“Bullcrap,” Lucas said. “You’re the one who’s brainwashed, pal! You still believe in American exceptionalism. All those years, we were fighting for freedom and democracy while the bureaucrats in Washington played games. They sent us off to die in wars they never intended to win. Then they dishonored our sacrifice by lying about it on national television. You know where I was September 11, 2012? I was in Tripoli, Jake. I was a few hundred miles away while our men, our brothers, fought and died. We begged—begged—to help. And for thirteen hours, the White House told us repeatedly to stand down. Told us the situation was under control. When it was over, they went on CNN and told the nation they did everything they could.”
Lucas turned his head to the side and spat. “They let our boys die, and they lied about it. That’s when I knew American was too corrupt to survive. I knew I could no longer go on protecting a system that was rotting from the inside. The only way to save America is to tear it down and start again. Don’t you see? We need to hit the reset.”
“You’re wrong,” Noble shook his head. “America isn’t perfect. No country is. America is what the voters make of it. We choose our leaders, and we get exactly what we vote for. Sometimes that’s great. Other times, it’s a nightmare, but the system works. Americans learn from their mistakes and course-correct. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it’s meant to be.”
The lifeboat had settled into the water with a solid thump and a splash. Noble knew his time was up. He said, “This operation is over, Luke. The Navy will be here any minute.”
“I’ll be long gone by the time they arrive.” Lucas leveled the gun at Noble.
“You going to shoot me, Luke?”
“Nothing personal, Jake,” Lucas said. He even managed to look apologetic. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll raise a glass to your memory, brother.”
“Gee, thanks.”
While they were talking, Eliška’s right hand was creeping toward her waistline.
Lucas started to tighten his finger on the trigger just as the first cargo container lost its precarious perch. The metal box went crashing into the water and other boxes started to slide and tumble. The sound was a deafening cacophony of thundering booms and shrieking metal. The deck of the Minerva bucked like a stallion.
Noble stumbled.
Lucas pinwheeled his arm like a tightrope walker trying to maintain balance. It gave Eliška the opening she was waiting for. She produced a folding knife with all the speed and skill of a magician plucking a rabbit from a hat. The blade licked Lucas’s wrist in one quick flash. His eyes opened wide and his fingers lost their grip on the weapon. The Glock clattered across the deck, and a lurid red splash of blood hit the wall of containers.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Eliška spun around and steel flashed. She made two quick cuts, opening Lucas’s belly with all the efficiency of a can opener. Ropey guts spilled out all over the deck, landing with a sickening plop. Lucas lurched backward, spilling a fresh gout of blood. His face turned a deadly shade of white. He tried to scoop up coils of intestines with his hands and stuff them back in, but they kept slipping through his fingers. “Jake,” he moaned. “Help me, Jake.”
The sight left Noble sick to his stomach. He fought down a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the heaving deck. His first instinct was to help, but there was nothing he could do. Eliška had killed Lucas just as surely as if she had put a bullet through his heart. It was only a matter of time. Noble stumbled across the sloping deck for the gun. He scooped it up and said, “It’s too late, Luke.”
Lucas went on trying to push his guts back in. His face went from white to an unhealthy shade of blue. His breath came out in ragged gasps full of pain and shot with fear. His eye bulged from their sockets. It was agonizing to watch. Lucas was a SEAL, one of the best of the best. A tier one operator. He had fought beside Noble and sacrificed for his country. Now, he sat with his guts in his lap, begging for help.
“Help me, Jake,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper. “Help me.”
Noble knelt down in front of him. In that moment he would have moved mountains to save his friend, but Noble could no more save Lucas than he could stop the ship from sinking. He said, “Close your eyes and count to ten, Luke. It will all be over soon.”
Lucas shook his head, flinging drops of sweat. “I don’t want to die, Jake. I can’t die like this. God, help me!”
“Close your eyes,” Noble said. “Count to ten.”
