Saint (20 page)

She considered his logic. “We have no way of knowing he's really the man's son. I don't understand why we would need the boy in any case.”

“We may need him to kill the president.”

“The president's dead!”

“No, I don't think he is.”

DAVID ABRAHAM walked briskly down the corridor, following the signs to radiology. Dr. Tom Davis was the chief radiologist. He would be the first to know what the X-rays showed.

They were working on Robert Stenton with an urgency that called for the immediate dismissal of all well-wishers, regardless of their political clout. Two Secret Service staff were posted outside the private room, and the hall was lined with staff, but not even his closest advisers knew the president's condition. All they knew was that he'd arrived at the hospital with a very weak pulse.

It wasn't great news. Many victims of gunshot wounds managed to hang on to life for an hour, even two, before expiring. In the case of such a prominent figure, no word on his condition would be given until it was certain.

The only thing the world knew at this point was that the president of the United States had been shot in the chest.

But David had to know more. He pushed open the door to the main radiology reception room. A dozen patients waited their turn.

The door twenty yards down the hall marked Authorized Personnel

Only would lead into the same department. David hurried to the door and walked through.

“May I help you?”

He faced a nurse who'd stopped in the hall on his right. “Yes, I must see Dr. Tom Davis immediately. Can you tell me where—”

“Dr. Davis is tied up. Have you checked in at reception?”

“I don't think you understand. I'm with the president. It's a matter of life and death.”

She wasn't impressed. “You'll have to—”

“Now!” He started to walk. “Another minute and he could be dead. Now!”

She hurried after him. “Sir, they specifically—”

“I'm President Stenton's spiritual adviser, for heaven's sake. I don't have time for this!”

She hesitated only a beat. “Third office on the left. He's in his reading room.”

David reached the door and put his hand on the knob. “This room?” “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

He stepped into a dimly lit room with four large monitors on one wall and a large vertical light surface on the opposite wall. The man he presumed to be Dr. Tom Davis stood in front of a row of large flat-screen monitors, reading a dozen X-rays. He didn't seem to notice David's entry.

“You're Dr. Davis?”

No response. The man was clearly focused.

David approached, scanning the backlit negatives. “My name is David Abraham. I'm the president's spiritual adviser. Are these his X-rays?”

“CAT scans. I've already sent the digital images down to surgery,” the radiologist said without looking over. “Interesting.”

“What do you see?” David asked.

Now the radiologist looked at him. “Spiritual adviser, huh?”

“That's correct. I must know if you've found any anomalies.”

“Not that I can see.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Show me nothing.”

The radiologist picked up a telescoping pointer, stretched it out, and tapped the image in front of him. “The bullet entered here, between the seventh and eighth lateral ribs. No break. If you want to consider that an anomaly, be my guest.”

“That's unusual?”

“It happens sometimes. Depends on the entry angle.”

He rested the point on a dark spot just below what looked to David like the president's heart. “Missed the heart and the lungs by a hair. We have some minor bleeding here, but I would guess it's from the surface wound. You could also call that an anomaly, I suppose.”

“That's not unusual?”

“It happens. But yes, it's unusual.”

He tapped a third image. “The bullet exited here, between the fifth and sixth vertebrae.”

“No breaks in the spinal column?”

“No.”

“So that, too, is unusual?”

Dr. Tom Davis put his hands on his hips and stared at the three images he'd just pointed out. “None of these is particularly unusual. Put them all together, and I would say you have an impossibility.”

David's pulse strengthened. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I've never seen anything like it. The bullet entered his torso in one of the only places it could have to miss all the internal organs and exit without so much as breaking a bone. Normally I'd expect to see the bullet break up and tear things to shreds. Most exit wounds leave holes large enough to put your fist through.”

The radiologist faced him with a grin. “This is no anomaly, my friend. If I were a man of faith, I'd call this a miracle.”

He knew it! David could hardly contain himself. Waves of relief washed over his body.

“And what injuries did he sustain?”

“You'll have to take that up with the surgeon. By what I can see, I'd say he sustained two flesh wounds. No internal bleeding. Nothing but a couple of minor cuts to his chest and back.”

“Then why surgery?”

“For starters, they just got these pictures. They'll sew him up. His greatest danger was from toxic shock, but they got to him pretty quickly. If I were a betting man, I'd say the president will be up and out of bed in two or three days.”

“And this isn't an anomaly?” David cried.

“I once read the X-rays of a skydiver whose chute failed to open. He sustained one broken finger and bruises. Unusual, yes; anomaly, no.”

David hardly heard him. He whirled toward the door. “I have to talk to him.”

“He's in surgery.”

David exited the reading room and suppressed a temptation to run. He hadn't felt so full of life in twelve years. There was no telling how Robert would react to this turn of events, but David would tell him everything. Today. As soon as he woke up.

Project Showdown was breathing still.

22

H
e wasn't sure, he said. His mind had entered a strange place, and he didn't know what had happened, because he really, really didn't want his bullet to kill the president. But he would now make it right. He would; he swore he would.

Kelly's worst fears were realized half an hour later when an NBC reporter giving a live report on location at Central Park was cut off by the anchor.

“. . . was here on this platform, where a forensic team is still looking for the bullet that—”

“I'm sorry to interrupt, Susan, but we have a live update on the president's condition. Reuters is reporting that the president of the United States has survived the assassination attempt that took place an hour and a half ago. I repeat, it appears that the president has survived the attempt on his life. The report goes on to say that the bullet resulted in flesh wounds only.”

Kelly stared at the screen, disbelieving. “How's that possible?”

