It was Dr. Pruitt, her surgeon. They stepped back to watch him lean over her, listen to her heart, take her pulse, then fiddle with the IV. In the next moment she was asleep. Pruitt turned on them. “If she is well enough, you may see her tomorrow, but not until then. Do I make myself clear?”

He left the room without waiting for an answer, Craig Swanson following him out. Carl Grace said, his voice lowered, “I know you have more questions, need more information to make sense of all this. I brought some recordings Vanessa has sent me over the past four months. We’ll go in the corner, keep our voices down, and listen until you’re satisfied you’ve got the full picture.”

But first Savich called the Secret Service to warn the detail searching Yorktown.

59

KNIGHT TAKES E1

Grace hit play on his tablet, and they heard Vanessa’s voice, calm and strong.

Darius came to COE with a bag of money and the Devil’s tongue. Don’t get me wrong, Darius wasn’t a hammer, he was subtle about it, slow, easy, methodical. It took me a while to realize that he was poisoning Matthew, convincing him to stop targeting oil refiners because it did no good. He needed to target people. And he needed to finish creating his magic gold coins—his bombs—and do it quickly. It was time to strike.

She paused a moment, then:

How to describe him so you’ll understand, Uncle Carl? Matthew Spenser was an idealist, a genius, a man with a bright future, until the terrorist bomb that killed his family in London on July 7, 2005, changed everything. He became committed to destroying all our ties to terrorist nations and to him that meant stopping all Middle East oil imports into the West. His plan was to destroy infrastructure because without funding from oil wealth, big organized terrorist groups couldn’t continue. Then Darius came and he changed.

Darius talked to Matthew day and night about how he could leave his mark, how he could attack the terrorists by taking out the people who wanted to protect them, fund them, empathize with them. Darius convinced him the Americans, our own president, wanted to make peace with them, and yet our president, instead of doing his job, protecting the American people, protecting our allies, is at a supposed peace table in Geneva, drinking tea with these soulless maniacs, and working on diplomatic solutions, ridiculous, all of it.

Matthew works well into the night on his bomb, but he won’t tell me how close he is to perfecting it, won’t even tell Ian, his very best friend.

Carl Grace hit stop, loaded in another recording.

I overheard Darius and Matthew talking. Darius was supposed to meet someone, get a package. They never discussed what it was. I listened and knew the pickup had fallen through and now he had another, at a diner in Baltimore, the Silver Corner. I saw his contact once when he delivered some information about the grids to Darius, but I couldn’t find out his name. I took photos of him. I hope you can identify him.

Carl Grace punched off the recording. “We do have his photos and have been running them, but we’ve come up empty so far. I’ll get his photos to you, see what you can find. The secondary pickup for the diner was for yesterday. We’re getting the video feeds as I speak.”

He turned the recording back on. “This is three days before Bayway.”

Uncle Carl, last week, Matthew was going on about how we must change the course of history, that political discourse is now absurd because the Iranians are about to eliminate half the world with their nukes, ISIS is on the move, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the worst of the worst, want to kill us all. He spoke of Israel, their people living in constant danger and conflict.

He said over and over that these people had been killing each other for centuries and they weren’t about to stop now, it was hardwired in their DNA. They still lived in the Middle Ages, not the modern world. Talk was worth nothing to them. The only thing they understood was violence, and force. And then he pounded the table and said again, “violence and force.” The way he said it, it scared me to my toes. And then he said, “I have to be the agent of change so we can save our culture, our people, our lives.”

Uncle Carl, Darius has changed him utterly. He’s different. I don’t know what he’s capable of anymore. Remember I told you before my first test with Matthew at Grangemouth in Scotland, he emphasized that no one could be hurt. No one. But now? I don’t know.

In a couple of days, we hit Bayway. I’ve got my bomb ready, but I have this feeling that Matthew has perfected his bomb and this is where he wants to test it, a bigger explosion, a bigger statement. Our contact is a night supervisor named Larry Reeves. Matthew paid him a ton of money to give us the plans. It’s how he’s always worked, as you know—pay off someone close to the site to get the blueprints, and find the best places to plant bombs for maximum damage. Sometimes he gets access online, sometimes they bring physical prints.

Nicholas raised a hand and Carl turned off the recorder.

“I can’t believe you didn’t warn us Bayway was coming.”

Grace said, “It wasn’t my decision. We stepped up their security. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

Mike wanted to stomp him, stomp all of those who’d made such a stupid decision. “Save us from our own law enforcement. Fifteen dead, Agent Grace, and even the one who sold out, Larry Reeves, is dead, killed in the very blast he helped facilitate. I know you heard three FBI agents were murdered as well, in an informant’s house. His name was Mr. Richard Hodges, a very nice man who overheard Reeves mouthing off in a bar about how much money he was coming into, and he called us, and died with the agents protecting him. His wife had died three years before of cancer. He ate bacon sandwiches for dinner. And the three FBI agents, all of them married with children. And now all those kids have no fathers. And you people let the whole thing happen. You stepped up security? And that’s all you’ve got to say about it?”

Carl Grace said, “There are no simple answers, Agent Caine, you know that. Compromises must be made, to gain the greater good, sacrifices must be made.” He saw she would explode and raised a hand. “I’m very sorry for that decision, the whole series of decisions, including leaving Vanessa in place.

“Now, I believe it was Zahir Damari who murdered the informant and the three FBI agents.”

Nicholas said, “It makes sense. He was tying up loose ends.”

Savich said, “We will sort out who’s to blame later. Please keep going, Agent Grace.”

Carl turned the recording back on.

Uncle Carl, it’s coming down to the wire. I believe Matthew when he laughs and says his bomb will be so much bigger, more powerful than anything I’d ever put together with my pathetic Semtex. When, not if, he perfects them, he could sell the formula, and any country could use it against us in unimaginable ways. I must get my hands on his notebooks, I must.

Carl turned off the recorder. “That’s the last I heard from her until the emergency text she sent to me after Bayway. I told her to get out, but it was already too late. And then he tried to kill her.” His voice was flat, steady, but his eyes were hard with pain and hate. He said after a moment, “Do you know, not an hour after Vanessa came out of recovery, she was telling me to announce she was still alive and let her play bait. She knew he’d want to come back and finish her off, he was that enraged at her betrayal. She could barely talk and she was begging me to let her get it right.”

His cell phone buzzed. When he punched off, he said, “The video feeds from that diner in Baltimore and the photo of Zahir are ready for you.”