by Abbott, Jeff
Luke studied Drummond’s face. ‘I will.’ Seeing the twin of his own medal around Drummond’s neck filled his head with a hundred questions. ‘My dad …’
‘Would order you to listen to me and to do as I say. Please. For your own safety, I cannot explain more. Now. Help me the only way you can. Tell me everything about the Night Road.’
‘I guess I should start with the most important part. The fifty million dollars.’
Drummond raised an eyebrow. Luke could see he hated to be surprised. But he was.
‘The fifty million what?’ Drummond asked.
38
Henry Shawcross leaned forward across the table and said, ‘Quicksilver has my son. We are going to get him back.’
Mouser and Snow glanced at each other. A thin haze of smoke from Mouser’s cigarette hung above the hotel room table; they sat at a window, but Snow insisted the curtains be kept drawn. She said satellites could spy on them. Henry thought she might be right. He studied their faces; they looked haggard, tired. They could not be. He needed them sharp.
‘There was a police incident report filed, shots fired near the air park where Luke’s plane landed, a man running into traffic, causing a couple of accidents. Quicksilver grabbed them.’ He’d driven up from Washington late last night when the news came from Mouser that Luke was headed for New York.
‘Who the hell are these Quicksilver clowns?’ Mouser asked.
Henry waved the smoke away from his face. ‘I gave some of my think-tank clients a security exercise to perform, to find every record affecting Quicksilver Risk and my old friend Drummond and Clifford, who are not much more than hired guns. Quicksilver is a small risk management consulting group, but I’m sure it’s just a front. But they have also bought, sometimes through front companies, buildings around the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They have accounts in banks around the world, again, under a set of holding company names.’
‘Are they CIA?’
‘Drummond used to be State Department. I don’t think it’s State. But I’m not sure why the CIA or FBI would go to this trouble to hide, unless they’re simply breaking the law and avoiding congressional oversight.’
‘You want us to attack a building,’ Snow said.
‘I live for this,’ Mouser said.
‘It’s not a typical building. There are no tenants. They will have a skeleton staff. All you have to do is get Luke back. Kill everyone else, I don’t care.’
‘And this is to save Luke? You know we’re just going to have to kill him, Henry, face facts. He’s not coming over to your side.’
‘I want to talk with him. Hustle him into a van and bring him to me.’
‘Face facts,’ Mouser repeated. ‘You’re deluded.’
‘I am in command here, Mouser. Not you.’
Mouser said, ‘For the moment.’
Henry ignored him. ‘Quicksilver knows of us, thanks to Bridger. So we have to decapitate them before they can act.’
‘Just the two of us and you?’ Snow said.
‘I have some important Hellfire work to do. I’ve arranged for some Night Road help for the two of you.’ He looked at Snow. ‘And, Snow, we need to move your bombs. I need to know you didn’t leave booby traps around your storage space in Houston.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re not there to handle the distribution. I’ve gotten a Night Road team to go to Houston to transport the bombs to a new location.’
‘Where are you taking the bombs?’ Snow asked.
‘That’s need to know. You’re about to go on a job where you could be captured.’
‘No traps,’ Snow said after a moment. ‘Take good care of my babies.’
‘You’re running this show,’ Mouser said, ‘but it’s your fault we’re in the hole we’re in.’
‘Your continued failure to capture Luke is our hole,’ Henry said, ‘but I’ve gotten you some more muscle.’
Sweet Bird was not a man who enjoyed waiting for other people, but impatience got you killed these days. Mr Shawcross had offered him enough arms to eliminate every rival gang in Queens and New Jersey. The Albanians, the leftover Italians, the mean Russians and the Asian tongs. He couldn’t say no to such a deal. Even if the risk was high. His grandmother, who never lived to see him become a leading kingpin and had hoped he would become a physician, had drilled that lesson into his head, by soft cajole and hard belt: take your opportunities, don’t waste them.
So when Shawcross called him early that morning, he’d listened to the delicious sound of a rare chance to make a powerful friend.
