The Monarch (21 page)

 

PART FIVE

Tuesday

 

33

Unknown

J
ONATHAN SNAPPED HIS
head up and fought the inky tendrils trying to drag him back down into the darkness. His cheek ached where the Australian had pistol-­whipped him. He tried to reach up to feel his wound but handcuffs running through the metal arms of his chair prevented him from moving his hands more than a few inches. He gripped the arms and pulled as hard as he could, but they wouldn't budge. The chair didn't rock either, apparently bolted to the concrete floor under his feet.

He bent his head down so he could touch his wound. It had crusted over and was already healing. He'd been out for at least a day, something that no pistol-­whipping could accomplish. He'd been drugged.

The fuzz rapidly lifting from his senses, he looked around the dimly lighted cavern he was in. It was huge, empty and lit only by emergency lighting. The air was hot and smelled moist and salty.

Streamers of wiring hung from the ceiling, both power lines and blue CAT–5 computer network cabling. Whatever had been here had sucked a lot of power and had been computerized.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hall,” a man's voice boomed out above him from speakers. He involuntarily looked up, but the ceiling was so high and it was so dim he couldn't see anything. “May I call you Jonathan?”

“No, you may not,” Jonathan said. He winced as the act of speaking made his head pound even more. “What you may do is get me out of this fucking chair.”

“John, John the leprechaun. One shoe off and one shoe on,” the voice said. Jonathan frowned at the nonsense.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?”

Muffled voices argued over the loudspeaker. A man and a woman. A disconcerting giggle. More muffled voices, then the female voice said: “Just give him the shot!”

After that, minutes passed with no sound at all except Jonathan's own heartbeat, which felt like it was in his eye sockets.

“Apologies, Mr. Hall,” the male voice said a few minutes later. “I'm sure you have a lot of questions.”

Jonathan remained silent and still. He'd tried bending this way and that, leveraging here and pulling there, but he was too well secured. Physically, he was at their mercy. Mentally, he might have the edge.

“First, allow me to introduce myself,” the voice said. A light snapped on in a large window high overhead. The light streamed down, spotlighting Jonathan. He squinted and turned his head away slightly. “My name is Nathan Kring, this is my island, and I'm the one responsible for finding you—­for finding The Monarch.”

As Jonathan's eyes adjusted to the brightness, figures took shape in the window. A seated man dressed in black looked down at him. Behind the seated man was a tall, slender woman with striking bone-­white hair.

Island
. That explained the sea air, but it still didn't tell him where he was or why he was here. Jonathan remained silent, getting the definite sense that Nathan was waiting for a reaction. After a minute or two of waiting, Nathan continued.

“Yes, well, I would have preferred this meeting to be more cordial, but your hidden identity made that impossible. Nevertheless, on to business. I have a job for you, Mr. Hall. A job you are uniquely experienced to perform. I want you to steal something for me from the Canton George estate. An easy task since The Monarch already robbed Mr. George. Once you've done that, you'll be free to go and handsomely rewarded, of course.”

Canton George?
Jonathan suddenly wished he'd pushed Lew harder back in the hotel room, not that it would have helped. Lew was a bulldog in a lot of ways, but if Jonathan was here because of that failed job, he had even more problems than he'd thought he had a moment ago.

“You really need to say something. Acting like a petulant child is not the response I expected from The Monarch.” Jonathan could hear the disappointment in Nathan's voice.

Did he really think I'd congratulate him for finding me?

“That's probably because I'm not The Monarch. I have no idea who you're talking about or why you think—­”

“Please. You were taken from the press conference about The Monarch. And let's just say I've gone to great expense to verify you are, indeed, who I think you are. Great expense. And I've done things no one else had the . . . wherewithal to do. I know you're The Monarch, just as I know you'll help me.”

Cocky bastard.

“Hey, I just saw a crowd and wandered in to see what was going on.”

“Fine,” the voice said, obviously perturbed. “You leave me no choice.”

Jonathan didn't care what he did, there was nothing that would make him—­

Ooga chaka
. . . ooga chaka . . . ooga chaka. . .

Jonathan felt a chill race down his arms and legs as his breathing deepened.

No, it can't be.

“You should really answer that. It might be important,” Nathan said, derision dripping from his voice.

