Solomon's Gold

CHAPTER 47

It was the day of the conference. Nick and the team had been in the hotel since first light. Everywhere they went they were stopped by Secret Service or FBI. The general attitude was that they weren't welcome and everything was under control, so why were they there in the first place?

They had been all through the building, including the basement. They'd found nothing out of the ordinary.

The Israeli prime minister and President Corrigan were already in the hotel. The prime minister had arrived at 12:30. President Corrigan had greeted him in the lobby. They'd been shepherded to a private conference room, trailing a gaggle of Mossad and Secret Service agents behind. The hotel was packed with delegates from all over the world.

Selena stood in the lobby with the others, watching people mill about.

"Alan should have been here to see this," she said. "This was his creation."

"From a security standpoint, this is a nightmare," Nick said. "There are too many people."

"Seems like half of them are Secret Service or something else," Ronnie said.

"It only takes one lunatic to make them all useless," Nick said.

"We still haven't talked to the maintenance guy, Kowalski."

"They had him over at the FBI office all morning. He has to be back by now. Let's find him."

They found Kowalski in the basement.

It didn't take Nick long to figure out that the assistant engineer wasn't the highest card in the deck.

"Like I told those other guys, I don't know nothin'."

"What other guys?" Nick asked.

"You know, the feds, guys like you."

"We're not FBI," Nick said. "We're something else. Tell me again why you left three men here without watching them."

"They had a work order. They looked okay."

"What does that mean?"

"What does what mean?"

"That they looked okay."

"You know. They looked like anybody else. Like working guys. Like guys that work on air-conditioning. Waddaya want from me?"

Selena said, "Mister Kowalski, no one is blaming you for anything. These men are terrorists. They were here for a reason. Our job is to try and find out what that was. Can you show me where they were when you last saw them?"

Relieved to know something they wanted, Kowalski led them into the control room where he'd last seen Dayoud and the others.

"I left them right here," he said. "Then I went upstairs."

"Just a few more questions, Mister Kowalski. Then you can get on with your work."

"Okay. That's good, I got a plumbing problem on the fourth floor. What with the president being here and all, everything's a mess. But the plumbing still has to work."

"What did they have with them?"

"Two toolboxes, like you carry tools in."

"What else?"

"They had a dolly with a cylinder on it. Like refrigeration guys use when they need to recharge something. I told the other guys that."

"Was there anything else?" Selena asked.

"Yeah, they had a ladder, one of those folding aluminum jobs."

Nick and Selena looked at each other. No one had mentioned a ladder before.

"Did you tell the other people who talked with you about that?"

"Come to think of it, it kind of slipped my mind, what with everybody being angry, confusing me."

"Angry?"

"Yeah, they acted like I'd done something wrong. All I did was follow orders. One guy was yelling at me."

"Well, he shouldn't have done that," Selena said.

"That's right," Kowalski said. "What right have those guys got to yell at me? I was just doing my job."

She looked at Nick. He nodded.

"Thank you for your time, Mister Kowalski. I don't think we have any more questions for you."

Kowalski looked like he wanted to get out of there. "Yeah, well, if you need to get hold of me, I'll be on the fourth floor."

They watched him leave.

"You did a good job with him," Nick said.

"The poor man was frightened," Selena said. "How would you feel if a bunch of federal agents came out of nowhere and started asking you a lot of questions?"

"Wouldn't bother me," Lamont said. "I'd tell them to take a hike back to the Hoover building."

"How would you get them to do that?" Ronnie asked.

"I'll show them my badge."

"They've got badges."

"Yeah, but mine's bigger than theirs."

In spite of herself, Selena laughed.

"The ladder is new info," Nick said.

Ronnie looked around the room. "I don't see anything they could have climbed up on. The feebs must have crawled all over the place. If there was anything up on top of that ductwork, they would have found it. Besides, most of it's right up against the ceiling. There isn't room for anything."

"What about inside the ducts?" Selena asked.

"Harker said the feds looked inside the ducts," Nick said. "They chalked a mark everywhere they looked, like that big access panel over there."

They walked over to the panel. A blue chalk mark showed that someone had checked it out.

"They went inside?" Ronnie asked.

"Yes." Nick looked at the panel. "Something bothers me about this, but I can't put my finger on it."

"It's got the chalk mark," Lamont said.

"Yeah, but something is bugging me about it."

Nick studied the panel.

"Why is one screw different from the others?" Selena asked.

"That's it," Nick said. "That's what was bugging me. It shouldn't be different. They should all be exactly the same. That one is the same size, but it's shiny. The others are all dull."

