Sidney Sheldon's Reckless

by Sidney Sheldon

  Tonight had felt like something more. Talking to Cameron Crewe, looking into his sad, intense eyes. It had felt good.

  That mustn’t happen again.

  BACK AT HIS GENEVA apartment—Cameron Crewe kept apartments in every city where he did business—Cameron lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

  That mustn’t happen again.

  He’d been too open with Tracy Whitney. Too unguarded. Cameron knew from experience how dangerous it was to open one’s heart. What devastating consequences could follow.

  And yet he’d felt a powerful connection to Tracy. He’d felt compassion. And kinship. And something else too. Something much more dangerous.

  Desire.

  Cameron wanted Tracy.

  The realization filled him with excitement, and with fear.

  He closed his eyes, switched on his iron discipline, and forced himself to sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  FULL HOUSE.”

  The fat man grinned, revealing a set of the ugliest teeth Hunter had ever seen, and reached forwards across the table to scoop up his winnings. Hunter’s arm shot out to stop him.

  “Sorry, Antoine.” Hunter slowly laid four beautiful jacks slowly out on the table. “I believe that’s my game.”

  The Frenchman made a noise that was part anger and part disbelief. Jack Hanley, or whatever his real name was, had shown up in Riga a week ago and proceeded to clean up at every major poker table in the city. The stakes weren’t particularly high tonight. The Frenchman could afford to lose, as could the Latvian businessmen at tonight’s game. Still, there was something about Jack Hanley, a certain American arrogance dressed up as humility, that was starting to get on everybody’s nerves. That and the fact that he always quit when he was ahead.

  “Is that really the time?” Hunter glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “I think I’d better call it a night.”

  Ignoring the grumbling of his fellow players—it was after midnight after all—Hunter grabbed his coat and headed into the night.

  He preferred Latvia to Romania, and especially liked Riga, a city steeped in both history and romance. His hotel looked directly over the dome cathedral in Vecrīga, the old city, a building that dated back to the thirteenth century and still whispered of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. Only two weeks ago, Group 99 had orchestrated a flyover of the cathedral, dropping hundreds of red balloons filled with cash for the beggars who still flocked there, hoping for alms. In the last month alone, the group had redistributed well over a million euros to Europe’s poor, through balloon drops or less dramatically, by simply depositing cash into the bank accounts of impoverished citizens as well as filling the coffers of various charities and NGOs, particularly in Greece.

  Hunter spent his days in Riga working on his story and his nights playing cards. He would have liked to stay longer, but it was too risky. After Romania he’d started using aliases and taking small steps to change his appearance. The CIA would find him eventually, he knew that. He just hoped to stay under the radar long enough to finish his story, to get the truth out there. If . . .

  Wheesh! The bullet whistled past Hunter’s left ear. He’d been in enough war zones to recognize that sound, even though the shot itself was silent. Professional. Instinctively Hunter dropped to the ground, scrambling on his hands and knees to the walled side of the alley, away from the glare of the streetlamps. Wheesh! Another shot. This time it clattered against something metal. A trash can, perhaps, up ahead? Or a fencepost.

  Hunter looked around him. The narrow streets around Antoine’s apartment were utterly deserted at this time of night. He couldn’t see his attacker, or anyone, in the darkness. His only hope was to run, to try to make it to one of the main streets or squares where he might find safety in numbers.

  Sprinting towards Remtes Street, Hunter’s mind spun faster than his legs. He had about $5,000 in his pockets, but he was pretty sure whoever was shooting at him wasn’t interested in money. He’d assumed the Americans wanted him alive—clearly they had back in Bratislava. But something had obviously changed. Unless it wasn’t the CIA. Unless it was . . .

  Wheesh! Another shot, and this time he could hear running behind him, boots pounding the cobblestones just like his own. The lights of a tram up ahead shone straight at him, momentarily blinding him. Panicked, Hunter turned around. The last thing he saw was Apollo’s face staring back at him, his sadist’s eyes alight with excitement as he raised the gun. Pointing it between Hunter’s eyes, he calmly pulled the trigger.