Jonathan leaned down so his handcuffed hand could reach his pocket. The name on the call display sent a chill through him. He pressed send.

“Is there anything a father wouldn't do to protect his child?”

It was a woman's voice. Jonathan looked up and saw the woman behind Nathan holding a phone to her ear. Then a light in another window snapped on. Natalie stood there alone; a blindfold covered her eyes and headphones were over her ears.

Jonathan lost it. No training in the world could have prepared him to handle the shock his system took seeing his little girl blindfolded in this place. He pulled at the handcuffs, slammed his back against the chair, and flailed his legs out like an animal caught in a trap.

“You son of a bitch! I'll kill you. I'll kill every motherfucking one of you!” Jonathan continued to struggle for a few minutes before his adrenaline eased, allowing him to stop thrashing. With exhaustion came defeat. The rage left him, replaced by the rawest, purest angst he'd ever felt in his life.

“Please settle down, Mr. Hall. You're going to hurt yourself if you keep this up. And then I'll have no reason at all to keep young Natalie alive.”

Despair overtook his angst, tears blurring his vision.

“She . . . she's just a kid. Leave her alone. She's got nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, but she's got everything to do with this. She is going to be my honored guest while you complete your task. She's my little insurance policy to make sure you don't run off to some corner of the world and disappear. Now, do we have a deal? Will you take the job?”

All Jonathan could think about was what Natalie must be going through. There was little else he could say.

“What do you want me to do?”

 

34

Hemingway Hotel

New York City

12:45
A.M.
Local Time

“C
HECK UNDER THE
beds,” Lew said. He'd gone through the bedroom already, but hotel rooms had a habit of eating socks and paperback novels. He didn't want any evidence remaining that they'd ever been there.

He'd packed both his and Jonathan's belongings; his in a khaki duffel bag; Jonathan's in a large messenger-­style, black leather shoulder bag. A shopping bag full of their disposable items—­bottles, cups, wrappers, and newspapers—­sat by the door. He'd dump it on their way out.

Lew cinched his duffel bag closed by the room's sofa, noticing a strange hesitation in Emily's movements. She was an odd woman; filled with potential and the instincts of a private detective—­which was obvious from the details she'd dug up for her book—­but something had happened, either to her or in her. Everything she did was tentative and unsure. Lew found it an attractive thing to watch, but he imagined it must have been hell to live that way.

As he watched her, he realized that without meaning to, his eyes were wandering up and down her body. He caught himself and shook his head to clear his thoughts. There was no time for that.

Besides, she'
s smart. She'd never go for someone like—­

Lew stopped his wondering when he saw her do something strange. She picked up one of the pillows and pressed it to her face, like she was smelling it. Lew turned away before she caught him looking, but he couldn't help wondering whose scent she was trying to capture.

“Everything okay in there?” Lew said, keeping his gaze away from the room, busying himself with tidying things by the front door. He picked up the last bottle of Canadian Club and saw it still had a finger's worth of amber fluid in its base. He spun the cap off and slugged it back, the burn as it rode down making him feel better. Without Jonny around, he thought way too much.

“Is that wise?” Emily said, coming back into the room. She had a T-­shirt in her hands. “Found this under one of the pillows.”

“Too late to matter,” Lew said, holding up the empty bottle before he dropped it in the bag with the others. He took Jonathan's shirt and tossed it in his bag. “I think we're good to go.”

They grabbed everything and left the room. Lew dumped their garbage and noticed a newspaper in the receptacle. He took it out and flipped through it.

“Weird,” Lew said.

“What is?” Emily asked as they waited for the elevator.

“There's nothing in here about Jonny.”

“Maybe it's old.”

“Nope, it's got a bunch of stuff about the explosion and The Monarch, but no mention of Jonny being identified as him.”

“What's it mean?” Emily asked.

“I'm not sure. But if I went to all that trouble to identify someone so I could kidnap them, it would sure help if no one else was suddenly looking for him.”

Emily looked at him in that weird way again, like when someone spent hours looking at one of those magic posters and finally saw the sailboat raise itself up off the page. He didn't like it. It made his throat dry.

The elevator bell rang and the door opened. They entered the car and both reached for the ground button at the same time. A half turn each and their faces were only a few inches apart. He could smell her scent; not perfume or cologne, but just a coppery, unique smell that was all hers. She held his gaze a few moments too long, her lips parting just slightly.

