Trust Me

by Jeff Abbott

The man’s face was full of kindness. Of course it was, Luke thought. Most people in this world were decent. Good. They did not turn a blind eye to the suffering they saw. There is good in the world, Luke thought, and the Night Road wants to stamp it out. Destroy it.

  ‘I am okay,’ Luke said. ‘Thank you.’

  He headed down the crowded street. The police cordoned off the avenues. How many innocent people, he thought. How many buried in the rubble, or killed outright. Nausea and anger shook him, vied for control. The ambulances were pulling away now, loading the first evacuees to the hospital. Surrounded by the onlookers, he felt marked, alone, as though he wandered among them like a ghost.

  And then, a block away in the milling crowd, he saw him. Henry Shawcross. Standing close to the cordon, looking down rue de l’Abbe-Gregoire at the devastation. His face might have been carved from stone. He stood on tiptoes, peering down the street, first-hand witness to the carnage he’d helped create.

  Henry turned away from the crowd, started to walk toward the ambulances that remained, where the injured were being loaded in.

  He’s looking for me. To see if I survived, Luke thought. He walked up to Henry, grabbed his shoulder, and said, ‘Are you here to leave flowers on my grave?’

  Henry didn’t move; he just sucked in a breath of surprise.

  ‘I’m armed. Are you here alone?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘If you lie to me, you’ll die. I’ll kill you and I won’t even blink. Start walking toward your car.’

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘Tables are turned, asshole. This is me kidnapping you.’

  Henry obeyed. Luke kept a grip on his arm and under his hand Henry’s flesh trembled.

  ‘Thank God you’re alive-’ Henry started.

  ‘Don’t give me your crappy lies. You sold me out. You left me to die.’

  ‘I did no such thing. Everything I’ve tried to do-’

  Luke’s hand slid down to Henry’s and gave the little finger a savage twist. Henry gasped and nearly stopped. ‘I am, oddly enough, not in the mood for one of your lectures about me or my life. Heard that, done that.’ They walked in the middle of the closed street, away from the other pedestrians who might overhear Luke’s harsh whispers.

  ‘The Night Road did this. Yes or no?’ Luke said.

  Henry nodded. Misery on his face. ‘Mouser ordered this done. He’s no longer following my orders. I tried to stop him.’

  ‘Yeah, I can really see you called the police.’

  ‘Luke, please. I was going to walk up and shoot the bomber before he could detonate. I didn’t get here in time. I took an enormous risk in coming here-’

  ‘Spare me the heroic self-portrait. They have Aubrey and my father?’

  Henry nodded again.

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So. All this to kill me?’

  ‘And to wipe out Quicksilver.’

  ‘You’ve killed innocent people.’

  ‘This is a war.’

  ‘You’re playing at war, but this isn’t a war.’

  ‘Look around you. Look at what you’ve been through, Luke. War. War of a different sort. Fought in secret. But still a war.’

  ‘And you’re on the side of the bad guys,’ Luke said.

  ‘The good guys didn’t want me any more.’ He looked away from Luke.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is my car.’ Henry stopped by a BMW sedan.

  ‘In, drive.’

  Henry obeyed. When he got behind the wheel Luke put the knife along his ribs. ‘I drove for four hours with a weapon in my side. I hope you enjoy it more than I did.’

  ‘Luke, let me explain.’

  ‘You are going to take me to where my father and Aubrey are. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘Whether or not I kill you when we get there depends on how well you act. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Luke.’

  ‘Drive.’

  Henry inched out into traffic, headed toward the Pont Neuf, crossed the Seine. Luke couldn’t take his gaze off Henry. It was like seeing something human, but knowing that a devil dwelt under the skin. Hurt, anger, loathing, all tore at him. No explanation could satisfy. But he still wanted to hear one, in Henry’s words.

  ‘Why?’ Luke asked.

  ‘There are so many whys.’ A bit of the cool confidence inched back into Henry’s tone. ‘I hardly know where to start.’

  ‘I want to know why you’re a traitor.’

