Resurrection Day (62 page)

Harold Fellini Rotstein was a small, dapper man in his late fifties, with a fondness for bow ties and an even bigger fondness for women's breasts.

It was an affection that had enticed him into the plastic surgery business, at first specialising in boob jobs, but after botching operations on four young women in Miami, two of them rising film stars whom he'd implanted with leaky silicone cells, he'd been struck off the medical register. The court case had ruined him, cost Rotstein not only a small fortune but his right to practice. Still, he'd got over all that, changed his name, moved to DC, got himself a false medical diploma, and carried on as before, although these days his patients were mostly hookers, or transsexual males in the same business.

Tonight, Rotstein wished he'd got the hell out of the plastic surgery business. The reason was Benny Visto, lying on a table in Rotstein's private clinic, with half his knee blown off. Visto was one of the meanest, nastiest pimps Rotstein had ever had the misfortune to deal with. He'd had half a dozen of his girls endowed with impressive breast jobs, and while Rotstein appreciated the cash, he hadn't appreciated the buzz on his doorbell just after midnight, rousing him from bed in his apartment above his clinic, nor the unwelcome sight of the two wounded men which awaited him.

'He's in a bad way. He really needs a hospital, for God's sake.'

'Benny doesn't want no fucking hospitals.' Frankie Tate's voice was shaking as he clutched his wounded shoulder. 'He doesn't want no cops.'

'Listen,' Rotstein replied calmly. 'The gunshot wound to his arm is not a major problem, but his knee is. He needs a good surgeon, otherwise he may end up crippled. There's arterial damage — it may be that the bullet nicked an artery, which is why he's still bleeding. This is really a job for a specialist surgeon.'

'No, you listen, asshole.' Visto was trying in vain to raise himself from the table, his eyes barely focused. 'It says fucking surgeon on that fucking door of yours outside, don't it?'

'That's true, but it's not the point, Mr Visto. Your injuries require specialist medical equipment, a proper operating theatre — '

Frankie was leaning against the table with his good arm. He was in considerable pain, sweat pouring down his face, but he had the .38 out of his pocket in an instant, pushed the barrel against Rotstein's left cheek, and the doctor's eyes bulged in terror. 'Fuck the point. Just do what I say, and do it quick. Get working on fixing up Benny's leg, then take care of me. Or else you're going need some fucking surgery yourself, you hear, Rotstein?'

'Very ... very well, but be it on your own head.' Rotstein, trembling, turned to Visto. 'I'll have to give you an anaesthetic, you understand this?'

'Give me anything you fucking want, but just get it fucking over and done with.'

His face beaded with sweat, Visto gritted his teeth, closed his eyes to the rivers of pain coursing through his leg. Rotstein went to a cupboard, and with trembling hands took down a syringe and a small bottle. He filled the syringe, inserted it into Visto's right arm. 'Try and relax, Mr Visto. In a couple more moments, you won't feel any pain.'

2.15 a.m.

Kursk reached the FBI visitors' apartment block on 7th Street, went up in the elevator, unlocked the door to his rooms, and switched on a table lamp. A bottle of Stolichnaya he hadn't opened was in his travel bag and he took it out, twisted off the cap and poured himself a large measure. He sat down, emptied the glass in one swallow and was about to pour another before he called the number he'd been given by Lazarev for the New York consulate when his cellphone vibrated. 'Kursk.'

'Major? It's Suslov.'

'I thought you said you didn't want to talk to me.'

'I don't. Except I got a call late tonight, from someone in DC who may have information about this guy Gorev. They heard I was asking.'

Kursk sat bolt upright. 'Who called you?'

'You don't know them, Major. I'll tell you when we meet. Can you meet me?'

'Wherever you want.'

'Take down this address. I'll see you there in half an hour and take you to see the guy. And Kursk ... '

'What?'

'This is just between you and me. I don't want the FBI tagging along, or anyone from the embassy, you got that? I may be in enough trouble already.'

