PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘London is as secure as it ever has been,’ Gregory responded. ‘I have thousands of extra officers on the streets, and Five is breaking down the doors of anyone ever suspected of having ties to a criminal or terrorist organization. We’ll be safe as houses Ellen, I assure you.’

  ‘I’m sure we will,’ Abrams said, although she would be the first to admit the unease she felt over the whole affair. ‘Director O’Hare of the Secret Service has sent an advance party over to help with security arrangements, I hope they will be accommodated by your agencies.’

  ‘I’ll make sure of it personally. Bryce Kelly at JTAC still has his knickers in a twist over that FBI agent of yours, but I’ll insist the Secret Service is made perfectly welcome.’

  ‘Thank you Adam, I appreciate that,’ Abrams said, hoping that he wouldn’t ask any more questions about ‘that FBI agent’ of hers.

  With no help forthcoming from the Brits, it looked like one of the only chances they had left to uncover the real people behind the attack was that same man.

  And as she said her farewells to the prime minister, Abrams felt herself hoping desperately that Mark Cole would have some success in Serbia.

  She had a feeling that a great deal might depend upon it.

  At the same time that President Abrams was talking to her opposite number in London, Vice President Clark Mason was also on the phone.

  He was in his first floor West Wing office, reclining back in his chair with his feet up on his desk as he chatted to Noah Graham, who was in his own office at FBI Headquarters just down the street.

  ‘So what have you got for me?’ Mason asked after the niceties were out of the way.

  ‘Not much so far,’ Graham had to admit. ‘She’s been spending almost all of her time over at the Forest Hills compound, only been home once in the past couple of days and even then it was only for a few hours. Bugs didn’t pick up on anything unusual.’

  Mason frowned. ‘But why is she there so much?’ He kicked his legs off the desk, sat up straight in his chair as he spoke. ‘It’s almost as if she’s working on something, right? Something that’s happening now, a live operation maybe? What job is she listed as having?’

  ‘Systems analyst in the IT department, debugs the computers, sorts out network security, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Mason said, eyes narrowing. ‘Doesn’t wash with me. She’s into something else. Did you find anything at her apartment?’

  ‘The kid likes computers, we know that much – the place was littered with every hi-tech device you could think of, and probably more. Good with the security too, we tried to get access but couldn’t get anywhere near.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We found the fingerprints of several people, quite a few from Dr. Alan Sandbourne.’

  ‘And is our good doctor fucking her?’ Mason asked next.

  ‘We don’t know. No signs of semen found with the ultraviolet, no prints of the doc’s in the bedroom either.’

  ‘Maybe he practices safe sex and they do it in the lounge,’ Mason suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Graham allowed. ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘You have any other theories?’

  ‘Only that they’re friends, or else they work closely together. You know, like cops do, meet up with their partners at home to hack out the cases they’re working on when they’re off-duty.’

  ‘The girl could be a researcher for him or something?’

  ‘Maybe. You think that Sandbourne was a government assassin, right? Well, we’re still looking into that, but let’s say you’re right, he used to work for Hansard and now he’s back with this new covert unit. What sort of work would he be doing?’

  ‘Getting involved in things like London, I guess. Right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Graham said again. ‘I’ve got file photos for Mark White, the supposed FBI guy that flew over there and has now gone missing. Looks different to Sandbourne, but not a million miles away.’

  ‘You think they’re one and the same?’

  ‘I think it’s a possibility. Which means that he’s operating in Europe, which might explain the odd hours that Michiko is keeping. Maybe she’s helping him, feeding him intel from Forest Hills, that sort of thing.’

  Mason felt himself becoming excited by what he was hearing. ‘And if we could link them?’ he asked. ‘What then?’

  ‘Well, if we can use Michiko to prove that Dr. Alan Sandbourne is Mark White, a fake FBI agent who got himself involved in a gun battle in London, then the whole of the Paradigm Group is going to get blown wide open not long after. It’ll all come crashing down around them.’

  ‘I like the sound of that,’ Mason said. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘We keep Michiko monitored, hope she slips up, contacts Sandbourne somehow.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t slip up?’

  ‘Well, then it becomes a bit more problematic,’ Graham said, ‘but not insurmountable. We’ll just bring her in for questioning, come up with some bullshit charge or something. She’s only, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? We’ll threaten her with deportation, she’ll shit her pants and give us everything we need.’

  ‘Why don’t we just go for that right away?’

  ‘Long term, it would be better if we had hard evidence rather than what some defense lawyer would probably deem to be a coerced confession. We could probably force it through if we had to, but it would be hard work, and not guaranteed. So we’ll keep the net open for now, and hope that she gives us something.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mason said, ‘but if we don’t get it soon, I’m happy to do it the hard way. That bitch is going to give us the Paradigm Group and the president one way or another.’

  The conversation over, Mason put the phone down and reclined back once more, feet back up on the table.

  Yes sir, he thought with a smile, that little Japanese whore is going to give us everything.

  That bitch? Michiko thought, angered beyond measure as she put down the headset through which she’d listened to the Vice President’s conversation with FBI Director Graham. That bitch?

  Well, fuck Clark Mason.

