by L. T. Ryan
Her instinct was to run, get a car, get out of town.
“What should we do?” she said.
“Only thing we can do. Get on the train.” He pointed ahead. The train nestled up next to the platform like a fiberglass and steel serpent stretched out on the ground. “They won’t do anything inside there.”
“They could arrest us.”
Spiers looked at her, then over his shoulder. “These aren’t the kind of agents that arrest people, Clarissa. Now come on, we best get on that train.”
She couldn’t ignore the feeling eating away at her. “This is a bad idea, Spiers.”
He ignored her. His hand clamped down around her wrist and jerked her forward. Heads turned and eyes focused on them. A few people whispered to one another. A big guy in a baseball cap and t-shirt with cut-off sleeves started toward them. Clarissa spotted the tattoo on his upper left arm. A shield with a sword through the middle of it. A snake wrapped around the sword. Growing up with a father who commanded Special Forces soldiers, she’d seen plenty of similar tattoos.
Spiers stopped, angled his body toward the guy, shook his head. The big guy froze for a moment, then stepped back.
They weaved through the crowd. Spiers made effective use of his shoulder when people refused to move out of the way. Clarissa kept pace with Spiers and he eased up on her wrist. They reached the train. The first three cars were full.
“Let’s go to the back,” Spiers said.
Clarissa wasn’t sure where they’d be safest, if they could be safe at all. At least in the last car the men would be forced to face them head on. If one approached from the back, he had no tactical fall back option other than suicide.
The crowd thinned the further away from the front they got. They quickened their pace to a jog. Spiers had let go of her wrist by this point. Clarissa was all-in and he must have been able to tell. They reached the final car. Clarissa boarded first. Speirs followed right behind her. Too close behind. He placed his hand on her behind. She looked back at him, fire in her eyes.
He threw his hands up in the air and said, “Sorry! Just trying to get us on board.”
She continued up the steps, stopped and turned. Spiers hadn’t climbed up yet. He stood half in, half out, like pictures she’d seen of trains in India, so crowded that some people rode hundreds of miles clinging to the handlebars at the edge of the cars. Spiers stared over his right shoulder.
“Do you see them?” she said.
He flung himself forward and up the stairs. Stopped in front of her. Said, “Maybe they weren’t after you.”
Clarissa turned, took a deep breath, shook her hands. The car was about one-third full. The rear seats were empty. She walked to the back and sat down with her back against the side wall. The vinyl seat felt cool on her flushed skin. Soon enough she’d stick to the material if they didn’t turn on the air conditioning.
Spiers collapsed on the seat next to her. His head fell backward. His Adam’s apple bounced up and down a couple times.
Two figures outside the train caught her eye. Two men, dark suits, dark skin, bulges on their hips.
“They’re out there,” she said.
“Dammit,” he said.
The men stopped. One pointed inside the train car.
“Here.” Spiers tossed her his cell phone. “When my associate calls, you find out where to meet the women and you take care of them. OK?”
Clarissa heard his words, nodded. She kept her eyes focused on the two men outside the train.
“Wait, what?” she said.
“You heard me,” he said.
“They’re not here for me. They want you.”
He nodded, said nothing.
The agents approached the car. One forced the door open. They climbed the stairs. Clarissa slumped in her seat. Spiers moved across to the bench that faced Clarissa, sat down with his back to the men.
The train’s air brakes hissed. The door closed again. The journey was about to start. She looked across at Spiers. He lifted his chin from his chest and met her gaze.
One of the men looked right at Clarissa. He said something to his partner, too low for Clarissa to hear. She closed her eyes, balled her hands into tight fists. Unarmed, she wouldn’t have much choice if they asked her to get up. She could fight, but they’d end it with a bullet. She could only assume that Spiers handing her his cell phone meant that they weren’t after her. He was their target. Why, though? Was his work in France unsanctioned? The political backlash could be huge if so.
“Vous là-bas, ne se déplacent pas.”
