The Janus Reprisal (17 page)

Smith watched as the elevator lights climbed higher than the third floor. His anxiety rose along with the lift. He pulled his attention away from the display long enough for the name she had mentioned to register. He gave a low whistle.

“Of the railroad and utility fame?”

Nolan nodded.

“If you’re a Redding, how is it that you were so difficult to find on the Internet when I was searching for you? I would think the society pages would be filled with your face.”

“I told you, Landon Investments values privacy and confidentiality. We have a policy that requires us to be as discreet as possible. As well as an IT specialist who scrubs the Internet on a regular basis. I kept my married name after my divorce and that has helped, too.” The elevator made a pinging sound and the doors whooshed open directly into the residence. Smith stepped into a lavish, marbled hall with several doors leading off in different directions.

“Does she occupy the entire floor?”

Nolan tossed her keys into a glass bowl on an elaborately carved antique credenza that Smith figured cost more than his yearly salary.

“She does. And the staff is on vacation as well, so we’re alone. Come into the master bath. She keeps the first aid there.” Smith reached out and put a hand on her arm to stop her from leaving.

“I assume that an apartment as magnificent as this has an alarm system?”

“It does.”

“Set it, please.”

“Now?”

Smith nodded. “Right now.”

Nolan returned to the wall near the elevator and tapped some keys on a keypad. Smith heard the system give an answering beep as it armed, and he felt a little of the tension leave his body. The pain was steady, but the bleeding had tapered a bit.

“I’ll need some tweezers, a bowl filled with a mixture of alcohol and water, a washcloth, and some bandages.”

“Who’s going to use the tweezers?”

“You.”

Nolan sighed. He followed her through a hall lined with wallpaper that looked like silk and past open doors that gave him glimpses of a game room as well as a library. Smith thought the apartment lavish, but was having a difficult time with the fact that it was on the sixth floor and so vast that a man could run through it without being heard. They would not remain long there if he could help it.

He entered a bathroom that gave testament to the long history of money accumulated by generations of Reddings. It was larger than his kitchen at home. Quite a feat in the heart of New York City. Nolan fished around in a linen closet and removed the items he had requested. She pulled up a small stool padded in white leather and pointed him to it, positioning him in front of the first sink in the double vanity. He glanced in the mirror in front of him and was shocked to see that he was pale and drawn, with heavy pain lines bracketing his mouth.

“What’s first?”

“Help me out of this shirt. If I can’t get out, then we’ll cut it off.” He started to roll the shirt from the bottom, and Nolan reached over to assist. Some of his blood dripped next to her.

“Sorry,” he said. She waved him off.

“I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared, and Smith continued to bunch up the shirt. He was able to remove his right arm and maneuvered the fabric over to his neck. Pulling it the rest of the way was not as easy, because it strained against the wound. He winced at the first try and decided to wait until she returned. She stepped back into the bathroom wearing dark jeans and a V-neck navy sweater. Her feet were bare.

“Better,” he said. “I won’t feel as bad when I drip blood on you.”

“Let me help.” With her assistance, they were able to get the shirt over his head without causing too much pain. He only hissed once, when she pulled the bits of fabric that had crusted to the wound.

“Is it awful?”

“Not yet. ‘Awful’ will arrive when you start to dig out the bullet.”

She took a deep breath. “How do you want me to sterilize the tweezers?”

“In the alcohol full strength. No dilution.” He watched as she poured the alcohol over the tweezers.

“Does this kill everything?”

“Everything that reacts to alcohol.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Biofilms.”

She gave him a glance and stepped closer. “What are those?”

“Bacteria that colonize and become so strong that nothing kills them. Not even bleach. They have to be scraped away. The plaque on your teeth is a biofilm.”

“I can see the bullet easily. Are you ready?”

Not at all
. “Yes,” he said.

She started in. He felt first the cold metal and then a lancing pain that made him groan involuntarily. She moved the tweezers a bit more and he could feel his entire body responding to the pain of this newest assault. The muscles in his arms clenched tight. His ears started to ring and his head to swim. She removed the tweezers and took a deep breath.

“I can’t reach it without first expanding the wound around it. Here.” She gave him a towel.

