The Spy

by James Phelan

  “And you were letting him run . . . letting me get close.”

  “As long as he kept the bad guys in cash, he was useful to me. And I knew that someone would tail him, so I wanted to be sure that it was someone we knew.”

  “Through Heller.”

  Bellamy nodded.

  “What’s in it for him?”

  “The future,” Bellamy said. “He spoke highly of you. Said that it had to be you; that if anyone could crack this, it’d be you. See, you were so good, you had to be used, and you had to die. Pity. I would have recruited you, but Heller wouldn’t have it. You were untouchable, he said. Uncorruptible. A rare breed. A dinosaur. Just like your father . . .”

  “And Assif, in Yemen?” Walker said, ignoring the personal remark. “What, he outgrew his role? He’d followed the money . . . and he knew about your plan. About Zodiac. About the chain of attacks that were going to play out.”

  “No. He only knew the first step. He helped set that up, to catch a bigger fish that never existed. He knew this would happen, and he knew it would lead to more.”

  “More? You failed, Bellamy. The VP’s not dead. Zodiac, these twelve attacks—it’s all over.”

  Bellamy shook his head, and gestured at the television screens.

  “The VP didn’t have to die,” Bellamy said. “This is just as good. An assassination attempt at the New York Stock Exchange. That was the trigger. So, it’s starting. The ball’s rolling. Isn’t it, Barry?”

  Walker looked at Barry, shaking, hard drive in hand. He looked to Walker, and Walker saw flight in his eyes.

  “Why do it this way?” Walker said, looking back at Bellamy.

  “Are you looking for an origin story?” Bellamy said. “Sorry to disappoint you. I arrived fully formed. I’m everything you are and more, because I’m all that you’re not.”

  “A lunatic?” Walker responded. Never insult a man who’s pointing a gun at you—unless all other options are off the table.

  Bellamy was silent, but only for a moment. He then spoke slowly, deliberately. “The war on terror—it bred new terrorists.”

  “Bullshit,” Walker replied. “It brought out the opportunists. Like you.”

  Bellamy smiled.

  “All this time,” Walker said with renewed vigor despite the painful throb pulsing through his arm. “All this time, and up until a day ago I was ready to leave it all at Heller’s feet. But you’re the puppet master. You’re to blame.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “And you’re going to kill me now?” Walker said.

  “Sure,” Bellamy said.

  “Shoot straight,” Walker said. He rehearsed his movements in his mind. Two and a half meters. Three steps. Inside of a second and a half. He tensed his thighs, his weight slightly forward, ready to spring. “Because if you don’t put me down by the time I get to you, I’m going to tear you apart.”

  “This close, my seven-year-old daughter could shoot you dead,” Bellamy said. “Watch the screens. I want you to see this.”

  Walker kept his weight at the balls of his feet, ready to pounce. He looked at the screens. Every local network and cable news channel, as well as plenty of foreign ones—BBC World News from the United Kingdom, Deutsche Welle from Germany and RT from Russia—tuned into live streams out the front of the New York Stock Exchange.

  An audience of millions, beamed live from the TV vans parked out front.

  “This wasn’t about the Vice President,” Walker said slowly, staring at the screens. Millions of people were watching, waiting for Bellamy’s showstopper. Outside the New York Stock Exchange, somewhere—octanitrocubane, or ONC. A detonation velocity of more than ten thousand meters per second. Invented in the US of A and used by a terrorist.

  “It was, but that’s not all.” Bellamy went quiet.

  Walker imagined a bomb going off outside. The world watching via all the media on scene. A spectacular thing; 9/11 all over again. Get the world to tune in, then show them what you can really do. Use ONC, invented in American labs, traceable back to none other than the CIA.

  “You’re going to detonate ONC for all to see,” Walker said. “On live television . . .”

  “You see,” Bellamy said, smiling, “in the world of intelligence, it pays to know more than the other guy. You’ve been out of the game too long. You have no idea the magnitude of what’s at stake here.”

