The Lie (41 page)

Kate nodded.

“You can always call the president and have him get someone to disarm it.”

“And have us look like bumbling fools? No. Image is everything in this.”

“Then what’s your alternative?” asked Paulie.

“You.”

There was a lot to be done at the house before leaving, and discipline was needed if they were to be thorough.

Paulie wanted to spare Kate as much as possible by taking care of Nicko himself, but she was not about to be spared a thing.

“I owe him at least that,” was how she put it.

So they wrapped Nicko in blankets against the chill of the earth and laid him to rest beneath a grove of cypress. It
was Kate who chose the site. Afterward, she cut a small cypress branch as a symbol of mourning.

They buried the three suitcases of money very close by.

No irony was intended.

It was merely that the house was a very short-term rental, and there was no telling when they would be back.

Nor was there any way to anticipate future threats. They spent a full hour scouring the house clean of fingerprints, bloodstains,
and any other identifying signs.

Since the three cars, like the house, were all rented under false IDs, these were cleaned up as well. Finally, they took the
added precaution of moving Kate’s Renault and Nicko’s Toyota a few kilometers away and rolling them into the lake.

Then they drove to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paulie’s Mustang, and were aboard a direct Air France flight to Washington
at 7:00
P.M.
Paris time.

They still had seventeen hours to detonation.

K
EN
H
ARRIS DIDN’T GO
through the contents of Daniel Archer’s pockets until he came home from his office that evening. When he finally did check
everything out, it was almost as an afterthought, over a drink.

There was nothing of true interest in Archer’s wallet. Just an assortment of credit cards and IDs under different names. His
passport carried the name of Howard Beatty, and the attached photograph showed him in his final, elderly persona.

Not until Harris was glancing over some folded sheets of paper was his attention caught by several drawings. Actually, they
were more than just drawings. They were meticulously rendered and annotated schematics of what was clearly a maze of circuitry,
detonators, and time clocks for a large-scale demolition operation.

Apparently Danny Archer had come to Washington to do more than just settle a personal score.

Mixing himself a second martini, the deputy director settled down with the schematics to see if he could find anything there
that could tell him what the project was all about.

Moments later, they had told him.

The site itself was none other than the Taylor Building on Massachusetts Avenue.

The charges were pinpointed behind the number 4 and number 5 wall panels at the northeast end of the second basement.

Three timer clocks were arranged in a relay sequence set to detonate the next day at exactly twelve noon Paris time, which,
it was stated in Archer’s own cramped handwriting, translated to exactly 6:00
A.M.
Washington time.

Listed, too, were the specific times at which Archer was to make his calls to determine whether a large cash drop had successfully
taken place. If the drop had been made, he was to defuse and abort the entire project.

The deputy director read the instructions twice. Not because he found them difficult to understand—they were quite clear as
stated—the whole concept just seemed beyond rational comprehension.

What he obviously had in his hands was a working diagram for the next target on Professor Mainz’s hit list, with Danny Archer
somehow assigned to carry out the operation—first to arm the explosives and set the timers going, then to pull the plug and
stop the clocks after the hundred million was paid.

What remained impossible for Harris to fathom was how Archer had ever connected up with Mainz to begin with.

Nevertheless, the
plastique
was armed, the clocks were ticking, and Danny Archer was obviously unable to stop them.

And Professor Mainz?

No doubt waiting someplace in Europe for Danny’s scheduled fail-safe calls that never came. But not for long. One way or another
Mainz would have to stop the clocks or watch everything he had worked for go up in smoke along with the Taylor Building and
hundreds of lives.

Harris checked the time. It was a bit past 7:00
P.M.
That left Mainz with less than eleven hours to either get over here himself to stop the clocks or arrange for someone else
to take care of it.

And I?
he thought.

I sit here building an entire, detailed life story out of two pages of diagrams, notes, and pure speculation
.

So before you lose it completely
, Ken Harris told himself,
why don’t you just make a few calls and get down there to check the whole thing out?

* * *

The deputy director had three men meet him an hour and a half later in the parking garage beneath the Taylor Building. Like
Daniel Archer, the men were not officially employed by the Agency but worked on especially sensitive clandestine operations
that held the potential for negative fallout.

Best of all, their loyalty was to Harris rather than to the Company.

The garage was nearly empty at this hour, and their footsteps echoed as they left their cars and approached a metal fire door
in an interior wall. The door was locked, but Peter, one of Harris’s associates, took out a ring of keys and quickly opened
it.

They were in a large, antiseptically white basement. George, the second of Harris’s men, was built like a top-grade linebacker.
Holding a photocopy of Daniel Archer’s schematic open in his hand, he led the way through several corridors.

George and Peter were dressed in dark suits and carried leather attaché cases. The third man, Arthur, wore jeans and a zippered
warm-up jacket with an olive-drab duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Passing a storage room, he spotted an aluminum A-ladder
leaning against a wall and took it with him.

When the four men reached the northeast end of the second basement as indicated on the schematic, it took less than five minutes
to locate the wall panels marked numbers 4 and 5, and an additional few moments to open them up.

The deputy director stared in silence at what he saw exposed.

All three clocks were ticking.

T
HE
A
IR
F
RANCE
747 landed at Dulles International Airport at 8:45
P.M.
Washington time.

Since Kate and Paulie had only carry-on bags, they got through customs ahead of the crowd.

But there were lines at the car-rental counters, and it was past ten o’clock by the time they picked up a sleek black Cougar,
drove out of the airport, and headed southeast.

“Where are we going?” Kate asked.

“To arm ourselves,” said Paulie. “Haven’t you heard? Americans are the most violent people on earth. And their capital is
their most dangerous city. Besides, I feel naked without a gun.”

