by Matthew Dunn
That was Haden.
His men never breathed a word about what they’d seen. They admired their commander way too much. And they saw a man capable of transcending evil and beating it at its own game.
They thought he might be a psychopath. But in war you work with the men who do what’s necessary. Haden wanted to kill. It was fortuitous that he was killing the right guys.
It seemed that had changed.
Seven p.m., Charlie Sapper’s house.
She was alone in the luxurious and tastefully decorated place on the outskirts of D.C., getting changed out of her suit, preparing for Kane and Fox to be there in two hours. A single woman, she loved the fact she had enough cash to own a property that was almost three times the size of the homes belonging to families who lived nearby. It was her finger to conformity. She had independence, a career that few could dream of, and an intellect that could outsmart most on Capitol Hill. To some extent, love was anathema to her at this stage, though she did wonder about having a man in her life at some point. Maybe when her career didn’t matter. She was getting to the point where the aspirations of love versus job were at loggerheads. Having kids was no longer an option, but having a partner still was, providing she didn’t wait too long. She was a looker and spent a lot of time fending off male advances.
Despite her wealth and faux internalizing that she was better off than the families around her, she knew she was missing out on family life. The nearest house to her was two hundred yards away. A family of four lived on that property that was half the size of hers. They had it better; she had it worse.
Now was not the time to dwell on such matters. Soon she’d see Kane and Fox. She hadn’t had contact with either since the Berlin operation three years ago. There’d been no need. But it seemed Haden was back on U.S. terra firma. Kane hadn’t fully articulated why that might be the case, but Sapper knew what the Pentagon staffer was thinking.
Haden was back to kill all those involved in the Berlin job.
Sapper wished she’d never gotten involved in the operation. She knew the mission was justified and that Raeder posed a major threat to Western security. If everything had gone according to plan and the assassination were leaked to U.S. officials, she, Fox, and Kane would have their knuckles rapped, but privately those in the corridors of power would hush up the mission and congratulate her on a job well done. It wouldn’t be a career killer; if anything it would prove to others that she had the balls to do what it takes to remove scum off the earth. But things were different now. Almost certainly she’d been taken for a fool by Haden; Fox and Kane had also been duped. A Senate inquiry would determine they’d been wittingly complicit in an illegal murder and unwittingly complicit in a heist. They’d forgive her for the former; they’d damn her for the latter. Her career would be screwed.
For the last three years, she’d prayed that Haden was sipping cocktails and spending his loot on a tropical island somewhere, causing no one any problems. If that was the case, everyone was happy. The nightmare scenario was that Haden reemerged and caused trouble. And the worst place for that to happen was in the States. Here, he would be arrested and forced to explain his disappearance.
She checked the time. Fox and Kane were due here soon.
The doorbell rang.
Standing by the inside of the door, Sapper called out, “Who is it?”
Outside, a person held up a cell phone and pressed play on an audio recording. “It’s Fox,” said the recording.
Cursing, Sapper muttered, “You’re early,” as she unbolted the door and opened the entrance. “What the . . . ?!”
A man was standing before her with a silenced pistol.
Before Sapper could do anything about it, the man shot her in the chest, stood over her prone body, and shot her twice in the head.
The killer closed the door and left the premises.
Kane cursed as he wove his car between other vehicles as he exited the center of D.C. It was dark and raining, traffic was heavy, and he was certainly going to be late getting to Sapper’s house. He called Jason Flail and explained his predicament. “I’ll be with you soon.”
Unwin Fox parked outside his home. Located in a quiet suburban part of Vienna, with a large yard in the rear, the house was way too big for a bachelor on a government salary. He’d inherited it from his deceased parents and had rattled around inside it for years, paying little heed to the repairs it needed or suggestions from casual female acquaintances that his books and academic papers would look better if not stacked haphazardly in most of the rooms. He bolted the front door behind him, one thing he had to thank his security-conscious father for: heavy-duty locks everywhere, iron bars on windows, every nook and cranny sealed up like Fort Knox. His face and open shirt soaked, he pulled the curtains closed, then peered out through the crack between fabric and one window. The street outside was empty, darkness pervading all but the surroundings of streetlights and the glow from other residences. A dog barked. That would be Jack, the mongrel belonging to the Terrences three doors down.
Jack often barked. Usually at strangers.
Fox weaved among piles of obscure volumes about geology and architecture, and went to his bedroom to change. Feeling refreshed and ready to make the drive to Sapper’s home, Fox returned downstairs and decided he had time to make a coffee.
The front door handle turned, the door juddering as someone tried futilely to force it open. Fox froze. “Who is it?”
No one answered. But the door handle was still juddering.
He wondered if this was him.
Haden.
The locks would hold—he was in no doubt about that. And upstairs was just as secure. Short of Haden using breaching equipment, there was no way in.
The handle stopped turning. Fox stood in the center of his living room, rotating 360 degrees while listening for signs that the front or back doors were being forced. But all was quiet. Had Haden gone? Fox pulled aside curtains on a window facing the yard. That’s when he saw him: one man, just standing and staring at his house. It was impossible to discern his facial features. But there was no doubt the man had a physique matching Haden’s.