  SALLY FAIERS WAS DEEP asleep when her mobile rang.

  “Can you talk?”

  It was the first time she’d heard from Hunter in almost a month. He sounded out of breath and antsy. Probably just climbed out of some married lady’s bedroom window with the husband in hot pursuit. In typical Drexel style he’d asked Sally to do something for him, something complex and time-consuming and of no benefit to her whatsoever, and then gone completely AWOL. Admittedly he was being hounded by the most powerful government on earth, not to mention a group of potentially murderous terrorists. But it was still deeply annoying.

  “No.”

  “Did you find anything out? About Major General Frank Dorrien?”

  “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand, Hunter? It’s one in the fucking morning.”

  “Don’t hang up!” It was a yell, panicked and desperate. For the first time Sally detected real fear in Hunter’s voice. “Please.”

  “Where are you?” Her tone softened. “What’s happened?”

  Hunter hesitated.

  “Either you trust me or you don’t,” Sally said angrily, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “Because if you don’t, I’m done busting my balls for this stupid story of yours. And I’m done keeping your secrets.”

  “I’m in Riga,” Hunter said. “Group 99 just tried to kill me.”

  He told her about Apollo, his captor in Bratislava and the man who’d shot Bob Daley.

  “He was firing right at me. This truck came out of nowhere and blocked the shot. By the time it passed he’d gone.”

  “Does he know where you’re staying?”

  “I assume so,” Hunter panted. “He must have followed me to the poker night. Unless one of the players tipped him off. In any case I can’t go back to the hotel. I left a bunch of notes there. Research. FUCK!”

  Sally sat up in bed. “It’s OK. You’re alive. And it’s all in your head anyway, right?”

  “I guess.” Hunter’s breathing began to normalize. “So did you find anything?”

  “That depends on your definition of anything,” Sally said, fully awake now. “General Frank didn’t kill Prince Achileas. That much I’m pretty sure of.”

  Hunter let out a long, disappointed breath.

  “But he does work for MI6. And he’s part of the team that’s looking for you.”

  “MI6 is looking for me?”

  “Yes,” Sally said. “After Bob Daley’s murder the U.S. and UK governments formed a joint intelligence task force to counter Group 99. As part of the information sharing I guess the Yanks told our boys the truth about what happened in Bratislava, that you’re on the run. They seem to believe you might be in league with Group 99. That your abduction might have been staged.”

  Hunter said nothing.

  “Was it?” Sally asked.

  “I just told you, they tried to kill me,” Hunter said. “What else did you find out?”

  “This is all hearsay. But it looks like the Brits are anxious to find you before the Americans do. Your man Frank Dorrien, in particular, doesn’t trust the CIA.”

  “We have something in common after all,” Hunter quipped.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Sally said. “The picture I get of Dorrien is of a highly disciplined, deeply conservative man. He disapproved of Prince Achileas. Evidently the boy was gay. General Dorrien may not have killed the boy but he certainly bullied him. You could argue that he drove the poor kid to suici
de.”

  Hunter wasn’t sure he’d call the privileged Prince of Greece a “poor kid” but he took Sally’s point.

  “Achileas did know Bob Daley. They weren’t friends exactly, but they seemed to get along. General Dorrien knew both men, and liked Daley.”

  “Bob was easy to like,” said Hunter. This wasn’t the news he’d been hoping to hear about Frank Dorrien. It meant he was going to have to rethink some things. But it was interesting nonetheless, especially the part about the British being on the hunt for him too.

  “Hunter?” Sally’s voice sounded very far away suddenly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me what you’re working on. Send me your notes, anything, as backup.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You almost got killed tonight,” Sally reminded him. “If you die, do you want this story to die with you?”

  “No. But I’d rather it died with me than with you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hunter said, “It’s not me they’re all trying to bury, Sal. It’s the truth. I can’t put you at risk.”

  “I’m putting me at risk,” said Sally.

