Slingshot: A Spycatcher Novel

by Matthew Dunn

  Wendell frowned. “That can’t be the end.”

  “Why not?”

  Mathias shook his head, knowing his twin brother’s thoughts. “The young eagle wouldn’t be injured if the giant earthworm hadn’t been so bad.”

  Wendell wasn’t happy. “And the eagle king needs to say sorry for hurting the younger eagle.” An idea came to him. “The best way he can do that is to find the worm and allow the younger eagle to kill it.”

  Stefan held his knife in midair and stared at nothing.

  Speaking more to himself while nodding slowly, Kronos whispered, “You’re right.”

  Fifty-Nine

  Patrick rang the doorbell of the London safe house and glanced at Will. “You been here before?”

  Will nodded. It was the Pimlico property he’d visited after the fiasco in Gdansk. The elderly housekeeper opened the door, looked at Will’s crutches, and said in a haughty voice, “Try not to damage the carpet with those things.”

  They entered the Regency house and moved into the tastefully decorated living room. Alistair was there, flicking through TV channels, wearing his favorite three-piece suit and Royal Navy tie. The MI6 controller frowned. “How long are you going to be on those things?”

  Will awkwardly removed the crutches from his armpits and slumped into an armchair. “The doctors want me to switch to a walking stick tomorrow.”

  Alistair continued flicking through channels, checked his watch, and muttered, “I can’t afford for you to be idle for too long. There’s plenty more work out there.”

  “Thanks for your concern. You think the Spartan Section’s got a future?”

  “We’ll see.” He found a news channel filming a reporter standing outside the International Criminal Court in The Hague. “Here we go.”

  Nikolai Dmitriev tried to control his breathing and force his body to relax. He’d waited a long time for this moment. The last thing the old man needed was a bout of nerves. After uncrossing his legs, he adjusted the knot on his tie and smoothed his frail hands over his suit. Armed police were all around him in the court’s secure waiting area. No one else was allowed in here, not even court officials. He stayed motionless, his back ramrod straight, staring at nothing as he mentally recited the statement he was to make.

  Dutch cops started shouting in an orderly fashion. One of them placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s time.”

  Dmitriev stood and followed officers out of the room, down bare corridors, and then into a large room containing men, women, tables, chairs, microphones, and cameras.

  The courtroom.

  All eyes were on him as he was guided to a stand to take the oath. Upon completion, he sat at a table that held a microphone and a glass of water. Facing him on the other side of the room were nine officials, including the court’s president and chief prosecutor.

  The prosecutor leaned toward his microphone. “Mr. Dmitriev. Do you understand that this is a hearing, a chance for you to supply us with your statement? It is not a trial.”

  Dmitriev nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good. If your statement warrants subsequent criminal proceedings, those trials will be held either here or in other relevant jurisdictions.” The prosecutor glanced at the president, who nodded at him. He returned his attention to Dmitriev. “Please proceed.”

  The former KGB colonel withdrew a sheet of paper, placed reading spectacles on, and momentarily stared at the cameras, knowing that his statement would be aired live to the world’s media. It seemed to him ironic that a life lived in the shadows would lead to this. Holding the paper with a shaking hand, he cleared his throat, inhaled deeply, and read the statement.

  “In 1995, I was a senior officer in Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki. In December of that year, I was ordered to attend a secret meeting in Berlin. The others present at that meeting were Russian generals Leon Michurin and Alexander Tatlin, former East German Stasi colonel Kurt Schreiber, United States admiral Jack Dugan, CIA officer Thomas Scott, and American army general Joe Ballinger. The meeting was initiated by Kurt Schreiber and was authorized by the presidents of the United States and Russia.

  “Our objective was to establish a set of military protocols for joint U.S.–Russian action against China, should the need ever arise to take action against the emerging superpower. These protocols would be stored in the relevant military headquarters in Russia and America, ready for use at a moment’s notice.”

  Dmitriev took a sip of water, his heart beating fast.

  “The American president believed that the joint military action would entail deployment of Russian conventional missiles from submarines located in the Philippine Sea and that their targets would be Chinese land-based missile sites. These strikes would be a warning to China, nothing more. American involvement would be deployment of its sophisticated interceptor missiles, sent from warships also located in the Philippine Sea, in order to stop Russia’s missiles from being shot down before they reached their targets.

  “However, Kurt Schreiber believed that China would never stop flexing its muscles simply as a result of strategic missile strikes. At the secret meeting, he argued that China needed to be shocked into submission. The others present at the meeting agreed with him. Various options were considered before it was decided that the best solution was a massive assault on China’s civilian population. The Russian missiles would not be conventional, instead they’d be carrying biological warheads. The American missiles would protect an act of genocide.”

  The prosecutor interrupted him. “On what scale?”

  Dmitriev felt sick. “The Russians would be targeting cities, densely populated civilian areas. In one wave of strikes, we estimated we could kill over one hundred million people.”

  “For the benefit of the court, repeat that number.”

  “One hundred million, probably much more.”

