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… her to a more secure wing…
… facilities here at St. Hedwig… inadequate…
… trained asset, could be of use to us…
… she doesn’t have long…
… one of Quentin Marr’s prodigies…
So they knew exactly who I was. I’m guessing I had Dr. Jonas Hoffman to thank for keeping them at bay while I fought for my life. But if, as it appeared, I was about to lose that battle, they wanted to wring every last drop of intelligence from me before tossing my corpse onto the pyre.
Sorry, gentlemen. I have my own mission to complete, and dying inside an interrogation room isn’t going to work for me.
Here’s another thing Quentin taught me: no matter the situation, you can bend the environment to suit your needs. Here’s what I could determine about my environment:
St. Hedwig’s was heavily guarded, not only by its usual security team, but by an unknown number of intelligence agents and their support staff. I needed to sidestep them somehow.
From what little I could see through the windows, I judged myself to be at least three or four stories above the street. I couldn’t see myself rappelling down the side of the building—not in my sorry condition.
The vents were way too small for my athletic frame—even if I were physically capable of shimmying through them (I wasn’t).
Impersonating hospital staff would be difficult, and there was no time to counterfeit identification badges or hack into the surveillance systems. I would be caught immediately.
Meanwhile, the minutes continued to tick by. I couldn’t waste more time plotting; I needed to start acting now, or I was never going to complete my final mission.
And then, all at once, it came to me.
CHAPTER 13
I WASNOTalone in Berlin.
I’ll admit that, when we first arrived, I’d been half-hoping not to get roped into having dinner with him. But now, I realized, the legendary Bill Devander was my only prospect.
Kevin had told me that he and Bill had been best friends since their freshman year at Duke. They’d met at student orientation and soon were inseparable, nursing each other through final exams, failed relationships, and epic hangovers. They became so like-minded that Bill even talked Kevin into changing his major to engineering (from history) so that they could go into business together someday. Which is exactly what happened. Funny how impulsive decisions made in your youth can dictate the course of your life.
But after fifteen years, Kevin needed a break. He’d decided to leave the company just before our whirlwind romance. There had been a few near-misses between us and Bill at various ports of call, but he and I had never managed to meet face-to-face. So up until that moment, Bill was myth and legend.
But now I prayed that the man behind the myth would turn out to be worthy of the praise Kevin had piled upon him. Bill Devander, according to said legend, was cunning, fierce, and a true business negotiations savant. I hoped this was the case. Because there was something I really needed Bill to sell.
I pressed the call button and asked the nurse in my shaky German if she could send in Dr. Hoffman right away. Her reply:The doctor is with other patients, is this an emergency?I wanted to scream at her:Yes, this is an emergency—I’m dying here!But that would get me nowhere, except an impromptu psych eval. Instead I asked to see him as soon as he was available.
My exhaustion was strong, and I was worried that I would doze off. The Arctic-level air conditioning wasn’t helping much, either—my brain was begging me to hibernate for the winter. But I stayed awake long enough to pounce on Dr. Jonas Hoffman the moment he stepped into my room.
“Doc, will you do me a favor?” I asked.
“That depends on the favor.”
“You’re seriously going to deny a dying woman her last wish?”
The doc was wary. “Oh, boy.”
“Relax, it’s nothing dangerous. Can you contact an American businessman named William Devander? His company is headquartered here in Berlin. So it’s not even a long-distance call.”
“Who is William Devander?”
“Family.”
A small lie that wouldn’t hold up in court, but I was hoping it would do the trick in this moment. And in a strange way, it was also true: If Kevin and Bill were basically brothers, that made Bill basically my brother-in-law, right?
