space. The acoustics of the room were complex, sounds ricocheting off the walls and cabinets. He couldn’t yet tell where she was, but he was sure she was inside. And therefore not more than a hundred feet away.
Jake tried to think it through. She was most likely across the room, on the other side of Maggie. His best bet was to go left, circle around. Outflank her. “Who are you?” he said into the phone, listening for the echo.
“You can call me Orchid.”
“What do you want?”
“In time. Now. Look at your phone.”
Jake saw the numbers of his phone appear one by one, as if he was dialing. The dialing stopped on the second-to-last number. He recognized the number. It was Vlad’s cell.
“Here’s what you will do. You’ll tell him everything is fine. Tell him that Ms. Connor’s cellphone batteries were dead. You understand? Then ask him how his search is going. He’ll tell you. You’ll respond appropriately. Then you’ll hang up. Do you understand?”
“What do I get in return?”
“Nothing. You fail, I kill her. I’ll be on the line. I’ll cut you off if you try and say anything wrong. You understand?”
Jake kept moving, hoping the confusing acoustics would mask his forward progress. He swung around the next cabinet, gun in one hand and the phone in the other.
Nothing.
Jesus Christ, where was she?
The last number appeared. Then the phone was ringing.
Vlad picked up on the second ring. “Jake?”
Jake approached the next cabinet, gun drawn.
“Jake? Everything all right?”
He whipped around, ready to fire. Nothing. “Everything is fine. Where are you with the sequencing?”
“What was wrong with her phone?” Vlad asked.
“The battery was dead.”
Jake stepped around another cabinet, gun drawn. Nothing.
“What about the landline?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t answer it.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“No. Vlad. It’s fine. Tell me about the sequence.”
Vlad didn’t respond. Then, “You sure you are fine?”
“Vlad. Leave it. It’s been a tough couple of days.” Jake continued his progress along the left wall. Only three more cabinets to go.
Jake was close. The next row was the one that was his best guess. “We’ve almost got it, Jake. Another half- hour.”
He heard the slight squeak of rubber. A shoe. It came from the other side of the cabinet he was now facing. He looked to his right. He could still see Maggie. The shoe wasn’t Maggie’s.
Moment of truth. He’d come around it quickly, firing.
He took a breath, held it. He muted his phone, then tossed it across the room. The phone struck the far wall with a clang. Jake turned the corner, gun held in both hands, ready to blow Orchid’s head off.
Standing there, staring right at him, was Dylan, eyes big as moons. Jake’s legs went rubbery, hands shaking at what he’d almost done. He’d come to within a fraction of a second of shooting.
He eased the pressure on the trigger, his knees almost buckling.
From behind him, a voice very close: “Put down the gun. Slowly.”
28
INSIDE OF AN HOUR, THEY HAD THE BRASS CYLINDER AT DETRICK.
Dunne watched by video hookup from a nearby secure room as Toloff picked it up and turned it over in her gloved hands. She was inside the USDA class-4 Uzumaki facility, in a full pressure suit with external air. She looked like an astronaut on the moon. The facility had a bunch of cameras, always on, but they were typically used only for archiving. They’d been tapped into, were being broadcast live, with power players up and down the security food chain watching every move. The head of Detrick, a general named Arvenick, was certainly watching, as was the FBI director. Dunne assumed the President was linked in as well.
A team of weapons experts and forensic materials scientists had already poked and prodded the cylinder every way they could. It had identical dimensions to the ones that had been recovered from the Japanese submarines. Something slid around inside when you tilted it, like a marble. They couldn’t do an MRI because the metal shielded out the radio waves. X rays didn’t show anything. A quick and ferocious debate followed about what to do, but in the end they’d simply decided to open the damn thing, and Toloff got the task. On the video, Dunne saw her hand shaking and the rivulets of sweat on her face as she twisted open the cylinder. The camera zoomed in on her gloved hands. “It’s resisting,” she said. Her hand jerked slightly. “All right,” she said. “The threads are sliding past one another. Here we go.”
Dunne braced himself as if he were in the room with her. The cylinder might be booby-trapped. They’d checked the mass against the thickness of the walls, which they had evaluated with ultrasound. It could be an explosive.
She unscrewed the cylinder, then carefully set the upper section on the table. She looked inside the other half.
“Holy crap,” she said. She studied it for a few seconds, then looked up at the camera. “You’re not going to believe this.”
She laid a Texwipe on the table, gently shook the cylinder over it to disgorge the contents.
It was a bone. A human finger bone. The significance of the finger bone was not lost on Dunne. She had probably taken it from the finger she cut off of the man in Times Square.
Toloff said, “There’s writing on it. Zoom in.”
Etched in letters so small that they were barely readable was a message.
KITANO MUST PAY
Dunne recognized the Chinese characters at the end of the message. They were the characters for
29
SHE DID EVERYTHING RIGHT. ORCHID MADE JAKE TAPE HIS own mouth closed, then put him in the lead, where he could see nothing but the way ahead. She directed him out the back door, a path that would take them nowhere near the gun he’d tossed aside. Her exit route was secure and hidden-through a stand of woods behind the herbarium. It was still light out, but the sun was low, the branches casting shadows that cut across the patches of snow like streaks of black paint.
They were hundreds of yards away from the nearest road. If anyone caught a glance from afar, they’d look like a group of hikers.
Maggie was behind him, holding Dylan close. Jake heard her crying. Orchid questioned her as they walked, asking where the Uzumaki was hidden. Maggie kept repeating, “I don’t know.”
Jake’s nerves were on high alert. He was thinking it through, and he didn’t like where his thoughts were
