by Abbott, Jeff
The dart pierced the cabbie’s throat and he sagged against the steering wheel. The car lurched forward, crumpling into a parked van. Luke yanked a dart from the scarf; it had gotten stuck in the thick knitting. The girlfriend’s impulsive gift had saved him.
Jesus, Luke thought. He was waiting for me. Cut ahead of the line to make sure I was his fare. He knew I was at that subway station. How?
The cabbie kept breathing in shallow panting gasps. Drugged.
Luke fumbled with the dart at the guy’s throat; his fingertip touched a leather string. He pulled on the cord and a small medal of an armed angel crept out of the cabbie’s shirt.
Saint Michael. Like his, like Drummond’s.
Was the angel a sign of Quicksilver? Drummond had the medal and was clearly a member. But if the cabbie was from Quicksilver, why would he attack him?
Luke picked up the dart gun and the cell phone the guy had used. He grabbed the cabbie’s wallet. He got out of the cab and ran. Three streets over, he opened the cell phone and looked in the call log. The number was one he recognized, one seared in his memory.
Jane. The kidnapping mastermind.
Never mind Quicksilver, never mind the Night Road, never mind the fifty million. Jane was the woman who had orchestrated all the chaos. The woman responsible for the hellish chessboard his life had turned into, she had sent this cabbie after him.
If the cabbie was part of Quicksilver, then he must be a traitor, working with Jane.
That was going to be her mistake, Luke thought. Because she’d just given him a way to track her down.
Pawn takes queen, he thought, as he ran away from the cab.
Luke knew he needed to avoid any place with security cameras - maybe the surveillance in the metro had helped the cabbie find him at Les Invalides, he thought - and so he ran until he found a library. But even the library had a camera near the door. He ducked his head, averted his gaze from its unblinking view.
He opened the cabbie’s wallet. A wad of euros, a driver’s license, a gray blank card. Like an electronic passkey.
Now he just needed to find an address to match the passkey.
He sat at a computer terminal. He entered in the web address he’d seen on Eric’s laptop in the old house: the Night Road’s online meeting room. He got to the television fan site, entered Eric’s password. It still worked; someone at the Night Road was being sloppy, not eliminating his account yet.
Or maybe they were just busy getting ready for Hellfire, whatever horror it was, and the thought chilled him.
He signed in as Eric and he started a new discussion with a request for help: I have a cell phone that I need to track. Immediately. Help please. And he typed in Jane’s cell phone number.
He waited. He clicked on a posting about a video link and to his horror the video started with a close-up of a guy he recognized as the man in Houston who’d been standing at the intersection waiting for Allen Clifford. The cheap jacket, the scarred cheeks - Luke remembered him running away in the dim streetlight in Houston. His eyes were wide and a razor began a slow draw across his throat.
Luke turned off the video before anyone around him could see the execution. He felt sick. That’s what they’ll do to you if they catch you. That’s what they’ll do to Aubrey and Dad.
He jumped to an English-language news site, and the shooting at the Tower was the top story. No suspects caught yet.
He went back to the Night Road site, hoping against hope. A reply waited for him. I have your phone info. What do you have to trade?
Inspiration struck and he wrote the kind of lie he thought would appeal: I have a nice set of bank accounts, established, ready for cleaned money.
He waited. It took an hour and he fought his impatience. Fine, the answer came in a private message to Eric’s account. The phone was registered to a Jane Mornay, she had a Paris address near Saint Germain, on a street called rue de l’Abbe-Gregoire. He signed off without posting the promised set of accounts. Betraying the guy who’d traced the phone probably meant his password would be invalidated and he couldn’t use the site again, but it didn’t matter. He would have the woman behind all his misery, the woman who had stolen his life.
And he would be closer to the truth about his father, his life, Hellfire. He thought Jane was at the nexus of all these events, an unseen hand, one he was about to drag into the sunlight.
He walked out the door, shielding his face again at the library’s doors. He was afraid every camera was an eye watching him.
