“Exactly.”
Brooke nodded. “All right, so here’s what we’re going to do. Doyle and this Reno guy — get over to Novak’s place and see where that leads. Meanwhile I want Hawke and one of my agents to get over to the Smithsonian and check out just what the hell Frank Watkins is talking about.”
Suddenly they were on the go again. Not for the first time, Hawke found himself being grateful that Lea and the others were nowhere near this mess. The thought of her safe and sound on Elysium was of some comfort, at least.
The six men all had Secret Service ID and were armed with SIG Sauer P229s. They arrived at the Smithsonian a few moments after President Kimble’s telephone call to Director Watkins, and moments later were ushered through the main gates and shown to the elevator.
As the elevator descended to Archive 7, no one spoke until the little light above the door indicated they had arrived. Then one of the men said: “Let’s make this quick.”
They moved to the security team, where Captain Aaron Reznik looked at the paperwork. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In nearly twenty years in the US Army he’d never seen anything like this before.
“I’m going to need to show this to the Colonel. Wait here.”
Reznik ordered the guards to keep the men outside the archive while he made a phone call.
“Sir, I think you need to see this.”
“What is it, Reznik?”
“It’s an Executive Order, sir, signed by the President of the United States.”
Colonel Prescott was unmoved. “That’s fine, Reznik. I’m on my way.”
Reznik hung up the phone and told the men to wait. Two minutes later the heavy, metal door swung open and the tall, slim figure of Colonel Douglas Prescott appeared in the half-light. “Follow me,” was all he said.
Reznik and the group of men obeyed in diligent silence as they followed the senior army man through the doorway and down a long corridor. Their footsteps echoed loudly off the brushed aluminum walls and ceiling as they walked to the end where a second door awaited them.
Prescott punched in a long keycode and the second door swung open to reveal a large warehouse, several storeys underground, built into the bedrock beneath the city itself. If any of the men were impressed by it, they didn’t show it.
“Where is the object?” one of them asked.
“Over there,” Prescott said quietly, his breath showing in the cold damp air of the storage facility. The whole place was full of boxes stacked up to create what looked almost like a maze. He pointed to the far wall, which contained hundreds of what looked like very large safety deposit boxes. “Follow me.”
They walked across the warehouse to the far wall in silence. Something made Reznik glance over his shoulder but nothing was there except the USSS Agents. As he moved along behind the Colonel he read the codes and descriptions on the locked doors of the boxes… X193745-4: ARK OF THE COVENANT… X375837-1: POSEIDON’S TRIDENT… X422387-0: ULTRA-CLASSIFIED.
Reznik shivered. “This whole place creeps me out.”
Prescott shot him a look. “That’s enough, Captain!”
The Colonel tapped in another long keycode and the large door clicked open. He swung it fully open and walked inside.
The men swarmed inside the small room. “We’ll take it from here, Colonel.”
They moved ahead of Prescott and Reznik and formed a huddle.
“What are you men doing there?” Prescott said nervously. He reached for his gun as the men opened the heavy safe door at the end of the room and extracted something from within it.
The agents turned to reveal they were now wearing gas masks and fitting long black NBC gloves on their hands. The man who had spoken back in the elevator was now holding the most dreadful thing Reznik had ever seen, but the young American officer had no time to react. A second after his eyes settled on the horror before him, he felt himself stiffening. His breathing became more labored and now he was unable to move his legs, or even call out for help.
His desperate eyes moved just enough to see Colonel Prescott going through the same terrible ordeal — clutching at his throat but unable to move or even scream out in terror.
A wave of ice-cold panic rushed over Reznik as he realized the Colonel was turning to stone, and was now nothing more than a statue. It had happened right before his eyes, but the realization that the same thing was happening to him, mercifully, came too late, and his world came to an end before he knew that he too had turned to stone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lea checked into the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel on Dublin’s Golden Lane. She had friends in the city, but they weren’t part of this side of her life, and her remaining family was distant and scattered along the west coast.
She flicked the TV to a news channel and watched the terrible news flooding out of America. It looked like the attacks were restricted to Washington DC, which was a small mercy, but they still had no idea where the President was — or even if he was dead or alive. She knew Jack Brooke would be up to his neck in it and she hoped Alex Reeve was safe. For now, at least, there was nothing else she could do.
She glanced at her phone — no messages. She considered calling Hawke. Where was he in the world? She had no idea. She picked up the phone and began to dial his number, but then thought better of it. He hadn’t called her, after all. She put the phone down and watched people trundling up and down the street beneath their umbrellas.
The light was beginning to fade now, and the night approached. It was all very familiar. Every time she returned to Ireland it was like she’d never been away, but at the same time she felt like she was a little more different every time she came back. She glanced at her watch and saw it was almost time to meet Devlin.
When Eden had told her about McNamara’s murder, she knew she’d need help when she got back to Ireland. Daniel Devlin was her old commanding officer from the Army Ranger Wing. He was a good man but a better soldier, and these days he spent his time propping up the bar in Flynn’s on Harry Street.
She hadn’t seen him for more years than she could remember, and she wondered what she was about to walk into. She’d heard stories about his fall from grace, but taken them with a good pinch of salt. Now she was about to see him face to face her concerns grew stronger, but she had nowhere else to run. He was the only person she could trust to help her, and she just hoped that he was going to be up to it.
She made the short walk to the pub in less than ten minutes and as expected, the former commandant was halfway through a Guinness and regaling the half-empty room with his old army exploits. She wondered if he could stand, let alone help her track down McNamara’s killers… but then she stopped herself. Men like Devlin were hardened Special Operations military men and she had watched him do whatever it took on missions from Somalia to Kosovo. She was certain he could handle anything thrown at him tonight.
She approached him from behind, looking up at the muted TV set bringing the punters yet more news of the chaos unfolding in Washington DC.
“So how many’s that you’ve sunk, Danny?”
Devlin turned and his face lit up. “So you really did make it back home, Mrs Bale?”
“Sure I did… someone had to drag you out of here, you know. You drink too much — you know that, don’t you, Danny?”
Devlin shrugged his shoulders. “I drink to hide from myself, Lea.”
“Does it work?”
“No. I’m too good at finding things.”
“Same old tosspot, I see — and it’s not Mrs Bale anymore… we divorced.”
“Am I sorry to hear it?”
“No.”
Devlin laughed and clapped his hand on her shoulder. He ordered two more pints of Guinness up at the bar while Lea secured a table in the corner. She watched him at the bar, recalling the night they had spent together all those years ago in this very city.