The Solomon Effect (30 page)

They were on I-270 headed toward the Virginia state line when
Matt called back. “You need to turn around. I’ve got a plane waiting at Frederick Airport to take you to Miami.”

“A Company plane? I thought we were off the clock?”

“Yeah, well, I found a way to get creative when I looked at Boyd’s flight schedule. He’s made a bunch of trips to Miami in the last ten months that don’t seem to correlate to anything he was doing for SOCOM. And he left Washington for Miami this afternoon at twelve thirty.”

Jax glanced over at October.
Boats and palm trees.

“And get this,” Matt was saying. “You remember that viewing session Tobie did in Kaliningrad with the Russian?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’ve been comparing her drawings of that bridge with all the bridges in the Miami area. I think it’s the Venetian Causeway. You’ll find a boat waiting for you at Bayside Marketplace. The way I figure it, the only way to find that house is to have her look for it.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Jax. “You want us to cruise around Biscayne Bay looking for a house October saw in her head?”

“You got any better ideas?”

Jax thought about it. “No.”

The boat was a Speedboat Marine V-drive with a Shepiro-craft inboard rear-mount 350 Chevy. By the time they reached Bayside Marketplace, the sun was a big ball of fire sinking low behind the city. The heat was beginning to go out of the day—or maybe that was just the effect of the long shadows cast by all those skyscrapers crowding up against the water.

Jax caught the keys tossed by a dark-skinned man in shorts and a white T-shirt, who said, “The hardware’s in the lockbox up under the bow.”

Jax waited until they were well away from the quay before hauling it out: a Beretta Cougar for himself, and another Beretta he held out to October. “Here. The Smith and Wesson must be out of ammo.”

She hesitated, then slipped the pistol in her bag.

“You need to get a holster.”

She just looked at him. “Oh, right; and where am I going to hide it?”

He swung around Dodge Island and cut under the Mac-Arthur Causeway, the small, light Speedboat soaring over the sparkling blue waters of the bay. “That look like your bridge?” he said as the Venetian Causeway rose before the boat’s bow, the elegant white guardrail sweeping from one man-made island to the next.

Her head tipped back, she put up a hand to catch the hair fluttering around her face. “Yes.”

“So which way do we go? Left or right?”

She glanced around her. “I guess that depends on whether or not my brain reversed things.”

“Great,” said Jax. “We’ll try north first.”

They ran up the island, past dozens of palatial villas with indoor and outdoor pools, squash courts and tennis courts, fleets of Mercedes and BMWs, Porsches and Bentleys.
“When I see this kind of stuff,” he said, eying the hundred-foot, gleaming white Chedyek rocking gently beside the nearest private dock, “it reminds me of this book I read about the French Revolution when I was a kid.”

She turned to stare at him. “You read books about the
French Revolution
as a kid? Why Jax, who’d have thought you’re really a secret nerd at heart?”

He spun the wheel, hitting the throttle as he brought the Speedboat in a wide arc and headed south under the bridge again. “I was never a nerd. I just liked history.”

“Okay. So what about the French Revolution?”

“I just remember reading about those noblemen in their chateaus, with their carriages and their jewels and their velvet gowns, and wondering how they could look at all those starving peasants and not realize they were being really, really shortsighted.”

“This from the guy with a BMW convertible and a townhouse on the Potomac?” she said. “If you’re not careful, someone’s going to get the idea you’re a—” She broke off.

He cut back on the throttle. “What is it?”

They were coming up on a pale pink Italianate villa with an arched arcade and a wide terrace overlooking an Olympic-sized pool and meticulously maintained lawns that swept down to a private dock. “That’s it,” she said, leaning forward.

Jax studied the massive fiberglass Hargrave yacht with a raised pilothouse tied up at the dock. “Is that the boat you saw?”

She shook her head. “I honestly couldn’t say. All big white yachts kinda look the same to me. But this is the house. I’m sure of it. Now what?”

Jax turned the Speedboat in toward the dock, spinning the wheel and cutting the engine so they drifted in to bump gently against the pier. “Now we look for a fluorescent yellow cylinder in an aluminum metal case,” he said, tossing her the bowline, “and hope to hell we’re not too late.”

