The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (18 page)

A hidden stash of accelerant, or just jet fuel ignited by high explosives?

David squinted as some of the smoke cleared. "Look," he said, "it wasn't a direct hit on
Nasheed's
condo. It's. . .
see?
. . .it's
below
that. Maybe four, five floors below."

Etherton didn't seem hopeful, staring at the flames going higher. But he picked up his cell phone and retried it, without luck. When they finally looked back toward
Seacrest
Tower, to the place they'd been observing earlier, they saw that the curtains of most of the windows had been pulled aside to afford a better view. But the window behind which a telescope had been trained was unchanged.

"He did it," Doug said, slumping down onto one of folding chairs. "He figures it can't be traced back to him. Somehow, he's fixed it."

David shook his head, dumbfounded in realizing the implications. "Was Swann with
Nasheed
?" he asked.

A brief flash of unfocused anger lit
Etherton's
eyes.
"Was?
They could both be burning alive up there, right now!" He looked down in despair. "And just like with the Twin Towers in New York, there's nothing we can do about it. Nothing anyone can do."

Leaning against the edge of the wall, David saw that they were now the only ones left atop the roof. He felt numbed by it. The night held an absurd, surreal quality, illuminated by phantom flares and then searchlights that cast shadows up from below. The incessant blaring of sirens and horns, both near and far away, seemed to merge into a cacophonous buzz, like hornets trapped in a bell jar. A sliver of moon like a sideways grin shown through a patch of cloud. . .
or was it smoke?
He couldn't tell which. Just below, cars leaped from the tunnel of the underground parking lot in back, only to find gridlock at the very first intersection met. Then he glimpsed
Cashman
down there too, hugging the side of the club nearest the corner, cell phone drawn to call a cab.

Part of him imagined yelling something down at the man. But what was there left to say, and what comfort or resolution would there be in saying it, except for his own ego?

How do you like your advance now, Ted?

Someday you'll realize what a scumbag you are, Ted.

See you in hell, Ted.

Such retorts seemed ludicrous. As absurd as accusation, and just as meaningless. How had he ever thought an expression of anger--or even violence--would make any difference? He slumped beside Etherton as flames crept higher to engulf
Nasheed's
floor atop Swann Tower. He touched Doug's shoulder with one hand while a thick tendril of black smoke curled up from the gap of broken glass. "This wasn't supposed to happen," he said. "It's totally insane, we both agreed, you know."

"Since when has that stopped anyone from doing anything?" When his cell phone rang, Doug paused to answer, then his mood seemed to change as a renewed sense of urgency overtook him. "I better go see what they're gonna do," he said, at last. "They want you to wait here."

"They say why?"

"Not really."

~ * ~

Etherton returned with a look that telegraphed astonishment and confusion, as though he were being pressed to come to a decision.

"What is it?" David asked. "What's happened?"

Doug went down on one knee beside his chair, staring across at Swann Tower. "Building's fire suppression system isn't working like it should. Firefighters are trying to get up the stairwell, which seems to be blocked. Unless they get backup systems working, the upper floors might be gutted. So far they think smoke inhalation is more likely the real danger for those trapped higher."

"Just like the Twin Towers," David said. "So it's sabotage?"

"Who knows. One thing's for sure. Swann's not going to wait for someone else's kangaroo court."

"So he's alive?"

Doug nodded. "On his way here now."

"Here?"

"He intends to confront Victor in person, although the word
confront
doesn't cut it. They'll go up the stairwell to the penthouse for a full cavity search." Etherton paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. "There's one other thing. It's about why they agreed to your game with
Cashman
and Innes. They wanted to see which one of them might play the pawn."

"What do you mean?"

"They don't know for sure where Victor is. All they know is that he's in the building."

"Why doesn't someone call him and find out?"

"Tried it already. Got voice mail."

"So what are they thinking?"

Etherton looked at him a moment before answering. "They want to send Jeffrey Innes up there to I.D. him."

"Innes?"

Doug glanced toward the stairs. "Innes was told that's where you've gone. He saw
Cashman
leave, and must figure he has a lock on the book deal."

"Maybe he's comfortable with the concept of employees jumping out of buildings without the golden parachute he used himself," Malcolm
Wurley
surmised in explaining the situation to David, "so we gave him a throwaway cell phone, told him it was yours, and sent him over to
Seacrest
Tower with it. He'll be let in from the inside. Our girl will show him into the right elevator to the penthouse. Then his cell phone will ring. It'll be you, telling him you'll be right there with Rhea Kumar, and to buzz the door and ask for Victor. You'll say to put Victor on the phone. We know he's a fan. We're also hoping he recognizes Innes on the security camera, too. According to his bio, he should."

Etherton frowned. "Won't he know the cell phone is a throwaway if he tries it?"

"There's a few other famous people on it too, mate. Like sheik El
Habib
, and singer
Shakira
. We bought five throwaway phones in all. The numbers are ours, so we'll block him if he tries them."

"Why not just send the girl or someone else to check?"

"They know things, Innes doesn't."

"And once David has
Seacrest
on the line?"

"Two men will be waiting in the stairwell. They're already on their way up. They went in with the cover party."

"What, you mean with hidden weapons?"

Malcolm nodded. "There's no cameras in the stairwell. It's already been checked."

"I'm not comfortable with this," David said, reluctantly, "even if Innes would be, if he knew the risk."

But Etherton wasn't listening. "Where's Swann now?" he asked
Wurley
.