  Go for the box, Walker willed him. Reach for it and see what I’ll do.

  But the box remained in Barry’s hands. Bellamy didn’t try to take it. He didn’t need to.

  Because then, a phone rang. The phone Bellamy had just used.

  Bellamy said to Walker, “That’ll be for you.”

  Walker looked at the phone.

  Ring ring.

  Bellamy said, “Better get it. Tick tock.”

  Ring ring. Walker picked it up. He expected it to be Eve. But it wasn’t. It was a voice he thought he’d never hear again.

  His father’s.

  78

  His father’s voice said, “Jed . . .”

  Walker gripped the phone receiver, his knuckles white.

  “Son, you can’t understand why, or what’s going on, but you have to trust me here. You’ve got to let this slide. Get out of there, with Bellamy. You can come to me. Start a new life.”

  Jed Walker, a dead man, listened to another dead Walker.

  “Son, please, there’s a time to explain but it’s not now—get out of there while we can still clean this up, and I’ll explain everything. You’ll understand . . .”

  Walker stared right through Bellamy.

  “Son, listen . . . we’re family. Always. You’ll understand soon enough—just let this play out. This is bigger than you could ever know.”

  Walker said into the phone, “You’re working with Bellamy?”

  “Jed, this is bigger than that. You have to let it play out. You’ll see. It’s for family—the American family, all of us. You’ll see.”

  Walker said, “You once told me that families are always rising and falling in America, right?”

  Walker’s father was silent.

  “You were right,” Walker said into the phone. “And you’re wrong. Yes, this does end now. But then I’m coming for you, and I’ll get the answers I need.”

  Walker hung up the phone. Bellamy looked surprised.

  But then he surprised Walker. He started whistling.

  Bellamy whistled the opening bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

  Walker knew the words; knew them well. The national anthem of the United States of America. He also knew the United States military code that stated what an enlisted man in or out of uniform was supposed to do on hearing it; the thing was, he already had his right hand over his heart.

  Bellamy’s whistle sounded the tune to the lyrics: O say can you see by the dawn’s early light . . .

  Bellamy stopped. Smiled.

  It was the fifth line of the first stanza that replayed in Walker’s head. It wouldn’t let him go: And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air . . .

  Wherever Bellamy had set the ONC charges, somewhere outside the building, they would go off in spectacular style. A whole new 9/11, after which INTFOR would rise from the ashes and take the lion’s share.

  As Bellamy watched Walker, his expression changed. He looked to Barry, to the box.

  “Give it to me,” he said, panicked, pacing to the trembling man and taking the transceiver. He looked down to check—

  Too late.

  Walker sprang forward. As he moved toward Bellamy, the Glock went off with a muzzle flash and the BANG! of a 9-millimeter round.

  Walker pushed the weapon aside. Another round went off. Walker pressed onward, tackling Bellamy, his full weight dropping onto him—230 pounds of crazed momentum crashing the guy to the floor. Walker landed with his elbows close to his chest, pointing down. He felt Bellamy’s ribs dislodge from the sternum and crack under the pressure; heard the air knock out
of him. Significant, life-threatening, blunt-force trauma.

  Bellamy’s eyes bulged with the pressure wave. He brought the Glock up to Walker, but Walker sat up, took the man’s right arm in his left grip and held it down to the ground, tight.

  Bellamy was red faced with the exertion and the pain, but he drew enough strength to land a punch on Walker’s wounded forearm.

  Walker reeled back, his left hand still tight around Bellamy’s wrist.

  Bellamy sucked air: short, sharp gasps that made him wince. He was alive, but not for long. On his back. Looking up. Blinking. His mouth moving.

  “Help . . .”

  “It’s too late for you,” Walker said as he took the Glock and tossed it.

  •

  Somerville and McCorkell listened as the HRT teams ran through corridors from three different directions, converging on the room. Over the computer terminal’s mic, and those on the HRT’s tactical-coms systems, they heard two gunshots, the distinctive claps of a 9-millimeter weapon.

  “I’m going in there!” McCorkell yelled.

