Zach rolled his eyes. “Just do as you’re told, Tania.”
ZACH ENDED THE CALL and walked back into the building. He didn’t notice the shadows moving in the doorway just over his shoulder. If anyone had been watching, they might have seen it as a trick of the light, as if part of the darkness peeled away from the wall. For a moment, the shadow of a man in a trench coat and old-fashioned fedora stood there.
But there was no one around to cast that shadow. And no one to see it.
A second later, it was gone.
SEVEN
IN THE COMPANY OF SHADOWS (2001, Drama/Super-natural)—Kevin Costner stars as Robert Westlake, a veteran CIA agent ordered to find any possible witnesses to the years of atrocities he’s seen or committed in his long career. Each one of his targets has a piece of the answers to the big mysteries—the real killers of JFK, for example—and Westlake silences them to make sure no one can ever put all the puzzles together. But at the same time, someone is stalking Westlake. He sees figures in the shadows, hears voices where there are none, and keeps getting strange messages. Eventually, Westlake discovers that the Company doesn’t let go, not even at death. Described as Bourne Identity meets The Sixth Sense, this movie was withdrawn by the distributor after appearing in a few test markets and never released in theaters. No records of the production can be found in any Internet databases, all materials for the promotional campaign were destroyed, and cast and crew deny they were ever involved. The official reason given was that after 9/11, audiences didn’t want to see anything that put America in a bad light. However, the extreme paranoia about the production has led some to believe the real CIA found something in the script a little too close to reality. No prints survive, but a few bootleg copies are rumored to exist on DVD.
—Tucker Layne-Baker, The Day the Clown Cried and Other Movies from Hollywood’s Vaults
42,000 FEET ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN
Graves leaned his seat back and put his feet up. He was on his second Scotch.
“You don’t seem particularly worried,” Cade said. “About what?”
Cade’s mouth twitched. “The infiltration of your company. The existence of things like me. The threat to the nation and the human race.”
Graves took another long sip of his drink and smacked his lips. “Taking those in order, I’m going to deal with the problem in my company when we find it. I’m confident in my abilities, so I have no need to worry about that. I’ve known about things like you for a long, long time, and I’ve made my peace with it. Likewise, there’s always a threat to the future of the human race. I’ve made my peace with that, too. No reason to let any of that destroy the little moments of joy in life.”
Cade didn’t say anything at first. He decided to ask the most obvious question: “Who are you?”
Graves smiled. “I don’t imagine many people ever have you at a disadvantage, Mr. Cade. Let’s just say I’m a troubleshooter. I’ve been doing it for a long time. The government cannot fulfill all its duties—too many weak sisters worried about bad headlines on Al-Jazeera and what the rest of the world might think. So the private sector has stepped up. I still do my job, but now I make considerably more money. That’s the way the system works. And it’s what makes our country great.”
“Is it?”
Graves laughed. “Don’t pretend to be naïve, Cade. How do you think it’s possible for a stoned college dropout behind the counter at Starbucks to live in more luxury than any Roman emperor? You think he works harder than the wetback who picked the beans for his vanilla latte? Hell, no. But he goes home to Internet porn and cable TV and more calories in a single meal than that bean-picker sees all week. Other countries struggle. We consume. America is the biggest, fattest kid at the party, gobbling all the candy. But someone has to break the piñata.”
“Is that you?”
“I’m proud to do my part.”
“Kidnapping people and delivering them to be tortured,” Cade said.
“And what would you do with them? Terrorists. Traitors. Murderers. How would you handle them?”
Cade showed his teeth.
“I would kill them all,” Cade said, his voice flat. “I would burn their cities until the desert fused to glass. I would tear the wombs from their mothers. I would poison their babies and dismember their children. And then I would drown the men in the blood of their families.”
Graves stared back at him for a moment.
“But then, I’m not human,” Cade said. “I don’t need an excuse to act like a monster.”
Graves nodded and chuckled, acknowledging the point scored. “Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Don’t blaspheme. Not in my presence.”
Graves looked at him, as if to gauge his seriousness, and laughed again. “Sorry, Cade. I’m not a religious man and I’m not scared of you. I’ll take the name of the Lord in vain whenever I goddamn please.”
Cade’s eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch. “You don’t believe?”
Graves cranked his seat back. “If they get you praying, they’ve already got you on your knees. I’m not looking for God to save me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Cade said.
Graves snorted. “I’ve got my own exit strategy.”
Silence again.
“I get the feeling you don’t like me, Mr. Cade.”
Cade said nothing.
“You don’t get to judge me,” Graves said. “I told you: I know about you. I know the things you’ve done. With all the blood on your hands, you expect me to believe you never once licked your fingers?”
Cade looked at him carefully. “You’re certain we haven’t met?” he asked.
“I’m sure you’d remember,” Graves said. He put in a pair of earbuds and closed his eyes. Conversation over.
THE QUIET SUITED CADE. He needed a few moments to think.
He looked at the dark wood paneling of the ceiling and thought about the Shadow Company.
