“Stay here,” Mason said. He climbed out of the Expedition, slipped on the hooded sweatshirt he’d borrowed from Ramses, and shoved his Glock into the front pouch.
“Trust me when I say I never had any intention of going in there,” Gunnar said from the passenger seat, where he sat with his laptop open, a live satellite feed on the screen. He fitted an earpiece into his right ear and positioned the microphone in front of his lips. “I’ll be with you in spirit, though.”
Mason nodded and closed the door. They were taking a risk by going in on their own, but they simply couldn’t afford to waste time trying to coordinate the operation with Archer, who was convinced the Dragon was in Philadelphia, or Chris, who had his hands full supervising the search for Valeria and liaising between the DHS and FBI to secure Independence Square.
They were on their own.
“I have visual on all three of you,” Gunnar said through the wireless receiver in his left ear.
Mason tapped his microphone twice in acknowledgment, but he refrained from responding as he passed a woman pushing a toddler in a stroller along the redbrick sidewalk.
“You sure you don’t want me to go in there with you?” Ramses said from a step behind him.
“If things go sideways in there, I need you outside to make sure the Dragon doesn’t get away.”
“You just don’t want me stealing your glory.”
“If you shoot anyone, it’s not glory you’ll be charged with.”
“You can suck the fun right out of anything, can’t you?”
“Are you boys finished?” Layne whispered through the speaker. “I’m just about in position. There’s a narrow opening off the alley, just wide enough to squeeze a car inside. Once I pass through there, I’ll be visible from all of the windows along the back of the building.”
“Then hold your ground for now,” Mason said, slowing his pace as he neared the building. “I’ll let you know when I’m at the front door.”
“See you on the other side,” Ramses said. He veered from the sidewalk, opened the gate, and ducked into the narrow gap between buildings, where he vanished into the shadows.
Mason leaned against the tree in front of the two-story structure and covertly watched for any sign of movement inside. The ground floor had been designed to serve as a retail establishment, the three bay windows positioned in such a way as to showcase the wares offered inside. Curtains had been drawn over two of them, while mannequins wearing sun-bleached, out-of-style clothes stood in the third. The sign in the window had been flipped to CLOSED, but there was no indication as to when, if ever, the store might open again.
“Who owns this building?” Mason asked.
“Give me a second,” Gunnar said.
The front door was painted forest green to match the trim and the shutters beside the upper-story windows. Evaporative coolers jutted from two of them. White blinds obscured the view of the interior. They wouldn’t be able to tell if there was anyone inside the building until they were in there with them.
“It’s owned by a company called National Realty Trust, which is one of the largest publicly traded equity real-estate investment trusts in the country,” Gunnar said. “It owns hundreds of commercial properties throughout the Midwest, primarily in rural communities, including processing plants, refineries, and facilities with industrial and agricultural applications. Plus, it owns a ton of land in the middle of nowhere and leases the mineral rights to various development and exploration companies who might or might not ever do anything with them.”
“Why would a company like that invest in a place like this?”
“That’s the thing, Mace. It wouldn’t. A real-estate investment trust like NRT is designed to accumulate and manage income-earning properties within its dedicated sphere…”
His voice trailed off into silence.
“What is it?” Mason asked.
“Give me a second,” Gunnar said. Mason listened to the clamor of keystrokes as he studied the building before him, searching for any sign that they were walking into a trap. “Here we go. National Realty Trust established a group of sister companies, ostensibly to help independent and minority-owned businesses enter the market in traditionally low-margin industries or lower-income areas. They operate at a net loss, which they’re able to write off since they’re technically performing a community service. It also allows them to transfer poorly performing assets from their main portfolio into accounts where any potential financial loss is turned right back into profit in the form of a tax write-off. The building in front of you was owned by a local sister company called Capitol Trust until three months ago, when the value of the land itself eclipsed the liability of the mortgage, necessitating its transfer to NRT’s main portfolio, unlike the majority of its rural and agricultural holdings in places like Pennsylvania, where it operates a sister company called Liberty Trust, and in—”
“Texas,” Mason said. “Where it goes by the name of Lone Star Trust, which bought the mortgage on the ranch where we found all of the dead bodies in the barn.”
“Yeah,” Gunnar said. He fell silent for several seconds. “Be exceedingly careful in there.”
“That’s the plan.” Mason approached the entrance and tested the knob, which turned easily in his hand. “The front door’s unlocked.”
“You think they’re expecting us?” Ramses said.
“Only one way to find out. Layne?”
“Ready on your mark,” she said.
Mason’s heart rate accelerated. This was the moment of truth.
“We go in on a silent three-count,” he said. “Three…”
A surge of adrenaline kicked in. He attuned his senses to even the slightest sound.
Two.
He drew his pistol. Slowed his breathing.
One.
In one fluid motion, he turned the knob and ducked into the building. Surveyed the interior down the sight line of his pistol. Closed the door silently behind him. The smell hit him immediately, causing him to instinctively cover his mouth and nose with the back of his hand. Motes of dust glittered in the dim light, seemingly suspended in the still air of the tiled foyer. Straight ahead, a checkout counter with an ancient cash register perched on top of it. A doorway on his left; a blind corner around which he couldn’t see on his right. He heard movement from somewhere beyond it and hoped to God it was Layne.
