by Titan Books
“Mr. Brogan, you are the best at what you do,” Yuri said earnestly. “But you’re still a man. You get tired, you have doubts, fears—you feel pain, even remorse because you have a conscience. This makes you sub-optimal as a soldier. You’re less than perfect and so less profitable.” Yuri leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “Clayton Verris is playing God with DNA. He must be stopped.”
Henry sat in silence. A few days ago, he had understood the basic structure of the world. It was a messy, unhappy, dangerous place and he had chosen to spend his life working to alleviate those things, or at the very least, to keep them from worsening.
But then he had come home from Liège and retired and suddenly the world was upside down and inside out, and everything he knew was wrong. He’d killed a good man and his younger self was trying to kill him to cover it up—sent by the bastard who’d tricked him into killing a good guy in the first place. Henry wondered what Verris had told his clone. Dormov’s spiked file had said he was a bioterrorist. Verris had probably told the clone Henry ate young children alive. Hell, in his early twenties, he might have bought that himself.
Henry was quiet for a long moment, letting the other man’s words sink in. “If this is as dangerous as you say, why not just send a missile? Take out the whole lab?”
Yuri gave a single, humorless laugh. “That is what we are doing—except you are the missile! I wish you luck!”
The Russian stood up, stretched, and tightened the belt on his bathrobe. “And now, you’ll have to excuse me, I must go kill a Ukrainian oligarch.” He looked up and down the empty hallway. “Just kidding!” he added loudly, then winked at Henry as he drew his finger across his own throat, mouthing, No joke.
Yuri turned to leave, then stopped. “One last thing I meant to tell you. Your escape from your home two days ago? Amazing work! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!”
Henry’s jaw dropped. “How do you even know about that?”
Yuri shrugged good-naturedly. “What can I say? I’m a super-fan.” He ambled up the hallway, his flip-flops smacking against the soles of his feet.
Damn, Henry thought, staring after him; the Ukrainians just couldn’t get a break, either.
* * *
Danny and Baron were waiting for him on the balcony. They listened intently as he told them what he’d found out from Yuri.
“Do you believe him?” Danny asked when he’d finished.
Henry nodded. “I’d trust him more than anyone at the agency right now.”
“Well that’s sobering,” Baron said. “You guys up for defecting?”
Danny elbowed him in the ribs. “We just have to find that kid.” Her eyes were large and serious. “You aren’t going to be safe until we do, Henry. None of us are.”
Who are you calling a kid? Henry barely managed not to say it aloud. “Okay, we find him. Then what?”
“You talk to him,” Danny replied, as if this should have been obvious. “He doesn’t know what he is; he doesn’t know who you are to him. Maybe you’ll get through.”
“Seriously?” Henry gave a short, hard laugh. “If a fifty-year-old version of you suddenly shows up saying you’re her clone, that would calm you down?”
“Fifty-one,” Baron put in.
Henry turned to give him a death-ray glare.
“Just sayin’.” Baron shrugged.
Danny touched Henry’s arm gently. “Maybe he’s the mirror you don’t want to look into, Henry. But he’s our best shot at getting to Verris.”
Henry couldn’t decide whether he wanted to hug her or shake her till her eyeballs rattled. Then he grinned as a better idea occurred to him.
“Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Where?” Baron asked.
Henry looked down at himself. He was still in the bathrobe and trunks. “Anywhere we don’t have to take off our clothes.”
CHAPTER 15
“Janet Lassiter?”
Lassiter was sitting at her usual table in the Copper Ground coffee shop, staring out at Savannah’s early morning traffic while she waited for her usual order, which seemed to be taking more than the usual amount of time today. She turned to find a tall, dark-skinned man who looked vaguely familiar standing over her. He wore a narrow blue bike helmet, a tight, colorful shirt, dark shorts, and had a worn canvas bag slung across the front of his body.
Of course he looked familiar, Lassiter realized; he was a bike messenger, most likely the one who almost ran her down every other day.
