Although he had a Pilates physique and the latest scruffy-chic haircut, the waiter’s frilly blouse and loose-fitting knickers gave him the appearance of having just stepped out of the eighteenth century. He led two men in contemporary business attire into the tea parlor and over to Isadora’s table. With a start, Charlie recognized the pair as the too-jolly gunman and the pale driver last seen at the intersection of Fillmore and Utica in Brooklyn.
“Officers Cadaret and Mortimer of the Defense Intelligence Agency,” the waiter said by way of introduction.
“Glad to meet you,” Drummond said cheerfully.
So much, Charlie thought, for his hope that the recollection of the day Isadora left had triggered Drummond into battle readiness.
“We’ve met, actually,” Charlie told the waiter. He locked plaintive eyes with Isadora on the remote chance of stirring her maternal instincts-if she had any. “If you hand us off to these guys, Mom, you’ll be discontinuing our existence.”
“It’s not like that at all,” she said.
“They’ve already shot at us, like, fifty times.”
“In an effort to halt a ten-thousand-pound stolen truck. I’m aware of all of it. They just need to find out what you know.”
“If I knew anything, why the hell would I have come here?”
“I’ve been assured that if you answer their questions, you’ll be let go.”
“Where? To the target end of the shooting range?”
The waiter interrupted with a pointed clearing of his throat. From his breeches he produced a distinctly modern pistol. With it he directed Charlie and Drummond out of the tea parlor and into a wide, white marble hallway. And what choice was there but to proceed? Mortimer and Cadaret fell in behind, and Isadora brought up the rear.
Just down the hall, the party came upon a taproom, which, if not for electric bulbs in the sconces and modern contraptions behind the bar, could be a London public house circa the Crimean War. A smattering of patrons ate and drank in secluded mahogany booths and at a pewter-topped bar. Of course no one blinked at the pistol pointed at Charlie and Drummond, not even the helicopter pilot or the paramedics.
Hungrily eyeing the servings of bangers and mash set before that trio, Drummond asked, “Are we having lunch here?”
“We’ll be continuing down the hall,” the waiter said.
Charlie proceeded with the feeling that his legs were sinking into the floor-the same heaviness felt in nightmares when there’s no choice but to face the horror ahead.
The hallway terminated at a fifty-foot-long ramp covered in Persian carpet. The group descended, coming into a narrow corridor with the antiseptic scent and fluorescent colorlessness of a hospital.
“First room on the left,” the waiter said.
The brass plaque beside the doorway was engraved CONFERENCE ROOM. Through the open door, Charlie took in a spartan table and chairs, bare brick walls, and a rubber flooring possibly chosen for the ease with which blood could be wiped off.
The entrance to the conference room was blocked, briefly, by a man in surgical garb, wheeling an instrument cart. He pushed through the swinging, steel-plated door directly across the corridor, revealing a full-sized operating room with a multitude of beeping monitors and machines. Seven members of a surgical team hovered around the operating table. On it lay the man who’d been carried off the helicopter, now apparently under general anesthesia.
The scene momentarily captured the attention of everyone in the corridor.
Except Drummond. He shot a hand into his half-opened fly, withdrew the rock he’d been fidgeting with on the terrace, and threw a fastball. It struck Cadaret in the jaw with a crack that caused everyone but the patient to jump.
While the others reeled, Charlie realized, with a rush of euphoria, that Drummond was on.
Cadaret collapsed, banging the operating room door inward. Drummond pounced on him, pried the gun from his shoulder holster, then rolled onto the operating room floor. He bounced up into a kneel, sighted the weapon, and squeezed out a shot. The report was thunder in the windowless chamber. A red starburst appeared on the front of the waiter’s frilly blouse. Gun still in hand, he fell dead, revealing matching splatter on the corridor wall behind him.
In the operating room, the surgical masks were puckered by expressions of alarm. Everyone looked to the surgeon. “Evacuate to recovery,” he said as if it were self-evident.
In the corridor, Isadora wheeled herself into a position so that the left side of the thick steel doorframe shielded her from Drummond’s fire. Pressing himself against the right side of the doorframe, Mortimer reached his gun into the operating room and fired three times in rapid succession. The unsilenced shots seemed to shake the building.
The first bullet kicked up a strip of linoleum from the tile on which Drummond had been kneeling. Drummond leaped away, to the patient’s left, vanishing behind a fireproof cabinet with the proportions and bulk of an industrial refrigerator.
Mortimer’s second round hammered the metal-plated face of the cabinet, at Drummond’s chest level. The bullet ricocheted, toppling an instrument stand and causing surgical instruments to ring against the floor tiles. The dense cabinet or its contents absorbed the third shot.
Charlie thought he could retrieve the fallen waiter’s gun. While Mortimer and Isadora were preoccupied with Drummond, he would dive for the weapon, snatch it, and roll to the safety of the conference room. Taking a deep breath in preparation, he was struck bodily from behind.
