Kingdom of the Seven Read online

  The activation of every floodlight on the property had turned the front yard to near daylight brightness, enough to cast shadows for each of the uniformed figures shifting about on the grounds. The single guard posted before the front door moved toward the limousine as it snailed to a halt.

  “Dr. Raymond’s boys,” was MacFarlane’s greeting to him.

  “They’re under guard upstairs as instructed. They insisted on taking one room instead of two. I believe they’re asleep.”

  “There,” said the president of Jardine-Marra to Karen. “See.”

  “I want to see them.”

  “Why wake—”

  “Now, Alex.” Then softly, firmly. “Now.”

  The sight of her sleeping boys lifted a great weight from Karen’s mind. She did not wake them up, though it took all her willpower to keep from doing so.

  Karen closed the door behind her and didn’t turn on the light, leaving the room’s sole illumination as that which slipped through the drawn vertical blinds from the floods positioned in a tree across from the window. Her thoughts turned to tomorrow and beyond. Alexander MacFarlane was right: They had to put Lot 35 back together, assemble a new team and work round the clock if that’s what it took, because only winning publicized approval for formal testing could make her feel safe. Once they went public, the enemy that had struck tonight would have no reason to go after her.

  Or her boys.

  Karen looked at them sleeping peacefully in the same big bed, faces awash with the light of the floods from outside. She wanted to lie down between them, take her sons in either arm and surrender to the dark for a time. Afraid to disturb them, she didn’t. Just stood there thinking about it with the stars, the sky, and the ocean peering in at her through all that glass.

  Then, as her mind returned to the events of the night, a sobering thought struck her, chilling in its message: according to Alexander MacFarlane, the killers had struck with virtual simultaneity at the lab and her home. But the attack at her house hadn’t come until nearly midnight, long after at least a few of her co-workers would have called it quits for the night. There was no way, no way at all, that all of them would be present in the lab as late as twelve o’clock. Which meant, which meant …

  Alexander MacFarlane had lied about the timing of the massacre. It must have been considerably earlier, several hours at least. Only when it was discovered she had been missed was the attack mounted on her home. The men had come with incredibly accurate intelligence. The invaders knew everything, about the alarm, the layout.

  Alexander MacFarlane had an identical alarm in his home. She had bought her house from a friend of his two years ago.

  Not Alex, never Alex. Anyone but Alex …

  And yet, and yet …

  He had her where he would have wanted her: in his domain, frightened and subservient. Along with Taylor and Brandon.

  He had her sons.

  The problem now is one of re-creating our work under tight security, probably in a different location. You can do it, of course. You always insisted on keeping all the backups yourself.

  Was that what he wanted, the backups? Was he afraid that somehow Lot 35 might endure beyond her?

  It made a terrifying kind of sense. And yet it didn’t, because she trusted Alexander MacFarlane. And if she couldn’t trust him, then who could she trust? Beyond that, there were more people involved than just him. The FBI, for example.

  But, in fact, she couldn’t be sure the men in suits were actually from the FBI. And why weren’t authorities from the San Diego Sheriff’s Department represented at Jardine-Marra in any form?

  Perhaps because they had never been summoned. Perhaps the whole show had been put on for her benefit.

  A soft knock rattled against the door behind her, and she jumped.

  “Karen?” Alexander MacFarlane’s voice called. “Is everything all right?”

  Why don’t you tell me? she wanted to shoot back, but instead said softly, “Yes.”

  Her decision was already made by then, her children the only concern.

  “I told you they were fine,” MacFarlane reassured when she stepped out of the room and closed the door carefully behind her.

  “Thank God.”

  “They’re safe here. So are you.”

  “I know.”

  She waited until after 3:00 A.M. to make her move. The bedroom Alex had given her overlooked the sloping cliffs and the ocean beyond, a stretch of Black’s Beach visible in the day. The floodlights were still burning when she arose, the guards continuing to methodically patrol the grounds. Either the illusion of security was being maintained for her benefit, or MacFarlane’s intentions were genuine. The thought crossed her mind that the guards might also be there to make sure she didn’t leave. If that was the case, the next few minutes might go very badly indeed.

  Fortunately, MacFarlane had not stationed guards inside the house, which would give her the run of the interior for as long as she needed it. Karen crept into the hallway and padded toward the boys’ room. The door opened soundlessly and she moved to Taylor’s side of the bed. She stirred him from sleep with a hand cupped over his mouth. His eyes regarded her sleepily, then gratefully.

  “Mom.” The word muffled, sound absorbed by her palm.

  “Shhhhhhhhhh,” she counseled. “We’ve got to leave.”

  His eyes looked at her questioningly.

  “I’m not sure we’re safe here. We may be, we probably are, but I can’t be sure.”

  Where they would be safe, where they would be going from here, was a problem she had not yet confronted. First things first.

  Taylor slipped into his sneakers while Karen roused Brandon, who fought determinedly against coming awake. She had to nearly drag him into the corridor and then support him as they started down it.

  “This way,” she whispered, leading them toward the stairway.

