Sidney Sheldon (18 page)

K
ATHY ORDONEZ WALKED
into Tanner Kingsley’s office with the morning newspapers and said, “It’s happening again.” She handed him the newspapers. They all had banner headlines:

F
OG
D
ISRUPTS
M
AJOR
G
ERMAN
C
ITIES

A
LL
S
WISS
A
IRPORTS
C
LOSED BY
F
OG

D
EATH
T
OLL
R
ISES FROM
F
OG IN
R
OME

Kathy said, “Shall I send these to Senator Van Luven?”

“Yes. Right away,” Tanner said grimly.

Kathy hurried out of his office.

Tanner looked at his wristwatch and smiled.
The bomb must have gone off by now. The two bitches have finally been disposed of.

His secretary’s voice came over the intercom. “Mr. Kingsley, Senator Van Luven is on the line for you. Do you wish to take it?”

“Yes.” Tanner picked up the phone. “Tanner Kingsley.”

“Hello, Mr. Kingsley. This is Senator Van Luven.”

“Good afternoon, Senator.”

“My assistants and I happen to be near your headquarters, and I wondered if it would be convenient for you if we dropped in for a visit.”

“Absolutely,” Tanner said enthusiastically. “I would be very happy to show you around, Senator.”

“Fine. We’ll be there shortly.”

Tanner pressed the intercom button. “I’m expecting some visitors in a few minutes. Hold all my calls.”

He thought about the obituary he had seen in the newspapers a few weeks earlier. Senator Van Luven’s husband had died of a heart attack.
I’ll offer my condolences.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER
,
Senator Van Luven and her two attractive young assistants arrived.

Tanner rose to greet them. “I’m delighted you decided to come.”

Senator Van Luven nodded. “You remember Corinne Murphy and Karolee Trost.”

Tanner smiled. “Yes. It’s nice to see you both again.” He turned to the senator. “I heard about your husband’s passing away. I’m terribly sorry.”

Senator Van Luven nodded. “Thank you. He had been ill for a long time, and finally, a few weeks ago…” She forced a smile. “By the way, the information on global warming that you’ve been sending me is very impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you like to show us what you’re doing here?”

“Of course. How much of a tour would you like? We have a five-hour tour, a four-hour tour, and an hour-and-a-half tour.”

Corinne Murphy grinned. “It would be nice to take the five—”

Senator Van Luven interrupted. “We’ll settle for the hour-and-a-half tour.”

“My pleasure.”

“How many people work at KIG?” Senator Van Luven asked.

“Approximately two thousand. KIG has offices in a dozen major countries all over the world.”

Corinne Murphy and Karolee Trost looked impressed.

“We have five hundred employees in these buildings. The staff members and the research fellows have separate quarters. Every scientist employed here has a minimum IQ of one hundred sixty.”

Corinne Murphy gushed, “They’re geniuses.”

Senator Van Luven gave her a disapproving look.

“Follow me, please,” Tanner said.

T
HE SENATOR AND
Murphy and Trost followed Tanner through a side door into one of the adjoining buildings. He led them into a room crammed with esoteric-looking equipment.

Senator Van Luven walked up to one of the odd-looking machines and asked, “What does this do?”

“That’s a sound spectrograph, Senator. It converts the sound of a voice into a voiceprint. It can recognize thousands of different voices.”

Trost frowned. “How does it do that?”

“Think of it this way. When a friend calls you on the telephone, you instantly recognize the voice because that sound pattern is etched in your brain circuit. We program this machine the same way. An electronic filter allows only a certain band of frequencies to get
through to the recorder, so that we have only the distinguishable features of that person’s voice.”

The rest of the tour became a fascinating montage of giant machines and miniature electronic microscopes and chemical laboratories; rooms with blackboards filled with mysterious symbols, labs with a dozen scientists working together, and offices where a single scientist was absorbed in trying to solve some arcane problem.

They passed a redbrick building with a double set of locks on the door.

Senator Van Luven asked, “What’s in there?”

“Some secret government research. Sorry, it’s out of bounds, Senator.”

The tour took two hours. When it was over, Tanner escorted the three women back to his office.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” Tanner said.

Senator Van Luven nodded. “It was interesting.”

“
Very
interesting.” Corinne Murphy smiled. Her eyes were on Tanner.

“I loved it!” exclaimed Karolee Trost.

Tanner turned to Senator Van Luven. “By the way, have you had a chance to discuss with your colleagues the environmental problem we talked about?”

The senator’s voice was noncommittal. “Yes.”

“Would you tell me what you think the chances are, Senator?”

“This is not a guessing game, Mr. Kingsley. There will be more discussions. I’ll let you know when it’s been decided.”

Tanner managed a smile. “Thank you. Thank you all for dropping by.”

He watched them leave.

A
S THE DOOR
closed behind them, Kathy Ordonez’s voice came over the intercom. “Mr. Kingsley, Saida Hernandez has been trying to reach you. She said it was urgent, but you told me to hold your calls.”

“Get her for me,” Tanner said.

Saida Hernandez was the woman he had sent to the Adams Hotel to plant the bomb.

“Line one.”

Tanner picked up the phone, anticipating the good news. “All went well, Saida?”

“No. I’m sorry, Mr. Kingsley.” He could hear the fear in her voice. “They got away.”

Tanner’s body went stiff.
“They what?”

“Yes, sir. They left before the bomb went off. A bellman saw them rush out of the hotel lobby.”

Tanner slammed the phone down. He buzzed his secretary. “Send Flint and Carballo in here.”

