“We have no interest in protecting Acevedo,” said Carr. “They will suffer a very thorough, very public investigation. We will do everything in our power to air out the extent of their crimes. You have my personal guarantee about that,” she said. On that point, Morgan remained doubtful. But there was one more important matter.
“And Nickerson?” he asked.
“They didn’t tell you?” she said, with a smile.
“Tell me what?”
“It seems,” she replied, “that someone has already taken care of that for us. His private jet crashed this morning, and he was confirmed dead just hours ago. Senator Nickerson will no longer be a problem.”
They made him sign about two dozen nondisclosure agreements and then let him go. He walked out to find Conley waiting for him.
“I brought your car,” he said, holding up the keys to the GTO.
As they drove away together, Morgan behind the wheel, Conley told him everything that he had gleaned from the CIA. “Apparently Nickerson was using the drug money to create a whole web of influence. It wasn’t just assassinations but also a wide campaign of bribery, blackmail, and intimidation. Boyle was feeding him information and also gave him access to some of the CIA’s operatives. Like Natasha.”
“What about Acevedo?” asked Morgan, looking forward as he drove.
“A marriage of convenience. Nickerson could offer protection, and they had money, lots of money. Enough to fund Nickerson’s wild power trips. Looking over this stuff, I’m just glad we stopped him before it got any worse.”
“And what are you going to do now?” asked Morgan.
Conley sighed. “I’m going to do what I’ve always done.”
“Back to work for the CIA? After all that’s happened?”
“It’s the life for me,” said Conley. “I’ve known it for a long time. I think you understand what I’m talking about. I think you feel it, too.”
“I quit, remember?”
“I know, Morgan. But part of you never did, the part of you that loved this job. It never really went away, did it? A part that loves danger and excitement and being a part of something great. It’s like Cobra still exists in there, inside you, and all this time was just waiting to come out. I know it’s not all you are. You’re also Dan Morgan, family man, who would do anything for his wife and daughter. Hey, maybe you can be just Dan Morgan for the rest of your life. But I’m not so sure that you can. Maybe you need this. Maybe you need to let Cobra out now and then.”
They arrived at the hotel, where Conley had left his Sebring.
Morgan embraced his old friend. “Take care of yourself, Cougar.”
Jenny and Alex were waiting for him in the lobby. As soon as he walked in through the revolving doors, they ran to him, Alex exclaiming, “Dad!” The three of them hugged, and Morgan couldn’t help the tears that streamed down his cheeks.
They returned to Massachusetts that very night to find Neika lying on the mat at their front door. Her fur was matted with dirt and blood, but she leapt up as soon as she saw them, prancing around them, if a little stiffly, in a state of pure joy. Morgan laughed as she jumped on them to lick their faces, leaving dirty brown paw prints everywhere. Jenny and Alex, dirt all over the front of their clothes, laughed along.
EPILOGUE
It was Sunday. The Boston Common was alive with couples, families, and solitary people taking in the sun. The landscape was speckled with vibrant tulips and cherry blossoms, and the trees were as green as they ever get. Morgan took his time, enjoying the warm breeze. It was a beautiful day.
He walked onto the footbridge and spotted Senator Lana McKay with a hand on the railing, looking absentmindedly at the swan boats out in the water. He caught her eye as he approached her and smiled.
“Senator? Dan Morgan.” He extended a friendly hand.
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Thanks for driving into Boston, Mr. Morgan.”
“I’m surprised you found me,” he said.
“Information about you is indeed hard to come by, even if you have a seat in the United States Senate.”
“But you have your ways?”
“Don’t we all?”
She looked out at the water and sighed. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, Mr. Morgan. What you did . . . well, I hesitate to use the word heroism in almost any context, but it certainly seems to apply here.”
“Honestly, Senator, I didn’t really see it as a choice.” he said. “I did what I had to do, and that’s about it.”
