The Panic Zone (32 page)

Nassau, Bahamas

I
n the predawn darkness, a police car crept through Nassau's Over-the-Hill district.

The faint yelp of a distant dog sounded a warning as a flashlight beam shot from the car's passenger door. Light raked across the dilapidated shops with barred windows, the boarded-up canteens, eviscerated cars and tumbledown houses.

Royal Bahamas Police Detective Colchester Young and his partner Angelo Morgan had worked their street sources. An angry ex-girlfriend had tipped them to their subject, hiding at his aunt's place in Over-the-Hill.

“He said he had to lay low,” she'd told them, then added, “he carries a gun all the time.”

The car rolled up to a neat home with pretty flower boxes.

In a heartbeat, Young and Morgan, armed with a crow-bar, semiautomatic pistols and a warrant, entered the house and found Whitney Wymm struggling to get up from the couch.

Wymm reached for the gun he'd stashed under the couch, but his wrist was crushed under Morgan's boot. Young slammed Wymm to the floor, rolled him on his stomach, put his knee in his back and cuffed him.

Wymm was one of the top document counterfeiters in the West Indies.

Young and Morgan had effective methods of extracting information and within an hour of his arrest, Wymm admitted that he'd created new passports for the woman in the photograph the detectives had shown him.

Gretchen Sutsoff.

Wymm gave them all the photos he'd used to create new passports for her in the name of Mary Anne Conrad and for the baby she had with her, William John Conrad.

By the time the sun rose, the detectives had alerted their supervisor to the vital new information. The supervisor alerted his bosses, who saw that the update was immediately rushed through official channels to the FBI in Washington.

The FBI passed it to the FBI Field Office in Manhattan and the New York Police Department, and it was circulated to every law enforcement officer tasked to find Gretchen Sutsoff.

Early that morning in Manhattan, Art Wolowicz and Clive Hatcher were among the teams of NYPD detectives assigned to that aspect of the case. They were canvassing hotels when the new alert beeped on the mobile computer in their unmarked Chevy Impala.

“A new picture and alias—this one's a freakin' chameleon. Where we goin' next?” Wolowicz asked.

Hatcher pried the lid off his takeout cup, blew on his coffee and said, “LaQuinta, then Comfort Inn, then let's go back to the Tellwood.”

New York City

“W
e're close to Tyler, I can feel it, Jack.” Emma Lane's concentration never strayed from Gannon's computer monitor.

The memory card she'd obtained from the Blue Tortoise Kids' Hideaway held hundreds of files. Gannon and Emma continued studying them now at Gannon's desk in the World Press Alliance headquarters.

They'd first read the files yesterday, during their flight from Nassau.

Tears had rolled down Emma's face when she'd found Tyler's case among them. It contained his health records from his doctor and the clinic in California, Emma and Joe's personal information, their photos, articles on their crash from the
Big Cloud Gazette,
even Joe's obituary. Then separate information about “adoptive parents” Valmir and Elena Leeka, and something about Tyler's birth parents having died in a car accident.

“Why are they doing this?” Emma had asked over and over.

Gannon didn't have the answer

Today, he zeroed in on the data related to seventy couples or families located around the world.

“There seems to be a pattern.”

Earlier that morning, after Gannon had brought Melody
Lyon up to speed, she'd assigned other reporters to help. They'd taken the names Gannon had mined from the files and started calling New York hotels to see if any people named in the files were registered.

In studying the files, Gannon had discovered that each case involved a small child, usually under three years old. Each case also seemed to involve an adoption through law firms or agencies in Brazil, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Malaysia, China or India. And each case involved name changes and exhaustive health records.

In the more recent files, Gannon found that names of the “families” or “couples” had been removed or changed. But a few files contained notes about traveling to New York for the Human World Conference. Gannon had managed to pull some of those names from those files. He was reviewing them when he got a call from a WPA reporter who was helping them.

“Jack, it's Linwood.”

“You get anything with those names I gave you to check?”

“Zip.”

“Keep checking.”

Gannon kept poring over the files. His focus sharpened when he found one he'd overlooked. It contained two names: Joy Lee Chenoweth and Wex Taggart out of Vancouver, Canada.

There were photos of the couple with a boy about three years old and recent notes suggesting that they would be going to the Human World Conference and staying at the Tellwood Regency Inn.

Gannon picked up his phone and called the hotel.

“Tellwood Regency, how may I help you?”