A minute later, Harry Flint and Vince Carballo walked into Tanner’s office.

Tanner turned to the two men. He was in a towering rage. “The bitches got away again. That’s the last time I will allow that to happen. Do you understand? I’m going to tell you where they are, and you’re going to take care of them. Any questions?”

Flint and Carballo looked at each other. “No, sir.”

Tanner pressed a button that revealed the electronic city map. “As long as they have the cards that I gave them, we can track them down.”

They watched the electronic lights appear on the television screen map. Tanner pressed a button. The lights did not move.

Tanner gritted his teeth. “They’ve gotten rid of their cards.” His face got redder. He turned to Flint and Carballo. “I want them killed today.”

Flint looked at Tanner, puzzled. “If we don’t know where they are, how can we—?”

Tanner cut in. “Do you think I’d let a woman outwit me that easily? As long as they have their cell phones, they’re not going anywhere without telling us.”

“You could get hold of their cell phone numbers?” Flint asked, surprised.

Tanner did not bother to reply. He was examining the map. “By now they’ve probably separated.” He pressed another switch. “Let’s try Diane Stevens first.” Tanner punched in a number.

The lights on the map started to move and began to slowly focus on Manhattan streets, panning across hotels, shops, and banks. Finally, the moving lights stopped at a building with a sign that read
NELSON GALLERY
.

“Diane Stevens is in a gallery.” Tanner pressed another button. “Let’s see where Kelly Harris is.” Tanner began to repeat the same procedure. The lights started moving again, this time focusing on a different part of the city.

The men watched as the lighted area narrowed down to a street with a clothing store, a restaurant, a drugstore, and a bus station. The lights scanned the area and suddenly stopped in front of a large, open building.

“Kelly Harris is at a bus station.” Tanner’s voice was grim. “We’ve got to catch them both, fast.”

“How?” Carballo asked. “They’re at opposite ends of town. By the time we got there, they’d be gone.”

Tanner turned. “Come with me.” He headed for an adjoining room, Flint and Carballo close behind him. The room they entered had an array of monitors, computers, and electronic keyboards with color-coded keys. On a shelf was a small squat machine, with dozens of compact discs and DVDs. Tanner looked through them and slipped one labeled
DIANE STEVENS
inside the machine.

He explained to the men: “This is a voice synthesizer. The voices of Diane Stevens and Kelly Harris were digitized earlier.
The patterns of their speech have been recorded and analyzed. With the press of a button, every word I say is calibrated to duplicate their voices.” Tanner picked up a cell phone and pressed some numbers.

There was a cautious “Hello?” It was Kelly Harris’s voice.

“Kelly! I’m so glad I found you.” It was Tanner speaking, but it was Diane Stevens’s voice that they heard.

“Diane! You caught me just in time. I’m on my way out of here.”

Flint and Carballo were listening in wonder.

“Where are you going, Kelly?”

“To Chicago. I’m taking a plane home, out of O’Hare.”

“Kelly, you can’t leave now.”

There was a moment of silence. “Why?”

“Because I found out what’s really happening. I know who killed our husbands and why.”

“Oh, my God! How did—Are you sure?”

“Positive. I have all the proof we need.”

“Diane, that’s—that’s wonderful.”

“I have the proof with me. I’m at the Delmont Hotel, in penthouse A. From here I’m going to the FBI. I wanted you to go with me, but if you have to go home, I understand.”

“No, no! I—I want to help finish what Mark was trying to do.”

Flint and Carballo were listening to every word, riveted. In the background, they could hear the station announcement for the bus to Chicago.

“I’ll go with you, Diane. You said the Delmont Hotel?”

“Yes, on Eighty-sixth Street. Penthouse A.”

“I’m on my way. See you in a little while.”

The connection was broken.

Tanner turned to Flint and Carballo. “Half the problem is solved. Now we’ll take care of the other half.”

Flint and Carballo watched as Tanner inserted another compact
disc labeled
KELLY HARRIS
into the synthesizer. Tanner moved a switch on the phone and pressed some numbers.

Diane’s voice came on almost immediately. “Hello…”

Tanner spoke into the phone, but it was Kelly’s voice they heard.

“Diane—”

“Kelly! Are you all right?”

“I’m wonderful. I have some exciting news. I found out who killed our husbands and why.”

“
What?
Who—who—?”

“We can’t discuss this on the phone, Diane. I’m at the Delmont Hotel, on Eighty-sixth Street, penthouse A. Can you meet me here?”

“Of course. I’ll come right over.”

“Wonderful, Diane. I’ll be waiting.”

Tanner clicked off the set and turned to Flint. “
You’ll
be waiting.” He handed Flint a key. “This is the key to penthouse A. It’s our company suite. Get there right away and wait for them. I want you to kill them as soon as they walk in the door. I’ll see to it that the bodies are taken care of.”

Carballo and Tanner watched Flint turn and hurry out the door.

Carballo said, “What would you like me to do, Mr. Kingsley?”

“Take care of Saida Hernandez.”

W
AITING INSIDE PENTHOUSE A,
Flint was determined that this time nothing would go wrong. He had heard of bunglers that Tanner had disposed of.
Not me,
Flint thought. He took out his gun, checked the barrel, and screwed on the silencer. All he had to do now was wait.

In a taxi six blocks from the Delmont Hotel, Kelly Harris’s mind was racing with excitement over what Diane had told her.
I know who killed our husbands and why…. I have all the proof we need. Mark, I’m going to make them pay for what they did to you.