BEHIND THE HAY-ADAMS HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mike Califano pressed the transmit button for his microphone. “Ana, you there?” It was the third time he’d tried to raise her on the radio. Once again, there was no response at all. Not good.
The voice of Bill McCreary suddenly came on the line. “Michael, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“What’s wrong with your voice?” McCreary asked. “It sounds weird.”
“It sounds fine to me,” said Califano. “Has anyone heard from Ana?”
“No,” replied McCreary grimly. “Nothing from her in a while.”
“I hear police sirens everywhere,” said Califano. “Are they finding anything?”
There was a long pause before McCreary finally came back on the line. “Yes, Steve’s monitoring all the police radio runs. They’re apparently responding to gunshots fired at the Third Church of Christ, Scientist. They’ve found two bodies in the alley behind the church . . . and they just found another one in the sanctuary. All of them white males.”
“I suppose that’s good news,” Califano mumbled. As hard as he tried, he could not shake the disturbing image of Ana Thorne lying dead or dying in an underground bunker somewhere. And this was dredging up all sorts of raw emotions and memories that he desperately wished he could suppress right now.
“Michael?” said Bill McCreary.
But Califano was now lost in nightmarish thoughts about his murdered mother and sister.
“Michael?”
“Huh? Yeah?”
“What about the woman you saw? Do you know where she went?”
This snapped Califano out of his trance. The woman in the white dress. He stepped quickly to the edge of the shaft behind the Dumpster and peered down again into the darkness. The white flash. He’d seen that phenomenon before. In the satellite video this morning. “Hold on,” he said.
For the next thirty seconds, Califano searched all around the service courtyard until he returned with a flat brick that he’d found in a small pile of replacement pavers. He brought it to the edge of the shaft, held it high over the center of the opening, then let it drop. He watched with anticipation as the brick fell through the shaft and disappeared into the darkness. At the exact moment when he expected to hear it land at the bottom with a loud clank . . . he heard nothing.
He quickly tapped the button for his microphone. “Bill, I think I know where she is. And I think she has the stone.”
Back at CIA headquarters, Bill McCreary was intensely interested in Califano’s comment about the woman and the stone, and he was still puzzled by the odd tone of Califano’s voice, which seemed to have mysteriously dropped several octaves. But all of this was suddenly interrupted by a strange commotion coming over the radio. Someone had just activated their transmitter but wasn’t talking. Instead, thumping and scraping noises could be heard, along with sporadic, muffled voices in the background. And something else. McCreary strained to make it out. Eventually, he realized it was the sound of a revving engine and shifting gears. These noises went on for several seconds and then abruptly stopped as the transmitter apparently timed out.
“Mike, did you hear that?” McCreary asked over the radio.
“Sort of,” said Califano a couple of seconds later. His voice came over the speakers in the DTAI workroom in a deep, unnatural baritone. “Was that Ana?”
Before McCreary could answer, Steve Goodwin shouted an urgent report from across the room. “Police just received a report of a suspicious white van that left the garage next door to the church about three minutes ago. Last seen heading north on Sixteenth.”
McCreary immediately relayed that information to Califano.
“I’m on it,” Califano said. He quickly began running in the direction of the black Chevy Tahoe that he and Ana had parked on Fifteenth Street earlier that morning. As he ran, he tapped the button for his transmitter. “Hey, Bill,” he said between breaths.
“Yeah?”
“You may want to have someone cover the access points to that fallout shelter. Especially behind the hotel. I think we have a little time situation going on down there.”
“Got it,” said McCreary. “And by the way, your voice seems back to normal.”
Ana Thorne was thinking about trains. The rhythmic bumping and jostling as the wheels rolled over uneven tracks. The noise of engines and horns and passengers shouting out the windows to friends and loved ones. She loved trains. They reminded her of holidays with her family as a little girl. The train ride from their home in Zagreb to Pula on the Mediterranean coast was always the most exciting. Watching the countryside whiz by as she anticipated the first magical feeling of sand between her toes and the cool blue waves of the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, that was before the war . . . before the explosion that killed her family and left her ear and neck badly scarred . . . before she was forced to start a new life with a new family in the United States.
Suddenly, very different noises were intruding into her thoughts. The constant shifting and downshifting of an automobile engine. Sporadic thumping and squealing brakes. And the ugly voices of angry men. These were not the joyous shouts of happy passengers on holiday. She opened her eyes, and the world was still black. It took her a moment to realize why. She had an opaque hood over her head.
Ana tried to move her arms and legs but couldn’t. Her wrists were secured tightly behind her back and her legs were bound together at the ankles. She tried screaming, but her mouth was apparently taped shut. She was lying on her side on the hard metal floor of a cargo van, feeling every bump and pothole in the road as the van sped north out of the city. Her head throbbed terribly because of the brutal blow by the man with the Russian accent.
Ana did her best to keep track of what was going on around her. She knew she could still collect valuable intelligence in this situation. In fact, she’d been specifically trained to do just that.
A man nearby was speaking English with a heavy Slavic accent. “Tell me what this is,” he demanded.
“I’m telling you, I don’t know,” said a second man in American English. Ana deduced that this was probably the carjacker from Thurmond. Malachi.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a vicious slap, and the American man grunted in agony.
“You are Malachi, are you not?” asked the first man.
“Yes. I already told you that.”
“Then answer my question. Tell me what this is!”
There were several seconds of silence followed by another brutal slap and the sounds of a man grunting in extreme pain.
“Give me that,” said a third man. Ana recognized his voice as that of the Russian who had struck her with his gun. She deduced that he must be the leader of this group of thugs. She heard the sound of rustling paper being transferred from one hand to another. So the thing they are asking about is on a sheet of paper.
“These men are going to kill you if you don’t answer their questions,” said the Russian. “Do you understand that? Good. Now, I can help you avoid that fate, but only if you cooperate with me.”
Good cop, bad cop, Ana thought. A classic interrogation technique, and one of the most effective.
“I understand you don’t recognize this exact drawing,” said the Russian. “But have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“I don’t know,” said the American man after a pause. “Maybe.”
“When?”
“A long time ago . . . with her.”
“Who? The woman you met at the church today?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s her name?”
“Opal.”
“And what did she tell you about the twelve stones shown in this sketch?”
“I . . . I don’t remember anything about twelve stones. I swear.”
The Russian sighed. “I can’t help you if you won’t help me.”
There was some jostling as the men apparently repositioned themselves in the back of the van. Then, suddenly, there was another brutal slap, and the American man cried out in agony.
Moments later, Ana felt her own head being lifted up and her body being rudely dragged across the floor of the van. Someone grabbed her beneath her arms and propped her up into a sitting position against the side of the van. She could feel the bite of sticky duct tape around her wrists and over her mouth. Then, suddenly, she felt the warmth of another person’s face next to her own. She heard heavy breathing and could feel hot breath on her ear. She could see just a bit of flesh color through her hood.
“You’re next,” whispered the Russian man into her ear. His voice was sinister, and tinged with a kind of sadistic pleasure that made her skin crawl.