“Yes, I'm trying to reach two guests, Joy Lee Chenoweth and Wex Taggart. Did they check in yet?”

“One moment, sir.” Keys clicked. “Yes, Wex Taggart from Vancouver, British Columbia.”

“That's right.”

“We have them. Would you like me to connect you, now?”

“Yes, please.”

The line switched and rang twice before a woman answered.

“Hello?”

Gannon hesitated while looking at the file photos. The voice on the line seemed suited to the pretty young Asian woman staring back at him.

“I'm sorry. I think I've got the wrong room.”

Gannon hung up and turned to Emma.

“We have a lead at the Tellwood hotel.”

New York City

G
annon updated Lyon.

Two news photographers were dispatched to meet Gannon and Emma at the northwest corner of the intersection closest to the Tellwood.

Lyon then authorized Emma to have a temporary WPA photo ID made for her at Gannon's insistence.

The Tellwood Regency Inn stood in the shadow of the Chrysler Building near Grand Central Station. Gannon and Emma found news photographers, Matt Ridley and Penny Uhnack, waiting at the nearest corner with their cameras tucked away in their shoulder bags.

Both were seen-it-all, shot-it-all pros.

“Matt, get everybody coming in and out of the hotel with a stroller or small kids,” Gannon said. “Penny, come with us.”

Inside, the gleaming four-star hotel was bustling.

“I'll wait here and do the same as Matt.” Uhnack un-shouldered her bag. “But I won't be obvious, just a tourist testing my camera.”

Gannon cut across the lobby to the desk where a young clerk smiled.

“Yes, can I help you?”

“Sorry, it's been a rough day. I'm a reporter with the World Press Alliance.” Gannon showed her his photo ID and unfolded a sheet of paper with the names Taggart and
Chenoweth. “I'm late for an interview with the people in this room, 1414. My desk didn't give me all the information. I think the people moved to another room. Can you please help me?”

The clerk looked at the note then tapped her keyboard.

“We have them, Mr. Gannon. Room 2104.”

“Thank you so much.”

Gannon and Emma stepped into one of six elevators and rode to the twenty-first floor. On the way up, they exchanged nervous glances. Gannon had decided he would confront Chenoweth and Taggart with the truth and try to persuade them to help.

They stepped off at the floor and headed to room 2104. Gannon knocked on the door.

No response.

Would they find a repeat of the scene in the Bahamas?

Gannon put his ear to the door. No movement inside. Emma looked in vain for cleaning staff.

“Let's go back down,” Gannon said.

In the lobby, Uhnack's face was flushed as she approached them.

“I think I got something.” She cued up several frames on her digital news camera. “These people just left. I barely got my camera out.”

Uhnack had captured images of an Asian woman in her twenties pushing a stroller with an Asian boy who looked about three or four. A Caucasian man in his twenties was with them. Gannon compared the shots to the file photos.

“That's them,” Gannon said.

“Definitely,” Uhnack said. “I got these pictures, too.”

She showed them more images. A white couple in their thirties holding hands with two little girls, then a frame of a young African-American woman with a baby in a stroller and a frame of an older woman pushing a stroller.

“Wait!” Emma drew her face to the camera's viewer. Uhnack enlarged the frame. “Oh, my God, that's Tyler!”

“Who is he with? She's familiar.” Gannon recalled the woman's face from that morning's fugitive alert. “It might be Gretchen Sutsoff.”

“Which way did she go?” Emma demanded. “Tell me!”

Uhnack shook her head. “I didn't see!”

Gannon's phone rang.

“Jack, it's Ridley outside. I got some stuff, but something's up. Looks like an unmarked just pulled up and two detectives are at the desk.”

Gannon went to the desk and got close enough to see a badge flash and hear NYPD detectives Wolowicz and Hatcher say they were looking for a Mary Anne Conrad, traveling with a baby, William John Conrad. The clerk checked registrations, then shook her head.

“We have other names,” Hatcher said as the clerk ran through them. Then Gannon heard the investigators say, “alias Gretchen Sutsoff.”

“Excuse me,” he interrupted. “I overheard you and I think I may have some information.”

The detectives turned.

“That right? And who are you?”

Gannon produced his ID, waved Uhnack and Emma over and called Ridley in. They showed the detectives their photographs. Emma struggled with her emotions as Gannon explained everything quickly to Wolowicz and Hatcher. Their stone-faced expressions revealed nothing.

When Gannon had finished briefing them, Hatcher called his captain.

