Chapter 42

Washington

4:21pm GMT, 12:21 pm Local

Monica Cross did what most travelers in a hurry did: she took the shuttle bus from Dulles Airport to the Wiehle-Reston Metro station, then rode the Silver Line a total of fourteen stops into the city. Along the way she tried calling Carter Logan five more times, each attempt getting the same series of empty clicks. Service in the tunnels was spotty and she kept losing signal, causing her frustration to mount with each passing station.

By the time she emerged from the Metro Center hub in the heart of Washington, her frustration had shifted to worry. The man named Phythian—he’d never given her his first name—assured her the number belonged to the blogger named Logan, but it wasn’t ringing through. As she rode the escalator up into the steamy sump of summer, she punched the numbers in one more time, almost not bothering to wait for the irritating click-click-click.

To her surprise, this time it started ringing.

Just as she stepped off the moving stairs into the glaring sun a voice on the other end said, “Who’s calling?” Suspicious and apprehensive, ready to hang up if given a reason to.

“My name is Monica Cross,” she answered. “Are you Carter Logan?”

“Do I know you?” he asked, abrupt and testy.

“No. But I’ve traveled a long way to give you something.” There was a pause on the other end, and Monica was afraid that Carter Logan—or whoever this was—might have hung up on her and not answer again if she called back. “I just got in from London, and I don’t have much time.”

“How did you get this number?” he demanded.

“From the man who gave me the thing I’m supposed to give you.”

Another pause, then: “And who is this man?”

Phythian had told Monica was not to mention his name, not under any circumstances. The NSA operated a number of sophisticated eavesdropping systems—among them PRISM, ECHELON, and DISHFIRE—all of which were capable of monitoring virtually every phone call, text, email, or other digital communication. Best to keep his identity out of the surveillance system, he’d explained.

Instead, he’d instructed her to say: “It’s about Katya Leiffson.”

She heard a gasp on the other end, and then the voice became terse. Almost angry. “What do you know about her?”

“Just that the two of you were going to get married. If your name is Carter Logan.”

“Who did you say you are?” he demanded.

“Monica Cross. I’m a photographer for Earth Illustrated magazine. I was in Pakistan until just a few days ago—”

“Holy shit. I know who you are. You found the plane.”

“That’s me,” she conceded. “Like I said, I have something to give you.”

“You—” He inhaled a ragged breath, then let it out. “You were there. You saw her.”

“Yes, Mr. Logan,” she replied, even though he had not yet confirmed his identity.

“You’re sure it was her? Katya?”

“If she was on that plane, I’m sure it was. There were five of them.”

“How…I mean, did she…what I want to know is, did she look like she’d suffered?”

“The crash happened a long time ago, Mr. Logan.”

“Just tell me, dammit,” he snapped. Not so much angry as impassioned.

“It would be better if we meet in person,” she told him.

“We will, so you can give me whatever this thing is. But I need to know how she died.”

Now it was Monica’s time to regroup, take a deep breath. “She was shot, Mr. Logan,” she told him. “All of them were.”

Monica could almost hear the gears grinding in his head as thoughts churned and memories rose up from the deepest crevasses in his mind. She knew the signals: same thing happened whenever she thought about Phillip, which seemed to be just about every second of the day. At least until she’d been forced to run for her life; since then, she’d been focused on simply staying one step ahead of the triggerman.

“Where are you now?” he asked her.

“Metro Center. I can see a Macy’s across the street.”

“I know it. Look…I can’t explain right now, but I think some people are after me. It’s why I destroyed my old phone and just got this one. They gave me the same number, but all my contacts are gone. Six blocks south of you is the Museum of Natural History. Meet me there at two o’clock. South steps on the mall side.”

“I remember it,” she assured him. She spotted a sandwich shop that was part of a nationwide chain halfway up the block, and quickly formulated a plan. “I’ll grab a quick bite and see you then.”

