Memoria. A Corporation of Lies

Chapter Twenty-Two. A Friend or a Murderer?

“He is the one who killed Kathleen Baker,” Claney looked into the Mayor’s little pig eyes. “Then six hours ago he massacred the camp leaders. Anna Gautier is dead. Even before that, Shelby coerced another Memoria worker, Maggie Douggan, into cooperation. Her father Barney Douggan and his friend Max — both former special-force types — are responsible for the Manhattan shootout. Then they helped Shelby to get inside Memoria’s building in order to kill the President. We have casualties among security staff and secret service agents.”

The Mayor tapped his fingers on the desk. He jerked his chin and looked up at Claney. “And you want me to present it as the official version of events?”

“Exactly,” Claney rose and headed for the exit.

“But this doesn’t agree with the already—”

“Yes it does!” Claney swung round. “Don’t forget to let the nation know that Captain Jessup was a panic monger and a double agent. Let the world know the truth about him.”

“But isn’t there supposed to be an official investigation first? I’m not an Attorney General. I can’t—”

“You can, and you will,” Claney lowered his head. His icy stare pierced the Mayor. “Or you might regret you got involved with the project.”

The Mayor shrank, his eyes on the Congressman. Cold sweat ran down his fat face. He nodded vigorously.

“Try not to leave your office until it’s over,” Claney added. “I might need you again.”

He walked out into the reception, glanced at his watch and hurried to the elevator, accompanied by his secretary and bodyguard. Both were bald, just like Claney himself.

When Claney reached the ground floor, his secretary’s phone rang.

“Who is it?” Claney reached for the phone.

“Dickens,” the secretary whispered placing the mobile into his hand.

“Speaking. They what?” Claney froze. “You-” The words stuck in his throat. He pulled at his tie, loosening up the knot. “You-” He regained his voice and yelled, “Start now! Don’t you dare let them go!”

“Don’t you dare let them go!” Kirk Dickens barked into the microphone in his sleeve and ran down a wide gray hallway toward the stairs. Beyond them, lay the roof of Memoria’s HQ. “Seal off the elevators and the exits in the building! Block off all levels!”

He sent the reserve group downstairs and lunged to the narrow doorway. Pressing his bracelet to the scanner lock, he pushed the door open.

It felt as if he’d crashed into a RV vehicle at full speed. A sledgehammer punch stopped him in his tracks. Dickens almost heard the Kevlar plates of his bulletproof vest crack under his shirt.

For a moment, his heart and his breathing stopped. He was hurled backward, blood seeping out of his mouth. Paralyzed by the pain in his chest, he tried to scramble back to his feet when a huge human shape loomed out of the dark behind the doorway. A lamp light fell onto a broken nose and a broad face disfigured by torture. Barney Douggan.

“You-” Dickens gasped. The only way the outlaws could get to the roof before them was by using the VIP elevator. The only person who had the key to it was William Bow. He’d always kept it on a silver chain on his neck.

Dickens didn’t have time to give orders. Barney lunged forward, about to stomp on his stomach. A floor tile crashed with a clatter as Barney’s foot rammed into the floor. Dickens rolled off, pulling the gun out of its holster. Before he could shoot, his hand was squashed in a vice-like grip. Dickens cried out as his fingers snapped. His gun smashed against the wall.

Dickens managed to half-rise and jerked his head to escape another heavy punch. He attempted an uppercut but failed to keep his balance, dragged to the floor in Barney’s bear hug. The radio on his belt bleeped and stopped, smashed against the tiles.

Dickens stuck his remaining good fingers into Barney’s face going for his eyes, but missed and hit his nose instead. Barney growled like a wounded bear. His arm shot up to slam Dickens in the face. Once again, Dickens jerked his head aside and Barney’s palm brushed his face, his nails grazing Dickens’ cheek. Immediately, Dickens’ return punch to Barney’s throat made the boxer wheeze and let go of his prey. Dickens managed to retrieve his wounded hand; he rolled away and got back to his feet.

The gun lay between Barney and himself, and the boxer had much better chances of getting to it in time.

Snorting heavily through his broken nose, Barney rose to one knee and looked up at Dickens. In the lamplight, the remaining eye glistened in his bloodied face smashed to pulp. He reached out to grasp the gun.

“Total control,” Dickens forced out the trigger command as loud as he could.

Barney froze. His stare glazed over.

“Up,” Dickens ordered.

The boxer rose. His powerful shoulders stooped. His gorilla-like arms hung weakly. Dickens waited a few more seconds and reached for the gun.

“There’s nothing here, Frank!” Standing at the center of the helipad, Maggie looked about. “Nothing that looks like a transmitter!”

The cold wind grasped at her words, taking them into the night sky that enveloped the city’s illuminated skyline.

“You hear me? There’s nothing here! You must be wrong!” Maggie shouted. “We should have tried to get out of the building instead. We should have gone to the police to tell them about the secret labs.”

Desperate, she sat down on the hard mesh with a large H painted white in the center.

Frank stood on the pad’s edge, several paces away from the girl, and grasped the long handle of a fire axe he’d taken from the fire precautions point by the elevators. Apart from several enormous fan blowers with their blades rotating slowly behind safety grills, sending the air down the building’s aircon system, there were no other machines on top of the roof. Nothing that looked like an equipment booth or a satellite dish that could send or receive signals. Only a squat concrete platform in the middle of the roof on top of which the helipad was mounted, flat with slightly raised edges.

How on earth was Dickens going to transmit the signal? Frank gripped the axe and ran back to the stairs. Now where would the antennas be? Could there be another door they hadn’t yet noticed? There were two ways of accessing the roof. Barney was now watching the service exit that faced south on the floor below. The entry by elevator — its cabin still frozen midway to the roof — was now blocked as Frank had broken the little silver key in the exit lock to make sure no one could use it.

He’d only picked up the axe in case he had to demolish the transmitter or sever the cables. Maggie seemed to be right, though. He could have misunderstood Claney’s words in the surgery. Possibly, Dickens had hidden the transmitter somewhere deep below, like the underground labs they’d just escaped from. On their way to the elevators, Frank had discovered that the building was chock full of secret rooms and passages. His head pulsated with the thought that, while he was rushing around the roof like a headless chicken, Claney and Dickens were happily bringing their evil plans to fruition.

“Frank!” he heard overhead. “Frank, where are you?”

“Here!” he stopped and raised his head. “The north side!”

A few moments later, Maggie peered down over the platform edge.

“I think I heard something,” she waved her hand toward the south side of the building. “Some noise where we left Dad.”

“Stay where you are!” Frank swore under his breath and ran to the service exit.

He’d stopped caring about his aches and pains a long time ago. His bruised body stung, the dislocated fingers could barely hold the axe; he could hardly move. But if he wanted to stop Claney from messing up the lives of millions, he had to keep looking for whatever had been mentioned in the surgery. Max had died for whatever it was. Barney and Maggie were risking their lives for it. He had to stop Dickens from using the transmitter.

When Frank finally got to the service exit door, he found it open. Could Barney be looking for them because of something he’d found?

Frank stepped inside and peered into the stairwell. It was bright and quiet.

Bright? Why? He grasped the axe and stepped back, looking up. A stifled cry came from the landing pad. Without thinking, Frank ran up the steps to the platform and froze, stopped by Dickens’ cold stare.

Dickens held Maggie by the neck pressing her against himself. The fingers of one hand deformed and dislocated, he held a gun in his other hand pointing it at the girl’s temple. Barney stood nearby, his arms hanging down, his head turned to Frank. His bruised face was covered with some fresh blood.

“Kill him,” Dickens ordered.

Barney trundled toward Frank.