Betrayal (25 page)

“But it’s so violent, so ... counterintuitive,” Ayden pressed.

“Think of it as chemotherapy. Yes, when viewed in isolation it is caustic. But the cancers that your therapy ultimately cures will salvage countless lives. This is the day you’ll paint a hundred million smiles.”

“You know about that?” Ayden asked.

“Of course.”

Ayden consciously recognized that the man he knew as Arvin had done a fine job of pushing his buttons, but it did not matter. Arvin had said exactly what he wanted to hear. He did not really want to back out. He just had a case of the jitters, he told himself. Like a bride on her wedding day.

He thought back to the evening when Arvin first knocked on his door. Arvin had asked him, “If you had the resources, would you be willing to do more?” With those words Arvin had given him hope, hope that kept him going while his resources diminished. And faith, faith that was rewarded when Agent Odysseus Carr landed in his lap. He remembered the pride and trepidation he felt when he used the coded exchange at Royal Falafel for the first time.
 

He had made his first call to Royal Falafel just seconds after treating Odi’s shoulder wound and getting him stable. His initiative had paid off. Arvin’s subsequent investigation had revealed circumstances that could not have been more perfectly suited to their cause. Eighteen hours after Ayden had picked up the phone, Arvin had personally delivered the telltale headsets to his door, and the recruitment of Odi Carr had begun.

Because of his courage that day, three defense industry CEOs, three men who ran cruel and exploitive companies like the one that killed his father, were no longer of this world. By contributing to their demise, Ayden had done right by his father. He had avenged Tigran Taronish. Thinking about that, Ayden realized that he felt better than he had in over twenty years. By honoring his father he had cured himself of a chronic disease. With a flash of blinding clarity he understood that he could not shy away from the opportunity Arvin now presented. This was his destiny.

“Tell me about your meeting with Director Proffitt,” Arvin continued, sweeping Ayden back into their present discussion. “Was it successful? Did he get you the list?”

“Your insight proved accurate. Proffitt’s approach is analogous to a pharmaceutical corporation’s. He is making a career of treating the disease of terrorism. So, contrary to the FBI Director’s vociferous rhetoric, the last thing he truly wants is a cure. Yes, he got me the list.”

“Excellent. When you have the Creamer call me back. I’ll give you instructions for meeting with my twenty-five volunteers.”

“Twenty-four,” Ayden corrected.

“There are twenty-five senators on the armed services committee, my friend,” Arvin persisted.

“I know, but you need supply only twenty-four volunteers. I would consider it an honor to be the twenty-fifth. I will take out the chairman.”

Chapter 42

Chesapeake Beach, Maryland

00:53 ... 00:52 ... 00:51 ... Cassi stared at the screen, counting in disbelief as the final seconds of her life vanished into the ether. An overload of emotions bore down on her as she stared, squelching her ability to think. She wondered how Odi managed it—working under such conditions. As a psychologist, she knew the human species to be remarkably resilient, but fifty-three seconds hardly gave you time to acclimate. Then it struck her. Perhaps Odi had not acclimated. Years of this strain could explain why he had snapped in Iran. It only took a final straw to break a camel’s back.

00:50 ... 00:49 ... 00:48 ... From her discussions with Odi and the occasional glimpse over his shoulder, Cassi knew much more than most on how to disarm bombs. But this was not a bomb. This was just a computer. The bomb could be anywhere within wireless range. Forty-eight seconds was not going to cut it.

00:47 ... 00:46 ... 00:45 ... Still mesmerized by the screen, Cassi flashed through her alternatives. Her best move would be to break out of the cottage, but Odi had prevented that by disabling the shutter mechanisms. He had probably accomplished that by simply removing a fuse, or—more cleverly and thus more likely—replacing a good fuse with one that looked good but did not work. Regardless, with just forty-five seconds left on her life’s clock, Cassi did not have time to run down her hunch.

00:44 ... 00:43 ... 00:42 ... Cassi recalled that the shutters could also be operated with a crank key. It was a safety precaution for times when the power was out. Cassi dashed around the cottage, scanning each window for the presence of a crank key and pummeling all the other switches just in case. Failing to produce any result, she returned to the computer cursing herself for thinking that Odi could be so easily outmaneuvered. The fanciful flight had cost her a priceless twelve seconds.

00:30 ... 00:29 ... 00:28 ... Realizing that escape was no longer an option, Cassi ran to the bedroom and pulled Charlotte’s quilt off the bed along with three thick decorative pillows. She hauled them to the bathroom and leapt in the tub, burying herself like a mole beneath. Then she remembered the door. It was not solid wood or anything close—just two thin sheets of masonite—but every little bit helped. While climbing out of the tub to close it, another thought came to her. She should pull the mattress off the bed, drag it into the bathroom, and lean it over the tub. How long did she have left?