“Which way did you say she was traveling?” Hatcher asked Ridley.

Emma fought back tears, staring at Tyler's photo.

“West on Forty-second,” Ridley said.

“—ASAP, that's right,” Hatcher said into his phone. “Get all radio cars looking for her from the Tellwood, west on forty-second.” Hatcher studied Ridley and Uhnack's photos. “Description—white female, mid-fifties, medium build.
Five-seven, maybe one-twenty, one-thirty. She's wearing a red top and white shorts. She's pushing a blue canvas stroller. The kid is white, about one or so, and is wearing a white ‘I heart New York' T-shirt.”

Emma wanted to scream.

“I can't stand here. I have to look for Tyler!”

“Hold it. No one goes anywhere.” Wolowicz tapped the cameras. “We want those pictures, this is a police investigation.”

“These are WPA property,” Ridley said. “Work that out with WPA brass.” He hit his speed-dial button for the WPA photo editor.

“We will, pal. I'm going to hold you all until we settle this.”

“I need to go now!” Emma screamed.

“No one is going anywhere, miss.” Wolowicz leveled his finger at her. “There are half a dozen police cars in this area now that are looking for our subject. Stay calm. We're going to find her and the baby.”

“We're wasting time!” Emma shouted.

Heads shot around as people watched the exchange. Ridley was on his phone explaining their predicament to the photo editor.

Gannon called Lancer.

“Lancer.”

“It's Gannon in New York. She's here. Sutsoff is here.”

“Where?”

“Our photographers saw her leaving the Tellwood on Forty-second heading west about fifteen minutes ago. She has Emma Lane's baby with her.”

“Are you sure?”

“We've got photos and two NYPD detectives are here.”

“Give us the photos.”

“It's being sorted out now. Where would Sutsoff go?”

Lancer hesitated.

“Come on, Lancer!”

“She'll likely go to Central Park for the conference.”

G
retchen Sutsoff heard an old melody on Fifth Avenue.

She stopped the stroller in front of a coffee shop. Its open door was leaking music, a song that her little brother had cherished.

Will.

The memories flooded back. Will was such a good boy.

To hear his song on this day pleased her until she was jerked from her reverie.

“Lady, would you get outta my freakin' way?”

A sweating, grunting delivery man balancing a steel handcart loaded with soda nearly grazed her, forcing her to move. Sutsoff came to another storefront and saw a TV inside broadcasting the fugitive alert.

The report showed the older photos that bore no resemblance to her.

As a precaution, she entered a Fifth Avenue shop, bought a summer dress, a sun hat and dark glasses. She took the baby with her and changed in the washroom of a fast-food restaurant. She also put on a new wig that was a different color and length. She tested her laptop. The signal was strong, she had full battery power and she had spares.

Good.

Finally, she checked the baby. His signs were fine.
He's in perfect health,
she thought, taking a couple more pills to help her contend with the crowds before wheeling the stroller back to the street.

They resumed their long walk on Fifth Avenue.

Sirens wailed and helicopters whomped overhead as they neared Central Park. The traffic and crowds increased and charter buses crawled along, diesels chugging, brakes hissing. Mounted patrols stood by as, even at this hour, vendors hawked pretzels, ice cream, nuts, soda and Human World T-shirts to people streaming toward the park. All were wearing the required orange wrist bands that came with the tickets.

As Sutsoff and the baby disappeared into the crowds, she saw him playfully touching people who brushed against them. She smiled as she watched the people he touched touch others.

* * *

Thirty minutes to go and Robert Lancer's stomach knotted.

The size of the crowd was sobering.

The number of people gathering on the Great Lawn, the huge midpark expanse where Pope John Paul II had celebrated Mass, was estimated at 1.3 million.

Is Sutsoff out there?
Lancer wondered as he looked through his binoculars from the police command post on West Drive, at the Eighty-third Street level. Other command posts were located around the park.

The air crackled with sound checks from the huge stage flanked by massive video screens. Other giant screens and speaker towers ascended from the tranquil sea of humanity.

Squadrons of emergency vans, ambulances and police trucks were strategically parked in and around the park. NYPD Communications trucks monitored the crowd via video cameras on speaker towers.

So much was in play; there were metal detectors and X-ray machines, K-9 explosives teams and chemical sensors to analyze the air for gases and toxins. The stage and VIP areas had been swept, then triple-checked by the Secret Service. Lancer exhaled. So far paramedics and first-
aid stations had reported no unusual or alarming medical problems.

