Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Ann Ring smiled wanly. Inside she was pleased that Li had made an appearance. “Thank you,” she murmured. How stupid words are, she thought. How inadequate, how mendacious.She was disgusted by the dog-and-pony show inherent in funerals, eulogies, mourning periods. The dead were gone, let them go in peace.

Li Wan wore a black suit, as if he, rather than she, were in mourning. Belatedly, she recalled that white was the Chinese color of death and mourning. Well, she thought wryly, he iswearing a white shirt, so crisply starched it appeared as if the collar points might at any moment do him harm.

Ann, in an ox-blood St. John nubbly wool suit, sat in the cloistered family room at Vineyard Funeral Home on Fourteenth Street NW. Even in mourning, she was the kind of woman who radiated sex and allure. She was surrounded by her usual entourage, along with a smattering of friends. The official viewing, which would attract hundreds of her colleagues, allies, and enemies from inside the Beltway, was mercifully a day away. Now it was quiet. The air was perfumed with the huge wreaths and bouquets of flowers that lined the walls and exploded from vases set on tables and even on some unused chairs.

“There was a history,” Li Wan was saying now in a low monotone, “and history means everything.”

“That’s something we have in common, Mr. Li,” she said in an even tone.

He bowed his head slightly and risked a slight smile as he handed over a wrapped parcel. “Please accept this inadequate token of my sorrow.”

“You’re too kind.” She took the package, laid it squarely on her lap, and watched Li’s face. She was waiting, and she thought he knew she was waiting.

At last he said, “May I sit with you a moment?”

She gestured. “Please.”

He sat primly, almost as if he were a turtle, trying to pull its arms and legs into its shell. It was an almost womanly attitude she found repellent.

“Is there anything I can do, Senator?”

“Thank you, no.” Curious, she thought. He’s acting like a mainland Chinese, not like a Chinese American.Because of the special nature of this man and the relationship with him laid out for her by Chris Hendricks, she felt the need to explore that notion. “And please call me Ann.”

“You are far too kind,” Li said, ducking his head again.

What is his behavior telling me?she asked herself.

Li looked across the room to the flowers bedecking the console table against the opposite wall. “I have many memories of your husband, Senator.” He paused a moment, as if debating whether or not to continue. “Memories that might, in time, be shared.”

Now comes the light, she thought. But it was altogether unclear whether he was on an official mission. Her heart leaped at the thought that it might be a personal one, that something had happened between Li and Charles that might have changed their dynamic or, if not that, Li’s own goals as opposed to his government’s.

“You know, Mr. Li, I have my own memories of my husband. It might be pleasant to hear some others.”

Li’s thin shoulders twitched infinitesimally. “In that event, I would welcome the opportunity to invite you to tea, Senator, when you feel up to it, of course.”

“How kind of you, Mr. Li.” She had to be careful here, very careful. “I have a full slate of subcommittee and budgetary meetings that have been thrown into disarray. You understand.”

“I do, Senator. Of course I do.”

She turned on a wistful expression. “On the other hand, it would certainly be refreshing to speak of matters unrelated to Capitol Hill.” She fingered Li’s present. “Perhaps this evening, after my vigil. I have allotted time for a meal.”

Li Wan looked hopeful. “Possibly dinner then.”

“Yes,” she said, ratcheting up her wistful expression. “That would be lovely.”

“I’ll pick you up here if you like.” Mr. Li’s smile was like a sliver of moon. “You have only to decide when.”

Sam Anderson spent fifteen fruitless minutes sending Treadstone personnel to scour the building for Richards.

Not having found him, he recalled his people and sent out a BOLO via FBI and the Metro Police with a priority tag.

Then he joined the assembled IT team, which was feverishly working to ID the virus that was overrunning the Treadstone servers, rendering them useless. He had peeled off one man, Timothy Nevers, who he assigned to check the software keylogger and its hardware companion that he had placed on the terminal Richards was working from, to parse the results.

Peter had chosen the perfect person to be his right-hand man. Anderson was neither ambitious nor complacent. He was wholly focused on the job he had been given to do, and he did it better than anyone else at Treadstone. Unlike many of his colleagues in the clandestine services, he was a people person, an exemplary manager. Those who followed his orders did so without question. They believed in him, believed he could work them out of any trouble they ran into.

