Текст книги "The Bourne Deception (Обман Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Now as she took the Town Car through a series of evasive maneuvers she was doubly glad she‘d made him stay away, even though this plan would have been far easier to execute with someone else driving the car. They could have left her off and driven on, leading the Town Car away while she doubled back to her house to fetch her Black River laptop. But nothing came easy in life, at least not in her life and not in anyone else‘s she knew, so why bother complaining about it. Take the hand you‘re dealt and then finesse it, that was what she‘d always done, that was what she‘d do now.

Night closed in as she drove down streets that became narrower and narrower as they approached the canal. Finally, she wheeled around a corner, made another left, braked to a halt, and, with the headlights still blazing, got out of the car in time for the driver of the Lincoln, its headlights off, to catch a glimpse of her as it nosed around the corner.

It came to an abrupt halt just as she ducked into a doorway, and two men in dark suits got out and jogged down the cobbles toward the spot where she‘d disappeared. They discovered a metal door deep in the shadows, and drew their snub-nosed sidearms. The one with a shaved head pressed his back against the building‘s brickwork while the other one tried the knob. Shaking his head, he raised his right leg and kicked the door open so hard it slammed back against the inside wall. Weapon at the ready, he stepped aggressively into the stygian blackness. As he did so, the door swung hard into his face, breaking his nose. His jaws clamped shut, his teeth snapping off the tip of his tongue.

His howl of pain was short-lived. Moira drove a knee into his groin and, as he reflexively bent double, brought her joined fists down onto the back of his neck.

The bald man heard a muffled metallic clang, and without further hesitation, he stepped into the open doorway and fired three shots point-blank into the blackness to center, right, and left. He heard nothing, saw nothing, and, in a tense crouch, made his run into the interior.

Moira slammed the spade-shaped end of the shovel she‘d stumbled over into the back of the bald man‘s head. He pitched headfirst onto the bare concrete floor. As she picked her way through the darkness and out into the gathering night, she heard the sound of police sirens. Doubtless, someone had heard the shots and called 911.

She walked back to her car at a brisk pace, an absorbed look on her face, as if she were late for a dinner rendezvous. It was crucial now to appear normal, to blend into the heavy traffic on M Street, until she lost herself amid the cobbled streets, shining in the light of old-fashioned street lamps.

Another ten minutes brought her back to her block, which she circled warily, on the lookout for another car with the lights off, someone in it, a sudden movement inside so he wouldn‘t be seen. But all appeared normal and serene.

She parked and took another look around before mounting the steps to her front door. Turning the lock, she opened the door and, drawing her Lady Hawk from its thigh holster, stepped inside. Closing the door softly behind her, she double-locked it, then stood for some time with her back against it, listening to the house breathe. One by one she identified the homey sounds of the hot-water circulator, the refrigerator condenser, the heating fan. Then she sniffed the air to see if there was the trace of an odor that didn‘t belong to her or her things.

Satisfied at last, she flipped the switch and the entryway and hallway were flooded with a warm, yellowish light. She let out the long breath she‘d been unconsciously holding in. Moving silently through the house, she checked every room, every closet on the ground floor; she made sure the door to the basement was securely locked. Then she ascended the stairs. Halfway up, she heard a noise and froze in midstep, her heart hammering in her breast. It came again, and she identified it as a branch scratching at the rear wall, where a narrow alley ran behind the row of town houses.

Resuming her climb, she took the staircase step by step, counting down from the top to make certain she bypassed the one tread that creaked. At the top of the stairs, something happened. The hot-water circulator cycled off, and the resulting silence seemed to her eerie and ominous. Then, like an old friend, it returned, reassuring her.

As she had on the ground floor, she moved from room to room, turning on lights, checking behind furniture, even, she thought, idiotically, under her bed. There was nothing and no one. The window to the left of her bed was unlatched, and she slid the semicircular tab home.

