A CHAOS agent disguised as a member of the hotel waitstaff stopped by to freshen Lobo's teapot. He offered his thanks and handed her a twenty-dollar bill, which she stuffed into her apron next to her Sig Sauer P230. She nodded and headed back to the kitchen with a wide smile.
Lobo had been staying at the Mandarin on and off for almost two weeks. His wife was back in Arizona with their son, and he was surprising her with some renovations at their Virginia countryside estate. With construction crews traipsing about, staying at the hotel was easier. Besides, the room service was amazing, maids cleaned his suite every morning, and the hotel was close enough to the office that it cut nearly thirty minutes off his commute.
As he waited for his appointment to arrive, his dark eyes roved the lobby floor, looking for anything unusual. Outside of the hotel staff and his undercover agents, there wasn't much activity. A woman stood at the front desk with ten pieces of luggage, wondering if she could check in early. An older couple were on their way out for a morning walk, and a man with a pronounced bald spot and a hawkish nose was asking the concierge for directions to an office complex where he was already late for a client meeting.
The front door slid open, and a brisk wind blew through the lobby. A thin man wearing a long coat walked inside. He wore a driving cap and leather gloves, but instead of luggage he was carrying a briefcase. It was difficult to gauge his age, though he looked to be somewhere in his late twenties or maybe early thirties.
“Krone?” Lobo asked as the man approached. Even though he was born in San Antonio, Lobo still had an accent. His parents were from the city of Reynosa in Tamualipas, Mexico, and he didn't speak English until he was six years old.
Krone nodded. As a shapeshifter, the man could have taken just about any form he desired, and he did so regularly. It made him a unique asset in the global espionage and intelligence community, though at the moment he didn't look much like an assassinâor at least the kind of assassin you might find in a Hollywood movie. He was not heavily muscled, his head wasn't shaved, and there were no visible tattoos. In fact, he was impeccably groomed, from his short-cropped hair to his manicured nails. His suit was clearly custom tailored, and Lobo assumed that his jacket was as well. The scarf was no doubt cashmere, and his wing-tipped shoes had been recently shined.
“Please, take a seat.” Lobo nodded to an empty couch across from where he was sitting.
Krone set his briefcase down, took off his gloves, and removed his coat, which he folded neatly before he laid it across the arm of the couch. As he sat, his eyes fell to the newspaper and then to Lobo, who watched him intently.
“A pity what happened in Iowa, wouldn't you agree?” Lobo asked.
The man nodded. “Yes, it was. Hopefully we won't have another Chernobyl on our hands.”
“Let's hope not.” Lobo smiled, though the expression held little kindness. Krone no doubt knew that there was no reactor leak, but that wasn't importantâat least for the moment.
“Tea?” Lobo asked, but the man held up his hand.
“No, thank you.”
Lobo reached down and unfastened the latch on his satchel to pull out a manila folder, which he slid across the coffee table.
“My assignment, I presume?” Krone took the folder and opened it to find the photograph of an older man who looked to be in his sixties or seventies. He was handsome and tanned, probably from spending too much time on the golf course. His teeth were perfect, as was his silver hair, and there was a pin of the Stars and Stripes fastened to his lapel.
Krone stared at the image as though memorizing every detail, then he closed the folder and handed it back to Lobo. “It won't be easy, you know,” he said, as his eyes fell on a gardener pruning a bush just outside the window. It was another one of Lobo's agents, and it was clear that Krone had spotted him. “Eliminating Senator Bishop is going to draw attention. After all, your feud has been rather public. And it's going to look like sour grapesâ you know, with him leading the charge to cut your funding until you're replaced.”
“I understand the ramifications, but at this point we don't have a choice.” Lobo took a sip of his tea. “If the senator and his cronies had their way, I'd be rotting in a cell next to Aldrich Koenig right now. They think I've turned CHAOS into my own private army, and they're scaredânot that I can blame them. In their minds, my methods are . . . well, I suppose they would consider them aggressive. Brutal. Perhaps they are, but they're also effective. The odds of this planet surviving an attack from your people are already infinitesimalâwithout me, they're nonexistent.”
“So they've left you with no choice, is that it?”
Lobo regarded the assassin, sensing that he was being mocked. “You're going to make the senator's demise look like an accident. Or better yet, like a natural death.” Lobo lowered his voice. “The man turned seventy years old last month, and he's already had one open-heart surgery. I'm sure you'll find a creative solution to ensure the least amount of scrutiny.”
“Perhaps I'll have that cup of tea after all.” Krone reached for the pot of steaming water and poured some into a cup before adding a teabag and a bit of cream. “You know, it's rather odd,” he said, voice calm, face devoid of emotion. “I mean, here we've worked together for, what is it now . . . nearly a decade? Yet we've never had the pleasure of meeting before today. If you don't mind my asking, why now?”
Lobo sat at the edge of the couch, leaning forward. His forearms rested on his knees and his fingers were interlocked as he looked directly at Krone. “I need to know that I can trust you,” he said. “And the only way to know if you can trust a man is to look him in the eyes.”
“I see,” Krone said, unflinching under the scrutiny. “Have I given you a reason to question my loyalty?”
“I've never been the trusting sort,” Lobo said. “It's not terribly prudent in our line of work, as I'm sure you would agree.”
Krone bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of the statement.
“I'll be frank,” Lobo said. “There is an entire planet filled with monsters like you, and they're all chomping at the bit to turn Earth into their new home. It's my job to make sure that doesn't happen, and that alone is enough for me to doubt your loyalties.”