  Silence for a long while. Luke stabbed him. Not deep; but he drove the knife into the cotton of the shirt and into the soft fat underneath.

  ‘Ahhh.’ Henry didn’t scream but it was close. A choking cry. ‘Do you want me to crash?’ Henry slapped a palm against the steering wheel in pain. ‘The police might ask why I’m bloodied and why you’re holding a knife.’

  ‘Did I stutter? Answer me. Why? You owe me, Henry. For years you pretended to be what you weren’t, you acted like you cared about me and my mom.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why. Why. Why.’

  Then the answer came, the words as flat as the blade of the knife. ‘No one listened to me.’

  It was such a petty confession; a small gripe by a small man. On such a little wheel could turn betrayals of country, of family, of honor.

  The confession left Luke nearly speechless. All the rage he felt toward Henry turned into a confusion. ‘Henry. I always listened to you. I trusted you.’

  ‘You and your mother were better to me than anyone ever was, Luke. You just don’t know.’

  ‘I’m listening now.’

  ‘The Book Club was my first think-tank. It was formed of a group of professors with international postings, recruited by the State Department. We all worked secretly for the department, doing analysis, talking with other academics in the target countries and regions we studied. We were much closer to the action than most analysts. We would conceive of new ways to acquire intelligence, to affect situations in foreign governments, and our muscle-’

  ‘Drummond and Clifford.’

  ‘Yes, they’d carry the plans out. I did some missions as well, so did your father. I did a lot of profiling of terrorists and extremists. We would write papers. But not for public release, they were policy papers. The deal was that we would never be named; we were working for State’s own version of the CIA, the one they’re not supposed to have.’

  ‘An illegal branch.’

  ‘A secret branch. None of us were formal spies, although we were trained in tradecraft; they were afraid we might get kidnapped, they wanted us to be capable of protecting ourselves. They called us thinkers and thugs. But we mostly focused on keeping our ears to the ground in a way that tapped into broad social changes that other researchers were not doing.’ He wiped at his lip. ‘We predicted the fall of the Soviet Union six years before it happened. We were ignored; just a bunch of State eggheads who were working in secret and didn’t even acknowledge our own names. We predicted the jihadists would arise after the fall of the Soviets. Guys with guns in Afghanistan would start hating America as much as they hated Russia and decide to open terrorist training camps. No one believed us.’ His voice broke. ‘I predicted 9/11, the use of jet liners as weapons, the same selection of targets, ten years before. No one believed me. No one took me seriously. Do you know what that felt like?’

  Luke did not feel sympathy for him, but it was hard not to feel a sickening pity. ‘You don’t get a pass because your feelings got bruised.’

  ‘No. It was more than feeling hurt. I started the Book Club. But your father took it over. Every good idea I had he smothered. I brought in the other professors, gave them this one great opportunity, but it was your father they wanted to follow. They thought I was just a chalk jockey, a book reader, I wasn’t a leader, I wasn’t as smart. I had one good idea, the Book Club itself, and then I was useless.’

  ‘So, ignored and unloved, you had Mouser kill them and make it look like an a
ccident.’

  Henry opened his mouth, shut it, opened it. Like a fish looking for the cooling water. But with a knife in his side, he said, ‘Yes. No one was listening to us anyway. After 9/11 we were an embarrassment – can you imagine the damage if my predictions saw the light of day? The government wasn’t willing to risk it. Ever. So there was no successor formed to the Book Club.’

  ‘And Mouser framed an innocent man for sabotaging the plane and killed him, too. And you found Mouser where?’

  Henry coughed. ‘It was my job to profile terrorists, see what we could learn from them. I met him in prison. I liked him. He wasn’t quite so extreme then. He’s gotten worse.’

  ‘You tried to kill my father and then you have the gall to claim you care about me? Just because you were jealous of him?’

  ‘You’re just like him. Just like him. I thought you were like your mother but I see you’re just like Warren.’

  Luke let the silence build. He thought he might kill Henry right now, even if it wrecked the car and killed them both. ‘Did you kill my mom, too?’

