Chapter 44

Washington

5:44 pm GMT, 1:24 pm Local

Carter Logan instinctively knew he couldn’t go home. The woman named Giselle, or whatever her name was, had known who he was and where to find him, which meant she also knew where he lived. Which meant others did, as well.

His apartment had probably already been tossed, his computer hacked and its contents downloaded, or stolen outright, listening devices and cameras installed, the whole nine yards. Her job obviously had been to kill him, leave him there on the sidewalk in what authorities would conclude was a mugging gone wrong.

His story on Justice Wheeler’s death had to be the key to all this. Logan hadn’t bought into the autoerotic asphyxiation ruse, instead using his syndicated column to raise doubts about the damning photos and videos, and other evidence. What was it Raleigh Durham who had told him?

Whoever pulled this off is going to go full ballistic if the truth gets out.

After his near-miss he’d walked for several hours as he tried to make sense of this new truth. Eventually he found an unlocked SUV, tucked himself into the back seat until the first glow of day appeared over the rooftops to the east. He’d slept fitfully, waking up at the slightest of noises, thinking the sleazebag with the knife might be prowling the streets looking for him. Or maybe the owner of the vehicle might show up and roust him with a squirt of pepper spray.

First order of business after wolfing down a breakfast sandwich was to get a new phone. Whoever was behind Wheeler’s death—and his own near-miss last night—probably had cloned the old one, or placed some kind of GPS device in it that would signal where he was. Fortunately, he had an insurance policy that paid for a replacement if it was broken or stolen, so he walked to the phone store and waited until it opened for business. His monthly payment might go up a few bucks, but it was worth it if it prolonged his life.

The process took longer than expected, but seconds after setting up the replacement, he’d received the call from the woman who said her name was Monica Cross, who sounded as if she was in a big hurry, and insisted she had something to deliver to him regarding his late fiancé. After the events of last night, he’d been understandably suspicious, but she’d sounded convincing. She also admitted to being the photographer in the incredible story he’d seen on the evening news, the one who had killed two brutal jihadists and then had discovered Katya’s body in the cabin of a wrecked plane. Even one of the Google alerts he’d received the night of his alcoholic bender had mentioned her name.

Improbable as her story had sounded, he’d agreed to meet her on the south steps of the Museum of Natural History sixteen minutes from now. Despite all that had happened over the last twelve hours, he strangely had a good feeling about this. About her.

Then again, he’d been mistaken before.

Minutes after catching a full cup of steaming tea in the face, Adam Kent was back in his office, unlocking the briefcase he routinely brought to work every morning, and took home every night. He had just retrieved his Kimber Micro nine when one of his phones rang.

“What?” he boomed into the pinhole microphone. The fury he felt from being bested by the Cross bitch was second only to the pain from hyper-attenuated nerve endings in his cheek and forehead—and his eye, which he worried might have some sort of permanent damage to the cornea—burned retina, possibly even ocular blindness. He’d wanted to chase after her as she stumbled out of the restaurant, but the thermal injury had forced him to flush his eyes with cold water in the restroom.

“You let her get away.”

“She boiled my face, dammit.”

“Witnesses said they thought she headed south toward the mall,” the voice on the phone said, no empathy at all.

“We have to stop her.” Kent checked the gun’s magazine and slide, then stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “Wherever she’s headed.”

“We have a working theory on that.”

“A theory? What kind of theory?

“We intercepted a call less than an hour ago. Her phone, the one she was given at the embassy. She may be heading to the Museum of Natural History.”

“What business does she have there?”

“Carter Logan.”

“The blogger,” he said. “I want a team dispatched now.”

“They’re already in position, ready to go.”

Monica was terrified. The man in the restaurant had been there to kill her. She’d seen it in his eyes, heard it in his voice, too. Even now that she was on American soil, her life remained in danger. Forget being arrested and questioned for the murder in Frankfurt; these goons were out to silence her, and they didn’t care what they had to do to make that happen.

After fleeing the restaurant, she’d almost given up and gone home. The metro station where she had just arrived from Dulles was across the street, and she knew it was only a handful of stops to Union Station. Amtrak. Safe and invisible. To hell with the envelope, the man named Phythian, and whoever this Carter Logan was. She could call him later and mail it to any address he gave her. Right now, saving her own hide was all that mattered.

But she didn’t take the escalator down into Metro Center, and she didn’t go to Union Station. Instead she zig-zagged her way down to the Mall, going one block over, then two blocks back, the entire time making sure no one was following her. Her untrained eye told her no cars were tailing her, and she didn’t see any evidence of stalkers on foot. Phillip had been a big fan of espionage movies, especially the Bourne thrillers, and she knew all about surveillance teams that traded off and circled around in order to keep fresh eyes on their target.

At least she thought she did.

