The Leviathan Effect (33 page)

He followed her around the Beltway into Maryland, exiting a quarter mile behind her onto a rural highway. The traffic was sparse, the lights flashing yellow. About a mile later, her taillights flared and her turn signal begin to blink off the wet sheen of the street. A convenience store. She was stopping at a convenience store.

The assassin pulled into the parking lot of a business park and cut his lights. He waited beneath a canopy of dripping trees and watched. From there he had a clear view of the 7-Eleven.
A straight shot
. If he’d wanted to stop her with an M24 sniper rifle, it would have been a splendid location. But he couldn’t do that with her. This one had to be a Jimmy Hoffa.
Without a trace
.

He was fully engaged now. Nothing mattered but the target. He watched as she came out the door, head down, swinging a plastic bag. Hurrying back to the car in the rain. She had made it easier for him, eluding her security detail the way she did. It would be her fatal flaw, although Blaine did not know that yet.

Her headlights went on again, the taillights brightening as she pulled out. The killer waited until she was back on the pike before he switched on his own lights. He followed her from a distance again on the rolling two-lane highway. The target drove another mile and three quarters and then he saw her turn signal blinking again, her brake lights pumping. The Pike Motel. The assassin slowed in the right lane and followed her car into the lot. She drove around the building, parking under an overhang of trees near the rear stairwell, again making things easier for him. He counted the cars in the lot. Seven.

He rolled past the office and edged his SUV toward the stairwell. The target came out of her car and splashed toward the overhang, head down, bag swinging in one hand, purse over her shoulder. Walking along the stucco wall out of the rain toward the elevators. The
assassin suddenly accelerated his Liberty, startling her, then braked abruptly. He clicked off his lights. Parked. Opened the door.

D
R
. J
ARED
C
LAYTON
walked toward the Bourbon Steak restaurant just off the lobby at the Four Seasons hotel, but he stopped before going in. He had been instructed to wait until he saw a man wearing a black carnation and to follow him. As he did, Clayton saw Zorn’s man move to intercede. If he had had doubts about working for Mr. Zorn before, they were confirmed now. He followed the man with the carnation out the revolving front door to Pennsylvania Avenue, where two Homeland Security police officers emerged from the back of a Lincoln limousine to block Zorn’s security man. Dr. Clayton slid in the open door, and one of the men closed it. The car began to move, up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House.

C
ATHERINE
B
LAINE HAD PURCHASED
a bottle of aspirin, a small carton of orange juice, and a six-pack of Heineken at the 7-Eleven. She had not slept well in weeks, and knew that this night was going to be an especially long one. As she walked through the rain from her rental car to the motel stairwell, she was surprised by the throttle of an engine and the bright flash of headlights in her eyes. An SUV, stopping by the elevators. She shielded her eyes but kept moving. For a moment, she debated taking the elevator, but decided to walk. The pavement was slippery and she stopped to test her footing. That’s when she heard the SUV door close, and heard an urgent splash of footsteps coming around the back of the vehicle.

“Excuse me!”

Blaine turned. Saw a dark blur emerging out of the rain. A bearded man in a black plastic slicker. “Do you have the time?”

She froze, sensing right away that something was wrong. The man kept moving. Did not stop the way someone would have who actually wanted to know the time.

Then she saw his right arm lift, incongruously, as if he were reaching for something above him, and in the next instant she felt his fist smashing the side of her face. Blaine stumbled backward, falling into the wall, her bag slamming to the pavement, beer bottles shattering.

The man’s arms went around her torso and he stumbled with her down to the concrete. His knee rammed her thigh, his right hand slapping at her face. She heard the shift points of his SUV engine idling in the rain behind them, a whine and drone of the windshield wipers, and felt herself about to pass out.

Blaine reached inside her jacket, grasping for a button on her cell phone. But the man noticed and violently jerked her arm out.

“No.”

In the next instant, Blaine scooted back and kicked her knee into the man’s groin, then scampered on hands and knees out into the parking lot, trying to gain her footing.

