by Jeff Abbott
I stopped when I stepped back out of the temporary tunnel; there was no sign of Lucy, on the sidewalks, in the herky-jerk of London traffic. None. I turned, looked every way.
I heard my pregnant wife crying on the phone.
“Lucy? Lucy?” I gripped the phone so hard the edges bit into my fingers.
Now I heard her sobbing: “Let me go.”
My eyes darted everywhere and I heard a car honk. I turned and saw a truck whip around an idling Audi, thirty feet away, the car facing me on the opposite side of the road, Lucy in the passenger seat. My office building stood between me and the Audi. My first thought was: no one stops on Holborn. The car was silver gray, like the sky in the moments before rain. A man sat in the driver’s seat, bent toward Lucy. Then he straightened and I could see him better. Late twenties. Dark hair. Dark glasses. Square jaw. I saw a flash of white as he turned his head, the pale curve of a scar marring his temple, like a sideways question mark.
Lucy looked right at me.
Then the blast hit.
3
A ROAR, AN ECLIPSE OF THE SUN, like God stuck his hand between me and the sky. I turned and the top floor of our building was shattering, flame spouting out, reinforced glass and ash and steel carving and falling through the air. The ground shook. A person, halved, burning, fell to the street, right by the pretty tea drinkers, who cowered and staggered for the doorway’s cover as debris rained down.
My office of fake consultants was gone. Brandon, the visiting suits, the scribbling rookie, my friends and colleagues. Gone. Rubble covered the street, people, landing on cars, cabs, and buses, and London itself seemed to give out a scream, formed of the thundering blast’s echo against glass tower and stone courts, the keen of car horns, and the rising cry and stampede of the bystanders.
I couldn’t see the Audi anymore, and Holborn was a mad jumble of stopped buses and cars, and chunks of concrete, stone, and steel.
I couldn’t see. I didn’t think. I vaulted onto the construction tunnel roof, monkeyed up the bars. I had to get above the haze. I climbed fast, then I saw the flash of steel gray. The Audi, with my wife in it, revved forward. I saw the back of Lucy’s head, bent slightly as though to catch the breeze in the window. Driving with the window down helped her cope with her morning sickness, I remembered. It was a crazy thought.
“Lucy!” I screamed. “Lucy!” I scrambled up the scaffold. I had to keep her in sight, find her above the cloud of grit. Below me was chaos. I had to keep the car in sight. I hurried up the scaffolding, found the Audi again. The traffic thickened like smoke from a fire, everyone trying to flee the blast.
I saw the Audi turn right onto a side street, revving onto the sidewalk to escape the impassable jam in the road, nearly running down two women.
The scaffolding moaned, heat surging through its joints. I heard a massive roar, turned, saw that the edge of the scaffolding closest to my office building had been savaged by falling debris. It was collapsing, thundering down onto the pavement.
I vaulted from the railing, bursting through the sheeted plastic onto a reconstructed floor. I hit concrete, coughing, tried to roll. I wasn’t in the right shoes for this and my roll was rough. I ran across the empty concrete, glanced back to see the scaffolding twist and shred and tumble into the street. The building shuddered and I thought: It’s next.
I ran across the unwalled floor to the back of the building—it cut all the way to a parallel street—and looked down, past a web of scaffolding on the north side of the building that was intact. I saw the Audi forcing its way onto the narrow sidewalk, a man in a suit kicking at the door in fury as it nearly ran him and a woman down. It was thirty feet below me.
My wife looked up. Through the sunroof. She saw me, her eyes wide and her mouth a perfect little shock of O. She started to reach upward, her jaw moving, and then the scarred man hit her. With a solid punch across her mouth. She slammed into the door.
I dropped down through the web of the scaffolding, my blood turning to adrenaline. I broke my descent with grabs but I let gravity do the pulling and I had never been so afraid in my life. Not for myself but for Lucy and The Bundle. I couldn’t lose the car. He was taking my wife; he had killed innocent people. Then I was on the ground and I dashed into the traffic.
A Mini Cooper barreled into the street, right into my path, and I wasn’t even thinking, I was only running for all I was worth. I timed it, going over the roof when I should have been run down by the car, sliding with purpose, and then I hit the street, rolled down to my shoulders, back onto my feet, not crippled by the impact or the force. The pain came later. I didn’t even know I was hurt.
The Audi surged ahead into the crowd and I ran hard and saw it turn a corner. I couldn’t fight my way through the thickened crowd driven out from offices and shops, the jam of cars and two buses, paralyzing the traffic between me and the Audi. I saw the Audi make another right.
I ran, my foot a hot, bright glow of pain. I made it to the corner. In the distance the Audi inched past a delivery truck, tires exhaling smoke for a moment in the tightness of its turn, and then it surged forward. I ran down the block, and when I reached the intersection the car was gone. The scarred driver had found an empty side street, one empty of panicked traffic.
With shaking hands, I tried to redial the number she’d called me from. There was no answer.
Lucy was gone. My office was gone. Everything was gone. Training bubbled to the surface in place of thought. My fingers dialed an emergency number in Langley. Words came to my mouth but I couldn’t remember what they were.