Lucas was hyperventilating now. His shoulders hitched with every panicked gasp. Noble laid a hand on his shoulder and told him again to close his eyes. It was another minute, but Lucas closed his eyes and started to count. He got to six before his strength gave out. He slumped sideways. His head landed on a rope of intestines. His eyes rolled up, but his lips kept moving, kept counting.
Eliška watched. She held the knife in one bloodstained hand and waited for the end. It came fast. Lucas had lost so much blood. The deck seemed to be drenched in it. Noble struggled to his feet and tried not to look, but his eyes kept going back to the grisly spectacle. Lucas let out one last, rattling breath—the death rattle—and then it was over.
Eliška looked down at the knife in her hand like she wasn’t quite sure how it came to be there. Lucas Randall was dead. His organization was destroyed. She had expected to feel relief. Instead, she just felt hollow. Killing Lucas hadn’t brought her father back. And it didn’t make Papa’s death any easier to accept. He was dead and gone and the man who killed him was lying in a puzzle on the deck of the Minerva. Eliška had won, but it was an empty victory. She dropped the knife. It landed amid the gore.
Noble grabbed her elbow and shoved her toward the side. “Go!”
The Minerva was leaning hard to starboard now, like a drunk stumbling home after an all-night bender. Containers continued to tumble off the deck. Eliška struggled up the incline to the gunwale. She swung one leg over the railing and pushed off the side. There was a short drop, and warm saltwater enveloped her in a rush of sound. She pulled with her arms and kicked with her feet and broke the surface. The lifeboat bobbed a few meters away. Eliška paddled over and pulled herself over the side.
A few minutes later, Noble clambered in next to her.
The Minerva pitched onto its side and spilled its cargo. Containers crashed down in the ocean with a mighty roar. A wave picked the lifeboat up and nearly tossed them out. Eliška clung to the side. The Minerva settled on the ocean floor with half the bow thrusting above the waves and the life boat eventually stopped riding the swells. Eliška started to thank Noble for saving her life and found herself staring down the barrel of the Glock.
“What now?” she asked in a tired voice. She mopped water from her face and said, “Are you going to turn me over to the CIA?”
“You’re still wanted for murder.”
“You know why P. Arthur Fellows was killed,” Eliška said. “Isn’t that enough?”
Noble shook his head. “The United States government wants his killer.”
“What does Jakob Noble want?” Eliška asked.
Jake hesitated.
“I thought we had something,” Eliška said.
“Maybe we did,” said Noble. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to let a killer go free.”
“If you turn me in, I’ll spend the rest of my life in a cage.”
Noble chewed the inside of one cheek.
Eliška could see the struggle. She looked to the west. She could just make out the lights of Italy in the distance. She said, “The coast is right there.”
“Letting you go is a capital crime,” Noble said.
“No one would have to know.”
“I’d know,” he told her.
“Maybe you turned your back for a moment and I just … disappeared?”
“I wouldn’t turn my back on you for a second. You’re too dangerous,” Noble said, but the gun went down to his side. He gazed across at the lights and shook his head. It was a moment
before he spoke again. His brows knotted together. “Far as I’m concerned, you made your escape back in the engine room.”
Eliška grinned. She started over the side and paused there a moment, one leg dangling in the warm water. “Was it just two lonely people on a train?” she asked. “Or something more?”
Noble didn’t answer right away. A Croatian Coast Guard vessel was closing in on the Minerva. He turned at the sound of the engines. Searchlights swept back and forth across the black waves. He said, “It was more than just two people on a train.”
Something inside Eliška seemed to relax, like there was a deep knot in her chest that had finally let go. She would probably never see him again, but she felt better just knowing he was in the world. She said, “Thank you, Jakob.”
He said, “Find a new job, Ellie. If we cross paths again—”
“If we cross paths again, I’ll have to kill you,” Eliška told him with a smile.
“Well, let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.”
