Deadline

by L. T. Ryan

  “No, no, no,” he said. “The hell is going on here?”

  His fingers danced on the keyboard. They worked faster than his conscious mind could think. It didn’t matter. He’d lost control.

  The screen brightened and he watched as someone else controlled the cursor. It was as though the sons of bitches knew exactly where to look, too. They accessed his files containing details on independent operators. There was a series of right clicks followed by the files disappearing, obviously being cut out and pasted somewhere off screen.

  Several names remained. One in particular.

  Jack Noble’s folder highlighted blue. Brandon expected it to disappear. Instead they opened the folder. A program must have taken over because every subfolder and file popped open individually and at a speed beyond what a human was capable of.

  Brandon tried once more to regain control. Hell, he didn’t even need full control. They could have all the data on the past missions. That wasn’t what was important to them.

  And then he had it. He was able to pull up the same folder on the adjacent screen. Brandon typed fast and furious and navigated through the file tree. He was in search of something buried deep and password protected.

  The system couldn’t keep up with him, not with the load it was currently under. Brandon opened up a file and created a simple bash program that would disrupt the other user. Eight lines of code. That was all it took. He read over it three times, then executed the program.

  His illuminated keyboard brightened, then went dead. His mouse no longer controlled the cursor. The monitor he was working on went blank.

  They had executed the kill shot first.

  On the other screen the chaos of thousands of files opening in rapid-fire succession stopped at once. A person was at the controls again and they worked their way through a maze of folders until they came to the one Brandon so desperately wanted to destroy.

  They now had Jack’s phone records in their possession.

  CHAPTER 39

  I left with more information than I had arrived knowing. The identity of the dead woman and her past were confirmed. But I had no idea where to go next. No clues or leads, and nothing obvious jumped out at me. As much as I didn’t want to, I would have to lean on Frank soon.

  Bernd Kohl broke down on my way out of the small apartment. I didn’t stop or look back or attempt to offer any words of condolence to the guy. What could I say? His wife and possibly he himself had made a deal and now he had to live with the consequences. I did find myself hoping that he’d be smart, cash the check, and get the hell out of town without leaving too much of a trail behind for the sake of his girls.

  Any concern I had over it disappeared as the door slammed shut behind me. The sounds of his sobs faded and had disappeared by the time I reached the elevator. I considered that Ahlberg had someone watching the apartment. Was her network large enough after spending so many years in isolation? Did she still maintain the support of Awad?

  I walked past the elevator and headed down the hallway toward the stairwell. The building lacked security. I hadn’t spotted hall cameras, not that I was too concerned about being spotted. Bernd wasn’t about to reach out and report my presence. Unless he’d put on a performance back there that fooled me, the guy was in way over his head and probably figured any attempts he made to reach out might result in him losing the funds.

  I descended the stairs, leaping the final three. An exit to the outside was placed inside the stairwell on the first floor. I took a moment to scan the surroundings through the narrow slit of a window. The barren alley offered little in the way of hiding places. Brick and asphalt were all I saw fifty feet in either direction.

  Warm air carrying the noise of chatter and traffic rushed inside the building as I pushed the door open. I had parked the car a few blocks away and decided to take a winding route back to it, filled with false steps to determine if I was being tailed.

  The road in front of the apartment was busy with both pedestrians and vehicles. I merged into the flow of foot traffic and followed the herd.

  There was plenty to take away from my conversation with Bernd Kohl. His wife looked enough like the Ahlberg twins that she was a natural choice to serve as a body double. She might’ve had a procedure or two done, but only surface-level stuff. It took a program like the one Brandon had used to notice the true differences between the Ahlbergs and Martina Kohl.

  The question was why she did it. I wasn’t sure I bought the cancer diagnosis. That seemed like something the women had cooked up to create an agreeable mindset in Bernd. There had to be more to her story. Things the husband didn’t know, or didn’t want to admit. Perhaps she had a debt they could not repay. Ahlberg offered to take care of it.

  How had they come to know each other? And when did they meet? With the internet the possibilities were endless, though I tended to think it was much simpler. As my mind wandered, I envisioned a scenario where the women found each other and hatched the plan. I wanted to revisit Bernd and ask about their finances before his wife told him she was sick. I decided against it, figuring that Brandon could provide a window into their lives by accessing banking and credit records.

  With that I put my presumptions on hold.

  A door opened ahead, flooding the area with the smell of dark roast. I worked my way across the crowded sidewalk and headed into the cafe. It was a small room with only a few tables and a counter. Everything looked sleek and modern. The barista stared at me expectantly without comment. I ordered a triple espresso. While waiting for my drink, my phone buzzed. I answered the call.

  “Brandon?”

  There was no response. I checked the screen to make sure I had answered. It didn’t even sound like we were connected. Usually there was a hint of fuzz. The line was silent. I looked around the room, wondering if the excessive use of steel had somehow affected the signal.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to the man behind the counter. He nodded without looking up while marking a cup with a fat black marker. I stepped around the short line behind me and went outside. The call had by now disconnected. I dialed into Brandon’s line and waited. It rang twice, then disconnected. I stared over at the roofline of the building across the street wondering what in the hell was going on.

