by L. T. Ryan
Frank rose, walked down the side of the table closest to the hallway. I countered on the opposite side. We stopped in the middle. Four feet of cheap particle board separated us.
“I’ve got nothing on her, or anyone else in your family, Jack. You know me. That’s not how I operate.”
“Things change.” I could feel my blood pressure skyrocketing, my pulse pounding in my head, against my temples. My ears and cheeks burned.
“That they do.” He held out his hand as though he wanted to shake mine. “But I have a few strands of moral decency left. Hell, I’d help you protect them if your ass wasn’t too proud to ask. I’ve got the best operatives in the world working for me. No one asks questions.”
“Makes it that much easier, doesn’t it?”
“Christ, Jack. I’m trying to help you.”
“Think I would risk giving away their position to you?”
“You think I can’t find that out anyway?”
“There you go again,” I said. “You come across as saying you’ll help, but then you have to make those threats.”
“You are a paranoid son of a bitch, you know that, Noble?”
He was right. “Aren’t we all? How else have you and I survived in this business so long?”
“By trusting the right people.” He placed both hands flat on the table and leaned forward. It left him vulnerable. I could lay him out cold before he could move his jaw. And he knew it. “There was a time when you and I had each other’s back. Every goddamned minute of the day, man. We didn’t always get along, but we sure as hell made sure that we went home alive at night.”
“Your point?”
“Trust me that nothing is going to happen to your family. Not even if word of this gets out.”
“Word of what?”
He looked up at me with a grave expression I’d only seen twice before. “We should head back up to my office.”
CHAPTER 3
Frank switched off his phone and turned his laptop on after we returned to his office. My gaze fell on the red folder on the table while he messed with his computer. We never used red in the SIS. Maybe in his new job it had something to do with a threat level, or pertained to operational security.
He placed a hand on it. “It was literally all I had in my drawer, and I was in a rush to get over here. Tell you the truth, we weren’t all that hopeful that we’d find you after the damn FBI moved Reese. Figured you’d cut rope and bail.”
“We?” I said. “Who is we?”
He shook his head. “My guys that detained you. Don’t worry, there’s no one else involved in this mess.”
If word gets out.
This mess.
What the hell was going on? Why did Frank keep referring to something while continuing to keep me in the dark about it? I could press him on it, but I had a feeling he was building up to telling me. I figured it best to take these last moments and relax because once that folder opened up, things might change.
I caught a glimpse of his laptop as he pushed it back. There were faces on the screen that I hadn’t seen in eight or nine years. Former SIS agents. At that time, we were a team that didn’t exist, working stateside and on foreign shores. We acted independently and needed permission from no one.
A lot of the things we did were not exactly legal according to most other agency heads. But that didn’t matter. We took our orders from the top.
Had some of that information come to light? Were the few remaining living members of SIS about to be exposed? Was that what Frank was referring to when he mentioned putting me away for ten to twenty?
“Haven’t seen some of those faces in forever,” I said.
Frank nodded, smiled. “Right? I was thinking the same thing. So many good men. You know, outside of you, I haven’t spoken to any of the old guys in years. I’m aware of what they’re doing, for the most part. A lot went on to contract work and are sitting in that mess in the Middle East right now. Hardy and Scalding started a security business and only work with celebrity clients. I found out they’re making close to seven figures each a year now. You believe that?”
I nodded slowly. I was mostly letting the information pass through. No sense in retaining any of it. It was bullshit, after all. I didn’t see how Frank could sit there spewing lies when he had allegedly been a part of a mass extinction of former and current SIS agents, among other black ops. I suppose it was possible a few guys slipped through the cracks. All I knew was that several SIS and black ops were terminated in a very short span not too long ago.
Frank adjusted his laptop so I couldn’t see the screen. He tapped on the keyboard, then slid the computer to his right. He leaned over the desk, placed his interlaced fingers on top of the red folder.
“You fucked up,” he said.
CHAPTER 4
Such a simple phrase capable of covering a host of situations. I never operated by the book, not that we had much of a ruleset to abide by in the SIS. Still, I found it difficult to recall an event that occurred over a half-decade ago or more that would require Frank Skinner to send a group of SOG operators to Nowhere, Texas to find and bring me to the remains of the SIS headquarters in order to hold a clandestine meeting.
Frank took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair. “Actually, we all messed up. But you were the man in the field, so a lot of this falls on you.”
“OK?” I said, unsure what the hell he was talking about.
“Our intelligence was garbage to begin with.”
“That was often the case.”
He waved his right hand over the folder. “Yeah, I know. But in this case, we had it wrong. I mean, big time, Jack.”
“Get to it, Frank.” I reached for the folder. He grasped the edge of it and pinned it to the table. “Come on, I’m tired of playing this guessing game.”
“Katrine Ahlberg,” he said. His eyes wavered back and forth as he stared at me, waiting for my reaction. “Remember her?”