“The longer I live,” she said, squinting at the water, “the more clear it is to me that the virtue of doing what is right is a rare thing in this world.” She paused. “The bill failed, you know. The corporate oversight bill. 47–51. Even without Nickerson, the favors and the campaign donations spoke louder. I suppose the irony here is that, if only Nickerson had left me alone, I would have failed all the same.”
“You’ll get another chance,” said Morgan.
“I certainly hope so,” she said, in a disheartened tone. She sighed deeply and spoke again, looking away. “Do you ever wonder whether all your efforts are for nothing, Mr. Morgan? Do you ever lie awake at night asking yourself if what you do is ultimately right?”
“To tell you the truth, Senator, I don’t. I know that maybe I should. It’s a messy world, and right and wrong aren’t always clear. But long ago, I learned to trust my gut and to never stop fighting.”
“And how has that worked out for you?” she asked, with sincere curiosity.
“Better than the alternative.”
She sighed. “I hope you’re right, Mr. Morgan. This political game in Washington makes me question myself sometimes.”
“That’s the reason I never got into it in the first place.”
She thanked him again and wished him luck. He made his way along the path toward his car. As he walked into the entrance to the underground parking garage, he spotted a man on his tail, maybe forty to forty-five, in a dark suit and tie, wearing sunglasses.
Morgan walked quickly downstairs and waited around the corner at the landing for the man. He heard the dull knocking of the man’s shoes on the steps. When he turned the corner, Morgan wrapped his right arm around the man’s neck, pinning him in a choke hold.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Hello, Mr. Morgan,” said the man, unfazed. “My name is Smith. I’ve been sent to make you a proposition.”
Morgan frisked him with his free hand and then released him. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”
“I hope you will at least listen, Mr. Morgan.”
Morgan walked toward his car, and the man who called himself Smith walked alongside him.
“I work for a certain organization. Officially, we have no name. Officially, we don’t exist. But we are there, behind the scenes, deeper than the CIA. We are pulling the strings and making this world a safer, better place. Mr. Morgan, we are in the business of writing history.”
Morgan couldn’t help giving the man a quick glance that betrayed his intrigue.
“We would like you to join us, Morgan. We have much use for a man like you. There’s no need to answer now.” The man handed him a business card that contained nothing but a phone number printed on cream stock. “Just call us when you have made your decision.” He turned around and took two steps, then stopped, and said, “Ah, I nearly forgot. We have contacted your friend, as well. A man who goes by the name of Cougar. We made him the same proposition.”
“And?”
“He accepted. We hope to hear from you soon, Mr. Morgan.” He walked away down the long garage, his footsteps echoing in the vast parking facility. Morgan contemplated tossing the card. Instead, he tucked it into his shirt pocket and got into the GTO. He turned his head to catch a last glimpse of Smith, but the man had already vanished. Morgan smiled to himself as he started the car and headed home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this novel was a three-year journey with many exha
usting days and sleepless nights, yet it was also one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I want to thank my wife, Lynn, who put up with my mood swings and who believed in and encouraged me through the process. I love you and appreciate all your help.
I was extremely fortunate to team up with my talented co-writer Caio Camargo, who spent the better part of a year listening to me tell stories from my past and then helped me create this book. It was a joy working together, and I look forward to our next collaboration.
I am very lucky to have been surrounded by such loyal friends during the writing of this book. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Nancy Schneider, carefully reviewed the many versions of the manuscript as it evolved. Hermann Schaeffer, Nick Julian, Rodney Jones, George Mitrano, Ruth Shuman, and Randi Swartz all provided feedback from a reader’s perspective.
I also want to thank Michaela Hamilton and the rest of the team at Kensington Publishing Corp. for taking a chance on an unknown writer and giving me the opportunity to tell my story.
Finally, I want to thank my readers . . . I hope you enjoyed the adventures of Dan Morgan.