"En route. He'll only go up after it's secure."

Doug huffed. "Figures. No risk for him, even with
Shakil
dead, right?"

"We don't know that,"
Wurley
said.

"Oh, I see. He's just not answering." Doug finally turned to David. "Are you okay with this?"

"I said I'm not," he repeated.

"What?" Malcolm looked directly at him, too. "What. . . do you mean?"

"I mean," David explained, looking away, "I'm through playing games."

An arm went around his neck from behind. Then, with the same unexpected suddenness, there was the cold steel of a pistol barrel pressed against the side of his forehead. "What did you say?" Peter, the bodyguard, breathed from behind his ear.

"I said. . .
shoot."

The arm tightened.

Now he couldn't breathe.

"Jesus, hold on!" Etherton exclaimed, lifting his hands, fingers spread. "Why can't I make the call?"

Disturbed though he appeared to be,
Wurley
considered it, and then quickly motioned his approval.

Peter's arm loosened around David's throat. David coughed and swallowed, gasping air. Finally, Peter pushed him, propelling him to the opposite wall, where he turned and looked at the man.
A thug, after all,
he thought, assessing this newly emerged alter ego. Still, he realized the word did no more to describe the bodyguard than had
scumbag
described
Cashman
. Although it certainly tended to clarify the true nature of the situation.

"This isn't about finding evidence," he told Etherton while trying to catch his breath, “it's about revenge. His mind. . . was made up as soon as. . . as soon as he heard the theory."

"Whose mind?" Doug asked.

"Good point. If he'd thought of it first, he would have. . . would have financed his
own
aerial assault."

Etherton squinted at him. Confusion and disbelief registered on his face before guilt invaded and smoothed out the lines. "I'm sorry it's come to this," he said at last.

"Not your fault."

When
Wurley's
cell rang, the security chief answered, then motioned for Etherton to make his call. "He's in the elevator. Do it."

"I can't be here," David said. He took out his own cell phone, dropping it to the floor. Then he walked toward the door.

Peter blocked it. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Back up on the roof. . . to watch the fire, if that's okay."

"Let him go," Malcolm instructed as Etherton telephoned Innes as directed.

Returning to the roof's far corner, where the video camera had been placed, David sat down into the chair beside it, and looked up at Swann Tower. The fire there had mostly died. The smoke was already dissipating. Lights had even returned to some of the upper windows, while a company helicopter circled at the level of the breach. Opposite the Swann, the enigmatic face of
Seacrest
Tower reflected the brightest of distant flares like the compound eyes of a dragonfly, wings lifted in repose, quiescently surveying road kill in solitary semblance of innocence.

I can't be here.

He moved his lips, mouthing the words as the letters rose, receding before his mind's eye almost as if they were film credits filing up into a starry patch of empyrean sky. Hadn't he spoken the same words before on other nights spent alone in telescope domes?

I can't be here.

Feeling the enveloping dark, he was almost sure that he'd muttered the very same words in justifying his early retirement. An identical sense of inexplicable loss swept him now, as though the link to it was a circuit with a switch. Staring up at the stars once again, he tried to visualize his mother's face more clearly, although she sat in an amorphous past which no longer existed except as a neural network of shifting pulses in his brain. . . a quantum reality in some relative relationship with his consciousness. That the switch to this repetitive cascade of thoughts might depend upon such a simple trigger seemed unbelievable at first, so he tried to blank his mind to confirm it, before realizing that thought
itself
had failed him. Or thoughts
themselves
, if cognition could be said to be alive: corporeal thoughts that worked like an artificial intelligence--a computer program that made perception and recollection spooky and prone to corruption, too. In remaking the past over and over, perhaps his memory traces had only magnified the errors they made, animating an attempt at self preservation by way of a genetic code. Like a virus had propagated and invaded his soul. Which meant that the past had never really existed exactly in the way he remembered it, and that the future had been an illusion as well. . . a neural construct, no more real than a politician's pipe dream.

By contrast, the present moment seemed unique and unfeigned. Distant flares and sirens proclaimed an obvious and solid distinctiveness. Even the pale yellow glow of the parking garage, and the ghosted reflections of movement along the highway--glimpsed as sweeps of light across acres of segmented glass--seemed, by comparison, pure and discernible, as telescoped to his retina.

He looked up and counted the stars, framed there through the drifting smoke. A dozen at most. His mind seized on the number and tried to connect the dots into a pattern, a constellation. He closed his eyes to thwart the attempt, instead.

No, not this time.

He waited for the compulsion to subside. Only when he was certain that it had did he open his eyes again. And what he saw was a point of light. One point amid others whose distance and genuine magnitudes he let remain unknowns.

Is there a planet around that star like the Earth?

Inescapable, the thought, born of habit. He let it live and die. Then, just as he did, the star began to brighten, inexplicably. Even as he stared at it, his next intrusive thought was how this could be. Was it because a veil of intervening smoke had drifted aside? If so, why hadn't the stars next to it brightened as well?

He felt his beating heart quicken, his pulse seeking pace with a new and enigmatic time. The transformation that then unfolded was a soundless shout across the bowl of sky, as the narrowly separated cloudbanks focused light as if like a lens meant just for him. When the star had reached the intensity of the moon, he knew the event to be more momentous than anything celestial ever witnessed. Reduced to a sharp point like the tip of a sword, the blazing star then performed its second miracle by piercing his mind clean of thought, and leaving only awe.