Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [126]
The only danger, and it was a slight one, would be if someone accosted or challenged him in the hospital before he had time to act. But that didn’t seem likely. It was an expensive private hospital, big enough that no one had looked twice at him when he walked in and flashed his credentials. He had gone straight to D’Agosta’s room and found him drugged up with painkillers, sound asleep after the operation. They hadn’t posted a guard, evidently because they felt they’d disguised his identity well enough. And he had to admit they’d done a brilliant job at that, all the paperwork in order, everyone in the hospital thinking he was Tony Spada from Flushing, Queens…
Except that he was the only patient in the entire region needing a forty-thousand-dollar porcine aortic valve xenograft.
He’d injected the Pavulon high up in the IV drip. By the time the code came through, he was in another part of the hospital. No one questioned him or even looked askance at his presence. Being a doctor himself, he knew exactly how to look, how to behave, what to say.
He checked his watch. Then he strolled over to his car and got in. The shotgun gleamed faintly from the floor of the passenger seat. He’d stay here, in the darkness, for a little while. Then he’d hide the shotgun under his coat, exit the vehicle, get into position between the lights… and wait for the birds to fly in.
* * *
Hayward could see the hospital at the end of the long, straight access drive, a three-story building glowing in the night, set amid a broad rising lawn, its many windows reflecting on the waters of a nearby pond. She accelerated, the road dipping down to cross a stream, then rising up again. As she approached the entrance she braked hard, making an effort to get her excessive speed under control, came into the final curve before the parking lot, the tires squealing softly on the dew-laden asphalt.
She came to a short, screeching halt in the closest parking space, threw open the door, and jumped out. She trotted across the lot and entered the covered walkway to the front doors. Immediately she saw a doctor standing to one side of the walkway, between the pools of light, holding a clipboard. A surgical mask was still in position on his face—he must have just come from the OR.
“Captain Hayward?” the doctor asked.
She veered toward him, alarmed at the thought he was waiting for her. “Yes, how is he?”
“He’s going to be just fine,” came the slightly muffled response. The doctor let the clipboard drop casually in one hand while he reached under his white coat with the other.
“Thank God—” she began, and then she saw the shotgun.
59
New York City
DR. JOHN FELDER MOUNTED THE BROAD STONE steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library. Behind him, the evening traffic on Fifth Avenue was a staccato chorus of horns and grinding diesels. He paused a moment between the large stone lions, Patience and Fortitude, to check his watch and rearrange the thin manila folder that was tucked beneath one arm. Then he made his way to the brass doors at the top of the stairs.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the guard standing before them. “The library is closed for the day.”
Felder took out his city credentials and showed them to the man.
“Very good, sir,” said the guard, stepping deferentially away from the doors.
“I put in a request for some research materials,” Felder said. “I was told they were ready for examination.”
“You can inquire in the General Research Division,” the guard replied. “Room Three Fifteen.”
“Thank you.”
His shoes rang out against the floor as he walked through the vast and echoing entrance hall. It was almost eight in the evening and the cavernous space was deserted save for a second guard at a receiving station, who again examined his credentials and pointed the way up the sweeping staircase. Felder mounted the marble stairs slowly and thoughtfully. Arriving at the third floor, he walked down the corridor to the entrance of Room 315.
Room 315