Jax was tying the stem line to a cleat on the dock when he
heard a man’s shout. Looking up, he spotted a big, blond-headed security guard loping down the lawn toward them. The guy was wearing tan slacks and boat shoes with no socks and a Hawaiian shirt that flapped open as he ran.

“Hey!” the guy shouted again, waving one beefy tanned arm as he jogged out onto the dock. “This is private property. You can’t tie up here.”

October straightened. “What do we do?” she said quietly.

“We look at the Hargrave,” said Jax, turning toward it.

They’d almost reached the yacht when the security guard caught up with them. He grabbed Jax’s left arm and jerked him around. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, man? This is a private dock. Get out of here.”

Jax reached behind his back and came up with his Cougar. He stuck the muzzle in the guard’s cheek hard enough to pucker the guy’s mouth and said, “Look. I’ve had a bad day. In fact, I’ve had a bad week. We’re going on this boat. We can either climb aboard
with
you, or we can climb
over
you, if you get my drift. The choice is yours.”

The man’s eyes widened, his splayed hands creeping into the air beside his head. “Who the fuck are you?”

Jax found the Glock in the holster at the small of the guy’s back and tossed it off the edge of the dock with a splash. “I’m the guy with the gun. Now move.” To October, he said, “Where’d you see the pathogen?”

“The stateroom.”

Jax prodded the security guard in the back with the Beretta. “Show us.”

“Which stateroom? There’s four.”

“Start with the master stateroom.”

They followed the guard to a cherry-paneled room with a king-sized bed, his and her walk-in closets, a 26-inch HD TV, and en suite his and her heads that gleamed with polished marble and gold-plated faucets. An aluminum case lay open on the bed. Empty.

“Sonofabitch,” said Jax. From the looks of the slot in the molded foam interior, the case had once cradled a cylinder just over a foot long and maybe six inches across.

He rested the Beretta’s muzzle against the security guard’s temple and pulled back the hammer with a click that echoed in the sudden stillness. “Who owns this boat?”

“Mr.—” The man’s voice broke. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mr. Walker. James Nelson Walker.”

The name meant nothing to Jax. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know!” The man’s voice rose in near hysteria. “He left maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“Jax,” said October softly.

He glanced at her. “What?” His gaze fell to the sheaf of blueprints she was unrolling. “What are those?”

“It says ‘Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning System.’”

“Shit. It’s an HVAC plan. What building?”

“The Intercontinental.”

Jax swung back to the security guard. “Where’s that?” The man’s nose quivered. “Chopin Plaza. On the bay.

Right next to Bayfront Park.”

Jax shoved the guy into the nearest closet and turned the key. “Bring the plans,” Jax told October. “Let’s go.”

By now the sun was only a rosy memory on a darkening horizon. October took the Speedboat’s helm while Jax spread the HVAC plans out on the floorboards.

“Anything?” she asked as the Speedboat skimmed over the smooth black waters of the bay.

“Someone’s circled the section of the system that serves the grand ballroom,” he said, straightening. “I’d say that’s their target.” He snapped his penlight closed and punched in a call to Matt. “Ever hear of some fat cat named James Nelson Walker?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Matt. “He’s the head of Walker Pharmaceuticals. I was just looking into him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he studied biochemistry at MIT when Kline was there. From what I can discover, he’s quite a closet bigot. He keeps it quiet for the sake of business.”

Jax squinted across the bay, to where the lights of the Manhattan-like skyscrapers twinkled out over the water. “Do me a favor, Matt: look on the Intercontinental website and see what function they’re holding in the grand ballroom tonight.”

After a minute, Matt said,
“Oh, man.”

“What is it?”

“The hotel’s hosting the People of the Book Conference.”

“The what?”

“It’s a kind of religious peace conference. The idea is that all three of the big Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—respect the same holy book—what Christians
call the Old Testament—and share many of the same beliefs. So they’ve brought together rabbis, priests, and imams from all over the world to try to find a way to work for interracial and interreligious peace. Their grand banquet is tonight. In the ballroom.”

Turning the wheel hard, October slammed the side of the
Speedboat into the
U
-shaped wooden walkway that curved out into the bay at Chopin Plaza and cut the engine.