She arrived at the Museum of Natural History fifteen minutes early. It was a warm afternoon on a Saturday in late June and the place was crowded, which could be both good and bad. Good because there was a lot of human cover, plenty of people to run interference should things go south. Bad for the same reason: how would she find Carter Logan among all these tourists? She had no idea what he looked like, and vice versa. Not a good set-up if he and she were to engineer a quick hand-off and make a hasty retreat.

Plus, someone could be hanging out in the crowd, waiting for the best moment to shuffle on by and put a bullet in her head.

Monica sat on the grass, facing the museum but not concentrating on it. Other people were lounging nearby, finishing lunch or soaking in the summer sun. A man was throwing a Frisbee for his dog, who seemed expert at catching it on the fly. A woman was feeding mashed food to a toddler, and a young child was running mightily, trying to get a kite into the sky.

At exactly two o’clock she rose from the grass and slowly strolled across Madison Drive, dodging cars and pedicabs as she edged toward the broad expanse of steps that led up to the museum. A steady stream of tourists was coming down them toward her; any one of them could have been Logan—or another assailant. But they all avoided her glance as they walked by, each one causing her to glance around nervously.

The steps were divided into two sets, separated in the middle by a broad terrace. She was halfway up the first set when she heard a voice behind her.

“Monica Cross?”

She wheeled around, half expecting to find the bastard from the restaurant holding that slick credit card knife in his fist. Instead, she found herself eye-to-eye with a man who seemed almost as nervous as she. Beads of sweat dribbled down his forehead, and his dark hair hung in clumps in front of his eyes. He appeared tense and jittery, like an addict in need of a fix, and he kept looking over his shoulder.

“Mr. Logan?” she said in return.

“Yes. You have something for me?”

“I do.” She’d kept the envelope in her pocket since Phythian had given it to her at Heathrow, and now she took it out.

“Wait a minute,” he said, gripping her hand tightly. “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

“How do I know you’re Carter Logan?” she snapped, snatching her hand back. “Look... I’ve traveled thousands of miles to give this to you. Don’t give me any shit.”

“Who sent you?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just take this—”

“You said it’s about Katya?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“We shouldn’t do this here,” he said. “You don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

“I sure as hell do,” she replied, pressing the envelope into his hand. “I need to go.”

She turned to leave, but Logan gently grasped her by the arm. “Look...whatever this is, if it’s about Katya, I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

“You just did,” she answered, a little too smartly. Then she turned and took a step up the stairs toward the stone terrace and the museum doors beyond.

As Monica moved forward a gunshot exploded and a small puff of dust rose from the granite in front of her, level with her head. Instinctively she wheeled around and pulled Logan down, just as another slug bit the stone barely an inch from where the first one had hit.

Someone was firing at them, and whoever it was, he damned sure wasn’t going to miss again.

People on all sides of her shrieked and dropped to the ground. She heard screams of “shooter” and “gun” and “stop,” tried to count how many shots she’d heard, a pointless exercise, since there was no fixed number of rounds a gun could fire these days.

Carter Logan dropped on top of her, covering her with his body. Then he gave her a gentle push and rolled with her, just as a third shot exploded off the very spot where they had been huddled.

She scrambled to get to her feet, but Logan grasped her arm and held her down. Another shot slammed into the step just below them. This time there was a loud pop, coming from somewhere nearby, and they both realized there was more than one gun.

“Run,” Logan told her. “They’re after me, not you—”

“Like hell they are,” she corrected him. “They’ve been after me since I left Pakistan.”

They looked at each other for a fraction of a second, almost too long. Then Logan pushed off and darted down the stairs in the direction of the pedicab stand. Another shot rang out as Monica headed the other way, up the steps toward the museum doors.

Her only hope was to blend in with the other tourists. Whoever was shooting at her was outdoors, and the Museum of Natural History was spread out across three levels and dozens of display rooms. With a modest head start she should be able to lose herself among the crowded exhibits, possibly even dash out the main entrance on the other side, onto Constitution Avenue.

She raced into the octagonal rotunda, past throngs of visitors staring at the massive African bull elephant that towered over the polished marble floor. It had been years since she’d set foot in this building, an eighth-grade trip to Washington that included all the major sights of the nation’s capital. The Museum of Natural History was one of the highlights, and she had particularly liked the Hope Diamond and the cockroach kitchen. Things seemed to have changed a lot since then—some exhibits had been replaced and the elephant had gone through a long-overdue makeover.

Monica speed-limped across the rotunda and into the Ocean Hall, where a monstrous whale was suspended from the ceiling. She pushed her way through the clumps of people studying the bubblegum coral and a massive set of megalodon jaws. Once she’d navigated the crowd she continued in the direction of where she remembered the main doors opening onto Constitution Avenue would be.

