Shadow Code (A John Kovac Thriller Book 2) (John Kovac Thriller Series)

by David Caris

  It was Tall Man, asking if any of them had seen a young woman.

  She was tall, he explained, slim, with an Austrian accent.

  She felt her heart thud in an odd way she hadn’t experienced before, like it had lost track of its usual reliable rhythm and needed to catch up by adding a little extra effort to the next beat.

  What he didn’t say was “zip-tied”. He was assuming that she had dealt with that problem by now, which was true. She had. She had found half a broken hacksaw blade out here in the sawdust and dirt underneath her feet. She had found it even before the sun came up, and had then found herself with all the time in the world to put it to use. That’s what happened when you climbed a back fence under cover of darkness and decided to stay put in a dusty woodshed for twelve hours. Time slowed to a crawl.

  Her greatest regret was throwing away the phone. What the fuck had she been thinking? She hadn’t dared go back for it, which meant she was out here now with no way to contact anyone. She heard Tall Man joking with the boozy lunch people. Then he was saying goodbye, and a few minutes after that she watched him get back in his car and leave.

  She was torn. She needed help. He was going to find her here. There were only so many places to hide, and he would soon circle back to this one. Worst case scenario, he’d return after this place shut, when there was no one around.

  She came back to a sequence of thoughts she’d run through countless times in the past few hours.

  Walk out, introduce yourself, ask for a phone.

  He couldn’t hurt her if she was with others. Yvette had died because she was alone, out in the middle of nowhere.

  Anna took a deep breath.

  C’mon, just get it over with.

  She stepped out of the shed and crossed the mown lawn, noticing a few rabbits at the edge of the garden. They were tame and didn’t even stop chewing as they watched her. But everyone at the table stopped talking all at once, a lot more disturbed by her emergence than the rabbits were. They were startled. A young woman had just stepped out of the woodshed, a woman they hadn’t seen enter the woodshed.

  ‘Can I borrow a phone?’ she asked.

  No one offered her a phone, even though she could see three of them lying on the table.

  ‘That one possibly?’ she asked, pointing to the closest.

  The woman who owned it asked what she wanted it for.

  ‘I have to call for a ride,’ Anna lied. She could see they had all picked up on her accent now, and they were matching her to Tall Man’s description. One of them said: ‘The man just left a moment ago.’

  ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘Can I borrow a phone?’ She pointed to the closest of the three phones again, and this time the woman picked it up, unlocked it and handed it to her.

  ‘Just for a phone call?’ she confirmed.

  ‘That’s right. Thank you. I’ll use it here and have it back to you in a moment.’

  Anna turned away and walked towards the back of the garden, and she heard them discussing her emergence from the woodshed in subdued tones.

  She kept walking, invading the rabbit’s territory and sending them hopping off, then searched Curzon’s London office. Unsurprisingly, there was no phone number for the company’s resident in-house assassin, John Kovac, nor for the CEO. There was just a generic customer enquiries number.

  Anna considered ringing the police. She glanced back at the table of heavy drinkers, and saw that the woman who owned the phone was watching her with an eagle eye. Someone stood and went into the bar area, as if to alert the manager to the girl who just stepped out of his woodshed. ‘Shit,’ she said under her breath.

  She didn’t ring the police. Something still told her they couldn’t help. She rang Curzon’s generic help number and – after enduring an automated service designed to stand between her and a real human being – finally got through to someone who didn’t sound like AI. She said: ‘This is an emergency. You need to put me through to Megan Curzon, please.’

  ‘CEO of the company, Megan Curzon?’ the man asked wearily, as if it was just his luck to get all the weirdos.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.’

  He didn’t sound sorry.

  Or even interested.

  Anna glanced back at the woman whose phone she was using. She had stood, and she now took a few steps towards Anna, but paused – as if unsure how pushy and rude she had a right to be. Eventually she just glanced at her watch, then stood there, making her point in a manner she perhaps thought was subtle.