“The Scandinavian Princess. Came from a wealthy family in Norway.” I stared at a yellow stain on the ceiling. “No, Sweden.”
“That’s right.”
“Father made his fortune in textiles. At least, that was his gig on the surface. Something else to do with human trafficking, if I remember correctly.”
Frank nodded, said nothing.
“Katrine married that son of a bitch Saudi, Awad. One of the Crown Prince’s two-thousand cousins, right? His dad was an oil tycoon. Awad followed in his footsteps, but spent little time actually working in the family business. When we found him, he was driving around in a gold Mercedes AMG. I mean, the thing was actually made from gold.”
Frank shook his head. “Such flagrant waste.”
“Intel said that Katrine and Awad had been involved in dealings with terrorists. Funding, recruiting, planning, that kind of stuff. More indirect than direct.”
“Good memory,” Frank said. “Kinda surprised considering all the lumps you’ve taken on the head.”
I reached back and cupped the back of my skull. Noticed for the first time that the sedative-induced hangover had cleared. “So were we wrong? Were they not involved in those things?”
“No, we were right. Hell, turns out they were more involved than we suspected. We—," he took a sip from his water bottle then cleared his throat, “I should say, you, Jack Noble, did the world a favor the night you assassinated her.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“You killed her twin sister.”
CHAPTER 5
The chair banged against the glass as I rocked back while the memory of pulling the trigger on the fatal shot that took the life of the woman I thought was Katrine Ahlberg played in my mind’s eye. I raced through files of information stored in the recesses of my brain for her sister’s name, and whether she was involved with Katrine’s dealings. With the top of my foot against the underside of the desk, I pulled myself forward, allowing my torso to continue until it collided with the desk.
“The hell you mean I
killed her twin sister?”
“You finished the mission. Only problem is it wasn’t Katrine. It was her twin sister Birgit. We were purposely fed false information by an informant.”
“Son of a bitch.” Details of the hit came back in fragments. I placed the pieces of the puzzle in place as they appeared. “And do we know the bastard who sold us out?”
Frank shook his head. “Obviously he wasn’t who we thought he was. So far, taking what we know about him, we haven’t been able to determine his true identity. He could still be there. That’s why you and I are meeting here, and not any of the other locations available to me now. We had no face-to-face with this guy. He could be in the Agency for all I know.”
The danger of working with an informant. We vetted them as best we could, but sometimes they arrived through alternative channels, and the information they provided had to be acted on before full compliance could be achieved.
Frank continued. “Our best guess is Katrine received advanced notice of the hit, used that information to set her sister up. She compromised our channels with the bad informant. Gave up her sister’s location and her schedule. Think about it, that was probably your easiest job ever. At least, that part of the mission.”
“But there were identifying markings, Frank. Hell, I remember taking the pictures of her tattoos.”
Frank opened the folder. He pulled out a thick pile of photos, flipped through them and placed two in front of me. At once, I recalled standing over the corpse, snapping the pictures. He slid them to the side and placed what appeared to be surveillance photos on the table. They were of Katrine at the beach. She had on a bikini and nothing else. The markings matched what we had.
“Either the women got the same tattoos,” he said. “Or our surveillance was compromised, too. Or it could’ve been pictures of Birgit. The women were identical, after all.”
“Awad is there, though.”
Frank nodded, placed two fingers down, one over Katrine, the other her husband. “I’ve considered that they were altered and what we’re seeing are two separate images here. Maybe a picture of Birgit and another of Awad, or one where Birgit’s tattoos were superimposed onto her sister. Whatever they did, we were duped.”
I studied the photos. Any of the explanations were valid. And they meant little now. This had gone down a decade ago.
“So fast forward,” I said. “What’s going on now? Has Katrine resurfaced? Is she dabbling in her old businesses again? What’s the threat we’re facing here?”
Frank flipped through a few more photos, placing them on top of the ones on the table. They were of Katrine. She’d aged, slightly. Looked nearly the same at forty as she had at thirty. Slim, attractive, definitely deadly.
“I don’t know if that’s the case,” he said. “I have the feeling I’m not being told everything.”
“How can that be?” I said. “I mean, considering your new position, you should be aware of damn near everything going on.”
Frank seemed disinclined to delve deeper into that aspect. “Jack, what I can tell you is that this situation came to light recently, and I was told to fix it. Katrine has to disappear. She can’t simply die. Any trace of her, or Birgit, I guess we should say, has to be wiped clean from the planet.”
There were things he’d left out. Intentionally, I presumed. Why had this come up now? And why did it require me to be a part of it? It left me feeling like I needed to pass on the situation. Only problem was, I doubt that option would be available.
“You’re sure this isn’t a setup?” I said.
“I trust my guy here,” he said.
“Like the original informant?” I paused to judge his reaction. There was none. He knew he’d screwed up. “Maybe it’s not you he’s setting up.”