Her Black River laptop was on the back shelf of her closet, under a line of shoe boxes. Picking her way across the room, she turned the doorknob, pulled the door open, and stepped in, leading with her weapon. She swept one hand across her hanging clothes, dresses, suits, skirts, and jackets all familiar to her, but which had now taken on a sinister aspect as curtains behind which someone could hide.

No one jumped out at her, causing her to expel a small laugh of relief.

Her gaze moved upward to the line of shoe boxes on the back shelf above her hanging clothes, and there was the laptop just as she‘d left it. She was reaching up to grab it when she heard the sharp crackle of breaking window glass and the dull thud as someone landed on the carpet. She whirled, stepped forward, only to have the closet door slam shut in her face.

Her hand went to the doorknob and pushed, but something was keeping the door shut, even when she put her shoulder to it. Stepping back, she fired off four shots at the knob. The sharp scent of cordite tickled her nose, and her ears rang with noise. She pushed the door again. It was still firmly shut, but now she had other things to think about. The light filtering in from the tiny gap between door and frame was systematically vanishing. Someone was taping up the gap.

And then, down at floor level, the slightly wider gap began to go dark, except for a space that was soon filled by the open end of the crevice attachment of her vacuum cleaner. A moment later a portable generator coughed to life and, with a mounting horror, Moira sensed the oxygen in the closet being sucked out. Carbon monoxide was being pumped in through her own vacuum cleaner attachment.

When Peter Marks found the Metro police report on Moira Trevor he was dumbfounded. He‘d just returned from the White House, where he‘d had a ten-minute evening interview with the president regarding the vacancy at the top of CI. He knew he wasn‘t the only candidate, but no one else at CI was talking. Still, he assumed the other six heads of the CI directorates were in line for similar interviews, if they hadn‘t already answered the president‘s summons. Of them all, he figured Dick Symes, the chief of the Intelligence Directorate, who was the interim DCI, would get the post. Symes was older, with more experience than Peter himself, who had only recently risen to the hallowed level of chief of operations under Veronica Hart‘s tragically short tenure as DCI. She hadn‘t even had time to vet candidates for deputy director, and now she never would. On the other hand, unlike Symes, he‘d been handpicked and trained by the Old Man himself, and he knew the reverence in which the president held the longtime DCI.

Peter was not certain he wanted the Big Chair, anyway, simply because it would take him another giant step away from the field, which was his first love. “No matter how high you climb,”the Old Man had told him, “you never outgrow your first love. You simply learn to live without it.”

On the other hand, maybe having doubts about occupying the Big Chair was a way of insulating himself from disappointment in the event he wasn‘t chosen to succeed Hart. Doubtless that was why he buried himself in the Moira Trevor files the moment he sat down at his desk. The Metro police report, almost perfunctorily brief, wasn‘t part of the stack of printouts and electronic data his staff had amassed for him; he‘d had to go looking for it himself.

Not that he was looking for a police report per se, but having exhausted the so-called leads overflowing his in-box, he had decided to go on a fishing expedition, just as he‘d learned to do when he was a rookie field agent.

“Never rely on intel other people feed you unless you absolutely can’t get it yourself,”the Old Man had lectured when he‘d first brought Marks into the fold. “And never, ever rely on other people’s intel when your life is on the line.”Excellent advice, which Marks had never forgotten. And now, behold, the Metro police report from yesterday describing a two-car crash in which a man named Jay Weston, a former employee of Hobart Industries and current employee of Heartland Risk Management, was killed and Moira Trevor, founder and president of Heartland, was injured. Two oddities: First, Weston hadn‘t died from injuries sustained in the crash; he‘d been shot to death. Second, Ms. Trevor had claimed—‖loudly and repeatedly,‖ as the first-on-the-scene officer wrote—that a uniformed motorcycle cop had fired the shot through the driver‘s-side front window into Mr. Weston‘s head. Basic forensic evidence at the scene confirmed Ms. Trevor‘s story, at least as far as the shot was concerned. As for the motorcycle cop, the report went on to say that no such department individual was even in the vicinity anywhere near the time of the shooting.