  The prosecutor looked unsettled and glanced at his colleagues. “We’ve never judged a case like this. That amount of death is unimaginable.”

  Dmitriev shook his head. “History shows that it is very imaginable.”

  The prosecutor wrote down notes. “Please clarify how the protocols can be enacted.”

  Dmitriev looked at each court official and saw fear and confusion in their eyes. “If China becomes a threat, the Russian and American premiers speak. They instruct their generals to dust off the protocols. Within four days of that, Russian submarines will be in the Philippine Sea. Above them will be U.S. destroyers. Russian biological warheads will be deployed to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and other cities. American interceptor missiles will shoot down any Chinese resistance. Simple.” Dmitriev read the end of his statement. “For the record, and to be absolutely clear on this, the American president had no knowledge of the agreement to use biological weapons. There is no reference to them in the protocols, they merely state that Russia will use conventional weapons. Subsequent U.S. presidents and generals who picked up the protocols would assume the same: America would be helping Russia to conduct a surgical, conventional strike against select military targets, not collude in genocide.”

  The prosecutor was writing notes. He stopped and looked up. “What about the Russian president of the day? Did he know that secretly Russia would be deploying biological warheads?”

  Dmitriev nodded. “Yes, but you have to understand that this was our final solution, one that we all hoped would never be used. And the only reason he never mentioned it to his American counterpart is that we told him that if he did so, the Americans would tear up their copy of the protocols. But . . .”—Dmitriev rubbed his wet eyes—“. . . things have changed. Dugan is now a senator, has the ear of the president, and has been put in charge of a political think tank—independent of Congress, the military, and other agencies—with the remit to analyze current strategic threats to the United States and provide creative solutio
ns to combat those threats. He’s employed his former colleagues Joe Ballinger and Thomas Scott. The three of them will persuade the U.S. president that China is our biggest long-term threat and propose the protocols drawn up at the Berlin meeting should be enacted.”

  “Do the protocols have a name?”

  Dmitriev nodded, feeling like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “The protocols are called Slingshot.”

  Alistair clapped his hands, turned off the television, and spun around to face Will. “Excellent! Your starting point was merely a scrap of paper and you pursued it to this. Bloody brilliant.” He pulled out his cell phone. “The prime minister will have watched the hearing, and I’m getting you in front of him. You’ll get a knighthood.”

  Will shook his head, pushed himself off the seat, and put the crutches in place. “If it’s okay with you, I’d rather not.”

  “You have better things to do with your time?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  Alistair looked furious. “God, you’re an obstinate so-and-so.” The MI6 Controller suddenly burst out laughing and pointed a finger toward Will. “But you’ve given the section a future. No one’s going to dare to touch us now.”

  Will hobbled away from the coheads, then stopped and turned. “What will happen to Dugan and the others?”

  Patrick answered, “Could be life imprisonment, but I’m guessing this will be a death penalty situation.” The CIA officer looked solemn. “They’ve duped numerous American presidents and could have sucked us into a world war.”

  “It would have been war, and China would have had the moral high ground.” Will tried to imagine the devastation caused by the biological attack against China, and the hundreds of millions of innocent people who would have suffered agonizing deaths. “China’s a problem, but not on this scale. Idiots keep trying to identify the bad guys and start wars. It undoes everything we do.” He lifted one of his crutches and pointed it at his coheads. “Are you making progress on locating Schreiber?”

  “He’s a marked man now. Every Western intelligence agency and law enforcement unit is on alert.”

  “Are you closing in on him?”

  Alistair sighed. “He’s vanished. Any leads we had to him are now dead.”

  Will lowered his crutch, shook his head, and felt like shit. “Schreiber’s got to be found.” He thought about everything Schreiber had done, his cold and brilliant brutality, his threats against Will’s people, his success. “Every fucking Western intelligence and law enforcement agency is out of its depth.”

  “Without you we . . .”

  “Without me you should be better.”

  “William, don’t take that tone with your superiors.”

  “My superiors?” Will thought about Betty. “Fuck you. Fuck it.” He turned, hobbled away, and said, “Why is it always up to me?”

  Sixty

  Suzy sat at her desk in Langley and switched on her computer. Around her were hundreds of other CIA analysts; the place resembled the trading floor of a large investment bank rather than the brains of the Agency. She felt tired, knew that it was merely due to a stage in her pregnancy, and wondered if the boy or girl in her womb felt the same way. Boy or girl? It mattered to the section’s men, because money was resting on the outcome. Damn fools. She picked up the book Will had bought her: Work & Pregnancy: Have a Life, Have a Kid.

  For the first time, she opened it and started flicking through the pages. She frowned as she saw that most of the pages had pencil notes in the margins; passages of text were underlined or circled.

  She recognized Adam’s handwriting. Herbal teas with antioxidant properties are great in the second trimester.

  And Roger’s. Iron-rich foods can be found in unexpected places like kids’ cereals.

  In one section, Mark had written, Check this out—good exercise routine for Suzy.

  And at the back of the book, Laith had written a shopping list of baby items, each exactly priced. The total cost was twelve hundred dollars, the value of the sweepstakes.