“You know how it worked back then, Jack. No one outside of me and the agents on the ground ever knew who pulled the trigger on any of these jobs.” He spread the pictures apart, eyes darting one to the next. Then he looked up at me. “And you can stop wondering. You weren’t asked for by name. They told me to get whoever I needed and fix this. I could’ve gone with any of the guys in my group. And you know how them sons of bitches are. They’d gladly do this.”
“Sounds like that’d be the way to go.”
He shook his head. “No, Jack. Fact is, even if you hadn’t been the one to carry out the original hit, I’d still ask you to do this.”
“Why?”
“You’re the only one from back then that didn’t go soft.”
I rose out of my seat, placed my hands on the desktop, leaned forward, hovering over him. “I’m the only one still alive. So quit feeding me line after line and let me know what’s at stake here.”
He pushed away from the desk and stood. His chair continued rolling back and collided with the wall.
“What I said is true,” he said. “I got to pick my guy. And we’ve got a limited amount of time to make this right. Once the goodwill expires, they’ll open the file, and everyone involved will be flagged for the spooks.”
Now it came together. Frank thought that I’d have a vested interest in resolving this issue. More so than any of his current agents, seeing as how their lives weren’t on the line.
I traced Katrine’s face in a close up photo that appeared to have been taken recently. She had a wrinkle on her forehead, and some lines in the corner of her eyes. With such fair skin, I’d have imagined there’d be more. How had they screwed this up so badly? And why was it now falling on me to fix it? Well, me and one other person.
“I wasn’t alone in this,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“Bear—Logan was with me.”
Riley “Bear” Logan had been my best friend since recruit training. Even though he was never an official member of the SIS, he had worked with me from time to time after he’d left the Marines.
Frank reached down and grabbed his bag off the floor. It was the same one he’d had the day I met him down in the Keys. He pulled the zipper back and opened it up enough to slide his hand inside. He retrieved a blue folder and placed it on the table in front of me.
“What’s this?” I asked without opening the folder.
“Your travel pack. Identity, passport, credit cards, everything you’ll need. There’s a code to a Swiss bank if you get in trouble. You also have accounts in England, Sweden, and Morocco.”
Two of those destinations made sense. “Why England?”
“That’s where Bear is living right now. It’s all in the folder. You leave out of LaGuardia in five hours. A man will meet you at Heathrow, on the other side of customs.”
“Who?”
Frank waved me off with a shake of his head. “No names here. You’ll figure it out. He’ll give you everything you need: a car, weapons, Bear’s location, and Katrine’s location.” He shuffled the photos in a stack, leaving the most recent ones of Katrine on the table for me. “And Jack, so help me, do not go to any of your friends in British Intelligence. This is strictly a need to know deal, and they don’t need to know anything about this.”
“What if I get in trouble?”
He reached into his bag again, placed three cell phones on the table. The first was a typical large-screen smartphone.
“Daily use. Traceable. Use it for getting around, general information. Imagine you’re a tourist.”
He held the second and third smartphones up. “Untraceable. This one is yours.” He gestured with his left hand. “The other is for Bear. You communicate with each other on these. GPS your mission routes with these. Call me only from yours. Same number as always. Got it?”
I nodded and collected the phones. “Luggage?”
“It’ll be in the car. Two duffle bags. Check one, carry the other.”
“Does it matter which?”
“Whichever one has the clothes you like best, carry it on. You’re not claiming the other when you get over there.” He closed his bag and placed it on the floor. “It’s time for you to get going.”
“I’d like to say it was good seeing you again, Frank.”
“But it wasn’t.” He smiled. The first genuine one I’d seen from him in some time.
We grasped each other’s hands for a few more seconds, then I hopped into the waiting car, wondering if I’d make it to New York alive.
CHAPTER 6
We took the Lincoln Tunnel across the Hudson into midtown Manhattan. At one point Bear and I had had several properties spread throughout the city. Now I only had the one apartment, and we were close to it. I hadn’t been there in months, and wondered whether the cleaning service had emptied the fridge. Anything I required to disappear forever was only a couple blocks away. I considered persuading the driver to drop me off, figuring it’d be easier to hide for a while out in the open in New York City than the wide open landscape of Texas.
He’d never go for it, though. Frank would be on his ass and would never stop riding it. Didn’t matter how much I offered the guy, it wasn’t worth it.
I searched for old friends, and enemies, amid the mass of people crammed into the confined spaces of the sidewalks and crosswalks. There was only one person in particular I cared to see. And even if I spotted Clarissa, what good would it do? They wouldn’t let me out. I couldn’t hug her and make sure life was treating her fair these days.
I pressed the window control on the door. To my surprise, it rolled down. I stopped it half-way, leaned my head back, and took in the aroma of the city. I was inundated with smells from restaurants and food carts, as well as trash and exhaust. A blend that reminded me of everything I loved and hated about the city rushed in through the cracked window. I hadn’t ever wanted to stop at a hot dog stand as bad as I did in that moment.