The next thing he knew, he was being propelled into the operating room by Mortimer. Although his shoes remained in contact with the floor, he had the feeling of being thrown off a building.
“What are you thinking?” Isadora screamed from the corridor.
Ignoring her, Mortimer shoved Charlie ahead.
They rounded the big cabinet, bringing Drummond, who knelt behind it, into view. With uncanny calm, Drummond tracked Mortimer through his gun sight. Charlie realized that he was being used by Mortimer as a shield.
“Put the gun on the floor,” Mortimer ordered Drummond. He gathered Charlie closer for emphasis.
Drummond fine-tuned the barrel and tightened his squint.
He wouldn’t dare shoot, Charlie thought. William Tell wouldn’t.
Drummond pressed the trigger. Mortimer too. The booms and the flashes were indistinguishable.
Mortimer’s bullet struck a side of the bulky cabinet, denting the heavy-gauge metal, then it bounced off and disappeared unceremoniously through the door to the dressing room. Drummond’s bullet tore the air inches to the side of Charlie’s jaw and knocked Mortimer off his feet. He keeled backward, hot blood from his jugular spraying Charlie, then slammed to the floor and lay on his back, unmoving. The angle of his neck declared he wasn’t playing possum.
Charlie was left awhirl in shock and stupor and, mostly, umbrage: How could Drummond have taken such a risk? Through it all he saw a faint gleam pass over Mortimer.
Drummond appeared to see it too. He spun toward the doctors and nurses, now transporting the patient by gurney through swinging side doors into the recovery room. Drummond fired at them, eliciting screams of horror.
From within their midst toppled a uniformed club guard, a boxy man with a fresh bullet hole in his forehead. The floor knocked a gleaming revolver from his hand.
Recalling Isadora’s description of Drummond as a natural, Charlie’s umbrage evaporated. Had William Tell been as good a shot, he would have had no famous dilemma.
Spotting Isadora’s wheels inching through the doorway, Charlie dropped behind the vacated operating table. Drummond, her likelier target, jumped behind the stalwart fireproof cabinet. Neither had a shot at the other.
The pandemonium dissolved to just the mechanized humming and intermittent beeps of the machines. The acrid gun smoke faded. The room brightened. Charlie was reminded of the moment at the end of a party when everyone realizes it’s time to go.
“Try not to kill me for a minute, Drummond, dear,” Isadora said. “I need to speak to the two of you.”
“You want a minute?” he said. “Does that mean you expect your backup here in forty-five seconds?”
She wheeled the chair tentatively with her left hand. She held her gun with her right, letting it dangle from her index finger by the trigger guard. “My backup is here already.” She pointed to the boxy guard, facedown in a pool of his own blood.
Still Charlie didn’t chance budging from behind the operating table. Drummond, too, held fast behind his cabinet.
“I was ordered by my superiors to hand you over to these men,” Isadora said. “I didn’t have the vaguest idea it would turn out like this.”
“Do you expect us to believe that you were just obeying an order?” Drummond asked.
She gasped theatrically. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up on your belief that obedience is next to godliness?”
“I just have a hard time imagining you listening to anyone.”
“Well, I did, sir. I heeded our club manager, who believed these men were DIA on a legitimate operation, and he’s a sphinx when it comes to bona fides-or, I should say, he was a sphinx.” With a grimace, she nodded at the slain waiter. “I expected you weren’t in for a rollicking time of it in debrief, but that’s the game. As for you, Charlie, if I hadn’t agreed to turn you over, I would have been charged with aiding and abetting federal fugitives and obstruction of justice, for starters. Still, I agreed to it only after I was given complete assurance that you would, truly, walk away.”
Charlie took it for granted that she was lying. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “These mix-ups happen all the time.”
Drummond seemed to soften. “So who are they?” he asked her.
“In hindsight it would appear DIA was just cover, and at the least they co-opted the club personnel,” she said. “The manager and security guard positions at a glorified nursing home don’t generally merit the highest pay grades.”
With a grunt of agreement, Drummond stepped out from behind the fireproof cabinet. He checked the double doors to the recovery room. She inspected the corridor. “The guards here mostly patrol the grounds,” she said. Both she and Drummond seemed satisfied that there was no imminent danger.
“So what do you think this is about?” he asked.
“I would imagine a secret that you either know, knew, or unwittingly have stumbled onto,” she said.
“That narrows it down to a stack’s worth.”
“I might have an idea. First, there’s something our son needs to know.”
Charlie felt safe in rising from behind the operating table.
She turned to him. “In our trade, Charlie, good and evil often blur to the point that it’s impossible to distinguish the two. At home, the oil and the water made a better couple than your father and I. On the job, I would stake my life that he’s on the good side, anytime, in sickness and in health. So we can rest assured that the culprit in this case is-”
A gun boomed from the corridor and her head snapped sideways.