  Henry’s face broke with grief. ‘You know better.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘It was an accident. She was driving. You know I nearly died. It was an accident.’

  ‘I feel you’re leaving gaps.’

  ‘Then go ahead and kill me, Luke. I am telling you that I would never have hurt your mother, and you can believe me or not. Kill me if you have to.’

  ‘You think I won’t kill you? Do you really doubt me now?’

  ‘I know you are fundamentally a decent person who will not kill a man who he loved as a father,’ Henry said. ‘We can help each other escape our problems.’

  ‘Ah. Having betrayed your friends, your family and your country, now you’re going to betray the Night Road.’

  ‘Would you prefer I stay loyal to them or help you?’ Henry asked. The traffic thickened and he laid on the horn, fighting his way through a tangle of cars and buses at the Place de la Concorde.

  ‘Help me. How do I stop the Night Road?’

  ‘You can’t, there are too many of them.’

  ‘What is Hellfire?’

  ‘Hellfire is the second phase. The first wave was an audition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think it through, Luke.’ Like this was an intellectual exercise. ‘An audition,’ Luke repeated. ‘Like a gang initiation, a smaller crime before you get responsibility for the bigger crime? Is that what these recent attacks are? The chlorine train in Texas, the E. coli in Tennessee, the pipeline bombing. The high school attack?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘Proving grounds,’ Luke said. ‘Pull them off and you get to play on a bigger stage. Which is Hellfire.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The money,’ Luke said. ‘The fifty million. You get a slice of that if you qualify, more if you contribute to executing the Hellfire attack.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where’s it coming from? The funds had to be brought in and cleaned, Eric said. From where?’

  Henry’s tongue played along his lip. His breathing grew ragged. ‘I need to explain.’

  An audition. He thought of the various terrorist wannabes on the Night Road site, asking for and getting expertise, the words they’d used. ‘It’s an investment. Someone overseas is investing in American-based terrorists.’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘Your researches into terrorism. You interviewed people overseas, too.’ Now he put the knife close to Henry’s tender throat. He didn’t care if anyone else in a passing car saw. ‘Who?’

  ‘An elderly Saudi prince. He’s backing the fifty million. More to come if we succeed. Our connection with him is what gave Mouser access to a suicide bomber here in Paris. He is funding networks all over Europe, in East Africa, in the Philippines, in Australia.’

  Luke lowered the knife. He thought he knew how deep this betrayal went, but this staggered him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you, I’ve been warning people about this for years, even with the new think-tank, I write the papers, not enough people listen, but now… they have to. I’ve predicted everything that’s going to happen. All my papers over the past six months. All the papers I’ve got coming out this week.’

  ‘You predict the future and then you make it happen. And now – everyone will listen to you. And pay you handsomely for your insights. And think you’re incredibly smart.’

  Henry moved his mouth to say yes but no word issued from his breath, his lips.

  ‘Do you realize how utterly pathetic you are? Truly?’

  Henry wiped at his mouth.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Why me. Why involve me.’

  ‘I thought I could just write the papers – with you – and then when our “predictions” came true, we’d be a success together. I didn’t know I’d have to run the show. Handle the money, recruit the Night Road proper. But it was all my idea, so the prince wanted me involved. I couldn’t say no. I thought it would just be us together in the think-tank – not us together in the Night Road.’

  Henry drove onto a highway that snaked through the northern suburbs of Paris.

  Luke couldn’t look at him. It was as though he’d glanced into a well and seen bodies piled and rotting in the water, a sickening sight that would haunt him forever. ‘Hellfire. It’s bombs, isn’t it, with Snow involved.’

  ‘Snow made a lot of bombs. They’ve been planted in six cities.’

  ‘Planted where?’

  The car’s phone rang. ‘Mouser,’ Henry whispered.

  ‘Tell him you saw me dead.’

  Henry glanced at him.

  ‘I want him to think I’m dead.’

  Henry answered the phone. He kept it on speaker.