  I told myself to relax. It was easy to get worked up over little things while in the midst of a job. Calls failed all the time. I was in the middle of Leipzig, Germany, dialing into a Hong Kong number that’d route to the States, while using a market store grade SIM card. There were bound to be fluctuations and disruptions in service.

  Back inside my drink waited on the counter. Bear had pulled some cash out prior to leaving and spotted me a few hundred Euros so I wouldn’t be forced to announce my presence with the use of credit cards. I handed the guy a ten for my six Euro drink. He didn’t bother to make change. I decided then and there I’d never visit this cafe again even if the Pope himself were serving.

  Another block further I stopped in a clothing store. After wearing the same outfit for over twenty-four hours I was ready for a change. Frank hadn’t left me with many options. I picked out a pair of tan chinos, a blue oxford, and a pair of leather hiking boots. The ones on my feet clung to the smell of that disgusting house in the woods. I paid for the clothes, then put them on before leaving the store. I used the shopping bag to discard my old gear into a dumpster in the back alley.

  The espresso had kicked in by the time I reached the BMW. My heart rate had climbed ten beats per minute. I considered walking another mile to slow it down. After all, I didn’t have a clue which direction to go in and Germany wasn’t a country where I had many contacts. Hell, come to think of it, I had none.

  I considered traveling into France, but my DSGE contacts were no longer breathing. Outside of Pierre and Laure Desault, who were both deceased, no one in the country would provide me with assistance.

  My phone buzzed again as I reached for the door handle. I checked the number and answered.

  “Brando
n? Can you hear me?”

  The line was full of static. “Jack?” He mumbled something indecipherable. “Jack can you—”

  A heavy burst of grating static overtook the call for several seconds. Brandon came back on the line.

  “Jack, listen—” there were a few moments of dead air, “—get out—”

  After that I couldn’t understand anything he said. A few seconds later the call died. I tried calling him back, but all I received was dead air. The signal hadn’t made it past Hong Kong.

  I sat inside the car and rolled down the windows to take advantage of the breeze.

  I glanced at the cell. It was easy to interpret the tone of Brandon’s voice as desperate. The man didn’t get worked up in that way. He might crack a joke, and in the process raise the pitch of his voice, but he never yelled. And the quality of our calls was never that piss poor. I started to fear the worst for the guy. He always assured me that his current location was as secure as a nuclear bunker.

  Impenetrable.

  I debated for several moments whether to call Frank. He didn’t know Brandon’s location, but he might have an idea what had spooked the computer genius. I held off on reaching out. I had no desire to reveal my location quite yet.

  I heard squealing tires and looked to my right. A black Mercedes S550 raced toward me.

  It looked as though my location had already been compromised.

  CHAPTER 40

  Sasha attempted to conceal her tears from Bear. She tucked her chin, turned her head, closed her eyes. He’d only seen her cry once, and it was at a television commercial where a daughter left home for college and the father wasn’t ready to let go. She told Bear never to mention the incident and he wasn’t about to cross her. Sasha was an MI6 veteran of more than fifteen years. She could handle herself, and him, if need be.

  In her hand she held the test results. The envelope had arrived the day Bear and Jack left. Sasha had kept them in the knife drawer until he returned. He had no desire to look at the doctor’s report, though. They’d all been negative from the first time he stepped foot in the guy’s office.

  He thought it was symbolic — or was it symbiotic — how the horrible headaches had started around the time of Mandy’s fight with amnesia.

  “Do you want to know?” Sasha dragged the back of her hand across her face and rid herself of the tears and stared him in the eye. All evidence she had been crying was now eradicated.

  Bear walked to the fridge. He stood with the French doors open. The cool air enveloped him, filled his nose with the smell of tomatoes. A chill raced down his spine. It wasn’t from the refrigerated air. It was probably the contents of the paper Sasha held.

  He grabbed a beer and popped the cap on the bear’s head bottle opener. Mandy had given it to him and told him it was a Father’s Day present. She had carved the four inch figurine herself, designed so that the fangs caught the cap and pried it right off with a single pull like any other bottle opener. He had proudly mounted it where all could see it in the kitchen. It was obvious by the look in Sasha’s eyes she did not approve of the location. She kept those thoughts to herself and smiled as she looked on at the pride Bear displayed after he finished securing the bottle opener.

  Bear wished Mandy were there at the house. He felt her absence every time he took a breath. His heart ached. Sasha had wisely whisked the girl to a colleague’s aunt’s house in Iceland. She showed him pictures of the place. It was remote and quiet. The kind of location Bear saw himself heading to someday soon if Sasha would go along with him.

  Bear turned his attention to the English IPA. It wasn’t as bitter as its American counterparts, which he appreciated. The brews could be overly hoppy stateside. He considered that a beer snob would refer to the Jenny Greenfinch as a more sophisticated and subtle IPA. To him it just tasted good.

  “Are you planning on burying your concerns in beer tonight?” Sasha’s words penetrated like a lance.

  In fact, he had. “I’ve got too much going on to even think about what some quack job thinks about my headaches, Sasha.”