“Who wants to know?” she asked, knowing full well she wasn’t going to like the answer. No one she had any use for would trust anything important to a bike messenger.
He pulled a cell phone out of his bag. “I’ve got a message for you, ma’am, from a man who transferred a thousand dollars into my Feathercoin account just to make sure you got it.”
“Does this person have a name?” Lassiter asked archly.
“His name is, ‘Thousand dollars into my Feathercoin account.’”
Lassiter considered asking what he called the guy for short but she didn’t feel like giving the smartass another straight line. Instead, she fixed him with a cold stare. Maybe she should shoot the messenger, she thought. A slug in the knee from the .38 in her purse wouldn’t kill him but it would hurt like hell, force him to find a less obnoxious line of work, and teach him not to get mouthy with short, older women. Then she motioned for him to go ahead.
The messenger cleared his throat and began reading from the cell phone screen. “‘Hello, Janet. Before you try to kill me again, consider this…’”
In her peripheral vision, Lassiter could see people turning to look at her with unabashed curiosity about the killer drinking coffee among them. It took an enormous amount of effort not to show any reaction herself. You couldn’t let the enemy see they’d had any effect on you or you’d be at their mercy. They were always trying to knock you off-balance, make you look crazy or stupid or even scary.
“‘Your home address is 1362 Carrol Grove. The security alarm code is 1776,’” the messenger continued. More people were staring, craning their necks, even standing up to get a look. Dammit, now she was going to have to move, Lassiter fumed. And she would have to change the security code while she packed.
“‘You awaken at 6:12 every morning and stop for your decaf soy latte with an extra shot by 6:42,’” declaimed the messenger, obviously enjoying himself. “‘Every night, you stand in front of your huge living room window sipping a Jose Cuervo margarita with Forensic Files on the TV.’”
Lassiter thought he had paused for breath but he tapped the screen and put the phone back in his bag. Apparently that was the message in its entirety. Lassiter felt let down in spite of herself; anticlimax wasn’t like Henry.
The people around her, however, seemed to think the show wasn’t over. Lassiter imagined kneecapping the messenger and maybe the wide-eyed couple at the table on her left, but then her own cell rang. She touched the Bluetooth clipped to her ear.
“This is Lassiter,” she said briskly.
“There are shooters at your ten and two,” Henry Brogan said. “Get up out of that chair and you will be AMF’ed.” He almost sounded polite, as if he were trying to be helpful.
Lassiter’s head snapped towards the window, scanning the buildings at ten o’clock and two o’clock. They were mostly high-rises with plenty of glass that reflected the bright morning sunlight, making it impossible for her to see anything. There might have been no one out there—or there might have been a whole platoon keeping her covered from multiple floors. She thought the former was more likely but she had known Henry Brogan for too long to risk calling his bluff. If she died today, it wasn’t going to be in a goddam coffee shop with a smartass bike messenger and a bunch of goddam over-caffeinated hipsters watching as she breathed her last.
“If I thought the world needed another me, I would have had a kid,” Henry said.
Lassiter wet her lips. “That program pre-dates my arrival
at the agency. You must know that,” she said in a stiff, professional tone. If she sounded boring, her audience would lose interest.
Henry laughed. “Oh, that’s a perfect DIA answer. Always cover your ass, deny everything, and if something goes wrong, duck!”
He said the last word so loudly, Lassiter did exactly that, putting her hands over her face to protect it from flying glass. Except there was no glass, no gunshots from ten o’clock or two o’clock, just the bike messenger staring at her like she’d gone crazy and a café full of people who probably thought they were watching a reality show.
“Now tip the nice bike guy,” Henry ordered her in a condescending tone.
Lassiter sat up, smoothing her hair and squaring her shoulders. She pointed an index finger at the bike messenger. “You—” She lowered the finger ninety degrees and aimed it at the front door. “Can go.”
The messenger gave her a parting sneer and Lassiter did likewise, listening to the tik-tik-tik sound of his bike shoes on the floor. If he had really thought he was going to get a tip after that shit-show, maybe she should have kneecapped him, just as a life lesson.
