Pocketing his cell phone, Gray retrieved the man’s coin from the grass. It was heavy, thick, crudely minted. He lifted it and absently rubbed at its surface. Using the dead man’s blood on his fingers, he polished the grime off the surface to reveal an image of what appeared to be a Greek or Roman temple, six pillars under a peaked roof.
What the hell?
In the coin’s center stood a single letter.
Gray thought it was the Greek letter ?.
Sigma.
In mathematics, the letter sigma represented the sum of all parts, but it was also the emblem for the organization Gray worked for: Sigma, an elite team of ex–Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in scientific fields to serve as a covert military arm for DARPA, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Gray glanced to the Castle. Sigma’s headquarters were here, buried beneath the foundations of the Smithsonian Castle in former World War II bunkers. It was perfectly situated to take advantage of the proximity to the halls of government, the Pentagon, and the various private and national laboratories.
Focusing back on the coin, Gray suddenly realized his mistake. The letter was not a Greek ?—but merely a large capital E. In his panic, his eyes had played tricks, seeing what had been forefront in his mind.
He closed his fist over the coin.
Just an E.
It wasn’t the first time in the past few weeks that Gray had assumed connections that weren’t there—or at least that was the consensus among his colleagues. For a solid month, Gray had been searching for some confirmation that a lost friend, Monk Kokkalis, could still be alive. But so far, even utilizing the full resources of Sigma, he had reached only dead ends.
Chasing ghosts, Painter Crowe had warned after the first weeks.
Maybe he was.
Across the way, doors crashed open in the front of the Castle. A dozen black-suited figures fled outward with weapons raised, clutched near shoulders in double grips.
The cavalry.
They moved cautiously, but no one fired shots at them.
They reached Gray’s side quickly and flanked around protectively.
One of the men fell to a knee beside the homeless man. He dropped a paramedic’s pack, ready to offer aid.
“I think he’s gone,” Gray warned.
The medic checked for a pulse, confirming Gray’s assessment.
Dead.
Gray climbed to his feet.
He was surprised to see his boss, Painter Crowe, at the side entrance. Jacketless, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, Director Crowe shoved through the door. His expression was stormy. Though ten years older than Gray, Painter still moved like a lean-muscled wolf. The director must have assessed the risk to be minimal. Or maybe, like Gray, he merely sensed that the sniper had already fled.
Still, what didn’t the man understand about desk job?
Painter crossed to him as sirens sounded from the distance. “I have local P.D. locking down the Mall,” he said in clipped tones.
“Too little, too late.”
“Most likely. Still, ballistics will narrow down a trajectory radius. Figure out from where the shots were fired. Was anyone following you?”
Gray shook his head. “Not that I could assess.”
Gray read the calculations in the director’s eyes as he surveyed the Mall. Who would attempt to assassinate Gray? On their own doorstep. It was a clear warning, but against what? Gray had not been active in any operation since the last mission in Cambodia.
“We already pulled your parents into security,” Painter said. “Just as a precaution.”
Gray nodded, grateful for that. Though he could imagine his father was not too happy. Nor his mother. They had barely recovered from a brutal kidnapping two months ago.
Still, with the immediate threat waning, Gray turned his attention to who might have tried to kill him—and more important, why. One possibility rose to the forefront: his current line of inquiry. Had his investigation into his friend’s fate struck a nerve somewhere?
Despite the death here, hope flared in Gray.
“Director, could the assassination—?”
Painter held up a hand as his brows pinched with worry. He sank to one knee beside the homeless man and gently turned his face. After a moment, he sat back on his heel, his eyes narrowed. He looked more worried.
“What is it, sir?”
“I don’t think you were the target, Gray.”
Gray glanced to the sidewalk and remembered the sparking strikes at his heels.
“At least not the primary target,” the director continued. “The sniper may have tried to eliminate you as a witness.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Painter nodded to the dead body. “I know this man.”
Shock rang through him.
“His name is Archibald Polk. Professor of neurology at M.I.T.”
Gray cast a skeptical eye upon the man’s jaundiced pallor, the grime, the scrabbled beard, but the director sounded certain. If true, the fellow plainly had fallen on hard times.
“How the hell did he end up like this?” he asked.
Painter stood and shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ve been out of touch for a decade. But the more important question: Why would someone want him dead?”
Gray stared down at the body. He readjusted his own internal assessment. Gray should have been relieved to learn he wasn’t a target of an assassin, but if Painter was correct, then Gray’s investigation had nothing to do with the attack.
Anger surfaced again—along with a certain sense of responsibility.
The man had died in Gray’s arms.
“He must have been coming here,” Painter mumbled and glanced to the Castle. “To see me. But why?”
Gray held out his hand, remembering the man’s urgency. The ancient coin rested on his bloody palm. “He may have wanted you to have this.”
2:02 P.M.
As sirens sounded in the distance, the elderly man walked slowly down
Pennsylvania Avenue
. He was dressed in a dusty gray suit. He carried a beat-up traveling valise on one side and held the hand of a girl on the other. The nine-year-old child wore a dress that matched the older man’s suit. Her dark hair was tied back from her pale face with a red ribbon. The polish on her black shoes was marred by a drying splash of mud from the playground where she’d been playing before being picked up a moment ago.
“Papa, did you find your friend?” she asked in Russian.
He squeezed her hand and answered in a tired voice. “Yes, I did, Sasha. But remember, English, my dear.”
She shuffled her feet a bit at the reprimand, then continued. “Was he happy to see you?”