“And you would step back into that world for Joe Ledger?”
“No, weren’t you listening?” said Toys, shaking his head slowly. “It’s not for Ledger. I told you, this is for Junie Flynn.”
Church pursed his lips again. “Do you think this is your path to redemption, Mr. Chismer?”
“No,” Toys said flatly. “We both know that I’m past any chance of redemption. So, this isn’t about me. Not sure why you can’t see that. This is all about Junie. She’s worth a hundred of Ledger. She’s better and cleaner than either of us.”
“I won’t argue that,” said Church.
“I want you to put me into play. Put me back in the game and let me help her by doing what I can for the man she—beyond all common effing sense—loves.”
“There is every chance many of your old contacts will never believe you’ve changed sides.”
“So what? Seriously, Church, there is no honor among thieves. It’s all about business, about money. I can make deals that will make people money, and that will erase all past sins.”
“You might find that some people are less forgiving. There are likely old allies of the Seven Kings who might want to nail your hide to the wall.”
Toys gave him a smile that was very much like one of the more poisonous jungle snakes. “Let them try.”
Church was silent for a long time. The aria that had been playing ended, and another began. A moody violin piece, an adagio in E-flat major.
“If you do this,” he said at length, “there may be no turning back. You escaped this war once. You may not be able to do so again.”
“I know the risks. Put me in play.”
Church stood up. “Very well, if you want to risk whatever measure of peace you’ve achieved, then welcome to the war, Mr. Chismer.”
The young man stood up, too. His dour face underwent a slow process of change. The lugubrious mask of grief he’d worn for years seemed to fall away, to be replaced by the smallest of smiles. A cold, sly, unpleasant smile.
“Stop calling me that,” he said. “My name is Toys.”
CHAPTER 49
BLUE DIAMOND TRAINING CAMP
CADDO MILLS, TEXAS
“These are the two men I told you about,” said John Saxon.
They were in a classroom that had been repurposed as an executive office. Top and Bunny stood flanking Saxon, all of them facing a woman behind a big oak desk. Everything in the office was high-end, from the imported Turkish carpets to the display case of bronze sculptures. A brass plate on a block of lignum vitae read Jill Hamilton-Krawczyk. She was a short brunette with a pretty and intelligent face. Her expression had the kind of apparent brightness of spirit that Top thought looked more like an executive in the music or film business. She did not look like the kind of person to be overseeing a training camp for private military contractors. She wore a pendant with an exquisite marquis-cut blue diamond that had to be three carats and was a rich and radiant azure. Small half-carat matching diamonds dangled from her earlobe. Top, who’d once researched that kind of stone when Blue Diamond first came on the DMS radar, estimated that the total value of those gems was north of a million.
She gave them a radiant smile and waved Top and Bunny toward a pair of leather chairs that were soft as butter. Top noted that the chairs were set too low so that the desk was slightly higher than normal, creating a subjective view of the executive being taller and more physically imposing than anyone who came to meet with her. A nice trick. It wasn’t all that different from the trick Colonel Ledger often used—slouching slightly to make himself look shorter, smaller, and slower than he actually was, right before he went apeshit over someone.
Saxon introduced the two recruits. “Anything else I can do for you, HK?”
“Thanks, John,” said the woman to Saxon. There was a quality of dismissal in her tone, and Saxon nodded and left.
When they were alone, HK spent a few moments studying the two men, and they sat in silence, allowing it.
“Mr. Guidry and Mr. Redfield,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Please call me HK.”
“Meetcha,” said Bunny.
“You here to give us some shit about what happened last week?” asked Top.
HK raised her eyebrows. “What? With Sergeant Wilkes? Ha! No. He was a racist, sexist, homophobic piece of shit, and from what John Saxon said in his report, you were within your rights.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” said Bunny.
She gave them both a sunny smile. “He patted me on the ass once. I was planning on having him kneecapped anyway.”
Top made a soft grunting noise and folded his arms.
“Saxon set us up,” said Bunny.
“Well, that’s his job, isn’t it?” she countered. Then she sat back and laced her fingers together on top of the desk. “Look, guys, this isn’t the Cub Scouts. You know what Blue Diamond does or you wouldn’t be here. One of our field scouts pegged you as likely material, and we did a thorough background check on each of you. All the way back to kindergarten. You, Mr. Redfield—”
“Call me Buck.”
“You, Buck, are a bit of a bad boy type,” she continued. “Maybe playing to type? Milking the reputation?”
Bunny said nothing.
“And you, Mr. Guidry,” said HK, “you make a big show of liking to sit racist pricks down on their ass, but I wonder if what you really like is the fight itself.”
“You walking anywhere in the direction of a point?” asked Top.
“Right to it, then … sure. That’s fine,” said HK. “Over the last eight days, you’ve been tested on a lot of different weapons systems, military tactics, and threat assessment capabilities, and you each demonstrated a remarkably wide range of knowledge and comfort.”
“If it goes bang or boom, we know about it,” said Bunny.
