Severance Package

by Duane Swierczynski

  The baby grew so fast, it quickly forgot its parents.

  The baby grew so large, it forgot parts of itself, like a toddler running through an antique shop. Such a baby doesn’t realize that swinging its arms out willy-nilly will shatter rare teacups and serving plates. All of that is boring anyway. The fun thing is to run.

  Guys like David Murphy were a vital part of the baby.

  On the outside, Murphy had surprised his fans within the conventional intelligence world by retiring and starting a financial services company. Like, what?

  He called it Murphy, Knox.

  Even the name was a gag: Knox=NOCs, CIA slang for “nonofficial covers.” Murphy and his NOCs.

  Murphy had quickly become a key player in CI-6.

  So had Keene, once he saw how useful he could be. How much more power he could wield working for an outfit like this.

  But what was Murphy mixed up in that, suddenly, he had to wipe out his front company? Along with more than a few of his employees, including several operatives?

  This was the problem with the baby that was CI-6. An invisible structure meant a hazy sense of self. Lack of accountability.

  Could a guy like Murphy just go and wipe out his own front company on a whim?

  Sure he could.

  But why?

  And did everyone else know about it?

  McCoy wouldn’t be much help in this department. He was too distracted by Girlfriend. He was more about recruiting—“nurturing talent,” he was fond of saying—than running operations. Keene couldn’t complain; it was how they’d met. Keene had liked being wooed. But now, he worried that his man didn’t have his eye on the full picture here.

  Keene fired up the laptop and hit the phones. Told the barman to keep the OJ coming.

  David was imagining he was inside a Wawa, and he was browsing the aisles, and he had an unlimited operational budget.

  He was able to procure microwaveable hamburgers, Italian submarine sandwiches—Philadelphians called them “hoagies”—tubs of cottage cheese, ooh, cottage cheese. That suddenly sounded good. If he could get himself up off this floor, and take care of everything that needed taking care of, he’d fix the elevators and ride down to the lobby and walk out to Twentieth Street. Just a block south … okay, two half blocks south, if you counted the stupid little side street below Market … there was a Wawa, right at Twentieth and Chestnut. He sneaked down there at lunch, sometimes. A man in his position was expected to dine at one of the Market West hot spots. Truth was, he hated those places. Gimmicky names, nine-dollar cheeseburgers. He preferred to buy lunch in some common place, bring it back in a brown paper bag, feast behind his closed office door. And Wawa was one of his favorites. The refrigerated dairy section was along the right wall. He could see the stacks of 2 percent cottage cheese, blue plastic containers, stacked in the middle. Oddly enough, the whole-milk cottage cheese was too cloying, while the 1 percent skim version was too acidic. Two percent was perfection. Perfect chunky creamy goodness …

  Someone touched his face.

  “I know you’re still there.”

  A female voice.

  Someone he recognized. Sort of.

  “I’m going to bring you around. But a bit of warning: This is going to hurt.”

  Hurt?

  Hurt was fine.

  As long as he woke up to a blue plastic container of Wawa 2 percent cottage cheese, already open, white plastic protective layer already peeled back, white plastic fork gently shoved into the side.

  And crackers. Plenty of Nabisco saltine …

  Nichole held the adrenaline shot two feet above David’s chest, then stabbed down and thumbed the plunger.

  A supersize dose of epinephrine—the so-called fight-or-flight hormone—pumped into David’s heart and made a lightning tour of his circulatory system.

  The reaction wasn’t immediate. It took a few seconds.

  But soon David was spitting blood and convulsing.

  Then he said, “… crackers.”

  Jamie realized that he’d been holding his breath for a full minute.

  Nichole didn’t waste a second. She flung the empty syringe across the conference room and placed her left foot on David’s throat. She applied enough pressure for him to start squirming slightly, even though he was still in the process of regaining consciousness.

