“What news?”
“About the terrorist.”
“Depends on how new the broadcast is.”
Tom rapidly brought Sam up to speed about the continued lockdown, urgent government directives to house commuters and tourists around the city, and to start clearing the streets of their cars so emergency vehicles could keep moving and panicked parents could get their kids home from school.
He also told Sam about Congresswoman Bledes demise, and how the media reported that the rest of her party had been made secure in a bunker beneath Capitol.
Sam asked, “What about the death toll from the explosions?”
“There weren’t any.”
“Are you kidding me, the entire city shook!”
“Yeah, three buildings were leveled.”
“Really, so why weren’t there any lives lost?” Sam asked.
“All three buildings were set for demolition next week.”
“Our terrorist simply sped up the process?”
Tom nodded. “It would appear so.”
“Well that proves it.”
“What?”
“Our terrorist doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“And then, if you can believe it,” Tom said, “he decided to give proof that he had a nuclear bomb in the city.”
“How?” Sam asked.
“He dropped off a plutonium rod. In the trunk of a car.”
Sam’s suspicion about the terrorist’s cryptic message was confirmed.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No. I heard it was sealed up pretty tight.”
Sam’s phone rang.
He and Tom looked at each other. Tom had been able to get into the city and find Sam — but the real test of whether they’d fooled the terrorist was now.
The disguised voice said, “You’ve found a friend, Sam Reilly.”
Sam made a face, shaking his head at Tom. Tom pressed his lips together and started looking around them, trying to spot anyone watching.
Sam was tempted to make a smartass remark, but the last time he’d let himself run at the mouth, it hadn’t ended so well.
“That’s three times you’ve pushed me.”
Sam bit back another remark.
“You’re not very good at playing by the rules, are you?”
If he didn’t say something soon, the terrorist was going to blow up something else just to prove that he could still force Sam to play along. “Depends on what’s at stake.”
The terrorist chuckled.
Tom’s phone rang.
“Tell your friend to answer that.”
“Go ahead, Tom.”
Tom’s eyebrows lifted in the rearview mirror. He turned up the volume and answered, holding the phone across the top of the steering wheel. “Hey, Elise. What’s up?”
“Tom. I’ve gone over the code you sent. The easiest, most obvious interpretation was that address that I gave you. But there’s more.”
“What is it?”
Elise paused, as if she had heard something odd in Tom’s voice.
“The name of a ship that was scuttled off the coast of New York in 1996. The Clarion Call.”
Sam frowned, but said nothing. Tom opened his mouth, but Sam raised a hand to cut off the logical question, shaking his head. He knew that ship.
Knew of it, at least.
He spoke into the burner phone. “We have your next clue.”
The voice growled mechanically, “You had to cheat to do it.”
“What else did you expect?”
“Get rid of your friend, Sam Reilly, or I will. I want him out of my city.”
The call cut off.
Sam let out a breath. “The game’s up, Tom. He knows you’re here somehow. And he wants you gone. Drop me off here and I’ll walk to the World War II Memorial. He says he’ll let you leave the city — apparently, he doesn’t want you getting in the way. He says he wants you out of his city. See if you can track down the location of where the Clarion Call was scuttled and start moving the Maria Helena in place. We’re going to need to dive that wreck if we’re ever going to find answers to this game.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Clarion Call had been one of Global Shipping’s earliest ships. Sam’s grandfather, Michael Reilly, had bought it after Global One but before the firm had officially made its way out of the red and into the black.
At the time, the purchase had been considered risky. Not just because of the firm’s finances, but because the ship had previously been owned by a Finnish black-market weapons trader, with ties to the U.S.S.R.
In other words, a smuggler’s ship.
According to family legend, it was the first Reilly ship to have a secret compartment built into the hold. It wasn’t used for smuggling arms or the secret human cargoes that had been rumored under the Finn, but works of art, antiquities, gold bars, and more.
Secrets.
Sam had his suspicions about his family’s relationship to the U.S. government. He, himself, had assisted the Secretary of Defense on a number of projects, and he knew that the CIA was involved somehow.
The CIA was like a fungus. Once you let it in, it grew everywhere.
He had thought that it was James Reilly who had first entangled the family in such clandestine matters, but now that Global One and Clarion Call had been brought into this business, he was starting to reconsider.
What if their connections went back further?
Global One had been taken to a family property along the coast of Maine, dismantled, and scrapped. The fixtures from the captain’s cabin had been moved into the house and recreated in a guest room. One of the smaller sea boats had been brought onto the grounds and turned into part of a children’s playground. The name had been cut out of the side of the ship and hung in a place of honor over the fireplace.
But the Clarion Call had been scuttled. Sunk in deep water — 700 or more feet down, to be exact.
Gone without a trace.
As if it contained secrets that his grandfather had wanted to bury forever.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The taxi pulled into the curb and Sam got out.
As Tom pulled away, Sam noticed the tug of additional weight in his left front pocket. He stopped to check the terrorist’s burner phone. No new messages. He placed the phone back in his left pocket, noting the presence of a second phone.
Tom had taken a risk.
Sam approved.
In all likelihood, Sam’s position and conversations were being picked up through the terrorist’s burner phone. Tracked by GPS, the terrorist could have set it to transmit everything it picked up even when it appeared to be “off.”
Sam had to get rid of the phone or block it. But how could he do that without the terrorist knowing he’d done so?
He couldn’t even hand the phone off to a passer-by and offer them a twenty for walking the phone around the block while he made a few calls. The terrorist would hear.
Sam looked around. He was on a residential block lined with town houses. Single garages at the end of driveways, and old-growth trees. People sat on the front stairs and spoke to each other in low, worried voices.
A group of kids, enjoying the relative lack of traffic, played in the street. A trash can overflowed with paper bags and cups. Flowerboxes sat on the tops of wrought-iron fences, blooming with blue and pink hydrangeas, red peonies, and gladiolus. The wind picked up, tossing a few leaves along the sidewalks.
Sam waited until the pair of kids got into a fight over a dog, then dropped the burner phone face-down in one of the flowerboxes. The black plastic faded almost invisibly into the dark soil.
He kept walking.