Thursday, 17 December 2015
3:36 P.M.
The glass walls muffled the shouts from outside as Lennox and Chase marched across the entrance hall of Montefiore Medical Center. Someone, almost certainly the comatose man’s reluctant doctor, had informed the media of the situation developing inside and they had turned out in force. Behind the cameras, picket boards bobbed in and out of sight: campaigners protesting against the FBI’s decision to prematurely wake a man with a life-threatening brain injury.
“Christ! These people’s memories are short,” muttered Lennox as they followed signs toward the intensive-care unit.
Chase had not heard. He was keeping pace with his superior while deflecting phone calls on her behalf. He made an irritating creaking sound with every step as his various pieces of body armor rubbed against one another:
“Yes, I understand that, sir . . . Yes, sir . . . And as I said before, she’s not currently available.”
A middle-aged man in a long brown coat seemed overly interested in them as he approached from the other direction. Lennox was about to alert Chase when the man pulled a camera and audio recorder out from his pockets:
“Agent Lennox, do you believe the FBI is above the law?” he asked accusingly as Chase shoved him up against the wall. Lennox continued down the corridor without pausing. “Judge, jury, and executioner—is that how it works now?”
As Chase restrained the struggling man, he continued to shout after her:
“The family have not given their consent!”
Lennox maintained her confident demeanor as she passed between the two police officers on the door and entered the ICU. Inside, the atmosphere was even more tense. A defibrillator sat ominously on a cart in the corner. Three nurses fussed over wires and tubes while the doctor prepared a syringe. Not one of them acknowledged her as she regarded the man in the bed.
He was as scrawny as a schoolboy, despite being in his twenties. Severe burns covered most of his right-hand side. Even the four-letter lie cut into his chest had spilled over onto his flank: a Puppet masquerading as Bait, a killer masquerading as a victim. A sturdy neck brace held his head in place, while a thin, bloody tube protruded from the tiny hole that had been drilled through his skull.
“I just want to reiterate how strongly I advise against this,” said the doctor, without taking his eyes off the syringe in his hands. “I am one hundred percent against performing this procedure.”
“Noted,” said Lennox as Chase entered the room. She was glad to have at least one person on her side.
“The risks involved in inducing consciousness with a brain injury like this are immense, exacerbated exponentially when considering his previous mental health history.”
“Noted!” repeated Lennox more forcefully. “Shall we?”
The doctor shook his head and stood over his patient. He plugged the first of the syringes into a port, an access point into the closed system of intravenous tubes and medications flowing into the bedridden man. Very, very slowly, he depressed the plunger, clouding the clear fluid already inside.
“Crash cart ready,” the doctor instructed the room. “We need to keep intracranial pressure as low as possible. Constant monitoring of pulse and blood pressure. Here we go.”
Lennox watched the motionless body, refusing to show even a glimpse of her inner turmoil. Whatever happened, her career at the Bureau was more than likely over. She had created a nationwide PR incident, ignored direct orders from above, and lied to the doctors to procure their compliance. She just hoped that it would prove to be worth the sacrifice, that this sole surviving enemy might just give them something that they had been missing the entire time.
The man gasped. His eyes sprang open and he attempted to sit up, the tubes and wires keeping him alive pulling him back down.
“OK. OK. Andre? Andre, I need you to stay calm for me,” the doctor said soothingly, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“Blood pressure’s 152 over 93,” one of the nurses called out.
“I’m Dr. Lawson, and you are in Montefiore Medical Center.”
The man looked around the room. His eyes grew wide with fear as he regarded horrors that nobody else could see.
“Heart rate ninety-two and still climbing. BP’s too high,” said the nurse anxiously.
“Don’t die. Don’t die,” Lennox whispered to herself as the man started thrashing around.
Dr. Lawson reached for a second syringe and twisted it into another port. Within seconds his patient stopped fighting and became drowsy to the point of sleep.
“BP’s dropping.”
“Andre, I’ve got someone here who needs to ask you a few questions. Would that be all right?” asked the doctor, sealing the deal with a kind smile.
The man nodded groggily. Dr. Lawson stepped aside to allow Lennox through.
“Hello, Andre.” Lennox smiled, setting the tone for the friendliest interrogation in history.
“Try to keep it simple. Short, direct questions,” warned the doctor as he moved back to monitor his patient’s vital signs.
“Understood.” She turned back to the man in the bed. “Andre, do you recognize this person?”
She held up a photograph of Alexei Green, looking every bit the wannabe rock star with his beautifully kept chin-length hair. Andre struggled to focus on the picture. Eventually, he nodded.
“Have you ever met him?”
On the edge of sleep, Andre nodded again: “We . . . all . . . must,” he slurred.
“When? Where was this?” asked Lennox.
Andre shook his head as if he couldn’t remember. In the background, the steady beeps were building momentum. Lennox looked back at Dr. Lawson, who made a gesture that she interpreted as “move on.” Reluctantly, she obeyed. She stared down at the letters sliced into the man’s chest, “Bait,” cut halfway through his emaciated body:
“Who did this to your chest?” she asked.
“’Nother.”
“Another? Another what? Another . . . Puppet?” She almost whispered the last word.
Andre nodded. He huffed and panted as he struggled to form his words:
“All of us . . . to-gether.”
“What do you mean, ‘together’?”
He did not respond.
“When you were at the church?” she asked.
Andre shook his head.
“You were all together somewhere before the church?”
He nodded.
“And this man was there?” She held up the photograph of Green once more.
“Yes.”
Lennox turned to the doctor excitedly:
“How old would you say these scars are?” she asked.
He got up and examined the wounds, causing Andre to flinch when he prodded a tender section just below the armpit.
“Rough guess, based on scabbing, inflammation, and infection: two, maybe three weeks.”
