Gripping his suppressed Glock, Stahl stepped soundlessly on the spongy pine needles toward the red BMW. He paused near its trunk and saw a young man and woman embracing in the front seat.
He stepped up to the open driver’s window. The surprised couple looked out at him.
“Out of the car! Now!”
They stared back.
“Now!” He placed the silencer near the man’s head.
They stepped from the car.
“Turn around and walk down that path.”
They turned and walked.
Stahl raised the silenced gun and shot them both in the back of the head.
He dragged their bodies behind some bushes, removed their IDs and destroyed their cell phones. He walked back to the Opel and lifted the American woman out and placed her on the ground. Her driver’s license read: Maccabee Singh.
She was not moving. Perhaps he’d hit her too hard. He’d done that a few times. In Caracas, he barely hit a guy who died within minutes. He looked down at the woman. Should he keep her as a hostage? Or would she slow him down?
He should probably just finish her off here.
* * *
“We’ve lost him!” Donovan said, slamming his fist on the dashboard as he drove through the forest.
“We’re blocking off Avenue de Tervuren!” de Waha said. “He’s trapped!”
“Not if he turned into the forest.”
Donovan knew the Forêt de Soignes sprawled over sixteen thousand acres of thick woods and numerous pathways. Perfect for hiding the Opel.
And Maccabee’s body.
As they drove out of the forest, Donovan raced past Avenue Isidor Gerard, then the small lakes in Audergham. He skidded to a stop at the roadblock where an ESI anti-terrorist team stood armed and ready.
De Waha asked the team if they’d seen the Opel. They shook their heads.
Donovan squeezed the steering wheel. “Stahl turned into a side street or the forest. She’s dead weight to him now.”
“No. She’s protection against our assault! He needs her as a hostage!”
“He needs to dump her body and get out of the country!”
De Waha shook his head. “The only way that bastard’ll get out of my country is in a coffin!”
“Like the G8 leaders… ” Donovan whispered, swallowing bile in his throat.
He felt nauseated by his horrific failure to stop the assassinations of the world leaders. He saw the explosion, saw bloody human legs and an arm, saw the elephant tusks, all blasting out of the gallery windows.
His life was over. He’d live forever as the agent who’d failed to protect the president of the United States… and the seven other most powerful leaders in the world. Forget that he and de Waha had tried repeatedly to cancel the tour. Forget that the authorities had insisted on touring the Congo Museum for political reasons. Scapegoats were needed. Heads would roll. And his head and de Waha’s were first in line for the chopping block.
Donovan was angry with himself for not following his instincts. He should have pulled the damn fire alarm and hustled the leaders out of the museum.
And because he didn’t, their lives ended.
So had his career, not that it mattered now.
De Waha grabbed the police car phone and dialed the Congo Museum.
Donovan felt the blood drain from his face.
“Nothing but static… ” de Waha said.
“They’re dead… ” Donovan whispered.
De Waha adjusted the channel frequency several times and still got static, then the line went dead. “The explosion wiped out our phones.”
“Try the museum phone.”
He punched in the number and waited. “Dead!”
Dead… Donovan felt nauseated, tried to swallow, couldn’t.
“I’ll call Frans Kramer’s cell,” De Waha dialed and pushed the speaker button. A loud buzz filled the car, then the phone rang once and started hissing.
“Kramers here.”
More hissing…
“Frans… how many?”
Again the phone crackled and hissed.
“Frans?
The line beeped.
“Frans, how many?”
More hissing… “All of them… ”
More hissing… buzzing… beeping.
“All G8 leaders?”
“Yes. All of them!”
More buzzing.
Donovan started to pull off the road to vomit.
“Jesus,” de Waha said, “all eight world leaders dead.”
More hissing and buzzing.
“I said… alive! All leaders are alive!”
“What - ?”
“Not a scratch!”
“But I saw them on my small TV,” de Waha said. “They were standing at the elephant. I saw the Elephant Gallery explode. I saw a human leg fly out the damn window!”
“A guard’s leg!”
“But the leaders… ?”
“They’re okay, Jean! They’re all fine!”
Stunned, Donovan looked at de Waha who crossed himself, shot his fist in the air and shouted, “Thank God!”
“Thank commercial television, too,” Kramers said.
“What?”
“Commercial television. Stahl was watching the leaders on TV. He watched them walk up to the elephant, right?”
“Right,” de Waha said.
“Then he detonated, right?”
“Yeah.”
“One small problem.”
“What?”
“The leaders were not at the elephant.”
Donovan got it. “Time-delay TV!”
“Exactly.”
“But I saw the word LIVE on my TV screen!” de Waha said.
“LIVE ain’t what it use to be. The networks use that word loosely these days.”
“The leaders weren’t in the elephant gallery. They were in another room several hundred feet away, separated by six walls of very thick concrete went the bomb went off. What Stahl saw on television happened three minutes earlier. The network tape-delayed so they could fit in commercials for people to donate to African charities.”
Donovan thought back to when the leaders entered the building. He remembered seeing commercials for African charities that ran for about three minutes. During that time, obviously, the leaders were already touring the galleries. When the commercials ended, the coverage began with the leaders in the first gallery.
The G8 leaders were alive.
Stahl had failed.
And when he finds out he’ll be enraged. What will he do to Maccabee?