CHAPTER 102

IN THE WAITING AREA of the oncology ward, Katrina White took off her parka and hat and opened the pack. She turned on the boom box, got out a stethoscope, closed the pack, and put it back on.

White reached into the pocket of her scrubs, found two chunks of malleable silicon, and mashed them into her ears. Next, she released the little microphone-like device from the clip on the harness. It dangled from the insulated hydration sleeve as she pushed her way through double doors and walked confidently down the hall.

The Sparrow was immediately aware of a smell she knew intimately, the odor that people give off when they’re at the end of their lives, dying after a long illness or facing whatever weapon White had decided to use that day.

Sourness, she thought as she saw the two Supreme Court Police officers sitting outside the hospital room where Justice Mayweather lay recovering from the rigors of the inauguration and his latest surgery.

It’s always that sour smell. I think it has to be some primitive physiological response, the body trying one last time not to be eaten by the wolves of time and chance.

Then, as she’d been trained to do, White made her mind go blank so she could fully mirror her situation and surroundings. She walked past the nurses’ station and saw an aide in her peripheral vision, her back turned.

One of the police officers sitting outside Justice Mayweather’s room looked up at her approach. The Sparrow smiled, adjusted her stethoscope a little as a distraction as her other hand found the little microphone device and her thumb settled over a button on it.

“I’m Cynthia, his new nurse,” she whispered in a genial, slightly conspiratorial tone. “I promise I won’t disturb him unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

She had the attention of both guards as she closed to within ten feet. Both their phones began to ring. They reached for their phones as she smiled her way to six feet and mashed the button with her thumb.

The little device bucked in her hand. The sound of the super-focused sonic wave bringing its invisible violence came through the silicon earplugs as a low soft thud, like distant thunder heard through a closed window.

But the effect on the man and woman guarding the Supreme Court justice was instant. When the energy wave hit them, their heads jerked back as if they’d been coldcocked by a prizefighter and they slid back in their chairs, their cell phones falling to the floor, their brain waves scrambled into unconsciousness.

The Sparrow checked her six: nothing. She pushed her way into Justice Mayweather’s room and in the glow of the monitor lights, she saw not a giant of the legal system but an old, withered rooster of a man at the end of his time on earth.

She could smell the sourness in the air. She aimed the microphone at Mayweather from the foot of his bed and mashed her thumb down a second time.

At near point-blank range, the vibration hit Justice Mayweather like a sledgehammer, and the monitors all around him went dark.

Strangely, no alarm sounded. As she left the room and strode past the still unconscious guards toward the nurses’ station, White decided that the pulse had to have completely fried the electronics that surrounded the justice.

Oddly, the guards’ phones were ringing again. The nurse at the station came into the hall, blocking her way to the elevators.

“You’re early,” the nurse said.

White held her belly as if fighting a stomach cramp and hurried around the woman. “I am. But right now, I am in desperate need of a bathroom. I’ll be right back. I just checked on Mayweather and he’s sleeping soundly. So are his guards.”

The Sparrow went through the double doors, snatched up the parka, took the stairs to the lobby, and went to the first exit she saw. Halfway out the door, she heard a code blue called.

White put her hood up and hurried away, telling herself she’d change in an alley and then figure out the best way to reach her final target.

She was three blocks away from the medical center when the burn phone began to ring. She ducked into dark woods at the edge of Rock Creek Park and answered with the words “It’s done.”

She heard Malcomb exhale with relief. “Good. Because they found the filters that made you invisible. They can see you. End your mission now.”

“No,” the Sparrow said without hesitation. “I don’t care if they can see me. I’m going to finish what we set out to do. For you, M, and for Maestro. And no matter what happens afterward, we will have changed the world for the better.”

Sirens began to wail in the distance. For several moments, all she heard over the phone was Malcomb’s rattling breaths. “M?”

“It worked, the new device?”

“It’s far superior to the one we bought in Havana and used on Blevins. Well worth the money you spent.”

There was another long silence, and M started to cough and hack. When the coughing subsided, White said, “You’re sick again.”

“It’s nothing. Are you sure you want to go on?”

“Yes.”

“You need to know, then,” Malcomb said with sudden, surprising emotion, “that you were special to me, to our cause, Katrina.”

“Ryan Malcomb getting sobby,” she said. “You’re either drinking scotch for the first time in a long time or you are sick. I will call you when it’s done.”

The Sparrow hung up, divorcing herself from the genuine affection she had for the mastermind behind Maestro and focusing on actions to be taken, just as she’d been taught as a young recruit in the Russian GRU. She needed to get far away from the sirens approaching the hospital and figure out a way north before dawn.