The Unwanted

by Brett Battles

  "Doesn't matter now."

  "No, I guess not," Chairman Kidd said. There was a pause. "Do you think he'll follow through?"

  "He'll tell the Office. He has to. And they'll tell their clients. Chercover won't let it drop. He may not have cared about us before, but Deputy Director Jackson was his protégé."

  "Killing him was an inspired idea," the Chairman said.

  "Thank you," Hardwick said.

  The finding of Jackson's body had gone near perfect to how Hardwick had envisioned it. As had the killings in Ireland, and the staged shooting at the museum less than an hour earlier. All had been designed to increase Chercover's and the Office's belief in the information Hardwick had been passing to them. Now there was only one last thing he had to do, and that would depend on what happened with Yellowhammer.

  "Do you think it's almost time to blackball the Office?" Chairman Kidd asked.

  "Let's wait and see what Quinn does," Hardwick said. Forcing the Office out of business was just another step in Hardwick's plan. They'd proved to be a problem for the LP, so using this opportunity to stop them was a no-brainer. "Once it looks like they've taken our bait, and send him to Yellowhammer, we move. Chercover first, though. Then we blackball the Office."

  "I'm looking forward to it."

  "After that I think it's time for us to go into quiet mode," Hardwick said.

  There was a pause, then Chairman Kidd said, "Agreed. I'll make sure everyone knows."

  "One other thing," Hardwick said. "I've retired as of this moment. Do you think you can arrange things for me?"

  "Of course. It's time you became a member of the council anyway."

  Hardwick smiled. Plans within plans, all coming together. "I would be honored."

  "I'm glad," the Chairman said. "I'll be waiting for your final call."

  "The morning after tomorrow. If everything sticks to schedule it should be around 12:30 p.m. your time."

  "Remember, there can be no loose ends."

  "There won't be."

  "Great, a vacation when you're done, then," Mr. Kidd said. "Someplace warm."

  "It's like you read my mind."

  "Be careful, James. I'll talk to you soon."

  Hardwick slipped the phone back into his pocket. A vacation did sound like a good idea. But he had to see this through first. And even before that, he needed to find a ride back to his hotel.

  Goddamn Quinn.

  Marion awoke to darkness.

  At first she thought there might be something covering her eyes. But as her fingers touched her face, she realized nothing was there. Blind? No, of course not, she told herself. It was just dark, darker even than the tiny space in the wall of Frau Roslyn's orphanage.

  "Iris." The name slipped from her mouth.

  She reached around her bed in the dark trying to find the girl. Not a bed, really. Not even a mattress, more a thick piece of foam. There was no sheet. No blanket.

  No Iris.

  Marion began working her way across the floor, feeling every inch of the cold concrete surface.

  "Iris!" She clung to the hope the child had just wandered off and fallen asleep, but the desperation in her harsh whisper betrayed what she really believed.

  Her fingers touched the far wall a half-second before her head did. A spike of white-hot pain lanced her skull, forcing her into a near blackout before she was able to regain control.

  She reached out and touched it again, but this time using it as a crutch to help her stand. Her head was still pounding from the blow, but she fought through it, willing herself to push the pain as far away as she could.

  "Iris?" she said again.

  She finished her search of the floor by shuffling her feet forward. The room wasn't that big. She figured no more than eight feet by ten. She found a door along the wall near the foot of the mattress. It was made of metal, solid, cold, and flush to the floor. There was absolutely no light seeping around the edges.

  But other than the door and the mattress and the cold walls, there was nothing else.

  Her memories of the last hours—days, maybe?—were sketchy at best. The parking garage she remembered. The man with the accent. But after that nothing was clear. Lights, darkness, a constant hum, someone helping her to walk, then another hum, louder this time, more powerful. Then . . .

  Then nothing until now.

  She felt around the walls, looking for a window. Maybe there was one that was covered. Or if she had gone blind, maybe it was filling the room with light she could not see. Either way, it was a possible route of escape. But there was no window. Nothing but solid wall.

  And a door.

  And a mattress.

  She wanted to lie back down, curl up, and let the tears that were screaming to pour out stream down her face. But she couldn't let herself, she just couldn't.

