World Without End (18 page)

The door opened and in walked a small, plump nurse with blond hair.

Grasped between her chubby hands was a plastic pitcher of water.

"Good, you're awake." Young, maybe mid-twenties, a Texan with a sunny voice, loving her job before the world beat her down. She placed the water pitcher on a tray and then adjusted the controls on the side of his bed. A humming sound of motors working. His head moved up until he was sitting upright. No other patients were in the room. He was alone.

"How you feeling?" she asked as she filled a plastic cup with water.

Conway tried to speak but the words came out in a dry, painful wheeze.

He went to moisten his lips. His tongue felt like a piece of wood running over sandpaper.

"Here, get some water in you." She held the straw to his mouth. The water burned at first, then soothed. When she took the water away he swallowed again. His throat throbbed. The soft flesh felt like it had been slashed repeatedly with a razor.

Conway's eyes shifted down to the sheets. His legs were under the white blanket. Wiggling his toes, good, he felt that. Normal looking, no bulky bandages, but that didn't mean they weren't burnt.

"My legs," he croaked.

"Your legs are fine, but you got a nasty gash on your forehead. You cracked your skull open."

He couldn't remember what had caused that. His head felt fogged-in, but he could recall pieces. The fire. Being held against the floor by the sticky foam. The fireman, probably Angel Eyes himself, grabbing Conway's finger and pulling the trigger. Randy grabbing his stomach.

Randy screaming no, not screaming, he was trying to talk. What was he trying to say? Conway tried to concentrate and couldn't. Don't force it.

How did I do that? Conway wondered. All he could remember was the fire and Randy.

You shot him in the stomach.

Randy had died inside the lab.

"You were under for three days," the nurse said.

"We weren't sure you were going to make it."

All Conway heard was three days. He had been under for three days.

Jesus. What had he missed?

He motioned her closer with his hand. She leaned in, and he could see the perfectly applied makeup on her round face, her eyes lined with heaps of mascara, the tiny stud earrings she wore in each ear.

"Visitors?" he croaked.

"The police have been by."

Conway expected that.

"A woman?"

The nurse kept her smile in place.

"I haven't seen one, no. Now why don't you just relax and " "Anyone else in here?"

"You mean from the Praxis fire?"

"You know about it?"

"Oh yes. It's all over the news. Entire building almost burnt down."

Conway thought about asking her more questions about the fire and decided against it. He needed her to answer a more important question.

"Airport," he croaked.

"There was an accident."

"The terrorist attack." The nurse shook her head, a frown on her mouth, and sighed.

"What happened to those poor people in those explosions if they catch this guy Angel Eyes they should hang him from a tree and let people throw rocks at him, stone him to death like they did in the Bible.

That's what I think."

"Angel Eyes?"

"That's what the newspapers and TV are calling the guy who did the bombings. He's the leader of some sort of terrorist group."

The nurse's words tumbled inside his head. He stared at her for a moment, not quite sure what to say. Questions lined up like dominoes in his head.

Conway pushed it away. He would deal with that later, but right now, all he cared about was the answer to one question. He formed the words, hope swelling inside him hoping that Bouchard had been wrong about Pasha.

"Survivors," he said.

"A few. Not many. Some of them came here."

"Her name…" Conway had to swallow, start again.

"Her name is Pasha Romanov. Is she here?"

No change in expression on the nurse's face. Please God, let Bouchard be wrong and let her be here.

"Let me go check. Is there anything else you need?"

Yes. I need you to hit the rewind button and let me go back three days in time. Can you do that?

"Newspapers," he said.

"All three days?"

Conway nodded.

"Let me see what I can do," she said and patted his arm. Then she reached over and grabbed a remote from the nightstand and placed it near his hand.

"In case you want to watch some TV. Give me a few minutes, and I'll be back with your papers." The nurse smiled.

"You're doing fine, you know. That scar on your forehead will fade in no time. You're lucky to be alive, Mr. Conway."

