voice or text message. Before he could punch in anything the signal cut out and the call was dropped.
Conrad hung up and paused for a moment. He removed the envelope from his body and taped it to the underside of the shelf beneath the phone. Then he buttoned up and stepped out of the booth.
Back in first class, Sergeant Major Kopinski was waiting for him. As soon as the glass doors opened, Conrad saw him standing there, jacket open to reveal a shoulder-holstered gun. The stain on his tie looked even bigger.
'I want my wallet, Dr. Yeats.'
'Yes, sir.' Conrad handed it over and looked back to make sure they were out of view of the business car and alone in first class. They were.
'This mission can't be what you intended for your life when you enlisted in the Marines, Sergeant Major,' Conrad said. 'You tell Packard to give you a real assignment.'
Kopinski nodded, then to Conrad's dismay started convulsing. Kopinski's eyes rolled back in their sockets and something green began to leak out his nostrils.
Then he saw a tiny dart in the Marine's neck as the head tilted to the side unnaturally and the heavy body crumpled to the floor with a thud. He was dead. Conrad spun around to see the glass doors into first class wide open and the attendant pointing some sort of dart gun at him.
'You just killed a federal agent,' Conrad said.
'Hand it over,' the assassin said. 'Slowly.'
Conrad reached into his pocket and pulled out Kopinski's wallet.
'Forget the wallet.' The assassin stepped forward, still pointing the gun.
'Who are you?' Conrad asked.
'The Grim Reaper, as far as you're concerned.' The assassin waved the dart gun at him. 'Turn around.'
Conrad turned to face the picture window. More bland pastures passing by. He felt the assassin pat him down.
'Take off your boots.'
Conrad removed his boots.
The assassin looked at them and then back at him. 'Unbutton your shirt.'
'I'm not that kind of guy.'
The assassin tapped the point of his dart gun on Conrad's chest. 'Open your damn shirt.'
Conrad could see the guy's eyes were on fire, meaning business. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open to show nothing but his chest. 'I work out, as you can see.'
'Where is it?'
'Where is what?'
'Whatever you took from that little book of yours.'
Conrad said, 'If you people did anything to hurt Brooke, I'll kill you.'
'You should be worried about what we're going to do to you.'
The assassin whipped the butt of the gun against the side of Conrad's head, and lightning flashed across Conrad's field of vision. The searing pain made it a struggle for him to stay standing.
'Give it to me,' the assassin ordered, 'or I'll open your ass to look for it.'
'You know, that's just where I've got it.' Conrad, his head throbbing, began to unbuckle his belt. 'You look like the kind of guy who'd like to search for it there.'
Conrad bent over, his butt up to the assassin's face, his own face inches over poor Kopinski on the floor, the guy's Egg Scramble and Tabasco sauce all over his shirt. He thought of the guy's wife and kids. A Marine, for Christ's sake. And this little shit behind him killed him.
'Now take a good, hard look,' Conrad said. 'You don't want to miss anything.'
Conrad dropped his pants with one hand and reached into Kopinski's jacket with the other. He suddenly straightened up and turned around, his pants around his ankles. The assassin's eyes were looking down where they shouldn't, missing Conrad's arm swinging up with Kopinski's gun.
'Surprise,' said Conrad and shot him in the stomach.
The bullet blew the assassin against the wall, and he crumpled to the floor in a fetal position.
Conrad looked back through both sets of glass doors into the other car to make sure nobody heard the shot, then leaned over and dug the pistol into the guy's neck. 'Who are you people?'
The assassin's mouth broke into a wide, wicked grin. Conrad saw the cyanide capsule between his teeth. But before he could bite down on the suicide pill, Conrad smashed his front teeth with the butt of the pistol. The assassin started choking on his teeth and swallowed the capsule.
'Gonna take you a little longer to die now,' Conrad told him. 'And you don't have to. You can still get some medical help. But only if you tell me who you people are.'
The assassin only glared at him.
'I see you still have a few teeth left.' Conrad held up the pistol for another blow. 'I think I can fix that.'
The assassin didn't flinch, even as he coughed up some blood. 'You'll be dead by sunset.'
Conrad bent closer. 'Says who?'
'The Alignment,' the assassin gasped through his bloody teeth, and then slumped over, dead.
Conrad ripped open the man's uniform and found a BlackBerry device. There was nothing else on him except the strange dart gun on the floor. Conrad took the BlackBerry and tucked Kopinski's gun behind his back.
He dragged both corpses to the port galley in the first-class car, where he found the body of the real attendant. He stood and looked at all three bodies and shook his head. He'd have all of twenty minutes tops before they were found after they pulled into New York. He looked at his watch. It was 10:30. They were due in Penn Station in a half hour.
Back in the snack car, he had to wait five minutes to use the Railfone booth. He slid inside, felt beneath the metal shelf counter and pulled out the envelope with the map inside that he had taped to the underside. Then he called Serena.
7
IN THE PANTHEON of modern megalithic architecture, China's new 25-kilometer-long venue for the 2008 Olympic Games-humbly dubbed the 'Axis of Human Civilization'-was a sure bet to join America's interstate highway system, Central America's Panama Canal, and Europe's Chunnel as one of the great wonders of the modern world.
But to Serena Serghetti, now standing before the General Assembly, it was an environmental disaster, a state-run catastrophe that was endangering animals, destroying ancient temples, and driving more than a million people from their homes. All because China wanted to show the world that it had come of age.
'Now we have reports of avian influenza-or 'bird flu'-spreading in the squalor of the countryside where the homeless have been exiled,' she said. 'But the government has refused to even acknowledge the threat of a global health pandemic, let alone help the poorest of its own people.'
Naturally, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations didn't see it that way and seemed visibly annoyed. This morning alone he had been forced to deny accusations that his country actively suppressed free speech and systematically imprisoned and executed people to harvest their organs. Now he had to contend with reports of avian flu just weeks before the Olympic Games in Beijing.
'We beg to differ,' was all he said through a translator. 'The industrialization and development of Beijing has created a rising standard of living for our people and better health care.'
'At least allow us to help your needy, Mr. Ambassador.'
Serena cited a report on relief efforts following the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and the 2005 hurricane that wiped out New Orleans, events that also displaced more than a million people.
'As the head of FEMA has stated, some of the world's problems are just too big for governments,' she said.
