CHAPTER TWO FORD’S THEATRE WASHINGTON, DC

FORD’S THEATRE

WASHINGTON, DC

January 8

The National Park Service presenter had a clear, strong voice. She stood in the middle of the stage in her uniform, capturing the attention of everyone sitting in the cramped wooden seats. The acoustics were incredible, but that was to be expected. Roth had never been to Ford’s Theatre before, but he knew the story she was telling. The story about the assassination of a president.

“John Wilkes Booth was waiting for this line to be spoken. The line that would cause a roar of laughter from the audience. Not that the line itself was humorous. No, the humor was in the irony of the line. About a man pretending to be cultured and proving he wasn’t. It was just the sort of line that would have appealed to Abraham Lincoln. He died laughing.”

Roth shook his head, mesmerized by her voice, by the delicious feeling of being part of history. His twin sons, Lucas and Brillante, were sitting next to him. He couldn’t tell whether either teenager was paying attention to the historian. They were looking over at the darkened booth where Lincoln had been shot. Since coming to DC, they hadn’t been able to do a lot of sightseeing, not with Jacob Calakmul undoubtedly hunting for them. Their guardian angel, Steve Lund, who owned the private security company Roth had hired to protect him and his kids after they’d survived the death game in Mexico, kept switching their hotels. He was vigilant about providing the security they needed, often in person, but even he realized that the family needed a change of scene from the hotel room now and then. Today, there’d be a double feature because this excursion to Ford’s Theatre coincided with a summons to FBI headquarters. They’d taken a long, circuitous route with lots of switchbacks to get there. Lund knew all the tricks.

“‘Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?’” the historian said with a drawl, pretending to be the actor who had spoken the lines. “‘Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.’” She paused, her voice lowering to heighten the tension. “As the audience roared with laughter, John Wilkes Booth stepped up behind President Lincoln with a derringer, pulled the trigger, and shot him in the back of the head.”

“Oof,” Brillante whispered. Lucas elbowed his brother to quiet him.

The presenter’s voice began to quicken with urgency. “Major Henry Rathbone noticed the smoke and tried to rush the man. Booth dropped his weapon, drew a dagger, and slit Rathbone’s arm to the bone. He then jumped over the balcony and onto the stage and uttered the line he’ll ever be remembered saying. Sic semper tyrannis.”

“‘Thus always to tyrants,’” Roth whispered, spellbound.

“In Latin, ‘Thus always to tyrants,’” the presenter said firmly.

Lucas glanced at his dad, eyebrows lifting.

Roth knew the end of the story, but with a few variations. Some thought Booth had broken his leg in the jump from the balcony edge to the stage. It was twelve feet to the floor below. Roth and his boys were in the balcony seating, and it did seem like a dangerous drop. But the presenter said there was evidence Booth’s leg had been broken later on, after being thrown by his horse. Many eyewitnesses had seen him run and mount a horse, using the stirrup with his left leg, the one that was supposedly broken.

That detail intrigued Roth. He’d heard the Lincoln assassination story many times, but the presenter’s talk had shed new light on it for him. It reminded him of a saying he’d read somewhere: “History is the process in which complex truths become simplified falsehoods.”

The presenter described President Lincoln being carried across the street and laid on a bed that was too short for him. And that’s where he’d passed away, having never regained consciousness. She received a loud ovation when her speech was finished, and everyone began to stand up to clear out of the theater so the next group of museum visitors could enter and hear the same story.

“Dude, that story was sick!” Lucas said. “It’s a bummer that he died, though. What if he’d stayed president?”

The stairwell was narrow and cramped, and they made their way down it carefully. Roth kept both of his sons in front of himself. He was more paranoid now than ever.

“Suki would have loved seeing this theater,” Brillante said somberly.

Nearly two weeks had passed since Roth’s daughter had been abducted by Jacob Calakmul. The suspense was ripping all of them up inside. Worse: Roth still didn’t know whether his wife was alive or dead. Calakmul might have them both, and he certainly wasn’t Roth’s biggest fan. They were playing the waiting game, and each hour felt like it lasted a year—hence why he’d brought his sons here for a distraction.

As the crowd flowed outdoors, the bite of cold air struck them. It wasn’t as cold in DC as it was in Bozeman, Montana, where they lived, but it definitely wasn’t California weather.