The helpful and eager smile back in place, she turned and left the room. Conway stared up at the ceiling tiles that glowed red and gold from the evening's sunlight as the word lucky tumbled through his head.

He tried to focus on the world beyond the door, tried to listen to the scatter of shoes across the floor and the bits of conversation, anything to keep his mind occupied.

It's possible she's alive. Maybe she wasn't inside one of the vans.

Maybe she was injured, maybe she was unconscious somewhere in the lot, and they found her and brought her in and she's here and she's fine.

He was looking out the window, watching the sunset, when the door opened.

It wasn't the nurse. The person who stood in the doorway was a small, thin man with chipmunk cheeks shadowed with permanent stubble. He wore a starched white shirt and pale blue jeans, his black cowboy boots pushing his height up to maybe five-five. A large paper cup of coffee was in one hand; the other held several newspapers. Conway's eyes were locked on the badge draped across the man's belt, near the gun holster.

"Detective Lenny Rombardo, Austin police," the man said.

"You and I need to talk."

Detective Rombardo walked over to the bed with a Marlboro man swagger and tossed the newspapers on Conway's lap. He slid a chair over, sat down, and crossed his legs. His black hair glistened with gel and stuck up on his scalp like porcupine needles.

It wasn't supposed to go down this way. Phase one of the operation was supposed to be completed, the IWAC team moving onto the second and final phase: identifying Angel Eyes and his group. Dixon would be brought into the IWAC fold not that unusual a move, given his technical skills. Conway should have been lying in his bed back in the condo and thinking about where he was going to go on vacation, maybe do the Caribbean thing with Pasha down in the Cayman Islands.

But it hadn't worked out like that. There would be no phase two of the operation because it had gone FUBAR. Dixon was gone, the IWAC unit had been killed, and Pasha… he tried to wipe the thought away and was left with a sharp and throbbing pain like a dagger of ice melting against his heart.

"How's the back of your noodle?" Rombardo asked.

"Fine." The word came out in a dry wheeze.

"You took quite a spill in the lab, cracked the back of your noggin against the floor and then that tile bonked off your forehead and cracked your skull open." Rombardo blew out a long stream of air as he shook his head.

"You're one lucky son of a bitch."

He knows I was inside the lab. Yes, of course he does, that's ivhy he's here. Conway looked back out the window. It was too soon for this.

He needed some time to prepare his story, the one that would throw Rombardo and his boys off the scent and away from the IWAC group.

"You remember much?" Rombardo asked.

"I just woke up a few minutes ago and my head's a fog. Can we do this later? Maybe tomorrow morning."

Rombardo grinned.

"Relax, I'm on your team," he said.

"My team?"

"I know what went down." Rombardo sipped his coffee and waited for Conway to say something. When he didn't, Rombardo said, "The school.

Dixon. What went down in the attic. I know all of it, Steve. Don't worry about the police. I already made the call to your boss. You're protected."

My boss? Does he mean Bouchard? Is he alive? Conway didn't say anything.

"Sorry, my mistake." Rombardo reached inside his shirt pocket and removed a thin black device the size of a pack of playing cards. A green light blinked steadily.

"It's amazing to me that the CIA can make a jamming unit this small.

Then again, I'm still mystified as to how a copying machine works, so I'm easy to impress." He slid the device back inside his pocket.

"Don't worry, we already checked your room and your condo for bugs.

It's clean. But after what went down, it doesn't hurt to be extra careful." Rombardo sipped some more of his coffee, his body relaxed, his legs crossed.

"We've got you and the perimeter covered. We can talk. It's safe."

Conway remembered Pasha saying something about having a contact inside the Austin police department in case IWAC ever ran into trouble, but Pasha had never mentioned a specific name. Was Rombardo the real deal?

Possible. What was equally possible was that Rombardo was one of Angel Eyes's men sent here on a fact-finding mission. Conway wasn't about to say anything until he talked with Bouchard.