  “Thanks for the help.”

  Sally thought about asking him not to hang up, but she knew it would be pointless.

  After he rang off she slumped back on her pillow and stared at the ceiling.

  What the hell are you up to, Hunter Drexel? What’s this really all about?

  She wondered how differently things might have turned out between them if she’d ever been able to trust him.

  FRANK DORRIEN WAITED UNTIL his wife was sleeping soundly before creeping out of bed.

  Downstairs in his study, he turned the desk lamp on low and switched on Prince Achileas’s laptop. There’d been very little time after the boy died to go through his room. But the Greek’s MacBook Air was vital. Frank had slipped it into his briefcase while the Prince was still swinging. He felt not the slightest twinge of guilt.

  MI6 had retrieved scores of deleted emails, many of them encrypted.

  Frank Dorrien had read them all.

  His upper lip curled with distaste now at the pornographic images in front of him. All were of deviant young men in various stages of sexual abasement. What was wrong with the world? Disgusting.

  A female journalist had been sniffing around the barracks in the last few weeks, asking questions. No doubt another bleeding-heart liberal who expected the British army to conform to civilian rules, while somehow magically keeping the country safe from harm. Didn’t people realize there was a war on? Not a war between nations, but a war of ideologies, a war of right and wrong?

  Frank Dorrien was aware of Miss Faiers. For now he had bigger fish to fry. But he would not tolerate anyone who tried to come between him and his duty. Miss Faiers had better watch her back.

  Turning his attention back to the emails, Frank stared transfixed at the top left-hand corner of Achileas’s last deleted message.

  There, hovering cheerfully, was a solitary red balloon.

  AGENT MILTON BUCK WAS having a bad day.

  It was about to get worse.

  The British were lying to him. He was sure of it. They claimed to have made no progress tracking down either Apollo or Althea, and to have heard nothing about Hunter Drexel’s fate. But from the tone of General Dorrien’s voice alone, Agent Buck knew the man was lying through his teeth. They’re closing the net. They’re going to make fools of us all!

  Of course, two could play at the concealing-information game. The problem was that U.S. intelligence had made no progress of their own to withhold from MI6. Tracy Whitney’s trip to Geneva had been a bust, a total dead end. Group 99 were dancing on Henry Cranston’s grave and there was nothing the FBI or the CIA could do about it. Tracy’s failures reflected directly on Milton Buck. He loathed having to work with her, but Althea’s bizarre connection had left him no choice. He was sure Tracy was lying to him too—she must know who Althea was, or at least have her suspicions—but of course he had no way to prove it.

  On top of which, Milton Buck had Greg Walton breathing down his neck day and night. Presumably because the president was breathing down Walton’s neck, but Agent Buck didn’t care about that. He cared about the fact that, once again, a chance for major career advancement was slipping through his fingers thanks to Tracy Whitney’s ineptitude. And to top it all off, his wife was on her period and bit his head off every time he walked through the door. Which explained why Milton Buck was still at his desk in his office, staring mindlessly at his computer screen, at eight o’clock at night.

  Clicking open his documents folder, Milton’s screen suddenly went blank.

  What the hell?

  He tried a few other applications. One by one, they all shut down like dominoes.

  He picked up the phone. “Jared. Get up here,” he barked at the systems manager. “My laptop just died.”

  “Everybody’s has, Sir,” the technician replied. “It looks . . . it seems we’ve had a breach. Something . . . Oh shit.”

  Milton Buck looked back at his own screen.

  One by one, the blackness was being filled with red balloons.

  Greg Walton picked up on the first ring.

  “I know,” he told Buck. “The same thing’s happening at Langley as we speak. Our guys are on it. We’re tracing the attack.”

  He hung up.

  TEN MINUTES LATER HE called back.

  “The hacker’s in London.”

  “Are you sure?” Milton Buck asked.

  “Positive. Tracy managed to trace her there.”

  “Her?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s Althea. Less than a minute after Tracy got a location, she messaged us directly, claiming responsibility.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Buck ranted. “How the hell did she get in again? We rewrote the entire system after the last breach. Every firewall, every password, every line of code.”