Kelly muted the television and sat on the bed, stunned. Kalman would receive the news soon enough, if he hadn't already. It would be the end.

Behind her, Carl remained silent.

“Do you know what this means?” she asked.

“That I've failed,” he said. “But I can fix it.”

She stood with her back to him. “Agotha will know.”

“She'll know what?”

“That your failure was intentional.”

“
I
don't even know that!”

Kelly could feel her world collapsing around her. So much training, so many hard nights—in one moment, gone. Both she and Carl were now expendable.

Was this also part of the plan? She sometimes found it difficult to determine what was real and what was part of the game.

She looked at Carl, who was still staring at the silent news broadcast. “You affected the bullet's trajectory the same way you have been for the last two weeks.”

He refused to look at her.

“Today you placed the bullet precisely where it had to travel to knock him down without killing him. We taught you more about the anatomy of the kill zones in the human body than most medical students ever learn. Now you've used that information to save your target. And by doing so, you've signed our death warrants.”

“We don't know that,” he said. “If it was intentional, I would remember.”

“Then what do you remember?”

“That I didn't want the president to die. I thought that the old man behind him might be my father. Or that the president himself might be. I was confused and knew that Agotha had probably put these ideas in my head to test me. As you said.”

“But you couldn't overcome the confusion?”

“I thought I had.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “It doesn't matter. Kalman will assume that you've countermanded his order to kill. He will never accept such a failure.”

Her cell phone chirped.

“That will be him.” Kelly picked up the phone. “Yes.”

Kalman's distant, gravelly voice spoke into her ear. “I see he missed.”

“Yes. We're working on a third attempt.”

The phone hissed.

“Carl's leading the son of the president's adviser—”

“I don't want the details,” Kalman said. “Englishman is standing by. You have until midnight. If I haven't received confirmation by then, your man must be eliminated.” He paused. “I want you to do it personally. I'll give you two hours following any such failure on his part. If you don't follow through, I'll trigger the implant and hold you responsible. Are we clear?”

She hesitated. “Of course.”

The line clicked off.

Kelly kept her back to Carl and gathered her wits. He couldn't see her face flushed.

“If the boy shows, can you do what you've suggested?” she asked, setting the phone down slowly.

He'd formulated a simple plan for a third attempt, but she had her doubts about his willingness to finish the job. If he didn't, she would.

“Why wouldn't I?”

Carl's mind is so fried that he can hardly hold a conviction for an
hour,
she thought.

“You've failed to finish the job twice now, both times because you associated the target with a father figure. None of this will change.”

“But I know why now,” Carl said. “Agotha put the desire in me.”

“That knowledge didn't help you execute the hit today.”

He didn't respond to her obvious point. It didn't matter. Her psychological manipulation had failed to affect him as she'd hoped. Perhaps the truth would work better.

“I have a confession to make,” she said. “I lied to you yesterday. Agotha didn't plant the thoughts of your father. I needed you to feel strong about today's attempt, so I gave you a plausible reason for your failure. It seems that this father business is coming from your own mind on its own terms.”

Carl looked lost. Stunned.

“Maybe it's my fault you feel so conflicted. I was trying to help you.”

“And I would have done the same for you,” he said. “It must have been horrible to have to lie. Yet you did it to protect me. Thank you.”

She couldn't bear this manipulation. What had they done to him? The mental stripping was one thing in the compound, but here in the middle of New York, it seemed inhumane.

“Can you do it?”

“Send the boy back with a message for the president?”

“Unwittingly armed with a toxic canister,” she finished. “It would kill everyone in the room.”

“Of course I can do it. It's what I've been trained to do.”

“You were also trained to put a bullet in a target's heart, yet you willfully missed.”

“I don't remember willfully—”

“There he is!”

The laptop showed a short boy standing inside their room at the Peking, looking around.

Carl walked up to the desk, studied the image for a few moments, then slammed the laptop closed.

“Let's go,” he said and strode toward the door.

THE PEKING Grand Hotel was a five-minute walk. With any luck the boy would find Carl's note instructing him to wait ten minutes.

They walked quickly, silently.

He was less sure of what he was doing now than at any time in his memory. His response to the confusion was to retreat. There were many times when survival depended on retreat. It was how he defeated the heat in his pit. The hornets on the shooting range. The hospital bed under Agotha's care. There was always a safe place in his mind somewhere. He just had to find it.

At this moment, that safe place was probably execution without thought. They had until midnight to undo the mess he'd made. Poison was the preferred weapon of many assassins, and tonight Carl would remember why.

If his plan failed, he would be left with only one alternative. He would find a few more-familiar weapons and go after the president in the hospital. His chances of survival were minimal, but he would be dead at midnight anyway. If he was going to die, he would die fighting for Kelly's survival. He owed her his life.

They entered the Peking through a rear door that required a plastic key card to open. Second floor. First door on the right, room 202.

The small device that Kelly carried in her purse consisted of a remote triggering device and a small canister of colorless, odorless hydrogen cyanide gas, potent enough to kill any living creature in a ten-by-ten room within five minutes. The boy's mission would be a simple one: in the president's hospital room, he would call a given telephone number and then verbally relay a message intended only for the president. In this way, they could reasonably believe that the boy was talking to the president, not a third party.

There would be no message, of course. As soon as the boy confirmed the president's presence, they would trigger the canister hidden on the boy's person with a certain degree of confidence that both were in the same room. A similar method using explosives rather than gas had been used successfully among drug cartels in South America. Certainly not infallible, but with nothing to lose, Carl was willing to assume the odds before he attempted anything more direct.