50
Mouser kicked Aubrey and Warren Dantry out of the back of the van, sending them sprawling at Henry Shawcross’s feet. The packed dirt of the old, vast barn smelled of horse, of hay. Aubrey blinked. Shafts of light made yellow bars on the brown of the floor. She saw a BMW parked behind Henry. She tried to make herself small, curling into a ball. One of the men had hit her after she’d spoiled his shot at Luke, kept a gun on her head to force Warren Dantry to sit still. She looked up at Mouser, Henry, the two remaining thugs. She realized no one was looking at her. They were all looking at her fellow prisoner.
Warren Dantry rolled onto his back and Henry stared. Mouser said, ‘You recognize—’ and Henry raised a hand to silence him.
‘You were on the plane. You died,’ Henry said.
‘Hello, asshole,’ Warren said.
Mouser saw Henry’s hands start to tremble, clenching into fists.
‘Luke is gone,’ Mouser said. ‘No way he’s an amateur. I think he’s been working for his dad this whole time. You’ve been played for the biggest effing fool on the planet, Henry.’
‘No,’ Henry said. ‘No, no. Not possible.’
‘No to what?’ Warren said. ‘No that I’m here or no to Luke having handed you your ass on a plate?’
‘Leave us,’ Henry said. ‘I want to talk to the walking dead alone.’
‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘You’re blinded, Henry. You’re blinded by your affection for your stepson. It ends now. You are incapable of calling the shots. You’ve put our money, our whole network, and Hellfire at risk. I’m in command now.’
Henry slid him a look of utter poison. ‘No, you’re not.’
‘Jesus, Henry, you really can’t run anything,’ Warren Dantry said. ‘Even when you’re supposedly the smartest guy in the room.’
‘Shut up. Shut up, shut up, you’re dead.’ Steel coated his tone, but underneath everyone could see a murderous rage.
‘Academics must take the evidence before their eyes into account,’ Warren said.
Henry seized the bound Warren and half-dragged him into an unused room off the main barn floor. He slammed the door closed. He shoved Warren to the floor.
‘What is Quicksilver?’ Henry said.
‘It’s your death,’ Warren said. ‘Unlike mine, yours will be for real.’
Henry studied Warren’s face. ‘Whoever they are, they must have paid you a fortune to abandon your wife and child. I would have enjoyed your funeral except I could see the agony Barbara and Luke suffered. I don’t think you gave them a moment’s thought.’ He knelt close to him. ‘You think I’ve lost? You lost, you heartless bastard. You lost the last ten years.’
‘You had to take over my life because you never could have built one for yourself.’
‘I loved being married to Barbara, loved being Luke’s father. And I was better at it than you were.’
‘Please. You destroyed it all. Barbara knew what you were, what you were becoming.’
Henry staggered on his feet.
‘I’m guessing she confronted you about your illicit activities while you were on your drive that day. I knew her better than anyone else. She wouldn’t have been able to contain her outrage. She called you out, didn’t she?’
I know what you are, Henry. You can’t lie it away. Her words, coated with venom. Him trying to explain, convince her she was wrong. Grabbing at the wheel, begging her to pull over. I want you out of the house, Henry, out of our lives. Gone forever. The car wheeling loose, the guardrail sudd
enly crunching and giving way, the car tumbling through air.
‘And you killed her.’
‘It was an accident. Just a stupid accident.’
‘There are no accidents around you, Henry. You’re the Black Death in a bad suit.’
Henry kicked Warren in the stomach. Hard. ‘Shut up.’ Then he kicked him in the face. Blood burst from Warren’s mouth, a chip of tooth pebbled across the packed dirt. Then Henry leaned down, grabbed Warren’s head, and started pounding it against the ground.
‘You’re dead, you’re dead, I’m going to make you dead again,’ Henry screamed.
‘Let him go.’ Mouser stood in the doorway, holding Aubrey. He held a gun aimed at Henry’s head.
‘I told you to leave us alone,’ Henry said.
‘We need him alive.’ Mouser guided Aubrey to a corner chair. ‘For information, or for ransom.’
‘No, he has to die, now.’
‘Go back to being dead?’ Mouser pushed the gun against Henry’s skin, between the nose and the upper lip. ‘Listen to yourself. We need him.’