  Iris.

  Iris needed her. God knows what they had done to the child. If anything happened to Iris, it would be Marion's fault. There was no other way for her to spin it. Iris's life was Marion's to care for, Marion's responsibility. That was what Frau Roslyn expected.

  Marion worked her way back to the door and felt for the knob, her palms moving frantically over the surface where it should have been. But there was no knob. She moved her hand along the edges of the door. No hinges, either. It must open outward, she realized.

  So she did the only thing she could. She began pounding on the door.

  "Help!" she yelled. "Help!"

  Maybe she had been abandoned somewhere. Perhaps no one knew she was there.

  "Help!" she screamed again.

  Light. Faint, and seeping around the edges of the door. One second it hadn't been there, then the next it was, like someone had flipped a switch.

  "Let me out! Please, anyone. Let me out!"

  Something banged against the door from the other side, loud and sharp, shocking her into silence.

  "Step back," a muffled voice said. It was male, and not sympathetic.

  She shuffled backward and almost tripped over the mattress.

  There were several clicks along the right edge of the door, then the distinct sound of a latch opening. Light streamed into the room, stinging Marion's eyes and forcing her to cover them with her hands.

  She heard steps, more than she could count, enter the room and approach her. She blinked again and peeked between her fingers. The light coming from behind her visitors was still too bright to make out anything more than several silhouettes. Three? Four?

  She never saw the hand that slapped her cheek. It rocked her to the left. Her foot caught on the mattress and she went down to her knees. One of her hands grazed the wall as she tried to stop her fall, but she only bruised her palm and scraped the flesh at the base of her thumb.

  Someone reached down, grabbed her, and pulled her to her feet. She tried to cover her face with her hands, not wanting to be slapped again, but her hands were shoved away.

  She could see them now. Three, not four. All men. The two nearest her were big and unsmiling and unfamiliar. But the one behind them she had no trouble recognizing. It was the man from the parking garage, the one who had taken her.

  He stared at her for a moment, then looked at the man nearest him. "Let's go," he said.

  The two larger men grabbed Marion by the arms and pulled her toward the door.

  "What do you want with me?" she said, voice trembling. "What are you going to do?"

  No one even looked at her.

  "Where's Iris?"

  She'd aimed her words at the man from the parking garage, but he remained silent.

  "Where is she?"

  She tried to plant her feet just short of the doorway, not wanting to go anywhere with them until they answered her questions. But it took only a halfhearted shove from the guy on her left to keep her moving across the threshold and into a narrow hallway.

  The corridor was only wide enough for one man to walk beside her, so one of the brutes moved behind her, while the garage man took the lead. There were tw
o light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, metal reflectors with dome wire cages on the bottom. Above them several pipes ran the length of the hallway, covering most of the actual ceiling. As they walked, she kept being bumped into the wall. It was hard and cold like the door of her cell. Metal, she realized.

  The garage man opened the door at the end of the hallway, then stepped through. Marion and her escort followed.

  They were in another corridor, this one considerably wider. Its walls were also gray and made of metal. A ship? Maybe military? There was no sensation of movement, so if it was a ship, they didn't appear to be out at sea. Only something wasn't right.

  The doorways, that was it. Don't navy ships have those doors that sealed shut in case of an emergency? There were no such doors here. But if she wasn't on a ship, then where was she?

  A door ahead opened and two men dressed in military fatigues and armed with rifles stepped out. As Marion and her escort neared, the men moved to the side of the hall, and nodded at the garage man like he was someone important.

  Farther down the corridor, another soldier appeared, then another behind him.

  Marion could feel her hands and feet go cold.

  Whatever hope of escape she'd been clinging to slipped away like it had never been there at all.

  "Who have you told?" Mr. Rose asked again.

  The Dupuis woman was crying now. Tears poured down her cheeks as she wordlessly pleaded with Tucker's boss to stop.

  "Who have you told?"

  She sobbed. Tucker could see she was trying to get words out, but nothing was coming. Mr. Rose nodded at him.

  Tucker turned to one of his men, Linden. "Give her another."

  Linden touched the controller, and sent another jolt of electricity down the wires attached to the woman. She grew rigid as her muscles contracted, the restraints the only things keeping her from falling to the floor.

