The Panic Zone Part 52

"What the Christ was that?" an NYPD official asked as others around the room muttered in disbelief.

"This is what we're facing," Lancer said.

"How the h.e.l.l do we stop that?"

67.

New York City Gretchen Sutsoff rose before the sun.

She was rested and ready.

Little Will was sleeping soundly.

Still in her nightdress, Sutsoff went to her laptop computer.

Drake Stinson had betrayed her. She knew that he was now somewhere in the Middle East trying to broker a deal with what he thought was an antidote to Pariah Variant 1.

As she started entering the activation codes for him, she did the same for the other members of her inner circle--General Dimitri, Downey, Goran, Reich and especially Ibrahim Jehaimi for violating her trust.

Before they'd joined her in the toast in Benghazi, she'd worked a veterinarian's hypodermic needle through the wine cork and injected enough lethal agent--a special prolonged-acting version--for all of them.

She took care of Jehaimi with a little gift of sweets later.

Now it was time to tidy things up.

It took five full minutes to complete the activation process, which ended when she tapped the enter key. Wherever they were in the world, they'd just taken their final breaths.

Goodbye.

She'd erased them.

Done.

Sutsoff was hungry.

She showered, then ordered a breakfast of poached eggs and English tea to her room. While the baby slept, she ate quietly and watched the new day break over Manhattan.

When she finished, she switched on the TV to watch the morning news programs. The weather called for a clear day in the low seventies.

Pictures of herself appeared on the TV screen.

A news crawler under the images said the FBI was searching for a former CIA scientist wanted in connection with murder, a conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism and theft of government property. No mention of a target or method of operation. Do they know? The news report showed footage of CIA headquarters, Fort Detrick, the resort on Paradise Island, a cruise s.h.i.+p and the face of the pa.s.senger from Indiana.

Sutsoff was calm.

She no longer looked like the wanted fugitive--Botox, body padding and a wig had taken care of that. She was Mary Anne Conrad, traveling with her grandson Will.

Her work would continue. She was only a few hours away from full activation. This just makes things interesting, she thought, as the baby woke and started to fuss.

Sutsoff changed him.

Then she unscrewed her float pen and mixed the clear liquid from the barrel into his breakfast: fruit, toast and juice from room service.

There we go.

As the baby ate, she checked on progress through her various e-mail accounts. She was disappointed to learn that only a handful of families were now in place in New York hotels.

She returned to the TV news, which was now showing preparations for the gathering in Central Park. The event would start later that morning. Over one million partic.i.p.ants were expected for the full slate of music and addresses from global celebrities, including the president.

"Over a million people--my, isn't that perfect?" She smiled at the baby. "It's more than perfect. It's beautiful."

Sutsoff noticed a new e-mail.

One of the couples was having trouble. They'd lost their floater pen. They were at the Tellwood, only four blocks away. Sutsoff had prepared extra pens.

She typed an e-mail to them.

"All finished eating, Will? Let's take a little walk before we head to the park."

She got him dressed, collected her laptop and some other things in a bag and loaded her stroller. Before she left, she took some more medication.

Nothing would stop her now.

68.

Na.s.sau, Bahamas In the predawn darkness, a police car crept through Na.s.sau's Over-the-Hill district.

The faint yelp of a distant dog sounded a warning as a flashlight beam shot from the car's pa.s.senger door. Light raked across the dilapidated shops with barred windows, the boarded-up canteens, eviscerated cars and tumbledown houses.

Royal Bahamas Police Detective Colchester Young and his partner Angelo Morgan had worked their street sources. An angry ex-girlfriend had tipped them to their subject, hiding at his aunt's place in Over-the-Hill.

"He said he had to lay low," she'd told them, then added, "he carries a gun all the time."

The car rolled up to a neat home with pretty flower boxes.

In a heartbeat, Young and Morgan, armed with a crow-bar, semiautomatic pistols and a warrant, entered the house and found Whitney Wymm struggling to get up from the couch.

Wymm reached for the gun he'd stashed under the couch, but his wrist was crushed under Morgan's boot. Young slammed Wymm to the floor, rolled him on his stomach, put his knee in his back and cuffed him.

Wymm was one of the top doc.u.ment counterfeiters in the West Indies.