Help me. My mouth moved.
She’d gone, everyone had gone. In the heart of London, the smoke rising like a pyre’s cloud of a life ended, the sirens starting their mad kee-kaw blare, a thousand people rushing past me, I was completely alone.
4
I HAD BEEN IN THE COLD DANK PRISON for over a week when a new man sat across from me in the cell. Fresh talent to try and break me. Fine. I was bored with the last guy.
“My name is Howell. I have a question to ask you, Mr. Capra. Are you a traitor or a fool?”
“Asked and answered,” I mumbled through the desert of my mouth.
“I need an explanation, Mr. Capra.” The new interrogator leaned back in the chair. He crossed his legs, but first he gave his perfectly creased pants the slightest yank. So they wouldn’t wrinkle. I hated that little yank; it was like a razor against my skin. It told me who had all the power in the room.
I had had no real sleep for three days. I reeked of sweat. If grief has a stench, that was what I smelled like. The new interrogator was fortyish, African American, with gray spiraling in his goatee and stylish steel-framed glasses. I told him what I told interrogator one and interrogator two. I told the truth.
“I am not a traitor. I don’t believe my wife is a traitor, either.”
Howell took off his glasses. He reminded me of one of my old history professors back at Harvard. A calm coolness surrounded him. “I think I believe you.”
Was this a trick? “No one else does.”
Howell rested the end of the glasses’ earpiece against his lip. He studied me for a long, uncomfortable silence. I liked the silences. No one called me names or accused me of treason. He opened a file and he started the old litany again, as if any of my answers might change. He would keep asking me the same questions to wear me down, to wait for my mistake.
“Your full name is Samuel Clemens Capra.”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain.”
“He’s my dad’s favorite author, and my mother vetoed Huckleberry and Tom Sawyer as choices.” Normally that story would make me laugh, but nothing was normal anymore.
“I want to call my father before I answer your questions,” I said. I hadn’t asked for this in the past three days of questioning. What would I say to him? But now I wanted to hear the tobacco-flecked warmth of my dad’s voice. I wanted to find my wife. I wanted to be out of t
his awful, dark, stone room that had no windows. It was stupid to ask. But it felt like fighting back after the endless questions, making my own modest stand.
“I didn’t think you got along at all well with your parents.”
I said nothing. The Company knew everything about me, as they should.
“Your parents didn’t even know you and Lucy were expecting, did they?”
“No.” It seemed a shameful admission. Family strains should stay private.
“You haven’t spoken to your parents for three years, except for a brief phone call at Christmas. None of the calls lasted more than two minutes.”
“That’s correct.”
“Three years. Some have suggested that’s how long you’ve been working against us. You cut off your parents so they wouldn’t be suspicious of your activities, would not be involved in your treason.”
“You just said you believed I wasn’t a traitor.”
“I’m telling you what others in the Company are saying about you.” He leaned forward. “A classic sign of treason is emotional distance from extended family and friends.”
“I didn’t cut my family off. My parents stopped talking to me. It wasn’t my choice. And I wasn’t going to use my own child to get back in their good graces. Can I call my father? Will you let me do that?”
“No, Sam.” Howell tapped the earpiece against his bottom lip and considered my file, as though mining it for further pain. I wondered what else was inside those few sheets of paper. “Your wife called you and warned you to get out of the office before the bomb exploded.”
“She was being kidnapped. I saw her struck by a man.”
“And why would her kidnapper allow her to call you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t in the car then, maybe she had a phone.”
“But she didn’t say she was being kidnapped.”
“She was trying to save me. To get me out.”
“But not the rest of the office. She didn’t say, ‘Evacuate, Sam,’ did she?”
I closed my eyes; the stone of the cell floor chilled my bare feet. “No.” I was sure I was no longer in the United Kingdom. Back in London the Company—the term used for the CIA by me and my colleagues—and British intelligence had heard my story and questioned me for three days. I was given no advocate or lawyer. Then four thick-necked men came with a syringe, held me still, and I woke up on a plane. I was in a Company prison, I guessed, in eastern Europe, most likely Poland. These secret prisons were supposedly closed ages ago.
“She got you, and only you, to safety. You see, that’s our problem. You walked out alone and then the office was destroyed.”
“Maybe Lucy didn’t know about the bomb then. The scarred man must have told her to call, to get me out.” I had described the scarred man in detail, but no one had brought me photos to look at, a suspect to identify. That scared me more than their questions and their needles.
“Why spare you?” Howell asked.
“I don’t know.”
Then he surprised me. The next question should have been about the briefing on the man with no name that I’d been giving Brandon and the suits. That had been the pattern of the first two interrogators. “Tell me about the money.”
5
WHAT MONEY?”
He slid paper toward me. An account number at a bank in England where Lucy and I didn’t have an account. I studied the transaction history. It included transfers to a bank in Grand Cayman. A quarter-million dollars.
“This is not our money.”
“This Cayman account was used in a Company operation last year. Lucy was the operations tech; she was supposed to close the account when the job was over. She didn’t. Money was parked in this supposedly dead Company account and then moved into this UK account with both your names on it, and then moved out to a numbered account in Switzerland where it was transferred to private bonds. Now we don’t know where it is. This is why people are having a hard time believing you, Sam.”