  When the sequence ended, she slumped in the chair.

  "Who have you told?" Mr. Rose asked again.

  "Just Henrick Roos," she said, naming her friend at the UN.

  "Who else?"

  "Noelle. Noelle Broussard in Côte d'Ivoire. That's all."

  "I don't believe you, Ms. Dupuis. Someone else knows. Someone else has been trying to help you. Who are they?"

  She tried to look at him, her eyebrows furrowed. "I . . . I don't know . . . who you mean. I've been alone. No one has . . ."

  Her last words were lost as her head fell forward.

  "Who have you told?" Mr. Rose said.

  Her shoulders began moving up and down as her tears returned.

  "More?" Tucker asked.

  Mr. Rose stared at the woman. His face was scarred and wrinkled, his slicked-back hair pure white. On bad days his hands shook so much he had to drink from a straw. But his eyes were always like laser beams, cutting into whatever he was focused on. And his voice, that was the clincher. Strong, manipulative, and unrelenting.

  "Who have you told?"

  But Marion Dupuis seemed unable to respond.

  The laser eyes turned to Tucker. "Again."

  The woman looked up, her eyes growing wide in fear.

  "No. No. I'll—" But the renewed current cut her off.

  This time when the cycle ended, she fell forward against the restraints, unconscious.

  "Goddammit," Mr. Rose said.

  Tucker moved in and checked the woman's pulse. She still had one, which was almost a surprise. They'd been at this for a while now. He'd seen others who hadn't lasted as long, needing to leave in a body bag instead of on their own feet.

  And with all they'd given her, she hadn't broken. Whoever the others at her house in Montreal had been, she wasn't telling. The only ones she had given up were her two colleagues at the UN, people who had been easy to trace through other means so were no real revelation. Neither of them had lasted as long as Marion when Tucker had interrogated them.

  It was the people in Montreal. If she did know who they were, Mr. Rose would find out. And if she didn't, it wouldn't matter anyway. Either result would end in her death. That was the only given here.

  "You want me to wake her?" Tucker asked.

  Mr. Rose looked at his watch. "Take her back to her room."

  Tucker nodded at Linden and his partner, Petersen. Both men stepped forward and picked the woman up.

  As soon as they were gone, Mr. Rose said, "I need to get down to the lab to supervise the final preparations."

  "All right," Tucker said. "When do you want her back here?"

  "Walk with me."

  "Of course," Tucker said.

  Mr. Rose was one of those people who got annoyed if you didn't read his mind, and got even more upset if he changed his mind about a task and you hadn't anticipated it. Tucker didn't like it, but he'd grown used to it. It was the pay that kept him around. Nothing else.

  Tucker followed Mr. Rose out of the interrogation room, through a short maze of hallways, then back into the main corridor. The lab of the underground facility was one level below, so Mr. Rose turned left toward the elevator.

  "These people you saw in Montreal, do you think there is any chance they might have followed you here?" Mr. Rose asked.

  Tucker felt a little like the woman. It wasn't the first time Mr. Rose had asked him the question. It wasn't even the second or the third.

  "No way."

  "They concern me."

  "We searched her. Everything she had, everything she was wearing. We even ran her through the scanner. Nothing. No tracking device. No hidden radio transmitter. Nothing."

  Mr. Rose thought about this for a moment. "You're sure?"

  "One hundred percent."

  When they reached the elevator, Tucker pressed the down button to call for a car.

  "And the child?" Mr. Rose asked.

  "What about her?"

  "You did the same with her? Check her clothes? Scanned her?"

  This was a new question, but the answer was the same.

  "Yes."

  The elevator door opened and Mr. Rose stepped inside. As Tucker stepped in to join him, Mr. Rose said, "I can't have a loose end like this."

  "I understand."

  Tucker reached out and pushed the button marked R3, the lab level.

  "Do you? Do you really understand?" Mr. Rose's laser eyes kept Tucker from answering. "It's a loose end. A distraction. We don't want or need distractions at this point." He paused. "There are people who want to stop me. Your job is to make sure that doesn't happen."

  "I'm well aware of that."