Young and Morgan had effective methods of extracting information and within an hour of his arrest, Wymm admitted that he'd created new pa.s.sports for the woman in the photograph the detectives had shown him.

Gretchen Sutsoff.

Wymm gave them all the photos he'd used to create new pa.s.sports for her in the name of Mary Anne Conrad and for the baby she had with her, William John Conrad.

By the time the sun rose, the detectives had alerted their supervisor to the vital new information. The supervisor alerted his bosses, who saw that the update was immediately rushed through official channels to the FBI in Was.h.i.+ngton.

The FBI pa.s.sed it to the FBI Field Office in Manhattan and the New York Police Department, and it was circulated to every law enforcement officer tasked to find Gretchen Sutsoff.

Early that morning in Manhattan, Art Wolowicz and Clive Hatcher were among the teams of NYPD detectives a.s.signed to that aspect of the case. They were canva.s.sing hotels when the new alert beeped on the mobile computer in their unmarked Chevy Impala.

"A new picture and alias--this one's a freakin' chameleon. Where we goin' next?" Wolowicz asked.

Hatcher pried the lid off his takeout cup, blew on his coffee and said, "LaQuinta, then Comfort Inn, then let's go back to the Tellwood."

69.

New York City "We're close to Tyler, I can feel it, Jack." Emma Lane's concentration never strayed from Gannon's computer monitor.

The memory card she'd obtained from the Blue Tortoise Kids' Hideaway held hundreds of files. Gannon and Emma continued studying them now at Gannon's desk in the World Press Alliance headquarters.

They'd first read the files yesterday, during their flight from Na.s.sau.

Tears had rolled down Emma's face when she'd found Tyler's case among them. It contained his health records from his doctor and the clinic in California, Emma and Joe's personal information, their photos, articles on their crash from the Big Cloud Gazette, even Joe's obituary. Then separate information about "adoptive parents" Valmir and Elena Leeka, and something about Tyler's birth parents having died in a car accident.

"Why are they doing this?" Emma had asked over and over.

Gannon didn't have the answer Today, he zeroed in on the data related to seventy couples or families located around the world.

"There seems to be a pattern."

Earlier that morning, after Gannon had brought Melody Lyon up to speed, she'd a.s.signed other reporters to help. They'd taken the names Gannon had mined from the files and started calling New York hotels to see if any people named in the files were registered.

In studying the files, Gannon had discovered that each case involved a small child, usually under three years old. Each case also seemed to involve an adoption through law firms or agencies in Brazil, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Malaysia, China or India. And each case involved name changes and exhaustive health records.

In the more recent files, Gannon found that names of the "families" or "couples" had been removed or changed. But a few files contained notes about traveling to New York for the Human World Conference. Gannon had managed to pull some of those names from those files. He was reviewing them when he got a call from a WPA reporter who was helping them.

"Jack, it's Linwood."

"You get anything with those names I gave you to check?"

"Zip."

"Keep checking."

Gannon kept poring over the files. His focus sharpened when he found one he'd overlooked. It contained two names: Joy Lee Chenoweth and Wex Taggart out of Vancouver, Canada.

There were photos of the couple with a boy about three years old and recent notes suggesting that they would be going to the Human World Conference and staying at the Tellwood Regency Inn.

Gannon picked up his phone and called the hotel.

"Tellwood Regency, how may I help you?"

"Yes, I'm trying to reach two guests, Joy Lee Chenoweth and Wex Taggart. Did they check in yet?"

"One moment, sir." Keys clicked. "Yes, Wex Taggart from Vancouver, British Columbia."

"That's right."

"We have them. Would you like me to connect you, now?"

"Yes, please."

The line switched and rang twice before a woman answered.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Gannon hesitated while looking at the file photos. The voice on the line seemed suited to the pretty young Asian woman staring back at him.

"I'm sorry. I think I've got the wrong room."

Gannon hung up and turned to Emma.

"We have a lead at the Tellwood hotel."

70.

New York City Gannon updated Lyon.

Two news photographers were dispatched to meet Gannon and Emma at the northwest corner of the intersection closest to the Tellwood.

Lyon then authorized Emma to have a temporary WPA photo ID made for her at Gannon's insistence.