2.45 a.m.

Eight blocks away, at Dr Rotstein's private clinic, Benny Visto had taken a definite turn for the worse. Two hours after Rotstein had operated on his knee he'd lost consciousness. His blood pressure had dropped, his breathing had become laboured, and he'd started to bleed again, despite the doctor's best efforts.

Frankie, waiting in a room outside, his shoulder stitched and bandaged, went in when Rotstein called him. 'What the fuck's wrong?' he demanded.

'I've done my best, really I have.' Rotstein was nervous. 'But the bleeding has started again. I told you he should have gone to hospital.'

Frankie, alarmed, saw that Visto's face was covered with sweat and he was moaning, moving from side to side. He caught a glimpse of Rotstein lifting the dressing, shaking his head at the stitched-up pulp of Visto's knee, the tiny rivers of blood seeping though the sutures. Frankie turned away in disgust, bile rising in his stomach. 'How bad is it?'

'Very bad. There's a chance he may lose the leg. I did warn you ... '

'Benny?' Frankie said.

Visto's eyes flickered open. For a moment he didn't seem to recognise his cousin. 'Fuck's going down, Frankie ... ?'

'We have to get you to a hospital, Benny, you hear me?'

Visto gripped Frankie's wrist feverishly. 'No ... no hospital, you hear? The cops been trying to get a bead on me for years. You want to hand me to them on a fucking plate? They find out about this, they'd be all over me ... '

He fell back, eyes closed again. Frankie, desperate, turned to the doctor. 'For Christ's sake, ain't there a good surgeon you know? Someone you can get here to help? I'll make it worth their while.'

'It's not a question of money, Mr Tate, even if I could recommend someone, which I can't. I told you, we'd need a proper operating theatre ... the right equipment. All I can really do is give him another injection to try and stop the haemorrhaging.'

'Then fucking do it.'

'But if that fails, I can't be held responsible ... '

Frankie was livid. 'That's where you're wrong, Doc. If Benny goes, you go with him, you hear me? And that's a fucking promise.'

Kursk stepped out of the cab near Dupont Circle. The place looked deserted at that dark hour of the morning, just a handful of taxis flitting around the Circle. He headed towards P Street, not far from Suslov's restaurant, then turned a corner, following the directions he'd been given, until he came to an intersection, swung right and waited on the pavement outside a private redbrick town house.

He heard footsteps approach. A figure came out of an alleyway to the right, walking towards him. At first he thought it was Suslov, but when the figure got closer he saw the man's face under the flash of a streetlamp. He was young, big and burly, with a jagged, ugly scar on his left cheek. Kursk was immediately cautious. The man spoke in Russian. 'Major Kursk of the FSB?'

'Who are you?' Kursk's right hand lingered on a button of his coat, ready to reach for his automatic.

'That doesn't matter for now, Major. I have some information for you.'

Suddenly two more men rushed from the alleyway to Kursk's right. Before he had a chance to wrench out his handgun he felt a stinging blow to the back of his neck, and a jagged spasm of pain jolted down his spine. A car started up, moved out of the alleyway. It was black and shiny, a Chrysler, and its rear door swung open. Kursk was bundled roughly into the back. He tried to fight off his attackers and struggle free, but fists rained down, and then another blow struck him hard across the back of the neck and he blacked out.

Washington, DC 12.45 a.m.

The Washington Post, founded in 1877 on four sheets of rag paper that were destined to give birth to a powerhouse of newspaper publishing, has a long history of shedding light and truth on some of the darker corners of American politics. Down the decades, a wealth of US government cover-ups had been exposed by the Post's reporters. Two of them, Woodward and Bernstein, had famously helped evict Richard Nixon from office, uncovering the President's involvement in the Watergate scandal.

