And in his heart he hoped the softly spoken words would carry far into the future, to a time when someone else of good character, strong will and undying patriotism sat in this, the loneliest of chairs.
Chapter 21
Special Agent John Doyle of the FBI's Miami field office wanted to know just exactly what kind of terrorists they were dealing with.
"Al-Qaida, Cubans, Palace Indians, what?" Doyle whispered to his partner. "I mean, it's terrorists, right?"
"Beats me," Allen Horsman replied gruffly. "They just pay me to get my ass shot at by the bad guys. They don't bother to tell me the who or why."
That was typical for Agent Allen Horsman. Running down murderers, drug runners and terrorists was all the same.
But Agent Doyle was curious. This business with apartment 1602 certainly did not constitute a normal FBI day. Given the presence of the mysterious man from Washington, Doyle was certain they were after terrorists.
Their superior from Washington was even younger than Doyle. Pale and of average height, with a wide face that was red from either excitement or anxiety. Probably both.
Weird that Doyle could be older than this temporary boss. Some at the Bureau-including his own partner-still considered Doyle an infant. Whoever the man was, he had clearance higher than anything Doyle or Horsman or anyone else at Miami FBI had ever seen. When they called Washington to confirm their orders, they were told to give the man everything he asked for. They were also told that the phone conversation had never taken place.
"Terrorists," Doyle stated firmly as the bombsquad men continued to saw through the wall. "Has to be."
Like the FBI, the bomb squad had been brought to Boca Raton from Miami. The men were using a short blade to cut by hand. As they worked they swept the wall electronically.
They moved with painstaking precision. On blue display screens that looked like the one on which Doyle had first seen sonogram images of his infant son, the FBI man saw the interior of the wall. The images passed slowly over oversize screws and splinters in the uneven surfaces of two-by-fours.
Agent Doyle knew it was terrorists the moment the man from Washington told him they couldn't use the door or windows. He had warned them about the roof.
The bomb squad had started there. And were horrified by what they found. The apartment next to 1602 was quickly and quietly evacuated so the ordnance folks could get to work.
The rest of the building hadn't been warned. A mass exodus might tip off someone with a remote detonator. The whole block could go up.
"Terrorists," Agent Doyle mumbled as the bombsquad men finished their sawing.
The section of wall was pulled carefully out. The men held their collective breath, knowing there could be any manner of trip wire or triggering device inside. Nothing happened. The men exhaled relief.
Once the wallboard was free and leaning safely against a coffee table, the bomb-squad captain ducked his head inside the hole, shining a yellow flashlight beam all around the interior of the wall and into the adjacent apartment.
"Immediate area looks clear," he grunted.
Agents Doyle and Horsman drew their side arms. Standing at the ready, they waved on the bomb squad. In body armor and with face shields down, a handful of men slipped inside.
There was silence for a long minute. The only sounds to come from the next apartment were soft murmurs. From somewhere down the hall, the drone of a television filtered to Agent Doyle's anxious ears. A sudden hoarse voice carried through the hole. "Sweet Jesus."
An instant later the bomb-squad captain stuck his head back into the room. He was white as a sheet. "Tell your buddy from D.C. to grab a cup of coffee," he warned, voice low. "This is gonna take a while."
FIVE HOURS LATER Mark Howard stepped carefully through the hole into the living room of Benson Dilkes's apartment.
Howard had ordered the police and FBI out of the apartment. The assistant CURE director was alone. As he walked past the sofa he could hear footfalls on the roof. Men in boots were still tiptoeing around with wire cutters, looking for anything they might have missed. The ceiling creaked.
The walls of the apartment were gutted. Wires that had been carefully threaded up inside the wallboard had been harvested and left on the floor.
The walls had been packed with explosives. Vans built to carry bombs had been hauling material away from the apartment building's kitchen loading dock for hours.
The Miami bomb-squad captain had insisted to Mark that he had never seen anything like it.
"The whole place was wired," the man had said, still pumped from adrenaline and fear. "The whole goddamn place. I mean, holy shit. I've never seen a place wired like this. If you hadn't warned us, we would have gone in through the door. It would have taken half the building down with it. How did you know?"
Mark hadn't answered. He simply thanked the man and left him to sift through his wires and switches. The truth was, Mark didn't know how he knew. He just did.
After arriving in Miami, Mark had driven to the King Apartments in Boca Raton. In the lobby he got on board the elevator and rode straight up to the sixteenth floor.
At least he thought he did.
He realized that he'd pressed the wrong button only when the doors opened on the seventeenth floor. Before he could press the 16 button and ride back down to the right floor, something clicked in his brain.
He wasn't quite sure why, but he got off the elevator and walked to the window at the end of the hall. It offered a good view of the city. High enough up that Mark could see the ocean.
The building narrowed one floor below. From his vantage, Mark could see out over a flat roof.
That was how he noticed the gleaming silver wire that shouldn't have been there.
That was why he looked for-and found-other wires, carefully threaded all around the pebbled roof. Which was why he called Dr. Smith, which was why the FBI was summoned, which was why Mark Howard wasn't scattered in tiny little bits around the smoking crater that had once been the King Apartments, reasonable rates, lovely view, within driving distance to beaches and most nightspots.
The shambles of the living room fed into a narrow hallway. Only half the wall was torn down here. The mess of shattered wood and particleboard extended into the large bathroom on the right. To the left were two bedrooms. Both rooms remained largely intact.
The first room appeared to be used mostly for storage. There were old suitcases and Army Surplus trunks stacked in tidy piles. There was also an arsenal.
Weapons of every kind neatly lined the walls. Machine guns to flamethrowers, guns large and small. Rifles in and out of cases. Boxes and boxes of ammunition.
Along one wall was a long table spread thick with bomb-making equipment. The police and FBI had already picked through everything, defusing whatever they could and carting away the rest.
Some mail from a local P.O. box had been left at the end of the table. It was addressed to a Mr. Mandell. Mark knew that was just a Dilkes alias.
When he saw the mail, Mark felt his heart rate quicken.
Glancing back to make certain he was alone, he thumbed rapidly through the mail.
He found what he was looking for at the bottom.
With great relief he slipped the envelope into his pocket.
Patting his pocket, Mark went back out into the hall.
The next room down looked like a normal bedroom. With one exception.
"Holy cow," Mark mused as he looked at the row of colored maps. They had been set up on easels and lined up on the far side of the bed near the shuttered windows.
The maps were turning brown from age. The countries had been painted in different primary colors, but the colors had begun to fade. Some of the corkboard at the corners was rotting.