HUNTER

by Bidinotto, Robert

  “We certainly don’t,” Kessler replied.

  “Didn’t you try to find him?”

  The men looked at each other and chuckled.

  “First, you don’t find Matthew Malone unless he wants to be found,” Kessler said. “Second, it seems that Matthew had been preparing to leave the Agency for some time.”

  Garrett broke in. “As you know, several years before then, we began to suspect there was a mole here in Langley. Missions around the Middle East were blown, for no apparent reason. Then a couple of our case officers turned up dead in Pakistan, and another disappeared in Afghanistan. In fact, back in May 2005, Malone himself survived an earlier attempt on his life.”

  “So they were on to him even then.”

  “Uh huh. And what was more troubling was that Malone wasn’t an obvious case officer, attached to an embassy under some transparent diplomatic cover. He was a NOC, working as a stringer for the Associated Press. His reporting was credible and there was no reason for anybody to suspect him. And being a NOC, sometimes working with black ops teams from the Special Activities Division, we of course didn’t even keep any files on him here. But the attempted hit reeked of Moscow. So how the hell was he blown, except by somebody here at Langley, with unusual access?”

  “He kept in touch with me during visits stateside,” Kessler interjected. “He was worried about more than the mole. He hated the office politics at Langley. The Company”—she had noticed that he preferred the more dated term—“was always playing it safe. Many senior people, starting on this floor, but extending all the way to the station chiefs, were afraid to put case officers in the field. Too many opportunities for blowback if operations went sour, they always said. So they put handcuffs on Grant and his people. That’s why the number of officers in the field gathering intelligence has been minuscule compared with the number of people here analyzing it.”

  “And Malone wasn’t one to put up with bureaucratic crap,” Garrett said. “I can’t tell you how many times he went off the reservation, breaking rules, pissing off station chiefs. Even a few ambassadors. I had to pull his ass out of the fire more than once. But it was getting harder to do as time went on. He could see the handwriting on the wall. So I think after that first attempted hit, he began planning his exit strategy.”

  “Strategy?”

  “Annie, it was really incredible, what he did. We found out only later that he’d been quietly liquidating his family’s holdings, piecemeal. He sold all his shares of their company. He sold the estate outside Pittsburgh, and all the contents. Cars, boats, vacation properties—the works. He must have set up accounts abroad while he traveled, because we’re sure a lot of it wound up offshore.”

  “How could he move and hide half a billion dollars without leaving tracks?”

  “Dummy companies. And aliases.”

  “Come on, Grant. You can’t tell me he set up dummy companies and accounts with a few fake IDs from Central Cover.”

  “Not fake. Not from Central Cover. And not a few, either. I don’t know how many. Maybe dozens.”

  “How could he get so many authentic IDs?”

  “He scammed the Social Security Administration. He used a spoof phone to call their headquarters in Baltimore; the Caller ID number tracked right back here. He identified himself and said he was coming over with a written request. When he got there, he showed a supervisor his ID, then handed him a signed letter on the director’s letterhead asking for access to their computers, on a matter of national security.”

  Kessler laughed. “That is so very like Matthew.”

  “He told the supervisor that we were trying to penetrate some domestic terrorist cells, and we needed to establish deep-cover aliases for a team of operatives. He talked the guy into issuing him about a hundred random Social Security numbers. Then, ballsy as you please, Malone sat at the guy’s keyboard for about an hour and typed in fake names and birth dates for all the SSNs. Finally, he actually got the guy to delete those SSNs from the queue of numbers to be issued in the future. That supervisor was so eager to do his patriotic duty that he even brought in a computer specialist to help tangle up the records, so that nobody could ever know which numbers were issued.”

  “You’re telling me that he walked out of there with scores of authentic but untraceable Social Security numbers?”

  “All connected to equally untraceable and unknown names. And of course, then he could use them to get other IDs. Drivers licenses. Credit cards. Library cards, pocket litter. You name it. From there, he could set up bank accounts, corporations, whatever he wanted.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Believe it. He’s that good. He even conned me into giving him some alias IDs.”

  “He conned you?”

  Kessler laughed harder.

  “Yeah, me,” Garrett growled, stabbing his latest butt into an ashtray. “He used several schemes. After the attempt on his life, he convinced me to delete all Agency records on them. And to contact other federal agencies, and have them delete all their records on Matt Malone, too.”

  “You did that?”

  “I know it sounds stupid in retrospect. But the Russians were on to him, they wanted him dead very badly, and we knew they would try again. So his only chance was to completely erase his tracks and set up a new identity.”

  “But you haven’t said why the Russians wanted to kill him.”

