by Matthew Dunn
The vehicle’s engine grew louder.
Please slow down, drive alongside me, lower your window, and look concerned.
Please.
The vehicle was close now, changed into a lower gear, and was slowing for sure.
He kept walking, his feet aching from fatigue, boots full of water after he’d witnessed Ulana’s plane sink into the icy strait.
The vehicle was right behind him.
He carried on.
So did the vehicle. But it remained behind him, matching his speed.
Jeez, it would be ironic if the person behind him turned out to be precisely what he hoped he didn’t look like: a prowling serial killer.
It turned out that the vehicle was something even less welcome. Blue lights flashed over the ground around him, followed by a short burst of siren and a man’s voice on a microphone saying, “Police. Stop where you are. Turn around.”
Will’s heart and mind were racing. The broken-down-car story wouldn’t work with the cops. They’d drive him back there with the intention of radioing for a tow truck. He turned, keeping his hands in his pockets, because only soldiers, special operatives, and experienced criminals would automatically put their arms out if someone had a gun trained on them from a distance.
There were two cops, both standing behind the cruiser’s open doors, hands on their holstered pistols, one of them holding a mic close to his mouth. “Hands where we can see them.”
Will put his hands up and flat in front of his chest, as if he were about to play patty-cake and had never confronted someone with a gun before. “I’m glad you guys are here.” The words were spoken in an East Coast American accent. Before she’d been murdered, his English mother had frequently told the adolescent Will that he sounded just like his CIA father. Not that Will had copied his father’s accent. He’d been incarcerated in Tehran when Will was five years old. But like his father, Will had grown up in Virginia.
“You in trouble?”
Will smiled. “You could say that. Woman trouble.” He nodded toward the road behind the cops. “About five miles that way, my girlfriend kicked me out of our van. We had a bit of a . . . disagreement.”
“You on vacation?”
“Yeah. Well, that was the idea.”
“Where you headed?”
Will shrugged. “Anywhere that’ll give me a bed for the night. Debby gets like this sometimes. Never lasts more than a day. I’ll text her, she’ll probably pick me up in the morning.” His smile broadened. “All I said to her was that her driving was crappy.”
The policeman near him tried to suppress a laugh. “Bet you regret saying that now.”
“Yep. I wondered if it was Debby behind me. Not guys with guns.”
“Seems it’s not your day. You tried calling her?”
“Several times. Goes straight to voice mail. She’ll turn it back on when she calms down.”
“Dumb move getting out of the vehicle this time of year. You can die out here.”
“I realize that now, but staying in the vehicle might have been just as dangerous. Debby’s got a crazy temper.”
The cop with the mic asked, “She going to be okay?”
Will nodded. “The van’s got a full tank plus spare gas, and lots of food. We’ve done plenty of touring before. Debby knows what she’s doing.”
“Vehicle registration number?”
“No idea. It’s a rental car, and Debs sorted all the paperwork out in New York.”
“You take the Maine–New Brunswick route in?”
“Yeah. Crossed at Vanceboro eleven days ago.”
“Okay, lower your hands. We’ll need to see some ID.”
“Sure. You able to drop me off someplace?”
The cop glanced at his colleague, who nodded. “We’re heading back to Truro. That do you?”
“If Truro’s got a diner and a motel, it’ll do me just fine.”
“Center of town’s got Holiday Inn, Willow Bend, Best Western, and Glengarry hotels. You have options. Identification, please.”
Will pulled out the American passport Ulana had given him. “I got other ID, but it’s in the van.”
The nearest policeman stepped up to Will, took the passport from him, and leaned over the ID so that his upper body shielded it from rain as he flicked through the pages.
As the cop opened the page containing the photo, Will mentally rehearsed what he’d do if the officer reached for his gun because he realized that the man in the photo wasn’t him or because he suddenly recalled seeing a nonbearded shot of Will Cochrane in a newspaper after the Senator Jellicoe hearing.
But the officer closed the passport, handed it back to him, and said, “Okay, Mr. Jones. All seems good. We’ll get you to Truro, and we should be able to get the plates of the van from Vanceboro immigration. During your crossing, it will have been logged alongside your passport. It’ll take a few hours though. If you don’t hear from your girlfriend by morning, it’s vital you call the RCMP station in Truro. We’ll go looking then.”
“Sure.”
The cop beckoned him forward. “Afraid we’ve finished our flask of coffee and we got a good hour before we reach Truro. Still”—he smiled—“since you look like shit, I’m betting you won’t mind getting a bit of shut-eye during the drive.”
Marsha Gage was sitting at her desk in the FBI task force room and had her cell phone pinned against one ear and a landline handset against the other. On one line was Sorocco Fonseca of Spain’s Centro Nacional de Inteligencia; on the other was Bianca Dinapoli of Italy’s Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna. Both were telling her that there’d been a few possible sightings in southern Europe of someone matching Will Cochrane’s description, but all of them had proven to be false. Behind Marsha, Patrick and Alistair were playing chess, while Sheridan was on the phone to Senator Jellicoe. Not for the first time since the three men had graced the room with their presence, Marsha thought that at best they were useless and at worst downright counterproductive. Regardless, it seemed that they enjoyed doing nothing while she worked her ass off.