Henry slapped the gun away. ‘Why? I can tell you what Quicksilver is if this bastard’s behind it. It’s a group of eggheads, with a bit of muscle thrown in, to evaluate threats and fight them off the books. Just like the Book Club. He took it over from me, he stole all the credit.’
‘Quicksilver is far more than the Book Club ever was. Just like Luke is far more of a man than you’ll ever be.’ Warren spat out another sliver of tooth and blood.
‘You,’ Mouser said to Warren. ‘How much do you know about us? Specifics.’
Warren hesitated and Mouser aimed his gun at Aubrey’s head. ‘Talk or she dies.’
‘You’re going to kill us anyway.’ Warren looked at Aubrey, sadness in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Aubrey, but it’s true.’
‘I know.’ Aubrey closed her eyes. As if waiting for the bullet to end the nightmare.
‘But I think if you want this money you’re after so bad, you won’t shoot her. Luke might still be willing to make an exchange.’
Mouser weighed his words. ‘Oh, I want to shoot her. Badly. Just because Luke killed my woman.’ Mouser twisted one of Aubrey’s breasts until she gasped in pain. He gave her a rough, angry kiss on the cheek as she tried to wrench her face away. But then he turned the gun back toward Warren. ‘You work for the Beast, right.’
‘The Beast?’
‘The United States government.’
‘I don’t work for the government. Not any more.’ Warren raised an eyebrow. ‘I mean, Henry takes the government’s money at his think-tank. I don’t.’ He said this like it was a sign of moral superiority.
‘How did you survive?’ Mouser said.
‘Don’t you have other things to worry about?’ Warren said.
‘Answer me. You should have died on the Book Club flight.’
‘I missed my plane.’
Mouser licked his upper lip. ‘Those two guys outside. They used to commit gang rapes in Bosnia when they wouldn’t get answers from pissant villagers. They’d love a few hours with Aubrey.’
Warren said, ‘I didn’t get on the plane at the last minute.’
‘Why?’
‘I got a phone call before the flight took off. I got a job offer I had to give immediate and private consideration. I told my friends I’d fly down later and meet them. And when the plane crashed, I knew it wasn’t an accident. My new employers thought it best to hide me. For me, and for my family. So they wouldn’t be targets.’
‘You’re a cold bastard,’ Aubrey said. ‘Luke worshipped you. You don’t deserve his love.’
‘My enemies thinking I was dead protected Luke. Until now.’ Warren stared at Henry. ‘You tried to make him into you. You failed.’
‘Shush,’ Mouser said. ‘You say you’re not part of the Beast. Only the Beast can mount a group that’s so well funded.’
‘Night Road is an army but isn’t part of any government, either,’ Warren said. ‘We’re opposite sides of the same coin.’
Mouser frowned.
‘You’re non-state, so are we,’ Warren said. ‘Welcome to the future of warfare.’
‘What, you’re a bunch of well-heeled international vigilantes? Please.’
‘We don’t have to follow the laws. Same as you. Scary for you, a level playing field.’
‘Shut up, Warren.’ Henry seemed calmer, collected. He turned to Mouser. ‘He won’t tell us specifics. Maybe if Luke were threatened. But he won’t talk. But he might break if tortured.’
Mouser leaned down into Warren’s face and shouted, ‘What do you know about Hellfire?’
‘You’re not going to be able to pull your big attack off,’ Warren said.
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
Warren closed his mouth.
‘You’re a lot like your son,’ Mouser said.
‘Thank you,’ Warren said.
‘By that, I mean you are too stupid to know when you are in deep trouble. He’s had luck. Yours has run out.’
‘If you kill him, you won’t get the money.’
‘You see, that was wishful thinking on Henry’s part. I think we get a man inside Eric’s bank, we hack our way in, and we track where he hid the money. That’s a hell of a lot simpler than trying to find Luke, who may or may not know where the money is.’
‘Luke doesn’t know,’ Aubrey practically spat the words at Mouser. ‘You might as well not spend your time chasing him. Eric was too smart for you. You killed him in cold blood but he made sure you’re not ever going to get that money. He hid it too well.’