“I have no idea about this money!” This was bad. Very bad. “I didn’t have access to or knowledge of these accounts.”
“Conventional wisdom says the spouse always knows when the other is a traitor, Sam. Always,” Howell said quietly. He sounded like a teacher, one with patience to burn, no need to raise his voice. The last two interrogators screamed at me. Howell’s calm was scarier, like a still blade held an inch above the throat. You don’t know when the cut will be made. “Always. Usually it’s the husband who turns traitor and the wife learns about it and then keeps her mouth shut. Either because she likes the money or because she doesn’t want to see her husband go to jail. Was Lucy recruited first? Or you? Or did they hook you together?”
“Neither. Neither of us is a traitor.” I couldn’t believe this of Lucy. I couldn’t. Not my wife. I didn’t care what evidence they showed me, it could not be real. To believe it was to commit treason against the woman I loved. My brain pounded with exhaustion; my chest felt thick. Air in my lungs felt coarse as sand.
“Beyond hope. Do you know that term, Sam?”
“No.”
“It’s what’s used to describe the state of being a traitor’s spouse. We want to hope that the spouse is innocent, that they don’t know that their loved one has betrayed their country. But we know, realistically, that they probably know about the treason. They are therefore beyond hope. Right now, Sam, that is you. Only I can help you. Tell me the truth.”
“I did nothing wrong. I knew nothing about this money.”
“I’ve made it easy, Sam.” He held up a slip of paper. “A confession, short and to the point. You only need to fill in who you worked for. Sign it and we’re done.”
“I won’t. Ever.”
He lowered the paper. “One of you is a traitor, Sam. Either her or you. Tell me about this money, Sam. The money.”
“I don’t know.” The coldness spread to my skin.
“You and Lucy are both alive and everyone in your office is dead and she warned you out.”
“The scarred man hit her. She hadn’t gone willingly. I could tell.”
“Who’s the money from? The Chinese or the Russians? A crime network like the ones you were investigating? Did you get turned while you were undercover? Who are you working for?”
“No one. No one.”
“You were giving a presentation to a team from Langley on the work you were doing.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
I tried not to laugh. My notes for my talk were still vivid in my mind because of the terrible thought that maybe my work had gotten our office targeted. “We’re looking for a Russian criminal I call the Money Czar. He cleans funds for various networks. I worked undercover for a few months last year, making contacts in these networks, mostly posing as an ex–Canadian soldier based in Prague who could provide smuggling routes for everything from knockoff cigarettes to guns bound for warlords in Africa. An informant in our employ in Budapest got the job to courier cash and gold from the Money Czar to a Russian scientist. Five million equivalent.”
“What was the scientist being paid for?”
“We don’t know. This scientist was kicked out of the Russian military’s research programs because of his heroin addiction; he set up shop as a brain for hire in Budapest, doing contract work. The informant was the one who told us that this Money Czar had a Russian accent.” I paused. “The informant and the scientist were both found dead a week later.”
“What kind of scientist was this man?”
“He used to work on nanotechnology.”
“Nanotechnology?”
“Yes. The study of the control of matter on an atomic or molecular level. Most of the research today has beneficial commercial applications—such as more effective means of delivering medicines into the body, or to specific organs. It could have huge implications, for instance, in the fight against breast cancer or brain tumors. Or we could create medicines geared to specific people’s DNA, or much more sophis
ticated sensors to detect serious illnesses in our bodies, or we could vastly expand the number of hours a computer battery can be charged.”
“And there are military and weapons applications to this?”
“Absolutely,” I answered. “Nanotech builds machines or materials on an incredibly small level and makes them powerful. Theoretically. Creating new kinds of armor to repel bullets, or much stronger tanks, or much more efficient guns. Creating bullets that could self-correct on a course once fired. Smaller nuclear weapons that have incredible guidance systems and produce virtually no fallout. Or imagine a bomb that releases a swarm of miniaturized robots that aim for human flesh or body temperature and inject a fatal toxin into every person in a two-mile radius.”
Howell swallowed and his throat made a dry click. “So this Money Czar could have been financing weapons research?”
“Yes.”
“And maybe whoever killed the scientist and the informant to protect your Money Czar came after you.”
“Yes.”
“Or, more likely, you got turned by the people you were chasing. You’re good at your job, Sam. You could have found this Money Czar. And maybe he offered you and Lucy all that cash in this Caymans account.”
“No.”
“They didn’t want you and Lucy talking and they’ve taken her and you decided to keep your mouth shut, maybe to protect her. I can see the thoughts going across your tired, beat-ass face, Sam.”
“No.” I wanted to drive Howell and his insane theories through the stone wall.
“Your only hope, Sam, is to deal with me. Tell me everything.” Howell leaned in close to me and he put a large hand on my shoulder. “Think how easy it will be. All the weight will be gone, Sam. And then we can work on finding your wife. Your child. You want to be there when your child is born, don’t you? Lucy’s due date is in six weeks’ time. Tell me where we can find the people you work for and we’ll find Lucy. You can see your wife, hold your child.”