“Do you think Angel is here now?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” Mike said. And that was the most frightening thing of all. He saw the expression on her face. “Look, if you want to leave—”
“No. You said I’m the bait. Without the bait, he won’t spring the trap.”
He nodded and squeezed her arm. “Right.”
Colonel McKinney was approaching. “We’ve done a thorough search, Mike. We haven’t been able to find a thing. I don’t like it.”
“Let’s take another look around.” Mike signaled to four armed marines standing by, and they moved up next to Mary. “Be right back,” Mike said.
Mary swallowed nervously. “Please.”
Mike and Colonel McKinney, accompanied by two guards with sniffer dogs, searched every upstairs room in the embassy residence.
“Nothing,” Mike said.
They talked to a marine guarding the back staircase.”
“Did any strangers come up here?”
“No, sir. It’s your average quiet Sunday night.”
Not quite, Mike thought bitterly.
They moved toward a guest room down the hall. An armed marine was standing guard. He saluted the colonel and stood aside to let them enter. Corina Socoli was lying on the bed, reading a book in Romanian. Young and beautiful and talented, the Romanian national treasure. Could she be a plant? Could she be helping Angel?
Corina looked up. “I am sorry I am going to miss the party. It sounds like such fun. Ah, well. I will stay here and finish my book.”
“Do that,” Mike said. He closed the door. “Let’s try the downstairs again.”
They returned to the kitchen.
“What about poison?” Colonel McKinney asked. “Would he use that?”
Mike shook his head. “Not photogenic enough. Angel’s going for the big bang.”
“Mike, there’s no way anyone could get explosives into this place. Our experts have gone over it, the dogs have gone over it—the place is clean. He can’t hit us through the roof, because we have firepower up there. It’s impossible.”
“There’s one way.”
Colonel McKinney looked at Mike. “How?”
“I don’t know. But Angel does.”
They searched the library and the offices again. Nothing. They passed the storage room where the corporal and his men were shoving out the last of the balloons, watching them as they floated to the ceiling.
“Pretty, huh?” the corporal said.
“Yeah.”
They started to walk on. Mike stopped. “Corporal, where did these balloons come from?”
“From the U.S. air base in Frankfurt, sir.”
Mike indicated the helium cylinders. “And these?”
“Same place. They were escorted to our warehouse per your instructions, sir.”
Mike said to Colonel McKinney, “Let’s start upstairs again.”
They turned to leave. The corporal said, “Oh, Colonel, the person you sent forgot to leave a time slip. Is that going to be handled by military payroll or civilian?”
Colonel McKinney frowned. “What person?”
“The one you authorized to fill the balloons.”
Colonel McKinney shook his head. “I never—who said I authorized it?”
“Eddie Maltz. He said you—”
Colonel McKinney said, “Eddie Maltz? I ordered him to Frankfurt.”
Mike turned to the corporal, his voice urgent. “What did this man look like?”
“Oh, it wasn’t a man, sir. It was a woman. To tell you the truth, I thought she looked weird. Fat and ugly. She had a funny accent. She was pockmarked and had kind of a puffy face.”
Mike said to McKinney, excitedly, “That sounds like Harry Lantz’s description of Neusa Muñez that he gave the Committee.”
The revelation hit them both at the same time.
Mike said slowly, “Oh, my God! Neusa Muñez is Angel!” He pointed to the cylinders. “She filled the balloons from these?”
“Yes, sir. It was funny. I lit a cigarette, and she screamed at me to put it out. I said, ‘Helium doesn’t burn,’ and she said—”
Mike looked up. “The balloons! The explosives are in the balloons!”
The two men stared at the high ceiling, covered with the spectacular red, white, and blue balloons.
“She’s using some kind of a remote-control device to explode them.” He turned to the corporal. “How long ago did she leave?”
“I guess about an hour ago.”
Under the table, unseen, the timing device had six minutes left on the dial.
Mike was frantically scanning the huge room. “She could have put it anywhere. It could go off at any second. We can never find it in time.”