The Monarch (18 page)

 

PART FOUR

Monday

 

23

Federal Plaza

New York City

11:00
A.M.
Local Time

T
HE FEDERAL PLAZA
lobby was already filled with spectators by the time Jonathan and Lew had arrived. Against the far wall a raised stand had been set up, with several chairs and a podium on it. Atop the podium were dozens of microphones, each labeled with a particular news agency's call letters or logos. To accommodate the expected crowd, large flat-­screen monitors had been hung from the ceiling at strategic points. Two large monitors had also been hung outside in the plaza so those who didn't care to squeeze through the crowd inside could watch the proceedings. The feed from the cameras was passed directly to the media as well, so they could show the event live without having to jam the space with their cameras. At the moment, all the monitors displayed the FBI logo.

Jonathan couldn't believe the crowd. There had to be two or three hundred ­people gathered for the press conference.

“Elvis is in the building,” Lew said.

“Unbelievable,” Jonathan said. They slowly pushed through the crowd. When they were at a point where they could see the outdoor monitors clearly, Lew stopped, but Jonathan kept going. He turned around when he noticed he was alone.

“You're not going in there,” Lew said.

Jonathan walked back to Lew so he could talk without being overheard, or at least try to. The din of the crowd was loud and rising in volume.

“If he's here, he'll be in there,” Jonathan said.

“Bullshit,” Lew said. “You don't know that. You just want to go in there. I think you're getting off on this dog and pony show.” Jonathan hated that Lew knew him so well, even after their time apart.

“Don't you?”

“Man, I don't even want to be on this side of town,” Lew said.

“Come on. We'll stay by the doors. I just need to see it live, not on these monitors,” Jonathan said. He had no intention of staying that far away, but one step at a time. He was going to make up some story about being unable to read ­people's faces in two dimensions off the screens, but Lew would have seen right through that. Instead, he went for the pity stare. He watched Lew look around the crowd, evaluating their situation. Jonathan knew Lew was running about a hundred different scenarios through his head.

He'd always listened to Lew, who had better survival instincts. Being a spook, even an ex-­spook, sometimes made you think you were both invisible and bulletproof. But without an agency, you were alone and vulnerable.

Finally Lew sighed and gave in. “Fine, just remember we're unarmed here.” It would have been impossible to bring anything into this crowd. Jonathan knew there would be plainclothes cops or feds passing through the crowds with scanners looking for anything dangerous.

Fifteen minutes and many apologies later, they'd made it to the entrance. The revolving doors had been removed to allow free flow of viewers in and out. They passed into the semi-­warmth and saw the podium at the far end of the room. Jonathan started toward it and was grabbed by the collar and pulled back. Lew let go and they stood beside the door with their backs to the glass.

“Right here is fine,” Lew said. He was being far too serious for Jonathan's liking. Lew wasn't just guessing; he could smell that something wasn't right. That nose of his had kept them alive more than a few times. Jonathan leaned against the glass beside him without argument.

“Yeah, I guess this'll do.”
For now.

A
HALF BLOCK
east and on the far side of the street, Thomas sat at the wheel of the limo, the engine purring in readiness. He gripped the steering wheel with black-­gloved hands, but he was neither nervous nor anxious—­not about the mission, at least. Bill Clapton, an ex-­Navy SEAL Thomas had worked with before, was in the backseat viewing Federal Plaza through binoculars from behind smoked glass.

“Sitrep,” Thomas said. They still had a half hour before things got under way, and probably another half hour before the shit hit the fan, but mistakes and anomalies seemed to be following him lately. He wasn't going to be surprised again if he could help it.

“Nothing to report,” Bill said. Thomas detected an edge to his voice. He wanted to be inside with his men, but Thomas needed a birddog out here. He couldn't sit at the wheel, ready to go at a moment's notice,
and
use the binoculars. But Thomas knew Bill was too much of a professional to let sulking interfere with the task at hand.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Well, probably nothing. But those two guys across the street from us are cops or I can't strip an AK–47 blindfolded.”

“Where?”

“Eight o'clock,” Bill said, indicating the pair across the street and behind them slightly.

“Roger. Keep your eyes on the prize,” Thomas said, not wanting them both taking their eyes off of Federal Plaza at the same time. Thomas reached up and pushed the side view mirror's motor control. A muffled whirr sounded as the mirror tilted out so he could see the sidewalk. “Got them.”

They were dressed in jeans, hockey jackets, and wool caps. They blended in perfectly with the crowd, appearing to the casual observer like just a ­couple of guys interested in The Monarch case. But unlike everyone else, they weren't getting any closer to the main event. They were just standing and talking, drinking a ­couple of steaming coffees out of white and blue paper cups. They also seemed to be looking around quite a bit, instead of looking at each other as they talked.