This virus was trouble of an exponential order. Every minute the IT team delayed in identifying its basic algorithm, the virus broke through and annihilated another barrier. The on-site Treadstone servers were beginning to look like Swiss cheese; there was almost nothing to pull off them, even if the IT team could find a way around or through the virus, which, as of now, they couldn’t.

“Keep on it,” Anderson said, and, turning to Tim Nevers, said, “Speak to me of the unspeakable.”

“You got that right,” Nevers said. “This guy Richards is a freakin’ genius at software programming. I’m still getting a good look at the Trojan, which, by the way, he definitely coded and entered into the system.”

“What about the virus?”

Nevers scratched his scalp. He was just over thirty and already shaved his head because he was going bald. “Yeah, well, it’s the freakin’ velociraptor of viruses, that much I can tell you.”

“Not helpful,” Anderson said. “You have to give me something I can export to the other IT guys.”

“I’m doing my best,” Nevers said, fingers blurred over the keyboard.

“Do better.”

That was what Anderson’s father had always said to him, not unkindly, but in a way that made Anderson wantto do better, not simply to please his father, though, of course, that loomed large. Doing better made him succeed, as well as learn something important about himself. Anderson’s father was a military man—intelligence– who ended up at Central Intelligence. He had revamped many of their clandestine intel gathering methods and was rewarded by being kicked out because of a bad heart. He hated idling at home and died sixteen months after he had been let go. His bosses all said, “We told you so,” but Anderson knew what his father had known: At home he couldn’t “do better.” Useless he went to sleep one night and never woke up. Anderson was quite certain his father knew that, too, as he drifted off.

“Got something!” Nevers said. “I’ve coded out the virus algorithm from the Trojan’s. It’s endlessly regenerative. Amazing, really.”

“What I want to know, Nevers, is whether it can be stopped.”

“Intervention,” Nevers said, nodding. “Not the way you’d ever think to nullify a virus, which is what makes it so clever. You have to flip a switch, so to speak, from insidethe algorithm.”

Anderson hitched his chair forward in order to get a better view. “So do it.”

“Not so fast,” Nevers said. “The virus is encoded with traps, failsafe mechanisms, and dead ends.”

Anderson groaned. “One step forward, two steps back.”

“Better than being in the dark.” Nevers hit the enter key. “I’ve just transmitted everything I’ve discovered to the rest of the IT team.” He turned, grinned at his boss. “Let’s see if they can do better.”

Anderson grunted.

“Richards destroyed the software keylogger just before he activated the virus. That’s the kernel of the problem. The software recorded only the partial code, not all of it. We can’t stop it until we have the code in its entirety.”

“Don’t you have enough information to make an informed assumption, intervene, and flip the algorithmic switch?”

“I could,” Nevers said, “but I won’t.” He turned to Anderson. “Look, this virus is so full of thorns—triggers, in other words—that if I don’t know precisely what I’m doing, I could inadvertently set off one of these triggers and make things infinitely worse.”

“Worse?” Anderson said, incredulous. “What could be worse than all our data being obliterated?”

“The motherboards overloading, the servers becoming nothing more than a pile of silicon, rare earths, and fused wire circuits. Vital enciphered communications would be down for God knows how long.”

Then he grinned. “But on the bright side...” He pulled a tiny oblong from beneath the desk and held it up. “Richards didn’t find the Bluetooth transmitter. If he downloaded anything from outside, it’ll be recorded right here. Even better, we’ll be able to back-trace it to the source.”

When Nicodemo saw Don Fernando Hererra, he froze, still as a statue.

Hererra was dead—at least, according to Martha Christiana. But she had lied, and now she herself was dead, lying on the cobbled street on the Île Saint-Louis. Whether she had jumped from the fifth-floor window or had been pushed was impossible to say. But what was irrefutable was the presence of Hererra talking to the cops while the photos were being taken and fingerprints lifted from the crime scene.

Craning his neck up, Nicodemo could see through the windows detectives treading through what must be Hererra’s apartment. More flashbulbs lit up the night, more fingerprints were being taken up there in every room. What they expected to find, Nicodemo had no idea, nor was he interested. His focus, which had been on Martha Christiana, the woman Maceo Encarnación had told him to pick up and bring back to the waiting jet, now shifted to Hererra. There was nothing Nicodemo could do for Martha Christiana anymore, but there was certainly something he must do about Hererra.

Retreating to the shadows around the corner, he pulled out his mobile and called Maceo Encarnación.