“That coincides with Green’s last visit to the US,” confirmed Chase from the back of the room.
Lennox turned back to the patient:
“Did you know the church was going to blow up?”
Andre nodded shamefully.
“Did you know about the other bombs?”
He stared up at her blankly.
“OK,” said Lennox, taking her answer from his expression. “Andre, I need to know how that meeting was arranged. How did you know where to go?”
Lennox was holding her breath. If they could just work out how these people were communicating with one another, they could intercept the messages before anybody else had to die. She watched the exhausted man struggling to remember. He brought his hand up to his ear.
“Over the phone?” she asked skeptically. Her team had thoroughly scrutinized the previous killers’ phone records, messages, apps, and data.
Andre shook his head in frustration. He raised a hand to the electronic display above his bed.
“A computer?”
He tapped his ear.
“Your phone screen?” asked Lennox. “Some sort of messages on your phone?”
Andre nodded.
Confused, Lennox turned to Chase. He acknowledged the unspoken order to share this important information immediately and left the room. Lennox could tell she wasn’t going to get much more out of the man but would question him until the doctor stopped her:
“Did these messages say anything else? Were there any instructions for after the church?”
Andre started whimpering.
“Andre?”
“Heart rate increasing again,” called the nurse.
“What did they say, Andre?”
“Blood pressure’s rising!”
“That’s it. I’m sedating him,” snapped Dr. Lawson, stepping forward.
“Wait!” yelled Lennox. “What did they tell you to do?”
He was whispering something under his breath, searching the room again for his invisible tormentors. Lennox leaned in closer to hear what he was saying.
“. . . one . . . every . . . ill . . . ryone . . . ill everyone . . . Kill everyone . . .”
Lennox felt her firearm slide out of its holster: “Gun!” she shouted.
She grabbed the weapon in the man’s hands as a round fired into the wall. The monitoring equipment was flashing and beeping frantically as the struggle continued. Dr. Lawson and the nurses were all crawling across the floor. Another shot shattered the light overhead, showering the bed in broken glass. Chase rushed back into the room and threw himself on top of the bedbound gunman, a second pair of hands easily overpowering the weakened man.
“Knock him out!” Chase ordered the doctor, who scrambled to his feet and reached for one of the syringes.
As they kept the gun pointed safely at the exterior wall, consciousness drained from his patient bit by bit until the weapon dropped out of his limp hand.
Lennox holstered the gun and smiled at her colleague in relief:
“Last twenty seconds aside, I think that went pretty well!”
Baxter turned off the obnoxious breakfast radio show and watched the entrance to Hammersmith Station, the hail exploding into icy patterns as it struck her windscreen.
After a few minutes, Rouche emerged from the station with his phone pressed to his ear as usual. He waved in the direction of Baxter’s black Audi and then hovered in the doorway while he finished his call.
“Are you kidding me?” Baxter muttered to herself.
She honked her horn angrily and revved the engine until Rouche jogged through the downpour to climb into the passenger seat. Empty Tesco sandwich boxes and half-drunk bottles of Lucozade crunched under his feet.
“Morning. Thanks for this,” he said as she pulled onto Fulham Palace Road.
Baxter didn’t reply, switching the radio back on, only to find the show more annoying than ever. She soon turned it off again and resigned herself to making conversation:
“How’s coma-bastard doing?”
The entire team had been made aware of the FBI’s progress overnight.
“Still alive,” said Rouche.
“That’s good . . . I guess. Should mean we can hold on to Lennox for a bit longer.”
Rouche looked at her in surprise.
“What? She’s the first manager I’ve ever met who actually did something I would do,” said Baxter defensively. She decided to change the subject: “So, they forgot to check the killers’ text messages, then?”
The rain outside was intensifying.
“I believe it’s a little more complicated than that,” replied Rouche.
“Uh-huh.”
“They’re going to try decrypting the . . . fragmented . . . errrm . . . data store . . . the Internet,” explained Rouche, explaining nothing. “Anyone searched Green’s place again since?”
“Where do you think we’re going?” said Baxter.
They continued along the high street. Rouche stared out at the illuminated shops longingly:
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“I skipped breakfast.”
“Sucks to be you.” Baxter huffed and pulled over.
“You’re the best. Want anything?” asked Rouche, already climbing out into the rain.
“No.”
He slammed the door behind him and dodged the traffic to enter the bakery across the road, his mobile phone lying forgotten on the passenger seat. Baxter looked down at it for a moment and then focused her attention back on the bakery; however, her gaze slowly returned to the passenger seat. She rapped her fingers anxiously against the steering wheel.
“Screw it!”
She snatched the phone off the leather. The screen was locked—she swiped her finger across it—but not password-protected. She clicked on an icon and started scrolling through the call log.
“Who the hell are you calling all the time?”
A list of outgoing calls flashed up, the same number reappearing time and time again: a London area code, almost every hour throughout the previous afternoon and evening.
A moment’s indecision.
She glanced back at the bakery, heart racing, pressed the “call” button, and held the phone up to her ear.
It started to ring.
“Come on. Come on. Come on.”
Someone answered: “Hello, my lov—”
The car door opened.
Baxter hung up and tossed the phone back onto the passenger seat as Rouche sat down. He was soaked through, his graying hair darker, making him look younger. He shifted his weight and pulled the phone out from under him before dropping it into his lap.
“I got you a breakfast bap,” he said, offering it to Baxter. “Just in case.”
It did smell delicious. She snatched it off him and quickly pulled into a gap in the traffic.
As Rouche unwrapped his bacon-and-egg roll, he noticed that his phone was glowing against his trousers. His eyes flicked across to Baxter, who was focusing intently on the flooded road. He watched her carefully for a few moments and then swiped his finger across the screen to lock it once more.