It was probably nothing, but it was enough to make Thomas look around the area away from Federal Plaza. He spotted three other similar pairs, standing almost equidistant from Federal Plaza as the first pair.

“Shit. We've got a perimeter setup,” Thomas said, turning his attention back to the plaza so Bill could confirm his suspicions.

“Got them,” Bill said. “Deviate?” Thomas had told Bill and his men that a mission scrub was possible if things weren't going right. He'd lied. This was a one-­shot deal. If they failed, they wouldn't have another chance. And neither would Nathan.

“Negative. Keep an eye on them and be ready to use the decoy,” Thomas said. He reached across the seat and grasped the handle of the suppressed SIG Sauer automatic lying there as he waited for Bill's response.

“Roger,” Bill said. Thomas took his hand off the gun and put it back on the steering wheel. “Decoy looks intact. We're good to go.”

Anticipating such a move from the feds, Thomas had put a decoy in place. Posing as window washers, they had carefully pressed a rope of C–4 over the putty holding the main windows of Federal Plaza's concourse in place. The windows were large, and there was enough material in place to blow up a small tank. Unless they brought sniffers out, it would be impossible for anyone to detect. The detonator was the hard part. It had to be passive and close range. If anyone peeled off the sticker in the bottom corner of the glass advertising their fake window washing company, they'd find the inside of the decal lined with wiring and circuitry. But everyone was too worried about a moving threat, which was what Thomas had counted on. They'd never suspect the biggest danger wasn't through the window, but the window itself.

The hard part was going to be timing. The blow rate was going to be unpredictable. Keeping safe anyone identified to him as a retrieval target—­The Monarch, Miss Burrows, and anyone else the control center eight thousand miles away ordered him to grab—­was going to be tricky to say the least. And then there was Lara's request. She wanted him to kill Burrows in the confusion that was about to take place. He knew why she wanted him to do it. She wanted to hurt her father. Thomas understood that motivation all too well, but a lifetime of taking orders had him more than a little conflicted about the request.

 

24

Tartaruga Island

6:30
P.M.
Local Time

S
OPHIA STEPPED FROM
the catwalk into the gallery. Two stories above the data center's floor, she could already see the three giant monitors hung high over one end of the hangar through the gallery's large windows. The central monitor displayed something that looked like a face, colorful overlays dancing across the image; smaller images jumped out of the bigger one for a few moments before they melted back into the whole. The other two monitors flanking the center one, equal in size, each showed a single line of white text on the otherwise black background: “No Feed Detected.”

Sophia eased closer to the windows, and the hardware and activity on the floor of the hangar came into view. This was the first time she had come down here since they started the project. Nathan hadn't specifically told her to stay away, but she'd still felt like she was trespassing—­seeing something she wasn't meant to see. But tonight she didn't care.

“My God,” she breathed as she took in the magnitude of the operation.

A dozen men and women in white lab coats—­her reassigned staff—­moved through the data center's server farm. Each of them glared at some sort of PDA device as they checked various parts of the computerized labyrinth, no doubt for instructions on what they were doing, since server maintenance and monitoring wasn't their field.

Beneath the monitors, several other lab-­coated workers monitored control stations that looked like something from NASA. Hired for their expertise, Sophia only recognized a few of them from brief encounters in the dining hall. At the center of it all were Nathan and Lara, Nathan in his chair, whirring back and forth, and Lara standing tall and erect by his side in one of her trademark dresses, this one sea blue.

Seeing them replaced Sophia's awe with distaste and resolve. Still dressed in her own lab coat, she reached in the pocket and touched the long, sharp object she'd brought.

Sophia buried the fear that someone would spot her and usher her out and descended the long flight of stairs spilling down to the hangar floor. Forcing herself to move at a slow, natural pace, no one seeming to notice an extra lab coat.

She crossed the floor toward her target, nodding to a few other ­people and ignoring the guards sprinkled around the data center who seemed to be returning the favor. As she got closer, Lara bellowed at the workers.

“Thirty minutes, ­people!” she said. Sophia could feel the screen overhead glowering down at her like a demented great and powerful Oz. She pulled the object from her pocket as she stepped up behind the arguing pair.
No one even sees me. I'm invisible, just like any other day.

Lara finally looked behind her just as Sophia swung her arm, but Lara wasn't the target. Sophia slammed the point of the hypodermic needle into Nathan's neck, looked in Lara's eyes to show her the lack of emotion she felt, and then abruptly turned and headed back the way she'd come.

Sophia didn't look back. She'd wanted to kill him, pump his veins full of acid and watch him dissolve in front of her—­in front of everyone—­but she just couldn't do it. Instead, she'd done the next best thing. She'd diluted the formula. And she'd just made sure he'd embarrassingly go through the change in front of everyone who reported to him. To Nathan, this would be worse than airing dirty laundry for the public to see. This would be airing your dirty laundry and standing naked beside it.