Before his encounter with Holt, he didn’t know the Company existed. They’d been around at least as long as he had. That much was obvious. But Cade, like most of his kind, focused on the immediate threat. An enemy willing to wait, to plan over the long term, would be as hidden from him as an animal that could blend completely into the foliage in the background. Conspiracies didn’t matter to him until they matured into a frontal assault. He was arrogant enough—and capable enough—to believe he could defeat anything that came at him directly. Until someone or something forced him to consider it, he didn’t waste the time or energy. He focused on the present.
Still, looking back, he began to see a pattern emerge. What he had dismissed in the past as mere incompetence or random outbreaks of human greed, viciousness or malice began to connect with each other. Taken separately, they were simply incidents in his long and strange life.
But together, they pointed to an opponent he didn’t even realize was on the other side of the board, watching him, making moves, countering him in some places and ignoring him in others. Above all, this opponent’s moves were designed to keep itself a secret.
Cade realized he’d been closest to the Shadow Company when it tried to remove any hint of its existence. At those moments, it broke from cover. And revealed itself more openly than any of the evidence ever could. In hindsight, the pattern was almost painfully obvious. You simply had to know where to look, and it stood out against the landscape, never to be fully hidden again.
Enid, Oklahoma, 1903
The January wind knocked against the wooden frame of the Grand Avenue Hotel like an insistent hand on a door. The old man limped down the hall to his room. The cold hurt his leg. The break had never healed properly.
He sighed heavily as he sat down in the armchair in the corner. The bottle was already there on the table, waiting for him. Like many drunks, he had his rituals, followed with precision to keep him from stumbling too far from the supply of his booze.
He looked up and saw Cade, standing by the win
dow. He didn’t seem surprised.
“I knew someone would come,” he said.
His voice was still a rich baritone, deep and resonant from his years of theatrical training. Once this was the most famous actor in the nation. And then the most wanted man alive for twelve days in 1865.
But no one looked too hard for a man who was supposed to be dead.
He made no move to escape. Instead, he took another glass from the table.
“Drink, sir?” he asked.
“I don’t drink . . . whiskey,” Cade replied. “You know why I’m here.”
“It has been a long time in coming,” he said, putting the empty glass back on the table. “Which of them sent you?”
“The president sent me.”
That, at least, gave the man a start. “I’m honored to be a topic of discussion in the White House again. What shall I call you?”
“My name is Nathaniel Cade. Which name do you prefer?”
That brought a smile under the old man’s mustache. “John will be fine.”
Cade stepped toward him. “I don’t think we’ll know each other long enough for me to use your first name.”
“No, I imagine not,” he said. He sipped his whiskey again. “I’m ready. As I said, it’s been a long time.”
Ordinarily, Cade would have eviscerated the man by then. He was more brutal in those days, more direct. But he felt an insistent prod of curiosity.
“Why did you begin talking?” Cade said.
“I’m sorry?” The man’s eyes were bleary. The drink was working on him.
“You knew someone would come. You’ve been telling people who you are. Who you really are. Why?”
A long sigh. “Do you believe redemption is possible, Mr. Cade? I don’t mean for breaking the covenant of marriage, or stealing a few coins here and there. I wonder if it’s possible to be forgiven for a truly monstrous sin.”
Cade almost smiled. Not the first time he’d considered that question. “It depends on the sinner, I suppose.”
Sadness filled the man’s eyes. “I don’t know either. It’s been the abiding preoccupation of my days. I suppose I was looking for some punishment. Perhaps that would expiate some of my guilt.”
“You feel guilty?” Now Cade was surprised.
The man nodded and drank. “It has taken me some years to realize how mistaken I was. Everything seems too clear when you’re young. You believe in the absolute rightness of your cause. You believe the end justifies the means. For the greater good. My confederates at the time were all too happy to use me to further their own ends. It was only much later I realized they were in league with our supposed enemies. Each for their own reasons, they wanted an American Messiah. At the time, I was sure we were blazing with the light of truth. Now I realize they were most comfortable in the shadows.”
“Your former allies? You think they’re still around, watching you?”
“Oh, they still exist,” he said. “They change the name of their organizations, their public leaders come and go, but they never die. I knew they would have to silence me once I began confessing. But I had to admit it, even if I was too much of a coward to do so before old age caught up with me.”
“And now you’re ready to pay for your crimes.”
The man gave a short, bitter laugh. “Whether I am or not, you’re here now. I believed the others would find me before any federal man could cross the country, however.”
Cade smiled, showing his fangs. “I’m not your typical federal man.”
Again surprising Cade, the man didn’t react with the usual terror or shock. “I’ve heard of things like you. I suppose it only proves I’m going to Hell, if you’re here to claim me.”
Cade felt something. He couldn’t quite name it. Something in his blood sang in proximity to this man, the same man who fired the bullet that was part of the ritual binding him to the presidency. A bit of the “American Messiah”’s blood was on that bullet, and Cade swore he could feel it now. However small those drops, however little remained inside him, he could feel it.
Perhaps that was what motivated him to ask the next question.
“Do you really feel you did something wrong? Do you repent?”
