“Okay,” he said uncertainly. He went over to a bookshelf to collect the contact information for his colleagues.
“Good. But don’t warn anyone else. It’s a disease. There’s a cure. Spread the disease and tell them where to go find the cure. Best way to get our way.”
So brutal, he thought, though he felt a delicious tremor in his stomach. “We have to warn them,” he said again. “And we have to find a way out. We have to take the antivirus ourselves and then get out. She saw my face. She knows you’re involved. And that Federal agent. I can’t believe the Feds got on our tail so fast. They’ll find us eventually.”
Frankie nodded. “That’s true. But you know that we know people that can help us with that. People with a lot of experience hiding from the government.”
The impact of her words reached Copeland even through his drug-induced stupor. He put down the book containing his contacts and bristled. It suddenly occurred to him that he absolutely should not tell Frankie where to find the vaccine. “Absolutely not.”
“They’re your contacts,” she pointed out. She reached forward to the coffee table and hefted a heavy piece of jade. Copeland had told her a dozen times the story of how he had discovered it during one of his hikes into the wilderness. She’d always liked its weight and its jagged edges. “You’re the one who wanted to learn from them.”
“Their philosophy! How they achieved their ends!” he spat. “We’re not going through this again. They are cold-blooded killers. Their goals are petty. We are trying to—”
“—save the planet,” she said like a teenager mocking her father. “Well, your reward is going to be a jail cell when they catch you. But those people can get us out of the country.”
Copeland shook his head. “I haven’t spoken with them in months. I have no way to contact them.”
“I do.”
Copeland’s eyes narrowed. He forced himself to pierce the tranquilizer’s veil to focus on her. “You? How did you— you have been speaking with them?”
She said yes without the slightest bit of remorse.
“They want to kill people. They’ll do nothing with the vaccine,” Copeland said firmly, trying to recover from his shock. “Absolutely not.”
He walked over to the telephone. “We have to call someone. Warn them about the police officer. They can get her into a sterile room before she becomes contagious.” He picked up the telephone.
Frankie Michaelmas stood up, hefted the heavy piece of jade, and brought it crashing down on the back of Copeland’s skull. She had always wondered how many blows it would take to kill him, and now she was determined to find out.
10. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 P.M. AND 5 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Ryan Chappelle burst into Christopher Henderson’s office, red-faced and puffed up, looking like a small dog taking up space.
“Bauer.” Chappelle said the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Not here,” Henderson said. “What’s wrong?”
“This is,” the Director said, holding up a mini-disc as though the very fact that he was holding it proved his point.
Henderson received the disc, opened his CD tray, and laid it down with deliberate smoothness. The video program fired up, and in minutes Henderson was watching color footage of Jack Bauer hunched down next to an overturned police van. His face wasn’t clear — the video was slightly unfocused, and Jack’s face was turned partly away — but Henderson recognized the slouch of Bauer’s shoulders and the straw-blond hair. He was talking to a man in a blue shirt— Henderson knew it was Kasim Turkel, who seemed to be handcuffed and lying on the ground. Every once in a while Bauer jabbed at the man’s leg and he twitched.
Henderson knew what was coming, but he wasn’t going to make it easy. “So?” he said dumbly.
“So, we’ve got video of a CTU agent torturing a man in public!”
Henderson wished he could have built a wall between himself and Chappelle’s invective. “You know Jack. He had a reason—”
“I’m sure Bauer had his reasons. I’m also sure I won’t like them. And I’m even more sure that if this ends up on the evening news, it’ll be a public relations disaster!”
“Suppress it. Where’d we get it?”
Chappelle paced back and forth, unable to contain his energy. He could be as cold as ice sometimes, but Bauer always seemed to bring out the worst in him. “That’s the kicker. A protestor. Check that, a rioter took video footage of him. Probably one of the same people who vandalized the police wagon. And the guy wants to sell it to us for half a million dollars. Otherwise he’s going to CNN.”
Henderson rubbed his temples. Video was unforgiving. Context didn’t matter. The public would see a Federal agent abusing a suspect, and no one would pay attention to the fact that the suspect was a terrorist putting lives at risk, and the interrogator was a man with hours left in which to save lives. “So we buy it off him, or we scare him out of the deal.”
“Maybe,” Chappelle said. “Because the other choice is that I cut this off at the knees by bringing Jack Bauer up on charges.”
Mercy Bennet had followed Smith, on foot, from the Federal Building out of West Los Angeles and into Santa Monica. He seemed to think he’d lost her in the crowd when she had hesitated, looking at Jack Bauer, and she did nothing to dissuade him from that belief. Tailing him on foot seemed ridiculous in this day and age — he should have been followed by two or three teams on foot and in cars, switching drivers and clothing. But with no radio or telephone, Mercy could not call for backup.
So she resorted to cloak-and-dagger movements, staying as far back as possible without losing him, staying behind parked cars, street signs, and other obstacles as often as possible. Copeland seemed to be taking a zigzagging path, one block north then one block west, over and over. Twice she thought she’d lost him, only to follow the pattern and pick him up again. Losing him temporarily had probably helped her more than anything, since it reduced her chances of being seen.
His path led eventually into an upscale neighborhood of Santa Monica above Montana Boulevard. Once he was there, he seemed to relax. His pace had slowed considerably and, though she was too far back to say for sure, she had the impression that his shoulders lost some of their tension. He was on his home turf.
He ended his run at a well-landscaped brick house around Fourteenth Street, the kind of house she would never afford on a government salary. She watched him enter the house, then she made her last dash, reaching a large oak tree planted along the parkway of the house across the street, and partly shielded by a parked Chevy Tahoe. She sat there for a minute catching her breath, trying to decide what to do next, when a Toyota Prius drove into Smith’s driveway. Mercy nearly cursed aloud when she saw Frankie Michaelmas get out of the car and hurry inside. A few minutes later, Frankie had reappeared carrying several small cases. She made a second trip for more cases, then got in the car and drove away. Mercy resisted an irrational urge to jump onto the hood of the car and keep it from moving by force of will. But in the end she did not think Frankie was her target. She focused on Smith.
She sat across the street for a few more minutes, recovering some of her strength and considering her next move, when a middle-aged woman with a round face, wearing a chic bandana on her bald head, came by, walking her dog. Both the woman and the dog moved with tired steps.
“Excuse me,” Mercy said, “I don’t want to bother you, but do you have a cell phone?”
The woman studied Mercy with a sharp eye. “Why?”