was in a vehicle that had already been searched several times.
Half the reporters in the room were on their cell phones; the other half were scribbling in their notebooks. Hamish watched them, feeling relaxed and content. His plans were made, and they would be carried out. He took out his throwaway cell phone and sent messages to Wynken and Blynken. He had already made his travel arrangements. He would not need the Cessna Caravan; it was now his backup escape plan. He sent a text to the pilot, instructing him to be ready for takeoff at three P.M.
Then a hush fell over the room as the president of the United States, accompanied by the president of Mexico, entered the theater from stage right and took their seats at a table at the center of the stage.
51
Stone and Dino were sitting with Mike Freeman, watching the presidents’ statements, when Steve Rifkin came in, mopping his brow.
“Everything all right?” Mike asked.
“So far, so good. I had to get out of that theater. Standing around waiting for something terrible to happen was just too much.”
“Relax,” Mike said. “Those two bombs are not on the premises. I think we’ve satisfied ourselves of that. How’s it going down at the front gate?”
“Nobody was supposed to arrive before noon, but they’re lined up, waiting to have themselves and their vehicles searched. Pretty soon, they’re going to start blowing their horns. What’s the president saying?”
“This is good stuff,” Stone said. “The Mexicans have agreed to create a new border guard unit in their army that will patrol their side of the fence, and that will mean a doubling of the number of people looking for illegal crossings.”
“Very good,” Steve said.
Holly Barker came into the room. “How’s it going?” she asked.
Stone brought her up to date.
“May I use the study for a moment?” she asked.
“Help yourself.”
Holly went into the study, called the Agency’s London station, got Tom Riley on the line, and scrambled. “Anything new?” she asked.
“We got a guy into the McCallister house posing as a gas worker looking for a leak in the neighborhood, but they wouldn’t allow him above the ground floor.”
“Swell, so we still don’t know if Hamish and Mo are in the house?”
“Our man did see the cook put a breakfast tray in the dumbwaiter and send it up.”
“A tray for one or two?”
“He thinks for one.”
“So one of them isn’t in the house?”
“Or one of them doesn’t eat breakfast. Take your pick.”
“Tom, do a search of everything for the name Algernon.” She spelled it for him.
“In what context?”
“In any context at all. We’ve got an al Qaeda operative calling himself Algernon.”
“Okay.”
“Call me when you’ve got something.” She hung up and went back into the living room.
“The president has finished, and now Vargas is having his say,” Stone said. “You look a little stressed. How come?”
Holly turned and walked out onto the patio without replying. Stone got up and followed her.
“What’s going on, Holly?”
“I’m missing something, that’s what’s going on,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you understand that we’re under siege here in this hotel? There are at least two bombers out there, determined to do their worst, and nothing we’ve been able to do about finding them has worked.”
“You sound like Steve Rifkin,” Stone said. “Leave it to the Secret Service, they’re the experts here, not you.”
“I’ve got a contact in London who I think is lying to me, but I can’t prove it.”
“I should think you’d get lied to a lot, in your business,” Stone said.
“I feel out of my depth,” Holly said. “I’m accustomed to playing offense, not defense.”
“I wish I could help,” Stone said. “Why don’t you talk with Felicity? Maybe she can help.”
“We had a long chat last evening,” Holly said, “and she’s working her side of the pond.”
“Have you done everything you can do?”
“I’ve done everything I can think of, which may not be the same thing.” Her phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, and walked away a few yards.
“It’s Tom. Scramble.”
Holly scrambled. “Shoot.”
“We haven’t got much: There’s a hotel in South London by that name, could be a drop. There’s Algernon Moncrieff, a character in The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde, and there’s a short story and then a novel called Flowers for Algernon, made into a movie called Charly that starred Cliff Robertson. He got an Academy Award for his performance. That’s it. Nobody here can think of anything in either work that would relate to al Qaeda or spying or anything else.”
“Okay, Tom.”
“We’ll keep at it.”
“Sure, call me.” Holly hung up and went back to where Stone had sat down.
“Anything new?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
52
Hamish opened the closet door and took the key to the steamer trunk from his pocket, opened it, and swung open the door. The finely machined panel glowed in the light from the overhead bulb.
Hamish inserted his T-key into the slot at the top of the panel and turned it ninety degrees to the right. With a click, the clock was powered, displaying a row of zeros. Hamish checked his wristwatch, added the number of hours until eight-thirty P.M., then carefully tapped the hours and minutes into the keypad. He took a deep breath and let it out, then he pressed the enter button, and the clock began its downward march to zero.
The concert would begin at seven P.M., perhaps a few minutes later. It was scheduled to run until eight- thirty, so the device would detonate at about the time of the last number in the concert, or, perhaps, during an encore. Even if the detonation came late there would still be fifteen hundred people in the Arrington Bowl, among them the presidents of the United States and Mexico. All the others-movie moguls, movie stars, entertainers of various skills, the cream of Los Angeles society, business leaders-would simply be cannon fodder for the greatest lethal attack on the United States ever recorded. Upward of a million people would die in an instant-many more of their injuries or radiation sickness in the months and years to come.
The loss of the great Osama bin Laden would be avenged. Any evidence of the perpetrators would be vaporized in the initial blast, so no one would ever know who had caused it, until the announcement was made worldwide on the Internet. Neither he nor Mo nor Jasmine nor any of the people who had helped them would ever be known to the authorities. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod would be dead.
Hamish checked his watch again: he would leave The Arrington at three P.M.; his flight from LAX would depart at five P.M. and arrive in London after a nonstop flight at midmorning the following day. He would drop off his
