by Titan Books
Lassiter had a fleeting mental image of thrusting the point of her umbrella into Verris’s eye. “I’m sorry,” she said in an even stiffer tone. “I can’t allow that.”
“I’m not asking your permission,” Verris said, and the edge in his voice was the vocal version of a lethal weapon. “You want to go to your bosses? I’m sure they’d love to hear about our little rogue project.”
The rain started to come down harder now but Lassiter could sense Verris’s self-righteousness; it radiated from him like heat, except it was cold, very cold. The man probably had a chunk of permafrost instead of a heart.
“I’ll make it look like a Russian hit,” Verris went on cheerfully. He stood up then and Lassiter followed suit. Apparently the meeting was coming to an end; she could hardly wait.
“You give Henry a state funeral. Flag on the coffin, twenty-one-gun salute, you give a nice speech, everyone cries, he’ll be remembered as a hero, and life goes on.”
“Not for Henry,” Lassiter said. The rain was coming down really hard now, pounding the pavement and splashing her lower legs.
“Oh come on,” Verris said. “Mutts like Henry were born to be collateral damage. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
That’s not how you felt back when you were begging him to work for you, Lassiter thought, sneaking a glance at him. He was gazing straight ahead, all puffed up with importance, loving his own genius. There was no way she could win this one.
“Do you have an asset in place?” she asked.
“I have the perfect asset,” Verris replied.
Lassiter knew what that meant and her heart sank.
CHAPTER 7
Henry dropped anchor just off a secluded bit of Florida shoreline. They would be safe here for a while, he told Danny, and suggested she get a few hours of sleep to make up for what she’d missed. Danny laughed—after what they’d just been through together, she wasn’t sure she would ever sleep again.
But even as she said it, she realized she had actually been running on fumes and was now so exhausted she was close to falling down on the spot. She stumbled down the few steps into the sleeping area in the Corsair’s bow and was surprised to find it wasn’t stuffy and hot; the owner had opted for air-conditioning.
As she lay down, she saw that the wide dark stripe running the length of the bow was actually dark-tinted Plexiglas, with three small hatches that could be opened for ventilation. She considered turning off the a/c and opening all three for fresh air, but before she could give that any further consideration, she dropped off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
The sun was a lot higher in the sky by the time she woke, groggy and heavy-headed, but more than anything, hungry. She gave herself a few minutes to become more alert, then had a look around the small galley. There were a few bottles of expensive imported beer in the mini-fridge but no food—no gourmet cheese, no caviar, no chocolate. It was so pristine she doubted there ever had been anything in it other than beer. Which she took as proof positive that the Corsair was owned by a man who never brought lady friends aboard.
Danny’s stomach growled unhappily as she conducted a thorough search of the cabinets. If all she could find were smuggled drugs or diamonds, she was going to track down the owner and tear him limb from limb with her bare hands, just on general principle.
She was on the verge of despair when she finally discovered a box of saltines at the very back of the last cabinet. Just seeing the picture of the crackers was enough to make her mouth water. There had better be crackers in this box, she thought, because if it turned out to be a fortune in stolen gems or little plastic bags of cocaine, she was going to eat them anyway.
Nope, just plain old crackers, lightly salted and dry as a bone, which had to be some kind of miracle considering they’d been stored on a boat. The pictures on the box showed them floating in a bowl of soup or topped with cheese; nobody ever ate saltines plain. Unless there was nothing else in the pantry of your stolen Chris-Craft Corsair, of course. Danny told herself she was grateful, glad to have them, and she wasn’t wishing they were Ritz crackers or cheese crackers, nope, not at all, not even slightly. These saltines were divine. The taste of edible papier mâché had been criminally underrated.
She emerged from below to find Henry had waded ashore and was now lounging on the beach, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and his ever-present Phillies cap pulled low to keep the sun out of his eyes. He looked up from his phone just long enough to give her a beckoning wave.
“Hungry?” she asked as she joined him, holding out the crackers.
He looked up from the phone again. “Very,” he said. “But—” he tapped the end of the box. “Those expired three years ago.”
“Really? They taste fine.” She turned the box around and saw the Best Before date. Apparently Henry didn’t know that Best Before wasn’t the same as an expiration date. She considered explaining it to him, then decided it could wait for a later time when people weren’t trying to kill them. Anyway, she was pretty sure the half-life for saltines was a lot longer than three years. Or maybe she was just so hungry she felt relieved that she didn’t have to share them.
“How long have you worked with Lassiter?” she asked.
“You know my file,” Henry said, not looking away from the phone screen.
“I do. Which was why I didn’t believe the guy in the marina office,” Danny said. “While he still had teeth, he said you were the rogue.”
Henry glanced up at her briefly. “But you didn’t believe him.”
“I was ninety-nine percent sure he was lying.”
“Yeah, there’s always that damn one percent, eh?” He gave a small laugh.
Yeah, that damn one percent, Danny thought as she shifted from one foot to the other. Here in the light of day, out of state with a stolen boat and only some very old saltines for breakfast, she couldn’t help wondering if she was doing the right thing. What if she had thrown her career away because she couldn’t tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys?
