The Columbus Code (38 page)

Tejada stepped forward, hoping to catch Abaddon's face in the light, but the old man thrust out his hand. It was best to tread carefully. This was his last chance to stop this.

“Well?” Abaddon said.

“It is preferable to the alternative.”

“The alternative. You mean the ultimate solution I gave you.”

“Yes.”

“That is because you still harbor a soft spot for human beings.”

Tejada felt a chill run through his body. “I am one of them,” he replied.

“No!” Abaddon retorted. “You are not one of them. You are mine. You are one with me.”

“The Russians will agree—”

“No, they will not. Koslov has his own scheme for world power, but unlike you, Emilio, that is not his destiny. Yet unlike you, he has no tenderness.”

Abaddon turned his head, creating a dark, featureless profile against the window in the background. Tejada's chill ran deeper.

“You must put aside tenderness in all its forms,” Abaddon continued. “You have already seen how it weakens you—in this turmoil you feel over Maria Winters.”

“She is gone,” Tejada said.

“And you plan to go after her.”

Tejada was speechless, not from Abaddon's perceptiveness, but from Carlos Molina's betrayal. He should have known this the moment Molina quoted Abaddon to him.

He should have known many things.

“There are some who seem to be more loyal to me than you are,” Abaddon said, confirming what Tejada already knew. “But I see through them—and that is what you must learn to do. You must sense things before you are told.”

The old man's words were dizzying.

“But that does not matter at this moment,” Abaddon said with a dismissive gesture. “It is time for the solution.”

“I had hoped to avoid—”

“It is too late. The device is in place?”

“It is, my lord, but—”

“Then do it.”

“Because we have been unable to retrieve the journal?”

“Because Molina is a pretender.” Abaddon jabbed a gnarled finger in the dim light. “You, Emilio, are the only one I can trust to do as I say. When the documents are recovered—and they soon will be—they must be destroyed, along with the people who possess them.
All
of them. Only then will you be secure in taking your rightful place.”

Abaddon paused to draw a long, rattling breath. “The Americans must be crippled so that you can ascend. They have not been handicapped by the efforts you've made so far.”

Slowly Abaddon leaned forward and his face emerged from the shadows. At the sight of him, Tejada took a convulsive breath. The old man's skin was thin and tight along his cheek bones. His eyes were sunken and when he smiled his lips pulled back to reveal the blackened roots of his teeth.

“It is time,” he said. “You will do it. You will give the order to detonate. And the bastion they call Wall Street will be demolished.”

The energy of Abaddon that had always infused Tejada's soul and raised him to the heights of charisma and power now seemed instead to be sucking his soul out of himself. Tejada tried to pull away from
the corpse of a man who now drew closer, but even his eyes could not move. Abaddon's were locked on his with a hideous force Tejada could not resist.

“You are one with me,” Abaddon said in a low, raspy voice. “You are one with me.”

That idea was not new. Tejada's complete revulsion was. Drawing on his last reserve of strength, Tejada nodded, bowed his head, and backed away. With words that had been drilled into him all his life he said, “It will be as you have said.”

Only then did Abaddon release him. And only then did Tejada take leave of the man he had called “Master” . . . and whom he now knew was completely deranged.

Within a matter of hours, the airy, white-walled house that overlooked the tiny village was transformed from Sophia's retreat to a lockdown facility for the two women Winters loved most.

Curtains were drawn and shutters closed. Doors were locked and reinforced with bureaus and armoires, while emergency exits were fashioned from windows and a laundry chute. Sophia's driver brought in new burn phones for all three of them, and then she dispatched him to a separate location—close enough to collect them on a moment's notice but far enough away to put off anyone who might have followed him.

Winters had gathered every implement that could be used as a weapon and instructed Sophia and Maria on how to use them to defend themselves. At the same time, he also stressed the need to follow his orders without question, knowing secretly that he wouldn't let either of them wield so much as a rolling pin against Tejada's people.

With their physical security addressed, the most vital remaining issue was that of contacting Rebhorn to alert him to what Winters was certain Tejada and Molina planned to do. Then the appropriate agencies would go into action and he'd be out of it. More important, so would Maria and Sophia. But contacting Rebhorn was the tricky part. He already suspected Winters was crazy. If Winters didn't have
hard evidence to convince him, Rebhorn would simply write him off as lost and that would be the end of it—the end of his attempt to stop Tejada and Molina, and the end of his career with the Secret Service.

But hard evidence was something he lacked.

Winters still wasn't sure he knew the true nature of Maria's relationship with Tejada. She'd told him many things, none of which implicated her in any way, but every time she mentioned him a light went on in her eyes and the look on her face softened. It might matter—it might not. But he was going to have to wait for the right moment to ask her. She was vacillating between uncanny strength and an uncharacteristic vulnerability, and Sophia had advised him to gauge his approach carefully.