  “It’s not what he thinks, you damn fool.” Her voice raised, and he wondered if this was the tone she took when one of her people had screwed up at work. “Those tests aren’t shaded by someone’s thoughts. They are black and white. Plain and simple, what you see is what you get.”

  Bear held back the words on the tip of his tongue, knowing that dragging this out into a full-blown fight would serve neither of them well.

  Sasha took a deep breath and proceeded calmly. “Don’t you think it’s better you walk out that door knowing what you are facing rather than it being a question always in the back of your mind, causing you worry and frustration?”

  Bear no longer wanted to discuss it. “Ever heard of Katrine Ahlberg?”

  Sasha seemed taken aback by the change of topic. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head a few times. “What?”

  “Katrine Ahlberg,” Bear said. “Ring any bells? Think back a decade ago, back when you were still wet behind the ears.”

  “I was made for intelligence work,” she said with a wink. “And I do recall that name. The Scandinavian Princess, I believe they called her. She was married to that terrorist, Christ, what’s his name?”

  Bear waited a beat to see if she’d remember.

  She did. “Awad. That son of a bitch. How he’s eluded us all these years…”

  “Probably has to do with his relation to the Crown Prince.”

  “Right, one of his two thousand cousins. Please, if the right people pushed on the Crown Prince and threatened to cut off a few business relationships, Awad would be plucked off the street in broad daylight. In fact, they’d broadcast his torture nightly if it were demanded.”

  “Is he someone you’ve been watching?”

  Sasha bit her bottom lip. Bear sensed that she realized she could go no further with the conversation. “Look, I know you won’t say anything, but I still have rules I have to adhere to regarding specific intelligence. Let’s get back to Ahlberg, though. Why did you bring up a woman who was killed ten years ago?”

  “Because she’s still alive.”

  “What?”

  “The wrong woman was killed.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I was there when it happened.”

  Sasha stumbled back into the island. She knew the kind of work Bear and Jack performed in those days. It wasn’t a mystery. Perhaps the association with names she knew made it real though. She gripped the countertop and steadied herself.

  “Then who was it that you assassinated?”

  Bear leaned back against the refrigerator. The stainless steel surface felt cool against his back even through his shirt. He took in a deep breath while considering how to phrase it. These weren’t conversations he liked to have with anyone. In the end, simple won out.

  “Her twin sister.”

  He could see Sasha searching her mental storehouse, trying to recount everything she could about Katrine Ahlberg. It had been so long ago that Sasha had likely dumped all information she had on the woman. Why keep tabs on a ghost? Turns out someone should have.

  “We were duped,” Bear said. “I don’t know by who, or how they did it, but the intelligence was tampered with and we were led to Birgit instead. We were brought back in to rectify the situation. The man who issued the command both then and now is now in charge of the Agency’s SOG.”

  “Jesus.” Sasha reached for Bear’s beer bottle and took a long drink. “Frank Skinner?”

  Bear nodded as he took back his beer and wiped her lipstick off the top. “He’s not the guy you want to screw with right now. Believe me, if I had the option of doing this or wringing his neck, he’d be dead right now. But I can’t do that, so we’re gonna finish this and then I’m done. I don’t care where I have to go in order to be far enough away that they never find me again. I’ll go there.” He glanced away for a second then re-established eye contact. “And I hope that you’ll come with m
e.”

  Sasha glanced at the test results face down on the counter next to her. She winced involuntarily. “If Ahlberg hasn’t been a problem for the past decade, then why all of a sudden does this need to be rectified? And why can’t Skinner use one of his SOG teams? Christ, this is what they excel at.”

  Bear shrugged the question off like it was a bad pitch on a 2-0 count. “I don’t have the clout to question that anymore.”

  “Where’s Jack now?”

  Bear filled Sasha in on what had happened since he and Jack left the house up to the scene in the morgue and the duo splitting up.

  “A body double?” Sasha said. “And willing to take a bullet like that? This is absurd. Someone’s tipped off Katrine. That’s the only logical explanation. And this operation has been in development for longer than a few weeks, I’ll tell you that much.” She paused a beat. “Jack hasn’t been in contact yet then?”

  Bear shook his head. “Haven’t heard anything.”

  Sasha left the room. Bear pulled another beer from the fridge, thought of Mandy as he popped the cap inside the bear’s mouth. He hoped the girl was managing OK in Iceland and not spending her hours worrying about him.

  “Let’s see what I can find out.” Sasha placed her laptop on the counter. It was an extremely thin device and barely weighed a pound. The first time Bear had picked it up, he nearly launched it into the ceiling. That was the last time Sasha allowed him to handle the computer.

  “I don’t want you getting in trouble,” he said.

  She waved him off. “I’ve got ways to access my systems that will not alert anyone.” She glanced up at him and picked up on his disapproval. “We may have intelligence that has not made its way to you. Or perhaps it has and Skinner is holding back on you. Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Bear didn’t doubt that. There wasn’t a time in history when he fully trusted Frank. Not even during the days when Jack vouched for the guy.

  Sasha had slipped into analyst mode and worked too quickly for Bear to keep up with her. She entered data on several screens. Row after row of database entries flew past in the background.