“I’m standing around the corner from Don Fernando Hererra’s apartment,” he said when he heard the other man on the end of the line. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but Martha Christiana is dead.”

He pulled the mobile away from his ear at the tirade of curses that emanated from it.

“Fell or pushed, I don’t know which,” he continued when Maceo Encarnación had expended the depths of his shock and rage. “I’m sorry, truly. But we have other matters to occupy us. Martha Christiana lied about Hererra being dead....I know, I am too....But he’s standing big as life....Of course I’m sure it’s him.”

Nicodemo spent the next few moments absorbing every word Maceo Encarnación spoke, at the end of which he said, “You’re sure that’s what you want me to do.”

More withering talk, during which Nicodemo began his preparation for the assignment Maceo Encarnación had given him.

“Get it done,” Maceo Encarnación concluded. “You have twentyfour hours. After that, if you haven’t appeared, I take off without you. Clear?”

“Perfectly,” Nicodemo said. “I’ll be back before the deadline. Count on it.”

Disconnecting, he pocketed his mobile and walked back to the crime scene. Martha Christiana had been loaded into the ambulance. Hererra was still talking with the detectives. He spoke, they nodded. One of them scribbled notes as fast as he could.

Nicodemo flipped out a cigarette, lit up, and smoked languidly as he continued to assess the scene. When, at length, the detectives were finished with Hererra, they gave him their cards, and he turned away, returning to his building. Nicodemo watched as he pressed a four-digit code into the panel on the right side of the huge wooden doorway to the street.

He waited until the detectives left and, amid the slowly dispersing crowd of onlookers, stood confronting the panel, which consisted of ten raised brass buttons, numbered one through zero. Taking out a small vial, he blew a white powder, finer than talcum, over the buttons. The powder adhered to the residue of oil left by Hererra’s fingerprints, revealing four whitened buttons. On the third combination, the door’s lock clicked open, and he stepped inside.

He stood for a moment in the cobbled inner courtyard where, centuries before, horse-drawn carriages full of passengers would pull up and liveried footmen would fall over themselves to help the patricians down and into their residence. Now, of course, many people lived in the building, but the history remained, rising off the cobbles like steam from the horses’ glistening flanks.

Two women, one young, one older, were lounging against a wall beside the front door, discussing the tragedy. The older one smoked. Nicodemo took out a cigarette and, approaching them, asked for a light.

“Terrible thing.” The young woman shuddered. “Who can sleep after something like that?”

“Now the street will be clogged with the morbidly curious,” the older woman said, shaking her head.

Nicodemo nodded sympathetically. “Why would someone throw themselves out a window?” he wondered out loud.

“Who can say?” The older woman shrugged her meaty shoulders. “People are mad, that’s my position.” She sucked down more smoke. “Did you know the poor girl?”

“A long time ago,” Nicodemo said. “We were childhood friends.”

The older woman looked sorrowful. “She must have been so unhappy.”

Nicodemo nodded. “I thought I could help her, but I arrived too late.”

“Do you want to go upstairs?” the younger woman said, as if struck by a sudden idea.

“I don’t want to disturb Señor Hererra.”

“Oh, I’m sure he could use the sympathy. Here.” She crossed to the door, slipped her keys out of her pocket. She pressed the attached disc against a metal pad beside the door and it buzzed open.

Nicodemo thanked her and went into the vertical vestibule. A large iron staircase curved upward, and he ascended. The building was eerily still, as if everyone in it were holding their breath in horror. No one was on the stairs, all the apartment doors were firmly closed, as if against a rapidly spreading disease.

Don Fernando’s floor was likewise deserted. He went soundlessly down the landing to stand in front of the apartment. He listened but heard nothing.

Then he put his ear to the door.

Inside the apartment, Don Fernando could still smell the stale clothes of the cops and detectives. He felt as if his home had been broken into. He didn’t want to smell anything but Martha Christiana’s distinctive scent, and he resented deeply the official invasion. He stood stiffly, his back ramrod-straight, and tried to separate his thoughts from his emotions.