“And your unarmed combat skills are several cuts above the norm. On a par with Delta. Which makes me wonder why neither of you were ever recruited by them.”
“I think you know the answer to that,” Top said quietly.
“Because you don’t play well with others except when you want to,” said HK. “And because neither of you is averse to making some unreported money on the side.”
“Times are tough,” said Bunny. “Economy’s in the toilet.”
“Oh, I’m not judging,” HK said brightly. “I’m very much in favor of an entrepreneurial spirit. We are, to be more precise.”
“‘We’ being Blue Diamond?” asked Top.
Her smile changed, became smaller and a bit secretive. “Consider Blue Diamond—at least this division of it—as a talent agency for very specialized services we offer to a variety of clients.”
They said nothing, waiting for the other shoe.
“It’s clear that you two are a cut above the usual herd,” continued HK. “Your aptitude, resourcefulness, and knowledge are top-shelf and, quite frankly, you’re overqualified for the kind of work most of Blue Diamond does.”
“Not much I won’t do for a paycheck and bennies,” said Bunny. “Most employers stop reading when they get to the details of my discharge.”
“We are not most employers,” she said, again flashing that thousand-watt smile. “We are a concierge service that provides top talent to customers who need the very best. And I do mean the best. That is not sales hype, gentlemen. It’s a point of fact. To keep you here at this facility would be a waste of your time and ours.”
“Wait … are you firing us?” asked Bunny.
“Just the opposite. I want to transfer you boys to a different training camp. A place where we work with upper-tier operators like yourselves.”
“This some kind of scam?” asked Top.
“No,” she said, “it’s really not. In fact, I’d like to put you both on a plane this afternoon.”
“To where?” asked Top.
“To meet who?” asked Bunny.
“Where isn’t important. You both have passports? Good. You may need them. As for w
ho … well, let’s just say it’s someone very special.”
CHAPTER 50
IN FLIGHT OVER THE IONIAN SEA
Toys sat on a leather bench seat behind an oak table as the private jet punched through the skies toward Italy.
He had a MindReader Q1 laptop open and was sipping a very good Bloody Mary while reviewing data that Church told him was “eyes only.”
“You’ll have access to the information Bug has been compiling,” Church had told him before the flight. “We have people in the field already looking for Ledger. Violin is out there, along with others from Arklight. And a few of my old friends are keeping their eyes and ears open. Their reports are in the material I’m sharing with you.”
“Have to say,” Toys had told him while they were on the tarmac behind Phoenix House, “I’m surprised you agreed to letting me do this.”
Church had studied him for a long three count before saying, “You’ve had plenty of opportunities to betray my trust. You haven’t. You’ve had opportunities to refuse some of the wet work jobs I’ve sent your way. You did not.”
“What’s that make me? A well-trained spaniel?”
“No,” said Church, offering his hand, “it means that you’re part of the family.”
They shook hands, and Toys had turned away quickly, nearly running to the plane because he absolutely did not want Church to see his expression. To see the shock. To see the tears.
Now he was on his way.
Toys was impressed by how much data had been collected, and he was already seeing some patterns emerge. And it was a rather ugly pattern. Ledger was moving like a plague through the technologies and weapons black markets. Not counting the slaughter in Croatia, Bug estimated that the body count was somewhere around forty.
“Well, mate,” he said to the photo of Joe Ledger on his screen, “you’re throwing a wobbly and no mistake. Bloody hell.”
He finished his drink and hit the bell to call the cabin steward to make another. The steward was a slender young chap with the most beautiful eyes. Toys was the only passenger aboard the jet and liked seeing the way the steward moved. Like a dancer. Very tasty. But, alas, there was no time for recreation. It was a short flight, and once he was on the ground, there would be no time for anything but work.
He gave the lad his very best smile as he accepted the new Bloody Mary, then forced himself to go back to the screen. To the horrors. And to doors Toys was very sure he could open if he applied just the right leverage.
CHAPTER 51
CHAMBLEY-BUSSIÈRES AIR BASE
NEAR METZ, FRANCE
FOUR WEEKS AGO
There are few jobs as deeply tedious as patrol shifts on a military base.
Marcel Chaufour was convinced of that. He’d thought it through over many a long night as he paced along the geometry of his prescribed route. Sometimes he was with another airman, often the lout Anton, who seldom used two words when one would serve, and who smelled of bean farts and cigarettes. Marcel preferred his particular friend, Gerard, who was chatty and funny and actually read, which allowed the two mates to have long, involved conversations about politics—they were both centrists, Marcel leaning left and Gerard tilting right; and books—Gerard preferred contemporary crime writers like Antonin Varenne and Pierre Lemaitre, while Marcel liked the nineteenth-century horror authors such as Petrus Borel, Théophile Gautier, and Guy de Maupassant. They liked the same music—mid-twentieth-century American jazz—but could never agree on poetry, which allowed for some truly satisfying arguments.
