“Sante Monica.”
Nina didn’t hesitate. She pulled her car up to the little postwar bungalow on Twenty-sixth Street below Pico, walked up the little path, and kicked in the door. She didn’t throw around that much weight, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in technique. Her foot connected right where the bolt should be, and the door flew inward, banging against the wall, and Nina was already inside, scanning the room over the top of her muzzle.
Diana Christie ran halfway into the room, startled by the noise. Her left arm was in a sling and she held a small semi-automatic in her right hand, but she didn’t raise it. When she saw Nina, her eyes filled with fear.
“Drop the weapon!” Nina ordered.
Diana did so immediately. She held up her good arm and backed away from Nina. “Oh god,” she said in sheer terror. “Get out of here. They’ll know! They’ll know!” She sounded on the verge of hysterics.
“Down on the ground!” Nina demanded, advancing steadily.
“No, please, you don’t understand—”
“Get on the ground, now!” Nina was almost within arm’s reach. Suddenly, Diana Christie bolted. She ran out of the living room and down a hallway, then through another door. Nina followed a few steps behind, and they ended up in a small, cramped garage, with Diana on the far end pressed against the door, and Nina at the interior door, her sights level on Christie’s chest.
“Get out of here!” Christie pleaded, tears streaming down her face. “Get out of here!”
Nina was about to respond, but a bomb went off, and a gruesome image of bright lights and blood splashed across her retina.
Mulrooney heard Michael enter his office. He could always tell it was Michael by the sound, or rather, the near-lack of it. Michael’s footsteps reminded him of the padding of cat’s paws from his childhood.
“Big day, Michael,” Mulrooney said.
“Very big, Your Eminence,” the security man agreed.
Mulrooney noticed that Michael had lost some of his gleam. There had always been a sort of sheen around the man, a halo, for lack of a better word. Now it was tarnished. “Is everything all right with our… problem?”
Michael shrugged uncertainly, a gesture as uncommon as the fatigue that showed on his face. “I believe so, Your Eminence, but I can’t be sure. Dortmund is no longer a problem, and of course Giggs is gone. Collins is also dead.”
The Cardinal felt no remorse. “Monsters all. If it weren’t to protect the church, I’d have thrown them out myself. Is there any… are there any witnesses?”
The security man said, “No one firsthand, Your Eminence. I don’t know what Father Collins might have told the police officer, but at least Collins himself cannot testify to anything.” Michael could not bring himself to mention the other man who knew so much about the abhorrent acts of the clergy, and the church’s attempts to cover them up: that bastard Yasin, whom Michael would deal with someday.
Mulrooney nodded with satisfaction. “Then you’ve done as much as you can, Michael. Thank you. You are a soldier for the true church.”
Mulrooney said, and Michael received, the phrase
“It will be over soon, Your Eminence,” Michael promised. “But on that count, I have a favor to ask of you. You must excuse yourself from the Unity Conference. Make an appearance at the reception, but then beg off.”
Mulrooney almost passed over the request, disregarded it, but it stung him after the fact, like the butterscotch taste of whiskey that burns the throat a moment later. He stopped — his every muscle locked into place where he sat, as he might have done if a wild dog had suddenly appeared in his office, growling at him.
“Michael, what is going on?” he asked.
Michael had been preparing for this conversation, but in no version had it seemed satisfactory. “Your Eminence, there is nothing for you to know. Or, rather, there are two things. First, that you must be out of the reception hall a few minutes after it begins. Second, that everything I do, I do to protect the true church.”
Mulrooney studied Michael, and felt in that moment that although the man had worked for him for several years, and that (though the Cardinal would barely admit it to himself) Michael had done many unscrupulous deeds at his request, he didn’t really know the man at all. “Have you… are you going to do something?”
“Not me, Your Eminence,” he said matter-offactly. “But a thing will be done. The less you know, the better.”
With that, Michael turned and walked out, leaving the Cardinal of Los Angeles to wrestle with a conscience he had ignored for many, many years.
Nina Myers picked herself up off the floor. She could hear nothing but a loud ringing in her ears.
The garage was on fire. She saw the smoke and the flames, but she couldn’t hear the noise. If fire trucks were on their way, she had no idea. The garage— what she could see of it through clouds of dust and smoke — had been blasted by the bomb. Chunks of wall had been blown away, and the big garage door was twisted on its hinges.
She knew she’d been unconscious, but she didn’t know for how long. Her mind had constructed a fantasy of sleep and vacation. Was she on vacation? Had she been sleeping? No, she didn’t sleep in a garage. A bomb. A bomb had exploded. She’d been concussed. She might be seriously injured. Nina’s eyes swam in and out of focus, so from a kneeling position she patted her hands up and down her body. She felt skin, and clothes, and wetness that was probably her blood. She was cut! No, not her blood. Diana Christie’s blood, splattered all over her. Diana had been blown up.
Weirdly, it occurred to Nina that Jack Bauer had first come to CTU the night before after being nearly blown up. Shit, she was coming in second to him already. She felt professional jealousy rear its ugly head.
Nina grabbed hold of something sturdy — a tabletop? — and pulled herself to her feet. She shook her head but still couldn’t see, so she felt her way to a wall, and then to the interior door. She had to get out. She had to stop the ringing in her head. And she was sure there was something important about the bomb that had just gone off. Something she couldn’t quite draw into the clear part of her brain…
Jon Boorstein liked his brand-new BMW 730i. He liked ordering Armani (in the same waist size for the last seven years, thanks to his trainer Gunnar). He liked Cannes and he liked the after-parties at the Oscars.
He did not, however, like his job. His job was the price he paid for the good things in life.
“But what a fuckin’ price,” he muttered as he glided his Beemer through the self-opening gate of Mark Gelson’s Malibu home.
He hopped out and walked through the door, which was opened by Lucia, without breaking stride. He didn’t look at the elaborately carved crucifix hanging on the wall — the thing always gave him the creeps. Walking by that thing was about the only time Boorstein ever appreciated his Judaism, which forbade graven images.
Mark was sitting on the deck overlooking the sand and the Pacific, reading the
Boorstein had tried, a year or two ago, to encourage Gelson to move past his
“Hey, Jon,” Gelson said, as though surprised to see him. “What’s up?”
“Headlines,” Boorstein said, sitting down. “They’re up all over the place, and they’re talking about you. But not the way we want.”
“Don’t PR guys say there’s no such thing as bad publicity?”
“They do say that,” Boorstein agreed irritably. “But they don’t have clients who talk about blowing people