He was responsible for Martha Christiana’s death, he had no doubts on that score. He had manipulated her, put her in what turned out to be an untenable position, pitting himself against Maceo Encarnación. He had twisted the screws on her, slowly to be sure, but in the end that hadn’t mattered. In the end, she hadn’t been able to follow either him or her employer. She had taken the only way out that would give her surcease. Perhaps this had been her destiny from the moment she was born into a loveless home and ran away, she thought, to save herself. Instead, she had run pell-mell toward her destiny, toward this apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, toward her death on the cobbles of the Quai de Bourbon.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with him, but he did not believe that. In Martha Christiana desire had warped her destiny. Now she was dead. Turning in a slow circle, he felt the lack of her, as if there were more shadows in these rooms he had come to know so well, as if there were suddenly another room he had never noticed and hadn’t explored, a room whose contents frightened him.

He checked once more to be certain he was alone even though the rational part of his brain told him that he was. Padding silently into the bathroom, he knelt down on creaky joints and extracted Martha Christiana’s handbag from the narrow space between the claw-foot tub and the marble-tiled floor, where he had shoved it before the cops had asked for entrance.

Putting down the toilet seat cover, he sat, placing the handbag on his thighs. He stayed like that for long minutes, his fingers exploring the soft leather, his nostrils dilated to take in her scent, which rose from the handbag’s interior and caused tears to form in his eyes.

Though he had been acting out of self-preservation, he had genuinely liked Martha. He had also felt sorry for her, trapped as she was. But what good had his empathy done, except to drive her the last few yards to her destiny?

He sighed, and his head came up abruptly. He had heard a sound, and he listened, as if for her soft bare footfalls, as if she might still be alive, as if the last several hours had been a nightmare from which he had just this second awakened, her handbag in his lap. Then he looked down and knew with absolute clarity that what he held between his hands was all that was left of her.

Slowly, he opened the bag and, with a curious trepidation, peered inside. He encountered the usual tools of the female trade: lipstick, compact, eyeliner, a small pack of tissues, her wallet, astonishingly thin, as if what little was inside might evaporate as quickly as her life. He opened it briefly, then fished out her mobile phone.

It was locked, but he knew many of the things she liked, and he tried several of them on the keypad until he stumbled upon the right one, and the mobile opened to him as it had so many times to her. This door opening, as it were, moved him deeply. It was as if she were inviting him into the guarded part of herself.

“ Mea culpa, Martha,” he said. “I wish you were here.”

Just outside the front door, Nicodemo heard these words as they wafted through the apartment, and he pressed his ear harder against the door. In doing so, he caused the old wooden panels to creak.

He froze, scarcely allowing himself to breathe.

Don Fernando’s head came up, and, like a dog on point, his body began to quiver. The creak from the front door had arrowed through the apartment, piercing his heart like a presentiment of death.

Placing Martha’s handbag aside, he rose and, leaving the bathroom, went through the bedroom to the living area. There he stood for a moment, immobile, scenting the air for a new spoor. He stared hard at the front door, which he had been careful to lock the moment the last of the detectives had vacated the premises. He watched the wooden boards, as if they might tell him what or who was on the other side of the door.

At length, he crept to the door and, with his back arched, bent to put his ear to the old wood. He heard breathing, but whether it was the building or someone standing on the other side of the door, he could not tell. He felt, if not frightened, then profoundly uneasy. He did not keep a handgun in the apartment, which was lucky for him. The cops would have confiscated it, and it might have aroused their suspicions that Martha Christiana’s death was murder rather than suicide. Now, though, he regretted not having stashed one somewhere. He did not feel safe.

After taking another fruitless listen through the door, he backed away, returning to the bathroom, where he took up Martha’s handbag and resumed his melancholy journey through its contents.

He checked her mobile’s call log first. The last incoming call had been made perhaps fifty minutes before she went out the window. Considering the hour it had been made, he thought that significant, especially because it was from a number in Martha’s phonebook. The name attached had been reduced to initials, but there was no doubt to whom “ME” belonged: Maceo Encarnación.

What had Maceo Encarnación said to her that had made her snap, caused her to decide to kill herself? There was no doubt in his mind that she had felt trapped between himself and Encarnación with no way out.

He checked her voicemails, texts, all the usual stuff that almost invariably clogged up people’s mobiles, but there was nothing. Martha Christiana had been too careful. As he was scrolling through her phonebook, his own mobile buzzed. He picked it up. Christien was calling.

“Are you still dead?” Christien said with a chuckle.

“Sadly, no.” Don Fernando took a breath. “But Martha Christiana is.”

“What happened?”

Don Fernando told him.

