by Matthew Dunn
Dedication
To my children
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: The Setup Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two: The Descent Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Three: The Justice Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Matthew Dunn
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part One
The Setup
Prologue
New York City, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 8:03 a.m.
I opened my eyes to find my hands were caked in blood, and I had no idea why.
More blood stained the Egyptian cotton sheets on top of me.
I swung my feet out of bed and onto the deep-pile cream carpet, hands motionless in midair. A nosebleed in the night was a possibility, though that hadn’t happened since I was ten years old. Thirty-five years ago. Urgently, I checked my body—all six foot four inches. Some of my scars were courtesy of my service as a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion. Others from being an American and British spy. None of the scars were ruptured.
On my right arm was a tiny cut. Maybe I had scratched the area and broken skin while sleeping. It was the only laceration on my flesh, but that wouldn’t account for the quantity of blood.
A warm breeze came through the open windows and swirled around the room, which was furnished with art deco paintings, velvet drapes, upholstered furniture, and a television atop an oak cabinet crammed with fine wines and single malts. A corridor led to the closed bathroom door. The bedroom windows had been shut when I went to bed.
Nothing made sense.
The bathroom door had been open last night. Perhaps I’d stumbled in there half asleep to relieve myself, shutting the door on my way out. I didn’t know. But I was awake now and my mind had finally kicked into gear.
I opened the bathroom door and turned the light on.
The sight that greeted me was like a heavyweight punch to the face.
In the bathtub was a smartly dressed woman—short brown hair, Caucasian. She’d been shot twice in the back of the head at close range with bullets that were sufficiently powerful to leave savage exit wounds.
Her face was an obliterated mess. Within the confines of the tub, her limbs were contorted, her body twisted, the result of a sudden jerk of movement during instant death.
I stayed still, silent, because I’d had too much experience of death to express my emotions. But internally, adrenaline and panic were kicking in big-time.
I looked everywhere for something to tell me what had happened.
Judging by her attire, the woman could have been one of the hotel’s hundreds of wealthy guests or numerous management staff. One of her hands was resting on the side of the tub. She wasn’t wearing wedding and engagement rings, but normally did. Neither had previously been taken off for some time, judging by the buildup of fat around the place where they should have been. They were gone now.
On the floor beneath her hand was an MK23 pistol with a sound suppressor attached. It was a weapon used by specialists. It’s a good gun—zero recoil. Why was it there? Who had left it there? The woman had bruises on her wrists, and one shoe heel was broken off. It was clear to me that she’d futilely fought before death and was placed here while alive, held down, and shot dead. How could I have slept through this? Had I been drugged? This body had been killed and placed here for a reason.
To implicate me.
After washing the blood off my hands, I examined everything in the crime scene—little bottles of Ferragamo perfumed soap on the side of the bath, mostly unused, those open done so by me the night before; blood on walls, floor too, and underneath the woman’s fingernails.
A bloody handprint was on the wall of tile. I held my hand against it and saw its shape and size exactly matched my own. Next to it were five red fingerprints. I dashed into the bedroom, opened my pen, and poured ink into a cup. After dipping one set of fingers into the ink, I pressed them against a sheet of hotel paper. In the bathroom, I held the sheet next to the fingerprints on the wall. A perfect match. It was my fingerprints on that wall.
My life was ruined by the scene in the bathroom. Torn apart, turned to shit.
But ruined by me? I wondered if I’d gone insane. My recollection of how I’d spent the evening before might have been a deliberate false memory. I hadn’t spent a quiet night of solitary reflection in my hotel room, making plans for my future. Instead, perhaps I’d met the woman in the hotel bar and asked her up to my room to join me for a drink. And then? Then she said something that set me off. A naïve or sarcastic comment that triggered memories of past traumas. It wasn’t the woman’s fault; she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Regardless, my ordinarily superb moral compass was sent into a helter-skelter spin of confused anger and revenge against the person I’d become. After a life of protecting people and getting no thanks in return, I’d gotten pissed off by something the woman in the bathtub had said. Maybe I shot her. Simple as that.
That would make me a good man turned crazed lunatic. A person pushed over the edge. A man who needed to be put behind bars forever, while receiving treatment for a brain that was firing on the wrong cylinders. The death penalty might be a better way out.
I picked up the pistol, checked its magazine, pulled back the workings, and sniffed the barrel. At least one bullet had recently exited the handgun. Eight bullets remained in the gun. I hadn’t smuggled a pistol into America. This was not my weapon.
I had to hand myself in to the police. I would tell them I didn’t think I’d killed the woman, and certainly had no recollection of doing so, but there was every possibility that I was a lying madman. The chances that I would be found not guilty were slim to nonexistent. Detectives would probe into my background and would get just enough information on my exploits to conclude that their prisoner was a man who’d been instructed to kill far too many times. Motive: acute mental disorder brought about by cumulative traumas. Victim: a random member of the human race. And while I was investigated, I’d be kept in a cage with no chance to establish the truth.