Organizers refused to consider shutting the event down at this stage.

All officials agreed that to make any sort of announcement of a potential threat would create chaos. The White House was clear: the president would attend. The first lady and vice president would remain in Washington. Oval Office staff told the Secret Service that the president would not cower. No group would dictate his agenda through threats. The president's stance was firm: he would be with the people at this major event. Facing threats was part of his job.

The pleas for cancellation by Lancer and other security officials were in vain. That left them few options. Yes, events like these were often subject to threats, but this one had a horrific blood trail that led straight to it.

Teams of undercover police and cadets were threading through the crowd, looking for anyone who matched Sutsoff's photo, the new one obtained by police in the Bahamas.

As the MC took to the stage to start the day's program, Lancer looked hard at the images filling the nearest big screen.

He had an idea.

* * *

The show started.

Gannon was with Emma on the east side, near the obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were patrolling the edges of the crowd, scrutinizing every person they saw who had a child in a stroller. Emma's heart raced each time she spotted someone who looked like Sutsoff or Tyler.

Gannon called the WPA and learned that the WPA's lawyers and NYPD were urgently finalizing use of the WPA's photos. TV news helicopters circled overhead. The
Times, Daily News
and
Post
had reported online that security was
heightened at the event because of the president's visit, amid rumors of an increased threat level.

So far, no news organization knew what Gannon and the WPA knew. The wire service had assigned eight reporters and six photographers to the event. As music filled the air, Gannon and Emma scanned the ocean of faces. The size of the crowd was overwhelming.

It was futile.

“I feel so helpless,” Emma said. “Did they find them?”

Again, Gannon called the WPA newsroom where Mike Kemp, a seasoned crime reporter, was monitoring emergency scanners.

“Anything happening, Mike?” Gannon asked Kemp, hearing the clatter of the scanners in the background.

“Nothing out of the ordinary for a crowd this size,” Kemp said. “Some guy in the southwest sector had an asthma attack, a seventy-two-year-old woman in the north section had a fainting spell and a teenage girl got stung by a bee.”

“What about arrests? Does it sound like they found Sutsoff?”

“Two gang bangers were fighting with knives near the Guggenheim and a drunk was exposing himself near the Museum of Natural History. I'll let you know if we pick up anything.”

Gannon hung up. “Nothing,” he told Emma. “Let's keep moving.”

They headed south in the direction of Turtle Pond.

* * *

At the west side of the park, at the Eighty-third Street police command post, Lancer had his cell phone pressed to his ear.

“We're all clear?” he asked.

“It's a go, Bob, just ahead in the program.”

“Good. Alert every cop out there. This might be our only hope.”

* * *

Sutsoff and the baby had been sitting on the grass northeast of the Delacorte Theater.

She had decided enough time had passed.

The program had now been going for over two hours with short concert performances punctuated by brief speeches from celebrities, Nobel laureates and politicians. The weather was ideal—everyone was upbeat.

As she removed her laptop from her bag to run a status check, a long, loud roar rose from the Great Lawn. For an instant, she was pulled back to Vridekistan, but her medication dulled her anxiety as the president started to address the crowd. With his tie loosened and shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows he told the conference how “for every one of us, being human in today's world means bearing enormous responsibility….”

Sutsoff paid little attention to him.

She concentrated on her work. She saw that of her operation's seventy couples, thirty-one had succeeded in administering Extremus Deus Variant 1 to the “delivery vehicles” and were currently present somewhere on the Great Lawn.

That number was in keeping with what she'd anticipated. She was pleased with her rough calculations as to how many people had been touched by the children and how many of those people would have touched someone, who then touched another and so forth.

At least 50 percent of all the people who'd gathered here.

A touch was all it took.

And given the scale of the victim pool, with people coming and going and touching others, the variant would be carried beyond the park and the numbers would grow and grow.

All Sutsoff needed to do was submit the range.

“How about everyone, except for me and little Will?” She smiled to herself.

She entered the parameters, ensuring it excluded her and the baby.

No harm will come our way.

Entering the activation code would require about five minutes.

As Sutsoff was about to start, another loud cheer floated over the crowd and people around her got to their feet. The president had called for everyone to “rise up, show your human side. Reach out to your neighbor.” He had formed a human hand-holding chain on the stage. It stretched into the crowd which swayed as people joined a soloist in the chorus of “Give Peace a Chance.” Sutsoff declined to hold anyone's hand but encouraged others to hold the baby's hand.