“What’s this for?” he said.

“You’re sweating. Round two. You ready?”

He nodded.

She put the tweezers in and the same lancing pain began. She expanded the tweezers and he felt the entire room spin. He passed out.

S
MITH WOKE UP LYING
flat on his back on the carpeted floor of one of the rooms in the apartment. A pillow had been placed under his head. From the complete darkness he assumed it was night. He heard sounds of the city rolling by outside, but nothing else. His left arm throbbed in a steady pulse to match his pumping heart, but the extreme, ice-pick pain had subsided. Next to his head came the buzzing sound of his cell phone and a small glow lit the area to his right. Smith managed to grab it with his right hand and answer without moving off the floor.

“Mr. Smith? This is Jana Wendel. I work with Ms. Russell. Can you meet me at the hospital? And please, don’t tell anyone about this call.” Wendel was whispering into the phone. Smith sat up and the small throw that someone had placed over him fell off. He groaned as his left arm reacted with renewed pain. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine. Why are you whispering?”

“Just meet me at the loading dock.” She gave him the directions and hung up.

Smith hauled himself to his feet. He was shirtless. A white gauze bandage was wrapped around his left bicep. In the gloom he saw that he was next to a billiard table. He went to the wall and switched on the overhead light, blinking in the sudden glare, and was happy to see his jacket and a shirt lying on the ground next to the pillow. He went back and retrieved both. The shirt wasn’t his, but was a man’s dress shirt in light blue chambray that buttoned up the front.

Thank God I don’t have to lift it over my head, Smith thought. He shrugged into it and headed to the hallway. He moved quietly, glancing into each doorway that he passed. He kept going to the kitchen, glanced around, and retraced his steps to the front door. The apartment was dark, quiet, and empty. Nolan was gone. The alarm display read OFF.

Smith hated the idea that he’d been lying unconscious in the vast apartment with an unarmed security system, but he supposed that she had no choice but to disarm it. Either that or leave him a note with the code and instructions. He already knew enough about Nolan to determine that she would never trust him to such an extent. He hit the elevator button and stepped onto it. While he rode the elevator down, he called Klein.

“I know why Dattar’s after her,” Smith said. “She stole his money.”

Klein was silent for a moment. “How ingenious. He was sentenced to life in prison. Had he not escaped, it would have been unlikely that he would have ever been able to regain the funds.”

“And now he’s gunning for her.”

“Whatever he’s doing about her, it sounds as though it has nothing to do with the coolers. Do you have any further ideas on where they might be?”

“I still think that Dattar has them. Russell and I are using her as bait to flush him out. When we do, we’ll get that information.”

“Excellent,” Klein said.

“Also, I’m a person of interest in the NYPD’s investigation of the Landon Investments killing. I’ve been able to dodge them so far.”

“Let’s see if they issue a warrant. If they do, then we’ll deal with it. I’ll monitor the situation until then.”

He found Jana Wendel pacing outside the hospital’s loading dock, holding a cigarette that she put to her lips. Smith strolled up to her, doing his best to appear relaxed and nonchalant. She spotted him and took another puff.

“You need to inhale if you intend to look like a real smoker,” Smith said. “Are you Ms. Wendel?” Wendel nodded and gave him a rueful look.

“I hate them, but it was the only thing I could think of that would allow me to hang out here without appearing to lurk.”

“How’s Russell?”

“Sleeping. They have her on an IV drip for dehydration.”

“Is it cholera?”

Wendel shook her head. “No. She asked them to check for that first and the avian flu virus second. Quick results showed that it’s not E. coli or salmonella, but indicated a possible variant of bird flu.”

Wendel’s words hit Smith in the gut, but he did his best to keep his face impassive. He must have failed because Wendel gave him a piercing look filled with worry.

“You looked grim just then. I know bird flu is dangerous, but I haven’t had time to check the statistics. What are her odds?”

“The average virulent pandemic virus can kill up to fifteen percent of those infected.”

Wendel looked thoughtful. “That’s bad, but I imagine we’re talking about the very young and the very old, right? She’s neither, and really strong.”

