you are indeed one of the great serial killers of all time.”
“I’m sorry the mission wasn’t successful, sir.”
“It was my call, my fault. You were following orders. That is what you’re supposed to do. I will never blame you for that.”
“Will you require a close-out report?”
“No. Enjoy Saudi Arabia.” Burns nodded at the door. A few seconds later he was alone once more.
He spent most of his time alone, thinking through the next doomsday scenario. He was tasked to keep America safe by any means possible. He thought about nothing else 24/7. He had used his muscle, training, and wits in uniform for his country. And now in a suit and tie he used what he had left to serve America.
He spent twenty minutes on three different calls. As he set the phone down for the last time, his mind went back to Mace Perry.
He didn’t like losing. Never had since he was a small boy running through the cornfields of Kansas chasing dreams. She was good, but she was still just a street cop.
He picked up his phone and made another call. “It’s time for the contingency plan,” he said into the receiver.
It was very late but Chester Ackerman was awake and sitting in the living room of his lavish apartment in the Watergate Building. The managing partner of Shilling & Murdoch had traded his suit, wingtips, and braces for khaki pants, an orange cashmere sweater, and Docksiders. As soon as he heard Burns’s voice his thoughts about taking a ride the next day in his forty-foot cabin cruiser vanished.
Ackerman put his tumbler of scotch and soda down, sat up straight, and gathered his courage to say it. “I really think I should maintain a low profile with all this. I already told you about Diane when she came to me asking questions. I fired Kingman. I’ve kept the money flowing. I think I’ve done enough.”
Burns’s retort was like a cannonball fired right into his belly. “You’ve also made a bloody fortune for basically sitting on your fat ass because of business deals that I got for you! Now here’s where you repay the kindness of your beneficent government. So just shut up and listen. You should already have the legal documents prepared like I told you to do.”
“I do,” he said in a shaky voice, his meager courage gone.
“Now you will act exactly in accordance with my instructions. And if you don’t…”
Burns spoke uninterrupted for nearly ten minutes. When he’d finished he hung up and leaned back in his chair.
That sonofabitch has made more in one year than I’ve made in my entire life. A draft dodger who pays his first-year know-nothings more than I’ll ever make. And he wants to lay low. He wants to take a time-out after making millions! He’s done enough!
Part of Burns wished that Ackerman would fail to follow his orders just so he could order the man’s execution. Mary Bard could probably kill him with simply a stare.
Don’t tempt me, you parasite. Don’t you dare tempt me.
CHAPTER 102
EARLY in the morning the Ducati roared through the gates at Altman’s estate. The female police officer driving it would take any followers on a two-hour ride around the Virginia countryside. A few minutes later the Bentley pulled past the gates, Herbert at the wheel. He was on his way to the market. But he had one delivery to make before then and it would take him into the heart of D.C.
Mace Perry lay in the backseat of the car.
Thirty-five minutes later she was walking through the cavernous Union Station. She got her ticket from the self-serve machine and boarded the Acela train a few minutes before it was to leave. She snagged a window seat and for the next two hours or so watched the scenery of the Northeast go by as she thought about her upcoming encounter with the law firm of Hamilton, Petrocelli & Sprissler. She grabbed a cab at the station and walked into the law firm’s suite in a twenty-story building in downtown Newark fifteen minutes later.
The place was all polished wood and marble with tasteful paintings on the wall. It looked very old money, yet Roy had looked up the law firm on an online legal directory for her and told her that it had only been in existence for fifteen years. The firm specialized in divorce and other civil litigation, and had three female partners, Julie Hamilton, Mandy Petrocelli, and Kelly Sprissler. They were all from New Jersey,