up.
The game's up, girl.
The door was open and two more Secret Service agents were inside. But she couldn't see Conrad.
Only Brooke Scarborough, tied to the bed, spread-eagled, a bullet hole in her head.
Oh, my God, she thought with a shudder. Conrad, what have you done?
'I'm sorry you had to see this, Sister Serghetti, but I need to ask you if you've seen Conrad Yeats at the hotel.'
'No,' she said, still staring at Brooke. 'What does he have to do with this?'
'He's a wanted man,' Seavers said. 'This was his room. He checked in under the alias Carl Anderson. I thought you might know something.'
'I don't.'
Seavers turned to the Secret Service agents. 'Not a word to Senator Scarborough or anybody until after the prayer breakfast,' he ordered. 'We have a killer on the loose. We don't want to give him a heads-up that we're onto him by creating any unusual disruptions. Seal off the room and post two security guards outside the door. I want room-to-room sweeps during the breakfast while everybody is downstairs in the ballroom. This killer isn't getting out of this building.'
The lead special agent nodded. 'Yes, sir.'
Seavers took her by the arm and escorted her out the door.
'Where are you taking me, Max?'
'Somewhere safe,' he told her. 'There's no telling what this maniac might do.'
He led her down the hallway to a service closet that turned out to be an express service elevator. It linked the small kitchen of the 10th-floor club room to the hotel's main kitchen on the ballroom level. They took it all the way down and emerged in the service corridor between the back of the ballroom stage and the main kitchen.
Waiting for them were six Secret Service agents, who instantly formed a protective ring around them.
They turned down another hallway behind the back of the ballroom, a curving corridor with wood-paneled walls and portraits of every president and first lady since George Washington. Step by step they passed through succeeding epochs of administrations until they came to the portraits of the sitting American president and his wife and then a small, unmarked door.
Inside was a special VIP room with red carpets and gold walls that reminded Serena of a funeral parlor. The president's advance Secret Service detail was there. So, too, were Secretary Packard, Senator Scarborough, and several Chinese officials, all awaiting the president.
'Sister Serghetti,' said Packard. 'You know Senator Scarborough.'
She was caught off guard but smiled and shook the hand of the father of the dead woman she had just seen. 'How are you, Senator?'
'On behalf of the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, I'd like to personally thank you for offering up the opening prayer.'
'The honor is mine, Mr. Senator.'
'And this is Mr. Ling, China's top Olympics ambassador. Max Seavers is going to show him and all the Olympics delegates some real fireworks tomorrow on the Fourth.'
Mr. Ling was all smiles. 'I told my wife I was going to see the Fourth of July from the ultimate skybox-the observation deck of the Washington Monument. She didn't believe me.'
Senator Scarborough looked at his watch. 'Well, Mr. Ling and I have to get backstage. Sister Serghetti, you simply walk out when Bono is finished performing and open the breakfast in prayer. The rest of the program will take care of itself.'
Serena nodded. 'Yes, Mr. Senator, thank you.'
She watched Scarborough leave with Ling and two Secret Service agents. It was just her, Seavers, and a glaring Packard in the room now, along with the president's personal advance team.
'What the hell is going on, Seavers?' Packard burst out.
'We found the body of Senator Scarborough's daughter in a room checked out to Yeats. Yeats murdered her.'
'God Almighty!' Packard said. 'This is a nightmare!'
'I don't believe Dr. Yeats murdered Ms. Scarborough,' Serena said quickly. 'Not for one second. Dr. Yeats is an American patriot of the first order and comes from a family of patriots. I also know he had feelings for her and would never kill without just cause.'
Packard looked at Max Seavers. 'What's Yeats doing here at the Washington Hilton of all places, anyway?'
Seavers said, 'We believe his primary target is the president, sir.'
'What!' Serena cried. 'You can't be serious.'
She was astounded, considering his relationship with Conrad, that Packard seemed to think it plausible.
'I suggest you mass e-mail a photo of Yeats to all agents on the premises immediately, Mr. Secretary,' Seavers pressed. 'He's wanted not only for the death of a security guard and an attack on the Library of Congress, but now the slaying of a U.S. senator's daughter. And the senator will have all our heads if we fail to apprehend Yeats.'
That was enough for Packard, whose purse strings were controlled by Scarborough as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
'OK, do it.'
Max Seavers nodded, clearly proud of himself.
Serena realized that Seavers had cleverly managed to turn the one person she and Conrad needed to reach- the president of the United States-into the one person he would never be able to get close to.
'What about Sister Serghetti, sir?' Seavers asked. 'She has a history with Yeats and might pass along intel to him. Or some key or means to escape.'
'That's absurd, Mr. Secretary.' She then looked at Seavers. 'You want to frisk me, Max?'
Seavers motioned to a couple of the stone-faced Secret Service agents but was cut off by Packard.
'This is the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, goddammit,' Packard said. 'Sister Serghetti is in the program for the opening prayer. We can't hold her, Seavers. We'll just watch her.'
A Secret Service agent walked up and said, 'Mr. Secretary, the presidential motorcade is two minutes away.'
'I'll be back in a minute to walk with the President to the ballroom.' Then Packard offered her his arm. 'Ladies first.'
'Thank you, Mr. Secretary.'
Packard looked back at Max Seavers and the security detail. 'After the breakfast we'll meet here with the president and break the news of his daughter's slaying to Senator Scarborough,' Packard barked. 'By then you better pray that you've got Yeats in custody. Now go find that goddamn bastard.'
38
IF CONRAD had his way, right now he'd be digging for the second globe beneath the Sarah Rittenhouse armillary in Montrose Park. He had already figured out that the secret access tunnel had to be the cave that his father had shown him as a child, and that the globe was probably at the bottom of that old Algonquin well in the back. It all made sense now, every wacky thing his crazy ass father had put him through.
But by 5 a.m. all entrances and exits to the Hilton had been sealed off in anticipation of the president's arrival. He was trapped in a hotel room with Harold and Meredith from Highland Park, Texas.
The most he could hope for now was to warn Serena and the president about the second globe and Seavers's plan to release a bird flu contagion. His best shot at reaching them was the prayer breakfast. And thanks to some bad blowfish the night before, Harold was going to be saying his prayers in the toilet while Conrad-or rather 'Pastor Jim'-escorted Meredith to the breakfast.
Together they stood in the long line of thousands of prayer breakfast attendees who had emerged from