“Bird flu is
not
the average virulent virus. It’s like a terrible virus on steroids. It kills fifty percent of infected persons, and the age of the victim doesn’t seem to be a mitigating factor.”

Wendel swallowed. “So far they’re not ready to confirm that it’s the bird flu, but she seems to be getting sicker. They’re running some more tests, and she’s in isolation in the infectious disease area until they figure it out.”

“Currently bird flu isn’t easily transmitted from human to human.”
Unless she has the mutated version
. Smith had the thought, but didn’t voice it.

“Where is she?”

“Fourth floor. Room 422. No visitors allowed.”

“Why did you need to see me?”

Wendel gave both sides of the street a quick glance. “Come with me into the hospital lounge. I need a Wi-Fi connection to show you.”

Wendel tossed her cigarette into a sand-filled ashtray placed against the wall and headed to the hospital’s rear door. They entered to a
rect
angular room with a bank of windows at the far end. The near side contained rows of vending machines offering snacks and drinks. Smith detoured straight to the one that held sandwiches. He fed some money into the machine, grabbed the sandwich that dropped into the vending tray, and joined her at a far table. She had a laptop open to the home page of a software application. He unwrapped the sandwich and nodded for her to begin. She took a deep breath.

“First, you need to know that what I’m going to tell you is confidential. Highly confidential. The only reason I’m showing you this is because Ms. Russell asked me to.”

“Okay,” Smith said. He watched the screen. It appeared to be a dashboard of a software aggregator for social media sites. Updates for the sites appeared in each column assigned to them. Wendel pointed to the updates for BLACKHAT254.

“These are from one of our agents. This column is the public site, and this column is the proprietary CIA site. I’ve previously told Ms. Russell that there’s something wrong with the CIA site. It’s lagging behind the public site.” Smith watched the screen and saw that she was correct. BLACKHAT254’s updates appeared on the public site but not immediately on the proprietary site.

“Is that a problem? You can always look at the public site.”

“It seemed benign, and I didn’t really worry until Jordan got shot. After he did, I went back and looked at the feed and saw something shocking. I have a screen shot of it.” Wendel switched screens. The same dashboard appeared. She pointed to a line.

“This is what Jordan updated publicly ten minutes before he was shot and this is what appeared on the proprietary site seven minutes later. Moneywoman is our code name for Nolan and ‘friend’ is anyone that we think may be suspicious.”

Smith read the public first. Jordan had written “Watching Moneywoman and see friend on corner of 72nd and Lexington.” The proprietary site’s line was dated seven minutes later and said, “Watching Moneywoman and see friend on corner of 72nd and Central Park West.” Smith stopped chewing.

“They switched up the location. Put him all the way on the other side of the park.”

Wendel nodded. “Most of the time on stakeouts the agents will only use the proprietary site. The display is almost instantaneous, so faster than a phone call has the advantage of silence. The agents can update each other without bystanders hearing them. I had asked Jordan to use the public site too until I could figure out what was causing the lag. We had another agent as backup for him around the corner, but he was only screening the proprietary site. Not only did that second agent get the information late, but once he saw the code ‘friend’ he took off
across
the park.”

“And Jordan got shot. Is he still alive?”

“He is. They have him in an induced coma while they wait for the swelling in his brain to go down. Once it does they’ll be able to assess the damage.” Wendel swallowed and Smith noticed that her eyes gleamed with tears. She blinked them away.

“What did Russell say when you showed her this?”

“She told me that under no circumstances was I to take this to anyone at the agency. She said to find you, tell you about it, and said that you know someone who can search for the source.”

She means Marty, Smith thought. “It isn’t necessarily happening from within the agency, is it? Can someone from the outside be intercepting the feed and altering it before it gets to your proprietary site?”

Wendel got a dubious look on her face. “That’s really doubtful. Yes, we use Wi-Fi, but we have the site encoded and password protected. I think we have to assume first that it’s coming from within the CIA, and only then check outside possibilities.”

Smith finished the sandwich, bunched up the plastic wrapper, and tossed it into a nearby garbage can.

