Patient Zero

Chapter One Hundred Three

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 11:59 A.M.

I LEANED CLOSE to Grace. “Call me paranoid, but I’m getting a weird vibe from that agent over there.” I told her where to look and she glanced surreptitiously at O’Brien and then flipped open her phone to call in a request for a physical description of Special Agent Michael O’Brien.

“Description matches,” she said, but from the expression on her face she clearly was getting the same bad feeling. Into the phone she said, “Transfer me to Director Brierly’s secure channel.”

Across the room I saw Brierly’s head swivel around to find us. “Sir,” said Grace, “this may be nothing but Captain Ledger has some concerns about one of the attending agents. O’Brien. Big red-haired bloke by the press entrance.”

We watched Brierly turn. “Michael O’Brien? He’s part of the team sent from D.C. Do you want him removed?”

“If you can do it quietly,” she said, and I winced. The Secret Service could do just about anything quietly. The word “secret” wasn’t there for show, but I understood what Grace was doing. She was putting the onus on Brierly to handle something correctly and we could learn a lot from the way he played it.

“Stand by,” he said, and switched channels. Almost immediately two of his agents began making their way around the perimeter of the room toward O’Brien.

My spider sense was going haywire now. I told Grace to get Brierly back on the line.

ON THE PODIUM the First Lady launched into a crushingly dull speech that was apparently going to chronicle the history of the Liberty Bell from the moment someone cooked up the idea, minute by minute, to today. “In 1752,” she intoned, “the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered a two-thousand-pound bell to place in the steeple of the new State House-what we now call Independence Hall.”

One of the approaching agents reached O’Brien and bent to whisper in the man’s ear. It must have been couched as a repositioning order because O’Brien merely nodded and began moving toward the exit which was directly behind him. The ranks of reporters made it necessary for him to thread his way through and the two other agents followed.

“He’s not bolting,” Grace said. “Maybe you’re wrong.”

“If I am I’ll apologize,” but I was still watching O’Brien.

“The order for the bell was sent to the Whitechapel Foundry in England,” continued the First Lady, “and noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell and to inscribe it with these historic words: ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.’ Sadly that first bell cracked shortly after it was mounted and a replacement bell was-”

The First Lady kept speaking but something she had said jolted me as my brain replayed those words.

. noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell

“And today we will be unveiling a new bell, designed and cast by Andrea Lester-who is with us today.” She indicated a small, unsmiling woman in a yellow pantsuit. “Ms. Lester is the last descendant of the original bell maker and is a resident of North Carolina. She is here with us today to help dedicate this new-”

My mind was reeling. Rudy must have caught it, too; he turned and was staring wide-eyed at me. He mouthed the word: “Bellmaker.”

Thomas Lester. The metalsmith who made the original Liberty Bell.

His descendant Andrea Lester, maker of the new bell.

Lester the bell maker!

Holy Christ! Aldin had told us, but he hadn’t told us enough.

I saw Andrea Lester glance very quickly from the First Lady, to the doorway where Agent O’Brien had paused, his hand on the glass door. He turned and looked back into the room, straight at Andrea Lester. The agents with him put their hands on his upper arms to try to move him along quietly; not wasting to make a scene.

I grabbed Grace’s arm so hard she flinched in pain and nearly dropped her phone.

“Grace! Oh my God it isn’t Lester Bellmaker. It’s Andrea Lester, the bell maker. She made the Freedom Bell!”

Just as I started moving the First Lady’s aides pulled the cords that released the drapes over the Freedom Bell; the red, white, and blue fluttered to the floor. In my mind the falling colors became a horrible promise of disaster. On the other side of the room I saw Special Agent Michael O’Brien shrug off the two agents and, his smile broader than ever, pull a small device out of his pocket.

It was a detonator.