“Sorry,” he finally said, clearing his throat and stepping back to give her room to press the button. She pressed it and the door slid shut. They rode down in silence, each staring at the floor, the air in the car seeming thicker than it had on the way up.

They were headed back to the scene of the crime—­Federal Plaza.

While Lew had policed the hotel room, Emily had called Donald Hinton, a junior FBI agent she'd met while preparing for the press conference and one of the few agency ­people she knew was still alive. She found out he was going to be bringing evidence on the case from Federal Plaza to the temporary FBI HQ in Lower Manhattan. Including the tracking phone. As much as Lew hated the idea of going back there, if they could get close enough with their Bluetooth hack device, Hinton wouldn't even know what had happened.

It was a long shot, but it was all they had. If it didn't work, Lew knew he'd never see Jonathan again.

 

35

Tartaruga Island

8:00
A.M.
Local Time

“I
WANT TO
see my daughter,” Jonathan said, holding fast. The guards walking behind him stopped and raised their weapons. Nathan swung his wheelchair around. Jonathan made a conscious effort to not appear threatening—­he just wasn't moving until he talked to Natalie. Maybe that wasn't even she. She'd been so far away and blindfolded, it could have been any little girl. Yet his rationalizations didn't hold much water when he considered the phone call.

“In due time. Please, let's continue. It's so infrequent lately that I have guests I can show around,” Nathan said. Jonathan evaluated his “host.” It was disconcerting to talk to someone when his lips didn't move. And with the way his head lolled to the side, it wasn't even possible to look him in the eye most of the time.

“Move,” Lara said.

“Did you kill the Swensons?” Jonathan asked.

“Who?” Nathan said.

“The family that was looking after his daughter,” Lara said.

“Ah,” Nathan said. “I'm afraid you'll have to ask Lara that.”

Jonathan looked at Lara, who was apparently the old man's daughter, and waited.

The smart play would be to shut up and keep walking. He was being given an opportunity to reconnoiter the enemy's lair, by the enemy himself, no less. But when it came to Natalie, he was rarely logical. Like the outburst when they'd shown her to him, it was raw emotion; no filter and no thought. If he'd been unbound and close enough, he actually would have killed them. With his bare hands, if necessary. Death was no stranger to him, but Jonathan had never killed or harmed anyone in anger in his life. But right now if he knew where Natalie was he'd dump this old, used-­up pile of flesh onto the floor and beat him to a pulp with his own wheelchair.

“Lara?” Nathan prompted. She continued her staring contest with Jonathan for a while longer.

“They're fine,” she said. “A little . . . bruised, but fine.” She grinned beneath her hooded gaze.

Well, that's something
, Jonathan thought. He was carrying enough guilt right now. Assuming she was telling the truth.

“Now for the last time,
move
,” Lara said, squaring off.

When Jonathan didn't comply, Lara nodded her head. One of the guards snapped out a telescoping club and swung it into the backs of his legs. Jonathan kept the scream in, but his muscles betrayed him and he fell to his knees.

“Lara!” the old man said in what passed for a shout from the electronic voice mounted to his wheelchair. He swung around to face the guards. “Leave us.”

At first they didn't move. Jonathan looked up and though the old man missed it, the guards only obeyed the command when Lara nodded again.

“My apologies. My daughter can be . . . impulsive. Lara, help the poor man up,” Nathan said. Lara grudgingly took Jonathan by the arm and helped him stand. Jonathan took note of her stance as she did. She appeared to be helping him, but she positioned herself so she could knock him back down with a single blow.

“Thanks,” Jonathan said, looking into her green eyes. He made sure nothing that was going on inside his head was evident on his face. She sneered anyway, releasing him and returning to her father's side.

“I promise you, your daughter is safe and close by. You'll see her shortly. And later, I have something very special to show you. Something you will uniquely appreciate,” Nathan said.

They continued the tour, Jonathan limping slightly from the welt he could feel rising on the back of his leg. Lara positioned herself so she was always within striking distance of Jonathan.

“As I was saying,” Nathan said. “My father bought the island from the Australian military after the war. The base was used for intelligence gathering by Z Force, a joint—­”

“—­Australian, British, and New Zealand commando unit,” Jonathan said.