On the screen of her landline, she saw that she had a call waiting from Assistant Commissioner Danny Labelle of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She ended the other calls, picked up, and said, “Commissioner. You got something for me?”
“Might be nothing, but you told me to report anything odd.”
“Wish half the people I work with could be as forthcoming. What is it?”
“Our Coast Guard’s found a crashed Islander plane on our Nova Scotia seaboard. Only reason they spotted it was due to the tide being out.”
“That happen a lot where you live?”
Labelle laughed. “Not where I live. But yeah, it happens in parts of Canada where there aren’t many roads but there are plenty of high winds that’ll knock you sideways.”
“So, why suspicious?”
“Pilot was still inside the plane when Coast Guard found it. And she’s got a bullet in her brain.”
“ID on her?”
“American passport. My guys have already put a call in to your Department of State. Turns out the passport’s a fake.”
“Drug runner making a delivery that went wrong?”
“Could be.”
“Anything else on her to suggest this isn’t just some criminal matter?”
“Can’t say there is, but you wanted to know about any suspicious transportation movements into east coast Canada.”
“I did indeed. Thanks anyway, Commissioner.”
“My pleasure. Oh, and Marsha?”
“Yeah.”
“Her body’s now at the Nova Scotia Hospital. Just a formality because she’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours. But doctors examined her anyway. She’s got a tattoo on her upper arm. Odd looking. Not the sort of thing women generally go for.”
“Probably a prison thing.” Marsha drummed her fingers on her desk. “Can you fax a picture of it over to me?”
“On its way.”
Two
minutes later, the fax machine printed a single sheet with the letterhead ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE—MAINTIENS LE DROIT, NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, HEADQUARTERS BUILDING, 73 LEIKIN DRIVE, OTTAWA ON K1A 0R2. On it was the photo image of an upper arm, and next to the limb was a handwritten note stating, Dead female pilot. Still no luck identifying her. Not seen this kind of tattoo before. She liked hunting, maybe? D. Labelle.
Marsha took out a magnifying glass from her desk drawer and examined the tattoo. It was a picture of a bear; an eagle with outstretched wings looked to be landing on its back. Like the commissioner, she had no idea if it symbolized anything or was just an innocuous cartoon that signified its wearer was prone to moments of illogical whimsy.
She swiveled in her chair and eyed Patrick and Alistair. Both were still engrossed in chess. “Unlike you, I’m kind of busy right now. So, gentlemen”—she folded the fax sheet into the shape of an airplane and tossed it at them—“I wouldn’t mind if you tapped Spooksville—Stateside and old country—on the shoulder to see if that tattoo makes any sense.”
Patrick picked up the fax with one hand while moving knight to take bishop with the other. The CIA officer unfolded it and held the image in front of Alistair, then thrust the fax toward Sheridan and called out, “You know what this means?”
Sheridan looked bemused. “I have no idea.”
“That a statement about your raison d’être?”
“What?”
“Never mind, idiot.”
Marsha gestured toward the paper and told the men about the downed Islander airplane. “Most likely it’s nothing, but I really would like it if you could find out if that tattoo means anything.”
Alistair shrugged while positioning a rook as bait to tempt Patrick’s knight to take it and in turn leave the knight vulnerable to attack from a bishop. “We don’t need to.”
“Just because I’m not paying by the hour doesn’t mean . . .”
“Shit.” Patrick stared at the chessboard, knowing that Alistair was thinking ten moves ahead. He adjusted his thinking, moved a rook, and called out, “It’s a military tattoo.”
“Russian.” Alistair’s rook took his opponent’s rook. “A version not too dissimilar is popular among Special Forces paratroopers.”
“This one’s unusual though, because it’s on a woman and because the bear and eagle aren’t fighting but instead are cooperating.” Patrick’s brain was racing because he knew Alistair had thrown in a new strategy. “You only see it on specialists.”
“GRU specialists.” Bishop defends queen.
“Who’ve been given advanced airborne training.” Pawn move to feint attack on queen.
“Secret training.” Queen retreats two squares.
Patrick’s knight puts Alistair’s queen and rook in jeopardy. “Seems your dead pilot was very unusual.”
“A highly skilled paramilitary intelligence officer.”
“Unlikely to be a drug runner who’d let petty criminals get the better of her.”
“More likely she was conducting a covert infiltration.”
“And something went wrong on her return journey.”
“Plane malfunction.” Alistair moved his queen. “Or got hit by some godawful weather.”
“And put a gun to her head rather than let the Atlantic do its work on her.” Patrick smiled as he moved his bishop. “Your king’s got nowhere to run. Checkmate.”
Alistair rubbed his hands together. “Didn’t see that one coming, old boy. Congrats.”
“Reckon that’s nine wins each so far.” Patrick turned to Marsha. “Also reckon you’d better be wondering what the GRU woman was delivering to Nova Scotia.”
The police cruiser stopped outside the Best Western hotel in Truro. One of the Mounties opened the rear door and gestured for Will to get out. “Remember—call us in the morning if your girlfriend doesn’t make contact with you.”
