After waiting for ninety seconds exactly, Cruz exited the room, turned right again, then took two lefts and went through imaginary double doors into the largest space yet, so big he hadn’t bothered to tape it all in. He made his way toward the far-right corner, where a second and a third mannequin stood. In his mind, Cruz imagined the place packed and him shifting and slipping his way forward.
Cruz stopped fifteen feet to the right of the mannequins and waited, a smile on his face, his left hand poised as if resting on the shoulder of someone in front of him.
Cruz laughed, bobbed his head, extended his right hand in welcome, and then snapped his fingers back sharply. The web stretched and triggered the second single-shot gas derringer. It fired with a thud, and the nylon bullet penetrated the mannequin’s chest and knocked it to the ground.
A moment later, he fired the left-hand derringer at the rear mannequin and hit it square in the chest.
Cruz clicked the stopwatch on his phone and saw that nine minutes and eleven seconds had elapsed. He started the clock again, stayed cool as he backed up, slow, deliberate, then turned and headed back through the maze the way he’d come.
In the long hallway, Cruz broke into a slow jog. When he reached the mannequin with the hole in its neck, he stopped for fifteen seconds, then moved on, running fast now, and was soon back at the entrance to the schematic.
Cruz stopped the clock; his hard breathing left clouds pluming in the frigid air. Six minutes and fourteen seconds coming back. Fifteen minutes and twenty-five seconds total.
That will do it, he thought, and he stared at the door that led outside the factory.
Cruz shook off the idea that he was ready and told himself to run the route at least twenty more times. He had enough time to practice until he could do the whole thing blindfolded or in the dark. Before resetting the stopwatch and starting again, he decided he would do both.
Chapter 39
Ned Mahoney pulled over at the curb and pointed diagonally across a busy street past a dingy strip mall to the Happy Pines Motel in suburban Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The Happy Pines was one of those no-tell joints you could rent by the hour, day, week, or month. A thirty-unit, two-story affair, the motel was badly in need of renovation, and the rain and gray skies made the place look even drearier than it was.
But according to Mahoney, a woman named Martina Rodoni bearing a Eurozone passport had registered at the Happy Pines two days before. Even though our contact at the CIA said there was zero chance Varjan would use the identity again, we decided to drive out to see if they were one and the same.
I said, “What are the odds she’s here?”
Mahoney turned off the car, said, “The clerk I spoke with said she’s in and out and hasn’t let them service the room.”
For a moment, I thought about Kasimov, the Russian, and how he’d been holed up at his hotel while his men put on disguises to go out on clandestine missions.
But I tucked that away and focused on the motel parking lot, seeing aged Ford pickups and beater Chevy sedans with tailpipes held on by coat hangers. Nothing newer. Nothing that screamed rental. Then again, Kristina Varjan could have parked on the street or in the alley behind the motel, where Mahoney had a squad of junior FBI agents moving into position.
When they radioed us that they were ready, we spilled out of the car, all of us dressed in jeans, work boots, and oversize rain jackets that hid our Kevlar vests. Remembering what we’d been told about the Hungarian assassin, I wondered if I was wearing enough armor.
As we crossed the street, I said, “You don’t find it odd she used the same name she used coming into the country? Edith, that spook we spoke with at the CIA, said she switches identities constantly.”
Mahoney shrugged. “She didn’t know she’d been spotted, so she stuck with it.”
We went into the office where we were met by the owner, Vash Yasant, a young, nervous Indian immigrant who’d bought the motel three months before.
“What’s this about?” Yasant said. “What’s she done?”
“Let’s make sure of something first,” Mahoney said, and on the counter he put a still from the surveillance footage at Dulles airport.
“Is that her?” I asked.
Yasant studied it, stroking his chin, then nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s her. I’d swear on it. Especially that bag. She had it with her when she checked in.”
“She have a car?”
“She said she came by Metro and bus.”
“Room?” Mahoney said.
“Number fifteen, right above us,” Yasant said, pointing upward. “She wanted a room facing the street.”
I sighed. “She saw us coming in.”
“If she was looking,” Mahoney said.
“She went out two hours ago,” the motel manager said. “What has this Martina Rodoni done?”
“Nothing so far,” I said. “We just want to talk to her.”
“I will take you to her room,” Yasant said. “I’ll bring the master key.”
I thought that was a mistake, but Mahoney said, “You’ll stay well behind us, and you will move only when told to.”
“Yes, sir!” the innkeeper cried, and he stood up straight.
“Yes, what?” his wife said, coming out from behind a curtain. She was dressed in a colorful sari and was very pregnant.
Her husband said, “Rani, these men are with the FBI, and that woman up in fifteen, she is very, very dangerous. They have asked me to assist them with the key!”
Mrs. Yasant looked at her husband, at us, and then at her husband again. “You will do no such thing, Vash! The baby comes any day, and you cannot go playing policeman!”
The innkeeper looked ready to argue, but Mahoney said, “On second thought, Mr. Yasant, your wife’s probably right. Why don’t you just give us the key? We’ll drop it on the way out.”
The father-to-be looked chagrined and deflated, but he handed us the key from a hook on the wall behind him.
“You will report what you find up there?” he asked. “This is my place, yes?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
We went out of the door and drew weapons and put them in our raincoat pockets before climbing the near staircase and walking back toward the main drag and room 15. It was mid-morning, no new hourly customers, and the long-termers had gone off to scavenge their lives.
Every room we passed was quiet. Even room 15, which had a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the door handle.
Mahoney stood to the side of the door, looked at the window and tight curtains beyond it, then knocked sharply.
No answer. After thirty seconds, Mahoney knocked again.
Again, no answer.
Mahoney took his pistol out. I did the same. He fitted the key in the lock and turned it.
I pushed the door inward, revealing twin beds, unused, still crisply made. Dead center of the bed deeper into the room was the same roller bag we’d seen Varjan wheeling in the Dulles airport security footage.
Beside it was a cheap cell phone.
Mahoney went over to the bag, but I stopped him.
“Why leave it like this?” I said. “Why not put it in the closed closet?”
Ned did not have time to answer before the cell phone on the tacky bedspread began to ring and buzz.
I was closer, so I picked it up and answered on speaker.
“Hello?” I said. “Kristina? Kristina Varjan?”
There was a moment before Varjan said, “Good-bye. Whoever you are.”
The phone went dead.
My eyes darted to the bag.
“Run!”
We spun and bolted toward the open door. I was behind Mahoney and one step onto the balcony when the phone in my hand began to ring with a different ringtone.
I threw myself completely out of the room a split second before the bomb went off behind us, blowing out the windows and blasting the metal door off its hinges.