When Marks came to the end of the report, there was an even more baffling oddity. There had been no follow-up, no reinterview of Ms. Trevor, no investigation into Mr. Weston‘s recent whereabouts that day or into his background in general. Apart from this brief report, it was as if the incident had never occurred.

Marks picked up the phone and called the appropriate Metro precinct, but when he asked for the author of the report, he was told the officer, as well as his partner, had been ―reassigned.‖ No further information was available.

He asked for Lieutenant McConnell, their immediate superior, but McConnell refused to tell Marks where they had gone or what had happened to them, either, and no amount of threats could open him up.

―My orders come straight from the commissioner himself,‖ Mc-Connell said with no rancor, only weariness in his voice. ―That‘s all I know, pal. I only work here. You got a beef, it‘s with him.‖

For a minute everything went black, then powerful hands gripped Arkadin beneath the armpits and hauled him roughly off the Muscovite. When he blindly rushed back toward his antagonist he received a kick to his rib cage that caused him to fall short, to wind up on his back gasping for air.

―What in the name of Saint Stephen is going on here?‖ a voice roared.

He looked up to see another man, feet spread, hands closed into fists, looming over him. He wasn‘t Lev Antonin so Arkadin figured he must be Mischa Tarkanian.

―My name is Leonid Danilovich Arkadin,‖ he said, through gasps. ―Your poorly trained animal, Oserov, just put a knife into that boy‘s heart.‖ As Tarkanian glanced over at the small crumpled form on the stairs, Arkadin continued: ―That‘s Lev Antonin‘s son, in case you have any interest.‖

Tarkanian jerked as if struck by an electrical current. ―Oserov, for the love of—‖

―If you don‘t finish off what I started,‖ Arkadin said, ―I will.‖

―The fuck you will,‖ Tarkanian roared. ―You‘ll lie there and keep still until I tell you otherwise.‖ Then he knelt beside Oserov. There was a lot of blood, and his right collarbone was sticking through the skin. ―You‘re lucky he‘s still breathing.‖

Arkadin wondered whether Tarkanian was talking to him or to himself. He wondered if it mattered, then realized that it certainly didn‘t to him.

―Oserov, Oserov.‖ Tarkanian was shaking his compatriot. ―Shit, his face looks like a piece of ground meat.‖

―I do good work,‖ Arkadin said.

While Tarkanian shot him a violent look, he got to his feet.

Tarkanian raised a warning forefinger. ―I told you—‖

―Relax, I‘m not going near him,‖ Arkadin said with a wince of pain, and went over to Joškar Antonin. Kneeling down, he untied her, then unwound her gag.

At once, her wail of grief and despair filled the room. She rushed past the men, mounting the stairs to take her dead son in her arms. And there she sat, sobbing uncontrollably, rocking her child against her breast, insensible to anything else.

The other three children were crouched at Arkadin‘s feet, weeping and sniffling. He turned his attention from mother and son to free the three girls, who immediately rushed to their mother‘s side, brushing their hands over their brother‘s hair, briefly holding his legs before resting their heads against their mother‘s thigh.

―How did this happen?‖ Tarkanian said.

Again, Arkadin couldn‘t tell whether he was talking to him or to himself.

Nevertheless, he spoke up, recounting everything that had happened as he‘d seen and experienced it. He was quite detailed, he left nothing out, and he was absolutely truthful, intuiting that this was the best—indeed, the only—

course to take.

When he was finished, Tarkanian sat back on his hamstrings. ―Dammit to hell, I knew Oserov was going to present a problem. My error was in underestimating its size and scope.‖ He looked around at the homey surroundings, made bleak now by the bloodstains, the female keening, and the stench of death. ―Essentially, we‘re screwed. Once Lev Antonin gets wind of what Oserov did to his family, our safe passage out of this shithole of a town will evaporate faster than you can say Not with My Wife, You Don’t!”