I may need you to assault a building.
A building? You’re kidding me.
I don’t like the sound of hesitation.
Ain’t hesitating, I’m listening. You probably don’t like the sound of some idiot leaping before he looks.
You do this, you’ll be one of the most powerful men in New York by the end of the day. I have a lot of work for you. Mr Shawcross’s voice had carried a low gleam over the phone. And Mr Shawcross always delivered. In the past two months he’d sent Sweet Bird real nice Belgian rifles to use, trained his men, helped them take down rival drug lords and a bothersome DA. Given him army-quality grenades to eliminate a couple of informants, right in their cars, no need to bother with unreliable handmade pipe bombs. And, from the Night Road website, handed him a couple of small insurance agencies that sold cheap policies, made it easy to shine and polish and legitimize the cocaine money.
He was waiting for Shawcross’s two people at a back room at one of the agencies, a few blocks from Greenwich Village. He waited with five of his regular guys, one who was Sweet Bird’s cousin, a violent gangster wannabe Luke had found two months before on a board discussing urban warfare, the others hardened street fighters. He watched as they double-checked their weapons. He had one of the nice Belgian rifles and he ran his hands over the cool, fine metal. He had modified a raincoat so he could carry the rifle in it unseen. In the background CNN played, talking about the spate of attacks across America, a rapid rising of violence that was undercutting Americans’ confidence to simply go about their lives.
Two minutes later there was a knock on the door, and he opened it to find a lean, muscled guy with a crew cut and a pretty but scowling woman who had a scary mop of white hair. They gave the right password.
‘Mouser. Snow. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I ain’t never met anyone from Night Road face to face.’
‘You understand the plan as presented?’ Mouser said. ‘And you understand I’m in charge.’
‘It’s not rocket science,’ Sweet Bird said. ‘Let’s go get it done.’
They left, in two cars. Mouser drove. Snow said, ‘Did you tell that guy you want Luke Dantry dead if he’s there?’
‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘You and I will handle it. I don’t trust anyone else.’
‘He’s Night Road, he’s okay.’
‘Nobody’s okay. I thought Henry was. He’s distracted by his affection for his stepson. It’s become a problem. If Luke’s at this building - he stops being a problem for us.’
39
‘You don’t know about the fifty million dollars,’ Luke said. ‘You have to be kidding.’
Drummond measured his expression, looking for a sign of bluff. ‘No, I don’t.’ His head tilted slightly, as though listening to the soft hiss of the air conditioner. He flicked his glance at the kitchen corner, for the barest of moments. If Luke had not been watching him so closely for his reaction, he wouldn’t have noticed. Luke glanced at the corner as well. He saw a pinpoint hole in the ceiling. A camera, maybe.
He had the sudden sense they were being watched. Maybe his imagination. But the past few days had taught him to trust his instincts.
‘A man as desperate as Eric would have mentioned every asset to win his safety.’ Luke put his gaze back on Drummond’s face. ‘He wouldn’t forget to mention fifty million.’
‘Offering us information on the Night Road would have won him ample
protection. He didn’t have to mention money.’ For the first time Drummond looked shaken. ‘We were working on IDing him from the airport garage video and the speeding ticket video. He contacted me.’
‘Wait - how did Eric know how to find you?’
‘That was a mystery. But he knew Quicksilver was more than a risk company. He wanted protection and he gave me enough info on Night Road for me to know it was legit. I hadn’t even met him face to face yet.’
Luke realized Drummond had no reason to lie. ‘Then Eric was going to keep the money for himself. You pick his brain, you hide him away where the Night Road can’t kill him, and then he vanishes, with fifty million stashed away and waiting for him, and neither the Night Road nor Quicksilver gets the cash. You’re too busy waging war against each other to care what he does.’ It was a simple but brilliant plan.
‘Where is this money?’ Drummond said.
‘I thought you said it didn’t matter.’
‘Money is lifeblood for terrorism. Where is it, Luke? We’ve got to secure that money before the Night Road uses it.’
