And, God willing, Boyfriend would give her the promotion she so desperately craved. No. Needed.
Good thing Boyfriend couldn’t see her now.
She had wanted him to see the pain she endured—that was part of the interview. But not the aftermath. A good operative was super-resilient, able to bounce back from any form of punishment. Most American operatives didn’t have much of a threshold for pain.
This would distinguish her from much of her competition.
She kept bandages and liquid skin in her right bracelet; tweezers and a simple stitching kit in her left. She used them now, working quickly and efficiently. Time was against her. She’d already wasted a minute on her face and rearranging her hair.
Her black skirt was fine—the color masked the blood—but her pantyhose were ruined, sliced open in a dozen places by the sharp glass. They had served her well. The pantyhose weren’t ordinary; you couldn’t buy them in a plastic egg in a department store. They were a special order, reinforced by woven Kevlar. Her legs had scratches and cuts, but no major gashes.
Her blouse was similarly reinforced. The worst damage she’d taken had been to her left forearm. She had rolled up her sleeve to access her bracelet.
Perhaps she should have rolled her sleeve back down.
Like the pantyhose, the blouse had to go. She wore a sleeveless shirt over her bra, one that didn’t look strange when paired with a skirt. It would do for the remainder of the interview.
Her legs and feet were bare, but she could easily recover her shoes before she departed.
Her hair now covered her face.
Glass had been plucked out; flesh taped, bonded, or sutured; clothes wiped clean.
Girlfriend was ready for the remainder of the morning activities.
She allowed herself the luxury of staring at herself in the bathroom mirror for a few moments. She was deep within the offices of Philadelphia Living. She’d stolen a key from the publisher two months ago. She’d followed him to a bar called The Happy Rooster—how appropriate, that name. He had been drunk and had stumbled off to sing karaoke. She slipped her hand into the bag, secreted the key, and disappeared into the shadows before he’d reached the second chorus of “Afternoon Delight.” In the meantime, she’d kept the key in a compartment in her right bracelet. She was glad it had finally been of some use.
Now she looked at herself, and was stunned by the passage of time.
Ten years ago, a much scrawnier, timid version of herself would have been looking back from the mirror.
A little girl, so eager to please.
Now she was different.
She was a young woman, much stronger, much bolder.
But still, eager to please.
Some things cannot be beaten from your soul.
Girlfriend spoke to herself in Russian. Mumbling, really. Nonsense rhymes. Things she would say to herself when she was a girl.
That was enough now. No more indulgences.
Number three was still missing. He had never shown up to the meeting, yet there was evidence he had arrived at the building.
Number three might still be hiding on the floor.
Or, Ethan had been clever enough to find a way out of David’s traps.
BACK TO WORK
If you really want to succeed, you’ll have to go for it every day like I do. The big time isn’t for slackers.
—DONALD TRUMP
Twenty floors down, somebody finally spotted him.
Well slap him and call him Susan. Weren’t security guards supposed to keep an especially keen eye on the fire towers? You know, as a potential security risk? Glad to know the Department has been in such safe hands all these years. Then again, that was probably the point. A heavily armed, man-heavy, hard-core, SWAT-style building security team would be kind of a red flag to the enemy. And what was the use of running a cover business if something like that blew the cover?
Still, Ethan knew there were fiber-optic cameras up and down the friggin’ tower. Even the lowest of the low-rent skyscrapers had ’em. He waved, then saluted each with a middle finger, on the way down. Hello, asses. Notice me.
Every couple of concrete staircases, he collapsed. He didn’t know if it was the nerve-agent blast or the pen tube in his throat or the remnants of that friggin’ French martini worming its way through his mind. But Ethan felt like hell.
So he collapsed.
He didn’t feel bad about it. As long as he fell on his back, no worries. If he ever pitched forward, however, they’d find a hung-over twenty-something with a pen tube sticking out through the back of his neck. That would be a tough one to explain to his parents.
Ethan’d told them he was in law school.
For seven years now.
Maybe they didn’t know how long law school took.
By floor sixteen, however, everything changed. Ethan felt an awesome weight on his head and shoulders. His eyes felt heavier than ever. When he started to pitch forward toward a cold slab of landing, it took every last bit of strength to buck himself backwards. Must … land … on … back….
Absurd, wasn’t it, how your most basic needs could change within an hour?
Must … eat … Big … Mac.
Must … land … on … back … so … pen … tube … doesn’t … kill … me.
Ethan’s wish was granted.
He landed on his back.
And gurgled loudly before he passed out.
Maybe it was just his nerve-agent-riddled imagination, but as he drifted into unconsciousness—and Ethan knew this was going to be one of those long-haul blackouts, not one of those wimpy pass-out sessions that lasted only a few seconds—he thought he heard footsteps pounding toward him. A fist on a steel door. Someone saying, Is anyone in there? The faint sound of a metal door latch twisting to one side. Another footstep, fainter still, on the concrete landing above.
And the final bit of sensory input, just before Ethan grabbed the heavy black curtain by the corner, folded it up over himself, and rolled over to one side:
You’d better come down to sixteen, Vincent.
Molly flipped open the compartment on her bracelet that held the ear receiver. She flipped the micro-size ON switch, then pushed it into her ear canal. The receiver was pretuned to pick up all internal radio contact. She didn’t expect to hear anything useful, but it was possible that Ethan had made it out of the building and was calling for backup. If so, she’d hear the security chatter. Not a huge worry. She’d just have to speed the assignment up. Hope that her reaction time would impress Boyfriend.
She’d been wearing the ear receiver for only a few minutes when she heard:
You’d better come down to sixteen, Vincent.
Static.
What’s going on?
Static.
I’ve got a guy down here you should see.
Static.
Let me guess. He has cuts all over his hands from pushing through a window.
Static.
No. He’s unconscious and he’s got a pen sticking out of his throat.
Ethan.
The scream made sense. Ethan must have felt something was off, and tried to flee early. Probably had enough sense to avoid the elevators—they were easier to control or sabotage or both. But he didn’t have enough sense to realize that a man who would sabotage an elevator would do the same thing to a fire tower. That miscalculation had earned him a blast of weaponized sarin.
Molly knew the effects of sarin; she’d briefly trafficked on behalf of an Afghan warlord years ago. And Ethan probably had enough sense to know what was happening. Probably felt his skin burn and his eyes bleed and his throat start to close, and he had been smart enough to attend to his throat first. Bleeding eyes will hurt—but a lack of air will kill you.