“If I could travel back in time to any event in history,” Roth told the boys, “I would have picked April 14, 1865. So many things went wrong that night. Booth should never have gotten close enough to kill President Lincoln. Knowing when and how the murder was going to happen, I could stop it all from happening. Like you said, Brillante, the whole history of America altered that night because of John Wilkes Booth and that theater.”

“If I could travel back in time, I would have warned us not to go to Mexico in the first place,” Lucas said. “Then none of this stuff would have happened.”

Roth looked at his son, seeing the tightness in his eyes, the worry. They all missed the half of their family that had been carved away. They wanted answers. But they were hundreds of miles away from Sarina and Suki, staying in Washington, DC, under FBI protection, trying to sort through an international conspiracy led by a very dangerous man.

Roth’s burner phone buzzed in his pocket with a text. He pulled it out and saw it was from Lund. He’d been expecting a message.

I’m behind you. Keep walking straight and then turn left at Pennsylvania.

Roth texted back: How far away are we?

The answer came quickly—3 minutes.

They passed a Hard Rock Cafe before crossing E Street. And there it was, directly ahead of them, the distinctive building that Roth had seen on episodes of the X-Files. The J. Edgar Hoover Building. FBI headquarters.

They crossed the street when the light turned green. The Hoover building was old, having been schemed by President Kennedy and built by Nixon. It didn’t look like other federal buildings in DC, with its concrete pillars, small square windows, and memorable overhanging roofline. It was a massive structure with multiple levels below ground and eight to eleven floors above ground. After crossing the street, Roth instinctively looked back to see if he could spot Lund, but there was no sign of him. The man could be a ghost when he wanted to be. He’d spent the majority of his career with the FBI and knew many who worked in the building. But the FBI forced employees to retire early, at age fifty-seven, and many chose to start a new career afterward. Thankfully, Lund had done just that. His commitment to protecting his clients was laudable. He was still fuming that Roth’s high school friend, Moretti, had tricked him into handing over Suki.

None of them had suspected the ultimate betrayal, that Moretti, whom Roth had known for decades, had been working for Calakmul all along.

After walking down the sidewalk to Pennsylvania Avenue, they turned left and went to the front of the building. From the corner, there was a row of denuded trees—the leaves long since banished by winter. Looking east, they could see the dome of the US Capitol building.

A man with a big overcoat, a cup of coffee, and a beard reached them. His sunglasses completed the look, and Roth didn’t recognize him until he was within a few steps of them.

“Enjoy the museum?” Lund asked after taking a sip.

“It was boss,” Brillante said.

“How’s Jordan doing?” Lucas asked. Jordan was one of Lund’s employees, a younger man who’d left the Army 82nd Airborne. He was a marksman, a sharpshooter. He’d saved their lives in the cabin in the mountains outside Bozeman, even after taking a bullet to the shoulder.

“He’s flying to DC tonight,” Lund said. “He heals pretty fast.”

“Maybe he misses Monica,” Lucas said, wagging his eyebrows. The boys shot each other matching grins.

Roth rolled his eyes, and Lund coughed to hide a chuckle. They’d all sensed the sparks between Jordan and Monica, although Monica was a consummate professional and didn’t give much away. Jordan couldn’t keep anything to himself, which was part of his charm. “Agent Sanchez,” Lund corrected, “is waiting for us. Follow me.”

They approached the main doors of the FBI building and entered through a rotating turnstile. Roth’s stomach was doing some flip-flops. They’d come to headquarters when they first arrived in DC, but it had been several days since their last visit, and that had been in the dead of night. Roth worried they were being observed, but Lund continued to assure him that making random changes to the schedule was the best way to prevent being spotted. There were too many people living and working and visiting DC for their presence to stand out in any meaningful way. And Lund’s company had set up various fake hotel reservations throughout the capitol to keep Calakmul’s goons constantly guessing. Roth had also shaved off his signature beard and started using pomade for his hair, both of which had altered his features dramatically enough that the hotel mirror still startled him at times. The boys had changed their hair too—Lucas’s was dyed, and Brillante’s was buzzed. They didn’t pass as twins on first glance anymore, despite the hoodies.

Agent Sanchez greeted them in the lobby with some plastic visitor badges. “Good afternoon, family.” She looked at Roth and tilted her head, her nose a little pinched as if wondering if he was okay.

