“The escape route, like the shelter itself, was a closely held secret. The creator didn’t want the public to know about it. In case of a threatened atomic attack he’d be besieged by hordes of neighbors and strangers all wanting to escape annihilation by holing up in the shelter, too. That wouldn’t do, so the shelter was kept secret and the escape route was hidden to look like part of the mountain so no outsiders would ever dream of its existence!
“What happened then? I’m guessing here, but we’ll find out the facts soon enough. The builder died, the shelter entrances and exits were sealed and forgotten, and the few others who knew the secret mostly died out. But who would be better placed to know the secret or rediscover it than the Lord High Executor of the Masterman Trust, the master of Sky Mount itself, you, Cabot Huntington Wright!”
Jack Bauer waited for Wright to respond but it was Marion Clary who reacted first. She stood up suddenly, the light of a massive revelation seizing her with an irresistible force.
She blurted out, “It’s true! There is an abandoned fallout shelter hidden under Sky Mount! It was built in the nineteen-fifties by F. X. Masterman, the last surviving heir to descend directly from old H. H. Masterman, founder of the family fortune. Francis Xavier Masterman was an eccentric with an obsession about surviving an atomic war. He spent a fortune building his shelter and escape routes. After he died the family wanted nothing more to do with F.X. and his sensational bad publicity so they capped the tunnels, sealed the hatches, pretended it wasn’t there, and forgot about it.
“I know about it because I’m the archivist and knowing the history of Sky Mount is my life’s work. I know it, yes — but how do you?”
Jack said seriously, “I know it, Ms. Clary, because I’ve been there. Just tonight I took the grand tour of it to keep a gang of murder-happy psychos from using it to blow up the fuel tanks and turn the mansion into an infernal holocaust! Where did I learn of it? From a sadistic killer named Pettibone who killed that nice young man Brad Oliver and who knows how many others.
“The big question is, who did he learn it from? From his boss, an even worse killer, who learned it from Larry Noone, who learned it from Cabot Huntington Wright! Unless you told Noone— ”
“No,” she said firmly, shaking her head. “I’ve always respected the family’s wishes for privacy and kept the truth about the shelter a private matter and never spoken of it to any outsiders.”
She was holding her body so tight that instead of turning her head she turned her entire body so she could look down at Cabot Wright and stare him in the eye. She went on, “I’ve never spoken of it to outsiders, but I have gone into detail about it on more than one occasion with my employer, Mr. Wright!”
Wright literally tried to wave it away, dismissing it with a flicking gesture of his hand. “Marion, you’re becoming seriously overwrought. I begin to fear for your state of mind.”
“You — you would have helped to destroy Sky Mount? All those innocent human lives? All those priceless art treasures?”
“You’re being ridiculous, dear. Sit down and take a pill to relax before you give yourself a nervous breakdown.”
Cabot Huntington Wright was beginning to show the first signs of agitation. He was restless, unable to sit still. He kept crossing and uncrossing his legs and squirming around in his seat as if unable to get comfortable.
Marion Clary ignored his advice. She did not sit down or take a pill. She stood her place, staring accusingly down at Wright.
Wright turned to the others as if unable to face her stare. “Do you see what you’ve done, gentlemen — and I use the term loosely — with your monstrous fabrication of lies and half truths, slurs and innuendos? You’ve driven this poor, simple soul nearly half mad with hysteria!”
Jack Bauer said softly, “Maybe she’s starting to realize the truth of what you’ve done, Mr. Wright. The lies and scheming, the conniving at murder, and more: wholesale mass murder!”
Wright affected an air of extreme nonchalance bordering on indifference. He studied his carefully manicured fingernails, flicked an imaginary spot of dust from his lapel. But he was watching Jack out of the corners of his eyes.
