7:15 p.m. Tenth floor. Waverly Hotel.
Adder wanted clarification.
"Let me get this straight," he said after he heard Drake's report. "I send you over there on a routine job and the next thing I know I got a shooting on my hands and this Horn character, whoever she is, claims Eckard Chertok came back from the dead like some kind of zombie."
"Hahn," Paxton corrected him. "Gena Hahn."
"Horn—Hahn—whatever."
"Bill, we've got to act on this."
"Hold on, Cable. Just calm down a second. This Hahn claims she was there when Chertok hijacked the convoy, but she's really working some kind of deep-cover penetration job for the CIA." Adder's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Ahmad's just a patsy and he didn't know what was going on. Meanwhile, her cover got blown and this guy Drake shot was supposed to shoot her in Conwell's room, but she doesn't know why they took her to that particular room and she claims she never heard of Mack Conwell. Does that make sense to you?"
"We don't have time for—"
"C'mon, Drake. I'm just trying to figure it out."
"We worked together in Yugoslavia." Drake paced Conwell's room, talking to Adder and Paxton on his cell phone, half-listening to the traffic on his headset. The delay was inexplicable. Maddening. Ten minutes had passed and Adder was still dragging his feet. "I don't know her current status." He kept his voice down, glancing at Gena. She was glaring at him like a viper on the other side of the room. "Look," he said. "I don't trust her, believe me. She was involved romantically with Chertok before he went rogue and the Agency canned her back in Ninety-Five. It's all in the files. I don't buy her story any more than you do, but we can't just ignore it."
He didn't mention his own involvement. There was no point in complicating things and he wanted to talk to Nastya before the scandal broke. Warn her. Try to explain. His thing with Gena was ancient history, but it was all going to come out now and when it did, it was going to look seedy and incriminating in light of current events.
"Matthew." Nastya on his headset.
"Hang on," he whispered. "I'll get back to you in a minute."
Christ, what was he going to tell her?
"Chertok's dead," Adder was saying. "The psycho got killed trying to blow up a munitions train in 1999. The Russians verified it. I don't care who she was screwing back then. You haven't seen her in all this time and she just happens to waltz in and blow us out of the water? I don't buy any of this crap."
"I don't think the timing was a coincidence." Drake closed his eyes, trying to ignore his pounding headache. "Conwell's the link. Whoever she's working for, they brought her up here for a reason and it's got something to do with the hijacking. They wanted to link her to Conwell, but I don't know why."
"And they're going to meet up in Roseville."
"That's what she says. Tomorrow morning."
"Take her into custody," Adder snapped. "We'll sort it out later. If this is a false alarm or some kind of stunt, she''ll be muff-diving in Bedford Hills Correctional for the next twenty years. I guarantee it."
He was furious. Rattled. Drake could understand that, but he couldn't understand why Adder was dragging his feet. The liaison was a natural bureaucrat: political, hyper-cautious. He had to know he was risking his career by stalling. The President was involved. Everyone in the hotel. They had to act on the threat, no matter how unreliable the source.
"We can't ignore it, Bill." Paxton was thinking the same thing. He was patiently, diplomatically, trying to get Adder to focus. "We've got to notify the Secret Service immediately, evacuate the hotel, sweep the neighborhood. She knew about the hijacking. Combined with the shooting, that's sufficient ground for action."
"Like hell it is," Adder said. "I'm not aborting a Presidential fundraiser and setting off a stampede on this bimbo's unsupported testimony. They'll eat me alive if I'm wrong. You, too. Both of you. We report this, it's going all the way to the top. We got to have some kind of corroborating evidence."
"We can't risk the chance that she's right."
Adder hesitated. Maybe it was starting to sink in.
"Evacuating the hotel's going to be a mess," he said, his voice shaky. "No way to contain it. There's going to be a media circus and we're liable if guests get injured in a false alarm. I'll be liable. Son of a bitch..." He let out his breath, wheezing over the line. "OK, I'll notify headquarters and the Secret Service and you better hope this is for real. We'll send a HAZMAT unit to check the engineering level and take it from there."
"We can get there faster," Drake broke in.
"They're equipped for this, Drake. You're not. What're you going to do if she's telling the truth? Grab a canister of VX and run out through the lobby?"
"What do you want us to do then?"
"Stand by," Adder said. "Secure Conwell's room. Don't let Hahn out of your sight and keep your team in position until you get the word."
"You can't be serious." Drake tried to stay calm. "Huntley's guys are scattered all over the hotel. I'm stuck in Conwell's room with Hahn. We're sitting on a dead body and we've got a lot of hysterical people out in the hall. Nastya's out there trying to calm them down, but it isn't going to matter if that thing goes off in the basement."
"That's an order," Adder barked. "Don't leave the room. Paxton will call you back in a couple minutes."
He disconnected.
"Jesus Christ," Drake said. "Cable, what's going on?"
"I don't know." Paxton sounded exhausted. "Stand by. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
The line went dead.
"Matthew." Nastya on his headset. "What're we doing?"
"Still waiting on a decision."
"What's taking so long?"
He couldn't tell her. He really didn't know.