The Housewife Assassin's Ghost Protocol (30 page)

Tatyana doesn’t know to look out for me. If she’d truly had any past experience with me, she would have known better.

From what I can tell, this is an abandoned office building. The halls create confusing mazes.

I use the sound of gunfire to find my way around.

I don’t have to go far. I find her with her back to me, peering around a corner. As a bullet goes whizzing over her head, I whisper, “Do you even remember your real name?”

Her head whips around.

Then it explodes.

Silence.

I hear footsteps: quick but cautious.

I’d know them anywhere.

Jack pauses before peeking around the corner. He’s crouched low, his gun held high, but ready to draw—

Until he sees me.

He runs to me.
 

There will never be a sweeter kiss.
 

As Ryan, Abu, and Dominic rush by us down the hall to the lab, Ryan shouts back to us, “Jeez, you two—get a room.”

Gladly.

But first things first: tying up a few loose ends.

Chapter 17

Dead End

At some point, each of us discovers—and sometimes, much too late—that the route you took is really a dead end.
 

Should you should find yourself in the middle of nowhere, do this—immediately:

#1: Turn around. Don’t be hard-headed about it. Here’s the reality: you can’t get there from here.

#2: Just don’t back up. Going the wrong way on a one-way street will get you hit in the rear end every time. Think of the damage. Yes, it will cost you.

#3: Start over. No one else has the right to plot your course. Just because someone else “got there from here” doesn’t mean you will too. Time to throw away someone else’s road map, and take a road never traveled.

Starting to see a pattern here? Good for you!

And if you think I’ve only been talking about a failure in your GPS system, you’re wrong. We’re discussing your life. Remember, you only live once. Don’t spend it in some dead end. There is always a way out.

“A
drone
created all the nightmares for Trisha? Why didn’t I think of that?” Arnie is so angry with himself that he smacks his head with his palm. “I’ll bet it has a projector—you know like a hologram.”
 

“Only one way to find out.” I toss it to him.

Like a child with a new toy, he shouts, grabs his bag of tiny screwdrivers. and gleefully runs off to his cubicle down the hall in Acme’s vast offices.

Emma sighs. “He will have dissected the damn thing in no time, and all will be right in the world again. Seriously, I don’t know who’s a bigger baby: him, or Nicky.”

“Let’s not digress to the obvious, people! We all want to get out of here before sundown.” The thought of a decent night’s sleep brings a smile to Ryan’s lips. “Any more loose ends to clear up so that we can close the case file on Operation Hercules?”
 

A thought hits me. “I’ve got one. How did you guys find me?”

“You can thank your penchant for slovenliness,” Dominic replies. “I presume it’s why you wore the same pants in which you put the GPS tags, is it not?”

The way in which I stab the table with my pen between his open index and middle fingers warns him against presuming anything.

“Donna!” Ryan warns.
 

I put my hands in my lap and smile prettily at him.

He shakes his head. “Anything else?”

I turn to Jack. “What did Trisha say to Janie that got her so upset?”

Jack laughs. “It’s my fault. You see, I told her that should she have the urge to tell someone where you really were, she should simply reply that you are watching from Heaven. Unfortunately, Janie then let it be known that her mother had already informed her that you were burning in hell instead. Your daughter—being a chip off of your very luscious block—replied, in no uncertain terms, that if that were the case, Babette would most likely join her there, since Babette was, and I quote, ‘the worst mother in the world.’ Needless to say, Janie didn’t take it too well. Apparently, neither did Babette. I think the Craigs have finally been banished from Lion’s Lair.”

“Oh, I seriously doubt that,” Ryan retorts. “Speaking of the Chiffrays, Lee wanted to show his appreciation to the Craigs with a little quid pro quo: he asked Assistant Attorney Reynolds to send a letter to the trustee of the Martin family, warning of an investigation if Evan’s funds weren’t released to him, or to the organizations who were also beneficiaries of the Martin Family largesse. Evan should be hearing from the trustee within twenty-four hours.”

Good for Lee. Other than a pardon, it’s the best way he could repay me for initiating ghost protocol on this operation. I’m sure Reynolds balked, but too bad.

“Which leads us to one other bit of cleanup. I feel it will answer a lot of the questions we still have outstanding as to why Operation Hercules failed so miserably in its application.” Ryan turns to Emma. “Want to give them the news?”

“It was really Abu’s great idea.” She nods in his direction.

Abu shrugs “As Donna so pointedly discovered”—he smothers his grin—“this Carl—as well as Tatyana, Salem, and Heinried—were imposters, and the real ones are dead after all. But who were the fakes? And, for that matter, who put them up to it, and why? I found it hard to believe that Fake Carl was the mastermind. So I got to thinking: what if it were something Eric Weber set into motion? I thought it worth mentioning to Ryan.”

Ryan nods. “And I asked Emma to tap into the visitor logs at Eric’s, er, ‘hotel’.” He means the dark site where Eric is being held until he takes his last breath. “There’s been only one visitor.”

He taps the screen, showing time-stamped webcam footage of it:

Dr. Norbert Welles appears on the screen.

“My God,” Jack murmurs. “How did he get access?”

“Apparently, he used his research with Operation Hercules as the reason for need.”

I zoom in to the name he writes when he signs in:
 

Frank N. Stein
 

“Clever,” I murmur.

Ryan shrugs. “What do you say, Donna, are you up for a visit to your biggest fan?”
 

“Yes,” I reply.
 

But only because I need closure on this anecdote.