“Sure, and thanks again for the ride.” Will exited the vehicle, shook the cop’s hand, and walked into the hotel lobby. He had no intention of staying here or anywhere else in Truro. A few minutes after the cops had gone, he’d leave the hotel and head farther west.
TWENTY-ONE
Ellie Hallowes walked down a corridor inside Langley that housed the Directorate of Intelligence, specifically its Russian and European Analysis division. On either side of her were large, open-plan rooms that housed researchers and analysts whose task was to support the work of the Agency’s National Clandestine Service as well as the dissemination of all source intelligence to key government and military customers in the United States. When not working in the field, it was common for members of the Clandestine Service to stalk the halls of this wholly separate directorate with the intention of trying to browbeat analysts into upgrading the importance of their sources’ intelligence. Though they were different shapes, ages, and sizes, you could differentiate officers of the Clandestine Service from the desk-bound ranks of the Directorate of Intelligence. They had an unusual way of looking at people, exuding confidence and an air of superiority. When one of them walked past, analysts would frequently stop what they were doing and stare at them in awe, jealousy, and resentment that they were responsible for a lot of the paperwork and crap the analysts had to put up with. But nobody took any notice of Ellie, because she averted her gaze from others and wanted to be invisible.
She entered a vast room containing at least two hundred desks and computer terminals, with people sitting or walking around, talking to each other or on the phone or working in silence. It was a cluttered and vibrant atmosphere, similar, Ellie assumed, to those found in newspaper headquarters, investment banks, and telemarketing companies.
She had to ask three people where to go before she found the desk of the female analyst.
Alongside the Director of the CIA, Sheridan, Parker, and Jellicoe, Ellie had ascertained from her computer’s file request database that four other officers were cleared to access Ferryman files. All were analysts. Three of them were no good to her because they were male. The fourth had potential, not just because she was a woman but because she was also cleared to read the Herald files.
“Ellie Hallowes.” She held out her hand to the woman, who was a few years older than Ellie, plumper, and wore thick-rimmed glasses. “Thought I’d introduce myself to you while I’m in town.”
The analyst didn’t get up from her seat. She looked quizzical and hesitant before shaking Ellie’s hand. “Helen Coombs.”
“I had direct involvement in the Herald case. Wanted to thank you in person for processing my intelligence reports, before he . . . well, you know.”
Helen’s mouth widened in surprise. “You were Herald’s case officer? I often wondered who you were, because your name was never mentioned in his files.”
Nor would it be. Unlike their peers in the Clandestine Service, deep-cover officers were never identified in official reports.
“Glad to hear that. I’m going to be pulling some of Herald’s files from archives. Director Parker’s given me written clearance to do so, but I thought you ought to know.” She smiled. “In case you thought they’d gone missing.”
“They’re your files, my dear. The rest of us can stand in line. You take as long as you like reading them. Know which archive department they’re in?”
“I’m told six corridors down.”
“Yep.” Helen looked concerned. “Were you with him when he was killed in Norway?”
“I . . .” It was time for the waterworks. Fake waterworks. Ellie held a handkerchief to her mouth and nose, and nodded.
“You poor thing.” Helen got up from her desk and put her arm around Ellie. “Nobody should have to go through that.”
Ellie cleared her throat and inhaled deeply, as if trying to compose herself. “Guess that’s why I wanted to meet you. I don’t know anyone else here. Certainly no one else who was in on Herald.”
“It must be so hard for you.” Helen patted her hand while looking around the bustling room. “Want to have a chat so
mewhere more private? We could grab a coffee.”
This was excellent. Ellie thought she’d have to make the first move, but Helen had suggested precisely what she was hoping for. “That sounds like a great idea. How about after work today?”
“Of course. I finish in two hours.”
“As long as it doesn’t annoy your husband.”
“I’m single. Live alone. I can do what I like.”
Ellie looked like she was about to get emotional again, though all she was thinking about was that she’d have to move quickly to get home first to sort through her array of disguises. “In that case, is it possible we can get something a bit stronger than a coffee? And go someplace away from here?”
Helen smiled. “I look forward to it. Tell you what—it’s work related, so let’s put it on expenses and make the Agency pay.”
Later that evening, Ellie drained the remainder of her wine and smiled. “Thanks for this evening, Helen. I needed it. Think I had to lay Herald to rest.”
“You calling it a night?” Helen’s words were a bit slurred, her face flushed. “Place’s just livening up.”
The bar was indeed getting lively with young office workers; the men had ties loosened and were speaking too loudly, trying to hold court; the women were cackling and gulping wine, all of them displaying the booze-fueled hubris of individuals who were relieved to be set free from work. Ellie wondered if Agency people came here, since the bar was close to Langley. She hoped not, because being seen out with one of the Agency’s analysts was the last thing she wanted. “Actually, it’s just a bit noisy in here. Feel like there’s too many people around.”
“I understand.”
“God, it feels good though to be off duty. Have you got anything decent to drink at your place? I could do with a few more glasses, but somewhere a bit less party-party. Still feeling very emotional, and the last thing I want to do is break down in front of these folks.”