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  “Can’t … breathe …”

  Jamie touched Nichole’s shoulder. “Hey, you might want to ease up—”

  Nichole slapped Jamie’s hand away. “Don’t.” Then, she said to David, “Everything, or I snap your neck.”

  “Ffffffine.”

  Nichole eased up. Slightly. As far as Jamie could tell, neck-snapping was still a distinct possibility.

  Jamie was still stunned, despite all that had transpired in the past thirty minutes. If you had called him at home yesterday and told him that he’d be seeing Nichole with her foot pressed against David’s neck in the conference room, with Stuart’s dead body lying in the corner, Jamie would have laughed. Okay, part of him would have hoped it was true. But most of him would have laughed.

  Now here it was. Everything took on that harshly lit look of surreality. The hyperreal. The couldn’t-actually-be-true-but-here-it-was.

  Nichole was saying: “Who ordered this? And why?”

  David smiled, which was creepy, because his eyes were still closed. “Who do you think?” he asked.

  More foot pressure. David winced.

  “I’m not asking about what I think. I’m asking about what you know. Tell me now and I’ll get you the medical attention you need. Refuse and I’ll be the last thing you see.”

  David swallowed. “I used to masturbate to your face.”

  A grim smile flashed on Nichole’s face; then she removed her foot and straddled David’s body. Both hands on the sides of his head. She turned him so they were face-to-face. Her thumbs were at his throat.

  “Who is it, David? Who wants us all dead?”

  “You’re looking at him, big girl.”

  Nichole shook her head. “You report to somebody.”

  “At least I’m not a mole.”

  “Who do you report to?”

  “A mole with a wet hole. Nee-COLE.”

  She dug her thumbs in deeper. David gasped, but he continued speaking anyway.

  “You’re out of your league, Nichole. Why do you think it’s been so hard for you to penetrate me? But I bet I could penetrate you.”

  “Tell me about Molly.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Liar.”

  Nichole removed her hands, then paced around the conference room.

  “What about the lockdown? Tell me how to reverse it.”

  “Since you’re giving orders,” David said, “let me give you one of my mine. A Big Mac. Two patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, all of that good stuff.”

  Nichole drove a fist into his face.

  It was an audacious move, David thought—punching someone in the face who’s already been shot in the head.

  A bullet, lodged in the skull, could easily loosen and work its way into brain tissue, making him a drooling side of beef on a conference room floor.

  Perhaps Nichole didn’t care.

  Maybe the crack about the “hole” was a step too far.

  Maybe it was his Big Mac order.

  Thing was, David wasn’t trying to be difficult. Well, maybe a little, but it was mostly the truth: He was absolutely ravenous. He’d been starving for months now, the hunger inside him mutating into a constant, sentient, insatiable thing. Telling his stomach no would be like telling his lungs not to crave air.

  He didn’t know how or why it had begun, but he realized that something was amiss when he drove home after work one night, pulled into a Bertucci’s off Huntingdon Pike, ordered two large pizza pies, fully loaded, along with three orders of garlic-an
d-butter breadsticks, then transported his bounty to his kitchen table and methodically consumed everything—every shred of dough, cheese, sun-dried tomato, shiitake mushroom, red pepper, black olive, and crumbled sausage—within an hour. No TV. No newspaper. No thoughts about the workday. Nothing to distract him but the pizza and breadsticks.

  And at two in the morning, David had risen from his bed and eaten six Snickers bars he’d stashed in the freezer.

  This had been in early June.

  Since then, his binges had come at unexpected times—along with his sex binges. Always with hookers or strippers, in his car or the champagne rooms of allegedly upscale sex clubs. David had to call his bank to ask that his ATM max withdrawal be raised from seven hundred dollars to a thousand dollars. He never knew when the urge would overwhelm him, and somehow, seven hundred dollars just didn’t go far enough in the champagne rooms.

  Nobody at work suspected; his employees didn’t usually make the rounds at suburban delis, chain restaurants, or brick-oven pizza parlors—or downtown strip joints or fetish clubs.