Clarissa translated the words. You there, don’t move.
Every muscle in her body tightened.
“I didn’t do it! Let me go!”
She opened her eyes. The agents dragged a petite dark-haired woman out of her seat. The lady thrashed around at first, then her body went slack. The tips of her toes grazed the floor, her worn out soles were the last thing Clarissa saw before the woman disappeared from sight.
Spiers exhaled loudly.
Clarissa looked at him and mouthed the words, “What the hell?”
He shrugged, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his left hand. She noticed that he held his pistol in his right hand. Spiers had no intention of going with the men. That’s why he handed her the phone. He planned to take them out and must have figured that one of the agents might land a shot in the process.
Spiers rose, crossed the aisle and retook his seat next to Clarissa.
“Gets the heart going, don’t it,” he said.
She nodded. Her heart had finally calmed down to a cool one hundred beats a minute and she was able to breathe somewhat normally again. Sometimes she doubted that she was cut out for the spy game.
“I know. Me, too,” Spiers said as if he read her mind. He glanced at her trembling hands. He held out his right hand, now sans weapon. It shook uncontrollably. “Adrenaline. That’s all.”
The doors shut tight. The brakes hissed again. The train rolled forward.
“Two and half hours till Brussels,” he said.
Episode 13
CHAPTER 27
The Cadillac rolled to a stop next to the police station. The building was small, square, made from brick. Bear glanced at the black lettering above the double glass door. He didn’t bother to read it. What did it matter? They were at a stoplight in a small town two hours away from the motel, and had nine more hours to drive.
Back at the motel, they hung back until the cops left. One of them had made the trip up to the crime scene. The cop snapped a couple of pictures, then went back down to the parking lot. After twenty minutes of waiting, the cops took off, and Bear and Mandy hurried to the Caddy and found the highway and headed east. The only drawback was that the police had his name. There was little they could do with that, though.
The light turned green. Bear dropped his heavy foot on the accelerator. Mandy made a soft whimpering sound. Bear glanced over. The cracked window allowed enough air in to lift her blond hair up and whip it against the cream colored leather seat. The girl breathed slowly, deeply. Her exhales were sometimes audible amid the wind rush and jazz playing over the radio. Bear had been amazed that he found a station that played something other than country music.
They passed an exit sign for I-75 south. It said one hundred miles to Atlanta. He thought about taking the exit and flying out of Hartsfield-Owen. He knew he could get a direct flight to London from there. The only problem was he didn’t have any solid contacts in the Atlanta area. At least none that could produce two false identities in a matter of minutes instead of days.
So they drove. The sun traveled from high in the sky to deep in the west. Mandy woke up as the final rays of deep pinkish-red reflected off the rear-view mirror.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Close to Virginia,” Bear said.
“Are we going back to D.C.?”
“Maybe.”
Bear hadn’t decided whether they’d fly directly out of D.C. or c
atch a flight to New York or Boston and fly from there. He often wondered if Boston was a safer airport for him to use. He’d spent very little time there, despite its close proximity to New York.
His cell phone vibrated on the dash. He grabbed it, checked the caller ID. The number was not familiar. Bear answered anyway.
“Bear, this is Brandon. I have some information for you.”
“Give me a minute.” Bear set the phone in his lap. He angled the Cadillac toward the fast approaching exit. Immediately following the exit was a gas station. He pulled in and parked close to the convenience store.
“I’m hungry,” Mandy said.
Bear handed her a twenty and told her to get him a Coke Zero.
“OK,” Bear said. “Talk.”
“Seven months ago Jack got into a tangle in Monte Carlo with a billionaire named Thornton Walloway.”
“OK.” Bear recalled Jack mentioning it.
“Thornton Walloway is dead. Two days ago he was alive. They found him buried under a pile of wood and garbage in an abandoned warehouse in London.”
“They think Jack did it?”