She dove into the water and paddled for shore.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Otto Keiser sat in his wheelchair, staring out the windows of the Apollo fund at the lights of Bern. He was no longer interested in the candlestick charts on the computer screens or the stock ticker scrolling across the televisions. The volume was muted, and he didn’t see the CNN Kyron that read, “Hedge Fund Billionaire Otto Keiser Loses Big in Bet Against the Dollar.” The office was empty, except for Keiser. His liver-spotted hands twisted together over his bulging stomach and one eye twitched. His lips pursed and relaxed, like a man trying to form words. But there were no words. He swallowed with an audible click in his throat. All of his carefully laid plans were ruined. His empire was destroyed. The money was at the bottom of the ocean and Keiser’s puts had expired, costing him trillions. His fund was bankrupt, and the United States, the imperialist giant, marched on without so much as a hiccup. In fact, it had been a good day on the market. The S&P was up nearly two hundred points and the Dow was up fifty.
Within hours of the news, the resignations had started. His loyal staff, so eager to hitch their wagons to Keiser’s rising star, had abandoned ship. They tried to quietly distance themselves from the failing fund. Some of them were probably already discreetly asking after opening in other brokerages. The bastards.
Everything was ruined. His life’s work lay in a thousand pieces, like the shattered remains of a priceless vase on the parlor floor. He couldn’t put it back together again. He could try to rebuild from the ground up, but who was he kidding? Keiser was too old for that. It had taken fifty years of hard work to maneuver all the pieces. No, too late to start again. Too late for anything but revenge.
He grasped the wheels of the wretched chair and wrestled himself around to face the conference table. The chairs were all empty and would probably never be filled again. Keiser stabbed the intercom button with one arthritic finger and barked at Westley/Wexler, “Find out everything you can about an American Special Forces operator named Jacob Noble.”
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Noble arrived home to Saint Petersburg three days later. It was late afternoon and hot enough to melt wax. Sweat glued his polo shirt to his back. He parked his ’67 Fastback at the marina across from Straub Park and made his way along the docks to a forty-foot wooden schooner. The Yeoman was lettered on the stern in curving gold script. Noble had a bag of groceries in the crook of one arm. The brown paper sack was full to bursting. He made his way up the gangplank and heard a low note, like the throaty rumble of a diesel engine, as he stepped on deck.
He wrestled open the small door to the galley with his free hand. One hundred and twenty pounds of fur and teeth was there to greet him. The Czechoslovakian wolf dog went up on his hind legs and planted his front paws in Noble’s belly. Noble nearly dropped the sack of food.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m happy to see you too. Let me put these down before I drop them.”
The dog sat back on his haunches. His tail wagged. A long pink tongue lulled from one side of his grinning mouth.
Noble dropped the sack on the counter and went down on one knee. He threw an arm around the dog’s broad neck and scratched behind its ears with his other hand. The animal draped one paw over Noble’s shoulder in what could only be described as a doggie hug. It was nice to have someone to come home to. Noble didn’t know how in the world he was going to care for a dog. Work required long absences, but he was determined to make it work.
“Hungry?” Noble asked.
The dog let out one huffing half bark.
Noble untangled himself from the mutt and started unloading groceries. He was stuffing the eggs in the fridge when he noticed a marionette laying on the galley table. Noble’s stomach clenched. His hand was halfway to the pistol in his waistband before he stopped himself. The dog seemed to sense danger. It stood and let out a deep growl. Noble shushed him and picked up the Czech doll. There was a note attached. A feminine scroll said, Take good care of my dog.
Chapter Eighty
Cook and Witwicky sat in Wizard’s cramped and cluttered office. The Deputy Director of Operations was hunched over his desk with an unlit Chesterfield dangling from his mouth. CIA Director Armstrong was there as well, dressed in a pinstripe suit with her hair up. She clutched a thin cigar in one manicured hand. Tendrils of blue smoke curled up from the glowing tip.