  “I’m right behind you,” Somerville said, grabbing a hand-held radio on her way out.

  •

  Bellamy’s focus drifted. At the most he had a couple of minutes to live.

  Walker looked to Barry. The guy was on the floor, motionless, a small gunshot wound to the right side of his chest, low. A lung shot. Not much blood. The Hydrashock round was devastating, the ballistic impact producing pressure waves that propagated at close to the speed of sound. Hydrostatic shock through the body cavity meant near to instant death.

  Walker turned his attention to Bellamy, who sucked air like a goldfish out of water.

  “Talk,” Walker said to him.

  Bellamy reached a hand up and gripped Walker’s shirt. His eyes begged for reprieve.

  Walker’s eyes were cold. “Talk.”

  •

  McCorkell crashed into the corridor and raced toward Walker, Somerville a step behind. Then the three squads of Hostage Rescue Team operators converged and provided cover. In five seconds twelve sub-machine guns were pointed at Bellamy by some of America’s finest marksmen.

  “My . . . daughter,” Bellamy gasped. “Please . . . can you . . . call her? I need to . . . talk . . . to her.”

  “No,” Walker replied. “Talk to me. How do we stop the rest? How do we stop the other attacks?”

  “My . . . daughter.”

  “I’ll make the call,” Somerville said, picking up the hard-line phone. Bellamy recited a number, and Somerville dialed.

  Walker considered holding the phone from Bellamy as soon as the kid’s voice came on the line, using it as leverage to get him to talk, but Somerville put the phone on speaker.

  A young girl answered.

  Bellamy gargled a hello.

  “Daddy?”

  “Darling . . .”

  “Talk to her,” Somerville said quietly to Bellamy as she crouched next to Walker. “Tell her goodbye.”

  Bellamy did, then told her he loved her. Walker reached over and ended the call.

  “Now, tell me, for her,” Walker said. “The rest of these attacks. The other eleven. How do I stop them?”

  “Twelve,” Bellamy said, starting to pant for breath as his heart and lungs raced for oxygen and blood that just wasn’t there anymore. “There’s twelve.”

  “This wasn’t the first one?”

  “This was . . . the trigger.”

  Walker looked to Somerville and McCorkell.

  “There’s twelve,” Bellamy said. “Each named after . . . after a Zodiac sign, and falls . . . in sequence. This will be reported as what it was, an assassination attempt. It’s started.”

  “How do we stop them?” said Walker.

  “Can’t.”

  “There’s got to be a way.”

  Bellamy’s eyes were glassy. He stared up at the blank ceiling. He was checking out and he knew it, and he knew he’d lost.

  “Once one sees . . . their trigger, they activate. Cutout cells, see? None knows . . . the others.”

  Walker said, “Someone knows.”

  “Not me.”

  “Who?”

  “No . . .” Bellamy tried to reach up to the back of his head, but his hand never got there. A gurgle emanated and then his body went limp as each muscle gave out.

  Walker touched the back of Bellamy’s head, felt the tiny bump under the hair. A head-case chip.

  EPILOGUE

  “We squeezed Senator Anderson,” Bill McCorkell said. “He talked. Told us everything in a plea bargain to save his life. Said he knew nothing about an attack on US soil let alone against the VP. He’ll still do ten years at a fed pen, keeping Heller company.”

  Walker remained silent as he sat opposite McCorkell; the two of them alone in a busy New York street. SoHo. Not far from where it all went down less than a week ago. Those events already felt like a lifetime ago.

  McCorkell continued, “Bellamy knew he couldn’t get this administration to concede to a bigger role for INTFOR. His only ally in the Cabinet was the Vice President. He hatched a plan whereby the Vice President’s death at the hands of terrorists would act as a catalyst to galvanize support in the Cabinet Room. We tossed Bellamy’s office and found files for release the next day—he was proposing that the bill to make INTFOR the lead intelligence agency be named after the Vice President, as a tribute.”