Arkadin said, ―Tony Curtis, Virna Lisi, George C. Scott.‖

Tarkanian raised his eyebrows. ―Norman Panama.‖

―I love American comedies,‖ Arkadin said.

―So do I.‖

As if acknowledging the inappropriateness of this conversation, Tarkanian hastily added, ―All we‘ll have are those memories, and then not even those once Lev Antonin and his crew get ahold of us.‖

Arkadin‘s mind was in full gear. He was in the middle of yet another life-or-death crisis, but unlike the two Muscovites he was in his own territory. He could abandon them, of course, and go on the run. But then what, back to his hole in the basement? He shuddered, knowing he couldn‘t spend another minute in enforced confinement. No, like it or not, his fate was now bound to these people because they were his ticket out of here, because they would take him all the way to Moscow.

―On the way in I saw Joškar‘s car in the driveway,‖ he said. ―Is it still here?‖

Tarkanian nodded.

―I‘ll gather her and the children. Find her purse, the car keys ought to be in there.‖

―You do realize that I‘m not leaving without Oserov.‖

Arkadin shrugged. ―That piece of shit is strictly your business. You want him along, you can carry him, because if I get near him again I swear to you I‘ll finish the job I started.‖

―That won‘t sit well with Maslov, I promise you.‖

Arkadin had just about enough of these interlopers. He got up into Tarkanian‘s face. ―Fuck Maslov, your worry should be Lev Antonin.‖

―That cretin!‖

―Here‘s a news flash: A cretin can kill you just as efficiently as a genius—and usually a whole lot quicker, because a cretin has no conscience.‖

He pointed to Oserov. ―Just like your boy over there. An attack dog has more sense than he does.‖

Tarkanian gave Arkadin a penetrating look, as if he were seeing him for the first time. ―You intrigue me, Leonid Danilovich.‖

―Only my friends call me Leonid Danilovich,‖ Arkadin said.

―So far as I can see, you don‘t have any friends.‖ Tarkanian went searching for Joškar‘s handbag and found it on the floor just past the end of the sofa where it had apparently been knocked off the end table. Opening it, he dug around, a moment later lifting out the car keys in triumph. ―Maybe, if we all get lucky, that will change.‖

Asphyxiated in her own home was not a fate Moira had ever contemplated. Her eyes were watering and she was slightly dizzy from holding her breath for so long. Holstering her Lady Hawk, she hauled out a low stepstool leaning against the rear wall, shook it open in the center of the small space, and climbed up until she could reach the ceiling—which, like the rest of the closet, was lined with cedar. A buzzing in her ears had already begun, product of a lack of oxygen, as she felt for the outline of the square in the cedar planking that was invisible from below. Tracing a line to the center of the square, she used both fists to pop the hatch she‘d built in the closet.

Pulling out the laptop, she hauled herself up into the crawl space in which she stored her bulky winter items in the summer months. Crawling across the bare plywood floor, she jammed the hatch back into place, collapsed onto her side, and gasped air into her burning lungs.

She gave a little moan, knowing she couldn‘t afford to stay there long: The carbon monoxide would seep into the crawl space soon enough. The small storage area gave out onto a jungle gym of beams and raised roof joists, across which she now crawled with great care.

Because she had built the storage space herself, she was familiar with every square inch of it. On either end, as the building code specified, there were venting triangles. She didn‘t know whether they‘d be large enough for her to squeeze through, but she knew she had to try.

The distance wasn‘t great, but, sweating, her heart pounding, it seemed to take her forever to traverse the treacherous expanse of crisscrossing beams to the far end, where a glimmer of streetlight announced the venting triangle. That light drew her like a moth, growing in size as she approached it. Still, when she arrived her heart sank, because it didn‘t look nearly large enough to accommodate her body. She hooked her nails around the nether side of the metal band that described the triangle, and pulled it off. A freshet of cool night air brushed her face like a lover‘s caress, and for a moment she lay still, simply breathing.

