The Machiavelli Covenant Read Online Free PDF Page B

has looked over Caroline's note to you and determined that the firm and myself could be open to major litigation by the Parsons family if we let you continue here without their approval and quite possibly the court's."
    "I don't understand."
    "You are to leave the premises right now."
    "Mr. Tyler," Marten pushed back, "that letter is notarized. Caroline gave it to me for the purpose of—"
    "I'm sorry, Mr. Marten."
    Marten stared at him for a long moment, then finally nodded and started for the door. Why the message came now, after they were already there and under way meant one of two things. Either the senior partner was more protective of the firm than Tyler was, or somebody else had learned about Caroline's note and wanted Marten's investigation stopped. Marten had known Katy, Caroline's sister, but that had been years before, when he was LAPD detective John Barron, and as far as he knew neither Caroline nor Mike had told Katy what had happened since. That meant she would have no idea who Nicholas Marten was, and to try and explain, especially under the eye of Richard Tyler's attorneys, and/or the court's if it came to that, could reveal his past and make his situation as precarious as it might have been had he been confronted by the police over Dr. Stephenson's death.
    Tyler opened the front door and Marten glanced around the house trying to remember it all. It was, he knew, probably the last time he would be in Caroline's home and in the presence of all she had left behind. Once again the reality of her death stabbed through him. It was awful and empty and hollow. They hadnever spent enough time together. And they never would again.
    "Mr. Marten." Tyler gestured toward the door, ushering him out. Tyler followed closely, then closed the door behind him and locked it and they left.

8

    • 2:05 P.M.

    Victor stood looking out the window of a rented corner office in the National Postal Museum just across from Union Station. From where he stood he could see taxis pulling into the station from Massachusetts Avenue to disperse or pick up passengers going to or coming from the Amtrak trains.
    "Victor," a calm voice filtered through his earpiece.
    "Yes, Richard," Victor said as calmly, speaking into the tiny microphone on the lapel of his suit jacket.
    "It's time."
    "I know."
    Victor looked like a middle-aged everyman. Forty-seven and divorced, he was balding and a little thick around the waist and wore an inexpensive gray suit and equally inexpensive black wing-tip shoes. The surgical gloves he wore were cream colored and available in any drugstore.
    He stared out the window a moment longer, then turned to the desk beside him. It was an everyday plain steel desk, its top bare, its drawers, like the bookcases and file cabinets across the room, empty. Only the wastebasket under it held anything, a round two-inch piece of glass hehad cut from the windowpane fifteen minutes earlier and the small cutting tool which he had used to do it.
    "Two minutes, Victor." Richard's voice was the same steady calm.
    "Acela Express number R2109. Left New York at eleven A.M., due in to Union Station at one forty-seven P.M. R2109 is seven minutes late," Victor said into the microphone and stepped around the desk to where a large semi-automatic rifle with a telescopic sight and sound suppressor sat on a tripod.
    "The train has arrived."
    "Thank you, Richard."
    "You remember what he looks like?"
    "Yes, Richard. I remember the photograph."
    "Ninety seconds."
    Victor picked up the rifle-mounted tripod and moved it to the window, adjusting it so that the tip of the gun barrel sat squarely in the center of the circle he had cut from the window glass.
    "One minute."
    Victor brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, then looked through the rifle's telescopic sight. Its crosshairs were trained on the main entry to Union Station, where a wave of just-arrived passengers was coming through in a rush. Victor moved the gun sight carefully over them. Up, down,