“Hey,” shouted a dark, stocky bellboy, starting toward them. “You’re not allowed to tie up your boat there!”

“Catch.” Jax tossed him the bow line and grabbed October’s hand to haul her up onto the boardwalk. “It’s yours.”

They sprinted across the pavement and burst through the hotel’s massive glass entrance doors into a soaring space of tan marble turned to gold by the subtle gleam of light. A swashbuckling pirate in a black eye patch careened into them, said, “Excuse me,” and stepped back into an Arab in flowing
bisht
and a
ghutra
and
igal.
The Arab was real. The pirate wasn’t.

“What the hell?” said Jax, turning in a circle. The lobby teemed with curvaceous Little Bo Peeps and Naughty Nurses, Orthodox Jews with black slouch hats and curly ringlets, Klingons and Vulcans, caped vampires and hairy werewolves and Catholic priests in white collars and befuddled expressions.

October touched his arm and pointed to a discreet black sign with white letters that read, H
IGHGATE
H
ALLOWEEN
C
HARITY
B
ALL
, R
M
B
12
; P
EOPLE OF THE
B
OOK
B
ANQUET
, G
RAND
B
ALLROOM.
“Where’s the ballroom?” she shouted over the roar of voices and the splash of the fountain.

“We don’t want the ballroom,” he said, pushing though a coven of witches. “We want the floor above it. That’s where the HVAC unit is. According to the plans, the building’s entire system runs next to the service-elevator shaft. This way.”

They found the service elevator in a quiet hallway to their right. The indicator was stuck on the third floor, and it wasn’t moving.

“They’re probably holding it there,” said Jax, punching open the door to the nearby stairwell. “Come on.”

They raced up the bare concrete steps, the only sounds the clatter of their footfalls and the echoing rasp of their breath. At first, she kept pace with him. But as they were turning toward the second flight, he heard her let out a gasp as she hunched over to brace one hand against her knee. He slowed. “You okay?”

“Don’t wait for me! Keep going.”

He was maybe five seconds ahead of her when he slapped open the heavy firedoors on the third floor, his Beretta in his hand.

Rigged out in a Crusader costume with fake chain mail and a white surcoat marked by a giant red cross, General Gerald T. Boyd stood in the center of the hall, his hands on his hips, his attention focused on a closed gray door marked
MAINTENANCE.
A second man—younger, leaner, with a military buzzcut that clashed badly with his medieval squire’s costume—had one foot wedged in the partially open doors of the service elevator.

At Jax’s catapulted entrance, both men jerked around. The squire had a 9mm Glock half out of the holster hidden
beneath his hauberk when Jax pumped two bullets into his chest.

The force of the impact knocked the squire back into the elevator. The doors slammed shut and the elevator whirled away with a ding.

“You bastard,”
roared Boyd. Arms spread, he plowed into Jax and enveloped him in a deadly bear hug, just as October burst through the firedoor from the stairs.

With the General’s beefy arms squeezing the air out of his lungs, Jax wheezed, “The HVAC room. Quick.”

Arms pinned to his sides, lungs bursting, Jax pointed the Beretta’s muzzle vaguely in the direction of Boyd’s foot and pulled the trigger. He heard the bullet ricochet off the floor and smelled burned leather, cloth, and flesh. Boyd roared again and squeezed harder.

Jax pulled the trigger again and missed. The pressure on his lungs tightened. He could hear his ears ringing. His vision dimmed. He looked up into the General’s furious red face and knew a moment of disbelief. He was being crushed to death by a giant crazy general just feet away from where a mad scientist was unleashing a plague that could wipe out a good quarter of the world’s population.

Bending one knee, he braced his foot against the wall behind him and pushed. The General staggered back just enough to enable Jax to shift the angle of the Beretta’s barrel and fire again.

This time, the bullet found a more sensitive portion of the General’s anatomy. The steely gray eyes widened in shock and pain and disbelief. The pressure on Jax’s chest eased and he slammed the top of his head into the General’s face.

Boyd staggered back. Jax brought up the Beretta and fired point-blank into the red Crusader’s cross.