  Fuck him, and fuck Noah Graham too.

  Bruce Vinson didn’t know, but ever since their meeting, Michiko had started her own little surveillance operation on Mason, Graham and Jones. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Vinson to do a good job; it was just that she didn’t like being at the mercy of other people. It probably stemmed from being orphaned at such an early age, but when she was personally at risk, she liked to look after herself. And she could hear from this most recent conversation that she was definitely at risk – as was the whole of the Paradigm Group and Force One. Hell, as was the whole Abrams’ administration.

  And she wasn’t the sort of person who was going to let that sort of thing happen if there was anything she could do about it.

  And as she thought about the problem, the corners of her mouth turned up in a crooked smile.

  Because, she decided, there was definitely something that she could do about it.

  And Vice President Clark Mason was about to find out who the real bitch was.

  12

  ‘It reminds me a little of Café Corse,’ Elizabeth Morgan said over a glass of wine, ‘although at least we can relax here.’

  Cole watched her face transform as she smiled, and he was once again struck by her features. She was a beautiful woman, of that there was no doubt; but Cole couldn’t help wondering how much it had held her back, how much harder she must have needed to work to get to where she was, to be taken seriously. She had said as much when they’d talked back in England, of how all the men had wanted to sleep with her, and all the women had hated her.

  It must have been tough, and a small part of Cole’s heart went out to her.

  ‘Yeah,’ Cole agreed as he took a sip of the local white, ‘it’s nice to relax.’

  But they both knew that total relaxation was never going to be on the cards; they had no idea if the police would turn up at any
moment, having tracked them down from France and tied them to the gangland deaths there somehow.

  Cole was hoping – and this was supported by Michiko’s latest report of the Marseille police investigation – that the events would be put down to gang warfare, one group moving in on another. There was already talk of Antone Agostini calling all his soldiers to his villa to plan for all-out war, desperately seeking vengeance for his sons.

  But the fact remained that Cole and Morgan were both at risk of discovery; in fact, travelling on her own passport, Morgan could be found by the Security Service any time they wanted her back. The fact that they hadn’t, despite what had happened back in London, was at the same time both a relief and a concern for Cole. It was good that they weren’t chasing after her, but wouldn’t they want to question her further? People had been killed, after all.

  Still, he could worry about that another day; Morgan was right, this was about as relaxing as things were ever going to get at the moment, and he told himself to enjoy it while he could.

  After landing at just after five o’clock local time, Cole and Morgan had stayed apart as they’d boarded the busy, anonymous airport bus into Zadar’s pretty town center. Not wanting to register Morgan’s details anywhere in Zadar, Michiko had booked a hotel room for them online, in Cole’s assumed name of Thomas Jameson.

  The Art Hotel Kalelarga was situated in the city’s old town district, in an upswept promontory surrounded on all sides by the water. The Riva seafront promenade ran all the way around and provided fabulous views of the Zadar Channel, the pretty islands of Ugljan and Pašman, and the open sea out toward the northwest.

  Cole had performed several counter-surveillance runs around the property, but it had soon been clear that there was nobody lying in wait for him there and he entered the lobby and picked up his key – a single businessman, traveling alone.

  Half an hour after going up to his room and showering, Cole had answered the door to Morgan, the pair together once more.

  The hotel had its own restaurant, but they decided to go out to eat and ended up at Tramonto, a popular Italian place right on the seafront with stunning views across the water. Nighttime had drawn in, but they could still make out the waves lapping against the promenade, and the lights of the islands ahead were mesmerizing, like something out of a fairytale.

  November was typically the wettest month on the Dalmatian coast, but the weather was unseasonably mild and they sat outside under wide awnings, large patio heaters making them even more comfortable.

  A waiter came over to take their order, and when he had gone, Cole poured Morgan some more wine.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking a sip. ‘It’s actually not that bad, is it?’

  ‘It’s nice,’ Cole said. ‘Although to be fair, after the day we’ve had, anything would go down pretty well about now.’

  Morgan laughed. ‘That’s true enough,’ she said, then put the glass down and looked across the table at Cole more seriously. ‘So what’s our plan of action going to be tomorrow?’

  Morgan knew that they were going to catch the next available flight to Belgrade, which was leaving at seven o’clock the next morning; but after that, she was in the dark about their strategy in getting to Radomir Milanović.

  Cole, however, had been in contact with both Vinson and Michiko, and a rough plan was shaping up nicely.

  ‘My associates have managed to get me an invitation to see him,’ he said.

  ‘They’ve what?’ Morgan asked in disbelief. ‘How have they done that?’

  Cole had been impressed himself; Michiko was certainly proving to be worth her weight in gold.

  She had found Milanović’s details via the internal systems of Serbia’s Military Intelligence Agency and Security Information Agency, as well as local police records. She had then created a new alter ego for Cole, that of superrich Swedish industrialist Anders Gunvaldsson, complete with a searchable history that even included articles that had been inserted onto the websites of various newspapers and magazines.

  Identification papers had been forged by Force One’s on-site specialists, and were being FedExed over to Zadar right then, for Cole to pick up from hotel reception in the morning, before boarding the flight to Belgrade.