“Well, at least she won’t be a threat to you anymore. I’ll take care of the press release correcting the news of your death.” There was a slight pause. “Do you know where Bourne is?”

“I thought you were keeping track of him?”

“No one can keep track of him, Don Fernando. You know that better than anyone.”

Don Fernando grunted. Without thinking, he slid Martha’s mobile back into her handbag. His fingers found the compact, smooth and warm, as from contact with Martha’s skin. He found that circling his thumb over its lacquered surface gave him a measure of solace.

“Our enemies are on the move,” Christien said. “Maceo Encarnación and Harry Rowland have left Mexico City. They landed in Paris over an hour ago. I thought I’d better warn you.”

“Something’s happening.”

“Yes, but I hope it’s not what we have been afraid of.”

Don Fernando ran a hand across his face. “There’s only one way to find out.”

“With Maceo Encarnación in Paris, I’m concerned about you.”

“Maceo Encarnación knows better than to show his face in Paris. I have too many eyes and ears on the ground. Rowland is, however, another matter.”

“Jason and that Mossad woman, Rebeka, were following Rowland.”

Don Fernando stared at his bare feet on the bathroom tiles. Martha had liked his feet. She said they were sexy. “If that’s the case, then they’ve failed.”

“I don’t want to think about Jason failing.”

“Neither do I.” Don Fernando’s heart grew even heavier as he stared at the lapis face of Martha’s compact. “Listen, Christien, there must be something we can do for Jason.”

“It’s progressed too rapidly, gone too far. It’s out of our hands,” Christien said. “All we can do now is have faith that Bourne will come through.”

“If anyone can...” Vaya con Dios, hombre, Don Fernando thought as he disconnected.

He was tired—beyond tired. He rose and, still holding the compact, padded back to the bedroom. It was early morning, when the city, still wrapped in sleep, began to shudder with the rumble of the first of the day’s traffic, when people queued up at bakeries to buy breakfast baguettes and croissants, when bicyclists crossed the bridges, taking their owners to work.

He lay down on his bed, the covers rucked beneath him, but that only brought into view the window Martha Christiana had ruined on her way out of his life. Rolling over, he sat up, his gaze once again fixated on the compact. It was odd, he thought, that Martha carried a compact when he had never seen powder on her cheeks or forehead. She used lipstick and lash color; her natural beauty required nothing more. And yet...

He turned the compact over and over in his hand. Then, on a sudden impulse, he snapped it open. The thin puff was there, but, when he lifted it out, there was no powder underneath, just a tiny gold flange set into the base. Using a fingernail, he lifted the flange, and the base came up, revealing an eight-gigabyte micro-SD card.

Just then he stiffened, his head cocked to one side, trying to capture the tiny noise again. There was no doubt about it, someone was outside his front door. Rising silently, he crossed to the kitchen and slid out a large-bladed carving knife.

Back in the living room, he paused in front of the door, listening. He heard the sound again, as of the scrape of shoe soles against the hallway floor. Stepping closer, he grasped the lock and turned it over slowly and quietly.

Keeping the point of the knife at the ready for an instantaneous thrust, he grasped the doorknob, and, with a quick, efficient turn, pulled open the door.

24

DICK RICHARDS, WAITING TO be shown into Tom Brick’s palatial offices at the Core Energy headquarters on Sixteenth Street NW, felt like a fugitive not only from Treadstone, but from life itself.

He had been waiting for what seemed like hours while a veritable parade of people were ushered in and out of the executive office suites.

For what seemed like the eighth or ninth time, he hauled himself up and reintroduced himself to the young woman behind the slab banc. She had the young person’s knack of wearing her wireless earpiece like jewelry, somehow making her look more human rather than like an alien. She smiled up at him with her bee-stung lips.

“Mr. Richards—” he was astonished that she remembered “—Mr. Lang would like a word with you.”

Stephen Lang was senior operations VP. Richards wondered why he wanted to see him. “I’m here to see Tom Brick.”

The receptionist smiled and touched the carapace of her earpiece. “He’s not in the office at the moment.”

“D’you know where he is?”

The smile stayed in place, another piece of postmodern jewelry. “I believe that’s what Mr. Lang wants to talk with you about.” She held out a shapely bare arm. “D’you know the way?”

Richards nodded. “I do.”

Passing through the pebbled translucent doors, he turned right to the end, then right again. Ahead of him lay Lang’s spacious corner office. He had been in there a handful of times when Brick had brought him in on the logistics of one project or another.

