pawnshop, several low-rent mom-and-pop operations, a bail bondsman’s establishment and a fried chicken eatery. All of the other lease space was empty except for one office. The windows of this unit were still covered up, as the build-out had not yet been completed. Actually, the work had never been started, nor would it ever be.
In the far back room behind a makeshift plywood partition were two Arab men and a third fellow. One of the Arabs was an engineer specializing in medical devices, the other a chemist, though both men had other skills as well. The third man, a former U.S. National Guardsman, was sitting in a chair looking nervously at the various pieces of equipment stacked neatly on a long table against the wall; these included wrenches, power screwdrivers, electrical wires and other, more sophisticated equipment. The former National Guardsman was looking nervously at where his right hand had been. A cast had been made of the stump, and a shiny metal socket with metal fingers had been attached to this spot.
“Just relax,” the chemist advised, and he put a gentle hand on the nervous fellow’s shoulder.
The engineer lifted an object out of a long box and held it up. It looked like a human hand. “It’s made of silicone, and we have copied your vein patterns, simulated your natural skin color and even matched it to your skin’s hair color. The metal socket and inner hand attached to your wrist are internally wired, with powered movement and flexibility in all five fingers. The older models only had mobility in the thumb, index and ring fingers. And they were able to engineer down the scale of the wiring so the new generation’s size approximates that of an actual human hand.” He held his hand up against the prosthetic one. “You can see that it’s barely an inch longer than normal.”
The man nodded and smiled. His thoughts were obvious. It did look like a real hand.
The chemist said, “You have a solid wrist joint and good remaining wrist muscles; that will help greatly. The electrodes embedded in the inner hand will have solid connection to the muscle.”
“Yeah, I’m a real lucky bastard,” the man said bitterly.
The silicone hand was put over the socket and the hand securely attached. When that was done, they took the man through some simple exercises.
The engineer said, “When you push your wrist muscles upward, the hand opens. When you relax your wrist muscles, the hand closes. Practice that.”
The man did so about a dozen times while the men watched closely. Each time, he became more comfortable with the manipulations.
The chemist nodded approvingly. “That is good. You are getting it. But you must keep practicing. Soon you will be able to do it without thinking. It will feel natural.”
The man in the chair rubbed the fake hand with the steel hook that constituted his other hand. “Does it feel real?” he asked. “I can’t tell.”
The engineer said, “Someone shaking hands with you will be able to tell it’s not real, simply by the texture and the colder temperature of the skin, but in all other respects it will look very real.”
The man seemed disappointed by this explanation and stopped looking at his new hand.
“You can never be what you were,” the chemist said bluntly. “But it is better than what you had, and we can do your other hand too, if you want.”
The man shook his head and held up his hook. “I want to keep this one. I don’t want to forget what happened to me.”
“You have your uniform?” the engineer asked.
The man nodded as he rose from the chair, still opening and closing his new hand. “That’s
“What was your rank?”
“Sergeant. National Guard.” He flexed his new hand again. “And after it’s over?”
“You will be taken care of, as agreed,” the engineer answered.
“It’s nice, to be finally taken care of.”
“We will be in touch, in the usual way.”
They shook hands.
“Feels good to finally be able to do that,” the ex-National Guardsman said.
After he had left, the two men went back to work. There was another box on the table that was marked in Arabic. One of the men opened it. Inside wrapped in plastic was a stainless-steel canister. Inside the canister was a bottle filled with liquid. He lifted out the bottle and held it up to the light.
He well knew that, according to the FBI, the three deadliest substances in the world were, in descending order of lethality, plutonium, botulism toxin and ricin. The liquid in the glass vial was not nearly as deadly as any of those poisons. However, in its own way the substance was still very effective.
The hand he had just placed on the former National Guardsman had a pouch inside. When a tiny release button built into the skin was pushed and the wristbone was flexed a very special way, the pouch opened and any liquid inside it would be secreted through the artificial pores.
As they worked away, the chemist said, “He is bitter, that National Guardsman.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” the other answered.
CHAPTER
13
TOM HEMINGWAY SAT IN HIS modest apartment near Capitol Hill. He had taken off his suit and put on shorts and a T-shirt and was barefoot. Though it was very late, he was not tired. In fact, adrenaline was ripping through his veins. He had just received the news: Patrick Johnson was dead. Hemingway felt no remorse. The man had no one to blame but himself. But there had been witnesses to the killing, and they had gotten away. Of course, that potentially changed everything.
He went into his bedroom, unlocked a hidden floor safe, took out a folder and sat down at his kitchen table. Inside the folder were photographs of over two dozen men and one woman. All were Muslims. The authorities would classify them as enemies of America. The assembling of these people represented two full years of Tom Hemingway’s life. And for those in the group who had run afoul of the law in some way, Hemingway had achieved a miracle. He had made the living appear to be dead.
Hemingway’s father, the Honorable Franklin T. Hemingway, had been a statesman, when that word still carried some actual meaning. He had risen through the ranks to become ambassador to some of the most diplomatically challenging countries on earth. Before his untimely death, he had been hailed as one of the great peacemakers of his generation, a dedicated and honorable civil servant.
Tom Hemingway eventually came to terms with his father’s violent death; however, he knew it was not something he would ever get over, nor should he. He had loved and respected his father, learning civility and compassion by the man’s example. Unlike many other ambassadors who “purchased” their title with large campaign donations and who never even bothered to adequately learn the language and culture of the country they were sent to, Franklin Hemingway immersed himself and his family in the language and history of whatever land he was assigned. Thus, Tom Hemingway had a far better understanding and appreciation of both the Islamic and Asian worlds than virtually any other American.
He had not gone the route of his diplomatic father, however, because Tom Hemingway didn’t believe he had the temperament for such a career. He had instead entered the spy world, beginning with the National Security Agency before transferring to the CIA and working his way up. It seemed an important even honorable career, and he’d thrown himself at it with the work ethic his father had instilled in him.
He’d become a superb field agent, assigned to some of the most dangerous hot spots in the world. He had survived, sometimes just by minutes, attempts to kill him. He had, in turn, killed, on behalf of his government. He helped orchestrate coups that toppled popularly elected governments. He also oversaw operations that created instability in fragile third-world countries, because this was deemed the best way to foster an atmosphere most beneficial to the United States. He had done all that was asked of him, and more.
And ultimately, it had been for nothing. The precious work that he’d performed was a sham, fueled more by business interests than national ones, accomplishing nothing other than making a bad situation worse. The world was as close to destruction as he had ever seen, and Tom Hemingway had seen a lot.
There were many reasons, beginning with critical shortages of water, oil and gas, steel, coal and other