“You look disappointed, my dear! Were you expecting a straight jacket and metal mask?” Eric Weber clucks his tongue. “How cliché.”

Frankly, I didn’t know what to expect. His cell—in this state-of-the-art maximum-security prison high on a sheer butte somewhere deep in a Utah mountain range—could be on the set of a James Bond movie. Even seeing that he is tethered by his wrists and ankles to a metal chair that is bolted into the steel floor of a cage made of impenetrable glass, I ask myself: Can even this place hold back the wrath of the titular head of the Quorum?

With what I’ve just been through, I give it a fifty-fifty chance.

When I don’t answer him, he stares me down. There may be a smirk on his face, but there is adoration in his eyes.
 

A psychopath who is in love with the one who got away? Now,
that’s
a cliché.

Finally, Eric sighs. “I presume you’re here to talk about my little army of phantoms.”

“Yes.” I lower myself onto the chair that has been placed five feet from the glass cage. My strategy: act dumb. With so many still unanswered questions, it’s easy to do. “Eric, how did you do it? How did you bring them back to life?”

He laughs joyously, as if we’re sharing a joke at a cocktail party. “You’ve got it backwards, my dear!
We never did
.”

“But…but I was with him:
Carl
. He knew things only Carl would know. And his DNA analysis confirmed it. For that matter, so did that of my…twin, or whatever—”

“Good, good! The authorities must cover all aspects of verification, eh? And that of Salem as well?” His grin is as wide as a jack-o-lantern’s. “And what of Tatyana? How is she?” He shakes his head at his gaffe. “I meant to say, how
was
she? She is now dead again, I presume?”

“Yes. Jack killed her—this time around.”

“Don’t be so jealous. You got her the first time. Maybe it was an act of transference on his part. She was so much like you—a natural. Did he strangle her? Such a pretty little neck!” He tilts his head and smiles, as if envisioning the deed.

I stifle my urge to shiver. “Nah. Bullet to the head.” I mimic the act, pointing to his as I pull an imaginary trigger.

Apparently, he doesn’t like my little joke. His jack-o-lantern grin fades. “You should ask your questions,” he demands crisply. “Otherwise, you’ll lose your window of opportunity to leave. At dusk, the winds are so wicked that one cannot fly off this godforsaken rock.”

“Eric, level with me. Were they clones, or”—okay, I don’t believe I’m saying this—“Zombies?”

“
Zombies
? No! Clones are closer to the truth. We called them ‘twins’ because their genetic make-up is almost identical to that of the original subject—the ‘immortal,’ if you will. But the goal was to simply satisfy any DNA test that would validate the twin as the immortal.”

“How did you accomplish this?”

He’s all smiles again. “Whereas it is true that each snippet of DNA contains common variants, the code found in all organisms can be laid out in a simple chart bearing sixty-four amino acids. God gave us a wonderful head start, and Dr. Brooks’ research took advantage of it.” He laughs. “The good doctor created a database that identifies tens of thousands of these commonalities in the genetic code. Like Acme and other covert agencies and governments, the Quorum keeps samples of our operatives’ DNA on hand. Dr. Welles took it from there. An acceptable twin’s profile had to have somewhat more than four hundred matching variants.” He preens at the beauty of it all.
 

So that’s why Salem’s and Carl’s evil twins passed Acme’s DNA analysis—and Gigi too, for that matter.
 

“Obviously, a twin’s external features weren’t always the same as the original’s,” I counter. “Even identical twins have mirror features.”

“When enhancements were needed, it was done the old fashioned way: with dye, make-up, or sometimes a vocal chord was altered,” Eric concedes. “And of course, plastic surgery—you know, a nip here, a tuck there.” He taps the middle and index fingers together, as if they are scissors.
 

“Speaking of which, there was one very important feature you got wrong on Fake Carl.” I hold up a pinky finger then let it droop.

He chuckles at the sarcasm in my voice. “The rumors of Carl’s manhood were so often exaggerated that I doubt
any
twin could have lived up to it! I suppose we should have tried harder. If it is any consolation, he was a disappointment to me, too…Oh! Not in
that
way.” He winks knowingly. “The audacity of the man—to think he could run this scheme without me! Such arrogance! In that way, too, he was exactly like the original. And it was he who convinced the others that they didn’t need me.”

“Who was he, anyway?”

“A Russian, of course. Undercover here, in the United States.” Eric sighs. “SVR agents—bah! There isn’t a loyal one among them. I blame Putin for that.” He shrugs. “No matter. I knew
you
could stop him, my dear Donna. My little super soldier girl!”

I yawn to show him I am immune to his flattery. “Why attempt to fake an ‘immortal’ in the first place?” I ask.

His smile fades. “Isn’t the reason obvious? All facets of Operation Hercules—regenerative bodies, strengthened bodies, perfected bodies—and full access to everything your mind holds, including every memory—is one way in which the Quorum lives forever.”
 

Noting my stare, he sighs at my lack of awareness of the obvious. “How did you feel, my pretty, when you saw Salem, whom you’d only killed a few weeks prior? I’m sure Jack did a double-take at the sight of Heinried. Just the thought of an organization made of humans who’ll never die strikes terror in the hearts and minds of men!” My slight nod is the acknowledgement he needs. “Oh, how I wish I could have been there when you set eyes on Carl! Did you faint? Were there tears? …No? Of course not. You’re made of stronger stuff than that. It’s why we had such a hard time finding a perfect match for you.” He winks playfully. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, my pet, but in full disclosure we encouraged your twin, little Gigi, to put on a bit more weight.”