The crowd around us breaks into a cheer. An organ plays. The Nationals are running off the field. Someone inches down the row past us toward the aisle. I envy that person, whose greatest concern at this moment is taking a leak or heading to the concession stand to grab some nachos.
My phone buzzes. I reach for it in my pocket, then realize a sudden movement could cause alarm. “My phone,” I explain. “It’s just my phone. A well-being check.”
Augie’s brow furrows. “What is this?”
“My chief of staff. She’s checking that I’m okay. Nothing more.”
Augie draws back, suspicious. But I don’t wait for his approval. If I don’t respond to Carolyn, she will assume the worst. And there will be consequences. She will open that letter I gave her.
The text message, again, is from C Brock. Again, just one number, this time, 4.
I type back Stewart and send it.
I put my phone away and say, “So tell me. How do you know ‘Dark Ages’?”
He shakes his head. It won’t be that easy. His partner wouldn’t hand over that information, and neither will he. Not yet. It’s part of his leverage. It might be his only leverage.
“I need to know,” I say.
“No, you do not. You want to know. What you need to know is more important.”
It’s hard to imagine anything more important than whether someone in my inner circle has betrayed our country.
“Then tell me what I need to know.”
He says, “Your country will not survive.”
“What does that mean?” I ask. “How?”
He shrugs. “Truly, when one considers it, it is a simple inevitability. Do you think you can prevent forever a nuclear detonation in the United States? Have you read A Canticle for Leibowitz?”
I shake my head, searching my memory bank. Sounds familiar, high school English.
“Or The Fourth Turning?” he says. “A fascinating discussion of the…cyclical nature of history. Mankind is predictable. Governments mistreat people—their own people and others. They always have, and they always will. So the people react. There is action and reaction. This is how history has progressed and how it always will.”
He wags his finger. “Ah, but now—now technology allows even one man to inflict utter destruction. It alters the construct, does it not? Mutually assured destruction is no longer a deterrent. Recruiting thousands or millions to your cause is no longer necessary. No need for an army, for a movement. It takes only one man, willing to destroy it all, willing to die if necessary, who is not susceptible to coercion or negotiation.”
Overhead, the first sounds from a turbulent sky. Thunder but no lightning. No rain yet. The lights in the ballpark are already on, so the darkening of the sky has little effect.
I lean into him, peering into his eyes. “Is this a history lesson? Or are you telling me something is imminent?”
He blinks. Swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Something is imminent,” he says, his voice changing.
“How imminent?”
“A matter of hours,” he says.
My blood goes cold.
“What are we talking about, exactly?” I ask.
“You know this already.”
Of course I do. But I want to hear him say it. I’m not giving anything away for free.
“Tell me,” I say.
“The virus,” he says. “The one you saw for a moment”—he snaps his fingers—“before it disappeared. The reason for your phone call to Suliman Cindoruk. The virus you have not been able to locate. The virus that has baffled your team of experts. The virus that terrifies you to the core. The virus you will never stop without us.”
I glance around, look for anyone paying close attention to us. Nobody.
“The Sons of Jihad is behind this?” I whisper. “Suliman Cindoruk?”
“Yes. You were correct about that.”
I swallow over the lump forming in my throat. “What does he want?”
Augie blinks hard, his expression changing, confusion. “What does he want?”
“Yes,” I say. “Suliman Cindoruk. What does he want?”
“This I do not know.”
“You don’t…” I sit back in my seat. What is the point of a ransom demand if you don’t know what you’re demanding? Money, a prisoner release, a pardon, a change in foreign policy—something. He came here to threaten me, to get something, but he doesn’t know what he wants?
Maybe his job is to demonstrate the threat. Someone else, later, will make the demand. Possible, but it doesn’t feel right to me.
And then it comes to me. It was always a possibility, but as I contemplated the potential scenarios for tonight, it was never very high on my list.
“You’re not here representing Suliman Cindoruk,” I say.
He raises his shoulders. “My interests are no longer…aligned with Suli, that is true.”
“They once were. You were part of the Sons of Jihad.”
A snarl curls his upper lip, color rising to his face, fire in his eyes. “I was,” he says. “But no longer.”
His anger, that emotional response—resentment toward the SOJ or its leader, a power struggle, perhaps—is something I tuck away for later, something I might be able to use.
The crack of a bat on a ball. The crowd rises, cheers. Music plays from the speakers. Someone hit a home run. It feels like we are light-years removed from a baseball game right now.
I open my hands. “So tell me what you want.”
He shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. No chet.
The first sprinkle of rain hits my hand. Light, sporadic, nothing heavy, bringing groans from the crowd but no movement, no rush for shelter.
“We go now,” says Augie.
“We?”
“Yes, we.”
A shudder passes through me. But I assumed this encounter would eventually move to a different location. It’s not safe, but neither was this meeting. Nothing about this is safe.
“Okay,” I say and push myself out of the seat.
“Your phone,” he says. “Hold it in your hand.”
I look at him with a question.
He stands up, too, and nods. “You will understand why in a moment,” he says.
Chapter
26
Breathe. Relax. Aim. Squeeze.
Bach lies on the rooftop, her breathing even, her nerves still, her eye looking through the scope of the rifle down at the baseball stadium, the left-field gate. Remembering the words of Ranko, her first teacher, the toothpick jutting out from the side of his mouth, his fiery red, stalklike hair—a scarecrow whose hair caught fire, as he once described himself.
Align your body with the weapon. Think of the rifle as part of your body. Aim your body, not the weapon.
You must remain steady.
Choose your aiming point, not your target.
Pull straight back on the trigger. Your index finger is separate from the rest of your hand.
No, no—you jerked the weapon. Keep the rest of the hand still. You’re not breathing. Breathe normally.
Breathe. Relax. Aim. Squeeze.
The first drop of rain hits her neck. The rain could accelerate events rapidly.
She moves her head away from the sniper scope and raises her binoculars to check on her teams.
Team 1 to the north of the exit, three men huddled together, speaking and laughing, by all appearances nothing more than three friends meeting one another on the street and conversing.
Team 2 to the south of the exit, doing the same thing.
Immediately below her perch, across the street from the stadium, out of her sight, should be team 3, similarly huddled together, ready to stop any escape headed in their direction.
The exit will be surrounded, the teams prepared to close in like a boa constrictor.
“He is leaving his seat.”
Her heart does a flip, adrenaline pumping through her, as the words spill from her earbud.
Breathe.
Relax.
Everything slows to a crawl. Slow. Easy.
It will not go perfectly as planned. It never does. A small part of her, the competitor in her, prefers it when it doesn’t, when she has to make an on-the-spot adjustment.
“Headed for the exit,” she hears through the earbud.
“Teams 1 and 2, go,” she says. “Team 3, hold ready.”
“Team 1, that’s a go,” comes the response.
“Team 2, that’s a go.”
“Team 3 holding ready.”
She moves her eye up to the scope of her rifle.