There were two holes in Melamid’s chest, one on the lower right and another to the upper left. Both were bubbling with air and blood, and when Melamid gasped for breath, there was a sickly wet sucking. “Do you have the sponge pen?”
Nancy did not respond.
He craned his head and saw her leaning over the body of the courier. She held the manila envelope in her left hand and checked the man’s neck for a pulse with her right. She caught him looking and shook her head. “He’s dead.”
“Get the pen,” he said. “Nancy! Get the pen!”
Nancy nodded to the back of the diner, and Smith followed her gaze and saw a girl hunched over the bodies of her dead friends. The girl was screeching in shock, her hand held out, clawing at the air.
The couple at the counter clutched each other, clearly in shock. Their waitress, Betty, lay on the floor, a hole in the side of her face. She was choking on blood, making terrible gluck-gluck noises as her legs spasmed uselessly against the floor.
Another waitress stared at the scene, frozen in fear.
“The police will be here soon,” Nancy said. “Three minutes, tops.”
“Give me the pen!”
She opened her purse and handed him a device resembling a large syringe. He stuck the syringe into the bullet wound on Melamid’s right side and squeezed the injector. The injector bottomed out, and hundreds of tiny sponges, each coated with a clotting agent made from shrimp and crab chitlin, swelled to seal the wound.
Melamid gasped and shook his head. “Go.”
Smith tried to ignore the wet sounds coming from the other bullet hole. “We need another pen.”
“We don’t have another pen,” Nancy hissed.
Smith squeezed Melamid’s arm. “You’ll be all right, you old bear. We’ll get you out of here.”
Melamid heaved and coughed up a bloody mess into his hand. “Too late for me, old friend.” He smiled sadly. “Internal hemorrhaging. I don’t have… much time.”
“We have to go,” Nancy said. She held up the manila envelope. “He’s right. He’s not going to make it. We’ve got what we came for.”
“We can’t leave him,” Smith said.
“That man… he is Russian,” Melamid said. “They sent him to kill us.”
“I thought you convinced them Alex was dead.”
Melamid coughed again and spat out blood. “Alexandra knows something. It was never just about her betrayal. Find her, little girl. Find your mother.”
“What does she know?” Smith asked. “Why won’t they let it go?”
Melamid coughed again and wiped at his mouth. “We were bad men, Fulton.”
“Something we did?” Smith asked. “What did we do?”
Melamid’s breathing slowed. “She has codes. Alexandra…” His eyelids fluttered. “She has the codes to the bombs.”
“The bombs?” Smith asked.
“We have to go,” Nancy insisted, pointing at the door. “Now!”
“What bombs?” Smith asked. “Vasilii? What bombs?”
“The warheads. They are here. Nu — nuclear…”
Smith’s stomach flip-flopped. “Alex has the codes to nuclear warheads here in the United States?”
Melamid managed a slight nod. “They… will never give up. Goodbye, Fulton. It… hurts…”
Melamid’s chest rose and then fell and then rose no more. The old Russian’s eyes went glassy, and there was the sharp smell of ammonia as his bladder released, followed by the stench of his releasing bowels.
Nancy grabbed Smith by the arm and pulled him to his feet, her eyes shining with fury. “We have to go!”
Smith nodded and gave Melamid one last glance before following his daughter into the frigid night and down the street to their Lincoln.
As he climbed into the passenger seat, he heard sirens wailing in the distance. Nancy started the Lincoln and gunned the engine, pushing him back into the seat before he had a chance to shut the door.
Nancy just barely obeyed the speed limit, and soon they were blocks away as police cars came screaming down the road with their lights blazing. She slowed as they passed, then asked softly, “Do you believe him?”
“That your mother knows codes for nuclear warheads?” He stared out the window as they fled the scene of the attack. “It explains why the Russians were so angry.”
“They smuggled warheads into the country?”
He nodded. “We suspect at least three of them, and perhaps as many as eight.”
The drove for miles in silence. “None of that matters to me,” she said.
“If it is true,” Smith said, “then Alex could start a nuclear war. The final war.”
“Why should I care?” Nancy snapped. “Why do I have to pay the price for their mistakes? Your mistakes?”
“Nancy—”
“You did the same thing. You smuggled bombs into their country. Vasilii was right. You are bad men.”
Smith took a sharp breath. “Vasilii loved his country, just as I love mine. When Russia was collapsing, he could have started World War III He didn’t. He agreed to stop their programs, just like I agreed to stop ours.”
“But you didn’t,” Nancy pointed out. “You left the bombs in Moscow, just like they left theirs here. Just to keep each other in check.”
Nancy turned left, and Smith asked, “Where are you going? This isn’t the way to the hotel.”
“We’re not going to the hotel,” Nancy said.
“We need—”
“We’ve tried it your way. Now we’re doing things my way.”
The cockpit door opened, and Nancy stepped out. Her face was grim. “We’ll be home soon.”
Smith stared at the cell phone on the table in front of him. “Your mother is waiting for our phone call.”
“Did you inspect it?”
“Yes,” he said. “There’s a single preprogrammed number. A 212 area code.”
“It’s somewhere in Manhattan,” Nancy said. “Dewey Green can route the call via VOIP It’s safer than a burner phone.”
“So much has changed,” Smith said. “There were only a handful of organizations that could trace a phone call. Cell phones made everything… different. We had a man at the NSA…”
He struggled to remember the man’s name, and then a moment later realized Nancy was watching him. “What?”
She frowned. “Are you okay?”
He concentrated on their conversation. “What was I saying?”
“You’re acting oddly. Hobert should examine you.”
“I’m fine,” he protested.
“You are not,” Nancy said. “Did the shock of the attack put too much of a strain on you?”
“Vasilii is dead. The Russians know your mother isn’t…” He struggled to connect the dots. “It’s just… what was I saying?”
“You’re having trouble putting words together,” Nancy said. “You appear confused. You’re…”
He took her hand and gently squeezed. “I’m running out of time.”
Nancy grimaced. “When I was a child, I hated you.” She turned to stare out the Gulfstream’s window at the clouds far below. “Even as a child, I understood your world was dangerous. You shuttled me from couple to couple, randomly dropping in to visit. Do you remember when you taught me how to tail someone?”
He searched his memories but came up blank. “No.”
“It was my ninth birthday. I was with the Sweeneys at Camp Pendleton. You took me for ice cream at the mall. Then you taught me how to follow someone without making it seem like I was following them.”
“That was… a long time ago.”
She blinked, and her mouth quirked up in a rare smile. “I’m sure many girls pretended their fathers were secret government agents. The difference is, I knew it to be true. I hated you, but I loved you. You were trying to protect me. I know I don’t say it enough, but I do appreciate what you did to keep me safe.”