He set the white cleric’s collar and the toupee next to him on the floor at the back of the storage unit and sat on several rolls of paper towels in total darkness, meditating and dozing while he waited for his moment.
Anxiety was not allowed to enter his brain.
Neither was fear. Or thoughts of the plan. Or dreams of the future.
Cruz became like death: nobody, nowhere, in no time.
Chapter 48
At 4:50 A.M. on Friday, Kristina Varjan got in an empty elevator in George Washington University Hospital and pushed the button for the fourth floor.
Wearing hospital scrubs, glasses, hazel contact lenses, and a long auburn wig gathered into a ponytail, she carried a blood-draw kit in her left hand and sported an excellent fake GW badge that read TERRI LE GRAND, PHLEBOTOMIST. A near-perfect forgery of an official GW employee pass hung from a clip at her waist.
As the elevator began to rise, Varjan was still debating whether she’d done the right thing by lighting two M-80 fire-crackers taped to two smoke bombs and dropping them in a trash can at the Victorious tournament.
She’d gotten out of there clean, hadn’t she? There was that, and more. Those were FBI agents in the tournament hall, the same FBI agents who’d gone to her motel room. She’d known that the second she’d laid eyes on them.
But what else was she going to do? She’d had to send a message, hadn’t she?
Yes, of that Varjan was certain. She’d been smart to use the smoke bombs for many reasons. But how had the FBI agents gotten there?
Before she could dwell any longer on the thought, the elevator slowed and dinged. The doors opened, and she exited.
Varjan ambled down the hall, yawning and covering her mouth with her sleeve.
She saw a nurse working at a computer at the dimly lit nurses’ station.
“Hi,” Varjan said, smiling at the nurse. “I’m here for Jones and Hitchcock?”
The nurse, a Filipina in her forties, wore a white sweater over her scrubs and a badge that said BRITA. She cocked her head. “You’re kind of early.”
“I’m working an early shift,” Varjan whispered. “Moonlighting. I’m usually at Georgetown Friday afternoons and I needed a double.”
Brita put on reading glasses, typed on the computer. “Who’s the draw for?”
Varjan looked at a clipboard, said, “Meeks for Jones. Albertson for Hitchcock.”
The nurse nodded. “Shame to wake them. Hitchcock had a rough night.”
“I could go upstairs and do my business and swing back if that would help.”
“No, go ahead. I have to deal with our shift change in five.”
“Thanks, Brita,” Varjan said, and she moved down the hall toward Hitchcock’s door. When she looked back, she saw the nurse busy at her computer again.
She went past Hitchcock’s door and the next one, took a deep breath, and used her elbow to push open the third door to a private room occupied by Arthur Jones.
Jones lay in bed, his gray skin lit by various monitors around him. In a chair on the far side of the bed, covered in a blanket, an older woman snored softly. Varjan swallowed. It could have been worse, but the woman did complicate things.
Varjan was flexible and adaptable, however. As she slipped toward the bed and the tangle of medical lines hooked to the old man, she was already spinning lies to use should the woman wake.
But the old woman showed no sign that she heard Varjan setting her kit on a table and opening it. Jones, however, stirred when she slipped a device on his finger to check his pulse ox and then put the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm.
“What the hell time is it?” he whispered grumpily.
Varjan held his gaze, smiled, whispered, “Little before five, sir.”
“Couldn’t this have waited a couple hours?”
The assassin acted sympathetic as she pumped the cuff. “I’m just following doctor’s orders.”
Varjan put on a stethoscope and took Jones’s blood pressure.
“Don’t tell me how bad my numbers are,” he grumbled. “Don’t mean a damn thing anyway, I’m going under the knife this afternoon.”
“People live through cardiac surgery every day,” she said, removing the cuff.
“That’s what they say. Where you poking me now?”
“Inner left arm.”
Without responding, Jones closed his eyes, adjusted the IV line sticking in the back of his left hand, and exposed the inside of his elbow. Varjan wrapped a length of tubing around his weak upper arm and felt for a vein.
She took a needle, attached it to a vacuum tube, and—
“Who the hell are you?” the woman in the chair said.
Chapter 49
Varjan started, said, “Sorry, Terri Le Grand. The phlebotomist. You?”
“Eddie, the sister,” the woman said, studying her critically. “He had blood taken last night.”
The assassin gazed at her. “And I’d think there’ll be more drawn before surgery.”
Eddie sniffed. “You’ll drain him before he can get on the table.”
“Surprise,” Jones said, his eyes still shut. “Dear sister woke up on the positive side of the bed again.”
“They’re taking a lot of blood, Arthur,” his sister said.
“Some of it’s being stockpiled for surgery,” Varjan said as she slipped the needle toward his arm. “Little pinch.”
“Ow,” Jones said, his eyes flashing open. “That hurt!”
Varjan, flustered, said, “I... I’m sorry. That never happens.”
“Torture him, why don’t you?” Eddie said.
“Eddie,” Jones said, looking away from Varjan. “Please.”
His sister sniffed again. “Just saying.”
Varjan watched blood flow into the vacuum tube and got a second tube ready. This one was not a vacuum but the barrel of a syringe. She set it into the back of the needle and pressed the plunger. The syringe contained a high dose of propranolol, a drug used to slow the heart rate and lower blood pressure.
Once the full dose was in, Varjan tugged back on the plunger until it was partially filled with blood. She slid out the needle, put cotton on the wound site, and taped it in place.
“There,” she said, smiling brightly. “Not so bad.”
Eddie said, “Do you get off on sticking people like that?”
“That’s it,” Jones said. “Can you have the nurse call Rebecca, my wife? Tell her to come early before I’m driven mad?”
Eddie acted offended. “What? I slept in a chair for you, Arthur.”
Varjan did not know what to make of the siblings and didn’t much care.
“Well,” she said awkwardly, “I hope surgery goes well.”
“If I don’t die from my sister’s bleak outlook on life,” Jones said.
“Rational outlook on life,” Eddie said. “The cold hard facts.”
Varjan smiled halfheartedly and left. She could hear them bickering softly as she walked down the hall toward the nurses’ station, where the shift change was under way. Brita, the Filipina nurse, looked up from her chart.
“Good?”
“Better than good,” Varjan said. “Have a nice sleep.”
She walked directly to the elevator and pushed the down button. Several moments passed before alarms began to sound in the hall.
Eddie ran out of her brother’s room, yelled, “He’s not breathing!”
Nurses and orderlies from both shifts grabbed crash carts and raced toward Jones’s room. The elevator doors opened.
Varjan took one last look at the team racing past Eddie, who trembled at the doorway. She looked in at the doctors and nurses and then glanced down the hall at her brother’s assassin. “You bled him dry!” she cried. “I knew that would happen!”