Midas Code Read Free Page B

might be used against military or civilian objectives. These kinds of military conferences were held virtually every week in the nation’s capital, but this was the only one his target was scheduled to address.
    The elevator opened, and Gaul got on with the majors. At the first stop, the door opened to a buzz of activity. It was just after 11:30, the morning sessions over, including his target’s keynote speech. The participants would be breaking for lunch. The majors got off, and two men in civilian attire entered. Gaul glanced sideways at their name tags, which said Aiden MacKenna and Miles Benson.
    Both of them seemed to be enhanced by technology out of a science-fiction movie. A black disk was attached to MacKenna’s skull with a wire connected to his ear, as if it were a hearing aid with a direct pipeline to his brain. MacKenna was walking, while Benson was driving a motorized wheelchair like nothing Gaul had ever seen. The chair was balanced on two wheels, apparently in defiance of the laws of physics, so that the eyes of the man in the chair were almost even with his own.
    Though Benson wore a suit, Gaul could see that the man had the upper torso of someone who spent time at the gym. He had the intense gaze and close-cropped hair of a former Army officer, so Gaul guessed that he’d been injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. MacKenna looked more like Gaul’s idea of a research analyst, with tortoiseshell glasses and a physique that suggested nothing more strenuous than typing in his daily routine.
    “Think he’ll take you up on your offer?” MacKenna said with an Irish brogue.
    “I don’t know,” Benson said. “Depends how good my sales pitch is.”
    “It was a good keynote.”
    “That’s exactly why I want him.”
    The elevator door opened at the mezzanine.
    “Where is the Capital Club?” Benson said as he drove out of the elevator.
    “To the left, I believe,” MacKenna said.
    “Okay, we should have a table reserved. We’ll save a seat between us for the general.”
    Gaul trailed them around the corner. MacKenna and Benson went through the restaurant’s glass doors, but Gaul didn’t follow. He stopped abruptly, as if he’d gone in the wrong direction, and turned back toward the mezzanine’s conference rooms.
    Attendees were streaming from the conference seminars to their lunch destinations or milling about in the hall to chat after the sessions. The dress was a fifty-fifty mix of military and civilian clothes. Gaul blended right in.
    Gaul wandered down the hall, pretending to study a conference program. He passed by the glass doors of the Capital Club but didn’t see his target. He found a spot near the elevators and had to remind himself not to lean against the wall so that he would stay in character as a ramrod-straight military officer.
    His cell phone buzzed. The text message was from Orr.

We’re under way here. You?
Gaul texted back, Everything’s in place .
Have you spotted him?
Not yet. But he’s here and scheduled to attend the lunch.
Good. We’ll know in 20 minutes. Be ready.
K.

    With nothing more to do but wait while keeping an eye on the elevators and stairs, Gaul went back to scanning the program. He smiled when he saw the title of the keynote address by his target, the former military leader of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The speech was called “The Dangers of Asymmetric Threat and Response: How to Combat Improvised Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Gaul thought the speaker would be surprised by how personal that danger would become.
    The elevator emptied three times before Gaul saw who he had come for. The newly retired major general looked a little grayer than in the photo he’d memorized, but the intense gaze and the wrought-iron jaw were still the same. All eyes followed the general as he strode toward the restaurant.
    Gaul took out his cell phone to text Orr with the confirmation that he now had Sherman Locke in his sights.

FOUR

    T yler liked the sense of duty,