Passing inspection, Kowalski was waved out into the Mall.
Gray pushed out the door and met the palm of one of the guards.
Arms up! he was ordered. The command was bolstered as another guard leveled a weapon at his chest.
Hands searched him swiftly. From head to toe. Luckily, he had stashed his ankle holster and weapon back in the gallery's trash can.
Still
Open your bag!
Gray knew there was no way he could resist. He dropped the bag and unzipped it.
He pulled out the only thing it held: a small electric sander. The rest of the bag was shaken to make sure it was empty then Gray was waved out of the way.
As he passed the barking dog, Gray noted a man standing to the side, dressed in a suit. No body armor. He had a Bluetooth headset fixed to his ear. He was barking orders, plainly in charge. Gray also remembered seeing him at the dock of the natural history museum.
Passing him, Gray spotted the credentials affixed to his jacket pocket.
DIA.
Defense Intelligence Agency.
Gray noted the name in bold type: MAPPLETHORPE.
Before his attention was noticed, Gray continued out into the Mall. He circumspectly joined the others well away from the museum and the confusion, just a trio of workers reuniting. Gray retaped his radio's throat mike under his jaw. He attempted to raise Sigma Command.
Finally, a familiar voice responded.
Gray! Where are you?
It was Painter Crowe.
No time to explain, Gray said. I need an unmarked car at the corner of
Fourteenth and Constitution.
It'll be there.
As he headed toward the extraction point, Gray held out a hand toward Kowalski.
The large man passed over one of the gallons of paint. Just carrying the thing creeps me out.
Gray accepted the paint can with relief. Submerged at the bottom lay hidden the strange skull. Gray had chanced that no one would explore too closely the depths of the thick latex paint, especially carried by a worker whose coveralls were splashed with the same paint. Once the skull was cleaned, maybe they'd finally have some answers.
We made it, Elizabeth said with a ring of relief.
Gray did not comment.
He knew this was far from over.
Halfway around the world, a man awoke in a dark, windowless room. A few small lights shone from a neighboring bank of equipment. He recognized the blink and beat of an EKG monitor. His nose caught a whiff of disinfectant and iodine.
Dazed, he sat up too quickly. The few lights swam, like darting fish in a midnight sea.
The sight stirred something buried. A memory.
lights in dark water
He struggled to sit up, but his elbows were secured to the railings of the bed.
A hospital bed. He could not even pull his arms free of the bedsheet. Weak, he lay back down.
Have I been in an accident?
As he took a breath, he sensed someone watching him, a prickling warning.
Turning his head, he vaguely made out the outline of a doorway. A dark shape stirred at the threshold. A shoe scraped on tile. Then a furtive whisper. In a foreign language. Russian, from the sound of it.
Who's there? he asked hoarsely. His throat burned, as if he had swallowed acid.
Silence. The darkness went deathly still.
He waited, holding his breath.
Then a flash of light bloomed near the doorway. It blinded, stung. He instinctively tried to raise a hand to shield his eyes, forgetting his arms were still secured to the bed.
He blinked away the glare. The flash came from a tiny penlight. The shine revealed three small figures slinking into his room. They were all children. A boy twelve or thirteen held the light and shielded a girl maybe a year or two younger. They were followed by a smaller boy who could be no more than eight years old. They approached his bed as if nearing a lion's den.
The taller boy, plainly the leader, swung to the younger one. He whispered in
Russian, unintelligible but plainly a concerned inquiry. He called the younger boy a name. It sounded like Peter. The child nodded, pointed to the bed, and mumbled in Russian with a ring of certainty to his words.
Stirring in the bed, he finally rasped out, Who are you? What do you want?
The taller boy shushed him with a glare and glanced toward the open doorway. The children then split up and crossed around the bed. The leader and the girl began freeing the straps that bound his limbs. The smaller boy held back, eyes wide.
Like his companions, the child was dressed in loose pants and a dark gray turtleneck sweater with a vest over it, along with a matching cable-knit hat.
The boy stared straight at him, unnervingly so, as if reading something on his forehead.
With his arms freed, he sat up. The room swam again, but not as much as before.
He ran his hand over his head, trying to steady himself. Under his palm, he found his scalp smooth and a prickly line of sutures behind his left ear, confirming this supposition. Had he been shaved for surgery? Still, as his palm ran across the smooth top of his head, the sensation felt somehow familiar, natural.
Before he could ponder this contradiction, he pulled his other hand into view.
Or rather tried to. His other arm ended in a stump at the wrist. His heart thudded harder in shock. He must've been in a horrible accident. His remaining hand trailed across the tender sutures behind his ear, as if trying to read
Braille. Obviously a recent surgery. But his wrist was calloused and long healed. Still, he could almost sense his missing fingers. Felt them curl into a phantom fist of frustration.
The taller boy stepped back from the bed. Come, he said in English.
From the clandestine nature of his release and furtive actions of his liberators, he sensed some amount of danger. Dressed in a thin hospital gown, he rolled his feet to the cold tiled floor. The room tilted with the motion.
Whoa
A small groan of nausea escaped him.
Hurry, the taller boy urged.
Wait, he said, gulping air to settle his stomach. Tell me what is going on.
No time. The tall boy stepped away. He was gangly, all limbs. He attempted to sound authoritative, but the cracking in his voice betrayed both his youth and his terror. He touched his chest, introducing himself. Menia zavut Konstantin.
You must come. Before it is too late.
But I I don't
Da. You are confused. For now, know your zavut is Monk Kokkalis.
Making a half-scoffing noise, he shook his head. Monk Kokkalis. The name meant nothing to him. As he attempted to voice his disagreement, to correct the mistake, he realized he had no ammunition, only a blank where his name normally resided. His heart clutched into a strained knot. Panic narrowed his vision. How could that be? He fingered the sutures again. Had he taken a blow to the head? A concussion? He sought for any memory beyond waking up here in this room, but there was nothing, a wasteland.
What had happened?
He stared again at the EKG monitor still connected to his chest by taped lead wires. And over in the corner stood a blood pressure monitor and an I. V. pole.
So if he could name what lay around him, why couldn't he remember his own name?