“Yes, I see you know your military history. In any case, once Z Force moved out, there was little left besides this complex, a few remote stations around the island stripped of equipment, and one of the few island runways in the region capable of supporting jet traffic. That and about a million turtles. I wasn't sure why he bought it, but I know he thrust himself immediately into controversy by stripping the island of the turtles. The act was being brought to the world's attention and things looked bad until the U.S. military did the same on Diego Garcia off the coast of India. But in U.S. fashion, they upped the ante and instead of depopulating turtles, they stripped the island of all indigenous humans.”

“How fortunate for your father,” Jonathan said.

“He was lucky like that. In life and in business. They say he had the Midas touch, turning any enterprise he attempted into a gold-­producing venture against all odds. Over and over again. After he died, I used the island mostly as a sanctuary. Somewhere to come and recharge when corporate life got to be a little too much.”

They rounded a bend in the wide corridor and came upon an elevator. Inside, Jonathan saw the complex had four floors in all, but the numbers on the control panel were inverted, with 1 at the top. Right now, they were on the second floor.

We're underground.

Once they were all inside, the button for the fourth floor lit up all on its own. The doors shut and they descended. When the doors opened, Jonathan saw that most floors, at least the ones he had seen, had an almost identical layout. Simple, utilitarian efficiency common in the military. But the floors were huge, with crisscrossing corridors. If he could get free, finding Natalie would be no small feat—­never mind getting out of there once he did.

“We're not going to the third floor?” Jonathan asked. The omission of the area made him curious. Lara gave a side glance to her father but remained silent.

“It's just the living areas. Nothing of much interest,” Nathan said. They moved around the corner and headed down the now familiar long corridor at a slow pace. “When I became ill, I moved my corporate headquarters here. It was supposed to be temporary, but once I'm well I think I may keep it here.”

“Once you're well?” Jonathan said. He couldn't believe that someone who looked like Nathan did would ever be well again. He looked like he needed to be in hospice so he could prepare to die. “If you don't mind my asking, what exactly do you—­”

“Ah, we're here,” Nathan said as they turned the far corner in the corridor. They had arrived at a door with an access panel. Unlike the other hallways and rooms, this door didn't open automatically as they approached. A guard stood vigil outside the door, straightening up when he saw them approaching.

“Lara, if you'd be so kind,” Nathan said. Lara took out a pass card and after two tries, unlocked the door. They went in and Jonathan saw it was a laboratory of some kind. The layout and equipment didn't interest Jonathan as much as the stunning woman in the lab coat with the black ponytail, at the far end of the lab.

Nathan brought his wheelchair to a stop and said, “Mr. Hall, I'd like you to meet my other daughter, Sophia. She's the scholar of the family.” Jonathan noticed that Lara sneered as much at her sister as she did at him.

Sophia came over. She had the saddest brown eyes he'd ever seen. But not just sad, they seemed almost—­broken.
Maybe that explains the guard outside the door.
She gave Jonathan a half smile.

“No problems with the neuro-­blocker?” Sophia asked, not really seeming to care one way or the other.

“It's working fine, as usual. I was hoping you could keep Mr. Hall company for a little while. I need to speak to Lara on another matter,” Nathan said. Jonathan noticed Lara's eyes widen slightly. Sophia reached up and pushed an escaping strand of hair behind her ear. It immediately fell down again. He didn't know about Nathan's plans to use him to rob Canton George, but right now he was pretty sure Nathan was using him as a lever between the two sisters.

“Father, do you think that's wise?” Lara said.

Sophia said, “I don't know. I'm busy with some animal trials and—­”

“Nonsense. It will only be for a few minutes. Think of it as a break,” Nathan said, turning around and wheeling his way back to the door. “Lara?”

Lara's face went from a sneer to a pucker as she exchanged glances first with Sophia and then with Jonathan. He didn't know what Sophia's said, but he understood the look she gave him perfectly. Lara puffed air from her nostrils and reluctantly joined her father, opening the door and following him as he whirred away. As the door closed, Jonathan saw there were now two guards standing fast outside the lab.

He wasn't going anywhere.

9:00
A.M.

W
HAT ARE YOU
doing?