  She closed the book, deep in thought. Why did her pregnancy matter so much to the operatives? They were killers, not gentle men. She turned to her screen and began trawling through the titles of dozens of telegrams, many from the Agency’s overseas stations. She stopped on one and opened it up.

  MI6 OFFICER FOUND FROZEN TO DEATH, CAUSE OF DEATH NOT SUSPICIOUS

  Oh dear God. Peter Rhodes. Should she tell Will? She supposed he’d find out soon enough. But she didn’t need to be the one to tell him that his act of kindness had turned out to be a death sentence. Anyway, she didn’t know if she’d be able to break the news to him without shedding a tear, and she made it a personal rule to never cry in front of colleagues, especially men. They always misunderstood what it meant.

  She placed a hand over the book and sighed. The team didn’t mind if her baby was a boy or a girl. What did matter to them was that a new life was coming into the world, and they had to support her with that process.

  Maybe because the men believed that in some small way they were giving something back to humanity.

  Sixty-One

  That evening, Will entered the ground-floor communal entrance to his West Square home, looked at the stairs, and wondered how he’d manage the two flights to reach his third-floor apartment. The crutches were severely pissing him off; he hadn’t even been able to buy groceries for his dinner, as he had no way to carry them.

  The door to the ground-floor apartment opened. Retired major Dickie Mountjoy stepped into the corridor. The former Coldstream Guards officer was about to make a brisk walk to the Army & Navy Club in central London’s Pall Mall. He did so at precisely the same time every weekday evening, and once at the club would socialize with other ex-guardsmen. Never former infantry officers, and heaven forbid anyone who’d spent their career at sea. It was Wednesday, so this evening he’d partake in a drop of sherry, then lamb hotpot with vegetables, followed by a glass of port. Then he’d march home so that he was back in time for the ten o’clock news and a cup of cocoa while completing the Telegraph crossword.

  Sporting a pencil mustache and wearing a camel overcoat, immaculately pressed trousers, and Church’s shoes that had been polished to the standard required of parade grounds, the old soldier looked at Will with disdain. In the same tone he no doubt would have used when dressing down a new recruit, he asked, “How’d you do that then?”

  Will tried to appear embarrassed. “I went for a jog along the Thames; broke my ankle stepping off the curb.”

  Major Mountjoy jabbed the tip of his rolled umbrella against the wooden flooring. “You’ve spent too long behind a desk. Civvies like you become a liability when it suddenly occurs to them to get some exercise under their belt.”

  Will smiled. “Maybe you could give me a military exercise regime. It might knock some shape into me.”

  Mountjoy huffed. “Bit late for that. Best you get back to flogging more of that dodgy life insurance to upright people like me.”

  “It’s not dodgy.”

  “It damn right is, Sunny Jim. My Agnes saved every spare penny to set us up for retirement. During her last weeks, you bastards didn’t pay out a thing and we had to use all of our savings to make her comfortable before the end.”

  The widower swept his umbrella up, so that it was perpendicular under his armpit, and strode out of the property.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” David the mortician was running down the stairs as fast as his flabby body would allow. Food stains and loose cigarette tobacco were on his sweater. “Another bloody call-out.” The divorcé ran past Will, glancing at his injury. “Don’t let it get infected; otherwise you could be visiting my mortuary.”

  As the front door slammed behind David, Will began the painful and slow ascent of the stairs. It took him two minutes to make the first flight. Breathing fast, he reached out to grab a handrail, and when he did so
one of his crutches crashed to the floor. Cursing, he picked it up and fixed it back into position.

  Phoebe opened her door and looked at him with concern. “Poor darling.”

  Will gave her the story about the jogging accident.

  The thirty-something art dealer was dressed to kill, which usually meant she’d be going out to watch a middleweight boxing match somewhere in town. She took a sip of her champagne. “You want me to help you up the stairs?”

  Will looked at her six-inch heels and smiled. “I think we both might struggle with that.”

  Phoebe wagged a finger. “Us girls are used to it, darling.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll manage. Are you picking up a Chinese takeout tonight?”

  “Of course, but not until after the fight. You want me to get you some?”

  “That would be very kind.”

  Phoebe placed a hand on her hip, striking a sexy pose. “You suggesting we make a night of it?”

  Will laughed. “I think you’d be picking the wrong guy for that. It’s been an exhausting few weeks, I’ll probably be asleep by nine. If you could leave the takeout outside my door, I’ll settle up with you in the morning.”

  “Nonsense. You can return the favor and cook me a meal one evening.”

  Will lied, “My cooking’s dreadful. Tell you what, though—David’s a great cook, and he’s in need of some company. I bet he’d be delighted if you knocked on his door one evening.”

  Phoebe considered this. “He’s not my normal type, although . . . that might not be a bad thing. But what about you? When you’re here, you always seem to be on your own.”

  Will blew her a kiss. “I’m used to it.” As he continued hobbling up the stairs, he called out, “Szechuan chicken with noodles, if they have it.”