  He looked at his friend. “Don, this is ‘need to know.’ You want to give us five minutes?”

  “Sure. I’ll take a walk down the hall.” The older man grinned. “Clear my lungs.”

  After he left, Garrett leaned forward. “What I’m going to tell you is classified way above Top Secret—SCI, in fact—so you never heard it, okay? When Malone was on a mission in Afghanistan, he heard a rumor that Moscow was funding and supplying the Taliban with weapons to use against our troops and NATO allies.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. He risked his neck a dozen ways to run the story down. The trail led to a Russkie in Islamabad, one of the money guys. Being Malone, he didn’t play nice with Ivan. He snatched the guy from his digs, dragged him off somewhere, and tortured the bastard. He got Ivan to sing like Josh Groban. Malone got names, dates, details of the shipments, contents, and transactions. The guy told him that the Kremlin wanted to bleed us dry by arming and financing the Taliban. That Putin himself considered it to be payback for when Reagan backed the jihadists against the Red Army, back in the Eighties.”

  “Malone got actual proof of this?”

  Garrett nodded. “Taped confession and some damning paperwork. He managed to deliver it to our station chief before he went back into the field.”

  “But that’s—”

  “—political dynamite,” he finished. “As Malone would soon discover. When the Russians missed their man, they followed the same trail of informants backwards, to Malone. They convinced one of the informants to tell Malone there was a meeting planned between Russian embassy personnel and some top Taliban. They knew he’d want to witness and record it. Malone took along a SOG guy for backup. But when they got to the place, all that was waiting inside was an IED.”

  “God!”

  “Only because he was so careful opening the door did he survive at all. He stood to the side, but the blast still blew the door right back into him, smashing his face. He took a few pieces of shrapnel, too. The SOG guy was out covering the alley, so he was okay. He picked up Malone and drove him out of there. We got Special Forces medics to stabilize him and we flew him to Germany, then back here to Walter Reed.”

  She tried to process it all. “Russia—backing the Taliban! Grant, why is this is the first time I’m hearing about this?”

  His face was drawn into bitter creases. “Because after risking his life to get that explosive information, Matt Malone was betrayed once again. This time, by his own commander-in-chief. While Dr. Copeland was piecing his face back together, just a few miles south, our dear president decided that it wo
uld be far better for his future relationship with Putin to sweep the whole thing under the rug.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that American troops are dying over there, thanks to the Russians—but nobody’s doing a damned thing about it?”

  “If you’re angry, imagine how Malone felt when he found out.”

  Once again, she looked at the photo on the coffee table. “How could they do that to him?”

  “Can you see now why he would’ve been angry enough to blow Muller’s brains out?”

  *

  She sat in her office, hunched over a few sheets of paper and a man’s photo.

  The papers were notes she’d been scribbling since the meeting with Garrett and Kessler ended an hour earlier. The photo was the one of Matt Malone.

  She kept going back to the photo. Maybe if she could come to understand him better, she might be able to find him. Though now that they knew what they were up against, it seemed almost hopeless. Clearly, he was a genius in the clandestine arts. Probably a genius, period.

  She tried to imagine the intensity of the idealism that could compel someone to such extremes. For she had no doubt, based on what they had said, that Matt Malone was a passionate idealist. A man so idealistic that he could lay down his life for his principles. Or, if necessary, kill for them.

  It caused her to wonder about the depth of her own principles, and what she would or wouldn’t do in their name. What is the boundary line between a man of principle and a fanatic? Between a person moved to violence by a passion for justice, and a person motivated to violence by blood-lust and nihilism? Surely there was a difference, not in degree but in kind, between someone like Matt Malone and a typical terrorist. A moral difference. He seemed a reluctant warrior, someone for whom violence had become a last resort, not a preferred alternative.

  She tried to put herself in his shoes, tried to fathom the sheer depths of his loneliness and isolation. She thought of his life history, of its promise, of what he could have become. Of what he should have become. He was a man of enormous talent, courage, and integrity. The sort of man who, in a just world, would be making headlines with his deeds.

  What a tragic waste.

  She heard the faint tone of her cell phone and dug it out of her purse. Frowned when she saw who it was.

  “Yes, Detective Cronin,” she answered.

  He chuckled. “I wonder how many heavy breathers have been put out of business by Caller ID?”

  “Better living through technology. What’s up?”

  “We haven’t talked for a while. Just wondered if anything new had developed?”

  “Not really. He contacted me again. We’re going to get together this weekend.”

  “Well, that’s something, at least. We lost track of him a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know how; we had his place staked out pretty well. Anyway, I called his editor at the Inquirer, and he said that Mr. Hunter told him he was off researching another crime piece.”