The man threw stones and didn’t stop until every rear-facing window was smashed.
Fox paced back and forth, urgently trying to decide what to do. Was the man outside going to kill him? He couldn’t risk getting the answer to that wrong. He called Sapper’s cell. No answer. He called Kane.
The Pentagon official answered.
“There’s a guy outside my house! Could be Haden!”
Kane was still stuck in traffic. “Shit!”
“He’s smashing my windows. A random burglar doesn’t do that.”
Kane honked his horn in a futile attempt to get traffic moving. “Can he get in your house?”
“No. Bars on the windows. Specialist locks on the doors. So why’s he smashing windows?”
A thought occurred to Kane. “Call the cops and the fire department now!”
“Fire department?”
“Now!” Kane hung up.
Fox dialed 911 and reported an intruder on his property. The operator told him to stay calm and that a squad car was on its way. Imploringly, Fox requested that more than one car be sent. He didn’t elaborate that two cops in one car would be no match for the man outside.
Everything went quiet. The man in his yard had vanished. Maybe he’d seen Fox on the phone and realized that he’d called the police. But something didn’t feel right.
All reason was gone as Fox sat at his computer desk and typed an e-mail to Will Cochrane.
My friend—
You saved my life in Syria and Moscow. You’re the only person I can truly trust. But they say you died in the fall or drowned. If not, we need to meet tomorrow. What happened in Berlin was a lie, a sleight of hand by the colonel. Haden’s back. I don’t know why. But you can stop him. Meet me at four p.m. in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park. Find me.
The CIA officer added a landmark, pressed send, and gla
nced into the yard. The man was back there. He picked up an object. Fox couldn’t discern in the darkness outside what it was. That changed when it was illuminated.
A firebomb.
It was hurled through a shattered window.
The bomb smashed against the floor, spewing blue-tinged flames across wood, furnishings, and the stacks of papers and books. It was too fierce and rapid to be ordinary gasoline. This was aviation fluid. More bombs were hurled through other windows.
Fox ran haphazardly. The heat was intense, the fire racing and devouring his parental home. Soon he’d be dead.
Sirens.
The front door his father had built out of a dying oak tree was blasted open by a shotgun. A cop ran in, ill equipped to deal with the inferno but unflinching in his duty to get Fox out of the blaze. He grabbed the CIA officer and ran him out of the house.
Another cop was outside, standing by his squad car and speaking on the radio.
Fox was coughing as he said, “One man! One man!”
Within ten minutes there were multiple sirens in the distance. Fire trucks, more cops, and an ambulance. They’d be too late. Fox’s home was now completely alight. Everything was being rendered to ash.
The cop who’d rescued him and his partner made a sweep of the grounds. They returned and told him that the perpetrator was nowhere to be seen. They asked him if he had any suspicions as to who had done this.
Fox lied. “None whatsoever.” Out of earshot of the cops, he called Kane and explained what had happened. “I’m aborting tonight’s meeting—I have to be interviewed by the police. Be very careful at the senator’s house. He’s come after me. And that means he’s after you and Sapper.”
Kane stopped his car outside Charlie Sapper’s house. There was an SUV also parked, belonging to one of Jason Flail’s team.
The asset met him at the door. “She’s dead. Shots to chest and head.”
Kane rubbed his face. “No doubt you’re wondering what’s going on. It all has to do with my former boss—Colonel Haden.”
“Okay.”
“But I can’t and won’t tell you more.”
The asset and Kane entered the house. Kane knelt down by Sapper’s dead body and stroked the beautiful woman’s bloody face. “She was on borrowed time.”
“Your instructions to my boss?”
Kane replied, “Tell Flail that law enforcement can’t be brought in. This is a matter of national security. I want the body removed and the crime scene sanitized. Get your men to help.”
“I’ll call them now.”
“No one else must know what happened here.”
“How big a problem is Haden?”
“As big as it gets. My endgame is to make him dead. You’re going to help.”
The asset tried to ask more questions but Kane held up his hand.
“The less you know, the better. We’re cleaning up a mess. This mess. Other messes. And I need you guys to do exactly what I say. My future instructions might sound confusing to you. And dangerous. But trust me, you don’t want the information Fox and I have in our heads.” He looked at Sapper. “She also had that information. Now she needs to disappear. Get it done.”
Chapter 2
It was past midnight as wind and rain pounded the exterior of the tiny bookstore in Chicago. The store was closed and its owner was sitting at his desk checking the week’s receipts. The task wouldn’t take long—his store specialized in rare works that he sourced from around the world. He had some loyal customers, but they were few. This week seven people had made purchases.
The only light in the room came from his green desk lamp, old-fashioned in design to match the ambience of the shop. Aside from some electronic devices on his desk and recessed lights that cast a discreet yellow glow when turned on, the place looked like it could have been a purveyor of fine works established and unchanged since the eighteenth century. He’d constructed it that way: dark maple bookshelves; many of the books leather bound, all of them hardcover; two armchairs for customers to sit in when perusing potential acquisitions; an urn for his more discerning patrons who valued his loose-leaf tea collection; and a cage for his two lovebirds.