If so, what would happen when the real good guys finally showed up to bring her and Henry in? Was she going to spend the rest of her life in maximum security for being the stupidest DIA agent who had ever lived?
“Henry,” she said, and he looked up from his phone again. “Has this ever happened to you before?”
“‘This?’” He frowned. “Can you be more specific?”
“Your own government trying to kill you.”
Henry gave a short laugh. “No. That’s brand new.”
“No, now really—you’ve been with the agency for a while,” she said. “Can’t you guess what this is all about?”
Henry gave her an arch look. “If I could, I wouldn’t be taking this lovely vacation with you.”
“When I’m head of the agency, we’re going to handle retirement very differently,” she promised him.
He was about to answer, then suddenly turned to look up at the clouds to the south and west. Danny heard the distant sound of an approaching aircraft. It gradually became louder until finally a twin-engine Aztec seaplane broke through the billows of white into the blue sky. It made a wide circle above them before it began to descend.
Henry’s face lit up as he got to his feet.
The Aztec was similar to a lot of planes run by sightseeing businesses that catered to tourists along the Georgia and Florida coastline, although the logo on the side—Baron Air—was one Danny had never seen before. It was probably a one-man operation; many of them were. There was always more than enough business to go around in tourist season, and during the rest of the year there were courier jobs that the larger companies considered too small, too dubious, or too risky.
Danny watched the Aztec make a perfect, even graceful landing. It water-taxied over to them, maneuvering until it was right next to the Corsair. For a moment, she held her breath, hoping she was looking at the next step in solving all her problems and not one more bad choice. Then th
e pilot’s side door opened and she saw a man with an impressive moustache smiling out at her. He was wearing a t-shirt, a vest with several pockets, cargo shorts, and motorcycle boots.
“Baron Tours here to pick up Brogan, party of two?” he said, eyes twinkling.
At a complete loss, Danny turned to Henry.
“Danny, meet the Baron,” he said. “Middle-aged reprobate and the best pilot I know.” Henry was grinning from ear to ear; she couldn’t remember the last time she had ever seen anyone look so happy. “Baron, Danny.”
“Hey, Toast,” Baron said genially.
Danny grimaced, feeling her face grow warm again, now with mortification. In the DIA, once you got a nickname from a senior agent, you were usually stuck with it whether you liked it or not; complaining would only guarantee it would be permanent.
As Baron helped her board the plane, she spotted the tattoo on his right wrist, a green spade identical to Henry’s, and felt herself relax a little. The two men had that kind of bond, which meant if she could trust Henry ninety-nine percent, she could trust this man just as much.
“Your burners, as requested.” Baron handed Henry a plastic bag full of cell phones. “But,” he added as Henry looked inside, “before you use them, maybe consider Cartagena as an option?”
Henry didn’t say anything and Danny wondered if he was actually thinking it over.
“It’s a nice life,” Baron went on, addressing her, too, now. “You’d be anonymous, and safe.”
Henry’s eyes glinted and for a split second, Danny thought he was actually going to say yes. Then he shook his head apologetically. “Baron, we’re in the shit here. I’m pretty sure Jack Willis is dead.”
For the first time, Baron’s smile vanished completely. “Jesus. Did anyone follow you?”
“No,” Henry assured him.
“They will. Let’s go. Hey, Toast, can I have one of those crackers?” he added, nodding at the box. “I skipped lunch. And breakfast.”
Danny had actually forgotten she was still holding it and handed it to him.
“Brace yourselves,” Baron said over his shoulder and revved the engine. “The ride tends to get pretty noisy.”
Del Patterson was a man with a lot of problems.
Of course, his road never had been completely smooth. Something always went wrong, and if it had already gone wrong, it would develop further complications. From an early age, Patterson had had to learn how to think on his feet, make repairs on the fly, and never let his insurance lapse. This probably accounted for how he had ended up in the DIA, doing what he did. He was never more in his comfort zone than when he was outside of it.
Recently, however, the going was tough even for him. There was no time when he didn’t have at least a dozen problems simmering on the verge of a rolling boil. A few were personal: he had lost his hair and gained a belly, he had the blood pressure of a man twenty years older and fifty pounds heavier, and the desire for a drink was starting to outweigh the desire not to have a drinking problem. As it happened, these were all due to ongoing troubles that either directly or indirectly posed a threat to the existence of the US or the world or both.
Not that he could share any of these burdens with anyone outside the agency. Patterson wasn’t allowed to tell anyone where he worked. He couldn’t even tell his family what he did for a living, which was why his wife was now his ex-wife and his kid was—well, he was a teenager and as far as Patterson knew, there was no cure for adolescence except growing up. And even that didn’t always work.