Jack ignored Wright’s smooth front and kept hammering his points home. He said, “Speaking of opportunity, that brings up one last important element in your master plan. It was a lucky fluke but you saw it lying there and picked it up for your own use. I’m referring to the presence of Abelson Prewitt and his inner circle of Zealots at the compound at Red Notch. Every conspiracy needs a fall guy, a patsy who can be blamed for the crime, and Prewitt was ripe for the taking. It’s the time- honored ploy known as ‘Pay the Law.’ Give the authorities a ready-made scapegoat for the crime and the manhunt ends. Otherwise they’ll keep on looking and possibly even stumble across the real culprits.
“Prewitt was your scapegoat. He was a crackpot cultist who hated the Round Table and all that it represents. There was no real history of violence in his background, but that was no problem. A lot of these cults go on their own way for years before reaching the breaking point and lashing out with overt acts. Prewitt’s crank economic theories and overheated rhetoric made him perfect for framing.
“The plan was to lay the blame for the Sky Mount terror strike on Prewitt and his cadre. To carry that out they first had to be disposed of. The Mountain Lake MRT unit did the advance work. They’d all been suborned into working for the plot, bought and paid for. I’m guessing that Larry Noone handled that part of the operation. I wondered how the activity at Winnetou could have gone unreported until I found out a little while ago from Agent Sandoval that Hardin’s MRT had the responsibility of patrolling that area and consistently gave it a clean bill of health.
“Red Notch was hit early Thursday morning. The MRT did the advance work of neutralizing O’Hara and Dean, the ATF agents monitoring the compound from the outside. Hardin and Taggart got the drop on the unsuspecting agents and put them out of the way. That left a clear field for Reb Weld’s kill squad. They blitzed the compound with BZ gas grenades, the potent hallucinogenic gas incapacitating the cultists. A hermit who witnessed the assault said that it was carried out by ‘hog-faced demons.’ Hog-faced demons— that’s what the killers in their gas masks looked like to him. He wasn’t so far off the mark at that.
“The round- up of the Zealots didn’t come off without a hitch. There was violence, some blood was spilled. Those bloodstains held the telltale chemical markers allowing for the identification of BZ as the chemical weapon agent. The cultists were herded onto their own bus and driven out to Silvertop in Shadow Valley to be disposed of. All but two of them were slaughtered and dumped down the air shaft of an abandoned mine, their bodies covered with dirt to make sure that they wouldn’t be found too soon.
“Prewitt and his top lieutenant, Ingrid Thaler, were killed, too, but their bodies weren’t dumped with the others. They were taken to the base camp at Winnetou and kept on ice for future use. I came across the ice chest that had been used to keep the corpses in cold storage at the camp but didn’t know what it was for until later tonight. It wasn’t until I found Prewitt and Thaler’s bodies in Level Two that the significance of the ice chest became clear to me. The cadavers had been frozen to disguise the true time of their death. They were going to be planted outside the mansion to be found in the aftermath of the destruction. By then the heat of the firestorm would have warmed them up.
“Prewitt and Thaler being found dead at the scene of the crime would have clinched the case for the Zealots’ responsibility for the terror strike. It would have been open and shut as far as the authorities and the public were concerned and no one need look any further into the matter. A crazy cult would have been blamed for the head shot that took down the national economy.
“Only it didn’t work out that way. The strike was thwarted and now we know the real mastermind behind the plot was you, Cabot Huntington Wright!”
Wright was squirming. He’d been unable to sit still as Jack Bauer drove home his summation. He now made a visible effort to regain his self- possession.
Wright tried another tack. “Theories are all very well, Agent Bauer — in theory. But proving them in open court is another matter. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that your allegations against me are true? How do you propose to prove them?
“Brad Oliver is dead. Larry Noone is dead. Going by your theory that I used them as middlemen and cat’s- paws to, how did you say it, get my dirty work done, how can you prove it? They can’t testify, and by your own logic they’re the only ones who could have tied me to these sordid murders and theft of Army secret weapons and legions of hired killers and whatnot. Proof. That’s what you’ve got to have and that’s what you lack.”
Jack pounced on something Wright had let slip.
