All the time that I was blabbing I was desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. I looked around. We were in the multi-room presidential suite. To my right, a veranda overlooked the fountains and gardens of the atrium. The doors to it were closed. I couldn’t jump, anyway. We were on the sixth floor.
“Mr. Trembley,” said the governor. “You may shoot him in the head now. Aim carefully, please.”
Trembley leveled his gun at me. It was all happening too fast. I didn’t even have my escape plan figured out yet. This was not-
Blam.
I jolted. Expected to feel the bullet tear into me. Felt at my face, scanned my chest. What? Nothing.
Then I looked up.
Trembley lay dying on the carpet.
“Nice shot, Dr. Bowers,” said the governor, holding my gun. The barrel was smoking. “It looks like you killed him.”
And in that moment I realized I might have underestimated Sebastian Taylor.
Tessa ran down the hallway, locked the bathroom door, then slipped into the master bedroom instead and left its door unlocked.
“387,834 people, Tessa,” called the man who’d shot the woman cop. “And every day 153,288 die. Where are you, Tessa? Today is your day.”
She heard the killer coming down the hall, trying the doors. Heard him open the door to the room she’d slept in last night.
“I know you’re down here, Tessa.” He moved to the next door in the hall. The bathroom. Found it locked. “Aha. There you are.”
She crouched in the corner of the bedroom, next to the dresser, trembled, pulled out her phone, dialed 911.
“Hello,” said a bored-sounding voice, “please state the nature-”
Her heartbeat was going through the roof. Her words came out in spurts as she tried to breathe. “There’s a man… in the hall… has a gun.”
“Where are you calling from, ma’am?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m in a house, a FBI house. Call the FBI office. Ask for Patrick Bowers.”
“Ma’am, I can’t-”
He was bashing on the bathroom door, hollering her name. “Tessa, open the door.”
“He’s coming,” Tessa whispered urgently. “He killed the cop who was supposed to be protecting me.”
Then she heard a car pull into the driveway and a car door slam.
Officer Stilton.
“Well,” said the governor. “I guess I won’t have to pay Mr. Trembley after all. Shame.” He set down my gun, picked up Trembley’s Glock, and aimed it at me. “And now it’s your turn, Agent Bowers.”
No, no, no. This was not good.
My heart began to jackhammer in my chest. “So you’re going to shoot me? Is that it?”
“Oh no. I wouldn’t do that. No need. Trembley already did, right before he died.”
Not good at all.
Tessa heard the bathroom door burst open. The clatter of splintered wood. Cursing.
Then the killer stopped. He must have looked out the window in the bathroom and seen the car there.
Oh no.
She glanced out the window. Officer Stilton was walking up the driveway.
She had to warn him. If she didn’t, the man in the hall would kill him too. She pulled the window shade back and tried signaling to the cop, but he was fumbling with his pack of cigarettes and didn’t see her.
She tried opening the window, but it was either jammed or sealed shut. Oh duh, she was in an FBI house! The windows were probably bulletproof and sealed shut for her protection.
Great.
She looked back at the phone. The screen read “Call Ended.” Either she’d lost the signal or they’d hung up on her when she stopped talking. Either way it meant she was dead meat.
Wait. If you can’t get out, how did the killer get in? Did he pick the lock? Was the door left unlocked on purpose? Why would someone have left it unlocked?
Officer Stilton paused and then turned back to his car. He must have forgotten something.
78
“Someone definitely heard that shot,” I said to the governor. “They’ll be coming for you.”
He shook his head. “Don’t think so.” He let his gaze wander around the suite. “Presidential suite, remember? Bulletproof glass. Soundproof rooms. Welcome to the waters where the big fish swim.” Then he tapped the Glock’s barrel against his palm. “Let’s see… So, how does this sound? Stressed-out FBI agent who lost his wife and got stuck behind a desk for six months finally gets back into the field but hasn’t quite recovered from his bouts with depression. Everyone in the office has noticed his erratic behavior and angry flare-ups. He concocts a wild conspiracy theory about the governor of North Carolina being involved in the Jonestown tragedy some thirty years earlier and despite being warned off the wild goose chase by his superiors, he takes things into his own hands and tries to assassinate the governor in his hotel room just one day after threatening him at his private residence. But thankfully, the private investigator who Governor Taylor had hired to investigate the rogue agent killed him before he could carry out his deadly plans.” Sebastian Taylor looked down at Trembley’s body. “Unfortunately for the PI, Dr. Bowers was able to squeeze off one final round, killing him, before expiring.”
OK, that actually sounded kind of believable to me.
“It’ll never fly,” I said.
“Oh, you seem to be forgetting, I’m very good at what I do.”
“Gunshot residue,” I said. “It’s all over your clothes, your face, your hands.”
“I was in the room when you shot him. It would be natural for some residue to be on me.”
That was actually a good point. How ironic. Location and timing of a crime were going to be the death of me. Literally.
Keep him talking.
“I still can’t believe that even you would be willing to sacrifice nine hundred innocent people,” I said.
He shook his head. “Never part of the plan. You should have figured that out by now. Ryan was the target. We knew we could pin the assassination on Peoples Temple, shut Jones down, show the world how crazy and unstable communists are. His followers were just collateral damage.” He smirked. “We weren’t sure exactly how Jones would react, but we figured he’d self-destruct-which he did. In the end it just went further than we thought it would.”
“That’s what you call the death of all those people? Going further than you thought it would? Collateral damage?” I felt anger pacing back and forth inside me, ready to pounce. “You used him. You used them all.”
“We did what we had to do. Ryan was a threat to our country, always fighting to limit the way the CIA did its work. We did it to protect freedom, not to limit it. We just created the perfect storm and waited to see how it would play out. I wasn’t sent in to make sense of it, just to help recast the story.”
“Remove the evidence, leave the rumors.”
“Eloquently put.”
“So what about the truth?” I said. “That doesn’t matter?”
He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Rumors, Dr. Bowers, not truth, are what matter in the end. Rumors start wars, topple regimes, ruin marriages, end careers. The driving force behind world commerce is innuendo, not truth. Everything from the stock market to the futures market to the price of oil is determined by guesswork and gossip. Control the rumors, Dr. Bowers, and you control the world.”
“And in the case of Jonestown, you controlled the rumors.”
A smile writhed across his face. “We influenced them. After all, those people really did kill themselves off; we had nothing to do with that. All we did was shape the way their story was told.” He raised the Glock, pointed it at my chest. “Just as I’m going to shape the way your story will be told.”
Think fast… think fast…
“But then why’d you leave the tape behind? At least tell me that much.”
“I was interrupted before I could finish editing it.” He shook his head. “It’s that simple. Someone just showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gotta hate those interruptions.” He took aim. Faster. Faster.
“Ralph and Lien-hua know.”