Mark of Evil (28 page)

Jo strode over to the SWAT leader. “I don’t care about ‘appreciation.’ What I want now is my meeting with Alexander Colliquin. As agreed. ASAP. It’s called quid pro quo, by the way. In business, as well as politics, that’s what it’s called.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

UNION STATION

Washington, D.C.

The white marble train station held more D.C. police than usual. The clashes on the Mall and near the Reflecting Pool were still continuing between police and anti-Hewbright activists who were enraged that he had not been removed from office. The violence was now spilling beyond the edges of Capitol Hill.

That posed a challenge for Henry Bender. He had picked Union Station as the meeting place before the riots. Bender had a manila envelope containing a Civil War calendar tucked under his arm as he strolled down the aisle that cut between the waiting area for train passengers and the food and magazine kiosks. He saw that most of the cops were positioned in the huge main entrance hall of the railway station, facing the flags outside and the cab stand and the circle drive;
he assumed that they expected protestors to start pouring in from the outside. So Bender sent a quiktext to the Allfone of his contact, to let him know where they would meet.

He made his way to the buffet-style Italian joint on the other side of the train station. He grabbed a tray and picked out some stromboli on two plates and two sodas, and after paying for it, brushed through the crowd until he found the perfect table against the wall. He knew where the surveillance cameras were located in the train station, and none of them were focused on this spot.

He started eating. He was hungry and he was tempted to devour his contact’s stromboli too, except that he thought better of it when he remembered how dangerous the other guy was.

Bender turned to look over the customers in the room and spotted him. The other man strolled through the crowd, stopping just beyond the buffet line. Bender didn’t wave; he knew this man would already have researched him and would know who he was looking for. Bender was right.

Vlad Malatov was dressed in a dark-blue suit, white shirt, and tie, and he had a nice, close shave and a short haircut, almost military length. He spotted Bender and made his way through the tables with a relaxed smile, then sat down opposite him. Bender put the manila envelope in the middle of the table.

“Inside this envelope there is a large calendar. Stuck in between the months of November and December, you will find your credentials and badge and your transfer papers documenting your reassignment from the Miami Secret Service office to the Washington office, White House detail. No questions will be asked.”

As Bender studied Malatov’s face he suddenly realized that the man had taken the pains to get a good Florida-looking tan. A nice touch.

Bender glanced at the picture on the transfer papers and then looked at Malatov’s face. “Whoever did your face reconstruction
deserves a medal. You’re a dead ringer for that Miami agent. Too bad he went missing today on his way up here to start his White House gig.” He chuckled. But after a moment’s reflection he asked, “So, just curious—why did Moscow pick that particular Miami agent all those years ago to be your, you know, your
facemate
?”

Malatov narrowed his eyes. Bender quickly realized it was a stupid question. Former Russian FSB agents didn’t share shoptalk with civilians. Whatever the scheme had been back then to substitute this Russian for the Miami agent so many years ago, it had been abandoned. But no matter. It proved to be a beautifully useful piece in the plan today.

Bender kept talking. “Anyway, there should be no questions asked. The Secret Service has about three thousand five hundred agents. Unlike the other law enforcement agencies of the feds—FBI, ATF, Border Patrol—the Secret Service moves their agents around like they’re on a shuffleboard. So your ‘reassignment’ won’t look weird when you show up.”

There was a questioning look on Malatov’s face.

Bender added, “Plus, we’ve got an inside contact. You’ll know him after you check in at the gate. I can’t tell you who he is, because I don’t know. All I know is that when he meets you for the first time he’s gonna say something to you about deep-sea diving for buried treasure—some sunken Spanish ship off the Florida Keys.”

There was a slow nod from Malatov.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Bender said. “You had better time your first show-up at the White House pretty closely. I don’t mean to tell you your business . . .” When he said that, Malatov’s eyes flashed and Bender leaned back a bit in his plastic chair. “Look, I’m just saying, you’re not gonna have a very big window of time between your initial show-up and the business you’ve got to get done.”

Bender forked a last bite of stromboli into his mouth, washed it down with a gulp of Diet Coke, and then grabbed his Styrofoam
plate and cup and stood up. “Good-bye, Agent Ted Booth,” he said and then dumped his trash in a wastebasket and disappeared into the crowds.

Vlad Malatov’s face tensed slightly at the mention of his new name, Booth. But it was too late now. He hadn’t been part of the decision years before in Moscow to reconstruct him to look like a guy by that name who was a Miami field agent for the Secret Service. If it had been up to Malatov, he never would have picked it, considering the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had been fatally shot in the head right there in Washington, D.C., by a guy with that same last name.

Rivka had finished with Meifeng’s doctor visit and the two of them had just arrived back at Rivka’s Hong Kong flat when her Allfone rang. She was expecting a call from Ethan about now, but when she looked at the caller ID she saw the photo of Hadley Brooking flashing on the little screen. When she picked up, Brooking sounded flustered and rushed. He said that he was calling about Ethan, and that something had happened at the meeting with Jo Li and they needed to meet immediately, but he couldn’t go into it on the phone.

