I had been trying to get my conscious self into the protective headspace that Doctor Rivers and I had worked on, but without success. This trigger must have been buried deep, giving it greater power over my actions. I tried again and again to break free. I roamed around the statesmen, keeping them in a ring around the Director and fighting off anyone who tried to intervene.
And then Karen came to me. She rose up like a goddess, dressed in a long white robe. She was cradling our son in her arms and there was a tender smile on her lips. She looked at me, looked into my eyes, and I heard her voice. She spoke words of love that brooked no argument and I heard myself respond to them. Love beyond death…
In a blur of movement, I found myself back in my body and back in control. Now I was pulling the Russians and Chinese away, shouting at them to run. Ahead, I saw the Director look up, his eyes wide. Arthur Bimsdale was behind him, still struggling to get past the confused statesmen. I pushed myself between the Russian energy minister and the European President. The Director was right in front of me, his hands holding two white plastic bottles. One of them was almost empty. A beatific expression came over the old man’s face as he held it toward me.
What was he saying? Too late, I saw a wisp of smoke or fumes escape the container as I threw myself over him in the best smothering tackle I had ever made.
There was a flash and a bang, and I went speedily to another place.
‘You lose,’ he had been saying. ‘They’ll miss you.’
Thirty-Seven
Rudi Crane was across the conference hall. He had been watching the FBI Director’s diplomatic activities and wondering what the former admiral was doing. He knew him, of course-had known him when he was still in the Navy and Hercules Solutions was nothing more than a small operator trying to muscle into the private security business. There had been rumors that the admiral was a CIA man, but that seemed unlikely, given his present position. When the group of statesman became a herd of confused sheep, with the Englishman Matt Wells running around like a sheepdog, Crane had got even more curious. Then fighting broke out and he decided to keep his distance, signaling the retreat to his executives. He didn’t want the company to be part of any unpleasantness, an approach subsequently justified by the muffled explosion which brought chaos to the entire area.
Retiring to the entrance hall, where no one was being allowed in or out, Rudi Crane thought about what he had witnessed. Had someone made an attempt on the FBI Director’s life? Certainly, Wells had been behaving strangely. Could one of the foreigners have brought explosives into the UN’s neutral domain?
The only thing to be said for the episode was that it could be spun for the good of security companies like his. If Hercules Solutions had been handling matters, no one would have been allowed to smuggle explosives in. It struck him that the whole thing might be a welcome distraction from what had gone on in Texas. Although there was nothing to tie H.S. with the camp down there, he didn’t like loose ends. The FBI would be working on the bodies of the assassins he had hired and, no doubt, their identities would eventually be uncovered. There was no link to him, but he would have preferred a tidier ending to his strategy of disrupting Jack Thomson’s activities and gaining possession of the conditioning program. Who knew what had happened to that? He suspected his former collaborator would have made sure law enforcement wouldn’t find it. There would be other government agencies after it, as well.
He took a seat in the entrance hall and watched as media people ran past, cameras and hairstyles wobbling. On reflection, he didn’t regret the so-called Hitler’s Hitman killings-the name had been suggested off the record to a journalist by one of his PR people. The assassin had followed their instructions and Thomson had been duly pressured. The unknown quantity had been Matt Wells. He had never expected the FBI to use a murder suspect in an investigation, especially not one with a grudge. Had the Director known about that? The fact that the lead investigator, Peter Sebastian, had been found dead was, at the very least, convenient for some people.
No, he would go back to the apartment and pray for a better day tomorrow. He should have known that cuddling up to politicians would be a waste of time. Hard-hearted businessmen were much easier to deal with.
Which reminded him: he needed to sign off on that stewardess’s promotion-what was her name again? She had the soul of a sinner, but her mouth was a miracle.
To my surprise, I came round quickly. I was still lying on top of the Director and the same besuited legs, both vertical and horizontal, were in my close vicinity. There was a foul smell in the air and Arthur Bimsdale’s hair had been scorched. Otherwise, he seemed okay. He sat up as I studied him, my eyes stinging, and looked toward me.
‘Are you all right?’ His voice sounded tinny.
‘Yeah.’ My own voice was weird. I was probably lucky I could hear anything.
‘What about the Director?’
I put my hands on either side of the old man’s head and levered myself off him. His face and hair had turned black in the blast, most of which had been directed back at him when I crashed into him.
‘Chemical bomb,’ Bimsdale said redundantly. ‘The proportions must have been slightly off. We were lucky.’
‘He wasn’t.’
The Director’s blue eyes were wide open, the whites crisscrossed by broken blood vessels. A piece of sharp plastic from one of the containers had penetrated his throat. Now I was standing, I realized that the clothing on the upper part of my body was drenched in arterial blood. People all around were gasping and raising their hands to their mouths.
I took off my jacket and accepted a blanket from a paramedic.
‘What happened to you?’ Bimsdale asked.
‘Trigger,’ I said, in a low voice. ‘I fought it off.’
‘Good for you. And the Director?’
I stepped aside to allow the paramedics to attend to the dead man. ‘Something similar, I’d guess. He spoke the word that nailed me.’ I thought back to what the Director had come out with as I overpowered him. ‘They’ll miss you.’ What had he meant? The people of the world? My friends?
The next three hours were a tedious succession of statements to various law enforcement agencies-UN, NYPD and others-and a trip to hospital for a check-up. I was given the all clear, though I was to see a doctor if my hearing didn’t improve within a week. I had numerous aches and pain across my body, the result of my fights with Bimsdale and others before the explosion, but none of them were important. When I was escorted out of the hospital by Special Agent Simonsen and his sidekicks, a battery of camera lights flashed on and the vultures let loose their questions-‘How does it feel to be a hero?’, ‘Was the FBI Director a North Korean agent?’ and ‘Are you going to write a book about this?’ were three of them. A headache had settled over my ravaged brain, so I kept quiet. That only made them more interested.
‘Do you want to freshen up?’ Simonsen asked.
I nodded.
‘Back to the hotel then.’ He led me to a waiting car.
‘Jesus,’ he said, as we were driven away. ‘Imagine if the Director had managed to take out the cream of the Russian and Chinese governments.’
‘Don’t forget the President of Europe.’
‘Oh, yeah, he was there, too. Good moves, my friend. You ever played gridiron?’
‘Rugby league.’
‘What’s that?’
I waved a hand feebly and sat back. The buildings of New York moved by, the rain still teeming down. Was that really it, the end of the affair? I felt a wave of exhaustion crash over me, which was hardly surprising, considering my physical and mental exertions and the lack of sleep recently. But that wasn’t the whole story. While I’d been on Rothmann’s tail and fighting through the Hades complex, even when I’d been with the Director, I’d been able to keep the ones I’d lost at the back of my mind. I couldn’t do so anymore. I could see them again, clearer than ever, Karen holding our son and smiling sadly as they hovered forever out of reach. Was this what the rest of my life was going to be? The prospect nearly made me jump out of the car.