The Lie (36 page)

Anna looked at them. “The man we’re talking about is your own deputy director. Ken Harris.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Cortlandt. “Why would a high-ranking intelligence officer put his life in the hands of a contract
assassin who could identify him anytime something went wrong?”

“Mr. Harris has no idea I know who he is.”

“How is that possible?” asked Paulie.

“Because we’ve only talked by phone. It wasn’t until I saw him interviewed on TV that I recognized his voice.”

“But what’s his motive?” Cortlandt inquired.

“You two gentlemen would know that better than I. How could Mr. Harris have benefited if the president died at Wannsee?”

“By getting my job after I got fired,” the director said
dryly. “But that’s hardly a driving reason to murder a head of state.”

“What about the vice president?” said Anna. “Could there be any possible connection
there
?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because it was
his
warning about another attack that probably just saved the president’s life.”

“It also could have been his cover,” said Anna.

Cortlandt shook his head. “And I thought
I
was cynical.”

“We’re way ahead of ourselves,” said Paulie. “At the moment we just have a failed assassin’s word for all this. Where’s the
hard evidence?”

The two men looked at Anna.

“Give me a little slack,” she said, “and I’ll get it for you.”

K
ATE
D
INNESON WOKE
to a bright sun, the sound of a man’s voice, and thoughts that opened a grave in her stomach.

This was the day
.

Then she saw Nicko Vorelli staring at the ceiling from another bed, and she remembered why she was here.

The sun was real enough. But the man’s voice was that of a news commentator coming from a radio clock that Nicko had set to
go off at exactly eight o’clock.

“Are you awake?” asked Nicko.

“Sort of.”

“We’re the lead item. He’s coming to us now. Listen.”

“Professor Alfred Mainz not only appeared to be alive and well,” declared the commentator, “but was threatening a reign of
terror if his soon to be announced conditions were not met.”

The countdown had started.

The first building would be destroyed in any one of seven possible countries at exactly twelve noon, local time, today.

An hour before the deadline, the actual target would be named to allow for evacuation.

The commentator pressed on, but Kate had shut him out.

“Nicko?” she said.

He switched off the radio and half turned toward her. “Yes?”

“What if they don’t give you what you want?”

“Considering the alternatives, how could they not?”

“I don’t know. But what if they don’t?”

“Then I’ll do whatever they force me to do.”

“Even though hundreds might die?”

“Even so.”

Kate’s fears turned her cold. “I don’t know if I’d be able to stand up to random killing on principle, Nicko.”

“Do you think
I’d
enjoy it?”

“No.”

“Then what do you suggest I do if they force it? Back off?”

“I don’t know, Nicko.”

“Do you think your friend Klaus would have backed off?”

Kate shook her head. “No.”

“Yet at the end you were rooting for him, weren’t you?”

“I was rooting for the good he was trying to do. Not for the rest.”

“And if there’s no getting one without the other?”

Kate again ducked the question. “Klaus was a zealot. You called him that yourself. I guess I’m not.”

“Neither am I, Katie. Yet I’ve cursed myself for not having the guts to be one.”

Nicko took one of his cigarettes from a night table and lit up.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I honestly don’t believe they’re going to be stupid enough to force a bloodbath no one wants. But
if it ever does come to that, I promise to cut you loose before it happens.”

Kate did not believe him for a second.

Daniel Archer left his hotel near the Piazza di Spagna at 10:45
A.M.

He walked a short distance to a public pay phone in a bustling shopping area and put through a call to the Emergency Service
Division, police headquarters, city of Rome.

“Sergeant Giotti,” said a man’s voice.

“I’m going to say this only once, Sergeant,” said Archer, speaking in Italian through a bunched handkerchief. “This is Professor
Alfred Mainz. At precisely noon today, the Del Guardo Building on the Via Tuscana will be destroyed by a powerful explosion.
You have just one hour to sound the
alarm and see that the building is evacuated. This call is being recorded as evidence that you received warning.”