When the song ended, the crowd sat down to wait for the next rock band to perform, leaving Sutsoff enthralled. She had not expected this hand-holding exercise. She estimated that 90 percent of the people here now carried the variant.

All she had to do was submit the activation code and press Enter.

She looked at her keyboard and listened to the sounds of happy families talking and laughing, then lifted her face to the sky and swallowed.

After today, the world will never be the same.

She positioned her laptop to enter the complex code.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” A man's voice boomed through the sound system. “May we have your attention please for a very important announcement?”

Sutsoff stopped typing and stared at the nearest large screen.

It filled with pictures of her and the baby, images showing them exiting the Tellwood hotel. There were several photos that changed every four seconds in a slide show. Crisp head-to-toe color shots credited to the World Press Alliance.

Sutsoff was stunned.

“We have a serious medical situation,” the voice boomed, “for Mary Anne Conrad who is traveling with her grandson William John Conrad. We need to locate them immediately.
We believe they may be here, so please look around you. If you see her, please point her out to the nearest security or medical official. Please, do it now.”

Waves of mild concern rolled through the park as people looked around them and back at the giant screens displaying Sutsoff's photos, now being enlarged to show details of the stroller and the baby's shoes.

Still wearing her large hat and dark glasses, Sutsoff turned to the group of teenaged boys on the lawn beside her.

“I think she's right over there.” Sutsoff pointed to the east.

“What?” a boy with metal rings in his nose said.

“The lady they're looking for—see, by the man with the flag?”

“Big deal, whatever.”

Sutsoff paused her work, closed her laptop, gathered the baby and her things then headed west to the nearest exit. She remained calm. All she needed was to find a safe place for five minutes to enter the code. She had to get out of the park now and get as far away as possible.

* * *

Gannon and Emma stared at the screen, then each other.

“That's pretty good,” he said.

* * *

In the vicinity of the southwest quadrant, an NYPD detective locked onto the woman pushing a stroller among the crowd. He compared the stroller shown on the big screen to the stroller he saw a short distance away. They were the same blue color, and the same dancing elephant patch and the same wheels. Then he focused on the baby's shoes.

It was them.

He lifted his radio to his mouth.

* * *

Gannon and Emma were not far from the Delacorte Theater when Gannon's cell phone rang.

“Jack, it's Mike. We just heard on the scanner that they spotted them near West Drive not far from Seventy-ninth.”

“We'll head there now. Alert the photographers.”

Gannon and Emma started running.

* * *

Lancer and several NYPD officers bolted from the police command point on West Drive, at the Eighty-third Street level. They navigated their way through the park toward Central Park West, while above them a police helicopter rolled into position to offer support. Radios crackled with updates from the breathless detective who was now running.

“She's on foot on Central Park West, north of the museum. She's moving fast, I could lose her if she gets in a cab. Goddammit, am I the only one watching her? Wake up, you guys!”

* * *

Gannon and Emma worked their way from the park. Mike Kemp called as a chopper thudded above them.

“Give me your location,” Kemp said.

“Uh—” Gannon looked around quickly “—Central Park West, around Eighty-first.”

“Okay, go south, Jack. You're close! Keep the line open.”

Gannon could hear Kemp crank up the scanner volume.

At that moment, he and Emma saw a CBS news crew running to a parked news van, a reporter with a phone pressed to his ear, just ahead of a camera operator.

Kemp was shouting in Gannon's phone.

“She's crossing from the east to the west side of Central Park West!”

As Gannon and Emma crossed to the west side and ran south, they saw flashing emergency lights several blocks away. Two parked NYPD patrol cars had swung into the street, their tires squealing as they headed north toward them.

Closer to them but a few blocks away, Emma glimpsed a woman pushing a stroller across the traffic lanes of Central Park West.

“I see her! I see Tyler!” Emma screamed.

* * *

Two blocks ahead, Sutsoff, pushing the stroller, heard the sirens and saw the chopper. Her ears were ringing from the blood rush of her racing heart.

Her medication was wearing off.

All she needed was five minutes.

“NYPD, freeze!”

A man behind her was running, gaining on her. She saw the badge on a chain around his neck. Police cars were roaring toward her. She glimpsed a hotel entrance a block ahead. If she could make it, then get up the elevator in time to hide for five minutes.

She just needed five minutes.

“NYPD. Freeze or I'll shoot!”

* * *