The old man’s eyes blazed with conviction. “I killed the best man who ever lived. I deserve whatever you have in store for me.”
This was not acting, Cade knew. This was the truth.
He poured the old man another drink.
“You were right, actually,” Cade said. “I wasn’t the first here. Another man entered your room. The whiskey you’ve been drinking has been laced with cyanide.”
The man considered this. “I thought it tasted a little bitter. But when you get to my age, you can’t be too choosy with your spirits.”
“It wouldn’t have killed you. Not before I did,” Cade said. “It certainly would have been less painful.”
“My hard luck, then. Do what you must.”
Cade pushed the glass toward the man’s hand.
“One last drink,” he said. “You have time.”
The man tipped his head in thanks. He drained the glass in a single gulp.
Almost immediately, it fell from his hand. His breathing grew shallow. As Cade had figured, the last glass had been enough for a lethal dose. Within minutes, Cade heard his heart slow, then stop.
He didn’t know why he let the assassin of President Lincoln die quietly, without the pain and fear Cade usually inflicted on his enemies.
Perhaps it was the last bit of that great man’s blood, still flowing in him somewhere.
Perhaps that’s where he found a drop of genuine mercy.
EIGHT
1928—Providence, Rhode Island—A series of “vampire murders” reported. Later, local authorities intercept a bootlegger’s truck that contains the stolen corpse of Benjamin Franklin. Cade sent to investigate. Results inconclusive. Possibly related to the Innsmouth incident.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODE NAME: NIGHTMARE PET
(EYES ONLY/CLASSIFIED/ABOVE TOP SECRET),
Partial Chronology, Unknown “Events” and Operations
EYL, PUNTLAND REGION OF SOMALIA
Business in the little coastal town was booming. Piracy had turned what was once a sleepy fishing village into a third-world amusement park: Pirateland. When the pirates came in from the sea, the village doubled or tripled in size, and dollars were dumped in piles amid the bone-grinding poverty. Restaurants on the coastline catered to the pirates and their prisoners as well. They offered menus, daily specials and delivery by boat. Rolls-Royces and Bentleys parked in the mud next to pens of livestock. Modern designer homes overlooked the gulf, paid for with ransoms and stolen goods. Pirated Internet cables were strung through the air, delivering wi-fi to the accountants who tallied the loot on their laptops.
Cade and Graves walked through the carnival smells and polyglot shouts unmolested, but not unnoticed. It was unusual for two white men to be here, but not unheard of. It was possible they were negotiators, or buyers. For some reason, no one wanted to approach Cade to find out.
“This is a waste of time,” Cade said.
“It’s all we have,” Graves replied.
Graves had changed into a tropical-weight outfit while on the plane—linen suit and shirt, khaki tie. He kept his shades on, even though it was now full dark. He looked like colonialism’s ghost on a tour of its old home. The only concessions he made to the setting were the waffle-stomper boots on his feet and the heavy N-frame, 8-shot Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum holstered in plain view on his belt.
They’d arrived at an airstrip—basically a long, flat section of dirt—about ninety miles east of Eyl. Over the intercom, the pilot said landing would be impossible; “a jet-fuel cremation,” was how he put it. Graves stepped into the cockpit, and a moment later, they came in for a landing that felt like going over class IV rapids.
The pilots stayed at the plane, trying to figure out how to turn the Gulfstream for takeoff, as Graves and Cade transferred int
o a black Range Rover. They left behind a couple of Archies with full-body armor and automatic weapons to stand guard.
By the time they arrived, it was past midnight, but no one was sleeping. As long as the pirates were in port, Eyl was a twenty-four-hour operation.
Still, they’d found nothing. The pirates who’d been infected with the Snakehead virus were already dead, killed by Cade. Their boats were gone, wrecked or scavenged. Their names brought only blank stares from the few people willing to talk.
“A waste of time,” Cade said again.
Graves shrugged. “If you have any other ideas, I’d be happy to—”
Cade had already turned away from him and activated his phone. He called Zach.
“Give me something I can use,” he said.
“AND HELLO to you too, Cade,” Zach replied.
It was past six in the offices, and nothing seemed nearly as fresh as it had this morning. They’d all been up since before dawn, with nothing to show for it.
Bell and her colleagues were frozen with some combination of humiliation, fear and ass-covering. They refused to call Graves without any fresh intel.
They were stuck. They knew it. They’d even sent Hewitt and Reynolds out for pizza. The stink of failure was starting to fill the air.
Bell looked up from her screen. “Is that Cade?”
Candle didn’t stop popping M&Ms into his mouth. “Tell him we say hello.”
“Well?” Cade asked.
“We’ve got exactly dick,” Zach admitted. “Sorry.”
“Look harder,” Cade said.
Zach allowed himself a little sigh of impatience. Zach actually liked talking to Cade on the phone. The nerve-rending effect of his presence was neutered. Even Cade was incapable of reaching through the telephone to tear out your throat long-distance. Sure, his voice still had that creepy, cold flatness, but Zach could handle that. It made him a little bolder, a little more likely to give Cade a direct order.
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