Stephen Lang was an ex-athlete running to fat. He still had the basic frame and musculature of a Michigan linebacker, but his face had broadened and his gut had deepened. The moment Richards entered his office, he came around from behind his desk, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He grinned, extended his hand in a brief, bonecrushing grip, and nodded at one of the upholstered chairs in front of his smoked-glass–topped postmodern desk.

“So I hear that the Treadstone computers are hopelessly snarled.” Perched on a corner of his desk, he nodded. “Good work, Richards.”

“Thanks. But I’m now fucked. I can’t go back there.”

“Not to worry. You’ve helped us achieve our goal at Treadstone. Time to move on.” Lang clapped his hands together. “Listen, Tom wants to congratulate you himself. He was called away at the last minute, so he’s arranged for a car and driver to take you to him.”

“Is he at the safe house?”

“Yeah, about that, the safe house is no longer safe.” Lang clapped his hands again. “As I said, time to move on.” He stood, indicating that the interview was at an end. Extending his hand again, he said, “Safe travels, Richards. You’ve become invaluable to us, so a significant bump in pay is waiting for you, not to mention a bonus.” He waved his hand. “Tom will explain it all.”

Richards, cheeks flushed, went out of the office suite. He barely felt his feet on the carpeting. Finally, he was getting the recognition he deserved. A chubby blonde greeted him with a smile on the elevator ride down to the lobby. He was so astonished when she said something to him that he scarcely heard a word she said. She looked vaguely familiar, but all he could muster was a stupid grin by way of reply. Watching her walk across the lobby, he thought, Other women will smile at me—beautiful women, because they existed—especially here inside the Beltway—to respond galvanically to money and power.

Outside, as Lang had said, a black Lincoln Navigator was waiting for him. It was a raw, gloomy late afternoon, with drizzle slanted by the wind. Richards hurried over. There was no need to introduce himself. Bogs, recognizing him, smiled and swung open the passenger door for him. Then he climbed in behind the wheel and peeled out, driving very fast through the congested streets of the city.

Richards sat back, luxuriating in the beginning moments of his new life. He had made the right choice. Government service was for fools who were content to work unconscionably long hours, take home their meager pay packets each week, and eventually retire into obscurity, worn out, beaten down by the endless bureaucracy.

They went over the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge into Virginia, then turned north. Ten minutes later, the Navigator turned in to a side entrance to Founders Park in Alexandria, which fronted the water. The driver got out, opened the door for Richards, and guided him down a long wharf that jutted out into the Potomac. At the far end was a large weathered-wood gazebo under which he saw Tom Brick talking to a figure in shadow.

He turned when Richards and the driver entered the gazebo’s overhang. “Ah, you made it, Richards. Good deal.” He gestured toward the other figure with him, the chubby blonde who had accompanied Richards down in the elevator.

Richards had just a moment to register his surprise when he felt a ghastly pain in his side. He opened his mouth to shout, but the driver’s thick hand clamped hard over the lower half of his face. Blood ran out of him, and his knees sagged. The driver was half holding him up.

He looked at Tom Brick who, along with the blonde, was watching him without any apparent emotion.

“What?” he stammered. “Why?”

Tom Brick sighed. “The very fact that you’re asking these questions confirms that your usefulness to me is at an end.” He stepped toward Richards, grabbed his chin, and lifted his face to stare into his eyes. “You idiot, what did you think you were doing announcing yourself as the saboteur?”

“I...I...” Richards’s slowly freezing brain, already shutting down at its periphery, was desperately trying to grasp what was happening to him. And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blonde grinning at him and he realized that she was a Treadstone employee– an assistant, someone in the unique position of watching everyone in the organization. Jesus, he thought. Jesus Christ.

“This is the price you pay for having multiple masters, Richards.” Tom Brick’s voice was gentle, rueful, understanding. “There was no other ending possible.”

Richards’s brain, robbed of blood, was turning more sluggish by the second. But still, he got it. Finally. “You recognized Peter Marks right away.”

Brick nodded. “Thanks to Tricia here, I did.”

“Then why did you let him—?”

“Once I knew he had followed me, that he knew more than I had dreamed, it was imperative to find out what his game was.” Brick pinched Richards’s chin between the pincers of his thumb and forefinger. “You didn’t tell me who he was, Richards. Why didn’t you tell me?”