Don’t miss the next exciting thriller featuring Black
Ops specialist Dan Morgan
Silent Assassin
by Leo J. Maloney
Coming from Pinnacle in 2013!
Turn the page to read a preview excerpt . . .
“I’m here to see Roman Lubarsky.”
The voice was self-assured—brash, even—and if the accent had not given away that it belonged to an American, then surely the characteristic lack of subtlety would have been plenty to identify the nationality of the speaker.
“I’m afraid Mr. Lubarsky isn’t seeing anyone at the moment, sir,” said the girl at reception, offering him a practiced look of slight commiseration from across the counter.
“Oh, I think he’s going to want to see me,” the man said, and then he grinned. He was approaching middle age but still handsome in that rough American way, with a full head of dark hair with gray streaks, and a trim beard and mustache. He was not tall but had broad shoulders emphasized by his gray pin-striped suit. He had a briefcase in his right hand, which she had noticed when he walked into the lobby. She had also noticed that he was unusually fit and vigorous. The kind of man who could cause a lot of trouble if he wanted to. And she couldn’t quite tell, but he might have had a well-concealed gun holster tucked under his suit jacket. It was the kind of thing she was paid to notice.
She did not smile back at his comment. She could tell she wouldn’t get rid of him easily, but he wasn’t the first person who had insisted on coming in off the street to see the boss. She knew how to deal with them.
“Mr. Lubarsky does not receive anyone without an appointment,” she told him. She leaned in closer, as if to say something confidential, just between him and her, and said, “Trust me, sir, it will do no good to insist.” As she spoke, she reached down discreetly with her right hand and pushed the tiny button hidden on the underside of the counter.
“I have a standing appointment with your boss,” said the man.
“It’s not in my book,” she said, offering him a What can I do? shrug.
“Oh, I think he’s going to want to see me, anyway.”
This was getting tiresome. “I insist, sir, that even if you are the Pope himself, Mr. Lubarsky will not—” She was interrupted as Marko and Lyudmil emerged from the door next to the reception desk and flanked the American.
“This guy giving you trouble, Rositsa?”
“Some men just can’t take no for an answer,” she said, teasing the man by looking straight into his eyes as she spoke.
The man did not stop smiling. “Some just know when not to fold.”
“Come on, asshole,” said Lyudmil, grabbing the man’s left arm. “The lady has had enough of you.”
The American, totally unfazed, did not move. Instead, he reached into his breast pocket. The two men seemed alarmed by the gesture and moved to restrain him, but they relaxed when they saw him pulling out a business card. The American offered it to them, holding it between two outstretched fingers. One guard took it, examined it, and then handed it to the other. They exchanged nods.
“Please follow us this way, sir,” said Marko.
The three disappeared through the door the two security men had emerged from. Rositsa looked down at the counter and saw that they had left the card. She picked it up and looked at it curiously. On it was no name—in fact, no words at all. All there was on it was a drawing of a snake, a cobra, coiled and ready to strike.
Dan Morgan, Code Name Cobra, was taken into a back room off the lobby of the Sárkány, where the bare concrete walls and fluorescent lighting stood in stark contrast to the elegant wood paneling and soft incandescent lighting in the reception area. He had been led there by the two hulking grunts in black suits who had come, originally, to kick him out and maybe leave him in the back alley with a couple of cracked ribs and internal bleeding.
One of the two, tall and broad-shouldered with a jutting chin, scowled down at him while the other, a squat and wide man who might have been mistaken for an ape if he weren’t wearing such a dapper suit, tried to take his Walther. “No guns in the hotel,” he said, though of course he meant no guns that weren’t in their possession.
“My weapon stays with me,” said Morgan.
“Are we going to have to take it away from you?” said the tall one.
“You can try.”
The two looked at each other and then at him as if they wanted to take turns breaking his neck.
“Any funny business,” said the short, squat one, “and you leave this hotel in little tiny pieces—is that clear?”