If Bouchard's still alive. Conway wasn't about to ask Rombardo.

"By the look on your face I take it Pasha never mentioned my name to you," Rombardo said.

"No. Where is she?"

Rombardo shifted in his chair, and Conway felt the last lingering threads of hope vanish.

"I'm sorry, Steve."

Conway's eyes jumped up to the ceiling. Lightning quick he slammed the door shut on his thoughts and emotions and would keep them shut until he was alone, away from this guy Rombardo.

"Look. I know this isn't easy for you. I know you just woke up and have no idea about what's gone down and that you're probably feeling a lot of things right now, so let me give you the lowdown on what we know," Rombardo said and then plunged right into it.

"The surveillance was blown. That means we have someone working on the inside. That's right, a mole, another real Aldrich Ames special, only this one's got to be close to Bouchard, someone who knows about the group and its activities. Ray told you about this guy McFadden, right?"

Conway didn't say anything.

"Granted, I don't have the inside scoop the CIA is trying to keep the damage under wraps but what I can tell you is that this asshole McFadden has, for the past twenty years, been giving up secrets to the Russians," Rombardo said.

"This guy forked over all this info on our intelligence systems and sold all this high-tech stuff that was worth millions."

Just like Angel Eyes, Conway thought.

"Worse, the prick fingered Soviet double agents. Fucking blew major operations we had going on," Rombardo said. He shook his head and sighed.

"This thing's going to be a real pisser to figure out."

Conway looked back at Rombardo.

"Now let me give you the rest of it the reason why I'm here," Rombardo said.

"The fire gutted the entire fourth floor. They were lucky to get you out when they did. Praxis is shut down indefinitely. The press doesn't know you were inside the lab, and they don't know that you were at the skydiving school they don't know any of it, and they won't because my job is to keep them off the scent. Fortunately, Dixon charged his jump. We wiped the charge off the database, and changed the owner of your Saab to some bogus name out of Dallas. There's no way to connect either you or Dixon back to the school which, incidentally, burned to the ground. But the press knows about the bomb threat, and they're connecting it back to the bombings at the airport.

They're blaming in on Angel Eyes."

"Angel Eyes," Conway said.

"That's right, the press is using that name," Rombardo said.

"I don't know how they found out about the name, but the story's gone national. They're calling it a terrorist attack. This story… it's taking on a life of its own. You know how it is. The problem is that we're not equipped to deal with this. Technically, we don't even exist."

"Where's Dixon?"

"Disappeared like the rest of them. And before you ask, yes, we checked. His body hasn't turned up. As for the suit… well, that's gone too."

If what Rombardo was saying was true, that meant that Harring and his Hazard Team hadn't intercepted Angel Eyes's men. But there was no way to know not unless Conway called Bouchard.

Rombardo scratched the back of his head. His small fingers were swollen, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep.

"Look, Steve, I don't want to overwhelm you. You're tired, you need your rest. I'm here to let you know that you're protected. You're not going to take the fall."

"The fall?"

"If I wasn't on your team, the Austin police would be hauling your ass down to the station for questioning. When they brought you in, your clothes were covered in blood. I confiscated them and had them destroyed you don't want the DNA tests to come back and say that the blood on your clothes matches the blood of the charred bodies they found at the skydiving school. Same thing with the gun. Your Clock, the one you had hidden in your car, they used it to execute the people at the skydiving school. We found the gun and a bag full of wallets and money belonging to these people in the back seat of the stolen Pathfinder. Don't worry, I took care of it. You're in the clear."

Rombardo's voice and body language seemed so honest and natural that Conway wanted to believe him.

Conway said, "How did I get out of the lab?"

"A fireman picked you up off the floor."

"Picked me up off the floor," Conway repeated, and felt a cold hard truth spring to life inside his chest.

"Several witnesses saw a man with a shaved head carrying you along with a fireman to the ambulance. Fortunately for you, the lab door was left open best way to feed the flames. Another minute or so and you would have become a real crispy critter."