J. Robb - Loyalty in Death

Her shoes pivoted smartly and marched away.

"Do you have to look so sexy when you do that?" Eve demanded. "You distract my aide."

"Just one of life's little hurdles. Ah, I won't need that flash after all. Lights," he ordered and the room brightened.

"Good. See if you can find the controls that open this paper file over here." She turned to a cabinet. "I'd blast it, but I might damage the data inside."

"Try a little patience. I'll get to it. She had excellent taste in equipment. These are my units. Locks, yes, here we are." He keystroked and Eve heard the click.

"That was easy."

"The rest won't be. Give me some quiet here."

She pulled out a drawer, hefted it, and carried it into the sitting room. She could hear the beeps and hums of the machines as Roarke worked on them. His occasional terse voice commands. Why she should have found it soothing, she couldn't say, but it was oddly satisfying to know he was in the next room working with her.

Then she started going through the paper files and forgot him, forgot everything else.

There were letters, handwritten in bold, sprawling script from James Rowan to his daughter – the daughter he didn't call Charlotte. The daughter he called Cassandra.

They weren't the sentimental or fatherly correspondence between parent and child but the rousing, dictatorial directives from commander to soldier.

"The war must be fought, the present government destroyed. For freedom, for liberty, for the good of the masses who are now under the boot of those who call themselves our leaders. We will be victorious. And when my time has passed, you will take my place. You, Cassandra, my young goddess, are my light into the future. You will be my prophet. Your brother is too weak to carry the burden of decision. He is too much his mother's son. You are mine.

"Remember always, victory carries a price. You must not hesitate to pay it. Move like a fury, like a goddess. Take your place in history."

There were others, following the same theme. She was his soldier and his replacement. He'd molded her, one god to another, in his image.

In another file she found copies of birth certificates. Clarissa's and her brother's, and their death certificates as well. There were newspaper and magazine clippings, stories on Apollo, and on her father.

There were photographs of him: public ones in his politician suit with his hair gleaming and his smile bright and friendly; private ones of him in full battle gear, his face smudged with black and his eyes cold. Killer eyes, Eve thought.

She'd looked into them hundreds of times in her life.

Family pictures, again private, of James Rowan and his daughter. The fairylike little girl had a ribbon in her hair and an assault weapon in her hands. Her smile was fierce, and her eyes were her father's.

She found all the data on one Clarissa Stanley, ID numbers, birth date, date of death.

Another picture showed Clarissa as a young woman. Dressed in military fatigues, she stood beside a grim-faced man with a captain's hat shading his eyes. Behind them was a dramatic ring of snow-covered mountains.

She'd seen that face before, she thought and dug out her magnifying goggles again to get a better look.

"Henson," she murmured. "William Jenkins." She pulled out her palm unit and requested data to refresh her memory.

William Jenkins Henson, date of birth August 12, 1998, Billings, Montana. Married Jessica Deals, one child. Daughter Madia, born August 9, 2018. James Rowan's campaign manager…

"Right. Stop." She rose, took a turn around the room. She remembered, she'd scanned the data before. He'd had a daughter Clarissa's age. A daughter who hadn't been accounted for, hadn't been mentioned since the bombing in Boston.

A female child's body had been identified in the ruin of that Boston home. Henson's daughter, Eve thought. Not Rowan's. And William Jenkins Henson had taken Rowan's child as his own.

He'd finished her training.

She sat again, began to push through the papers looking for another letter, another photo, another piece. She found another stack from Rowan to his daughter and began to read.

"Eve, I'm in. You'll want to see this."

Taking the letters with her, she went to Roarke. "He'd been training her since she was a kid," Eve told him. "Brought her up through the ranks. He called her Cassandra. And when he died, Henson took over. I've got a photo of her and Henson taken a good ten years after the bombing in Boston."

"They trained her well." Damned if he hadn't admired her skill with the units and the codes and mazes she'd planted within them. "I have transmissions from here to a location in Montana. It may be to Henson. No names are used, but she's kept him up to date on her progress."

Eve glanced down at the monitor. "Dear Comrade," she read.

"I don't understand politics," she said after she'd read the first transmission. "What are they trying to prove? What are they trying to be?"

"Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Fascism." Roarke jerked his shoulders. "Democracy, republic, monarchy. One is the same as the other to them. It's power, it's glory. It's revolution for the sake of it. Politics, religion, for some it remains their own narrow and personal view."

"Conquer and rule?" Eve wondered.

"To feed. Have a look. On-screen," Roarke ordered, and the wall unit flashed on. "We have schematics and blueprints, security codes and data. These are the Apollo targets, starting with the Kennedy Center."

"They kept records," she murmured. "Property damage and cost, number of dead. Jesus, they list the names."

"War records," Roarke said. "So many for them, so many for us. Tally the count. Without blood, war's losing its sexuality. And here… secondary data, split screen. This is the data and images of Radio City. Note the red dots indicate the positioning of the explosives."

"Following in daddy's footsteps."

"I have names and locations for members of the group."

"Feed them to my home unit, to Peabody. We'll start rounding up. Are all the targets listed?"

"I haven't gone past the first two. I thought you'd want to see what we've got so far."

"Right. Get the data to Peabody first, then we'll go on." She glanced down at the letter in her hand as he started the transmission. And her blood froze.

"Jesus, the Pentagon wasn't the next target. They had an abort between the arena and the Pentagon. It doesn't say what it is here, just equipment problems, financial difficulties. 'Money is a necessary evil. Line your coffers well.'" She tossed the letter aside. "What's after the arena? What was next on Apollo's list?"

Roarke called it up and they both stared at the white spear on-screen. "The Washington Monument, targeted for two days after the complex."

She laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. "They'll move tonight, tomorrow the latest. They won't wait, they won't contact. They can't risk it. What's the target?"

He called it up. Three images popped. "Take your choice."

Eve yanked out her communicator. "Peabody, get an E and B team to the Empire State Building, another to the Twin Towers, one more to the Statue of Liberty. You and McNab cover the Empire State, get Feeney down to the Towers. Have one of the long-range scanners ready for me. I'm on my way home. I want everybody to move, move fast. Riot gear and armed. Evacuation immediately, cordon off entire sectors. No civilians within three city blocks of locations."

She jammed the communicator into her pocket. "How fast can that jet-copter of yours get us to Liberty Island?"

"A lot faster than those toys your department uses."

"Then shoot this data off, add your copter's computer to the spread. Let's go fire it up."

She raced through the door, out and down the steps. Roarke was behind the wheel of his car and had the engine engaged before she could slam her door.