As if answering her question with “not much” the computer began an accelerated beep. Was it the final countdown, or something more? Cassi had no time to think, she could only react. She glanced fleetingly toward the mattress as though Brad Pitt lay naked there, and then ran for the kitchen.

00:08 ... 00:07 ... Cassi saw at once that something had changed. The maddening beep had ushered in a new message. Seconds until BOOM had been replaced by a trick question. She read it aloud. “What’s the best size?”

Chapter 43

Baltimore, Maryland

E
VEN
AS
THE
frosty flask of acid slipped from his grasp, Odi contemplated the pager’s implicit message. Someone had entered Charlotte’s cottage. The bomb was now armed. In one minute the sanctuary of his youth would be reduced to matchsticks and his research would be turned to dust—along with anyone caught inside.

The heavy Pyrex flask crashed down on the desktop gas valve even as Odi lunged to catch it with gloved hands. As it shattered, he rolled to his left and dove for the floor. The reflex saved his face, but acid rain deluged the right side of his torso.
 

Odi heard his clothing begin to sizzle and felt his right shoulder start to burn. He scrambled to his feet and made a screaming beeline for the chemical shower by the door. Yanking on the dangling chain like Quasimodo incensed, Odi prayed that he would not emerge looking like the bell-ringer too.
 

He had seen acid burns before. Many times. A friend of his from this very lab referred to the cheese-grater scar on his cheek as his birth-control wound.

Twenty or thirty gallons into the drenching blast, Odi peeled off the protective goggles and heavy gloves. After a quick inspection of his hands, he tore off his shirt.

His right shoulder had borne the brunt of the splash and even it had seen worse. The blood-pocked patchwork reminded him of a gravel-slide he had suffered after falling off his dirt bike as a kid. If the acid had not been super-cooled or the shower seconds away, it might have eaten through to the bone. Still, between the shrapnel wound in his left shoulder and the acid burn on his right, he would not be breaking down doors anytime soon. Given his luck and the way things were going, that ability was probably about to become important.

He stripped off the rest of his clothes and stood there two minutes more, using one of his socks as a washcloth to scrub. He was going to be cold and conspicuous crossing campus soaking wet and shirtless in the middle of October. But that beat looking freakish for the rest of his life—assuming that the-rest-of-his-life lasted longer than a few hours.

Odi wrung out his clothes as best he could and got dressed. He tried to be mad at himself for screwing up, but found himself feeling grateful for his blessings instead. “Ten fingers and two eyes,” he repeated aloud, recalling his earlier musing.

Looking over at the smoking green tile floor, Odi remembered the vibration that catalyzed the reaction and his heart sunk. He dug anxious fingers into the wet front pocket of his jeans and withdrew the little black box. The pager was dedicated to the intrusion alarm on Charlotte’s cottage, so its vibration yielded only one conclusion. Boom.
 

“Unless someone had dialed a wrong number,” Odi thought aloud. The display dashed that hope. It read 843-7448, the numeric equivalent of THE SHIT, which, as his British colleagues loved to say, he was now in. Barring a robbery or some other equally unlikely coincidence, someone was on his tail. The obvious conclusion was that Cassi had talked.

The loss of his childhood getaway was a psychological blow, but in practical terms it did not matter. Not in the short run, at least. Come this time tomorrow he would be headed for Iran where he would miraculously awake. Cassi’s split-second sighting would be attributed to a grieving mind playing tricks. No jury in the world would be left without a reasonable doubt. But that was all in the distant future, Odi reminded himself. Today, he had one final but crucial stop to make.

Though the tabletop and floor were now etched with nitric acid, the big Pyrex beaker full of Creamer base sat undisturbed. He could still salvage this batch. That was important. He had a rendezvous with Sheila.
 

Thirty-two minutes later the recipe was complete. After curing for an hour, the Creamer would be ready. He emptied the eight liters of Creamer into two gallon-jugs and had about a pint of Creamer left over. Rather than pouring it down the drain, he emptied his sixteen-ounce bottle of Dasani into the sink and poured the remaining Creamer inside. He put the Dasani bottle back in his jacket pocket and then secured the gallon jugs in his backpack. The sound of the backpack’s zipper was a welcome one. He had come close to disaster tonight, but in the end he had pulled it off.

With a spring in his step, Odi opened the laboratory door and nearly walked into the man waiting silently in the dark.

“Hello Odi.”

Odi jumped. “Ayden?”

His friend’s face was shadowed, but the corridor’s emergency lighting reflected off the gun in his hand. The surprising scene took too long for Odi’s tired mind to compute. By the time the threat had registered he was flying backwards through space as an explosion of pain ripped through his body from the center of his chest. Agony racked him with an almost physical grip until his whole world was reduced to a blinding white light. Then everything went black.

Chapter 44

Washington, D.C.

“I
TOLD
YOU
never to call me here,” Wiley said, his voice raspy from lack of sleep. “It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re in the office at five in the morning. You didn’t leave me much choice,” Stuart replied. “Check your Hotmail account. I’m sending a file.”