“So I'm a monster, am I?” Krone asked, looking relaxed as he sipped his tea. Lobo started to clarify his point, but Krone raised his hand to cut him off. “I understand what you're saying, and it's a perfectly fair point.”
“So why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn't.”
Lobo narrowed his eyes.
“Look, I could give you a litany of reasons why I won't betray our pact,” Krone said. “I could start with the fact that I was born here on Earth and have very little love for my home world. I could tell you that you've paid me handsomely over the years, affording me a lifestyle I might never have known. But we both know none of that matters.”
He set his cup back on the saucer. “There are other important people besides Senator Bishop who would like to see you replaced. Who's to say I won't align myself with them should your downfall become imminent? Or if they simply offer more money?”
“And your response?”
“Here's the thing,” Krone said after a lengthy pause. “You need me, and I always deliver. Trust has nothing to do with it. Besides, my record stands for itself. Once I accept a contract, I don't break it.”
Lobo sat with jaw clenched and brows furrowed. With a single word, his agents could eliminate Krone if it came to that, but the assassin was right. Trust was impossible. Even foolish. “Then I take it you'll accept the job under our current terms?”
“I'm afraid not,” Krone said. “I'll need double the usual number, half wired to my account within the hour and the other half payable once the job is complete.”
“Then it needs to happen tonight,” Lobo said. “Senator Bishop is set to speak at a fund-raiser for a congressional candidate in Tucson. Your flight leaves in an hour.”
L
obo arranged for a private jet to fly Krone from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to Tucson, where a driver took him to the Ventana Canyon Resort. Though it was late October, the sun was shining in the vast blue sky. It was perfect weather for golf, and Senator Bishop was about to tee off on the third hole of the Mountain Course. He was there with Jeff Wilson, the Republican nominee for the 8th Congressional District, along with a Secret Service agent and two influential donors who had organized the thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraiser for Wilson's campaign.
The Republicans hoped to regain control of the United States Congress, and this was one of the races they were banking on to get their majority. Polls showed that Wilson trailed the Democratic incumbent, Alicia Alvarez, by six points. The hope was that an endorsement from Senator Bishopânot to mention the contributions from that eveningâwould be enough to push Wilson past Alvarez.
Krone tipped the driver handsomely and walked into the lobby, which was filled with middle-aged men in golf shirts and khaki pants, as well as beautiful women wearing designer clothes and expensive jewelry. It was no doubt a gathering of Tucson's eliteâdoctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, as well as a television anchor whom Krone recognized from one of the twenty-four-hour cable news stations.
“So much for the impartiality of the press,” he said under his breath.
Krone thought about posing as one of the housekeepers, or even as a waiter delivering room service, but with the Secret Service agents hovering around the senator's room, there were too many eyes. Better, he thought, to wait for the dinner, where things could be more discreet.
He spent the rest of the afternoon at the bar, where he watched television and enjoyed a grilled portabella mushroom sandwich with avocados and sprouts. The news was focused on the reactor leak in Iowa. All across the Midwest, churches, homeless shelters, and even a chain of health clubs had opened their doors to take in displaced families.
As the afternoon lingered, the bar started to empty. People went back to their rooms to get ready for dinner, leaving Krone alone with the bartender. He looked down at his watch. The wait-staff was set to meet in the Grand Ballroom in ten minutes, so he finished off his bottle of sparkling water and paid for his tab in cash.
As Krone walked across the grounds back toward the main building, he pulled out his phone and opened an image of the employee he was going to impersonate. Israel Sandoval was a twenty-three-year-old college graduate who had recently been accepted to the University of Arizona medical school. He was handsome, like a Latin pop star, but more important he had just moved to town. That meant he hadn't been on the job long enough for anyone to grow accustomed to the nuances of his inflection or body movement.
That afternoon the real Israel received a call from his supervisor. According to the Secret Service, employees who hadn't been at the resort for at least three months weren't allowed to work the event. But the person on the other end of the call wasn't his supervisor at all. It was Krone.
Krone walked through a service door and into a winding labyrinth of hallways. His skin started to bubble, and for a moment it looked like it was melting. Bone cracked and cartilage shifted, his blue eyes faded to brown, and his hair grew longer. In the blink of an eye, Krone became a living replica of Israel Sandoval. And short of a blood test, no one other than his mother would know the difference.
He removed his watch, cuff links, jacket, and tie, then placed them all in his briefcase, which he hid behind a bin of white tablecloths. Then he rolled up his sleeves and walked into the employee locker room.
A heavyset man in his early twenties greeted him as though they knew each other. He had a mass of red hair and he was trying to fasten a cummerbund around the girth of his stomach. He wasn't having much luck. Krone forced a smile as he nodded and waved. It was best to avoid talking whenever possible. Mimicking other voices had always been the most difficult part of the job, and even though he had listened to tapes of Israel talking during his flight, Krone wasn't sure he could pull it off on such short notice.
He walked over to the rack of uniforms hanging across the back wall and found the one with Israel's name pinned to the jacket. He changed into a tuxedo with a black bow tie and matching cummerbund and listened to the banquet manager, who was flanked by two Secret Service agents.
“Can you believe this?”
Krone turned to see the man with the red hair standing next to him, smiling.
“I mean, Senator Bishop is the first presidential candidate I ever voted for. Do you think they'll fire me if I try and get a picture with him?”
I
t didn't take long for the tables in the dining hall to fill up. Krone was assigned to a section in the back of the room that included a table for local media, but somehow the guy with the red hair, whose name was Harry, was up front serving Senator Bishop's table.
Once everyone was seated, salads were served and the program began. The emcee for the evening welcomed the guests and thanked them for their generous contributions before saying a few words about Jeff Wilson.