Adam Kent was halfway through the crosswalk in the middle of 17th Street when his phone rang. He had a paper bag from a deli in one hand, and he had to fish the device out of his inside coat pocket. The June heat made it insane to wear a jacket in Washington, but he had an image to protect. Even though it was Saturday, the government never slept. And neither would he, until the immediate issues of the day were dealt with.

“What?” he barked, since it was not the phone The Chairman typically called.

“I’m told you’re tracking an American target named Monica Cross,” said an anonymous voice on the other end; southern accent, maybe north Georgia hills or eastern Tennessee. A dialect expert would know the difference, but Kent neither knew nor cared.

“Who gave you this number?”

“FYI, she cleared customs at Dulles forty minutes ago,” the nameless voice continued, ignoring him. “And just four minutes ago she used a credit card bearing the same name at an address on G Street, just west of Metro Center. Place called Panera Bread.”

By now Kent had reached the opposite curb. He glanced around, fuming that this was not like New York, where cabs were everywhere, even at lunchtime. It was not quite the same in DC. Hailing a taxi was not impossible, but those that were empty and looking for a fare tended to hang around the National Mall or outside Union Station. The curb in front of the Eisenhower Building was not a popular attraction on the capital tourist trail, which meant the chance of snagging a ride where he was standing was almost nil.

Two blocks east of him, however, was the White House, which was a different story altogether.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said to this man he did not know.

“She should still be there.”

The cab driver was not happy to have picked up a fare that was only going six blocks, much less one who stunk up his vehicle with a nasty Reuben sandwich smothered with foul-smelling sauerkraut, and a side of pickles. But the twenty-dollar bill Kent handed him incentivized him to overlook life’s immediate indignations, and there was always the possibility he might pick up another passenger at Metro Center. Which meant he wouldn’t even log this in as an official ride, and could pocket the twenty.

The trip took all of three minutes, and Kent spent half that time contemplating the man on the phone. Clearly The Chairman had activated one of the NSA’s security threads and was tracking Monica Cross via her passport and credit card. It had been a mistake for her to buy lunch with it, which suggested she either was low on American money, or had made a sloppy mistake. In any event, he was alarmed that she was in the middle of the city, probably killing time until she completed whatever task she came here to do. Meet up with someone? Pick up something? Make some sort of hand-off? The fact that Phythian was involved made the matter even more puzzling, and Kent didn’t like puzzles.

The second half of those three minutes he focused on what he would do when he spotted her. For reasons he found un-fucking-believable, she had managed to make it all the way from the outer reaches of Pakistan to Washington, DC, leaving a swath of death and mayhem in her wake. Along the way two of the G3’s finest enforcers had been lost, although largely because of their own hubris. Even worse, the thing called EQUINOX remained unaccounted for.

Most days Kent didn’t walk the streets of Washington with a gun tucked into a holster under his jacket, and this was one of those days. His Kimber Micro nine-millimeter with Crimson Trace Lasergrips, white dot sights and sixteen-pound recoil spring, six bullet capacity, was locked in a briefcase under his desk on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Building. Twelve years in the U.S. Army Special Forces and another eight as a Langley analyst—before he’d personally been tapped by The Chairman to fill a slot on the executive board—had caused him never to want to fire a gun again. While he felt comforted to have one close by, he didn’t need to have it on him unless events made it absolutely necessary.

But knives…well, they were another thing altogether. Adam Kent appreciated the close proximity and finality of knives, and a specially crafted case in his attic man cave held an extensive collection of them: filet and deboning knives, fixed-blade survival knives, Bowie knives, British commando knives—even the Marfione Custom Mini Matrix-R with a Nebula Damascus blade, Moku-Ti handle, and blued titanium hardware. That one was his favorite, for visceral reasons that had contributed to the dissolution of his marriage.

But not the folding credit card knife; that weapon, which fit nice and snug in his deerskin wallet, was not stored in the locked display closet. In fact, he carried that one tucked in his wallet inside his suitcoat pocket, where it was easily accessible at any moment.

Monica had ordered a Fuji apple salad and half a ciabatta roll, plus a large to-go cup of tea that she’d found too hot to drink. She was seated at a small table in the far corner of the restaurant, where she could keep an eye on her fellow diners.