Tonight, though, Marcel was walking alone, patrolling in the new captain’s staggered pattern. That meant the sentries were spaced out so that, while there was always someone in line of sight, fewer men could walk a larger grid. More cost-cutting. Which meant hours trapped in his own thoughts. Well-formed opinions are a burden when there is no one to share them with.
The base was a large one and had once been used by the United States Air Force and as a front-line installation during the Cold War. But the Soviets had never tried to march into France, and the Americans left in 1967, the year Marcel’s father was born. Since then, it had been the sole property of the Armée de l’Air, and more recently, much of the base had been redeveloped as a commercial business park. Military staff were reduced constantly, though the place was still technically a military airfield. Sort of. The most exciting thing that happened on the base was the Lorraine Mondial Air Ballons, Europe’s grandest hot air balloon festival. That was only every other year, though, and this wasn’t the year.
And so, Marcel Chaufour was profoundly bored.
What would have been nice would be a transfer to the other team, to the mixed group of airmen and soldiers working underground. One hundred meters below the groundskeeper’s barn and under part of the biomedical research center was the lab. A very secret lab that had no official name and did not, according to the detailed maps of the air base, exist at all.
One of those oh-so-clever hide-in-plain-sight facilities in which the government does all sorts of unspeakable stuff. This one, a close friend had confided in him five pints into a Friday night, had been built by the Agence de l’Innovation de Défense. France’s answer to the American DARPA—Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The people who invented things like the bloody internet, Siri, and GPS. He knew that the French, being much smarter than the Yanks, must be doing something on the level of Star Trek. Not the original series, but something like Discovery or Picard. Sleek and sophisticated, where function is in harmony with form.
That thought pleased him, because it was proof the three semesters at university were not, as his father so often said, wasted.
But he wasn’t on that detail. A place like that was not patrolled by regular airmen like he was. He was not supposed to even be aware of it, and the fact that he did was probably a capital crime.
Even so, it must be interesting to work there, he thought. Just to stroll around and look here, or there, or in there. It would be so great.
But …
It was such a long evening that he actually prayed for an interruption. A truck delivery, perhaps. That would be nice, because verifying papers and inspecting cargo could nicely chew up half an hour. More if it was a small convoy bringing supplies in for one of the commercial properties. And there was a redhead who drove one of those trucks, and Marcel was sure he could get her number or email address given another opportunity.
He was on his third circuit and wondering if he could get leave to go take a piss—the third cup of coffee was probably a poor decision before patrol—when he saw headlights bumping over the road.
“Yes,” he said aloud.
He headed over to the gate, which was part of his patrol zone, and stood close to the corporal working the booth. Paul was not a friend, but friendly enough. One of those older fellows who joined the military after a failed marriage, with the simple plan of letting someone else run his life henceforth. A bit dull, but always up on the latest football scores.
“What’s coming in?” asked Marcel as he leaned on the rail by the open booth door.
The corporal frowned down at a clipboard. “Mmmm, says here ‘decorative foliage.’”
“For whom?”
“I think for the little common area they’re building. Goes in the barn.”
“Odd,” said Marcel, “they’ve not even finished the hardscaping on that. Isn’t it too soon for plants?”
“The hell should I know?” groused Paul. “I grew up in Paris. I don’t think I ever saw a tree or shrub until I enlisted.”
He stepped past Marcel and made that hand-patting gesture that told a driver to slow down and stop. The lorry was a big one, and Marcel wondered how many damned shrubs they had ordered. Or did someone screw up and send a big lorry like this instead of a more appropriately sized van?
The driver was a very pretty woman, and Marcel perked up. She was petite, blond, very nice to look at. A bit like that actress from the comic book movie. The one with the baseball
bat and too much lipstick. Marcel could not fish her name out of his head. His knowledge of American cinema was only marginally better than what he knew about British film. He was okay with the Italians, but mostly the retro stuff. This driver, though, could have fit into the old sixties and seventies giallo films. Or maybe a young Catherine Deneuve, but with a punk finish.
Marcel watched the woman hand an ID card to Paul, give only a slight uptilt of her nose at Paul’s leering smile, pop chewing gum very loudly, take her card back, and drive in through the gate.
Marcel smoked a cigarette with Paul, then continued his patrol. He kept thinking of the driver mostly because he could not remember the name of the actress who played in that superhero movie. The sentries were not allowed to use their cell phones on patrol, so he couldn’t do a search. And, eventually, he forgot about the actress, the driver, and the truck.
His memory was triggered when the truck drove out ninety-four minutes later, and then it vanished again.
What really made every detail of that woman and that truck was when all the lights on the base flashed on, a dozen sirens blared, and military police swarmed through in riot gear. For the next three days, Marcel—along with Paul and everyone on patrol or guard duty that night—sat in rooms while teams of investigators screamed questions at him.
They did not actually explain things outright, but over time, by piecing together bits of different questions, he worked it out. The truck drove in using false ID. It parked behind the biomedical research center. A gate was lowered, and two forklifts were offloaded—and later found abandoned—and then used to remove tons of vital and highly classified machines, computer mainframes, and other unspecified materials.
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