‘Tell me who Quicksilver is and I’ll give you the fifty million.’
Drummond paused, as though holding in his anger, and then Luke saw it: a minuscule earpiece in Drummond’s ear. ‘Okay,’ Drummond said. ‘You give me the location of the money and I’ll answer your questions.’
‘I go first.’ Luke watched the corner of the kitchen where Drummond had seemed to pause. ‘Are we being watched? Or listened to?’
‘Does it matter?’ Which to Luke meant yes.
He took a deep breath and then asked again: ‘I want to know what the connection is between you and my stepfather and my dad. Why do you have a Saint Michael medal like mine?’
Drummond tented fingers under his chin, frowned.
‘That connection is the key to why I was targeted. You’re on one side of this fight, Henry on another, and you’re both part of my father’s past.’
Drummond was silent for ten long seconds. ‘Seeing you brings back a lot of memories. I carried you once on my shoulders. I remember when you were a small kid, I saw you a few times at your parents’ house. There were three of us at the beginning. Me. Your stepfather. And your father.’
The words unnerved Luke. His father had led an entirely secret life, and the foundation of what Luke had always believed about his dad seemed to shift under his feet. A wave of dizziness hit him and passed. ‘The beginning, you said. Beginning of this Book Club?’
‘Book Club was a joke name, because it was mostly professors and writers, but it stuck. The State Department recruited your stepdad, then your dad. And your father found several others, including me. To work with a secret group, unofficial, to approach and solve the world’s problems in new and fresh ways. What do you do if there’s a foreign leader who becomes an enemy? You can’t assassinate him, that’s always a temporary solution. But maybe, the Book Club would say, we find an unsuspected way to erode the guy’s power among his base. Perhaps involving subtle economic changes that hurt his biggest backers, or political pressure that he doesn’t see as coming from the West. It’s more effective than assassination. But it takes imagination, and then some muscle and well-applied arm-twisting to make the situation happen. That’s just an example. The professors were the thinkers; me and Clifford, and sometimes the professors, carried out the missions. We had a few successes. Sometimes subtlety is greater than force.’ He gestured at the photos. ‘We had a few failures. Subtlety doesn’t always work.’
‘I’m having trouble picturing this.’ Luke shook his head. ‘My dad was a history professor. Tweed jackets, and obscure books crammed in every space, and chalk dusting his fingers. Now you say he was some sort of counter-terrorist?’
‘One of the best. You don’t realize how good they were.’
Luke sat back down. It felt like the air had vanished from the room. ‘That’s why he had so many visiting professorships. Europe, Asia, Africa. It wasn’t about being a teacher, or research. It was about … spying.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did my mother know?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t lie. Did she know?’
‘No,’ Drummond said after a moment. ‘Most of us weren’t married. Only your dad was. He kept it from her. Orders.’
Orders. His father had been an operative for a secret group. How many secrets had been hidden behind Warren Dantry’s smile? Tears pricked Luke’s eyes and he blinked them back. ‘And my stepfather?’
‘The same.’
He glanced around the room, trying to see where the other cameras might be. It was strange how claustrophobic you could feel in a room full of windows.
‘Yes. But of course, when your father and everyone on the plane died, the Book Club died. He’d wanted to start a new group in the weeks before; the Book Club had problems. Your father and your stepfather disagreed fairly often. Henry wanted to lobby for more money, more attention inside State; your dad wanted to keep a low profile, just get the work done.’
‘And Quicksilver is the heir apparent to the Book Club.’
Drummond rubbed his face. ‘Yes, we started Quicksilver. Your father died before he could see it take shape. Quicksilver grew out of our earlier work, a new way to fight the bad guys, to stop terrorism before it starts, to bring new strategies to the problem.’
A new way. He wondered where the money came from, for this building, for the security, for the private jet, for all the resources that Quicksilver had. ‘Are you still part of the State Department?’