“I digitally removed the Dragon’s scarring, re-created his original features, and fed the image into my facial-recognition program,” Gunnar said. “It returned an immediate match. Zadorov knew exactly who he was the whole time and didn’t say a word.”
Mason tapped twice in acknowledgment, removed his mini Maglite from his pocket, and aligned it with the barrel of his Glock. Went around the wall. Low and fast. Swept his beam across the retail floor and nearly fired upon the mannequins leaning against the far wall. All of them were in various states of undress. Racks of dusty clothes had been shoved to either side to clear space for the bed in the middle of the room.
“He gave us his name,” Ramses said. “What more could you possibly want?”
“It would have been helpful to know that his real name was Yevgeny and that he was the nuclear engineer responsible for implementing the safety protocols that might have prevented the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. He had a cousin named Zakar, who dropped out of circulation shortly after Yevgeny was released from prison, only to reappear, physically altered by scarring consistent with acute radiation exposure, in the files related to Konets Mira.”
Mason shone his light onto the bed. The sheets were filthy and crusted with blood. A stack of unwashed bedpans rested on the floor. The TV tray beside them had been draped with a towel, on top of which was a handful of hooked needles and a spool of thick black thread.
Layne appeared from the back of the house and gestured toward the staircase. The stairs were wooden, the runner and railings smeared with blood. She reached them first and ascended with her flashlight shining upward toward the landing, beyond which they could see only a bare wall with rectangular discolorations where pictures had once hung.
“He was one of six men charged in the disaster,” Gunnar said. “A farce of a trial was held in front of the whole country. They were convicted without the defense attorneys speaking on their behalf and received sentences ranging from two to ten years, based on their levels of culpability. Yevgeny got five years for negligence and was released in 1992 after serving his full term, despite a report issued the previous year by the State Committee for the Supervision of Industry and Nuclear Power, which acknowledged that the explosion had resulted from a design flaw in the control rods and not human error, producing a fizzle reaction that sent six tons of radioactive material into the air.”
“Which is why he uses it as his calling card,” Mason whispered.
The smell was even stronger on the second floor. Layne pressed her back against the wall beside the first open doorway and waited for Mason before going in fast. Their lights sliced through the darkness, illuminating the room where the bed downstairs must have once resided. In its place was a desk with a laptop computer sitting on top of it. A Russian flag hung from one wall, a map of Independence National Historical Park from the other.
There was no doubt in Mason’s mind that the map had been a plant meant to mislead them.
“They dragged this guy in front of the whole country and made him believe he was responsible for killing all of those people,” Ramses said. “And they didn’t kick him loose when they learned he wasn’t responsible after all? No wonder he joined a cult that wanted to see the whole damn world destroyed.”
“Over here,” Layne whispered.
Mason found her standing just inside the doorway of the room across the hall. He slipped in behind her and shone his beam onto a neatly made bed. The dresser was freshly polished and a curio cabinet displayed porcelain figurines that practically glowed in the dim light. An ionizer stood in one corner, a HEPA filtration unit in another. Essential oil diffusers were strategically arranged throughout. It was a scene completely incongruous with the remainder of the house, one that would have been jarring were it not for the walls, which were plastered with maps and photographs.
“We’re definitely in the right place,” Mason whispered.
The maps were of Washington, D.C., as a whole, and the National Mall specifically, and featured handwritten notes and distances measured in what could only have been steps. There were photographs of every structure from every possible angle. From the Lincoln Memorial in the west to the Capitol Building in the east, the White House in the north to the Jefferson Memorial in the south, and everything in between. He recognized the World War II and Vietnam Memorials, the American and Natural History Museums, the Smithsonian Castle, the statues and paddleboats and gardens and the security details assigned to each, including the exact times the photographs were taken. They’d been surveilling the area for what had to have been years. Every path, every blade of grass, every solitary inch was represented somewhere in the confusion of pictures, but it wasn’t until he looked up at the ceiling and saw the Washington Monument that everything fell into place. The 555-foot obelisk stood at the very center of everything, a point from which a single detonation could wipe out the entirety of the American political infrastructure and erase its history.
If the goal was to trigger immediate and disproportionate reprisals, this was the surest way to do it.
Mason cleared the bathroom and met Layne beside the lone remaining doorway, the buzzing of flies emanating from within. They went in together, their flashlights scything through the darkness.
“Jesus,” she gasped.
A workstation framed by gray bricks sat on the table just inside the doorway. A pair of lead gloves was draped over the clear shield in front of it. There were syringes in metal sheaths and a container with the radiation symbol on the side, but that wasn’t what had caught Layne’s eye.
A pair of legs rested on the small bed in a wash of congealed blood. They’d been amputated just below the groin, presumably by the chain saw leaning against the armchair. The decomposing flesh of the thighs had retracted from the femurs. He could still smell faint traces of burned meat and a hint of gas from the acetylene torch they’d used to cauterize the stumps.
“What is it?” Gunnar asked. “What did you find?”
Mason didn’t have the slightest clue. He could only shake his head at the implications as he stared at what he had to believe were the Dragon’s legs.