Barney Redmond Woods, the night editor, was a grizzled, grey-haired man of fifty-six, a veteran who'd spent over thirty years in the newspaper business. He was sitting in his office that early morning, sipping from a mug of coffee, one of many he'd knocked back during his shift which had played havoc with his ulcers. The paper would be put to bed by 1.45 a.m.; half an hour later the presses would roll out the final edition, but far from being happy, Woods was strained. His shift ran from 3 p.m. to midnight, and he should have been home by now, unwinding with a triple Scotch and soda, but he was still stuck in his damned office.

'Nikki, you've got a hunch, that's all. You've got to give me something concrete if we're to run a story.'

Nikki, seated opposite, had been arguing her case with Barney Woods for the third time in the last two hours, until she was almost hoarse. It didn't help that she was in agony; her bandaged arm throbbed, her head ached, and every time she spoke her bruised face hurt like hell. Before leaving the hospital she'd forgotten to ask one of the nurses for some painkillers, and she was regretting it now. For the last four hours, since her medication had worn off, she'd felt the pain of every bump and laceration she'd suffered. When she'd looked at herself in the mirror in the ladies' rest room down the hall, she'd got a shock — with the dressing still around her forehead, together with her swollen face and bandaged arm, the treated cuts and tiny facial lacerations, she looked like someone who'd survived a head-on collision.

'There's smoke, sure, but where's the fire?' Woods argued. 'I need to see the fire, Nikki. And so far, I haven't seen any.'

Nikki thought: He's right. All she really had to go on was her intuition that something strange was happening in the District, but even that was leading her nowhere. She'd spent the last five hours on the phone: a half-dozen times she'd called the Police Commissioner, both at his office and at his home, to ask him directly about the police drill and explore her suspicions. The Commissioner obviously didn't want to talk with her; his wife didn't offer to say where he was or how Nikki could get in contact, and directed her, apologetically but firmly, to the metropolitan police public affairs office — Brad Stelman's domain — before she put down the phone. When she called police headquarters, she got the same fob-off — 'I'm sorry, ma'am, you'll have to call back tomorrow during office hours. There's no one here right now who can handle your query.'

She'd phoned the army public affairs office and asked to speak with Major Craig again. She was told that Craig was on leave, and was passed on to a Captain Tore, who listened politely as she again explained her query about the troop deployments in DC, but it got her absolutely nowhere. Tore insisted that Major Craig would have to deal with it, and that he'd be back in the office the following afternoon if she'd care to call back, or he'd have the major call her. The army was giving her the runaround again.

When she called the mayor's office, she got the same treatment — they didn't know anything about the police or army exercises and she'd have to contact their respective public affairs offices and direct her questions there. At the end of it all she was angry, frustrated and in agony without painkillers. The concussion she'd suffered didn't help; she felt lethargic, her head muzzy, as if she'd woken after a deep night's sleep aided by a double dose of sleeping pills. In between it all, racked by worry, she'd called her mother every hour at the hospital. Daniel was still stable — and he'd come awake twice. The news made her cry with joy and relief — but the fact that she wasn't near him right now was agony in itself. 'What about the bomb at the FBI Headquarters, Barney? What about that?'

'We ran the story yesterday, and we're still with it today, like every other goddamned newspaper, TV and radio station in the country. But the official line from the Feds is still the same — an obscure, unnamed Patriot group may be responsible.'

'What evidence have they offered?'

'Nikki, the blast only happened twenty-four hours ago and the investigation's barely begun. It's going to take the Feds time to get results. But I've got a dozen people working the story. Why the hell do you think I'm still hanging around here? If anything breaks, I want to know about it.'