  Mouser sounded impatient. ‘Well? What happened?’

  ‘You won, Mouser. You won.’

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘Dead. I saw it myself. Lying in the street.’

  ‘His father’s people?’

  ‘Same.’

  ‘Excellent. Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  Mouser hung up. No goodbyes.

  ‘Where are these bombs, Henry?’

  ‘I’ll tell you if we can make a deal.’ Henry gave him a sidelong glance. ‘And if you kill me, you won’t get your dad or Aubrey back.’

  ‘What’s the deal?’

  ‘Mouser resents my efforts to protect you. He’s going to kill me, I feel sure, and take control of the Night Road entirely. I want immunity. I want protection.’

  ‘I can’t really give that to you.’

  ‘Quicksilver is more than that office in Paris or Drummond in New York. They can protect you. I want protection.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘It will be a wave of bombings. A hundred and forty.’

  A hundred and forty bombs. My God.

  ‘Where? What cities?’ He thought of the map of the previous attacks. Would they strike the same areas? Or entirely different ones?

  ‘When I’m safe, I’ll tell you. Not before.’ Henry glanced at his watch. ‘You better hurry. Mouser’s moving your father and Aubrey in the next hour.’

  ‘Describe where they’re being held.’

  Henry remained silent and it was only when Luke shifted position to slice at him again that he said, ‘Don’t be an idiot. If you want them out, you need me. I can’t go in there bloodied. They’ll know something is wrong. Start using your brain, Luke.’ He reached out, grabbed Luke’s wrist. Squeezed. Released it. ‘You hate me. Fine. We’re still stuck together in this mess. You should tell me what you plan to do. Marching in with a knife on me buys you nothing.’

  ‘True. I need a gun.’

  ‘Glove compartment.’

  Luke opened it, fished out a small Beretta. He checked; it was loaded. He didn’t say thank you.

  ‘Tell me what the plan is,’ Henry said. ‘I just gave you a gun.’

  ‘We’re going to
go in and I’m killing Mouser.’

  ‘He has hired men with him. You have no chance. I want you alive, Luke. Look at me. I raised you, for God’s sakes.’

  ‘I don’t see tears in your eyes.’

  ‘I don’t cry. You know that.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll handle it myself. Where are they?’

  ‘The prince has a compound just outside Paris. I drove like the devil to get there in time to try and stop the bomber.’

  ‘Or to make sure his work was done.’

  ‘You know that’s not true. If you believe I want you dead, stab me right now. Do it. Kill me.’

  ‘I need you breathing, Henry.’ He thought of the words of ChicagoChris; now Luke was the one trying to earn admittance to the club. ‘You’re my golden ticket.’

  53

  A stone wall surrounded the compound. The home beyond looked like a chateau, grand but slightly shabby. The landscaping had been ripped up around the house but not replaced, giving the house the air of neglect. Three miles away was a former French air force base, used as a hub by Travport for its legitimate courier service.

  ‘The prince, he owns Travport, through a series of limited partnerships.’

  ‘And he put you in touch with Eric.’ Luke remembered the photos in Eric’s room at his parents’ house, him posing with a businessman type in the shimmer of the desert.

  ‘Yes.’ Henry paused. ‘Eric did banking for him when he worked on overseas projects. Mouser will fly us back on a Travport jet, with the prince’s permission. Easier with prisoners. You’re an idiot to try this.’

  ‘Not asking your opinion,’ Luke said from the back seat. Henry had given him a basic layout of the compound. In the center was the old small chateau that the prince’s money had renewed from ruin. Behind it was a large barn, a guest house. Beyond that was another house, and that was where Warren Dantry and Aubrey Perrault were now being held.

  Or so Henry said. But Henry was the king of lies.

  ‘Guards?’

  ‘Two remaining. Now that Quicksilver’s Paris base is gone, and presumably the remains of Quicksilver scattered with it, I suspect that the guards will not have further reinforcements.’

  ‘I’m going to shoot the guards,’ Luke said. ‘If you give me away, I’ll shoot you too.’