And truth be told, his mind was otherwise occupied. He sat now in the dimly lit nook off the kitchen, half-listening to the murmur of female voices upstairs as he went over what he knew. He had to be clear before he called Rebhorn.

Winters pushed the notes he'd made into the yellow arc of light on the table. He was born about the time the so-called suitcase bombs had been intercepted on their way to Iran in the early seventies, but their existence was well known among the ranks of the Secret Service. Several of them had supposedly been hidden in secure locations around the United States. Speculation about those locations was a popular late-night topic among agents as they shared a beer after a long day. Rumor had it that the CIA had one or two that they kept for archival purposes—secured in a vault at Langley or in the fifth level of the Pentagon basement, depending on who recounted the story. Others suggested they were poorly constructed and leaked radiation, so it was a mystery to him why the CIA would have insisted on keeping them. He'd always suspected they'd forgotten where they'd put
them—or that the rumors of their existence were unfounded—but apparently not.

He tapped his pen on the name Schlesinger and recounted in his mind the conversation Maria overheard. He could be totally wrong about what it meant. But the part about him having a dalliance with Danish schoolgirls was a no-brainer. Schlesinger was a sleazeball and should have been replaced long ago.

Winters stirred in his chair.

Schlesinger was obviously being blackmailed, but was he vulnerable enough to allow someone to talk him out of a radioactive bomb just to protect a reputation that didn't exist? There had to be more to it, but that really didn't seem to be the point. From the gist of the conversation, Molina had a nuclear suitcase bomb. That was the point. And if Molina did have a bomb, Winters had to assume he was going to use it.

And if these people would kill for a five-hundred-year-old journal they could have had for the asking, why wasn't it plausible that they'd detonate a bomb? It would be nice to know why, but the essential question was . . . where?

Winters scowled at his notes. Nothing Maria remembered gave him so much as a clue. Still, he went over the list again, looking at each item from as many perspectives as possible, asking new questions—trying to read between the lines.

Everything in him wanted to call Donleavy to see if he'd heard any buzz, but he didn't want to run the risk of Rebhorn finding out his friend had helped Maria. He had no choice but to call Rebhorn and hope to convince him with what he had. Mention of a threat like the one he thought they faced—detonation of a nuclear bomb at a location inside the continental United States—was too catastrophic
to ignore, even if Rebhorn thought he was crazy. He might scream and shout in response. He might tell Winters he was fired. But after the phone call, Rebhorn would calm down . . . and then he would get curious. And then he would call the right people to look into it. Hopefully before Tejada and Molina discovered where he and Maria and Sophia were hiding.

And Winters had no doubt that they could.

Few people had Rebhorn's personal cell phone number. Winters was one of those few. Rebhorn answered on the first ring. But his greeting set Winters back in the chair.

“Winters,” he roared. “Where the—where have you been?”

How had he—oh. The Barcelona code. “Long story,” Winters said, as casually as possible. “I'll give you the short version.”

“Don't give me any version. Just get your—”

“We're talking bomb, sir,” Winters said, interrupting, then he plunged into an account of all he knew about the threat they faced.

“I have two things to say to you, Agent Winters,” Rebhorn said when Winters finally paused. “One, you are obviously more unstable than Archer says you are. And, two—”

“Sir, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm as certain of this as I've ever been of anything.”

“If what you said was true—and I've always doubted those suitcase bomb stories—but if it were true, you'd be talking about a forty-five-year-old bomb. Do you understand that, Winters? A forty-five-year-old leaking, deteriorating device.”

“I know it sounds like a long shot.”

“It sounds like the ravings of a madman.”

“Yes, sir,” Winters said. “But I think—”

“The second thing I have to say to you,” Rebhorn continued,
“is—get yourself back here within the next forty-eight hours or you are fired. Permanently.”

“See, that's the thing,” Winters said. “I'm stuck in—”

A tone sounded indicating the call had ended, followed by nothing but dead air. Rebhorn had hung up.

Maria could only sleep in short, fitful increments and she was just drifting into an uneasy doze when a vibration near her head alerted her to a call on her cell phone. She reached for it on the pillow and sat upright on the bed. The call was from Donleavy.

“Maria—Taylor here,” he said when she answered.

The rest was chopped up. Maria pressed the phone to her ear—as if that were going to help the connection. “You're breaking up,” she said.

“—heard another—Tej—Lou—”

“You heard Tejada and Molina talking?” she asked, trying to make sense of the garbled conversation.

“Not Mol—you left it set up—couldn't find you—got in—”

“What did they
say
, Taylor?” She leapt from the bed and moved to the opposite end of the room, hoping for a better cell phone signal.

“—Wall Street—”

“What about Wall Street?” she pleaded.

“—timate solution—”

“What?”

The phone beeped and went dead.

“No!” Maria poked at it but the signal was gone. “No! Donleavy, come back!”

She didn't realize how loudly she was yelling until her father appeared in the doorway with a meat cleaver in his hand.

“Dad?” she said. “What's a ‘timate' solution?”