Брэд Мельтцер - The Fifth Assassin

“What did Tot tell you?” Mac asks, his robot voice slower than ever.

“Mac, this isn’t funny. How many members are there?”

Through the phone, there’s a loud click, like a radio being turned off. Instead of Mac’s robot voice, a female voice—an older woman—says, “Beecher, my name is Grace Bentham. You need to get out of your house.”

“W-What’re you—? Who the hell is this?”

“It’s Mac,” the old woman replies as I realize I’m hearing Immaculate Deception’s real voice. “My name is Grace. I’m trying to save your life.”

85

One hour earlier

St. Elizabeths Hospital

Washington, D.C.

Nico didn’t realize the guards were there until they grabbed him from behind, clutching his neck and dragging him down toward the gravel parking lot.

“ You’re letting him go! Don’t let him go! ” Nico screamed, still kicking wildly.

Beecher punched the gas, his tires spun, and a windmill of loose gravel flew through the air.

“ He’s the monster! Not me! ” Nico howled as the car sped off, fishtailing out of the parking lot.

“Nico, catch your breath!” Nurse Rupert yelled. Between him and the guard, their weight was too much. Like a cleaved tree, Nico tumbled backward.

With a crunch and a thud, his shoulders slammed down into the frozen gravel. Bits of rocks and dust coughed into the air. It didn’t stop him from thrashing, trying to free his arms, his legs, anything to break free.

“ Guys! Some help! ” Rupert shouted.

Within seconds, two more guards caught up to them, joining the fray. Trained in a variety of restraining holds, they weren’t punching or hitting Nico. They grabbed at his wrists, going for pressure points.

Nearly blind from the spray of dust, Nico only saw a muddy blur, but in the distance he heard a new voice… a voice he knew… running toward him.

“ Don’t hurt him! ” Dr. Gosling yelled in his familiar southern accent. “ He’s not fighting you! ”

Gosling was right. The fight was over. Even for Nico, four against one was too much.

“ Nico, listen to me—he’s gone ,” Rupert said, down on his knees, holding on to Nico’s shoulder and working hard to keep his voice calm. It was the only way to talk to Nico. “Whoever that was… whoever you’re chasing… he’s gone. Look…” Grabbing Nico by the ear and lifting his head, Rupert pointed him to the main road. Nico blinked hard to see. There was no missing it. Beecher’s car blew past the guard gate and out from the hospital grounds.

With a final snort, Nico let his head collapse back into the gravel. His body went limp.

So did the rest of the group.

“Action’s over! Let’s get him inside!” Rupert called out.

In a mess of murmurs and curse words, the guards slowly and angrily peeled themselves off the pile.

“Nico, you’re a real pimple on my ass,” one of them said as he accidentally stepped on Nico’s fingertips.

Nico didn’t yell or complain. Behind him, as he lay there in the gravel still buzzing from adrenaline, he heard the sound of Velcro straps. They were bringing the stretcher. The one with the restraints. Nico knew the consequences of fighting, just like he knew what else was coming.

A mosquito bite of pain pricked him in the thigh. At the nurses’ station, they called it a “B-52,” a mix of Haldol, Ativan, and a few other antipsychotics that put you to sleep for the next eighteen hours.

“ Find out who that was! ” a guard shouted on one side of him.

“ I don’t care how dangerous the job is! ” Dr. Gosling shouted on the other, more pissed than ever. “ You know our regs—there’s no manhandling the patients! ” From the proximity of his voice, Nico knew Gosling was the one administering the shot.

“You got the other arm secure?” Rupert asked, still kneeling next to him.

The Velcro bit hard against Nico’s wrist. He stared up at the gray sky, waiting for the foggy light-headedness that came with the sedation.

It never came.

“Nico, close your eyes,” Dr. Gosling said, warmly patting the chest of his most famous patient.

Nico did what he was told. He closed his eyes. Yet as the stretcher tipped forward, then back, then was lifted in the air—as the nurses carried him back toward the building—Nico was surprised that instead of feeling groggy he felt wide awake. And better than ever.

86

Now

But how’re you—? How can—?” I stop myself, pressing my phone to my ear and looking around my kitchen like I’m seeing it for the first time. “You’re a woman ?”

“The front door, Beecher. Grab your stuff and get outside,” says the woman who, for two months now, has been calling herself Immaculate Deception. From the way she says my name— Beech-ah —she’s got a hint of an old Boston accent. The fancy private school kind.

Rushing to the kitchen table, I hunch over my laptop and enter her name into Google. Grace Bentham. I add the words computer expert to narrow it down.

“Don’t Google me, Beecher.”

“Wait… are you…? You hacked my computer too?”

“No—I hear the clicking of your keyboard. I’m not deaf,” she tells me.

She says something else, but I’m too lost in an online profile from the Boston Herald . According to this, Grace Bentham is…

“I’m seventy-two years old,” she adds. “I met Tot during my navy days.”

I continue reading. A seventy-two-year-old former navy officer. Rear admiral. Bigshot back in the day. As I skim through the article, it says she was a pioneer in the computer field… one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, whatever that is. Earned her the nickname Amazing Grace . In fact, according to this, she’s the one who actually invented the term debugging when she found an actual moth in a Harvard Mark II computer and then pulled it out. But if that’s who’s looking out for me—a bunch of seventy- and eighty-year-olds…

“How many people are in the Culper Ring?” I ask her.

“Beecher, this is a conversation that’s better saved for—”

“ How many!? ” I insist.

She goes silent. But not for long. “Seven.”

“Seven!?”

“Seven. Including you. That’s all that’s left.”

That means there were more. “Did something happen to the rest of them?”

Like before, Amazing Grace doesn’t answer.

“What happened to them, Grace?”

Again, no answer.

“Grace, is someone hunting the members of the Culper Ring? Is that what this is about?”

“Beecher, don’t forget that one of the key strengths of the Ring used to be its small size. George Washington barely had half a dozen members. Then over time, there were dozens of us, nearly a hundred at our height. But don’t you see? That’s why Tot picked you. As they hunted us down, Tot was determined to rebuild.”

A needle of pain pierces my throat at just the mention of Tot’s name and everything he’s done for me. No way will his work stop here.

“There’s four of you: Tot, you, the Surgeon, the one you called Santa… plus me is five. Who are the others?” I demand.

“Listen, I know you’re upset.”

“No, upset is what happens when you get a speeding ticket, or your girlfriend dumps you. I risked my life here! I risked my life thinking I was being protected by the team from Mission: Impossible ! Instead, I got invited to an AARP meeting!”

“Beecher, don’t underestimate us. You have no concept of the battles we’ve fought. And won. So I hear every word you’re saying, but please … What matters right now is getting you to safety. If you want to have this argument, grab your stuff, run out the front door, and head for the safehouse that Tot showed you. At the post office. Let’s have this fight from the safety of your car.”