But the good news was, the rest of the coffee shop rabble took the messenger’s departure to mean the show really was over now and turned their attention back to their own phones or tablets or laptops. Except for the wide-eyed couple at the table on her left; they seemed to be hoping for a better finale.
Lassiter turned in her chair, pointedly giving her back to them and everyone else, mostly so she could search the buildings and the street for sniper rifles. She still didn’t see anything at ten and two, either up high or at ground level. Brogan had to be bluffing, she was almost certain of it, but in this business, you didn’t stay alive by being almost certain.
“I have an agent of yours here with me,” Henry said. “Danielle Zakarewski. She wants to come in.”
“Fine.” Lassiter decided to kneecap Zakarewski just on general principle.
“Like me, she’s a patriot,” Henry went on. “But unlike me, she wants to spend the next couple decades scoring touchdowns for you assholes. Her safety is non-negotiable. Remember I’ve got you covered. Ten and two, Janet.”
Lassiter was vaguely aware of a barista calling out something about a decaf soy latte with an extra shot for Janet but it was just background noise.
“You cannot—” she started.
“The only person I’ll hand her off to is the person you sent after me in Cartagena,” Henry said, talking over her. “So don’t bother sending anyone else.”
“Oh, a family reunion?” Lassiter gave a short humorless laugh. “How sweet.”
“Keep it up, Janet,” Henry said, “and you’ll be the first person I ever killed for free. How soon can you get him to Budapest?”
Lassiter gave another short laugh. “How about five minutes? Does that work for you?”
There was a long moment of silence. Lassiter smiled with grim satisfaction. The smug bastard hadn’t seen that one coming.
“Good,” Henry said. She could practically hear him pretending she hadn’t just blindsided him. “She’ll be at the courtyard of the Vajdahunyad Castle at midnight tonight. Enjoy your latte.” He hung up on her.
Oh, she was going to enjoy her latte, all right—she’d enjoy it a hell of a lot more than Henry would enjoy what happened next, Lassiter fumed, putting her phone away. In fact, she should have been enjoying her goddam latte right now—where the hell was it? She looked over at the pick-up counter, frowning like a thunderstorm. If that barista had forgotten her order, Lassiter was going to rain so much hell down on her she’d be scarred for life.
* * *
Henry sat back in his chair. Danny half-expected to see steam coming out of his ears. Baron signaled their waiter for another round of espressos but she wasn’t sure Henry really needed more caffeine. On the other hand, he had set the meet for midnight and they needed to stay awake even though they were all still jet-lagged. Well, she was, anyway; Baron was such an easy-going, roll-withthe-punches kind of guy, she wasn’t sure he even got headaches. As for Henry, she was starting to think he was Superman’s secret identity.
Baron nudged her elbow. “In case you’re wondering, AMF stands for—”
“Adios, motherfucker,” Danny finished for him. “Yeah, I know.”
Both he and Henry stared at her, startled.
“Oh, come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What am I, a five-year-old?”
Henry shook his head. “A better question is, how the hell did he know I was here?”
CHAPTER 16
Vajdahunyad Castle was in the middle of the City Park of Budapest, which according to Danny’s phone was the oldest urban green space in Europe. Or was it the world? Henry had forgotten already. He did remember Danny telling him that Vajdahunyad Castle wasn’t just one big fortress like San Felipe Castle back in Cartagena but actually a complex comprising several buildings. Henry had chosen it as a meeting place because both park and castle were located in the middle of Budapest. He thought Danny would be much safer there. If Junior tried to abduct her, the city’s narrow streets would slow him down. Unless, of course, he went vaulting over the rooftops instead, although Henry didn’t think he’d try that with Danny. If he did, Henry was sure Junior was more likely to end up splattered on the sidewalk than she was.
