Chapter Forty-five

AS THE GOVERNMENT car sped through the deserted streets towards the White House, Whispering Death sat in the secure cocoon at the back, the thick glass privacy screen raised and made a series of phone calls. The first one was to order the immediate arrest of Walter Drax. Even the most cursory glance at the guy’s human-resources file showed he was a man with too much anger, a loose cannon who could never be trusted not to talk or boast.

A few minutes later, six men in three black SUVs gained access to the institute’s campus, were met by several of the on-site security guards and walked into Drax’s lab. With pistols clearly visible under their jackets, they told the institute’s director to return to his office, flashed Drax some IDs which may or may not have been genuine FBI shields and told him he was under arrest on suspicion of espionage. Drax, looking completely flustered, told them he had no idea what they were talking about – he was a loyal American, had been all his life. They ignored him, read him his rights and, when he asked to see a lawyer, told him that would be arranged once he had been formally charged. Of course they had no intention of doing that – instead they took him to an airfield just the other side of Frederick where a waiting government jet flew them to a private airstrip in the Black Hills of South Dakota. From there, more government SUVs transported him to a remote ranch house and the bleak rooms it contained.

Ironically, in one of those strange coincidences that life sometimes throws up, it was the same house that I had been taken to after I had killed the Rider of the Blue – appropriated and put to a similar use by other members of the intelligence community after The Division was disbanded. Like myself so many years before, Drax and his secret were now lost to the world.

The second phone call Whisperer made – well, actually it was three phone calls – was to the ambassadors of Italy, Japan and Holland. He told them with deep regret that he had just learned that their nationals were dead, killed by their kidnappers when they realized troops were closing in. ‘They made a hurried attempt to bury the bodies and we are exhuming the site now, ’ he said. ‘Obviously, forensic tests and formal identification will take some time. ’ He told them that, for operational reasons, the information had to be kept secret and, while he didn’t say so explicitly, he gave the impression that a hot pursuit was still in progress.

His last call was to the head of the CIA. Offering no explanation, which wasn’t uncommon in the shadow world, he told him to organize to have the men in the NBC suits at the Overlook hotel informed that all tests had come back negative. Because they were no longer needed, they were to return to base immediately. Only after they had left were the CIA’s own operatives to move in, seal the pit and secure the site completely.

By the time he had finished the phone calls – plugging the most obvious means by which the secret might escape – he had entered the gates of the White House.