CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The two CIA case officers took the expensive cab ride to the Naked Monkey Bar, a DC hot spot where Omar Farok was known to mingle when he was in town. If everything went according to plan, Farok would soon be in their custody.
But his bodyguards were always by his side, and they were brutal. Recruited from the Republic of the Congo, they came from the ranks of the rebels who’d fought in the Second Congo War, where they’d treated their prisoners with extreme cruelty. These were trained and experienced torturers. They knew how much injury they could inflict on a human body without killing their victim, frequently removing the victim’s organs and eating them, a ritualistic practice reflecting their tribe’s cannibalistic past. Torture of Farok’s girlfriends was a common thing.
At midnight, Farok slipped out of the Naked Monkey Bar, and headed back to his rented townhouse. He walked briskly toward his destination, only four blocks away. He didn’t notice the two CIA operatives who were following him until he was within two blocks of the townhouse. He rarely went anywhere without bodyguards, but that night, he’d felt confidant. He’d misjudged. He’d been a fool to send his guards away.
Farok rarely used his cell phone because there were too many electronic ears listening, waiting for him to slip up. But this was an emergency. He pressed “1” on his speed dial, and made an immediate connection.
“I have company. Two of them,” he said quietly. “I’m two blocks away, on M Street by Connecticut Avenue. Take them before they take me.”
Four men in black suits and starched white shirts without ties raced from their room to a limo parked at the curb for quick departure. Within a minute, they were behind the two CIA operatives trailing their boss. The limo slowed. Two of the bodyguards jumped from the car, crept up behind the CIA men, and slammed ten-inch jambiyas into their backs, just left of the spine. The attackers thrust upward and then sideways, carving gaping holes into the aorta and heart. As the agents fell forward, the Congolese killers grabbed them under their arms and dragged them to the limo. They shoved the bodies into the back and jumped in.
The limo sped down the street until it caught up to Farok, then it slowed almost to a stop alongside him. The front passenger door swung open and Farok jumped into the car. While the car raced to a parking garage two blocks away, the rebels removed the cell phones from the pockets of the dead men, wiped off the blood, and handed them to Farok. “We’re leaving tonight,” Farok said in a quiet voice. “I want to be closer to the target when Celena locates it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I woke in a cold sweat, heart racing, disoriented. It took me a minute to get my bearings. I pulled on my clothes and walked down the short hall to the bathroom. The door to Keyes’ bedroom was closed, but I could hear her snoring softly inside. Must’ve been a late night.
After getting cleaned up, I went to the kitchen to make some coffee and breakfast. Except for a few bottles of water, some condiments, and a moldy cantaloupe, the refrigerator was pretty much bare, so I walked to the corner market to pick up a few groceries.
An hour later, I was lifting one of my specialties, a veggie frittata, out of the oven when Keyes walked in. Laughing, she said, “You clean and cook? What more could a girl want?”
“It’s the least I can do.”
I looked into her sparkling eyes. They were inviting. I wanted to touch her, but controlled myself and forced my thoughts back to business mode. Keyes seemed sincere, and God knows I could use an ally.
After breakfast, Keyes gave me a lift to Jackson City Hospital. I still had a license to practice medicine and hospital privileges. I just needed a space to operate and to have access to special equipment for wound care for my post-op patients. I dreaded having to go there because to do so I had to get Herb Waters’ approval. It would have been tough enough even before I was accused of murder, but now it would be next to impossible. With everything at stake, I had to give it a try.
Herb Waters ruled the hospital with an iron fist. I went directly to his sixth floor Penthouse office.
In what little spare time I had, over the previous few months, I’d done research on Waters and the Jackson City Hospital. My research concluded with a half-page op-ed piece that was published in the Daily Chronicle, the city paper. In my article, I accused Waters of negotiating to sell our community not-for-profit hospital to the large for-profit conglomerate, American Hospital Systems (AHS). AHS bought and managed hundreds of hospitals all over the United States.
I’d written the piece because the concept of charitable medical care was near and dear to my heart. The purpose of a nonprofit hospital was to provide medical care to all who needed it, not only to those with good insurance or loads of cash in the bank, as was the standard practice at for-profit hospitals. Most physicians had, as I did, a few indigent patients they treated for free, and they relied on the community hospital to accept those patients who needed in-hospital services.
Waters had written a three-column rebuttal to my article. In his piece, which appeared on the front page of the newspaper a few days after my letter was published, Waters repeatedly stated that, “this hospital is not for sale to anyone.” Further, he claimed, “Dr. James’ letter was written with no knowledge of fact.”
I knew that to be a lie because I had personally talked with an AHS executive in Houston four times during the previous month. Waters had never accepted criticism well, and he was beyond livid about my op-ed piece in the newspaper.
Until our recent falling out, Waters and I had been close friends, going back to our freshman year in high school. These days, our relationship was rocky, at best. But I had no choice but to ask for his help.
Herb Waters’ office, occupying one-fourth of the roof space of the sixth floor, looked as if it had been dropped from the sky on top of an otherwise functionally well-designed hospital. It was planned by his advisers, who felt he should be physically present at the hospital and not several miles away in the Hanover building, where his office was formerly situated. Hospital employees gave the office the name, “Penthouse,” which by common usage became the official title of the structure.
The Penthouse’s appearance was questioned by professional builders and designers, even though it was drawn by the best architects in the southeast. Passersby thought that the odd structure was the top of the elevator shafts or the ventilation system. With the Penthouse addition, Waters moved, permanently, from the Hanover building to the hospital, and his title was changed to President of Jackson City Healthcare Systems Inc.
The hospital elevator only went as high as the fifth floor. This was because Waters didn’t want to see any of the doctors, and made it difficult for us to reach his office by distancing himself from the hospital complex with a flight of stairs. I took the elevator to the fifth floor and ran up the stairs, bounding into the Penthouse.
I walked into Waters’ office reception area. No one other than his private secretary was allowed in Waters’ Penthouse.
I surprised the secretary, Shirley Moss. “I need to see your boss.”
“Dr. James, please… I’m not sure if… ” was her tentative response. She looked at me and continued, her voice, now firm, “He’s busy. You’ll have to make an appointment.”