Rivka’s natural impulse was to demand answers about Ethan. She already had a sinking feeling. But her intelligence training kicked in.
Not over an Allfone call.
She suggested a little Cantonese café that she trusted. But Brooking said no, that he wanted to meet her down by the harbor, at the Clock Tower at the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula in the Tsim Sha Tsui section of town.

She balked for a moment. She hadn’t trusted Brooking from the beginning, and now he wanted her to come alone to an area near
the public pier at Victoria Harbor. She knew that Jo Li’s super yacht had been anchored in that same harbor. Some disturbing scenarios raced through her head. But the worst one of all was the desperate feeling that something terrible had happened to Ethan.

Faced with no other choice, she told Brooking that she would be there, but when they met, he had to be forthright about absolutely everything he knew.

An hour later Rivka stood alone at the base of the Clock Tower that looked like an old brick lighthouse. There at the edge of the harbor, the night air was turning suddenly cool. A shiver ran down her back. She was in mid-prayer about Ethan and his safety when Hadley Brooking showed up, looking distracted and burdened.

“Over here,” he said, motioning to the other side of the Clock Tower, away from a few locals who milled around.

“Where is Ethan?” Rivka barked. “What happened?”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Hadley Brooking said. “You have to believe me.”

“What happened in that meeting?” she demanded, her voice cracking.

“Jo Li was there. I was there. Ethan arrived. Before the meeting I was simply told by one of Jo’s assistants that they wanted to cut some deal and wanted it to happen in my office. So I agreed. The next thing I know, a gang of Global Alliance soldiers showed up in the lobby, and they grabbed Ethan. He put up a fight, but they subdued him and put him in handcuffs and hauled him off. I think his injuries were only minor.”

“Who called the Alliance forces?”

“I have no idea. It wasn’t me,” Brooking insisted.

“Why should I believe you?” she cried. “Why? And why did they let you go?”

Hadley Brooking looked her straight in the eye. “There are things about me that I can’t explain yet. Let’s just say that I wear many hats,
and different people believe I may be valuable for different things. But you can trust me because I am here, meeting with you. Telling you this. And because, dear girl, I came alone.” He took a quick look around and added, “And I am at risk right now even being here with you.”

Rivka stared into his face. Looking for signs of deception. But Brooking saw that too. “You’re searching my face,” he said with a smile. “Dilation of my pupils, contraction of my facial muscles. To see if I am lying. Yes, I know all the techniques.”

Suddenly, Rivka found herself reassessing her impression of Hadley Brooking as he continued talking. “There is a great deal that I simply cannot tell you about myself, Rivka. Just as you cannot tell me, either, about your years in the Israeli Mossad. I’ve done things . . . deliberately led men down the primrose path to their death. Some deserved it. Some did not. I mastered the art of calm, unperturbed betrayal. I’ve done extraordinarily deceptive things, and I am plagued with the realization every day that I will have to settle accounts with God over those. But you must believe me when I say this: betraying Ethan March is not one of them.”

“Where did they take him?”

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“You must have some idea.”

“I heard a comment by the leader of the Alliance commandoes. Jo Li was talking about a meeting with Alexander Colliquin. It sounded like he had turned Ethan over to the Global Alliance as part of a deal with Colliquin. As they were leaving, the Alliance captain said that the commandoes were heading to HQ with Ethan and that he would check to see if Jo could travel along with them. What headquarters he was talking about, I can’t be sure. But I think we can both guess.”

Rivka blurted it out. “New Babylon.”

“Jo asked, rather jokingly, I think, ‘How should I dress for the occasion?’ The captain replied, ‘For the desert.’ ”

Now Rivka was left with two very disturbing questions. She wondered what kind of nightmare Colliquin had planned for Ethan. And then there was the more urgent question: she worried how a rescue team could break into Colliquin’s Iraq fortress before it was too late.

THIRTY-NINE

ANIMAL TESTING ROOM #6—DIGITAL IMAGERY LAB

New Babylon, Iraq

Ethan March’s arms were outstretched and strapped to a metal pole that hung just above him, crucifixion style. His legs were manacled to the floor. He could see a few men dressed in blue lab coats on the other side of the glass, talking together and checking instruments. He prayed silently for strength and endurance as the agony in his arms and shoulders increased by the minute. He repeated in his mind, over and over again, a verse from the New Testament. From the book of Philippians.
“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear the voice of his mentor Josh Jordan. Something he had taught Ethan—something Josh had learned from his own experience in a torture chamber of his
own. Josh had told Ethan to focus not on the pain or the fear, but on the fact that as long as he was alive—as long as he could still breathe and think and pray and plan and, yes, experience the pain—then God still had work for him to do and therefore God would be there with him, empowering him while he endured it.

Ethan’s task now was to control the natural anxiety that threatened to overwhelm his judgment—the racing thoughts about what would happen next and what this experiment was and what kind of horror awaited him. Instead, he had to focus on something else: the objective facts of his dilemma. And how that fit into the hellish agenda of his capturers. He would try to figure it out, all of it, in case by some miracle he got out of this alive. If he did, then he could use it for others. To save the rest. To help resist this monstrous evil.