She found it hard to believe she’d been released from the hospital in Islamabad only sixty hours ago. Three continents, four cities, and she didn’t care to think how many people had tried to kill her since then. Until she delivered the envelope to Carter Logan—until she was safely back in her own apartment, sleeping in her own bed—she wasn’t going to let down her guard, not for a second.

Most of the lunch patrons on this Saturday seemed to be tourists, with a few weekend office workers thrown in. T-shirts and sunglasses mingled with slacks and sundresses and ties. Monica enjoyed people-watching, and she found herself so engrossed in them that she almost missed the man in the summer suit who had pushed his way inside, studying the crowd rather than heading over to the “order” counter.

He seemed to be looking for someone, but Monica told herself not to be worried. There was no way anyone could know she was here in Washington, much less having lunch in this unobtrusive sandwich place. The guy had to be meeting someone, and he was simply checking to see if he—or she—had arrived. That’s what she kept telling herself as she tried not to make eye contact, opting instead to focus on the contents of her salad.

The more he stood there, the more she didn’t like his body language; impatient, almost in a hurry to get a job done. She picked at a leaf of spinach on her plate, saw him look in her direction, caught him reach inside his suit pocket for something.

Her heart leaped as she thought gun. But that was just her paranoia raging again, as the man pulled his wallet out of a pocket and plucked out a credit card. As he turned it over in his hand he caught her looking at him, and he shot her a tight grin that lingered longer than it should have. And much longer than made her feel comfortable.

Again, her brain told her no way, but the rest of her was screaming, you’re screwed. And as one second ticked into the next, she realized she was. In her haste to keep an eye on the door, she had selected a table in a back corner, no escape route that would lead her to safety if someone figured out who she was.

A potentially fatal mistake.

They stared at each other for several seconds, and Monica sensed—correction, knew—he was here for her. In an instant he was pushing his way toward her, methodically weaving through the crowded tables, closing in. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. She felt like the fox who had managed to outrun the dogs for hours, and had become overconfident somewhere along the way.

“Monica Cross.” Adam Kent said as he stepped up to her table, boxing her in. “I’m here to help you—”

“How did you find me?” Monica asked, her voice no more than a single strand of breath.

“Credit card,” he said, quickly figuring there was no point keeping up the pretense. “Come with me.”

“What do you want?” she asked, not budging from her seat. Her eyes flashed on his for half a second, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him longer than that.

“That depends on whether you cooperate,” Kent explained, an arrogant smirk creeping into his face. “You’ve given us quite a challenge.”

“What if I don’t?” she said, a little louder this time. “Cooperate, I mean?”

The smirk turned into a sneer as he slipped a sharp, flat blade out of the object she had thought was a credit card. He exposed just enough of it to allow Monica a glimpse of the razor-sharp edge, “Come along without a problem, no one gets hurt. If you put up a struggle, you won’t be around to see yourself on the evening news.”

Monica hesitated a moment, as if trying to decide what to do. Kent waited patiently; in his mind she really had no choice. But Monica’s mind was different, and she’d made a different choice the moment Kent had slipped the knife out of its black sheath.

She started to stand up, sighing with resignation, and Kent flashed her a smile of victory. “That’s a good girl—”

But Monica had no intention of being good, nor did she consider herself a mere girl. Appearing resigned to her fate, she bent down to pick up a non-existent handbag, momentarily drawing his eyes away from where she was seated. And as soon as he wasn’t looking at her, she grasped the paper cup of tea and hurled it at him.

The steaming liquid hit him squarely in the face. Instinctively he threw his hands up to his eyes and cursed at the same time. Monica gripped the edge of the small table and, with a great heave, pushed it over. It caught Kent just above the knees and tipped him backward, toppling him into a man seated directly behind him.

Monica wasted no time. She pivoted around Kent, who was clutching at his eyes and hurling a litany of cuss words at her. She stomped on his knee with all her might, driving a spear of pain into her ankle as she pushed past him and raced for the door.

The words “Stop that bitch” ringing in her ears as she hit the pavement.