The Pawn

  “That’s what you call the death of all those people? Going further than you thought it would? Collateral damage?” I felt anger pacing back and forth inside me, ready to pounce. “You used him. You used them all.”

  “We did what we had to do. Ryan was a threat to our country, always fighting to limit the way the CIA did its work. We did it to protect freedom, not to limit it. We just created the perfect storm and waited to see how it would play out. I wasn’t sent in to make sense of it, just to help recast the story.”

  “Remove the evidence, leave the rumors.”

  “Eloquently put.”

  “So what about the truth?” I said. “That doesn’t matter?”

  He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Rumors, Dr. Bowers, not truth, are what matter in the end. Rumors start wars, topple regimes, ruin marriages, end careers. The driving force behind world commerce is innuendo, not truth. Everything from the stock market to the futures market to the price of oil is determined by guesswork and gossip. Control the rumors, Dr. Bowers, and you control the world.”

  “And in the case of Jonestown, you controlled the rumors.”

  A smile writhed across his face. “We influenced them. After all, those people really did kill themselves off; we had nothing to do with that. All we did was shape the way their story was told.” He raised the Glock, pointed it at my chest. “Just as I’m going to shape the way your story will be told.”

  Think fast . . . think fast . . .

  “But then why’d you leave the tape behind? At least tell me that much.”

  “I was interrupted before I could finish editing it.” He shook his head. “It’s that simple. Someone just showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gotta hate those interruptions.” He took aim. Faster. Faster.

  “Ralph and Lien-hua know.”

  The governor scoffed. “They can’t prove anything.”

  “No,” said a voice from behind me. “But I can.”

  Governor Taylor and I turned to see a gentle-looking man in his early forties step into the room from where he’d apparently been hiding on the balcony.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” he said. “My name is Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid. And I have something to give you.”

  Tessa faced the door, her heart ready to explode. It was the last door in the hall. The killer would try it next.

  911 hadn’t helped. Who? Who could she call?

  She saw a cell phone recharging on the dresser. The phone Patrick had been using. It would have the phone numbers of the other FBI agents! She grabbed it.

  It was turned off.

  Pressed power.

  Waited.

  Heard the killer moving through the hallway.

  Waited.

  There.

  She scrolled to the recent calls. The first name listed was Brent Tucker.

  79

  The governor swiveled on smoothly oiled joints and fired the Glock at Kincaid, hitting him square in the shoulder, sending him reeling toward the balcony where he smacked into the railing and flipped over backward. A moment later I heard the splash as he landed in the river six stories below. A series of screams echoed through the courtyard from the delegates who saw what happened.

  “I should have done that thirty years ago,” said the governor, gazing toward the balcony.

  While he was momentarily distracted I scrambled over, grabbed my gun, rolled across the carpet.

  “That, Dr. Bowers,” said Sebastian Taylor from somewhere behind me, “is how you handle a shark.”

  I positioned myself behind the couch. Flattened my back against it.

  “Sebastian,” I yelled. “Put down the gun.” I peered around the edge of the couch and then ducked back. He was scanning the room looking for me, trying to conserve bullets now that the balcony doors were open and the room was no longer soundproof. He’d need to choose his shot wisely; security would be here any moment. “You ate the hors d’oeuvres,” I called. “You’re infected. We need to treat you.”

  “Wasn’t me, I’m afraid,” he said. “I gave those to Anita before sending her to her room. I suppose I’ll have to find a new personal assistant. Ah well, she was getting a little old for me anyhow.”

  I couldn’t see him; he was on the other side of the room. “Governor,” I said. “It’s over. I recorded everything you said. I’m wired.” I touched the mic patch to make sure it was still in place beneath my ear. I’d put it on after grabbing it from my desk before leaving the federal building. No one was monitoring the other end at the moment, but everything the governor had said was automatically recorded.

  Every word.

  Despite the interruptions.

  That is how you handle a shark.

  Brent Tucker . . . Brent Tucker . . . Tessa had overheard Patrick talking to him on the phone earlier this morning. What had Patrick said again? Something about him helping with the case, being a good man.

  So he was a friend of Patrick’s. He could help. She punched the number. Waited while it rang. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  She heard the catch of the lock as the cop who liked to smoke opened the front door of the house.

  I heard the door bang open and ventured a glance. Governor Taylor had fled.

  Shouts and screams rose from the courtyard. I ran to the balcony.

  Kincaid had landed in the foaming water near the base of the waterfall. It must have cushioned his landing enough for him to survive the fall. He was hobbling to his feet. “It’s a cruel world,” he was shouting. “But our love will unite us forever!” And one by one, his people, the caterers for today’s luncheon, were taking capsules out of their pockets and popping them into their mouths.

  Endgame.

  Tessa couldn’t believe that the killer didn’t open the door in front of her, the last door in the hall. Instead, she heard him run back toward the center of the house.

  Officer Stilton, no! He was going to kill him too.

  The cell phone in her hand was ringing, still ringing.

  Answer, Agent Tucker. Answer!

  Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid looked around the courtyard. The world was spinning. People screaming.

  He was standing in water. Swirling water. Blood weeping from his shoulder.

  Blood and water. Curling together.

  The river.

  The whirlpool.

  Jessica and the days of true love.

  “His vision, our vision!” he yelled. “His future, our future!”

  I watched as the hotel security guards raced into the lobby and then fumbled around trying to figure out what to do: arrest the people who were killing themselves or try to calm down the panicking guests who were paying $1,200 a night?

  “Arrest them!” I shouted. The room was erupting in confusion. People were trying to leave, stampeding everywhere. “Stop them,” I yelled. “It’s a suicide mission! We need them alive to identify the virus!”

  You have to get down there.

  I knew the elevators would be jammed with people, so I ran to the stairs, descended to the main floor, and bolted into the courtyard of hanging gardens and pools.

  All around me, chaos.

  Tessa held her breath, waiting for the gunshot she was sure would come, waiting for the killer to shoot Officer Stilton too.

  No shot came, and when the phone in her hand vibrated, she almost screamed.

  “Hello? Pat?” a voice said.

  “No, it’s me,” she cried. “It’s Tessa!”

  “Tessa?”

  “I’m his daughter.” By then she was crying.

  “Are you OK? Where are you?”

  “I need your help. I’m at the house. She’s dead. Someone’s dead. Hurry.”

  “OK, calm down. I’ll be right there. I’m close by.”

  80

  Off to the right I saw four security guards trying to tackle a mountain of a man near the east entrance to the courtyard. He was wearing a caterer’s uniform and was throwing the guards around like rag dolls. Four to one, but they were hopelessly outma
tched. Ralph must have seen them the same time I did because he rushed into the middle of the melee and called to the guy doing the pummeling, “Pick on someone your own size, you freakin’ pansy.”

  Just then I located Kincaid. He was about twenty meters from Ralph. I ran toward him but found my way blocked by the crowd.

  Ralph waved the security guards to safety and then pointed to the capsule the guy had pulled out. “Don’t take the sissy way out. Fight me. Right now. If I win, I don’t let you die today.” Ralph was rolling up his sleeves. “I take you in, we prosecute you, put you away for the next forty years, and you get to experience all the joys of the American penal system. If you win, well, I’ll swallow your little pill.”

  What are you doing, Ralph?

  I wanted to help him, but I had to get to Kincaid. I pushed my way through the crowd, struggling to get to him before it was too late.

  Kincaid was right in front of me. “His future, our future!” he was shouting.

  He slipped his hand into his pocket.

  He’s going for a capsule. Don’t let him die. You need to find out the name of the contagion.

  I rushed him, tackled him, and sent the capsule he’d pulled out spinning across the cobblestone path. But not far enough. It was still within reach.

  As we crashed onto the ground, he wrestled free, squirming and fighting like a madman. “Don’t do this,” I managed to say. “These people are innocent.” But he brought his elbow down with crushing strength into my gut. I gasped for breath. This guy was tougher than he looked.

  He snatched up the capsule, shoved it into my mouth, then punched me hard in the jaw.

  Don’t swallow, Pat. Whatever you do, don’t swallow!

  Tessa waited one moment. Then another. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Still no shot. The killer must have slipped away. Then she heard Officer Stilton gasp when he saw the body in the other room . . . the sound of him shouting her name . . . sirens blaring toward the house . . . the bedroom door crashing open. “Tessa!”

  It was him. The cop who liked to smoke.

  So then. She was safe. It was going to be OK. Everything was going to be OK.

  I could taste the bitter tablet dissolving on my tongue.

  I tried to spit it out. Couldn’t. Kincaid was on me with a vengeance, clamping his hand over my mouth.

  Just then I saw a blur beside my face, and Kincaid’s jaw snapped back, and he flew off me.

  I spit out the capsule.

  Lien-hua swirled around with the grace of a gazelle, leapt into the air, and cracked her heel into the side of Kincaid’s head a second time, this time hard enough to swipe him off his feet. His body torqued around backward, and he slammed into the ground, unconscious. She landed softly on her feet, ready for another kick.

  “An A,” I said. I was trying to catch my breath. “I would definitely give that kick an A.”

  “’Bout time,” she said, rushing off toward a woman holding a capsule.

  Marcie watched as the others slipped the capsules into their mouths and bit down . . . watched as the people she loved collapsed onto the floor with mouths full of foam . . . watched as they convulsed . . . as they gasped for breath . . . as they died.

  Being captured alive had never been part of the plan.

  She stared at the capsule in her hand and heard shouting all around her, voices telling her what to do. “Take it . . . Drop it . . . Swallow it . . . Stand down . . .” A thousand voices coming from everywhere at once.

  She had a choice. She had to make a choice.

  “Wait.” An Asian woman came running toward her with open hands. “Please. Don’t. No more people need to die.”

  I scrambled over to Kincaid to cuff him and see if I could find out the name of the virus, but when I was only a few steps from him, he pulled out a syringe inside a plastic bag, thrust the tip through the bag, and plunged it into his heart.