Thing was, though, I knew my own mind.
I kill people who need to be killed.
I didn’t shoot the woman.
I couldn’t trust the police to help me understand what had happened here. For them it would be a no-brainer. I would be guilty as charged.
There was no one I could trust.
I needed to move quickly. After dressing in jeans, boots, T-shirt, sweater, and jacket, I grabbed only essential items and shoved them into a small backpack, together with the pistol. I removed my cell phone battery and smashed the phone into pieces, collecting all debris and dumping it into a shower cap. When far away from here, I’d dispose of the destroyed phone.
And getting away from here was now my absolute priority.
But I hesitated
.
I touched the fresh cut on my arm as I looked at the woman’s bloody nails. She’d scratched me, I was sure. I put the tips of my fingers against hers. I knew I shouldn’t have done so, but I was convinced my DNA was already all over the scene. Almost certainly my prints were on the gun. I kept my hand against hers because I needed the faceless corpse to know that someone really cared about what had happened.
I hated leaving her.
The vast hotel lobby had a marble floor with potted plants and rows of golden pillars that were illuminated by huge crystal chandeliers. Numerous guests were checking in or out or heading to breakfast. It was a civilized place. I was innocent of what had happened in room 1944, but I felt like a guilty murderer. This wasn’t the place for me. Getting out of here was all that mattered.
The concierge glanced up from his computer, smiled, and walked from behind his desk directly toward me. He was carrying a clipboard and a small parcel.
He blocked my path, held up the parcel, and said, “This came for you in the early hours. Hand delivered. We were going to run it up to your room today. Still can, if you like. Or you can take it now.”
Nobody apart from hotel staff knew I was in the Waldorf. The parcel was a small cardboard box, though big enough to contain a bomb that would obliterate me. I wondered whether I should take the parcel far away from here and dump it in a deserted field. But somebody had dragged a woman into my room, shot her, and exited without killing me. He’d have killed me then if he wanted.
I opened the box.
Inside was a hardcover encyclopedia. I flicked though the first pages. Printed in 1924 by a publishing house I’d never heard of, almost certainly the book was long ago out of print. As I rifled through the book I came across the brief handwritten note.
The classifieds section of the Washington Post. Not available online; only print copies. Tomorrow’s edition.
“Just need you to sign for this.” The concierge handed me his clipboard and pen. “Hope you’re having a great day,” he added, his smile broadening.
I took the clipboard and wrote my name.
Will Cochrane.
Chapter 1
The Romanian cleaner was crying as she jogged down the nineteenth-floor corridor alongside the Waldorf’s head of security. She didn’t know the man by her side. He was serious, an ex-NYPD cop, she’d heard, and had the demeanor of someone who’d been waiting for a moment like this so that he could kick into action and do something other than hushing rowdy guests. She was in her cleaning apron and flat shoes. He was in a dark suit and had an earpiece, making him look like the Secret Service men she’d seen in movies.
They reached the room where the Do Not Disturb sign had hung on the door all day. It was only ten minutes ago that the cleaner had knocked on the door again, heard no response, and entered.
That’s when she’d screamed.
The head of security told her to stay in the corridor, used a universal swipe card to enter the room, and walked into the bathroom.
The ex-cop had never seen anything like this.
As the Amtrak train turned on a bend in the tracks, Philadelphia became visible in the distance. I’d disappear in the city for one night. Spending any longer here would be suicidal. Nowhere was safe.
I’d pretended to sleep for most of the journey in the full train car, head bowed low, jacket hood up, and arms folded as if I was hugging myself warm rather than keeping one hand close to the murder weapon I’d taken from the bathroom. A tired kid called Andy was sitting next to me. Mom was sitting opposite her son, her accent from North Carolina, I was sure; a patient woman who spoke to Andy in a noncondescending yet commanding tone.
Next to her was a jerk called Kevin, who was almost certainly hated by the U.S. Marine Corps, though he was a marine. Regulation marine haircut, a new tattoo on his sinewy forearm, and a mouth that blathered in all directions to other travelers. He was getting promoted to corporal, he told everyone, because he knew his shit. Discipline—he pumped his chest as he looked at Andy—was his savior. The Corps, God, America, ten Buds, and warm thighs made him tick, ooh-rah, y’all—in that frickin’ order, you get?
Single Mom clearly didn’t take to Kevin. “Please, young man. No language like that in front of my son.”
The marine wasn’t bothered. “Ma’am, your son hears worse at school. And he’ll hear a darn sight worse when he’s grown some balls.”
I opened my eyes.
No doubt Andy’s mom was worried. Kevin had a grin on his face and an unstoppable tongue. Mom glanced at the rear of the car, probably wondering whether she should grab her son and leave.
I leaned forward, silent because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. But I stared at Kevin.