Daniel Archer hung up and started to walk in the direction of the Del Guardo Building. He walked briskly but with seeming
casualness, a calm, quiet-faced man who tried never to call attention to himself.

He heard the first sirens going off in the distance after no more than six or seven minutes. They grew louder as he walked.

By eleven-thirty the streets immediately surrounding the Del Guardo Building were being cordoned off by the police, with traffic
detoured into a horn-honking maze of confusion. In places, fire equipment and ambulances jumped curbs and sped along sidewalks.
Carabinieri
were shouting instructions through bullhorns, but few paid attention.

Waving a press pass, Archer worked his way through the police barricades and crowds until he saw the site itself.

People were streaming from the building’s exits and being shunted into nearby side streets by uniformed police. Adjacent buildings
were being emptied as an additional precaution, which just added to the turmoil.

Archer saw a huge, armored, bomb-disposal truck parked in the road, and he knew that even now its crew was rushing through
the building in a frantic, last-minute effort to locate and disarm the cached explosives.

At ten minutes before the hour, all civilians seemed to have been cleared. Those exiting now were uniformed police and firemen.
The last to come out were the bomb-disposal personnel in their padded gear and helmets.

Daniel Archer stood against one of the more forward of the police barricades. He felt the quiet settling over the crowd, the
press, the police, the firemen, everyone. There was something singular and magisterial about the event that seemed to demand
a certain reverence.

Archer glanced at his watch. Two minutes to go.

Then someone began a controlled, rhythmic countdown that was picked up by the crowd at thirty.

“Twenty-nine… twenty-eight… twenty-seven…”

Its sound rising, the countdown spread through the streets, piazzas, and boulevards.

“Fifteen… fourteen… thirteen…”

What if it doesn’t go off? thought Daniel Archer. In a moment of cold sweat, he mentally reviewed and checked off every detail
that might go wrong at the last moment.

“Three… two… one. Blast off!” chanted the crowd, conditioned by more than thirty years of space shoots.

A dull, crackling roar seemed to emerge from deep inside the earth. It made Daniel Archer tremble. He felt air rush back against
his face and saw whole sections of the Del Guardo Building’s facade crumbling into the street below.

Clouds of smoke billowed black and gray.

The crowd gasped.

Fire came next. It broke through the smoke in spurts of orange and blue-green. Like licking tongues, the flames sank back
then burst out again through shattered windows. Then the fire hoses got started, sending their looping geysers through black
holes and seemingly affecting nothing.

Daniel Archer licked his lips. They tasted sulphuric. He looked at the faces of those around him and saw streaks of flame
reflected in their eyes.

He saw other things as well. They were enjoying it. No. More than just enjoying it. They were having the time of their dull,
tired lives. They would talk about it for years to come.

In all my life
, they would say,
I never saw anything like it
.

Can you imagine anyone deliberately doing something like that?

Daniel Archer slowly worked his way out through the crowd and left the scene.

There was no need for him to imagine any such thing. He was the one who had done it.

D
EPUTY
CIA D
IRECTOR
K
EN
H
ARRIS
learned about the destruction of the Del Guardo Building at 6:14
A.M.

The news came via a call from the duty officer at Langley, who had orders to phone Harris at home the instant anything new
developed.

Hoping for news of Dunster’s death, Harris reacted to the bombing with a hard mix of disappointment and foreboding. Anna was
taking too long.

He was just starting to shave when a call from the White House invited him to join Jayson Fleming at eight o’clock for breakfast
in the presidential family quarters. The last-minute invitation made him feel no better. It could only mean that his friend
needed propping up again.

Half an hour later, Harris found he was wrong. It was too late to prop up Jay Fleming. He had already fallen.

The deputy director knew this the moment he walked into the bright, sun-filled room and saw Fleming’s wife sitting there with
him.