But now as he sat in the car with Danny a few hundred yards from the entrance to the Vajdahunyad Castle complex, Henry was beginning to think this wasn’t such a good idea after all. It was all he could do not to keep himself from calling the whole thing off and taking her as far away from Junior as possible.
There was no question that she was a tough professional; he’d seen her in action and he knew she was anything but helpless. Or a coward, although Henry thought that a good part of her courage was down to youth and inexperience—she didn’t know how bad the bad guys could be. Of course, if she stuck with the DIA she was going to find out; she’d encounter things that most civilians never had to deal with, never even imagined. Right now, he wished more than anything that Danny Zakarewski was a civilian.
He could see how nervous she was; it made her look even younger than her years, which in turn made it harder for him to justify sending her to meet a trained killer without so much as a nail file for defense. His instincts were telling him to get her out of there, to protect her, not expose her to danger.
If Danny had known what he was thinking she would have accused him of sexism and ageism and who knew how many other -isms—capitalism, anarchism, antidisestablishmentarianism—all while going upside his head. So much had changed since he’d started out in the DIA as a young, strong, capable agent whose career was on the rise. The world was so different these days that sometimes he wasn’t sure what planet he was on. And now Danny was the young, strong, capable agent whose career was on the rise, while he was getting older.
Or trying to.
Danny took hold of the car door handle, then paused. “This is going to work, right?”
“Yep,” Henry assured her, hoping he wasn’t lying.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“He’s not exactly me but I know his taste,” he replied.
Danny turned to get out of the car, then turned back to him again. “Wait a second. You’re attracted to me?”
I talk too goddam much, Henry thought unhappily. “Me, personally, right now? Hell no,” he said. “But a younger, less mature version of me? Probably.”
She laughed and he laughed with her, as if they weren’t both scared shitless. He couldn’t let her do this, he thought, and opened his mouth to tell her it was off.
“Henry?” she said.
His name hung in the air between them and he could hear all the unspoken questions she wanted to ask:
Do I have a hope in hell of getting out of this alive? Do you? If we don’t, is this something worth dying for? Is anything worth dying for? Is this really what our lives have been leading up to and is it right, is it good? Are we good? Will
it even make a difference? Will anyone care what happens to us?
Even after twenty-five years, he still knew all those questions by heart. With any luck, she would get more answers than he had.
All of this ran through his mind in less time than it took for him to smooth an errant strand of dark hair back from her face. “When I came to get you in Georgia,” he said quietly, “I didn’t have to think about it. It was instinct, wanting to keep you safe. He’s got that, too—he’s not going to hurt you.”
He could sense her seizing on that and holding it close, willing it to be true.
“And hurting you doesn’t help him,” he added. “What he wants is me. In his sights.”
Danny took a deep steadying breath, got out of the car, and walked toward the entrance to Vajdahunyad Castle without looking back.
Henry stared after her, all his instincts still screaming for him to call it off.
* * *
Danny walked across the footbridge at an even pace, not slow, not fast, toward the Gatehouse Tower of Vajdahunyad Castle. The outside of the castle was surrounded by very bright, yellow-gold lights; although the illumination spilled over a bit on the inside, the place was still very dark and shadowy. The gate was up, its sharp points hanging over the entrance. She was pretty sure it was normally lowered after hours but Henry’s clone was clever enough to fix it so she wouldn’t have to scale the tower to get in. And the open gate absolutely did not in any way remind her of an animal’s gaping jaws, not even a little.
On the other side of the bridge, the paving went from smooth to brick. Danny still didn’t hurry, except as she passed under the raised gate; she did a quick little trot, so as not to be under those pointed metal bars for more than a second.
Which was silly—why would the clone agree to meet here only to impale her with a metal gate? Henry’s words came back to her: Hurting you doesn’t help him. What he wants is me. In his sights. She really hoped Henry was right, at least about the first part. And anyway, clone-Henry would have orders from Janet Lassiter to take her back to the States safe and sound. If he were going to disobey those orders and kill her, he could have done it when she was on the footbridge. Or he could shoot her right now.