“Keep Russell’s phone on at all times. I’m going to have a man named Marty call you. He’s the one Russell knows. He’s a genius at computers. He has Asperger’s syndrome so bear with his oddities, but he can’t be beat for IT matters.”

He rose to leave.

“I’ll be checking in, but try not to call me unless it’s absolutely imperative. Someone is tracking me, and I don’t want to help him. I’ll be shutting off my phone soon.”

Wendel rose with him. Smith was glad to see the teary look replaced with one of determination. Wendel pushed through the exit doors and walked Smith back to the loading dock and smoking station. She put out her hand.

“Thank you for your help.”

Smith returned the handshake. “Is there a way you can keep me apprised of Russell’s condition? I’m worried about her.”

Wendel nodded. “Watch BLACKHAT254 on the public site. I’ll have him update on her status. In code, of course. Do you know her CIA cover name?”

Smith nodded. “I do. I’ll look for it.” Wendel disappeared into the hospital. He watched the door swing shut.

After a moment he headed in behind her. When he reached the lobby he consulted a directory and pinpointed the wing that contained the infectious disease patients. He stepped onto the elevator and hit the button. When he stepped out onto the fourth floor, he was in a long hall with rooms stretching on each side. To his left and twenty feet away was the nurses’ station where a lone nurse typed on a computer keyboard. A sign on the wall directly opposite the elevator stated that the floor was secure and asked all visitors to check in. It also listed room numbers in each direction. The nurse looked up.

“Can I help you?” she said. He walked to the counter.

“I’m with the army’s infectious disease unit.” He handed her his USAMRIID identification. “I need to speak to your patient in room 422.”

The nurse looked at his identification and then frowned. “This is the isolation floor. The only visitors allowed are her doctors or any consulting medical professionals.”

“Which is what I am. I’m a doctor and I’m here on official business.”

The nurse’s face became set. “It’s late. You’ll need to return during regular hours and have the permission of her physician.”

Smith leaned over the counter, picked up the phone, and handed it to the nurse. “Please page her doctor. Tell him or her that it’s an emergency. That a doctor with the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases requires immediate access to the patient.”

The nurse hesitated. “It’s really quite important. It can’t wait,” Smith said.

The nurse raised her eyebrows, took the phone and punched in a number. After a moment she said, “I have a doctor from the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases that wants access to Ms. Russell.” The nurse listened. “He says it’s an emergency. I’ve seen his credentials.” The nurse listened a moment more and then hung up.

“He says it’s okay, but he wants you to keep it short.” She held a clipboard out to him. “Sign in.”

Smith filled out the roster and signed his name. “Thank you. Do I need to suit up?”

The nurse reached across the desk and handed him a flat packet wrapped in thin plastic. “It’s a paper gown and mask.”

Smith took the package and ripped it open. He shook out the paper gown, put it over his clothes and tied it at the neck. He put on the mask while he walked toward Russell’s room.

Russell’s small private room was decorated in soft blues and tans, which Smith thought gave it the air of a spa or hotel rather than a hospital. The bed, though, was all business; with metal bars lowered and an attached table that held a remote for the headboard and a television, and a plastic water glass. A nightstand had a small desk lamp. Smith took one more step in and came even with an open door that led into a private bathroom. He caught a glimpse of the sink and the edge of a shower curtain.

A small, glowing bar attached to the wall near the bed acted as a night light for the nurses. Shadows covered large sections of the wall and the only sound was the occasional drip of the liquid from the sink in the bathroom.

Smith walked up to the bed and stood next to a holder that held an IV drip. Russell lay against the pillows, her eyes closed. Smith caught his breath when he got the first look at her face. Her eyes were closed and her cheeks and forehead glowed with sweat. Her lips were cracked from dehydration. Her skin was gray. Whatever ran through her system, it had accelerated since he saw her last. Her eyes opened and she focused on him.

“Hey,” she said in a weak voice. He settled next to her on the bed and took her hand. She tried to pull it away, but he tightened his grip. She frowned at him. “You shouldn’t be here. I could be contagious.”

“I’ll wash my hands after. How do you feel?”

“Terrible. Feverish and unable to keep anything down. Even the ice chips.” Smith looked at the water glass and saw that it was filled with ice.