He was an old-fashioned guy at heart.
And though he could have done with more cash coming in, he’d deliberately established a business and identity that drew little attention. He playacted a shy man, his trimmed beard intended to put up barriers between him and others, his shoulders artificially stooped during the day as if he were ashamed of his six-foot-four physique, his cropped blond-and-gray hair functional because he had no woman in his life to impress, and his unneeded glasses covering one green eye, one blue. He was always in a smart three-piece suit because the attire was good at hiding his athletic frame and scars. Customers thought he was Edward Pope, a gentleman scholar from the South. They’d probably estimate his age was late forties. They’d be wrong about that and most other things. He’d led a hard life and was forty-five.
His name wasn’t Edward Pope.
It was Will Cochrane.
The assassin. The one Sapper and Kane were terrified of.
He wasn’t from the Deep South. He was raised in Virginia and earned a double first-class degree at England’s Cambridge University. And he’d been a bookseller for only under a year.
But he had to be Pope. In the eyes of the world, Will was a murderer. He’d killed people as a special forces French Foreign Legionnaire and assassinated targets in French intelligence black operations. He had been the West’s prime joint operative with the CIA and Britain’s MI6 for fourteen years, until he went crazy and killed a lot of cops and civilians in the States before throwing himself off the Brooklyn Bridge and dying.
His death was essential. He was America’s Most Wanted. He wasn’t what some thought of him—a psychopath. But he was a former special operative and killer. Had been all his adult life. It started when he was seventeen and walked in on four criminals suffocating his mother and about to kill his sister. His mother died; sister didn’t, because he grabbed his mother’s carving knife and ended the criminals’ lives before fleeing to the Legion. He wished he didn’t know how many people he’d killed since. It would be a lie. He knew every victim. Their souls lingered around him, taunting him, reminding him of who he was.
All 263 souls.
But the souls of the people they say he killed in the States didn’t hassle him.
Because he didn’t kill them. He never killed innocents, only those who needed to be killed.
But in the eyes of the law, that’s not the case and that’s why he had to fake his death and reinvent himself. A year ago, his situation was desperate, despite all of his training and covert operations experience in hostile countries. He’d received only one bit of help, but it was significant. Russia’s most formidable intelligence officer, code name Antaeus—now, thanks to Will, a defector living in the States—had cleverly managed to get $300,000 into Will’s pocket. Will didn’t know exactly why he’d done it. After all, Will had accidentally killed his family with a car bomb when in fact he’d intended only to kill the spy. But he suspected he knew why the Russian had become his benefactor: Antaeus wanted his generosity to plunge the knife that was Will’s guilt deeper.
Regardless of Antaeus’s motives, the cash helped set up Will’s new life.
Will’s family and close acquaintances were all dead. He’d be given the needle if cops found out who he was. The West he’d served with unflinching duty had hung him out to dry. He thought of himself as a scavenging dog, kicked out of its owner’s backyard and left to fend for itself. He was resigned to that, every day expecting the Feds to rush into his store and put a bullet in his skull. That’s what they’d do. No attempt to arrest. No negotiations. Execution only. Will wouldn’t blame them. They knew he’d cause carnage if given the slightest of chances.
He finished his accounts, took a swig of Assam tea, and frowned as he heard the female lovebird make an unusual sound. Like her male companion, she resembled a smal
l parrot, her plumage green and yellow, face and beak red, large eyes pure white with black pupils. He’d taken the birds off the hands of an old lady who frequented his store. Her son, a merchant marine officer, had brought them back from exotic climes, though she couldn’t remember where because she was suffering from dementia. And she could no longer look after them, particularly now that the male had broken his wing. Will hated seeing animals in cages. But the female wouldn’t leave the male’s side. And for the time being, the male had to be kept in the cage until he was fully recuperated. Then Will would release them to a large aviary or the wild.
Their previous owner couldn’t remember their names, so Will called the male Ebb and the female Flo. Flo was now agitated, hopping about as opposed to what she usually did, which was nestling her face against that of her lover. Will opened the cage, knowing Flo wouldn’t go anywhere while Ebb was there. The former special operative bowed his head. Ebb was all wrong, flopping on the base of the cage, his good wing twitching, his broken one immobile. Will knew he was dying and there was nothing he could do about it. What goes through a bird’s brain? He didn’t know. And he didn’t know whether lovebirds were in fact lifelong lovers or if that was a myth. But Will knew how he felt. He had to give Flo closure, let her be free, not allow her to think there was hope that Ebb would return to her. Gently he lifted Ebb. His body was warm but now limp. He carried him to the store’s backyard. Flo followed him. Will had hoped she would.
Will looked at Flo, who was perched close by on the branch of a tree. She was watching. It seemed she and Will didn’t know what to do.
“I have to let you know this is the end,” Will said to her. Actually, he was saying it to himself.
He snapped Ebb’s neck and buried him.
Flo looked at him before flying into the darkness. As tears ran down his face, he wondered if she hated him. Or maybe she understood. Of course, he’d never know.