“And there’s no way we can connect Keiser to any of this?” Armstrong was saying.
Wizard turned his attention to Cook and Witwicky.
They shook their heads in unison.
Ezra said, “Everything was done through shell companies and subsidiaries. We can make the case that Keiser owns controlling interests in the holding companies, but we can’t prove he was directly involved. For all we know, those organizations were acting on their own.”
“Not likely,” Wizard rasped.
“No,” Gwen agreed. “But that’s what Keiser would claim.”
Armstrong muttered a curse and put the thin cigar to her painted lips. The end flared briefly, then dimmed. Her lipstick left a sensual ring of red on the brown paper. “Any luck tracking down Cermákova?”
“None,” Gwen said. “She vanished into thin air.”
“Probably drowned,” Ezra suggested.
“I highly doubt that,” Wizard said but declined to speculate further.
Armstrong said, “Randall dead, Cermákova escaped, and no way to implicate Keiser in the whole affair.” She shook her head. “Not our finest hour.”
“Not a complete loss,” Wizard said. He searched the clutter on his desk for a match and lit it with his thumbnail. Cupping the flame from a nonexistent draft, he said, “We saved America from economic collapse. That’s enough for one day.”
Armstrong agreed with a nod. She turned in her seat to face Cook and Witwicky. They both straightened up, like soldiers coming to attention. Armstrong said, “Make Otto Keiser your full-time job. I want to know everything about him. I want to know where he goes, who he talks to. I want to know if he secretly wears women’s panties. Everything. Understood?”
“The J. Edgar Hoover package,” Ezra remarked.
“We’re on it,” Gwen said.
Armstrong levered herself out of the chair and went to the door. She paused in the opening. “Ezra, Gwen, you both did real good. I’d put you in for a medal, but this whole thing is off the books.”
“We’re the CIA,” Ezra said. “We don’t do it for medals.”
Gwen said, “Stopping Keiser is reward enough.”
Armstrong favored them with a smile before walking out.
Wizard waited until she was gone, reached inside his desk and brought out an 8x10 black-and-white headshot of Otto Keiser. He cranked himself out of the chair with difficulty and tacked Keiser’s picture to the center of the vast web covering the wall.
Ezra sat up a little straighter.
Gwen said, “All this time, you knew?”
“I suspected.�
�
Ezra said, “What now?”
Wizard leaned his bony hips against the desk and stared at the wall. He smoked his cigarette in quiet contemplation. After a while he said, “Now I watch, and I wait. It’s a long game he and I have been playing. The end is still a long way off. We dealt him a serious blow, but he’s far from finished.”
Epilogue
She opened her mouth to scream and icy water poured down her throat, choking her. The pain was exquisite, blinding. Her body felt electrified. Her lungs screamed for air. It felt like a metal band closing around her chest. Her back and legs were piano wires stretched to the breaking point. Her hands, fingers numb with cold, churned water into foam. Blackness crushed in around her, threatening to drag her down into the fathomless depths. She needed oxygen. She needed to breathe. She clawed her way toward the surface, desperate for air. She could see light shimmering on the water in kaleidoscopic patterns. If only she could reach it…
She came awake with a start, a scream dying on her lips. Painfully bright fluorescents blinded her. She had to narrow her eyes and blink against the overheads. She wasn’t in the water. She was in a hospital room, and there was a man sitting in a chair next to her bed.
He was balding and slightly plump. The blood vessels in his nose were broken. His eyes reminded her of a sad looking basset hound. He wore a faded brown suit under a rumpled overcoat and leafed through a file folder.
She tried to sit up in bed. Pain rocked her body in crushing waves that slammed her back to the pillow. It was a moment before she realized her wrists were strapped down by leather restraints. She tried to speak, had to clear an obstruction in her throat, and tried again. Her voice was a tired croak. “Who are you?”
“I am inspector Laurent.” He closed the file and regarded her with those sad basset hound eyes. “You are American?”
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