But the man was with her. She felt his full weight landing on top of her, her chest slamming the pavement. Felt his knee on her back, knocking the wind out of her. Holding her. And then he dragged her back to the stairwell, out of the rain, and turned her over. He punched the side of her head as she struggled beneath him. Then his right hand covered her nose and mouth and she felt herself beginning to smother.

T
HE ASSASSIN SAW
Blaine reach into her jacket and he yanked her arm out, with the intention of breaking it. But his gloves slipped on the wet nylon of her jacket sleeve and then she caught him by surprise, ramming her knee just above his groin.

He recoiled for an instant, during which she got a good look at him, and managed to scramble away. Desperately, like a crab, crawling into the rain.

She didn’t make it. The assassin lunged at her and pinned her to the pavement. Pulled her back under cover by the elevators.

“Okay?” he said. He lay her out again and sat on top.

Blaine watched him, breathing heavily, her eyes stunned. His hands traced a pattern on her face, as if he were a blind man reading Braille.
We’re in a pretty good spot here
, he thought,
half-hidden behind the stairwell. I’m going to mold you now
. He moved his fingers delicately over her face and neck. He actually liked her; that was the sad part of this. In another life, they might have even been friends. But not now. That chance had been lost. He listened to the rain and the shifting of his engine and the drone of the wipers, straining to hear any other sounds.
No. No one would be out on a night like this
. He leaned down so his face was touching hers. “You want to try anything else?” he whispered, lightly licking her auricle, rubbing his beard against her cheek. She didn’t respond. He sat up, watched her. Her face was mottled, eyes closed, her dark blond hair wet against her skin. She was breathing heavily. When she still wouldn’t speak, the
man slapped his open right hand hard across Blaine’s face, and he saw her eyes open slowly. And then he studied the way her skin changed, seeming to fill with blood. He liked that. He imagined what she’d be like at the farmhouse, afterward.

He sat very still on top of her, feeling her heavy breathing underneath him. It wasn’t unpleasant. “Okay?” he whispered, still catching his own breath. A thin stream of blood trickled from one of her nostrils; the flesh around her right eye was already beginning to darken. He gazed back at the parking lot, seeing the escape route she had imagined for an instant. He smiled, but knew that he needed to move quickly now, even though he felt protected here—out of the rain, out of view from the road. He reached inside his left coat pocket and extracted a rag that he had soaked with isoflurane and held it over her face. Felt her breathing quicken under his hand, then slow. Watched her eyes open once and close. Then the assassin replaced the rag in his pocket and unzipped her jacket. He removed his right glove and rubbed his hand over her chest several times, massaging the soft skin of her breasts. “Okay?” he whispered.

Blaine said nothing. Eventually, he found what she had been reaching for. It wasn’t mace or a gun. It was just a cell phone.

The man stood, pulling on his glove, surveying the parking lot. Nothing. He extracted the hinged cuffs from a rear pocket of his jeans, and knelt on the concrete. Drew the backs of her wrists together and double-locked the cuffs behind her. Then he lifted her under the arms and dragged her across the pavement to the back seat of his SUV. Yanked her inside; she was heavier than he had thought, but it was not unpleasant lifting her, bending her legs inside the vehicle, one and then the other; rubbing the insides of her thighs. He was out in plain sight again, though. Something he said he’d never do.

The assassin opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel. He shifted to reverse, then drive. He pulled onto the highway, went half a block and turned into the lot of a darkened office building. Parked around the side, in a deep patch of shadow. He reached into the back and went through her pockets and purse. Found a wallet with twenty-seven dollars in paper money, several credit cards, and a picture pouch with three photos of a young man—her son, no doubt—car keys, a motel room key. He had to improvise now. To finish it.

Room 217.

The assassin cut the engine and got out. He jogged back, splashing through the rain, coming at the motel parking lot from the rear, through a thatch of woods. Past the stairwell. As he reached the lot, he checked the Smith & Wesson .38 in his shoulder holster. Her shopping bag, he saw, was still lying by the stairs. He picked it up and pushed it through the slot in the trash can.