“Crystal.”
They X-rayed his briefcase, scanned him for bugs, and then escorted him back to the lobby. Then they ushered him to an elevator that they opened with a key. The interior was red-carpeted and wood-paneled to match the lobby, and it had only two floor buttons, unmarked. The short one turned another key and pressed the top button.
The elevator was not large, and Morgan was wedged uncomfortably between the two guards. The cabin began its ascent, the movement imperceptible but for a gentle tug at Morgan’s gut and at the leather satchel he held in his right hand.
The elevator stopped as discreetly as it had started, after what seemed like too short a time to cover the necessary distance. The doors slid open, right into the penthouse foyer.
The first thing to hit him was the smell. It was a heady mixture of stale vomit, rotting food, alcohol, and sweat mingled with a few other bodily odors. Obscene squeals and moans from a pornographic movie drifted in, and it seemed like an appropriate soundtrack. The foyer itself was decorated in the most expensive poor taste achievable. He briefly wondered how much worse it would seem to Jenny’s professional eye—only a fleeting thought before his mind began to formulate his reaction in case things took a turn for the worse.
It was automatic, part of his training. Possibilities played in his head in short clips of sudden violence. The bigger one would go down with a swing of the suitcase in Morgan’s hand—a well-placed blow would be enough knock him out. He’d likely have to draw his gun to take down the other goon, but he could not count on doing it fast enough and might have to improvise. Morgan had a keen sense of his environment, and this one provided more than enough for him to work with: here a bronze bust of Elvis that could easily crack open a man’s skull, there a gold-framed mirror whose shards could slice open a carotid in a split second.
A guttural voice spoke from the next room, in Russian. The short one responded in kind, and Morgan made out, in his speech, the word “Cobra.” The man in the other room responded.
“Go on,” said the short one thickly. “He is waiting.”
Morgan stepped through a columned arch, and the scene that had been only suggested by the acrid and intensifying smell appeared before him, inspiring in him alternately nausea and rage. The Sárkány was elegant and expensive, and the p
enthouse, on a good day, was by far the best suite in the hotel. But whatever class the place might have had was subsumed into the filth of the man he had come to see.
“Lubarsky.”
“Please, please, call me Roman,” said Lubarsky jovially. “Have a drink. Make yourself at home.”
Husks of top-shelf Champagne and vodka bottles lay strewn about, along with two upturned velvet-upholstered chairs. Slumped on the bed, half-covered by a stained white sheet, was a woman who wouldn’t have looked out of place on a high-fashion runway. She lay slack on the bed, her white-blond hair hanging off its side, her eyes eerily blank. Another woman, black with high cheekbones and wearing mussed-up lingerie, was huddled over an end table from which she had pushed off a wrought iron lamp. She was frantically cutting with a razor at a small mound of cocaine. Victims of human trafficking, most likely. Morgan knew what women went through to become playthings for the rich and unscrupulous. What he saw disgusted him, and made him want to kill Lubarsky even more.
“Lubarsky,” said Morgan.
The man himself was naked, rolls of flesh pendent between his open legs, his body hair so thick, he might as well have been wearing a sweater. Greasy black locks clung to the sweat on his forehead, and his eyes were open wide, red and manic, with pupils so dilated that they almost reached the outer edges of the iris.
“How long have you been on this bender?” Morgan asked.
“I take it that’s my money in that suitcase?” He snorted.
“Answer the question, Lubarsky.”
The Georgian looked at him with murder in his eyes. “Are you telling me what to do in my own hotel?”
“You and I have things to do today, and I want to know that you’re able to keep up your end.”
Lubarsky looked at him as if he were about to lunge for his throat, then burst out laughing, a hacking, throaty laugh. “Why all business, Cobra? Sit down. Have some cocaine. Have a whore. I just got these two fresh from a new shipment.” He looked at the woman who had been huddled over the table snorting coke. “You! Come here.”
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