press badge and then smiled and nodded.
“Sure,” she said.
Martin Olivera plucked a pen out of his shirt pocket and lifted a small black notepad. “So what brings a group of teenagers down to a huge political demonstration like this?”
“Well,” Kim said, winking at Brad, “I mean, this is our planet, too, isn’t it? And like we’re going to be around here longer, aren’t we?”
Olivera scratched at his notebook. “That’s good, that’s really good. Can I have your name for the article?”
“Kim Bauer,” she said. “And he’s Brad Gilmore.”
“Great, thanks. Have a good day.”
He turned away, and Kim turned back to Brad. “Oh, hey, one more thing,” the reporter said. He reached back and tapped Kim with the pen. The pen poked her on the wrist like a bee sting.
“Ow!”
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry!” Olivera said. “I just wanted to make sure it’s B-a-u-e-r.”
“That hurt. Be careful with that thing,” Kim said, bringing her wrist to her mouth and sucking at the spot where the pen had stabbed her. “Yeah, that’s how you spell it.”
“Thanks again,” Olivera said with a smile. “Goodbye.”
Tony Almeida watched Jack through the camera as he talked with the female detective. He’d seen her around CTU — some sort of liaison — but he’d forgotten her name. Jack had turned off his microphone, so he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“She’s a hottie,” said one of the two pallid FBI techs. The other one had gone on a break. This one grinned at Tony. He had a hard, Slavic look about the face, but his body was thin. “We could always use the shotgun mike on him.”
Tony glared at him under his heavy eyelids. “How do you guys get off when you’re not snooping?”
“Oh, we’re always snooping,” he said with a grin.
Tony shrugged. “You guys told me your names before. McKey and Dyson, right? Which one are you?”
The tech laughed. “We’re interchangeable.”
“Built out of spare parts at Quantico, that it?”
“Something like that. I’m Nick Dyson.” He shook Tony’s hand quickly. “So anyway, how about that shotgun mike?”
Tony shook his head. “If Bauer wanted us listening in, he’d have left his mike on.”
“Suit yourself,” the tech said. He stared at the bank of monitors and sighed. “This is going to be boring, I can tell already.”
Almeida watched the human ocean roiling and crashing against the barricades. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he prayed.
One of the best parts of being a Federal agent was the parking. When Jack had brought Kim down to the rally, he’d parked in the Federal Building’s main lot, which was now reserved only for personnel who worked in the building and, of course, Federal agents.
Jack climbed into his black SUV as his cell phone rang.
“Hey, Jack,” Teri said. “How’s it going out there?”
“Hey,” he replied. “It’s going fine. Listen, can you call Kim on her cell and tell her I’ll be right back? I have to run over to the office for a minute.”
The wireless connection went suddenly cold. “Jack, you’re supposed to be with her.”
He defended himself. “She’s with the chaperone. And this is a quick trip. I just have to check on something. Do you mind calling her?”
“Fine,” she said in a tone that indicated it was anything but. “I’ll talk to you later.” The call ended.
He would pay for that later, he could tell. But there was nothing to be done at the moment. Jack fired the engine, then rolled out of the lot and turned south on Federal Avenue. It would have been easier to turn north and take Wilshire Boulevard toward downtown, which would have led him closer to CTU headquarters, but Wilshire was, of course, blocked, so the only way to get away from the building was to follow a maze of detours through the narrow streets lined with tiny, well-kept Spanish bungalows that had sprung up just off the main thoroughfares. It was really just Los Angeles, but they called it Holmby Hills, or Rancho Park, or something else that sounded exclusive and desirable, so that the residents all felt good about their inflated property values.
He should have been focused on Ayman al-Libbi, or even Mercy’s take on the eco-terrorist theory. But instead he was focused on Mercy Bennet herself, although his mind alternately, almost guiltily, went from Mercy to Teri Bauer and back, like a bad news reporter giving equal time even when the topics did not merit equal weight.
Mercy was right to hold him at arm’s length. He knew that, and not because he subscribed to some outmoded sense of decency. Half the men he knew admitted cheating on their wives, and the other half were liars. Mercy didn’t demand that he do the right thing — she just wanted assurance that she was making more than just a guest appearance in Jack’s own personal drama.
And the truth was, he couldn’t give her that assurance. He liked her. He knew that. But he loved Teri, even when she drove him crazy. Even in the depth of his discontent he had never thought of leaving her for another woman, until Mercy appeared. She was a new temptation, different from the others that Jack had resisted, a temptation that was more than distraction, a lure that seemed to be not just temporary relief but. an alternative.
And the truth was, Jack knew that in the end he was using her.
“You know what’s really screwing you up,” Jack growled to himself. “The fact that you’re thinking of this at all. You need to focus on your job.”
He had just finished speaking those words out loud when the pickup truck slammed into the passenger side of his car.
3. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 A.M. AND 10 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Kasim Turkel walked into the hotel lobby with the same sense of stupefied wonder he’d felt upon entering every building since his arrival in the United States. The evidence of abundance was overwhelming. The double doors were fashioned of wrought iron and glass. The tiles in the lobby were wide and smooth, with heavy stone tables supporting enormous porcelain vases filled with flower arrangements that towered over him. Beyond the tables stood a small wooden lectern, behind which stood a tall young man in a blue jacket who smiled at him professionally.
Instinctively Kasim hesitated until he felt Nurmamet Tuman’s hand touch his arm reassuringly.
“Relax,” Nurmamet said softly in Uygur. “We are just visiting the bar. It is done here all the time.”
To the man in the blue coat, Nurmamet spoke in gently accented English. “Good morning. Where is the bar please?”
The young man pointed over Nurmamet’s shoulder. “It’s that way, sir. But I’m sorry, they’re not serving.”
“That’s all right,” Nurmamet replied, “we are just looking for a quiet place to sit for a few minutes.”
Kasim nodded and summoned a smile as he passed the man in the blue coat, following Nurmamet’s lead, and turned right. In this direction lay another set of double doors, this time of hand-carved wood, that opened on an opulent bar of gleaming wood flanked by deep-cushioned stools. Across from the bar, squads of tables guarded by leather chairs formed a small army. As the hotel employee had said, the bar was not open and the room was empty except for a man sitting at one of the tables, one leg crossed lazily over the other, a newspaper laid out before him and half lifted in his hands. He seemed not to have noticed the two men enter.
Undaunted, Nurmamet walked over to him and sat down, indicating that Kasim should do likewise. The man