  “No doubt. I wonder what new surprises he has in store for us?”

  “You sound a bit negative. I thought you liked what he is writing.”

  “Oh. Well, yes. I guess I’m just a bit tired.”

  “Don’t lose your idealism, Ms. Woods. I like that about you. And, truth be told, I like your boyfriend’s idealism, too.”

  “So do I,” she said. She glanced at Malone’s photo. Another idealist. She smiled to herself. I can’t seem to escape them.

  “Well, as long as I have you on the line,” he continued, “I might as well bring you up to speed on the investigation. Don’t spread this around, but we have a blood sample of one of the shooters.”

  It perked her interest. “Really. That’s great news. How did that happen?”

  “We didn’t let it out to the press. But remember that Navarro killing a couple weeks ago? The guy owned a Doberman. It bit the shooter before he killed it and Navarro. We got the shooter’s blood sample off the dog. It had to be his blood, because it didn’t match Navarro’s. It’s our first real break, because when we eventually get a shooter suspect, we can check for a DNA match or maybe scars from dog bites.”

  “That’s at least some progress.”

  “The longer they do this, the more chances they take, the more mistakes they make, and the more clues they leave behind. And the people around them start to notice things, too. All the sneaking around.”

  “It’s a shame you don’t have more than the blood to go on, so far.”

  “Not much. Just that and the symbolic names.”

  “Symbolic names?”

  “Oh. Sorry. That hasn’t gotten out, either. The vigilante team has been using symbolic aliases.”

  “I still don’t get what you mean.”

  “You know, names like ‘Lex Talionis’ and ‘Edmond Dantes.’ Lex Talionis, that’s Latin for ‘eye for an eye.’ Old Testament justice, you see. They used that in Hyattsville, when a—”

  Something froze inside her. “Did you say Edmond Dantes?”

  “Yeah. One of our guys looked it up. That’s the hero in a classic revenge novel, Count of Monte Cristo. That guy was also a vigilante. So the way we—”

  “Billy Joe Stoddard,” she mumbled.

  “Excuse me?”

  The walls seemed to be spinning.

  Suddenly, things began to crash together.

  Malone assassinates Muller, out of revenge.

  And leaves behind the name of a fictional avenger as his signature.

  The vigilantes assassinate criminals, also for revenge.

  And leave behind the name of fictional avengers.

  Matt Malone is a vigilante?

  “Ms. Woods?”

  She stared in shock at the photo on her desk.

  It couldn’t be.

  It couldn’t be.

  But then everything else began to tumble into place.

  Matt Malone, CIA master of assassination and disguise...and of surveillance detection.

  Matt Malone, idealist...who had plastic surgery...who left his old identity behind...living now under a false identity...seeking justice....

  “You still there? Ms. Woods?”

  Arthur Copeland rebuilds Matt Malone’s face....

  Her pulse was hammering.

  Dylan Hunter—with a rebuilt face and a new identity—shows up at Arthur Copeland’s funeral....

  She stared at the photo of the dark-haired man. Began to shake.

  No—God no!

  She felt a crushing weight on her chest, making it hard to breathe.

  Matt Malone...Dylan Hunter...

  You’ve been hunting your own lover!

  “Annie! Is anything wrong?”

  “I...have to go....”

  She clicked off the phone. It fell from her shaking hand to her desk.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

  Saturday, December 20, 4:25 p.m.

  The sight of her lingerie in the overnight bag caused her to shudder.

  She had to stop packing and sit on her bed, trying once again to settle her nerves.

  Since yesterday, the fear had come upon her in sudden waves. It prevented her from sleeping last night, until she finally took a pill that relaxed her enough for a fitful few hours of semi-consciousness.

  Throughout the day, though, the thought of facing him again terrified her. All the facts, all the logical inferences she could draw from them, told her that Matt Malone, CIA assassin, had become Dylan Hunter, leader of a team of vigilantes.

  But those same facts—and mistaken logical inferences drawn from them—had led her and Garrett astray for the past six months. The same facts and erroneous inferences had propelled them into futile manhunts for imaginary Russian moles and military snipers.

  Well, were her inferences any more valid this time? Everything she felt, everything she knew, told her that she was right about this. But did she really know everything?

  Before she would say anything to Garrett or Cronin, she needed proof. Iron-clad proof. She cou
ld not destroy Dylan’s life because of some terrible mistake or misinterpretation.

  She ran her hand over the smooth fabric of the bed’s comforter.

  Nor could she destroy their relationship because of some tragic error.

  So she had to face him tonight. Had to pretend to him that she had resolved her doubts and fears. Had to play-act long enough to get the proof she needed. Or evidence that would exonerate him, once and for all.