Which was probably why Patterson had taken to fantasizing about spilling his guts to people with no security clearance, simply coming right out and saying, I orchestrate strategic abductions and assassinations in foreign countries to ensure the safety of the free world, if only for the shock value. Especially in situations like the one currently unfolding in the principal’s office at his kid’s school.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been summoned here to sit through a detailed list of his son’s high crimes and misdemeanors. Yeah, everybody knew that teaching was a difficult, frustrating, and thankless job, and being a principal was all that with a punchline on top. But sometimes Patterson had a powerful urge to interrupt the man’s litany of complaints with something like, Oh, gosh, I’m really sorry he’s acting out again. I’ve been so busy on the other side of the world making sure the right people get assassinated for the sake of our national security—i.e. to prevent another attack on US soil—that I guess I missed all the warning signs.
The man would probably swallow his tongue.
“Does he do this at home?” the principal demanded, jarring him out of his daydream.
“I don’t think so.” Patterson had no idea what he was referring to. “I don’t know.” He turned to his son, who was slumped in the chair beside him in the classic teenage position of defiant apathy. “Do you?”
His son shook his head and Patterson suddenly realized the kid was dying of embarrassment. Although he wasn’t sure who the boy was embarrassed by, himself or the principal.
The principal’s glower intensified. “Then can you tell me why, if it’s inappropriate to do this sort of thing at home, you would think it appropriate to do it in your science class?”
“I dunno,” the kid said querulously. “Probably because science is so wicked boring.”
Patterson was about to tell him what he thought of that statement when his phone rang. Sighing, he turned to the principal. “Excuse me, I have to take this,” he said. “Try not to do anything incriminating until I get back,” he added to his son as he got up.
The principal was unfazed by the interruption. He launched into a lecture, perhaps as a way to make sure the boy knew he was still being disciplined even while Patterson was out of the room. “Son, you’re going a hundred miles an hour at a brick wall,” he said. “Slow down. Every time you turn on that cell phone of yours, it gets you in trouble.”
Words to live by, Patterson thought as he closed the door behind him. “Hello?” he said tensely.
“Well, I guess you really didn’t want me to retire,” said a familiar voice.
Patterson felt a sensation that he suspected was a lot like a sucking chest wound. “Henry! You’re okay!” he babbled, barely aware of the bell ringing. Students flooded into the hall, brushing past him roughly. “Thank God!”
“Stop it.” Henry’s tone was flat and lethal. “Is Monroe dead?”
Patterson swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Shit,” Henry said, furious. “What about Jack Willis?”
“It wasn’t me, Henry,” Patterson told him desperately. “None of this was me. I swear it.”
“Jesus, Del,” Henry said. “I trusted you.”
“You still can,” Patterson told him urgently. “I’m the one fighting for you! Let me call you on another line.”
There was a moment of silence that Patterson believed was a lot like the very last second of a hundred-foot fall, just before the impact.
“604-555-0131. You have thirty seconds,” Henry said and broke the connection.
Patterson looked around desperately for someone he could borrow a phone from but the hallway that had been full of kids only a moment ago was deserted now. Where the hell had they all gone?
As if on cue, a couple of girls came out of a nearby ladies’ room, whispering to each other and giggling.
Patterson hurried toward them, taking out his wallet. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks for your phone for five minutes.”
The girls looked at each other, then at him. They were dressed in what Patterson supposed was the height of teenage chic and made up to an extent that was practically kabuki, but he could see they were wary. They’d probably been warned about strange men offering them gifts or money. But they weren’t on the street and he wasn’t asking them to get into his car, he just wanted to borrow a phone. If neither of them said yes, he’d have to goddam mug them. Wouldn’t the principal love that?
Finally, the taller one nodd
ed. Patterson paid her, grabbed the phone, and moved away from the girls as he began dialing frantically.
“You can start with whose idea it was to send a team to Agent Zakarewski’s apartment,” Henry said as soon as he answered “Was that necessary?”
“Also not my call,” Patterson assured him. “She’s working for the inspector general, not me. Is she with you?”
“Yeah,” Henry said. “Not voluntarily.”
Patterson looked around. The girls stood a little ways up the hall whispering to each other. No doubt they could hear every word he said. Kids had ears like bats, especially when it came to things you didn’t want them to hear.
“Listen,” he said, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. “This isn’t something I want to say over a phone—I’m at my kid’s goddam school.”
“Del!” Henry snapped. “What the hell is all this?”
Patterson took a breath. “We have a… problem here.” He lowered his voice and cupped his hand around the phone. “Gemini.”
The silence on the other end was deafening.
“Your old friend,” Patterson went on after a moment, “working with Janet Lassiter and her people. I can’t stop them.”
“What about Dormov?” Henry said. “Did he have something to do with Gemini? You remember Dormov? The guy I popped on the train because you told me he was a bio-fucking-terrorist. Was he working for Gemini?”
Patterson leaned against a row of lockers and closed his eyes. Now what was he supposed to say—that he’d been completely bamboozled by Janet Lassiter? It was true but Patterson knew how it was going to sound. Maybe if he apologized for not knowing he had been a sock puppet for Verris’s sock puppet?
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, Patterson thought. Saving the world in the service of your country was supposed to be a clean job. The agency was supposed to be the good guy. He glanced up the hallway at the girls. They were smirking at him now. He felt like telling them they had a bright future as Real Housewives. Except they’d probably like that.