Then he walked up the stairs to the second floor, one step at a time, glancing out at the rain slanting across the empty highway, the blurred lights of apartment houses in the distance.

A lamplight glowed behind the curtain of 217. There was a thin crack for him to look through.
Nothing
.

He removed the safety catch on his gun and gripped it in his right hand. This would be delicate, yes.

He touched the knob, then inserted the key. When the latch turned, he kicked the door with his right foot, entering in a combat stance, ready to fire a succession of rounds into Charles Mallory. His second target.

But there was no one in the room.

Nothing
.

He pushed the door closed behind him and stood straighter, though still ready, his heart thumping.

With his weapon extended in both hands, the assassin cleared the other spaces in the enclosure—a double closet; a bathroom. Nothing. All clear. The room was empty.

He kept the gun raised as he pulled the motel door open again, leaving it unlocked, alert for any sound or motion. But there was nothing. Site cleared. All he heard now was the rain. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He jogged back through the alley to the SUV, slipped inside behind the steering wheel, and drove back onto the pike, his prisoner of war lying motionless across the back seat.

C
HARLES
M
ALLORY TRIED TO
call Blaine, and again his call went to voice mail. He shouldn’t have allowed her to leave. He felt a rage tear through him, afraid he’d let her down. Afraid that someone had followed her. Was she really off the grid of the government’s surveillance? He didn’t know. But he did know this: it had been his idea for her to come here, and she had been safe when they’d been together; but the game had changed as soon as she left alone.

Restless, Mallory stepped outside onto the ledge. He breathed the cold mist from the rain, looking past the red glow of the Pike Motel sign. Saw his breath become vapor as he exhaled. Beyond the awning, wind blew gusts of rain horizontally into the bare trees.

He counted the cars in the lot. Seven. Lights burned in the motel office, he noticed, but there was no one behind the check-in counter. Mallory saw a television screen through the office window in a corner of the room, and the familiar swirling color-enhanced bands of Alexander. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the same thing. It took a disaster to do that.

Mallory looked up at the distant office buildings beyond the trees, dark silhouettes against the sky, and the dim glow of moonlight through the sheets of rain. He gazed down at the parking lot again and saw the incongruity. His heart began to race.

No
.

He went back inside the room and grabbed his Beretta. Came out and looked again. The thing sat there in the corner of the lot without explanation, parked in the rain. A taunt. Something that shouldn’t
have been there: Blaine’s Ford Focus, occupying the last space. But Blaine hadn’t returned. She wasn’t here. Was she?

He hurried to the stairwell and down to the second floor. Could she be in her room? Wouldn’t she have called? He glanced at the bottom of the stairwell and saw something by the elevators that stopped him—a pool of orange liquid and broken glass. The liquid trailed across the pavement under the concrete awning, ending at a metal trash bin. Mallory hurried down. He tilted the cover of the trash can and looked. Saw a plastic bag, broken beer bottles, smashed orange juice container. Bottle of aspirin.
Hers
. “No!”

He ran back up the stairs to Room 217. There was light through the curtains. He squinted in and knocked, holding out his gun. Tried the door. It was unlocked. Mallory pushed it open and, gun drawn, stepped inside. Listened.

The room was vacant.

But then he noticed the wet shoeprints on the carpet. Someone had been inside, probably just minutes earlier. He stepped out and surveyed the lot. The walkway was too wet for clear indentations of shoeprints.

So where had he taken her?

He ran back to the third floor room and pressed a button on one of his cell phones. Chaplin answered after the third ring.

“Hello.”

“I have an emergency,” he said. “Do you still have tracking on Catherine Blaine?”

He heard opera music blaring in the background.
Rigoletto
, perhaps.

“Why, yes.”

“Good.” Chaplin turned down the music. “We need to follow her. Right away. Both of us. She’s been abducted. Come on out. Be in touch with me.”

After a pause, Chaplin said, “What should I bring?”