  No!

  He fumbled for something in his pocket. “And this is for—” he started to say, but then he began to convulse.

  In all my time in law enforcement I’d never witnessed such a terrible death.

  In the end I had to turn away. I couldn’t watch. I looked up just in time to see Ralph punch the gorilla in the stomach. The man was gasping, backing up as Ralph went at him, bashing him with his shot-put-sized fists.

  Roundhouse.

  Uppercut. Finally a left hook. Ralph hit him so hard in the face that he spun around in an instant and, with a meaty crunch, collided face first against the stone wall of the hotel and toppled to the ground. Ralph wiped his hand across his face to get the blood out of his mouth as he cuffed him. “Ah,” said Ralph. “Just the way I like it. Fast and clean.”

  Tessa looked around the living room.

  Police and a bunch of ambulance guys had arrived, and half a dozen people she didn’t know were milling around asking her questions. They’d put the cop who’d gotten shot on a gurney. Maybe she was still alive.

  “Tessa!” Agent Tucker came running in. “Are you OK?”

  She blinked. “Where’s Patrick?” she said weakly.

  “He’ll be coming in a minute,” he said. “Don’t worry, Tessa. I’m here to help you.”

  “We would rather die free than live as slaves,” said Marcie.

  “That’s what he told you, isn’t it?” asked the woman, coming closer. “Kincaid, right? Or maybe Jones? But what do you think? You get to decide. That’s the thing. A slave is someone who can no longer choose.”

  “Stay back!”

  The Chinese woman stopped. “What’s your name?”

  After a pause. “Marcie.”

  “I’m Lien-hua. Please, Marcie, help us protect these people. Please.”

  Marcie watched as the security guards tried to corral people into conference rooms, control the panic, calm people down.

  She thought of her daughter lying still on the floor. Saw the look in the little girl’s eyes as she’d told her to drink the “medication” back in the library. “Will it hurt, Mommy?” her daughter had asked. “No, sweetie, it won’t hurt,” Marcie had said—had lied. She’d lied to her only daughter because Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid told her to. “Of course it’ll hurt,” she’d wanted to say. But she didn’t say it. She just told her it wouldn’t hurt, and then her daughter nodded and closed her eyes and opened her mouth, a trusting little girl.

  Marcie backed into the retaining wall of the fountain, lifted the tablet. “There’s nothing left for me here. My daughter is dead. I killed her.”

  The woman, Lien-hua, was still talking to her. “Please. I know you loved your daughter. I know you did. Sometimes when people are afraid, they do things they later regret.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like—”

  “No, I don’t,” the woman said, and it surprised Marcie that she agreed with her. “None of us can know what it’s like for someone else. It’s what makes us individuals. We each have our own pain, our own mistakes. But we can reach out toward each other, help each other. That’s what makes us human.”

  “It’s too late . . .”

  Lien-hua pointed to the line of people being herded out of the courtyard, guided into conference rooms to be quarantined and treated. “It’s not too late for them, for their children. You don’t have to do what Kincaid says. He’s gone. You get to decide. Please help us.”

  The capsule was in Marcie’s hand.

  She raised it to her lips.

  She got to decide. It was her choice.

  She saw them: the children in the library. The poison still moist on their lips. Moist on their lips.

  Her daughter’s trusting face.

  At last, with her little girl’s smiling face drifting before her, Marcie let the last fragment of her old life fall from her fingers and onto the floor. “Francisella tularensis,” she whispered. She sensed a man beside her, a big man with a rough voice. It was almost as if she were somewhere else watching, a spectator observing a woman getting handcuffed. “Genetically enhanced
. . .” she said in case anyone was listening. This was good. She could finally do something good with her life. Something right. “We spliced the genes . . . Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever . . .”

  81

  Tessa tried to drink the glass of water Agent Tucker had gotten for her, but her hands were still shaking. She heard purring and noticed Midnight stretching out on the floor at her feet. She hadn’t seen Sunshine since the craziness started.

  She set down the glass and looked in her lap. She had two phones—hers and the one Patrick was using. She slipped them into separate pockets in her jeans and gently stroked Midnight’s soft fur.

  She just wanted to get out of here. To go home.

  Mr. Tucker was talking on his cell. “Yeah, Agent Wellington?” he was saying. “This is Brent. I need to get a message through to Pat. Tell him I’m with his daughter, and she’s fine. Yeah. Make sure you tell him. All right. Thanks.”

  I overheard Lien-hua talking with one of Kincaid’s people about the contagion. Ralph was cuffing the woman. I ran to them. “Wait, ma’am. What did you say?”

  “Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever,” she said.

  “What’s that? How do you know?”

  “I have a degree . . .” Her eyes were blank. “In microbiology . . .” She spoke to us from another place. “I used to work for Father at PTPharmaceuticals . . . I was a researcher . . . that’s where we met.”

  I looked her in the eye, tried to help her focus. “Can we stop it? Do you know how to treat it?”

  The woman nodded. “We altered the genetic makeup, but I worked on the project. I can help you.”