Mouser kicked her in the chest and she went down, gasping. He turned back to Warren. ‘Where will your son go?’
‘His only option is the police.’
‘I don’t think he will,’ Mouser said. ‘I think he’ll look for Quicksilver to help him. We are interested in them, and in one other person. A British woman who calls herself Jane.’
‘I don’t know a Jane,’ Warren said.
‘I think you must,’ Mouser said. ‘She’s pitted us against each other. She’s responsible for the deaths of your man in Houston and she’s tried to steal our money. We have a common enemy in her.’
Warren stared silently, his lips pressed into a tight line.
‘You don’t know her,’ Mouser said.
‘No. No idea who she is.’
‘I think you don’t know her by the name Jane, but maybe by another name. Maybe Jane’s just her kidnapper’s name. I think maybe she’s screwed you over,’ Mouser said.
Warren remained silent, but Aubrey could see a flash of painful realization on his face.
‘Is your son working for you? Was he a spy for Quicksilver?’ Mouser asked.
Warren measured the tension in the air. He watched Aubrey staring at him. ‘Yes. Yes, Luke works for Quicksilver.’
‘Goddamn it, he’s lying, to make me look bad,’ Henry said.
‘You’re doing that perfectly well yourself,’ Mouser said. ‘I’m not blind to the fact this man wants to see you stripped of your power.’
‘I want to see him stripped of his life,’ Warren said.
‘But I’m not blind to the one fact you both ignore. The catalyst to this entire situation is Luke. He is the one and only person with a personal link to both Quicksilver and to the Night Road. This Jane bitch knew it. She’s not part of the Night Road. So I think she must know about Quicksilver.’ Mouser crossed his arms.
Henry and Warren glared at each other.
Mouser went to the desk, opened the laptop. ‘I left Eric’s account alive on the Night Road website to see if they would come back. It was accessed once, after Eric was dead, and I figured it had to be Luke or Aubrey. Someone using Eric’s account just posted a request to trace a phone.’
‘Luke’s looking for someone,’ Henry said. ‘Where is he? Can you find where he logged in from?’
Mouser studied the screen. ‘He’s gotten a promise to respond from a member. Call the member,
Henry. Tell him to give us the information on who’s registered to that phone but well before he passes it to Luke. I want to know where they are, and who owns that property. I think Luke will go there.’
‘You want to set a trap,’ Henry said. ‘Let me go, let me talk to him.’
‘No. Much more than a trap. This ends now, Henry. There are other ways to get our money back.’ Mouser glanced at Aubrey. ‘She was his woman. She can get us inside that bank. She knows Eric’s friends there, his coworkers. We can get inside, we can track where he moved the money.’
The answer from the hacker came quickly; Mouser read it off the screen: ‘Registered to a Jane Mornay, at this address. On rue de l’Abbe-Gregoire.’
‘Send me. If Luke is there, I can talk to him.’
‘Grow up. You cannot have it both ways. Didn’t your mama ever teach you that?’ Mouser clicked open his phone, began to dial. ‘I’ve got friends here beyond you, Henry, people I’ve traded information with before. It’s time for a very big gun. Then we go back home and we launch Hellfire, Henry, now. The money is not more important than the mission. We can get more money to fund the Night Road.’
‘We can’t. You don’t know who our financiers are, they’ll kill us for losing the fifty million.’
‘Not us. You.’
Henry stared.
‘I do know who’s sending us the fifty million. Did you think I wouldn’t check you out when you approached me about the Night Road, you idiot? I have my own contacts, Henry. When I explain your incompetence, your lack of focus, the prince will give us fresh cash. He has plenty and he’ll pay plenty to fund us for years to come. And if you argue with me, I will shoot you to death. I’m taking command. Fight me and I’ll kill you.’
‘What the hell are you planning?’ Henry’s voice rose.
‘Two birds,’ Mouser said. ‘One stone.’
51
Rue du l’Abbe-Gregoire was a quiet street and Luke used the cabbie’s passkey to open the ground-level door of the building. He walked in.
The lion’s den. The truth behind his kidnapping. The truth behind his past.