Sophia brushed through her hair and pulled it back into a strand-­free ponytail, snapping the hair band tight to keep it that way. Her freshly rinsed face now had a light powder coating it hadn't had when she'd first come in. She'd rolled fresh deodorant under her arms, but refrained from squirting the little perfume she had left on her neck. She put her lab coat back on, smoothing out any wrinkles with her hands and plucking off the odd animal hair she'd missed with the lint roller. She looked at herself in the mirror of her lab's bathroom and then made a face at the perturbed reflection.

She'd left him out in the lab, saying she'd be back in a minute. Her father—­she desperately wanted to think of him as only Nathan, but after all these years it was hard—­probably would be upset that she'd left him alone.

But why did he leave him here with me in the first place? Especially after last night.

Sophia opened the door but stopped short when she saw Jonathan standing in her office by her desk. She eyed her unmade cot against the wall and her pile of clothes on the floor. He turned and smiled disarmingly when she entered.

“Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you. Would it be all right if I . . .” He motioned toward the bathroom.

“Of course. Go ahead,” Sophia said. The second he closed the door, she scooped up her laundry and tossed it under the cot. She pulled the blanket up and saw there was a salsa stain on it from the burrito she'd had last night. She put her pillow on top of the stain and shook her head. Of all nights to be a slob.

The door opened and she stood up so fast her glasses fell off. She bent to get them, but Jonathan beat her to them. He smiled and handed them to her.

“Should we go back out?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes. Sure,” Sophia said. Jonathan motioned for her to go first. She thanked him and left her office with Jonathan close behind.

“How do you know my father, Mr. Hall?” Sophia asked when they were back in the lab. He seemed more interested in her animal cages than in her. He answered without turning around.

“I don't. And call me Jonathan.”

“You—­”

“So what is all this about?” Jonathan asked, waving at the cages and the maze table.

“It's for my research.”

“This whole lab is just for you?”

“I used to have a staff. In fact, most of the initial work was done at Kring Laboratories, a research facility in Nigeria, but things . . . changed.”

“I'm assuming the change has something to do with the guard outside your door. He's not keeping ­people out, is he.” It wasn't a question.

Who is this guy?

“If you don't know my father, then how—­”

“You show me yours and I'll show you mine.”

“Excuse me?” Sophia said, feeling her face redden.

“Give me the Cliff Notes version of your research and I'll tell you anything you want to know. Deal?” he asked, putting out his hand.

Sophia shook it and agreed, noticing how soft his hand was. She doubted revealing the research to a stranger was what her father had in mind when he asked her to stay with Jonathan. Which was exactly why she agreed so quickly.

“Do you know what a prion is?” she asked, wiping off a whiteboard and grabbing a marker.

“Something to do with the brain, isn't it?”

“Yes, that's right. Basically,” she said, drawing something that resembled a string on the board, “there are harmless proteins in all of us—­you, me, animals, plants—­everything. For these proteins to assume a functional shape—­be able to do anything—­they have to fold, sort of like this.”

Sophia drew a kind of coiled ribbon beside the string, trying her best to simplify the process for Jonathan. He nodded, so she assumed she was doing all right.

“For some reason—­nobody really knows why—­sometimes one of these benign proteins will fold abnormally,” she said, continuing to draw. “But the really interesting part—­and the real danger—­is not that a protein can fold, but what an abnormally folded protein does after it folds. They're capable of coopting any other proteins they come in contact with, making it a copy of itself.”

“Like a zombie,” Jonathan said as Sophia finished drawing something that looked like an untied shoelace.

“Exactly, but a microscopic zombie that will never get a movie deal. It travels through the body, changing perfectly healthy proteins into copies of itself. When these misfolded prions get into the nervous system and the brain, you get prion diseases like Creutzfeldt-­Jakob disease, fatal insomnia, and even some types of Alzheimer's.”

“You can die from insomnia?”

“Um, yes, but it's not the kind of insomnia you're probably thinking of. Only twenty-­eight families in the world have been identified with the gene responsible for—­but I'm getting off topic,” she said, batting the air like she was erasing what she just said.

“Sorry. Prions. You were saying,” Jonathan said.

“Yes, someone with a prion disease experiences impaired brain function causing memory changes, personality changes, dementia, and problems with movement. All of these get worse over time,” she said, putting down the marker and walking over to where the cages lined the wall.