'It's tied into it all somehow, Barney,' Nikki said in frustration. 'The troops deployed in DC, the military activity at the airport, the police exercise, the runaround I'm being given ... '

Woods shook his head, stood, hitched up his trousers. 'That's not even a good conspiracy theory, Nikki. It's just a feeling, and there's nothing you can prove. Jesus, if I had a dime for every intuitive lead the people in this place have had over the years that turned out to be well wide of the mark, I'd be sunning myself on my own yacht in the Caribbean ... '

'What about Brad Stelman? What about that?' She'd called Stelman at his sister's place. His sister said she hadn't heard from him since five that evening, when he'd called her from his office. Nikki left a message with her for her brother to call if he got in touch, then drove over to Stelman's apartment block, trying his cellphone and land-line numbers on the way, but got no response. She got no response either when she tried his apartment buzzer. After five minutes, almost paranoid, she'd checked the street outside for any men in cars or vans watching Stelman's block but saw no one suspicious. 'What about the fact he was followed yesterday evening? That he thought his phone was being tapped?'

'They're not facts, Nikki. Just Stelman's own intuition, until you can prove otherwise.'

'What if he's been abducted by the men who were watching him?'

'Nikki, the guy's only disappeared off the radar for the last eight, nine hours, for Christ sakes. How do you know he's been abducted? He could be anywhere. Getting laid, having a beer ... ' Woods shook his head. 'We've gone over it all, Nikki, and I know you think there's some kind of conspiracy, that something stinks in this town, but ... '

'You don't?'

Woods sighed, came round his desk, placed a hand gently on her shoulder. 'Look, Nikki, I'm truly sorry about what happened to Daniel, just as I'm concerned about what happened to you. I also know you're under stress. And the fact that you left Daniel's bedside to come back here to work, in the state you're in, tells me you're sincere about this, and determined as hell, and maybe you've got something, something big. For what it's worth, frankly, I don't know what the hell to think. Maybe you're right. Maybe we're sitting on the biggest story we've had in years. But until we've got evidence, until we find out what the hell it is that might be happening, all we've got to give the reader is veiled hints. And that's not reporting, Nikki. It's speculation. And we can't hang a story on speculation.'

'My son's lying in a critical-care unit and thirteen people are dead. What more do you want, Barney? More bodies? What if there's another explosion, more people are killed? We owe it to this city to find out what's going on, we really do.'

Nikki's shoulders slumped; there was a thwarted look on her face. She was wearing herself down.

Woods, in response, ran a hand tiredly over his craggy face, collapsed into his chair. For a few moments he massaged his temples, then placed both his hands on the desk. 'OK, look, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll get in touch with the mayor personally, and with a couple of senior cops I know in the Met. I'll throw out a line, tell them we're sniffing round a conspiracy story, big time — mention all the stuff you told me — and see what reaction I get. If I get the feeling they're worried, or trying to cover something up, we'll follow it up.'

'When will you call them?'

'Now, tonight. Al Brown's going to love me for ruining his sleep, so are my friends in the Met, but what the frig. In return, I'd like you to do something for me.'

'What?'

'Go back to the hospital. Go back to your little boy and stay with him. That's the only place you ought to be. I'll call you if I've got anything.' Woods checked his watch, thought for a moment. 'Maybe there's another angle I can try, too. I'll wake up someone else, a friend of mine who works at the White House. I had to call him anyway about something else, but I'll try throwing him the same line as the mayor and the others. I've known the guy for years. If I sense any hint that he's scared, or knows something he doesn't want to tell me, we'll take it from there. As for you, just get yourself back to the hospital.'

'First I've got to see if I can find Brad Stelman. And I've got some calls to make.'

Woods groaned. 'Jesus, I'm talking to a wall.'

There was something else Nikki had to do, but she didn't tell Woods. She would keep her word and divulge nothing of what Jack had told her, but she wanted to talk with him again. She was convinced that at the hospital he'd been on the edge of telling her the real truth about the case he was involved in. If she could just push him a little harder this time, maybe she could find out what that truth really was. Nikki stood. 'What's the story with your friend in the White House? Why do you have to call him?'

'The weirdest thing,' Woods said. 'I got a wire report tonight about a big number of our troops being shipped out of the Middle East, and no one seems to know a damned thing about what's going on.'

Washington, DC 4 a.m.