  ‘The story is that I’m looking to move into diamond mines in Africa, I’ve heard that conditions there can be violent, and I want weapons for my bodyguards. I’m asking Milanović for his help in supplying and shipping automatic rifles and handguns to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to be picked up by my men there. I’m telling him that I don’t want to rely on local weaponry, as I don’t know who’s who there, and I can’t rely on people.’

  ‘And he’s buying it?’

  Cole shrugged. ‘He’s a businessman, it’s money, why would he turn it down? Supplying arms is what he does.’

  ‘And he’s agreed to meet you?’

  Cole nodded. ‘Yeah, apparently so. Tomorrow at midday, in a hotel room in downtown Belgrade. I need to rely on the people I deal with, you see, I need to trust them. It’s part of my cover – it’s even in those magazine articles I mentioned, I like to meet people face to face.’

  ‘And what’s my role in this thing?’ Morgan asked. ‘Am I meeting up with Milanović too?’

  Cole shook his head. ‘Sorry, but no. I need you elsewhere, monitoring things. We’ve got a room in an office block across the road from where I’m meeting Milanović, I need you there watching. My people are working on getting us some equipment there too, audio and thermal imaging, that sort of thing, should hopefully be able to pick it up when we get there.’

  ‘Won’t he be expecting you to have bodyguards?’

  ‘I’ll have two,’ Cole said. ‘Something else my people have arranged, they’ll meet us in Belgrade.’

  Although he’d wanted Tier One personnel if possible, Vinson was all too aware of who was now controlling such people, and he didn’t want Colonel Manfred Jones to know anything about this operation.

  Vinson had therefore sourced some people through unofficial channels, two guys that were part of Pro-Tec Security, a civilian defense contractor agency operating in Bosnia. They were currently off-duty for a few days, and Vinson had convinced the agency’s CEO, an old friend of his, to let Cole have them for the day.

  One was an ex-Ranger, the other a Marine. Not Tier One perhaps, but they would be able to handle themselves and would certainly look the part, which – Cole hoped – was all he would need.

  ‘The FBI is a bit more creative than I’d imagined,’ Morgan said. ‘Especially with operations in foreign countries, which I thought was the territory of the CIA.’ She smiled, but Cole wasn’t sure if it was entirely friendly. ‘So are you stepping on the CIA’s toes, or are you not really what you seem to be, Mark?’

  Cole’s response to her query had to mercifully wait as their starters were brought to the table, and he was glad; what was he going to say, anyway? She worked for British intelligence, and if he told her that he wasn’t really FBI, she might report that back to MI5. But then again, he was working with her in partnership now, didn’t she have a right to know?

  The waiter left, and Cole forked some calamari into his mouth as he looked at her expectant face, still waiting for an answer.

  ‘I work for the United States government,’ he said eventually, ‘and that’s all I can say, even to you.’

  ‘CIA?’ Morgan asked, and Cole just shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he asked. ‘All those alphabet soup agencies are just the same as each other, if you work for one, you might as well work for another. Maybe I’m FBI, maybe I’m CIA, maybe I’m something else entirely, what does it matter?’ He took another mouthful of his appetizer, encouraged Morgan to do the same. ‘What should matter to you is that I’m going to do everything in my power to find out who was behind Khan, behind those three killers. And you’re going to be right alongside, helping me do it. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To crack this thing open, to go back to Lond
on and show them that you’ve done it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘That is what I want. More than anything else, to get the bastards who are behind it. I want to prove myself to the others, sure; but I really just want to catch these sonsofbitches and make them pay for what they did.’

  Cole nodded as well. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Make them pay for what they did, and stop them from doing whatever else it is they might have planned.’

  Morgan started to eat her own appetizer of bread and olives. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘okay. Maybe it doesn’t really matter who you work for. But I just don’t want to be tied up in anything illegal, you know?’

  ‘I know,’ Cole said, ‘and believe me, you won’t be. If we solve this thing, I’ll give you all the credit too, I’ll just melt into the background, never to be seen again.’

  Morgan looked at him with wide, searching eyes. ‘That would be a shame,’ she said. ‘I think I’d miss you.’

  For a moment, Cole didn’t know what to say, and again he thought that if she was a target, then he would have no problem developing the relationship at all. He would know exactly what to say, and how and when to say it. As a real person though – not an agent with a mission – he was at a loss at how to respond.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said finally, before taking a large swig from his wine glass. ‘I guess I’d miss you too.’

  She laughed lightly, put her hand on his arm across the table. ‘You’re better off with a gun in your hand, aren’t you?’

  Cole, unused to such intimate contact, had to fight against the instinct which almost pulled his arm free; instead left it right where it was, forced himself to relax.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said softly, ‘it’s okay.’ She laughed again. ‘Look at us now, it’s pretty funny, isn’t it? For the past couple of days you’ve been totally in control – car chases, gun fights, you name it, you’ve been on top of it. But the moment a woman touches your arm, or says a few nice words? You go to pieces, and suddenly I’m in charge.’

  He laughed with her. ‘I guess you’re right, it is pretty funny when you put it like that. But I guess we’re all good at something, right? And you’ve seen what I’m good at.’