“Yes, darling. Tonight
A knock interrupted her laugh. “Here’s Katya, now. I’ll see you tonight, at the wrap party. Remember, Club 100. Midnight — unless that damn awards show runs overtime.”
The office door opened. The woman who entered looked to be in her early thirties. She wore a simple black dress, black leather boots that just touched the bend of her knee. Straw-blond hair in a tight bun, her only jewelry a black choker around her long, graceful, bone-white neck. In her arms she cradled a square box emblazoned with the name of an exclusive Rodeo Drive boutique.
“Come in, darling,” said Valerie Dodge. “Where have you been all morning?”
“I went over to the Chamberlain Auditorium to make sure everything was in order, that our models have the privacy they need.”
“Good girl. Last year half the stagehands were ogling my girls. All they had were canvas cubicles and Japanese screens for a dressing room.”
Katya smiled. “I took care of that, Ms. Dodge. This year they’ll have real rooms, backstage.”
Valerie smiled. Then her eyes drifted to Katya’s desk in the next room. On top of it, a thick red folder stuffed with contracts appeared untouched. Valerie Dodge nearly jumped out of her chair.
“My god, Katya. The models’ contracts! They’re still there on your desk where I left them. The girls can’t appear tonight if those contracts are not filed with the television network, the producers.”
“Relax, Ms. Dodge,” said Katya, fumbling with the box in her arm. “The proper paperwork went to the right people. I made sure of that.”
Valerie leaned back and smiled. “Thank god. For a moment—” She fumbled with a cigarette, a solid gold lighter. “Well, I knew you were on top of everything. Believe me, Katya, without you—”
The woman in black dropped the box, squeezed the trigger. The sound suppressed Walther PBK in her hand bucked once, twice, three times. Valerie Dodge jerked as each shot struck her. With a final moan she sank to the carpeted floor.
Katya lowered the weapon. Ignored the twitching corpse. “I know, Ms. Dodge. You’d just die without me.”
The woman set the weapon on the glass desk. Then she grabbed the dead woman by the ankle and dragged her to the corner of the room, leaving a long crimson trail on the spotless white rug.
Katya dropped the leg and stepped around the corpse. Sitting in the chair, she booted up Valerie Dodge’s computer, then slipped a pen drive into a USB port. It took less than two minutes for the plans, the schematics, the codes to load. Next Katya typed in her call sign — ChechenAvenger066—and sent coded e-mails that activated sleeper agents all over America’s West Coast.
The loading dock was guarded by the auditorium’s regular security staff, but supervised by Secret Service Agent Craig Auburn. A twenty-year veteran of the Currency Fraud Division, Auburn had been temporarily — and
After he’d already arrived, it was announced that Number Two — the Vice President — would not make the trip, so many of the duties were scrambled. Auburn ended up serving as an entry monitor, which was not much more than a glorified doorman, but he made no complaint. Special Agent Auburn took his job seriously. He also planned to retire in five years with a full pension and no blots on his exemplary record.
Things had been quiet until a Middle Eastern man arrived. He led a parade of carpenters and a half-dozen mechanical dollies piled high with formed steel parts partially or completely swathed by crude wooden crates.
“What’s this?” Auburn demanded, stepping in front of the column.
“Stage prop,” said the Middle Eastern man, waving a manifest. Auburn took the clipboard, scanned it with one eye on the man who gave it to him.
“Who are you?” Auburn asked, handing the clipboard back to the man.
“I am Haroun. It was my truck that brought these sculptures in from the fabricator.”
“Let me see your identification.”
Smiling, Haroun handed Auburn his driver’s license, union card, and security pass. Everything seemed in order, but there was something about the man, these crates, that set off Auburn’s internal alarms. His colleagues said he could always spot a phony when he saw one, and Haroun felt like a ringer.
Auburn pushed past Haroun, paced down the line of dollies, circling one after the other. The crates were sizable — the smallest taller than a man, the largest nearly the size of an automobile. Finally, the horn honked on one of the mechanical dollies in the rear of the line.
“What’s the hold up?” barked its operator.
“Who cares,” said another. “We get paid by the hour.”
Just then, the auditorium’s crew chief arrived. He spied the crates and threw up his hands. “About god-damn time. Get those dollies in here. I got an empty stage up there.”
“I am coming,” Haroun called back. “As soon as this man lets me pass.”
The crew chief shook his head, approached Special Agent Auburn. “
“That is correct.”
“How’s the wife, by the way?” asked the crew chief. Haroun grinned. “She baked honey cakes. I am sorry they are all gone. I would have liked to save one for you.”
“Maybe next time.” The crew chief turned to Auburn. “Come on, guy. We’re running late here. Save the double-oh-seven stuff for the bad guys. Unless this really is a case of racial profiling.”
Auburn stepped aside. “Go on,” he said, waving the men through.
One by one, the dollies began to move. Under Special Agent Auburn’s watchful eye, the Chechens carefully maneuvered the mechanical dollies through the tight loading dock and up the ramp to the stage. They were exceedingly careful not to bump the crates, or send them tumbling onto their sides. The men moving the crates knew that those hidden inside were martyrs — armed and highly trained members of the faithful who were willing to die for the cause of Chechen independence, and for jihad.
This was the primary reason the phony union workers moved the props into attack position with reverence and respect. They did not want to disturb such heroes more than necessary on their final day on Earth.
Despite the chemical stench and the cuffs cutting off the circulation to his swollen hands, Tony Almeida had fallen into a fitful sleep. Someone had erected a plastic screen around the corner where he’d been thrown and on the other side of it, men continued to cook pills, separating the deadly and addictive narcotic from its component parts.
Tony had no idea how long he’d slept when two men approached him and hauled him to his feet. They were fair-skinned giants with light hair cropped close to their scalps. Each wore a surgical mask.
“Hey,” Tony yelled, the moment they’d touched him, “what the hell do you want with me!”
The men responded with stony silence. They freed his arms, tore away his shirt. Then they slammed Tony against the wire box spring propped upright against the wall. When he realized what was happening, Tony struggled frantically, but his hands were useless, completely numb, and his elbows were poor substitutes for fists. The men easily bound him against the cold metal.
When they finally moved back, another man stepped up. He wore overalls, stained with sweat, thick rolls of fat bulging around a tight collar. His eyes were small and close set, over a flat nose and wet pink lips. While the other two men rolled the friction generator into the room and connected the electrodes to the bedsprings, the fat man watched, arms folded, until they were finished. Then he moved his face within inches of Tony’s.
“Mr. Dobyns tells me you pass yourself off as a credit card cheat, a petty criminal. But he believes you are more than that. So do I.”