  Anna turned away again and took a deep breath. She said: ‘But you could get a message through to someone who could get a message to Megan, right? And if I stayed on this line, it would reach her or it wouldn’t.’

  ‘I don’t think –’

  ‘Listen to me, she wants to speak to me. And if you don’t at least try, there are going to be questions about why you didn’t.’

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said. ‘If I could do this, what would the message be?’

  ‘Tell her it’s Kovac calling, an emergency.’

  ‘Kovac?’

  ‘Correct. Kovac. K-O-V-A-C.’

  He sounded something closer to curious now.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’m a close friend of Megan’s, and I’ve lost my phone. I’m in danger, calling from a stranger’s phone, and I don’t know Megan’s number. I never memorized it. But if you pass my message on to someone who can reach her, I swear, she’ll take the call.’

  ‘From you, her friend Kovac.’ He sounded skeptical still.

  ‘It’s my surname, okay. I – listen, it won’t make sense to you, but it will to her. Trust me, she’ll thank you for this.’

  He sighed. ‘Please hold.’

  The music was straight-out-of-the-box elevator pop.

  Anna risked a looked back at the phone owner, who was still staring at her and now actually tapping one foot.

  The music droned on.

  One minute, two, three.

  The woman acquired reinforcements. Another two men, one of whom Anna knew from hours of observation was the publican. He said. ‘Miss, I made the call for you, you can return this lady’s phone. The man you’re trying to contact, he left his number. He’s coming to get you. Are you okay? He said you were diabetic. He said you might be confused. Were you in the shed?’

  Anna heard a click. At first her heart sank. She assumed it was the call dropping out, with her lost in the system somewhere and dumped by some kind of computerized timeout. But then a sharp, confident voice said: ‘Nixon Hsu speaking.’

  Chapter 70

  Luther watched the helicopter land in the hills high to the north of him, then depart again.

  Kovac and Bishop, he hoped.

  If it was, they had arrived with mere minutes to spare.

  He approached the bridge as if it were a gangplank. He was out of breath and dizzy again, but this time it wasn’t stress. It had been a long and – for him anyway – grueling uphill walk to get here. Worse still, just looking up from underneath this bridge had triggered vertigo, worsening his balance yet more.

  The San Pablo bridge was a pedestrian bridge made of iron. It was red in color, and it spanned a steep ravine containing the Huécar River. The bridge provided a good view of medieval Cuenca and its famous hanging houses, which looked as if they had been built into the cliff face above and around the bridge. And of course, the bridge provided an equally good view of the sheer, rocky slopes of the ravine underneath.

  The ravine ran north and south, but to the north it dog-legged east. This was where Luther had just seen the helicopter. He had positioned Kovac and Bishop right where the dog-leg began, on the far side of the ravine. He looked for them now, but couldn’t see much. The area was shrouded in a faint white fog, which turned to a near-solid white down at the river below.

  Luther wasn’t here to sightsee. The vertigo redoubled but he forced himself to step out onto the first planks. He didn’t like heights, and this br
idge was narrow and a little shaky, with a particularly low railing.

  He wondered again why Bibi had selected this location. He had read up on it after she suggested it. The bridge had been built in the early 1900s and was approximately three hundred feet end to end. Consisting entirely of rectilinear lines, the boardwalk he was on rested on thin columns in the same red steel, though the lower sections had been filled with stone for extra stability.

  Luther took a few more steps, thinking of the stone bridge from the 1500s which this one had replaced. That bridge had collapsed.

  He risked a look down through cracks in the boards. He didn’t know exactly how high up he was, but it had to be a few hundred feet at least. Even at the center, with water below him, there was no way he would survive a fall.

  He forced himself to walk to the middle, one shaky step at a time, then stood looking skyward, refusing to look down. He looked north, wondering if the fog was too thick, if he had moved out into position too fast… Had he given Kovac and Bishop the right proximity and enough time? Probably not, but there was no sign of Dauguet yet. They could adapt.

