‘Maybe we’ll take the stairs,’ Flaherty said.
‘Fine by me, though it’s seven flights to the top.’ Stokes boarded the elevator and kept his thumb on the control panel to hold the doors.
With reluctance, Brooke and Flaherty stepped in beside him.
‘Good choice.’ Stokes pushed the top control button, the doors glided shut, and the elevator began its imperceptible ascent. Gospel music pumped in from overhead speakers.
‘How was your flight from Boston?’ Stokes asked.
‘Smooth sailing,’ Flaherty said. In close quarters, he noticed Stokes was wheezing. And the crisp overhead lighting highlighted a film of perspiration that masked the preacher’s face.
‘Are you CIA or FBI?’ Stokes asked.
‘Neither,’ Flaherty replied truthfully.
Stokes gave him an appraising stare. ‘I’m not surprised. Feds love to travel in pairs and wave their credentials around. Makes them feel special. You’re not the cowboy type. So let me guess … You’ve got a Boston accent’ - he thought aloud - ‘Bostonians prefer to stick to their own.’ Simple deduction led to only one conclusion: must work for the same outfit as the mercenaries who’d found the cave. ‘Therefore, I’d guess you’re with Global Security Corporation.’
‘Lucky guess,’ Flaherty replied flatly. ‘Agent Thomas Flaherty.’
‘All right, Agent Flaherty. Now we’re getting somewhere.’
The elevator came to a stop and the doors whispered open. They stepped out into a cosy antechamber trimmed in cherry wood and with modern leather furnishings and an empty reception desk.
Stokes led them around the desk and through a double door that brought them into his office.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Stokes said, indicating the wingback chairs on the guest side of his desk. ‘Something to drink? Soda, coffee, tea, water? Got the hard stuff, too, if you so desire.’
‘No, thanks,’ Flaherty said.
‘Ms Thompson?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, trying to reconcile how this charismatic televangelist had sent an assassin to kill her.
Stokes sat behind his desk and folded his hands over his chest.
‘You actually would make a handsome couple,’ Stokes admitted. ‘But why are you really here?’
Flaherty got to the point. ‘Our intelligence shows that during the past twenty-four hours you’ve been communicating with US Marine Colonel Bryce Crawford. He’s been making encrypted calls to a landline in this building. That phone there, perhaps?’ He pointed to the phone on Stokes’s desk.
‘Perhaps,’ Stokes replied.
‘So you’re aware that Colonel Crawford’s platoon is assisting an extraction effort currently under way in the Iraqi mountains?’
‘I am.’
Stokes’s candour surprised Brooke.
‘I assume you’re also aware that Frank Roselli was killed in a freak car crash today. Not far from here, in fact.’
Stokes paused before replying. ‘Very unfortunate.’
‘Funny thing is, the coroner suspects foul play since Roselli died of asphyxiation behind the wheel before careering into a telephone pole.’
‘Not a heart attack?’ Stokes said.
‘No. But I’m sure that’s what you’re gunning for,’ Flaherty said. ‘You don’t seem too broken up for a man who just lost a close friend.’
‘I’ve seen plenty of death in my day, Agent Flaherty. After a while, one gets numb to it.’
‘Seems you’ve killed plenty in your day too.’
Keeping his composure, Stokes responded with, ‘I killed lots of bad guys so kids like you could eat McDonald’s, drive SUVs and have 3.2 children. Liberty comes at a price. The only thing I’m guilty of is being a diehard patriot.’
‘But why did you try to kill
Not ready to completely tip his hand, Stokes grinned.
‘Hold on, Brooke,’ Flaherty said. ‘You see, Stokes, at roughly the same time Frank Roselli was killed, an assassin tried to kill Ms Thompson in Boston. But he died trying.’ He noticed that this titbit made Stokes’s jaw muscles ripple. ‘Our office had a tough time working through the guy’s multiple identities. Naturally, his fingerprints and dental records were non-existent too. He did, however, have a marine tattoo on his arm. A tattoo common to most guys in 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Division Expeditionary Force, in fact. So we tried running his prints through the CIA database instead. Lo and behold, we found that Corporal Lawrence Massey trained at Camp Pendleton. And wouldn’t you know it … he served under Bryce Crawford.’
‘Go on,’ Stokes encouraged, intrigued by Flaherty’s apposite deconstruction. He steepled his hands under his chin.
Flaherty was amazed how Stokes could be so cavalier given the seriousness of the accusations. ‘In 2003 Ms Thompson was hired by one Colonel Frank Roselli to assist in a covert excavation in the Iraqi mountains, a project for which the Department of Defense has no formal knowledge. The same cave, as it turns out, that Crawford is so intent on protecting. Everyone commissioned to work on that dig, present company excluded’ - he tipped his head towards Brooke - ‘has turned up dead in the past twenty-four hours. And of course there are those bone samples Roselli had brought back from the dig and studied at Fort Detrick. All those teeth. Bottom line is that a common thread pulls all this together. And it’s not a cave.’ Flaherty got up from his chair and paced over to the trophy wall, pointed to the framed picture of Stokes, Roselli and Crawford. ‘You’re a smart man, Stokes. So I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.’
Then a coughing fit struck Stokes. He snatched the pocket handkerchief and held it over his mouth. When he was done, he stared at the bloodied linen and struggled to catch his breath. Shaken, he shook his head and laughed.
‘Are you all right?’ Flaherty couldn’t help but ask, trying to avoid looking at the bloodstained handkerchief.
‘Actually I’m not okay, Agent Flaherty,’ Stokes said, mopping his chin, then chucking the vulgar handkerchief in the waste-basket beneath his desk. ‘Which makes this your lucky day.’
‘How so?’ Flaherty asked.
‘You see, I’m not just a smart man. By tomorrow, I’ll be a dead man. Which means I have no reason to hide anything from you. So you’ll get your answers. All of them. You’ll hear things you’ll wish you never heard. But first I’ll need to show you a few things to help you sew your thread.’ He rose to his feet, came around the desk and hesitated. ‘And you’re wrong about one thing.’
‘What might that be?’
‘The cave
59
Randall Stokes ushered the two guests across the office to an ordinary-looking door centred between two floor-to-ceiling bookcases. He punched a pass code into a keypad mounted on the doorframe to disengage the vault’s pneumatic locking system. He clasped the door handle, paused, and turned to Brooke and Flaherty. ‘Few have ever been in this room. This is where I keep my personal collection,’ he confided in a whisper.
When Stokes pulled the door open, a motion sensor activated the lights in the space beyond.
‘Come and see,’ Stokes said, leading the way inside.
The tantalizing possibilities had Brooke’s heart beating triple-time. She could tell Flaherty’s curiosity was equally piqued.
‘After you,’ Flaherty said to Brooke. As she slipped past him, he paused at the threshold and gave the formidable security door closer consideration. He noted the deadbolt on the door’s inside face. Giving the spacious vault a cursory once-over, he detected no other doors or windows. The air in here was thin. One word came to mind: asphyxiation.
As she moved deeper into the vault, Brooke was rendered speechless by the incredible assortment of Mesopotamian relics Stokes had amassed. Display cases and shelves filled with jaw-dropping specimens: dozens of