  You couldn’t tell by looking at David, either. His frame was still finely muscled and compact—essentially the same as the day he entered freshman year at Penn. His metabolism, always efficient, had shifted into overdrive to accommodate the influx of calories.

  His penis was raw, but even that seemed to heal quickly.

  David began to suspect he was losing his mind.

  It had been known to happen in this kind of business.

  By late July David decided to purge himself of the hunger. It was stress-related, he’d decided, and he needed to detox his body and mind. After a few quiet inquiries, he settled on an ayurvedic spa in southern India, where a radical panchakarma treatment might be what he needed to shake the cravings. He’d booked the flights and the package and told Amy Felton to take care of things; he had suddenly been called away. It was monsoon season in India. Tourists avoided areas like south India this time of year, but for David’s purposes it was perfect. The harsh conditions were what he needed. As well as dinners of rice gruel. Intense early morning yoga sessions. Forced vomiting. Leeches. Pummeling. Herb steam baths. And finally, shirodhara, in which warm oil was poured over your forehead in a slow, steady, and potentially maddening stream. It was the panchakarma version of Chinese water torture, and it was exquisitely painful.

  Fourteen days later—the required minimum stay—David emerged from the resort trembling but hopeful.

  On his way home, he made a pit stop in Austin, and ate five pulled-pork sandwiches along with fries and enough frosty pints of Shiner Bock to require an extra night’s stay in an airport hotel to sleep off his drunkenness. In the morning, he consumed four egg-and-bacon breakfasts, with croissants and extra-strong coffee.

  His hunger was bottomless. Hopeless.

  A few days later, he’d received instructions.

  And then he understood.

  Somehow, his body had anticipated all of this. His labor of five years, building Murphy, Knox, needed to be destroyed. And he, along with it.

  So it made sense. His body was merely trying to experience every last sensory detail it could before his eyelids closed a final time, and the heavy black curtain covered his face, and the data bank that was his brain flickered into nothingness.

  Whether or not Nichole Wise cared if he lived or died, there was something more important. He didn’t care either, beyond finishing this final operation.

  And the longer David kept them here, on this floor, the more likely that would be.

  His need for one last success was as sharp as the hunger.

  Ania’s palms and soles still burned and ached from racing down to the sixteenth floor of the north fire tower. But that was nothing compared with the pain of the return trip to thirty-six.

  The events of the past thirty minutes had taken their toll on her body, already weakened from the soft years of living as “Molly Lewis.” She’d tried to maintain her core strength, and she had, to a large degree, thanks to regular visits to the franchise gym closest to their home. Paul had been very supportive, renewing her membership every year for Christmas, even though he’d allowed his own waistline and chin to lie fallow. In bed, he constantly complimented her body—its compactness, its suppleness. Paul would suggest positions, and she’d agree to them, just for the exercise. The trick was having him hold steady. Often, it was over before her heart rate even peaked. But this meager regimen was no match for the long hours in front of the plasma television, or the constant barrage of carbs and sugar and fat that were the main ingredients of the meals Paul preferred. Pizza. Chinese take-out. His beloved Polish potato salad.

  As a result, her battle with Nichole Wise—not so much a battle as a chance to flex muscles she hadn’t used in a long while—left her more winded than she would have expected.

  And the abuse she’d taken in the past ten minutes—hurtling her body down endless sets of concrete staircases, hoisting two male bodies on her shoulders, snapping a neck, enduring a beating with a lead sap—had weakened her severely.

  Ania, what has become of you?

  Ania, potential Olympic gold medal winner?

  Ania, whose body was both the source of her greatest pain and the key to her escape?

  But walking up the south fire tower stairs with the corpse of Ethan Goins over her right shoulder, endless staircase after endless staircase, every weakness pronounced itself.

  She’d made her way across the elevator bank to the south tower—away from the sarin. But it didn’t make the flights up any easier.