They had been traveling for about twenty minutes when Paulie pulled into the driveway of a white colonial with two yellow
lanterns burning in front. To Kate, it looked like a house in which the president of the local garden club might live.

“Better wait in the car,” Paulie said. “No point in your being seen unnecessarily.”

Kate watched him walk to the front door. After a moment she saw the door open and a big man embrace Paulie before the two
of them disappeared into the house.

Even gone from sight, she could feel Paulie Walters stirring inside her.

A warm, dry wind came through the open car window from the south, and Kate felt it move through her hair and
touch her face. And she saw very clearly how the greater part of her life might have been leading only to this moment of sitting
here in a rented car waiting for this man.

Half an hour later, Kate saw Paulie in the doorway beside the tall heavyset man. They appeared to be looking in her direction.
When the man lifted his arm and waved a greeting, Kate waved back.

Paulie returned to the car with a bag bulging with ordnance and they drove off.

“That was my father’s first cousin, Dino Battaglia,” said Paulie. “Our family supplier of fine weapons to three generations
of distinguished mafiosi and an occasional spook. He begs to send you much respect, affection, and gratitude.”

“For what?”

“For loving me so much. He also begs me to please tell you he would be honored to be named godfather to our firstborn.”

Kate’s smile was uncertain. “He didn’t really.”

“He did.”

“Is that why he kept you in there so long?”

“No. That was just to demonstrate the latest of these crazy little gadgets he keeps inventing to help keep me alive. Dino
still thinks I’m James Bond.”

“You mean you’re not?”

“As long as I have you backing me up, I don’t have to be.”

They drove toward Washington.

Kate kept one of her hands on Paulie’s, where it gripped the wheel. “Is Dino your only relative?” she asked.

“As far as I know. What about you? Do you have any family?”

“No. But I think more than anything I’d love for us to start making one.”

“I doubt if we’ll have time tonight.”

They rode for a while in silence.

“How do you think we’ll do together, long-term?” Kate asked.

“Magnificently.”

“I’m serious, Paulie.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

She either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer that.

“I’m going to say this only once,” Paulie told her. “Given the chance to be with you, I’ll never fail or betray you as long
as I live.”

They reached the Taylor Building shortly after midnight, which made it a bit past 6:00
A.M.
in Paris and allowed them a full six-hour safety margin.

Still, neither Paulie nor Kate was complacent about what lay ahead. They would still be dealing with high explosives in a
less than friendly environment, and they had enough knowledge of such things to respect their potential for disaster.

Kate had her own copy of the annotated two-page schematic that Daniel Archer had carried, and she studied it under a map light
as Paulie drove slowly around the building. When everything appeared in order, he swung down into the underground garage ramp,
pressed the special electronic door opener that had been in Cousin Dino’s bag of magic tricks, and drove into the big parking
area.

There were only about a dozen cars scattered about, probably belonging to late workers putting in overtime.

They sat in the Cougar studying the schematic. They noted the metal fire door through which they would enter the basement,
and saw the door itself about fifty feet away.

They checked the guns and skeleton keys they were taking with them from Dino Battaglia’s bag, hearing the reassuring click
of the guns’ slides being racked, then putting the pieces back in their holsters.

“Ready?” Paulie asked.

Kate Dinneson nodded.

He leaned over and kissed her. “For luck.”

She looked at him in the cold light of the garage. “I know you don’t really believe in any of this. I know you’re doing it
only for me. And I appreciate it.”

“You don’t have to tell me things like that.”

“Yes I do.”

“Don’t you think I understand how you feel?” Paulie asked.

“Yes. But it’s still important to me that I say it.”

Paulie stared at her with his solemn eyes. “In that case you have my permission.”

Kate smiled, and Paulie realized he had never seen a smile of pure love before.

P
AULIE AND
K
ATE LEFT THE CAR
, opened the fire door with one of Dino Battaglia’s keys, and entered the basement.

Then, following the schematic, they started down a corridor that led to the right. With no anticipated threats, they kept
their weapons out of sight.

They passed a storage room, then another, before finally reaching the northeast section of the basement. When they found wall
panels 4 and 5, they worked together to get them open.

Paulie studied the exposed cache of
plastique
, wires, fuses, detonators, and clocks. He saw that the final clock still had five hours and twenty-two minutes to go before
detonation. For a moment he stood unmoving, as if the clock had somehow fixed him in a mood he dared not break.

Finally, he reached for the off switch.

“Done,” he said.

Turning to share the moment with Kate, Paulie saw the men. There were four of them and they made no sound as they approached
from an adjacent room. Paulie’s hand started for his automatic but he never drew it. There were four pistols with attached
silencers pointing at him.

His hand fell of its own weight.

The men stopped walking and stood ten feet away in a loose semicircle. No one had spoken, but their timing and positioning
seemed to have been choreographed.

Only then did Paulie realize that one of the men was Deputy CIA Director Harris. The other three were strangers to him.

Seemingly confused, Ken Harris frowned at Paulie. Then he stared at the exposed explosives and the timer that Paulie had just
switched off. He considered Paulie once more.

“It looks like we’re all a little unsettled by this, Paul,” said the deputy director. “The last I knew you were at Wannsee,
as John Hendricks. And I’m sure you never expected to be running into
me
down here.”

Paulie said nothing. Now he understood why Daniel Archer had missed making his calls to Kate and Nicko.

Harris turned to Kate. “I don’t believe we know each other.”

“I know
you
, Mr. Harris.” Kate’s face was pale but controlled.

“And what’s
your
name?”

“Kate Dinneson.”