  She knew where Alex MacFarlane kept the keys to his three cars: a Rolls Corniche, a rare Porsche, and a Cadillac. The garage in which they were stored was attached to the house, accessible through a small hall off the kitchen. In that same kitchen, Karen found the keys in a drawer and grabbed the ones attached to a chain bearing the Cadillac logo. Still in silence, using only the light the outdoor floods gave them, she led the boys into the garage and eased the door closed behind her.

  The most difficult part remained ahead. The grounds were still swimming with security men. They wouldn’t be expecting what was about to occur, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to respond to it rapidly. Her sons stowed safely in the Caddy’s backseat with instructions to keep down out of sight, Karen stuck the keys into the ignition and turned.

  The Cadillac purred to life.

  Karen reached up and touched the button on the visor that activated the automatic garage door opener. Instantly it began to churn upward. A light snapped on above and she cursed herself for not removing the bulb prior to entering the car. The soft whir of the garage door’s machinery might escape the patrolling guards’ attention, but the light would be noticed with a turn of the next head.

  Karen eased the Caddy into reverse. The big car slid onto the dark macadam of the circular drive and nearly collided with a pair of the cars double-parked along it before Karen found the brake. She kept the Caddy’s lights off as she started toward the main entrance. She didn’t screech away, keeping her pace normal, hoping to make those on the grounds think the exit was expected, planned for.

  The one at the front gate didn’t bite. Karen saw the gun holstered on his hip as he came toward the car in a trot. There was no choice. She floored the accelerator and the Caddy shot forward with a burst of dirt and debris kicked behind it. The man lurched away at the same time she jerked the wheel to avoid him. The car jumped onto the grass and sideswiped an ornamental boulder set at the entrance as it swept through. She righted it quickly and tore off, barreling down the street.

  “Awright, Mom!” congratulated Taylor, elated by their screeching getaway.

/>   As had been the case earlier the same evening, Karen’s eyes flirted nervously with the rearview mirror. As before, though, no unfriendly sights appeared. No sights at all, for that matter.

  Lights on now, she drove into the night. Gone from the place that might or might not have been her prison, Karen turned her focus on possible destinations. The local police were out, those of the state variety made up by the California Highway Patrol a good possibility. Yet she had no idea where the nearest substation could be found, never mind what would happen once she got there. Again her decision might have been different if not for her sons. Wherever she drove, it had to promise sure safety and real refuge for Taylor and Brandon, perhaps for an indefinite period.

  Only one place fit that bill, and Karen pushed the Caddy further into the night toward it.

  CHAPTER 8

  “That’s it, sir,” a voice said from the dark of the small theater when the tape reached its conclusion.

  “And they are all here now, Major?”

  “Still being settled in when I last checked, sir. It’s a rather complicated process, given the situation.”

  “But we are equipped to handle it, I trust.”

  “We are now, sir.”

  “And what of the state trooper?”

  “He never should have gotten away, of course. It was a fluke, sir.”

  “A rather ominous fluke.”

  “Not according to present reports. He was picked up in the desert several hours ago in a near catatonic state. I doubt very much he’ll be talking to anyone anytime soon, sir.”

  “We will have to make sure that is long enough, won’t we, Major?”

  The man in the rear grasped the back of the crushed red velour seat before him. Every detail of the small theater had an ornate look and feel to it, as if an old-fashioned movie house had simply been shrunk down and placed here. Rich wood paneling with hand-carved pilasters and moldings covered the walls. The ceiling was painted in neo-Pompeian style, with arabesques and ropes of flowers intertwined with gods and goddesses.

  “And what of the site itself?” he resumed.

  “All reports indicate it’s clean, sir. Not even the slightest trace. The tests carried out were remarkably thorough. I don’t think we have anything to fear on that account.”

  “We have that much to be thankful for, I suppose. What about security, containment?”

  “We’re monitoring the area closely, sir, but so long as we are able to move the replacements into the town before the highway patrol happens to return, I think we’ll be all right.”

  “And how long do you expect that will take, Major?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, sir, at the latest.”

  “Very good. Keep me informed.” He seemed finished until something else occurred to him. “Of course, the other events of the day do now allow us to eliminate a problem that has been vexing us for some time. You know of what I speak, Major?”

  “I have issued the appropriate orders, sir.”

  “By my specifications, I trust.”

  “Of course, sir. To the letter.”

  “I want her to have a chance to atone. I owe her that much.” The figure rose in the back of the dark theater, silhouetted by the dim ceiling lights. “Very well, then …”

  “Sir?”

  “Ah yes, Major, there was something else.” He sat down again, reluctantly.

  “Something else rather pressing, I’m afraid, sir.”

  On signal, the lights in the small, plush theater were snapped all the way off once more. On the eight-bytwelve-foot screen encompassing the center of the front wall, a picture came to life portraying a narrow slice of Lexington Avenue in New York City. A number of pedestrians were stepping past a tight throng gathered before a fruit stand set up in front of the abandoned Alexander’s department store.

  “We confiscated this tape from a bystander who happened to be filming at the time of the attack.”

  “An attack that was most poorly executed, leaving the material we sought to acquire potentially in dangerous hands.”