  Several tourists drifted across, speaking a mix of languages. One couple asked him to photograph them, and he obliged without smiling or saying a word. A few minutes passed, then Luther noticed two men, one at each end of the bridge. They were staring at him, and not in a friendly way. One was in a jacket, the other looked like a retired boxer.

  Luther made a snap decision. This was a trap of some kind, and that being the case he was reverting to the original plan. He took out his phone and texted Bishop. “Men at either end of bridge.” He pressed send, but then typed furiously with both thumbs again. “If this goes bad, neutralize all threats. Van H, Anna, Lewis.” He pressed send, and looked up to see Bibi. She had appeared at the eastern end of the bridge. The same side he had come from. She stepped onto the first boards just as he had done.

  The man who was guarding the entrance to this eastern end of the bridge gave her a subtle nod, but didn’t fall in behind her. He stayed where he was.

  Bibi walked with a limp, and Luther saw that she had one arm in a cast and sling. She had a phone in her good hand, which was pressed to her ear.

  The man behind her sneered at Luther.

  Luther stared back at him, figuring he was Malone, but he didn’t risk a reply sneer. It would only fail him right now and reveal his fear.

  When Bibi arrived within earshot, she called out: ‘Shall we switch the phones off, Luther? I’m here to negotiate.’

  Luther studied her face. There was a smugness to her, something in her eyes he didn’t like. As if she knew something he didn’t, something crucial. He wondered if she had Megan. He had left Megan at the hotel. He had traveled to Cuenca without bodyguards, not wanting to add to his list of witnesses, to the list of names he or Megan might one day be required to “clean up”. But he regretted that now. It had meant leaving Megan on her own.

  But what other choice was there? He didn’t want her here with him, and she certainly didn’t belong with Kovac or Bishop.

  Bibi put her phone away and took out a metallic wand. She held it aloft, as if asking permission. Luther nodded.

  Bibi closed the last of the distance between them, glancing north into the fog, as if she knew Kovac and Bishop were up there somewhere. She waved the wand over him, presumably looking for weapons or bugs – or perhaps both. She found nothing because Luther hadn’t brought anything. Aside from a sniper positioned to the north of the ravine, he was here in good faith.

  A pair of young Asian tourists glanced nervously at Bibi as she scanned Luther again. They started towards the western end of the bridge with new speed and purpose.

  Bibi put the wand away. She put her good hand out, requesting Luther’s phone without saying a word.

  He glanced down at it. No reply from Bishop.

  He switched it off, then gave it to her. She didn’t look at it. In one effortless movement, she reached out and dropped it into the ravine.

  Luther watched through a gap in the boards underfoot, glimpsing it, seeing it spinning down into the Huécar River far below. He didn’t see the splash and though he listened for it, he heard nothing.

  ‘Why did you come?’ Bibi asked.

  ‘You asked me to.’

  ‘I tell you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?’

  The question was rhetorical, albeit unnervingly pertinent. Luther didn’t answer. ‘What exactly do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘This. A conversation, a meeting. Face to face at last.’ She smiled. ‘The truth is, this is all over. It’s finished. You’re finished, your company’s finished. I’m taking your life and your life’s work. And your legacy on top of that.’ She leaned out and looked down into the water, then glanced back at him. ‘You don’t look surprised, Luther. You knew all that, and you came out here anyway?’

  He gave a shrug.

  ‘Brave,’ she said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Actually, in the end, it wasn’t all that difficult. Peng helped. I thought he would rob me of my chance, but in the end he just softened you up. Then you chose Kapoor to help you investigate other ways to make money from DELPHI and I knew I had you. I approached Kapoor, filled him in on your past indiscretions, and he agreed to work for me. He used DELPHI to locate four men with the skills I needed. I planted them in Curzon, and pop – your entire company suddenly blossomed like a beautiful flower.’ She cast her good arm across the cliffs above them, with their hanging houses. ‘Limitless access.’

  ‘And Van Heythuysen?’ Luther asked, guessing. ‘He helped Kapoor?’