Setting the triangle carefully aside, she slid headfirst through the opening. Now she could see that she was at the rear of her house, overhanging the narrow alley where she and her neighbors put out their garbage for the sanitation truck that weekly rumbled down the cobbles, disturbing the residents‘ sleep every Thursday at daybreak.

The glow of her neighbors‘ security lights streamed harshly into the interior, illuminating the laptop as she placed it on the lip of the opening.

It was then that she saw to her consternation and alarm that the laptop‘s hot-swappable hard drive was missing. She checked and checked again as one will when a wallet is lost, because the enormity of the loss is such a shock.

Then with a grunt of disgust, she shoved the laptop away. All this effort, putting herself in harm‘s way—and for nothing!

With her hands against the brickwork of the facade, she began to lever herself out, rounding her shoulders to get them through the triangle at its widest point, no mean trick—she had barely enough room to squeeze them through. Then she grasped one of the decorative stone outcroppings to increase her leverage. Now she had to contend with her hips, which didn‘t look as if they‘d make it.

She was struggling with this problem of solid geometry when she heard a sound directly below her. Twisting her neck painfully, she saw that her rear door was opening. Someone was coming out—a figure in black. Though he looked severely foreshortened because of her awkward view from above, she could see him clearly enough. He stood motionless on the back step, peering around.

Now she turned back to her task, desperate to free herself. Resettling her grip on the ornamental stone lip, she redoubled her effort to haul her lower body through the opening. Unfortunately, this resulted in her hips getting stuck in the triangle. Belatedly, she saw how she should have twisted to have the best shot at getting through. She tried to push herself back, to free herself, but she was stuck. Down below, the man in black had lit a cigarette. By the way he was glancing up and down the alley, she figured that he must be waiting for the Lincoln Town Car to pick him up. As she continued to struggle, she saw him pull out his cell phone. Any moment now he would punch in his confederates‘ number and, finding they didn‘t answer, would take off on his own. With him would go her hard drive and any chance of hacking into Noah‘s Wi-Fi network.

The man in black put his phone to his ear, and she willed herself to relax, to exhale, so her body would soften. There! She was free! Now she twisted her hips and hauled herself through. Hanging precariously from the stone ornamentation, she heard the man‘s soft voice spiral up to her, along with the smoke from his cigarette. Knowing she was out of time, she let go and, plunging downward, landed on him.

As he fell to the cobbles, his cell phone flew through the air, shattering some feet away. His head hit the street with a sickening smack.

Jolted, aching, and slightly disoriented, she crawled over the corpse of the man in black, and in so doing found his cell phone. She stared at it curiously for a moment. If she was holding his cell, what had flown through the air?

Staggering to her feet, she zigzagged her way to where the splintered plastic and metal shards lay shining on the cobbles. On one of the small rectangular pieces was a thick red lightning bolt from upper right corner to lower left, symbol of all of Black River‘s specially designed hardware.

―Oh, God,‖ she moaned. ―No.‖

Sinking to her knees, she scooped up the disks, remnants of her hard drive, which was split open, unusable, unsalvageable, utterly ruined.

24

WHILE BOURNE AND TRACY waited in the first-class lounge in Madrid for their Egyptair flight, Bourne excused himself and walked toward the men‘s room. He passed the shiny ranked shelves displaying newspapers from all over the world, in a great many languages, but all with more or less the same screaming headlines: ―Negotiations Break Down,‖ or ―On The Brink,‖ or ―Last Diplomatic Hope Gone,‖ but which invariably included the words ―Iran‖ and

–War.‖

When he was out of Tracy‘s sight, he extracted his cell and called Boris‘s number. There was no answer, no ring even, which meant that Boris had his phone off. He thought a moment and, walking to the windows so that he was away from everyone, he scrolled through his phone‘s address book until he brought up another Moscow number.