The action worked. It got the marine’s attention away from other passengers.
Kevin said, “Guys like you don’t know what it’s like to be in the Corps.”
I didn’t. But I did know how to do a HALO parachute jump from thirty thousand feet, run across snow-covered mountains with an orange boiler suit on and a hunter-killer squad with dogs on my trail, twist a man’s neck until his body becomes limp, and make a car explode.
Kevin had the look of a man who thought he’d won the day. That was all I needed. He was pacified. Calmer. A guy who thought he dominated everyone around him with his masculinity. I wanted that for the sake of the folks next to me. The alternative would have been to punch him in the throat and leave him gasping for breath. I’ve done that many times to men far bigger than Kevin. But I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. More important, the kid next to me didn’t need to see the results of that action.
The train stopped. I watched Single Mom and her son exit, then picked up my things and stared at Kevin. I smiled as I towered over him. He was silent. I knew why. He now realized he was out of his league. I got off the train and walked through the station.
The Waldorf Astoria’s room 1944 was officially a crime scene.
The hotel’s head of security was loitering in the corridor. In the room were two forensics officers, head to toe in white coveralls, masks over their mouths, rubber gloves changed each time they touched something. It was only ten minutes ago that they’d let Detectives Józef Kopański and Thyme Painter back into the room.
Always in a bleached shirt and immaculate suit when working, Kopański—a rangy man with silver hair and not an ounce of fat on his imposing frame—had a face that was half handsome and half mutilated from nitric acid, and callused hands, the size of shovels and as strong as clamps, that could quickly put any bullet where it needed to be. Joe Cop Killer, his colleagues called him behind his back but not to his face, a nickname derived from the time he’d entered a house alone and with pinpoint accuracy shot a dangerous sheriff who was strung out on meth and was pointing a gun at his wife’s head.
Compared to Kopański, whose parents were impoverished immigrants, Painter’s background couldn’t have been more different. Her parents were investment bankers and she was a graduate of Stanford. She’d had options on Capitol Hill, but went to West Point and graduated at the top of her class. Three years later, she was a helicopter Night Stalker for the 160th SOAR. Her career ended when she’d offloaded five DEVGRU SEALs in Afghanistan and saw that another chopper on her six had been locked on by a SAM. To save the other helo, which contained more SEALs, she’d flown into the path of the missile. Doctors saved her life but not her leg. She joked that the stress of having an artificial limb kept her weight down.
Both single, Kopański and Painter formed a tireless unit who broke more murder cases than the rest of Manhattan’s precincts combined.
The forensics team told them that the blood prints in the bathroom matched prints elsewhere in the room, meaning it was almost certain that the guest staying in 1944 was the murderer; the prints would be sent off for analysis along with all other samples.
Kopański moved left and said nothing as Painter leaned in from behind him and placed her face by the bloody handprints on the
bathroom wall. She moved from one place to another, silent, shooting only the quickest of occasional glances at Kopański to let him know she was on the case and getting signals, as she called her methodology. She saw a powerful man, grip as strong as Kopański’s, holding the victim with one hand, pumping bullets into the back of her skull with the other.
Painter touched Kopański’s shoulder.
The big Polish American sensed the killer in the room, an electric feeling of immediacy that heightened every nerve-shredding instinct. He had been here. He’d kill you now if he still were. The murderer had washed in the bathroom, cleaning himself up after the death of an innocent woman. Killers are two a dime, serial killers a slight notch up only because their deranged personalities and get-away-with-it track record hold fascination. But this killer was different—he’d killed with brutal efficiency, yet had been sloppy by leaving his prints and DNA all over the crime scene.
According to the hotel, the room occupant was an English guy called Will Cochrane.
Both detectives wondered if he was a pro who didn’t care whether the world knew he’d gone mad.
The taxi dropped me outside the Holiday Inn Express in Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia. When the car was out of sight, I turned away from the hotel, walking through the city, which was wet and cold despite the last vestiges of summer lingering in the air. I stopped by an ATM, withdrew the maximum limit allowed by my bank, and moved on until I found a cheap hotel on Spruce Street, near the center of the city. After paying for a room up front in cash, I went to my room and held my head in my hands while sitting on the bed. It seemed only minutes ago that I’d sat on my Waldorf bed and stared at my bloody hands.
Traveling between New York and Philadelphia had kept me preoccupied with the urgency of fleeing and hiding. My next destination was eight hundred miles southwest, the home of twin ten-year-old boys. They were the reason I was in the States. Their parents were friends of mine and had been murdered. I’d planned to adopt the boys and start a new life in America. After months of preparation, today I was supposed to visit a law firm in NYC to sign adoption papers. I’d intended to have a new life, give the boys the security and love they so needed, start working as a teacher at their school, and be a parent. Their father was a former SEAL who’d worked with me. Many times he’d saved my life. It was my duty to look after his remaining family.