  ‘Correct. They both reported to Malone.’ She pointed to the boxer back at the eastern end of the bridge.

  Luther saw Bibi was enjoying explaining it all. There was real pride here.

  No. More than that. She was gloating, in her way.

  ‘The four horsemen of the apocalypse,’ she said, more to herself than him.

  He didn’t take the bait. He knew she would explain the comment, and she did.

  ‘Sims, my black horse, helping me with a digital plague, a famine of sorts. Sims made hacking you all too easy. Krathwohl, atop his red horse, bringing violence and chaos. There’s footage of him saying he bombed the soccer stadium with the help of your man, Kovac. And then my Frenchmen, who are right now delivering widespread death and conquest. Malone killed the first two when they were no longer of use, and soon enough he’ll kill the remaining two.’

  Luther noted her confidence. So she believed the BoNT attack in Paris was still on.

  He felt optimism for the first time since arriving at this bridge.

  Chapter 71

  There was nothing to like about their new perch. It was up above a few tourist attractions, and getting into position from the helicopter without drawing attention to themselves hadn’t been easy. They had needed to keep well back, which made the distant bridge a challenging target.

  ‘Maybe a body shot,’ Bishop said, sounding unconvinced as he slid down into position behind the rifle. They had decided Bishop would take the shot, freeing Kovac up to move down towards the bridge as a close-quarters Plan B.

  Kovac’s phone buzzed – or really, Megan’s phone. It had been doing this on and off all morning, getting on Bishop’s nerves. Kovac fished it out. It was Megan’s personal assistant, Nixon Hsu. Kovac ignored it, continuing to scan the bridge.

  He could see people on it, but no real detail. Bishop put his eye to the scope. ‘King at the center, in conversation with our HVT,’ he said. ‘Two other targets either end of the bridge. Both male.’

  Nixon Hsu rang again.

  Kovac ignored it, but the buzzing seemed to last an eternity.

  ‘Shut that off,’ Bishop grumbled.

  Kovac was trying, but short of shutting the phone down it seemed determined to go on buzzing. Some kind of setting Megan had, he figured, to ensure she didn’t miss calls when on silent mode.

  It finally stopped. Only to immediately start up a
gain.

  ‘Shut it off, I said.’

  Kovac decided to answer and tell Nixon Hsu it was a bad time right now and could he kindly fuck off. He clicked the button and brought the phone up to his ear, and Hsu said: ‘Megan, I’ve got a Ms. Kovac on the line. I recognized the name and thought you might want to take this one. Hello, Ms. Kovac, you’re speaking with Megan now. Go ahead.’

  Kovac blinked in confusion, then heard a voice he knew.

  ‘You don’t know me, my name is –’

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Kovac?’

  Hsu said: ‘Who’s this? Why isn’t…?’

  ‘Get off the line, Hsu,’ Kovac said. He waited a moment, then said ‘Hsu?’

  ‘He’s gone, I think.’

  ‘Anna, what’s going on?’

  Kovac saw Bishop look up at him warily.

  ‘Someone’s trying to kill me,’ she said. ‘Some tall guy from Curzon.’

  ‘What does she want?’ Bishop asked.

  Kovac thought quickly and said: ‘Stay here. Take the shot if you have to, but you’re going to attract a lot of attention if you do. Exfil won’t be easy.’

  ‘No shit. Where are you going?’

  ‘Down to the bridge, like we planned.’

  ‘Kovac? Kovac? What is this?’

  But Kovac was already up and moving, the phone still to his ear. ‘Okay, talk to me Anna. Stay calm and start at the beginning. What happened?’

  ‘Bishop grabbed me. He brought me down to some house at the coast and locked me up. Somewhere with cliffs. Yvette and I almost walked straight off them in the dark. We –’

  ‘Yvette Morris?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yvette’s with you now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’s Yvette?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Kovac stopped walking, stunned. ‘How?’

  ‘He shot her?’

  ‘Who shot her? Bishop?’

  ‘No. The tall man. And now he’s searching for me. I’m scared, Kovac.’