But she was wrong. The main entrance was one floor below, down a set of steps to where the T-rex and the restaurant were located. Damn.

She hobbled toward a stairway to her right, taking the steps as quickly as she could, considering the biting pain in her ankle. Halfway down she reached a landing, and when she made the one-eighty turn to continue her descent to the first floor she felt her heart stop.

There he was, the bastard with the credit card knife who had tried to apprehend her at lunch. His skin remained a bright crimson hue, and a parboiled Muppet eye bulged from its socket. Somehow, impossibly, he was on the ground level of the Museum of Natural History, clearly looking for her.

How had he found her so quickly? It was a stupid question, one that took her half a second to answer. Someone must have been listening in to Carter Logan’s phone, which meant that he’d been right: these people were after him as much as they were after her. Or: was it her phone, as she’d begun to suspect yesterday? Had it been bugged and infected with a GPS tracker that allowed them to keep tabs on her whereabouts?

All these thoughts tumbled through her brain in less than a second, enough time for her to spin around and speed-limp back up the steps to the second floor, just enough time for the man from the restaurant to spot her motion, and call out to her. “Give it up, Monica Cross,” he said from below. “Game’s over.”

At the top of the stairs she hesitated, glancing at the exhibit halls to her left and right. Human Origins or African Voices? Or—maybe—the utility closet, which was across the corridor in front of her.

Stop running, you whore, Adam Kent silently swore, although the curse word in his mind actually began with “c.” She was only a few yards ahead of him, and even if she veered off into one of the crowded exhibits, he would find her in a flash. But when he arrived at the top of the steps and glanced around, she was gone.

No way could she have disappeared that fast. She was tired and had to be on the verge of collapse. He knew she also had bruises and sprains and cracked ribs.

But she was not here.

His face continued to burn from her nasty stunt at the restaurant, and his eye was screaming in pain. He actually might lose it, all because of this crazy bitch. She deserved everything she had coming; his only regret was that he didn’t have the Marfione Custom Mini Matrix-R knife that would allow him to treat her to the slow agony of death she so rightfully deserved.

He glanced right, left, straight ahead. No sight of her anywhere, his body sagged momentarily from disbelief and impending defeat. She couldn’t have gotten away, but there was no sign of her—no sign of anyone moving with any speed at all, just dozens of tourists roaming about, studying the exhibits and reading the descriptive placards.

Kent stood at the top of the staircase and assessed his options. His Kimber nine was in his pocket, and Monica Cross was in the building. The Chairman was waiting for word that the target was finally down, case closed. The anonymous southern accent he’d heard on the phone could take care of Carter Logan; Kent’s only concern at the moment was swatting a mosquito that had been an annoyance far too long. The question was, where was she?

Then he noticed the utility closet, and things suddenly began to look a little brighter.

Without hesitating he charged in, found her cowering at a slop sink in the far corner. She looked as if she might scream when he drew the cruel-looking gun from his jacket and pointed it at her.

“Make a noise—any noise—and you die right now,” he told her as he slowly approached her. “Keep your mouth shut, maybe you buy a few seconds.”

She decided to keep her mouth shut.

“You’re good,” he said, nodding at her appreciatively. “I lost money on you.”

She started to say something, realized there was no point.

Kent studied her at length, now that he finally had time to look upon his prey. “You don’t know what the hell is going on, do you?”

Despite his advice that she remain silent, she said, “Equinox.”

The answer noticeably took him by surprise, and he recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “You’re smarter than you look,” he said. “Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” she told him, her hands trembling like a seismic fault. “Never even saw the damned thing.”

“But you know too much.”

“Go ahead and kill me. By tomorrow morning the whole world will be reading all about this thing called the Greenwich Global Group and every despicable deed you bastards have done just to line your filthy pockets.”

“Spare me the lecture.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Monica snickered. She was petrified beyond all belief, but it was time to play her hole card. “That would only be the start of your troubles.”

Kent’s nostrils flared and she could see fire in his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Phythian,” was all she had to say.

Fuck. The murdering sonofabitch had turned up in the middle of the night two days ago in the middle of the Pyrenees, then had disappeared. As had the locksmith named Beaudin, something Petrie’s termination squad had confirmed upon their arrival in Andorra. Hours later Simone Marchand had been killed in a restroom at the Frankfurt airport. Then, Eitan Hazan had been shot on a train in Cologne, and an MI6 agent named Fiona Cassidy was found dead in her London flat. Now Monica was here in Washington, delivering a parcel to the fucking blogger named Carter Logan. It explained a number of things, but it posed just as many questions as it answered.

Unfortunately, it was too late for questions. The Chairman had given im direct orders, and it was Kent’s job to execute them. “Sleep tight,” he said, as he pressed the gun to her temple.