―What the hell?‖ a crusty old voice shouted down the line.

―Ivan, Ivan Volkin,‖ he said. ―It‘s Jason Bourne, Boris‘s friend.‖

―I know whose friend you are. I‘m old, not senile. Besides, you caused enough mayhem when you were here three months ago to remain indelible in the mind of an Alzheimer‘s patient.‖

―I‘m trying to get in touch with Boris.‖

―What else is new?‖ Volkin said tartly. ―Why don‘t you try calling him instead of bothering me?‖

―I wouldn‘t be calling you if he answered his cell.‖

―Ah, then you don‘t have his satellite phone number.‖

Which meant, Bourne thought, that Boris had returned to Africa. ―You mean he‘s back in Timbuktu?‖

―Timbuktu?‖ Volkin said. ―Where did you get the idea Boris had been in Timbuktu?‖

―From Boris himself.‖

―Hah! No, no, no. Not Timbuktu. Khartoum.‖

Bourne leaned against the glass chilled by the fierce air-conditioning of the lounge. He felt as if the ground were sliding out from under his feet.

Why did all strands of the spider‘s web lead to Khartoum?

―What‘s Boris doing in Khartoum?‖

―Something he doesn‘t want you, his good friend, to know about.‖ Volkin laughed throatily. ―Obviously.‖

Bourne took a stab in the dark. ―But you know.‖

―Me? My dear Bourne, I‘m retired from the world of the grupperovka. Who‘s got the bad memory, me or you?‖

There was something very wrong with this conversation, and a moment later Bourne knew what it was. Surely, with all his contacts, Volkin must have heard of Bourne‘s ―death.‖ And yet there was no surprise in his voice when Bourne announced himself, no awkward questions being asked. Which meant he already knew Bourne had survived the attack on Bali. That meant Boris knew.

He tried another tack. ―Do you know a man named Bogdan Machin?‖

―The Torturer. Of course I know him.‖

―He‘s dead,‖ Bourne said.

―No one‘s going to mourn, believe me.‖

―He was sent to Seville,‖ Bourne said, ―to kill me.‖

―Aren‘t you already dead?‖ Volkin said with an ironic twist.

―You knew I wasn‘t.‖

―Me, I still have a couple of brain cells left, which is more than could be said for the late, unlamented Bogdan Machin.‖

―Who told you? Boris?‖

―Boris? My dear fellow, Boris went on a weeklong drunk when he heard—

through me, I might add—that you‘d been killed. Now, of course, he knows better.‖

―So Boris wasn‘t the one who shot me.‖

The explosion of laughter obliged Bourne to hold the phone away from his ear for a moment.

When Volkin had calmed down, he said, ―What an absurd notion! You Americans! Where on earth did you come up with that bit of insanity?‖

―Someone in Seville showed me surveillance photos of Boris in a Munich beer hall with the American secretary of defense.‖

―Really? On what planet would that happen?‖

―I know it sounds crazy but I heard a tape of them talking. Secretary Halliday ordered my death and Boris agreed to it.‖

―Boris is your friend.‖ Volkin‘s tone had turned deadly serious. ―He‘s Russian; friendships don‘t come easily to us, and they‘re never betrayed.‖

―It was a barter,‖ Bourne persisted. ―Boris said he wanted Abdulla Khoury, the head of the Eastern Brotherhood, killed in return.‖

―It‘s true Abdulla Khoury was killed recently, but I assure you that Boris would have no reason to want him dead.‖

―Are you certain?‖

―Boris has been working on anti-narcotics, yes? You know this or, at least, must have surmised as much. You‘re a clever one, hah! The Eastern Brotherhood was funding its Black Legion terrorists through a drug pipeline that ran from Colombia to Mexico to Munich. Boris had someone inside the cartel who provided him with the other end of the pipeline, namely Gustavo Moreno, a Colombian drug lord living in a vast hacienda outside Mexico City.

