Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

The screen cut to Senator Talbot in his office. Talbot looked genuinely stunned when Holt said that according to the Constitution and rules of the Senate, he should be the president of the United States.

“Is that true, Lester?” he asked, shocked.

“I believe it is, Senator,” Holt said. “Will you seek to remove Mr. Larkin and take his place in the Oval Office?”

Talbot looked deeply conflicted but said, “Well, I’ll have to talk to people smarter than me about this before I make any firm decisions. But if what you’re saying is true, Lester, then it is my solemn duty to take office, regardless of the high esteem in which I hold Sam Larkin.”

Shortly before six that Saturday evening, I was on my second cup of coffee at the Mandarin Oriental bar when the man I was waiting for entered, looking harried and jittery, a backpack slung over his shoulder.

I left my coffee cup to cut across the lobby to intercept him.

“Dr. Winters?” I said.

The concierge doctor started and seemed puzzled and then threatened by my presence.

“Dr. Cross? What are you doing here?”

“Can I have a few moments of your time?”

“I have a patient waiting.”

“The patient’s me.”

He looked confused. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a few questions we need answered sooner rather than later.”

Winters, who was in his early forties, scratched at his hand. “I get paid for this, you know, making calls.”

“The FBI will cover your fee. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Bourbon,” Winters said.

A few minutes later, a waitress set a tumbler with two fingers of Maker’s Mark in front of Winters; he raised it, drank it down, and ordered another.

“What do you need?” he said.

“What was your relationship to Viktor Kasimov?”

“I was his doctor.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“I’ve read the file on your medical-license review,” I said.

Winters got disgusted and then angry. “I’m clean, and I have been clean for almost four years.”

“You were reprimanded for overprescribing pain medication,” I said.

“Four years ago,” he said.

“So you didn’t give Kasimov a script for Oxy?”

“No. He had a stomach bug. Why would I?”

“What about seeing makeup and masks? You neglected to tell us about that when we spoke.”

Winters ducked his chin, and you could tell he was wondering how the hell I knew that, and then he did know.

“That psycho bitch tell you that?” he asked. “Kaycee?”

I was almost going to correct him, tell him her real name, but instead I nodded. “She did. She thought it was the right thing to do.”

“I’m sure she did,” the concierge doctor said, almost sneering. “But so what? Is it a crime?”

“Depends,” I said. “If Kasimov’s men donned disguises to go to a liquor store, no. But if they went out and were involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the president, it’s quite a different story. A case could be made for your aiding and abetting murder.”

Winters’s hands flew up in surrender. “No way. They told me they just needed to be able to visit the Russian embassy without attracting attention. I swear to God.”

I studied him, thinking that I didn’t trust him. “Kasimov or his men mention where they were going the last time you saw them?”

“London,” the doctor said. “I told him to see a doctor there if he was feeling dehydrated after his sickness and the flight. That’s it. End of story.”

“Okay,” I said. “If you think of anything else, here’s my card.”

He took it without enthusiasm, didn’t look at it, and stuffed it in his pocket.

The waitress came with his second drink. I threw down two twenties and got up.

“My address is on the card,” I said. “Send your bill there.”

“No. No charge.”

I started to walk away.

“Dr. Cross?”

When I looked back, I saw he had my card out and was playing with it in his fingers. “Yes?”

“I...” He paused to look at his bourbon. “Do you think people like me, addictive personalities — do you think we can ever stop our obsessions?”

“If you’re sufficiently motivated to change, yes,” I said.

“So someone else can’t stop you?”

“When it comes right down to it, change has to come from within.”

Winters nodded and pushed the bourbon away from him. He gazed at me and said, “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

As I turned to go again, he said, “I tried to change Kaycee, or whatever her name really is.”

I paused, unsure of what to say. “Didn’t work?”

He shook his head. “She’s crazy. Crazier than I ever was.”

Pablo Cruz was nothing if not patient.

On the second full day of martial law, President Hobbs’s assassin waited until darkness had fallen before slipping out from beneath the protective cover on a Bertram offshore fishing boat moored in a slip at the Hope Springs Marina in Stafford, Virginia. He still wore the dry suit, and he attributed the fact that he was still alive to the suit and to the belt he’d used as a tourniquet.

The wound wasn’t as bad as it could have been, given the number of shots that had been fired at him at the confluence of the flooding Rock Creek and the surging Potomac River. The slug had hit him in top of his left forearm, just below the elbow, and broken bone before exiting.

The pain had been excruciating enough to send even the most seasoned veteran to the surface and sure capture. But Cruz had embraced the pain and used it to drive him to swim harder and deeper into the main channel, where the current was swift and growing stronger with the rain and the tide. He was swept fast and far downstream as he felt water seeping through the holes the bullet had made entering and exiting the suit. He reached up and clamped his gloved hand over them.

After staying under for more than two minutes, he surfaced, saw lights on the shore, and ducked under again. Cruz kept on in this manner, swimming farther and farther toward the center of the river, always underwater.

After coming up for air the sixth time, he’d floated on his back, letting the river take him as it flowed toward the sea. He’d probed the wound, cleaned it as best he could, and applied the tourniquet.

Then he dug in the thigh pocket of the dry suit for the patch kit that came with it. The suit had been designed by cave divers, people who knew a torn suit could kill them.

It was a struggle, but he got two glued patches over the holes and then cinched the belt harder around his bleeding arm.

The assassin had swum on and floated for almost seven hours with the current, releasing the tourniquet every fifteen minutes to avoid cutting off the blood flow for too long and heading consistently southeast, downstream. When he’d climbed into the boat before dawn that Saturday, Cruz was forty-six miles from where he’d entered the river.

He’d found a cabinet with canned food and water in the fishing boat’s cabin. Knowing he risked serious infection, Cruz had forced the antibiotics into him before the painkillers. He’d eaten and slept fitfully with the Ruger in his good hand all day, setting his wristwatch to wake him every twenty minutes to briefly loosen the tourniquet.

Even so, when Cruz stepped down on the dock, he felt feverish and light-headed. He needed to put as much distance as he could between himself and Washington, DC, he decided. But seeing a doctor came first.

Cruz was halfway down the dock to shore when he saw a light go on in one of the marina offices. It went off a few moments later, then another one went on and off, and then a third.