He gave a jagged laugh, shook his head. ‘We started Quicksilver, and in a wonderful symmetry, you helped start the Night Road.’ Sweat was on Drummond’s face, as though the silent listeners would be measuring him, watching him.
The phone began to ring, a soft, repetitive warble. Drummond didn’t move.
‘I’m not going to answer it,’ Drummond said. ‘Because I’m going to tell you why I want to keep you safe. Your father saved me once, and I’m repaying the karma best way I can. I’m going to get you out of the way of a war.’
‘War.’
‘There is a war beginning. A secret war.’
The silence hung between them like a mist. ‘You can’t fight a war in secret. People tend to notice armies and bullets and missiles.’ Luke shook his head.
‘That sort of war is dying. This war started a long time ago. Skirmishes, and in both cases each side used governments as their proxies. Their pawns. Influence was their currency, and then there were only two sides, not a thousand like now - and each was able to say that their concerns matched those of their governments. That these interests were aligned, and the governments believed it.’ Drummond sounded for a moment like he couldn’t continue. The phone’s buzzing began again. ‘But - the governments - they didn’t stop 9/11. Or the Bali or Madrid or London or Jordan bombings. Do you know how much they cost?’
‘Thousands of lives.’
‘Yes. Of course, and that’s incalculable, but think: how much they cost? The economic damage. Who suffers economic damage?’
‘Well, everyone.’
‘Everyone?’ Drummond’s voice oozed contempt.
The phone stopped ringing.
‘Okay. Then I guess governments and big companies lost the most. Then it trickles down.’
‘Then it trickles down, Luke. Yes. And after those attacks, we are simply supposed to trust that government will do its job. Protect us. That the various governments of the world, and their multitude of agencies, with their well-intentioned but million moving parts, handcuffed by rules and bureaucracy, will shift into efficiency and suddenly develop all the human capital and infrastructure to’ - he paused - ‘fight and eliminate every shadow and nutcase, every asshole with a laptop and an agenda? You know what kind of people you found for the Night Road. How they can vanish like smoke, how badly they can hurt the world with a small investment and their own fanaticism. The playing field must be even.’ The glare in his eyes grew cold. �
��Now. I am here to protect you. But you give me this fifty million, Luke. You tell me everything you know about Hellfire.’
‘I don’t even know what kind of attack Hellfire is.’ It frightened him that Drummond knew the name. The thought flooded him: what did the Saint Michael’s medal prove? Nothing. Medals could be copied to win trust. Lies could be told. There was nothing to prove what Drummond had said was the truth.
‘Think. It’s coming out of the Night Road; all those thousands of postings you made, you must know what they would target if they made a big hit. What would be their dream attack, one they could actually execute?’
‘They’re already executing attacks.’ Luke paused. ‘But I think these attacks, they’re not Hellfire. Hellfire is bigger. On their website they are chattering about the attacks, but there’s no word on Hellfire. Hellfire has got to be something distinct from this group of small attacks; it’s much more tied to this money they want. It’s not unusual in terrorist psychology to consider smaller jobs as dry runs, or as qualifiers for more dangerous work.’
‘You’re right. As awful as they are, these attacks are too small. Too localized.’ Drummond frowned. ‘Maybe they need that fifty million to finance a huge new series of operations, and you not giving it to us is leaving open the chance that the Night Road will get their hands on the money.’
‘If someone else is listening to or watching us,’ Luke shouted at the ceiling, ‘if they have Aubrey, I want to talk to them. Please.’
Drummond made a choked laugh. ‘You’re a smart kid. You figured it out we were under a camera. I’m pleased.’
The phone began to ring again. Drummond answered it. He listened and then said, ‘For God’s sakes. He gives us what he knows first, then we decide.’
Drummond turned away to go into the other room, as if to finish his discussion.
Luke stood and picked up the chair and the voice on the phone must have warned him because Drummond turned. Luke swung the chair with all his might and it crashed and splintered into Drummond’s head. He didn’t pause. He hit him again and Drummond went down.