The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (15 page)

Fortaleza gestured to his assistant, and Villanueva stepped forward with the hand-carved wooden box trimmed with jewels. He bowed as he offered it to Kira, who accepted it.

“How generous of President Seguera. I know that Mr. Tower will be pleased. Shall we proceed?”

Fortaleza nodded. “By all means. We’re eager to see your demonstration.”

Russel motioned them toward the utility corridor. “This way to your future, gentlemen.” Graham unlocked the glass door from his station, and the entourage filed through it. Russel and Fortaleza walked side by side, followed by Kira and Villanueva, with Jake bringing up the rear. At the end of the corridor, Russel produced a security card and opened the conference room door. He and the Filipinos entered the sunlit room and Kira turned in the doorway, blocking Jake’s path.

“Thank you, Mr. Helman. That will be all.”

Jake hesitated. “Shall I wait out here?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

She closed the door in his face.

Bitch
, he thought.

“What’s this demonstration they’re holding in there?” Jake asked Graham in the security bay.

Graham held his right hand over his eyes, then over his right ear, and finally over his mouth: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Returning to his office, Jake sat at his computer and opened an Internet search engine. In less than a minute, he found the information he wanted.

Kimo Seguera had been the president of the Philippines for six years, with Jose Fortaleza serving as his diplomatic emissary. No information turned up on Villanueva. Rocked by attacks from various terrorist factions based in its impregnable jungles, the Philippines had suffered drastic economic woes when corporations seeking exploitable territories deemed them too unstable for investment. The steps taken by Seguera to crush the terrorists had been so extreme that his own people had risen against him. To protect his position, he imposed martial law, transforming the democracy into a police state almost overnight. The terrorists continued to plague him, with the support of his oppressed subjects.

Jake sat back in his chair. No direct connection linked Seguera to Tower, but the CIA had played a pivotal role in the dictator’s early campaign against terrorism, and an additional search showed that Bill Russel had worked for the CIA when Seguera had first become president. What could Seguera possibly want from Tower International? Tower had a stranglehold on genetic industries, and Seguera needed military strength.

What’s inside that Demonstration Room?

He stared at two white pens that lay side by side on the desktop, like lines of cocaine. Sweat formed on his brow and his vision turned blurry. Seizing the pens, he shoved them into a drawer, which he slammed shut.

Russel and the Filipino delegation departed an hour later, and Kira summoned Jake to her office again. Through her expansive windows, Jake watched the sun dip behind the skyline and wondered when his workday would end.

“Have a seat,” Kira said.

He made himself comfortable.

“According to our intelligence, RAGE intends to launch an attack on the Tower soon.”

Jake tensed up. No wonder Tower had needed him to start right away. Exactly what intelligence had Russel given Kira?

“I want you to issue a company-wide memo raising our alert status to Orange immediately.”

“Right.” Jake rose to his feet.

So did Kira. “But I need you to do something else first.” She led him to the anteroom door outside Tower’s office and gestured at the black rubber eyecup of the retina scanner. “You need access to Nicholas’s office in case of an emergency and this entrance can’t be opened with a security card or hand scan. Swipe your card for identification.”

Jake removed his badge from his jacket and swiped it through a slot on the scanner. When his security code appeared on the display window, Kira pressed a button.

“Press your right eye against the eyecup.”

Jake hesitated.

“It’s perfectly safe.”

Stepping closer, he leaned forward and pressed his eye against the eyecup. Staring through a lens at a mirror, he saw his own bloodshot eye.

“Don’t blink.”

A red laser beam scanned his eye and his lids twitched, threatening to close. He heard a buzzing sound, followed by a click that reminded him of the sound made by an x-ray machine.

“Okay.”

Blinking, he stepped back.

The anteroom door unlocked and Kira opened it. “There’s one more step.” She took him into the anteroom and pointed at the hand scanner beside the steel doors. “Place your hand on the scanner.”

“I already did this with Graham.”

“Do it again.”

Frowning, Jake set his right palm down on the scanner. The laser scanned his hand, and his security code appeared on the display.

Kira pressed a button. “Now hold perfectly still. You’re going to feel a pinch—”

Jake furrowed his eyebrows. There had been no pinch before—

Pain shot through the back of his hand, as if a needle had pierced his skin, and his body turned rigid. He heard what sounded like an electric stapler in action as his fingers spread out. The pain and sound ebbed at the same time.

“Remove your hand.”