“I’m looking at it like the man had a beef with Jack. He’s alive before Jack gets to London. He’s dead a day or two later. But the consensus is that Jack didn’t do it. They tell me that they think he was being targeted as well. For some reason, he didn’t show up to the site of the hit. Another guy did. They found him next to Walloway’s body.”
“So you think the other guy was supposed to be the shooter? Who was he? And if Jack didn’t pull the trigger, who did?”
“Working on that. No ID found on the guy. Neither of them, actually. Just empty wallets. Thornton was easy for them to spot. He’s kind of well known, mostly for being a prick. But this other guy is a bit of an enigma. And it doesn’t help that half his face is missing.”
Bear scanned the empty parking lot, said nothing.
“Where are you now?”
“Outside of Johnson City, Tennessee.”
“Perfect. I got a partner in Greensboro, North Carolina. Full service stop, man. He can hook you up with IDs, passports, cash, credit cards. Hell, if you got a hankering for Twinkies, he’s got cases of them in his garage. Only damn place you can find them anymore. He’ll take care of your car, and we can get you on a flight out of Raleigh.”
Bear thought about it while drumming the tips of his thick fingers on the hood of the Caddy.
“Which international terminal do you prefer, Atlanta or D.C.?” Brandon said.
“Atlanta. Less of a headache.”
Brandon laughed. “If you say so, man.”
Bear said nothing.
“OK, listen up. You’re gonna hop on 26 East, then 40 East. He’s a mile off the interstate. Should take you about three hours. I’ll call in two and three-quarters with directions.”
“Why not give them to me now?”
“You know better than to ask that, Bear.”
He did. Giving too many details at this point put both parties at risk if someone monitored the line.
“All right, Brandon. We’ll start heading…” Bear stopped, looked at the phone’s display. Brandon had already hung up. “Asshole.”
“Always with the language.”
He turned and saw Mandy standing there, half his size and holding out a sweating bottle of Coke Zero. He twisted the cap and took a long pull from the bottle, enjoyed the burning sensation of the carbonated beverage flowing down his throat.
He gassed up the Caddy, then hit the road. They took 26 East, which really took them five degrees east of straight south, then merged onto 40 East in Asheville, North Carolina. Despite the dark, Bear knew they were in beautiful country.
The Blue Ridge Mountains had been one of his favorite areas as a kid. Every summer he and his father would take a fishing and hunting trip there. They’d hike for a week in, then a week out. He learned a lot during that time. How to hunt. How to field dress a deer. How to survive in the wilderness. He also discovered that despite his father’s silent and rugged exterior, the man had a gentle soul. Bear wondered for a minute what his life would have been like if his father hadn’t been killed when Bear was sixteen years old. Maybe he wouldn’t have dropped out of school. Maybe he would have played football in the SEC. Maybe he wouldn’t have joined the Marines.
“What are you smiling at?”
He glanced over at Mandy.
Maybe I wouldn’t have met her. Nothing in my life is worth fixing if that’d be the result.
CHAPTER 28
Jack waited for two hours. The groans and creaks of settling wood often interrupted the silence in the house. He learned to tune the noises out. He watched the camera feeds. A few cars passed by out front. Rabbits and squirrels scurried in and out of the woods. The wind blew the swings in the backyard back and forth, the seat turning and the chains twisting from time to time.
No one came. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe they had figured Jack was onto them and he and Dottie and Leon would be prepared. Dottie had resources. She could enlist enough former agents and former SAS to make a decent security team. They had to know that.
So Jack reached out to an old contact who told him Mason Sutton’s home address. Jack considered returning to the hotel a few miles away. The Fiat was parked there. Having a car would make the trip easier. In the end, the risk outweighed the reward of driving around in the cramped vehicle. They’d found the first hotel in London and all he’d had was a reservation there. Jack didn’t doubt they knew of the hotel he actually stayed in.