She reached the stairs and headed up at the same slow, steady pace she'd used to descend them, but she knew what was happening behind her: Nathan's brain was exploding with light and heat, his body was shaking uncontrollably, his eyes were rolling up in their sockets, and if he wasn't careful he was biting into his tongue. These were all normal effects of the serum, as it disabled the neuro-­blocker that kept his shaking body still before attacking the diseased parts of his brain, temporarily curing him. Very temporarily, Sophia thought as she climbed the stairs. In a fraction of the time the formula usually lasted, he'd start shaking and convulsing, returning to his natural state. And without his wheelchair or the neuro-­blocker to keep him still, his greatest fear would come true in front of everyone. Yes, she thought, for him, this would be much worse than death.

Wild chatter moved through the staff like a wave, a few ­people shouting, and somewhere a woman screamed. Still, Sophia stayed focused on the top of the stairs. She heard running footsteps—­first on concrete and then the tinny clang of the metal stairs—­as two guards came after her. She remained unhurried.
Do it
.

“Leave her!” Lara shouted. The steps behind her slowed, stopped, and then after a moment started again but headed away from her this time. She knew the only reason Lara had stopped them: Without Sophia, there wouldn't be any more serum.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she glanced back just for a moment and saw Lara staring at her, Nathan sprawled on the ground on all fours fighting the nausea.

Back in the gallery, Sophia tossed the empty hypodermic needle into the trash, a slight blue tinge the only thing revealing the serum inside.

Tears threatened to blur her vision as she crossed the catwalk, but she held them at bay. Not yet. She would let go once she was back in her lab—­back home. Which was a sad thought all on its own, making her control even harder to keep.

All she wanted to do now was hold her animals and fall asleep. Ironic, since for the first time in her life, her eyes were open.

 

25

Federal Plaza

New York City

11:45
A.M.
Local Time

E
MILY STOOD AT
the back of the elevator beside Wagner reading the statement she'd written and trying to ignore the wall of FBI agents around her. Even though she was the one who'd written the statement—­and she'd been practicing it over and over—­the words were making no sense to her.

“You'll do fine,” Wagner said. She knew he meant her nervousness about speaking in front of so many ­people, rather than her safety. The Kevlar vest they'd convinced her to wear felt like a corset that was making her
more
of a target rather than less.

She smiled at Wagner and continued reading, but her mind just wouldn't focus. It kept drifting off to her real concern.
Is he here
?

Emily had spent years concocting her mental image of The Monarch. His face, his body, his hands. Even his smell. The image would waver now and again, as her imagination refined her desires with her experiences. She knew the reality would never live up to her fantasy, but she couldn't stop herself.

“Here we go,” Wagner said as the elevator car slowed and then stopped. The overhead display dinged and a moment later the doors slid open. The noise from the concourse blasted into the car, sounding more like a gaggle of geese than human beings. Emily's breath hitched at the sudden sensory assault. “Stay close.”

They left the elevator and moved as a group up the side of the crowd toward the raised platform. Emily looked around at the spectacle. Everywhere ­people pushed and shoved, standing on tiptoe with their cameras raised high over their heads, flashes blasted over and over at them as the crowd tried to get a peek at this case breaker.

She glanced up at the big screens hung from the ceiling and felt a new fear race through her as she imagined her head filling the displays, every blemish and flaw the size of a turnip. Then she saw that the crowd filling the concourse was just the tip of the iceberg. As they moved and the glare from the windows eased, she saw that the audience filled the plaza outside and beyond. Some stood on the serpentine benches for a better view, pointing and laughing at the spectacle inside. At her.

Am I walking by him right now?

“T
HAT'S HER,”
J
ONATHAN
said. Lew followed Jonathan's gaze, which wasn't really necessary with the way everyone was pointing at the woman walking in a sea of blue suits.

“Huh. Not what I expected,” Lew said. From the book and the way she wrote, he'd somehow expected her to look older and tougher. Sort of a thin version of Kathleen Turner, who had gone from beauty queen to scary old broad in a few short years. Burrows was nothing like that. She was tall and pretty in a fresh-­faced sort of way. More like Katharine Hepburn in those black and white movies.

Jonathan said, “I'm going to move up closer to the platform. Stay here and watch the crowd.” He sidled his way forward before Lew could say anything.

Crap
. Lew worked to follow him, his size making his progress a lot slower.

By the time he caught up, they were right behind the press. Any farther and they'd need a press pass. As far as Lew was concerned, this was way too close, their position making an escape almost impossible. Lew tried to identify their best egress, but found himself staring at Emily up on the platform. He didn't even notice when Jonathan drifted to the side of the press corps away from him.