  “Erase potentially.”

  “Major?”

  “I believe we have located the material, sir. I’m going to fast-forward here to the spot in question.”

  “Please,” returned the voice from the very back row, sounding disturbed.

  The action on the screen returned to normal speed. A woman and three children were smiling and waving at the video camera. Their lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Suddenly a figure crossed in front of the lens, obscuring the family. At the front of the theater, the major froze the tape briefly on the befuddled looks of the family members. Then he rewound it and ran it again in slow motion, freezing the frame when the intruding figure was centered on the screen, visible from only the waist up. Even through the blur, it was clear he was broad and had a beard that looked more the result of a week gone without shaving than careful grooming.

  “Sir, this man meets the description of one of the surviving gunmen from inside Bloomingdale’s who eliminated our people. We have now been able to obtain a positive identification based on a computer enhancement of this frame.” The major paused. “The man’s name is Blaine McCracken.”

  The figure in the theater’s rear rose to better his view, but the screen denied it, refusing to let him gain a clear glimpse through the blur. “Is that supposed to mean something to me, Major?”

  “Indeed it is, sir,” said the man in the theater’s front, and then he began to explain.

  PART TWO

  THE KEY SOCIETY

  NEW YORK CITY:

  TUESDAY; 9:00 A.M.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sal Belamo arranged the meeting for McCracken from his bedside. The effects of the bullet wound suffered the previous afternoon had left him stiff and uncomfortable after a restless night. He grimaced and dry-swallowed a pair of Percodans in the bedroom of the Grand Hyatt suite.

  “You ask me, a guy could get to like this shit too much, he gets the chance.”

  “What’d your man say about the bodies?” McCracken asked him.

  “Nothing. Won’t talk on the phone, even after I tell him that’s the way it’s gotta be. He says in person or I can go fuck myself.”

  “You tell him I was coming?”

  Belamo smirked, eyes starting to grow glassy as the Percodans took hold. “I told him to look for a guy ’bout as pretty as me only ten years younger.”

  McCracken walked the short distance from the Hyatt to the Broadway Deli on Forty-second, where Sergeant Ed Reese would be waiting for him. Blaine didn’t need Belamo’s description to spot the cop; a fat man in a cheap khaki overcoat was sitting with his counter stool hal-cocked toward the door when he stepped into the deli. He gave McCracken a disinterested glance and went back to a jelly doughnut which leaked all the way to his lips. Took a big slurp of coffee next and left what didn’t reach his mouth pooling in the saucer. Reese had hair that was slicked down in the front and stood upright in the back. His eyes looked tired and drained, but confident.

  McCracken was a yard away when Reese threw him another cursory glance and then started talking.

  “Old Sal got himself shot, did he?”

  “He did.”

  “It’s happened before.”

  Reese shifted his bulk enough on the stool to make it wobble.

  “Got hit myself in Korea,” he explained, and slapped the upper part of his left leg. “Took it right in the hip. Part of the slug’s still in there. Bastard doctors couldn’t get it all.”

  “You know Sal from Korea?”

  Reese shook his head demonstratively. “Hell, no. He was into a whole different game and a lot better at it than I was. You?”

  “Nam.”

  “So I figured. Anyway, I got to know Little Sal after, while he was boxing. Bet on both Carlos Monzon fights.”

  “Must have lost your shirt.”

  “Nah! I took the odds and went with Monzon. What the hell, I figure. Guy’s never lost, it’s
not gonna be Little Sal puts him on the mat.” Reese stuffed the rest of his doughnut into his mouth, chewed rapidly, and swallowed before he checked his watch. “You don’t mind, I want to be out of here fifteen minutes ago.”

  “You ID those two shooters we iced?”

  “Nope, and we’re not going to neither.” Reese stopped and looked around to see if anyone was watching before he took another doughnut from inside the glass container.

  “’Cause the bodies are gone. Somebody lifted them right out of the ME’s office. Knocked the guard out and that was that.” He reached a hand into his sport jacket and it emerged holding a folded, coffee-stained envelope. “Preliminary report on the two stiffs is in here. Best I can do. Hey, they got something in common.”

  “Other than having been stolen?”

  “Try this out: Both of them were missing the lobes on their left ears.”

  Blaine thought about that briefly. “What about the body found back on Lexington near Fifty-ninth Street?” referring to the man who had uttered a dying message to Johnny Wareagle, after switching briefcases with El-Salarabi.

  “Had both his lobes still intact, that’s what you’re asking.”

  “At least you didn’t lose his body too.”

  Reese frowned. “Yeah, well, that guy lost most of his guts to somebody who knows how to use a killing knife.” Reese reached into his pocket and came out with a notebook. “On account of we didn’t lose the body, we did a little better with this one. Got a make on him off the fingerprints. Stiff’s name is Benjamin Ratansky. Age fifty-three from Aldrich, Illinois. Funny thing is, according to the make we ran on him, he ain’t dead at all. Computer insists he’s serving out a ten-year sentence for computer fraud at the Taylorville Correctional Center in Taylorville, Illinois.”