He left the house, walked a mile, found a main road and caught the bus into London. The bus entered an area heavy with foot traffic. Jack got off there, hailed a cab. The taxi took him to Sutherland Road, north of the M4 highway. From there, Jack walked two blocks east, then two blocks south. He turned east again on Gordon Road. He passed by an area that was residential on one side of the street, industrial on the other. A large warehouse took up half the block. Puffs of steam rose from its roof.
His shadow stretched out along the sidewalk in front of him. Behind him, the sun hovered low in the western sky. The orange tint made the homes in the area look older than he assumed they were.
Twenty minutes after starting his trek on Gordon, Jack stood across the street from Mason’s house. The homes in the area looked like they cost a pretty penny, or pound, Jack figured. He knew that, like U.S. intelligence jobs, MI5 paid well. But well enough to afford a home like the one he was looking at? Jack doubted it.
More proof the man was on the payroll of a billionaire.
There was no point in being clandestine. Jack wanted to attack, drive fear into the man. He crossed the street, took the steps leading to the front door two at a time. He knocked with his left, grabbed the handle of his pistol with his right. If Mason made an aggressive move, Jack would be ready to strike. Thirty seconds passed with no answer. He knocked again. A minute went by, still no answer. He reached out and grabbed the door handle. Unlocked. He turned the knob and pushed the door open.
“Hello?” he called out.
No response.
“Mason? You here?” He didn’t bother to disguise his voice. His British accent was awful. He knew it. Any American accent he used would be pointless. Mason would know it was him.
Again, no response.
Jack used his foot to push the door open. It glided smoothly without a sound. Well-oiled or fairly new, he guessed. The heavy odor of potpourri wafted through the open doorway. Jack stepped inside and used the heel of the same foot to kick the door closed. Then he called out once again and received no response.
He stood in a ten by ten foyer. In front of him, a set of stairs led up to the second floor. Next to the stairs, a hall. To his left, a wall. To his right, the dining room. Jack turned right. The dining room led to a large kitchen with slate floors, granite counter tops and updated appliances. Everything was clean, sleek and modern. Clearly missing any feminine touch. The sink was placed against the back wall. Above it, a wind
ow. Jack leaned over the faucet and looked out at the backyard. There were no trees or bushes or flowers, only green grass. Unnaturally so, thought Jack. He wondered if it was fake.
Before exiting the kitchen, he noticed a set of chef knives, ranging in length from eight to twelve inches. They looked fancy. Jack had seen knives like that sell for as much as five hundred dollars each.
He continued through the living room. More modern furniture, leather chairs and metal tables, and a flat panel mounted to the wall. All wires were hidden. He expected nothing less.
He returned to the front of the house and started up the stairs. Halfway up, he heard voices outside the front door. Jack froze. He reached for his handgun and then let his hand fall to his side. His leg shielded his weapon.
Outside the house, a man and a woman shared a laugh. High and low. Deep and light. They mixed together to form the sound of a couple in love.
The home lacks a feminine touch.
One of them knocked on the door.
Jack exhaled. Couldn’t be Mason. What man would knock on his own front door? That didn’t mean Jack could relax, though. One of them might be Mason’s partner or maybe even another agent. Cops hung out with cops, soldiers with soldiers, firemen with other firemen. It worked the same way for spies.
Jack ascended the stairs backward, one step at a time. He stopped near the top. He knew he’d be out of view should they try the door handle like he had.
They didn’t though. Their chatter faded.
Jack considered returning downstairs to lock the door. He decided against it, though. Mason was the kind of man who would know whether or not he locked his door when he left in the morning. Returning home to find it otherwise would set off alarms in the guy’s head. Jack needed the element of surprise should Mason show up.
The upstairs consisted of a large open area near the stairs, and a closed door at the far end. The open area had a beat up leather couch and a computer desk. Neither new, neither modern. A hardback book missing its dust jacket was perched on the middle of the couch. Jack went to the desk. He opened the drawers, noted that they were filled with files labeled with simple words like snow and dog and misfits. Code, Jack thought.