Jake slid his hand from the scanner and examined the area of skin that had hurt. He saw no mark or blood.

“DNA scanner,” Kira said. “There’s no fooling this machine.”

Jake disliked the idea of a genetics outfit possessing a sample of his DNA, but what could he do?

Back in her office, Kira sat at her desk and turned to her computer, ignoring him. Jake studied the way the orange light from the setting sun highlighted the contours of her face. She looked up at him with one eyebrow cocked.

“Is there something else? I need you to disseminate that memo.”

Jake felt like a schoolboy who had just been caught staring at the prettiest girl in class. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out for a drink sometime? It would give us a chance to go over procedures away from all of this.” He wanted to kick himself even as the words tumbled from his mouth. Why had he asked her out? He disliked her and she clearly detested him. He had no interest in being with anyone but Sheryl and had sworn off drinking.

Kira studied him for a moment with a curious expression. Then her eyes darkened. “No, thank you. I’m allergic to alcohol.”

Jake’s body relaxed.
Maybe you’re allergic to men
. But he doubted that very much. “I’ll send that e-mail now.”

Jake had dinner at Sinare’s, the Italian restaurant next door to the Midnight Diner.
I’ll never have to leave the block
, he thought, eyeing the bar in the rear of the restaurant. When he returned to the sixtieth floor at 8:00 p.m., he saw that Graham had been relieved by a tall young man with broad shoulders and short hair: Cutler, Barry.

“I’m Jake Helman.” He offered his hand, which the guard shook.

“Pleased to meet you.” Cutler possessed a Southern accent.

“I read in your dossier that you were an MP.”

Cutler nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I just resigned from the police department. It’s good to know that I’ll have a brother in arms to depend on.”

Cutler just looked at him with a blank expression.

“I’ll be in my unit if you need me for anything.”

“Good night, sir.”

Inside his unit, Jake kicked off his shoes and set his walkie-talkie down on the computer station. On one of the monitors above the computer, he saw Cutler drum the fingers of one hand on his desk. Jake hung his suit in the bedroom closet. It felt strange living in the same building where he worked. In Homicide, he had crashed on a cot in the locker room on numerous occasions while working around the clock on major cases, but he had always made it home to Sheryl eventually. He looked around the bedroom, his home for the time being.

Stripping naked, he climbed into the Jacuzzi. As high-powered jets of water massaged his tired muscles, he allowed his mind to wander. The rising steam moistened his nostrils, and he dug his fingers into his palms. Squeezing his eyes shut, he fought off the craving for cocaine. His thoughts turned once more to Kira’s clandestine meeting with the Filipinos that afternoon. What had that meeting concerned? It occurred to him that he had not seen Tower all day. The old man seemed like a prisoner in his own castle. How could he protect someone he never saw? And he had seen nothing that explained the unused floor space on the sixtieth floor. He found it hard to believe that Tower needed all that square footage for his private quarters.

When his skin had wrinkled, he drained the Jacuzzi and changed into a pair of red shorts and a blue NYPD T-shirt. He crossed the living room and turned off the lights, then stood before the picture window, gazing out at the twinkling lights of the city. Killers lurked out there. Not just psychos like the Cipher, or murderous thugs like Dread and Baldy, but organized zealots like the members of RAGE, who pulled triggers and planted bombs in God’s name. He lit a cigarette and the automatic air purifier in the wall hummed.

He needed to get home to Sheryl.

Without a computer or security monitors, the bedroom felt comfortable, its natural wood decor offering welcome relief from the high-tech environment in which Jake had spent the day. Closing the door, he stripped down to his briefs and set his alarm clock for 7:00 a.m. Thinking of the ACCL and RAGE, he slipped his Glock beneath the pillow beside him, holstered so he would not accidentally pull the trigger in his sleep. He crawled beneath a blanket and switched off the bedside lamp, then rested his head on his pillow. Sleep claimed him before midnight.

A sharp noise awoke him sometime later. His body jerked upright, his eyes scanning the darkness. Had he actually heard a door close, or had that just been part of a dream? He recalled disjointed images from his sleep: locked doors, security cameras, and key cards. Listening to the darkness, he heard only the sound of his pensive breathing. The luminous numbers on the clock showed the time: 12:35. He had been asleep for less than an hour. Had he heard the door to Kira’s unit closing? He smiled at his paranoia; no terrorists had stormed the Tower.

Then yellow light, as pale as an alligator’s eyes, outlined the bedroom door and he held in his breath.