Being a woman was a great aid to her in her work as an assassin. She was able to get into dozens of places men couldn’t and the possible disguises were endless. Somehow targets didn’t feel threatened by women. They let them get too close and often that was when Scola struck. The nurse’s guise had always been one of her most effective. So often over the years when others had failed to carry out their assignments, wounding the target instead of killing him, Scola was called in. She wasn’t sure of the precise circumstances surrounding her target in room 434, nor did they concern her. All that mattered now was that she was totally prepared, her instrument of death stored openly on her nurse’s cart.
Scola had worked for a time with the CIA, quite effectively in fact. Then, though, drugs had entered in. This was hardly unusual in the case of active field agents, especially assassins, so the Company was well equipped to deal with it; that is, so long as the subject could be considered a soft case rather than a hard one. Five months after her cocaine habit began, Scola found her file upgraded from soft to hard and she was out of a job. The Company wanted no part of an addict. The odds of a slipup were simply too great. Scola fumed briefly, then plunged into the free-lance market, where the pay was exorbitant, the hours better, and no issue was made of her habit.
The wheels of her cart squeaked a bit as she headed toward the elevator. The sound soothed her. Yes, returning to a hospital for a mission was like coming home. These buildings were all the same, and she had never failed in one yet.
The elevator doors opened and Scola shoved her cart in ahead of her.
Blaine McCracken accepted the pain-killers only at night to help him sleep. He knew he needed his rest if he wanted to make a quick return to duty. He’d leave it to Stimson to sort out the political complications. He was concerned only with healing his own body or at least making it functional. For this he needed sleep but for sleep he needed the painkillers.
Blaine had always hated them. He’d seen lots of young boys in ’Nam become addicts after only a few injections of morphine in the field and since then had avoided any drugs at virtually all costs. But this was different. More than twenty-four hours had passed since his meeting with Stimson and the inactivity had begun to gnaw at him. He was restless and sleep was virtually impossible without chemical help. The two pills he had taken an hour before were just starting to reach their full effect. He felt himself starting to float into the darkness of the room.
In the final moments before consciousness left him, Blaine focused on what information the fiche had yielded: Christmas Eve dinner for 15,000 and the list of foods with numbers preceding them beneath it.
Stimson’s computers had gotten nowhere in their quest to break the code. Nor would they ever be able to if too many alphabetical and numerical components were missing. Without the complete text, no patterns could be found, and without patterns Easton’s cipher would continue to elude them.
But what if such alphabetical and numerical patterns weren’t important? There was something Blaine wasn’t considering, something the computers couldn’t. In his half-sleep he could almost reach out and touch it.
It looks like a shopping list. …
McCracken’s mind had locked on that thought, when sleep overcame him.
Francis Dolorman held the receiver to his ear as he punched out a private number. His line was “swept” daily to insure no tap or recording devices were in place, nothing that might betray the frequent discussions that were so crucial to the success of Omega.
“Yes,” responded the man on the other end.
“There are further complications, sir.”
“I’m listening, Francis.”
“We confirmed that Kelno delivered the disk to Sandy Lister and now we have it back in our possession.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Miss Lister, sir. This development makes her a grave risk to us at this stage.”
“But with Omega only five days from activation, eliminating her remains even more risky. Without the disk she has no proof and you’ve already assured me there was nothing on it that could in any way lead back to us.”
“Unless more of Kelno’s accomplices link up with her. Wells is making no inroads toward learning their identities. If they reach Lister, it could be disastrous.”
“Except, Francis, to do so they’ll have to surface, which is just what we want. Make sure Wells is ready at that time. They’ll show themselves before long. The pressure’s on them, not us. Now, what about the McCracken business?”
“It’s being handled this evening, sir. I expect no complications.”
“With men like McCracken there are always complications. Get back to me when it’s finished.”
Scola eased her cart around the sharp corner and headed toward the bank of private rooms on the fourth floor. She could already tell that no guard was stationed outside room 434. This would make her job even easier than she had been led to expect it would be.
The nurses on duty at the central station were chatting and giggling, so Scola was able to move smoothly by without having to announce herself. An orderly eyed her as he passed, but Scola smiled routinely and kept going. Room 434 was just up ahead.
Scola could feel her heart beating hard now. This was partially due to the cocaine she had ingested only an hour before. The drug sharpened her senses and made her feel as though she could accomplish anything. Failure was out of the question.
Scola opened the door to room 434 and dragged the cart in after her. The door closed softly.
She stepped into the darkness.
McCracken felt himself come drowsily awake. He wasn’t sure what had stirred him from his rest, and his mind was too slowed to utilize its normal reasoning powers. There had been a sound and something else, something that had come to him in his sleep.
Christmas Eve dinner for 15,000 …
He had found the answer in his sleep! His body must have stirred for fear he might lose his grip on it during the long hours of the night. Blaine fought with his dulled mind, fought with it to yield the answer sleep had revealed.
So simple, so damn simple …
It was this slight sharpening of his senses that allowed him to feel the presence of another person in the room. He could feel the intruder closing on him. No, not feel — hear. There was a squeaking sound that suddenly stopped.
For an instant Blaine drifted toward sleep again, then struggled back.
By that time in the darkness Scola had removed her target’s IV pouch from its hook and replaced it with one from her cart, the contents of which would lead to a quick, mysterious death. All she had to do now was reinsert the needle in her pouch.
Blaine felt the slight tugging on his arm and shifted his eyes lazily to the side. They were slow to respond to the near total blackness of the room, broken only by a slight spill of light sneaking through a crack in the Venetian blinds.
The spill caught something white moving at his side.
Blaine knew it was a nurse, knew her presence here was all wrong. Adrenaline surged through his veins, reviving him, providing the thrust he needed to regain motor capacities.
Scola’s needle dug deep into the IV pouch and a clear liquid began flowing out immediately, heading straight for her target’s veins.
The suddenness of his movement shocked her, but she thought it was more a spasm than an action until she saw he was clearly reaching out for her. Scola recoiled and slammed into her cart.
Blaine had almost made it from the bed when the numbness grasped him. It seemed to start in all his limbs at once, leaving his brain frustrated and confused. The white figure was hovering back over him now and it should have been so easy to reach up and choke the daylights out of her. But when he tried to reach, there seemed to be nothing to reach with, as if his mind and body had become two separate entities.