  “Linking the assassination to a bomb-maker killed while meeting the courier with the bin Laden cell-phone number would have iced the cake,” Walker said. “The whole country would have been onside to give Bellamy, the great American patriot who was right there at the Vice President’s side at the time of his assassination, a blank check to look after them.”

  McCorkell nodded. “We’re working through that list you got from Hong Kong now. It seems those put options went out to a select few of Bellamy’s former clients. If we can unravel that, it might lead to what’s next in the Zodiac cells.”

  Walker sipped his coffee. “They find the explosives linked to the wireless hard drive?”

  “In the news crews’ TV vans,” McCorkell said. “If we hadn’t jammed the frequencies, well, people would have seen a hell of a sight on their screens at home.”

  “I can’t believe the lengths he was willing to go . . .” Walker said.

  “What are you going to do?” McCorkell asked. “Keep running? Keep living with nothing in your pockets but a fake passport and some cash?”

  “I’m not running from anything,” Walker replied. “I’m chasing it.”

  “You’ve got nothing left to chase. The truth about Yemen is coming out. You’ll be reborn. Free.”

  “Free? Are you kidding? Besides, there’s always something to chase.”

  “You know what I mean. Come back, into the fold.”

  “I can’t work for the Agency again.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean, take your life back. Like this, you can never be the Jed Walker you were. You’re a ghost, living in the shadows, always looking over your shoulder.”

  “So, I should come home and get a parade?”

  “Join my team; you’d be a free man to chase whatever you want.”

  “You reckon you’re free?”

  “I have no reason not to.”

  “I have plenty of reasons not to.”

  “Like Eve? Is she still a reason?”

  “You know nothing about her.”

  “True, nothing of import. But I have no doubt that she’d like to know the truth of what happened, about you not being dead.”

  “She’s over it. She’s moved on. She doesn’t need a ghost to pop up in her life.”

  “People don’t get over what she’s been through.”

  “I can’t undo it, either. This isn’t some lame TV show where I come back from the grave a year later and say, ‘Honey, I’m home.’”

  “It couldn’t hurt to try, to give her the option of how to move ahead.”

  “Of course it
could hurt. It would make her a target. Have you thought of that? It would show anyone watching me that she’s a weakness of mine, a way to get to me, to force my hand.”

  They both sat for a few long moments.

  “You still love her,” said McCorkell eventually, watching Walker.

  “Of course. I married her, didn’t I?”

  “You were separated before you went to Yemen.”

  “Thanks to my shitty job.”

  “No, it was your attitude toward it. That’s changed now.”

  “No. I haven’t changed. That’s the problem. I can’t stop, don’t you see? I will track down every single cell of this Zodiac program or I’ll die trying. Asad is still out there, building bombs.” Walker pushed his empty coffee cup away roughly. “You think I want to be like this? I can’t help it.”

  “If you join us, that can change. It won’t be one man against the world; it’ll be you and me and a group from the UN.”

  “Sorry if I don’t see that option as an improvement on what I can achieve alone.”

  McCorkell chewed at his bottom lip, as if trying to keep himself in check, and then said, “Okay, well, you know where I am.”

  He offered a hand.

  Walker shook it.

  “Where will you go?” McCorkell asked.

  Walker shrugged.

  “You know the score,” McCorkell went on. “You’re in the arena, dealing with the worst, and that means that you can’t have a normal life. Normal for you is the war that soccer moms see on TV. I get it, okay? When you’re in that world, you can’t be close to someone, because when you get hurt, they get hurt. One way or another, they get hurt—and you may think you’ve hurt her all you can but you know, deep down, that isn’t true. There’s pain and then there’s pain, and you know you’ve put her through enough. You need to see her, though, and you will, but you probably won’t talk to her, won’t let her see you.”

  A thousand thoughts ran through Walker’s mind, a part of his brain filtering them to some succinct possibilities and musings, which he categorized and prioritized and compartmentalized into a few distinct lists. Less than a minute and he knew what he had to do, today, tomorrow, and for the rest of his life. Marty Bloom would have been proud.

  •