Boris attacked the hacienda with his elite team of FSB-2 men and shut Moreno down. But the really big prize—Moreno‘s laptop with the details of every inch of the pipeline—eluded him. What happened to it? Boris spent two days searching every inch of the compound, to no avail, because before he died Moreno insisted it was in the hacienda. It wasn‘t, but Boris being Boris caught a whiff of a strange scent.‖

―Which eventually brought him to Khartoum.‖

Volkin deliberately ignored the comment. Perhaps he thought the answer was self-evident. Instead, he said: ―Do you have the date this alleged meeting between Boris and the American secretary took place?‖

―It was stamped on the photos,‖ Bourne said. When he told Volkin, the Russian said emphatically, ―Boris was here with me for three days, including that date. I don‘t know who was sitting down with the American secretary of defense, Bourne, but as sure as Russia is corrupt it wasn‘t our mutual friend Boris Karpov.‖

―Who was it then?‖

―A chameleon, certainly. Do you know any, Bourne?‖

―Besides myself, I do. But, unlike me, he‘s dead.‖

―You seem certain of that.‖

―I saw him fall from a great height into the water off the Port of Los Angeles.‖

―That is not the same as death. By God, you, of all people, should know,‖

Volkin said.

A cold chill swept down Bourne‘s spine.

―How many lives have you had, Bourne? Boris tells me many. I think it must be the same with Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.‖

―Are you telling me that Arkadin didn‘t drown? That he survived?‖

―A black cat like Arkadin has nine lives, my friend, possibly even more.‖

So it was Arkadin who‘d tried to kill him on Bali. Though the picture had suddenly become clearer, there was still something wrong, something missing.

―Are you sure of all this, Volkin?‖

―Arkadin is now the new head of the Eastern Brotherhood, how‘s that for being sure?‖

―All right, but why would he hire the Torturer when he seems to want so desperately to kill me himself?‖

―He wouldn‘t,‖ Volkin said. ―The Torturer is much too unreliable, especially against a foe like you.‖

―Then who hired him?‖

―That, Bourne, is a question even I cannot answer.‖

Having decided to take to the field himself in an effort to find the missing Metro police officers, Peter Marks was waiting in front of the bank of elevators to take him to the ground floor when an elevator door slid open.

The only person inside was the enigmatic Frederick Willard, up until three months ago the Old Man‘s mole inside the NSA‘s Virginia safe house. The older man was, as usual, dapper, urbane, utterly self-contained. He wore an impeccable gunmetal-gray, chalk-striped three-piece suit over a crisp white shirt and a conservative tie.

―Hello, Willard,‖ Marks said as he stepped into the elevator. ―I thought you were on leave.‖

―I got back several days ago.‖

From Marks‘s point of view, Willard was remarkably well suited to play the role of steward in the safe house, evincing an old-school professorial air, musty and rather boring. It wasn‘t difficult to see how he melted into the woodwork. Being invisible made it so much easier to eavesdrop on intimate conversations.

The door slid shut and they descended.

―I imagine it‘s been difficult getting back into the swing of things,‖

Marks said, more to be polite to the older man than anything else.

―Frankly, it was like I was never gone.‖ Willard glanced over at Marks with a grimace, as if he‘d just come from the surgeon‘s office and his agony was of such magnitude that he could not hide it. ―How did your interview with the president go?‖

Surprised that Willard knew about it, Marks said, ―Well enough, I suppose.‖

―Not that it matters, you‘re not getting the post.‖

―It figures. Dick Symes was the logical front-runner.‖

―Symes is out, too.‖

Marks‘s acceptance turned to consternation. ―How do you know that?‖

―Because I know who did get the post and, fuck us all, it isn‘t anyone from inside CI.‖