"Like someone replaced it," Lamont said.

"We need to open it up," Ronnie said.

"Get Kowalski back in here with his tools," Nick said. "Tell him to bring a ladder."

Fifteen minutes later, Kowalski showed up carrying a toolbox and a ladder.

"I gotta turn off the blower before I pull that off," Kowalski said.

He punched the button that shut down the big fan. A few minutes after that, he had the panel off the ductwork.

"The whole system is shut down with that blower off," Kowalski said. "I'll stay here until you're done, so I can put it back together."

"Okay," Nick said. "I'd like you to stand over by the wall, away from the opening."

"You think there's a bomb in there? Those guys already checked it out."

"It's only a precaution. Please, stand over there."

Grumbling, Kowalski moved to the other side of the room.

Nick got inside the ductwork and looked up. It was dark. He couldn't see anything except sheet-metal rising toward the ceiling.

Why did they need a ladder?

He took a flashlight from his pocket and turned it on.

"There's another large branch going off at a right angle, about ten feet up. Let me have the ladder."

His voice echoed inside the metal work.

Lamont handed the ladder in to him. Nick set it up against the steel and climbed. He shone his light down the branch and saw a round, black container with wires coming off it. The wires were connected to a digital timing device. Red LEDs on the display counted down as he watched.

More wires were hooked up to a package in front of the container. Seconds ticked off as the timer counted down.

Nick set his flashlight down in the duct, pointing at the bomb.

"There's a bomb, and a timer counting down. Call Harker, clear the hotel."

Selena took out her phone and speed dialed Virginia.

"Yes, Selena."

"We found a bomb. Nick says clear the hotel."

"Tell her, do it now," Nick yelled from inside the duct. "Tell her she's got less than four minutes."

"I heard that," Elizabeth said.

She disconnected and started making calls.

"Oh, shit," Kowalski said.

"Get out of here," Ronnie said. "Find the first cop you can find and tell him there's a bomb. Then get out of the hotel."

Kowalski ran for the door.

"What have we got, Nick?" Ronnie asked.

"There are two different packages, both of them wired up. There's a timer counting down. It's hooked up to a black object that's round, about two feet long. Sophisticated. This isn't some homemade job. The second package has wires coming out of it, too. It's covered with some kind of paste. Probably something to fool the dogs."

"What do you need?"

"I think the package blows when anybody messes with the timer or the black thing and sets it all off. There are a lot of wires. I cut the wrong one, it's all she wrote."

"Can you get to the timer?"

"Not without going through a web of wires. Someone knew what they were doing when they put this together."

Then he thought, Selena. The baby.

"Selena, get out of here."

"Just defuse it, Nick. I'm not leaving you here."

"Damn it, Selena."

"Tell us what to do, Nick. None of us are going anywhere."

Ronnie said, "How much time, Kemo Sabe?"

"Less than two minutes. We could use one of those transporters about now, like they had on Star Trek."

The timer was down to one minute and fifty-seven seconds. He took out his knife.

"Not much I can do. I'm going to start cutting."

"Wait," Selena said.

She ran over to the wall, pulled down a fire extinguisher, and ran back.

"That might work," Ronnie said.

"What might work?" Nick called.

Ronnie grabbed the extinguisher from Selena, ducked through the access panel, and climbed up the ladder below Nick.

"Spray the shit out of it with this," Ronnie said. "It's cold, it will coat everything. It should stop the timer."

"What if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll all be sitting on a cloud somewhere having a cold beer. Use the extinguisher."

He handed it up. Nick took the extinguisher from him and looked at the timer.

Forty-two seconds.

He pulled the safety pin, pointed the extinguisher at the malevolent package in front of him, and squeezed the trigger. A cloud of white blasted out of the nozzle, coating everything in the ductwork and beyond. Nick closed his eyes and ducked down as some of the spray blew back at him. It felt ice cold against his skin.

He opened his eyes and looked down the duct. The beam from his flashlight illuminated a scene that might've come out of a Christmas display window in a department store. Everything was covered with a thick coating of white. A faint shine of red from the timer came through the white. He couldn't read the numbers, but it didn't look as though they were moving. Even as he watched, the red glow faded.

"Must've worked," he said. "Time to get the bomb squad in here."

Nick climbed down the ladder and stepped out into the room.

Lamont and Ronnie started laughing.

"What's so funny?"

Ronnie said, "Your face and hair are covered in white. You look like a damn zombie."

Selena wrapped her arms around him.

"You should've left."

"Not a chance," she said.