  Perhaps the worst thing about it was how Ethan’s head rocked from side to side, like a bowling ball in a sack slung over your shoulder. Gravity pulled it one way. Then another. Then an entirely different way. It was unpredictable.

  Ania took comfort in what would happen once she reached the thirty-sixth floor. If those watching had been satisfied with her performance on the landing, then there was not much left to accomplish.

  She needed only to release the belt buckle holding Amy Felton in place, and drag her back into her office. She suspected she’d be dead from fright. If not, another neck snap, and she could finally join her beloved Ethan.

  David was in the conference room, paralyzed, awaiting final interrogations. There were three questions she needed to ask, and then she could end his life, too.

  And then it would be time to collect Jamie.

  Most likely, he’d passed out, and was still in the empty office where she’d left him. If he’d wandered away, he’d find nothing but horrors. Either way, she would find him somewhere on thirty-six, docile, awaiting rescue. Her rescue. Repairs to his hand would need to be made, but that wouldn’t take long. Ania had made clean, precise cuts down the lengths of his fingers. When they’d healed, she’d kiss the scars. Her lips would be the first sensations he’d feel. She’d encourage him to write again. Write what he wanted. Not press releases.

  In Europe, he’d be free to write whatever he liked.

  She hoped he’d get along with her mother.

  Nichole decided to start with the fingers. Maybe he was paralyzed for real; maybe he wouldn’t feel a thing. But she’d make him tell her what was going on. Whoops, David, there goes your ring finger. And most of the pinkie. Want to try for a thumb? After a while, he had to start caring.

  And start telling her how to bring this floor out of lockdown.

  “God, what are you doing?”

  Jamie, the drone. Watching her hold the gun to David’s hand, placing the barrel at the spot where the index finger met palm.

  Jamie, cradling his own hand protectively.

  “You can’t do that,” he said.

  “You want to get out of here, don’t you?” Nichole asked. “I need him to start giving me answers.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  Almost at the same time Jamie said, “No!”

  David appreciated the concern from Jamie; he really did. But there was no need. He was more or less numb from the neck
down.

  As a result, his body was vaguely aware of the loss. A finger was nothing to take lightly. Especially his index finger—one of the more useful digits of the human hand. But it wasn’t as if David could move his hand anyway. He told his body this, and his body shrugged and said, Hey, it’s your body.

  David gritted his teeth and pretended to be in some kind of pain. He even winced. Showmanship to the end.

  What did the Moscow Rules say?

  Use misdirection, illusion, deception.

  “It’s your thumb next,” he heard her say.

  Sure, that would be natural.

  Maybe she planned on doing all ten fingers, which would be wonderful. The more time Nichole spent torturing him, the less time she had to make it off this floor. That was the only thing he cared about now; everybody staying on the floor until the explosives did their job.

  “Two seconds to decide, David.”

  His glanced at his hand, and saw Nichole had a gun pointed at the base of his thumb this time. She was bringing out the big hurt early. It was best to start with a small finger, because when you feel how bad it hurts to lose, say, a pinkie, the pain of losing a thumb or index finger seems unfathomable.

  But hey, it was her show.

  David was finished being her mentor.

  Meanwhile, Jamie looked sick to his stomach.

  “Jamie,” he said, “if there’s still champagne and orange juice on the table, I suggest you mix yourself a drink.”

  David would rather see Jamie fall asleep than burn up alive. Or worse—try to leap from the windo—

  BLAM!

  Ah.

  The thumb.

  Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy finally figured out how to tap into the building’s security cameras. There was nothing of interest in the north fire tower. He found what he wanted in the south tower.

  Girlfriend.

  Dragging the corpse of Ethan Goins up one flight of concrete stairs after another, which had to be a real pain in the ass. But McCoy knew—and Girlfriend knew—that leaving his body in the fire tower wouldn’t work. It needed to be on the thirty-sixth floor. Burned up with the rest of the bodies. That was the operation.