  “I know what we did, Milton,” Greg Walton snapped. “Evidently it wasn’t enough. This virus is a lot more powerful than the last one. Three-quarters of my files have been corrupted. And it gets worse.”

  “Worse? How?” Milton Buck’s head was starting to throb.

  “According to Tracy, the virus originated from 85 Albert Embankment, SW1.”

  “Albert Embankment?” The throbbing got worse. “Isn’t that . . .”

  “Uh-huh.” Greg Walton sighed heavily. “MI6 headquarters.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THERE’S NO WAY IT originated here. No way. To be frank, Miss Whitney, I can’t believe we’re even discussing this.”

  Jamie MacIntosh seemed like a decent man. But Tracy could see that his nerves were frayed to breaking point over this latest Group 99 cyberattack. He constantly worried at his fingernails and his left foot tapped an anxious rhythm as he listened to Tracy talk.

  Tracy thought, No wonder he’s worried. Not only had Althea devastated and deeply embarrassed U.S. intelligence, but she had successfully managed to implicate British intelligence in what happened, thereby setting the two allies at each other’s throats at precisely the moment that cooperation was vital.

  “I agree with you,” Tracy said placatingly. “No one’s suggesting that Althea is one of yours.”

  According to Tracy’s research, less than 12 percent of MI6 employees were women, and the vast majority of those were in lowly administrative or secretarial positions. Of the women educated or senior enough to have the wherewithal to plan a sophisticated cyberattack, none came close to fitting Althea’s profile.

  “But she did compromise your systems, just as she compromised ours. She deliberately set this up to make it look as though this hack came from within. That tells us things about her.”

  Major General Frank Dorrien looked at Tracy suspiciously. “Such as?”

  From the little he knew of Tracy Whitney, Frank Dorrien wasn’t a fan. Thieves and con artists were not people to be trusted, no matter how reformed they claimed to be.


  “Such as the fact that she knows how Western intelligence services operate. My guess is she’s either a former spy, or she knows someone on the inside.”

  “She knows you, Miss Whitney,” Frank Dorrien reminded Tracy. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that your memory has been jogged? That some connection has suddenly come back to you?”

  Tracy’s eyes narrowed. She resented the general’s implication that she was lying about not knowing Althea. That she was hiding something. She also resented the way the general had looked down his superior, patrician nose at her from the moment she walked in.

  “She knows of me,” Tracy corrected him. “But so would anyone else who worked here fifteen years ago.”

  “OK.” Jamie MacIntosh rubbed his eyes. “We’ll look into the former spy angle. Greg Walton should do the same, although I’ll admit I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Any alternate suggestions?” Tracy asked him.

  “I have a suggestion,” the general piped up. “There’s a journalist at the Times, a young woman by the name of Faiers. Sally Faiers. She’s been up to Sandhurst, asking questions about me and about Prince Achileas’s death. She seems to be pursuing some preposterous conspiracy theory that I did the young man harm in order to silence him.”

  “Silence him over what?” Tracy asked.

  “I have no idea.” Frank sounded bored. “But I do know she’s been asking about Captain Daley as well, and whether he and the prince knew each other.”

  “Did they?”

  Frank looked Tracy right in the eye. “No. They may have passed in the corridor or on the parade ground but it was no more than that. Captain Daley was an exemplary soldier. Prince Achileas . . . was not. The idea that they were friends is frankly insulting.”

  Dorrien’s dislike of the young Greek was palpable. It struck Tracy as odd that he made no attempt to hide it. The boy was dead, after all.

  “It turns out Miss Faiers is also an ex-girlfriend of the elusive Mr. Hunter Drexel,” Dorrien continued.

  Tracy’s eyebrows shot up.

  “And she’s written a number of influential op-eds in the past, arguing against hydraulic fracturing, including a withering article about Henry Cranston’s company. That’s rather too many connections to Group 99 for my liking.”