“Amy, what a nice surprise,” he said, and touched his dry lips to the cool and even greater dryness of Amy Fleming’s cheek.

Amy just stared at him, and Harris knew instantly that she, not Jay, had set up the breakfast meeting. He knew, too, that
not a single good moment was likely to come out of it for any one of them.

Sonofabitch. The poor fool’s told her everything
.

Ken Harris could only wonder at his own astonishment. He should have expected it. He had known them both for more than twenty
years and Amy was by far the stronger and smarter of the two. That he and Amy had been secret lovers for almost four of those
years only added weight to his judgment.

They were silent as a white-jacketed houseman poured coffee, took their breakfast orders, and left the room.

Amy sat considering the deputy director. “How could you?” she said, her voice quiet and very cold. “Do you really hate us
so much that you finally had to destroy us?”

“
Destroy
you?” Harris glanced at Fleming, but the pro tempore president would not meet his eyes. “How? By trying to lift you to your
ultimate place in the sun?”

“You had to know that neither Jay nor I could ever have lived with what you were doing.”

“Even if it was successful?”

“Especially then.” Amy paused to steady herself. “All I can do now is pray that nothing further happens to Jimmy Dunster.
And if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll make absolutely sure it doesn’t.”

The threat was not even veiled.

“I’m not God, Amy.”

“In this you are,” she said.

Harris turned to Jayson Fleming. “All right, tell me what you’ve done, Jay.”

“I’m sorry about this whole mess,” said the vice president. “But Amy is right about cutting our losses. Right here. While
we still can.”

“Just tell me what the devil you’ve done.”

Fleming studied his fingers. “I called Tommy Cortlandt last night. I said I’d heard something about another try at the president.
I ordered him to move Jimmy at once.”

“Outstanding,” said Ken Harris softly.

The houseman returned with a full tray. The room was quiet as he served them. Then he left.

“Have you heard anything from Berlin?” Fleming asked Harris.

“Not a word.”

“Then you don’t know whether there was even another attempt?”

“That’s correct.”

“Will you be able to reach your contact and have the operation scrubbed?”

“It won’t be easy. There are all sorts of complicating identity safeguards. But I’ll try.”

Amy Fleming threw the deputy CIA director a quick, hard look. “You’d better do more than just try.”

Leaving the White House, Ken Harris had his chauffeur drop him at home rather than at Langley.

His housekeeper would not be in for another hour, so the apartment was empty. Checking the time, he figured it to be about
three in the afternoon in Berlin. Then he went into his study, took the secure phone out of his wall safe, and put through
a direct call to one of several numbers he had for Anna.

Ken Harris counted five, then six rings, and he was just about to hang up when he heard her answer.

“Anna, it’s Walter. It’s so good to hear your voice. You were beginning to worry me.”

“But why?” she said. “What is there to worry about, Walter?”

“I hadn’t heard a word and I was concerned about my sick friend. What’s happening?”

“A few problems. You didn’t tell me they were going to move him.”

“I didn’t find out until about an hour ago. Where did they move him to? Another hospital?”

“No,” said Anna. “But they did put him in another room.”

“How will that affect your planned treatments?”

“I’ll manage. But I’m afraid it might take a little longer to get the kind of safe, permanent results you want.”

“How much longer?”

“No more than a few days. Maybe less.”

“There’s no need to rush anything.”

“I understand.” Anna paused. “I’ve been waiting for your call. It was frustrating not being able to reach you. I thought you
might want to cancel out entirely.”

“Forget any such idea. The treatments are on.”

The connection hummed softly.

“I don’t suppose there’s a safe number you could let me have for a possible emergency call,” she said.

“Don’t even think about it, Anna. If I don’t find anything in the news, I’ll try to call you at this same time each day. Then
if you have something important to say or ask, you can be in touch. How is that?”

“Wonderful.”

“Then good luck again. And here’s hoping there are no more surprises for either of us.”

The deputy CIA director hung up.