“Any news?” he asked her in a low voice.

“We can’t talk here,” she said. “But yes. There’s news.”

They went through the security checkpoint, where Lund showed the guards the special weapons allowance he’d been given by the director first and then the weapon holstered beneath the jacket as well as a pocket pistol strapped to his calf, both of which they allowed him to keep. That done, Monica took them to a bank of elevators. They filed onto one of them, and she punched the button for an upper floor.

“What time is Jordan’s flight arriving?” Monica asked Lund.

Lucas wagged his eyebrows again, but he was behind her, so she couldn’t see.

“Eleven tonight. He’s taking a taxi to our hotel,” Lund said.

“The director isn’t happy that you won’t tell us which one,” Monica said archly.

“Director Wright has bigger problems to figure out than where we’re staying. But that was our agreement. Until you find out who else is on Calakmul’s payroll, I don’t trust any of the regular FBI safe houses.”

Monica sighed. “It can’t be that many.”

“One was too many,” Lund shot back. “That was the deal in exchange for our cooperation and for keeping lawyers out of it.”

The elevator beeped at their floor, and they emerged into an office area with cubicles and rows of office doors, all facing the exterior windows. The fluorescent lights were dreary. It reminded Roth of one of the old buildings at Hayward State, before it had been renamed, where he’d both worked and gone to college. He’d hated the fluorescents and ratty carpet.

Monica took them to a conference room and held the door for them. Two more special agents were waiting inside.

“Hello, Lund,” said Carter coldly.

The dislike between the men was mutual. Roth didn’t much care for Carter either. Carter had a perpetually annoyed look on his face. Moreover, he seemed to be a political man, someone who’d worked his way up the FBI ranks through maneuvering and intrigue. Still, they had no choice but to deal with him. He’d been appointed the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake field office after his predecessor was blown up at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport trying to apprehend Jacob Calakmul.

“This is Executive Assistant Director Brower,” Monica said, gesturing to another man seated at the table. He was a big guy, midforties, with all the expressive personality of a sourdough roll. He looked like the quintessential fed—regular suit, cropped dark hair with a receding hairline, and the cool eyes of a man who interrogated murderers.

Roth scratched his chin, feeling out of place.

Lund leaned back against the conference room door. He didn’t reply to Carter’s greeting.

“Have a seat, if you will,” Carter told them. Agent Sanchez sat down across from Brower. Roth took the seat next to hers, and the boys settled in at the far end of the table, looking as sheepish and uncomfortable as Roth felt. Lund didn’t sit at all.

The tension in the room was palpable.

“Monica said there was some news,” Roth said when he could no longer stand the silence.

“And hopefully she didn’t tell you any of it on the way up in the elevator,” Carter said. He wasn’t in a good mood.

“I didn’t,” Monica said with an exasperated sigh.

Brower said nothing. He was studying Roth closely, which made Roth even more uncomfortable. Roth began to tap nervously on the table.

“Good clue about the archaeologist,” Carter said. “Dr. Estrada did some work with National Geographic on Maya ruins. He’s run airplanes out of Guatemala over the jungles and captured mountains of data. Including, it seems, from part of Mexico.”

Roth leaned forward in surprise. “That’s excellent news!”

Carter wasn’t smiling. “Unfortunately, someone else got to him first.”

Roth stopped breathing. “What?”

Monica spoke up. “Someone pretending to be with the bureau spoke to him yesterday. He was persuaded to reveal that on one occasion, he and his pilot had crossed into Mexican airspace and found a site that wasn’t on any of the charts. Although he didn’t relate exactly what he saw to the imposter, he disclosed that something ... inexplicable occurred over the site. When we interviewed him, he told us that a storm nearly crashed the plane.” She gave him a significant look. “He said he’s flown through dozens of storms, and this one was uncanny. It literally came out of nowhere.”

“Dude,” Brillante said, shaking his head. “Like during the games!”

“What did the imposter do?” Roth asked worriedly.

Monica’s mouth pursed. “The servers at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego have been hacked and are now under a ransomware lockdown.”

“Ransomware?” Roth asked, confused. He’d heard the word before but couldn’t come up with the meaning off the top of his head.

“Ransomware is a cryptovirus,” Brower said tonelessly. “This particular one is highly sophisticated. They’re not asking for money. They’re asking for you.”