by Matthew Dunn
“How could that happen?”
The man peered at him before repeating, “I won’t tell you how we get Hubble intelligence. Whatever you think you can do, my masters will be able to do worse to me if I betray Hubble.”
“I understand, but hear me out. What would you say if I told you that a person or persons unknown had discovered a technical attack against Iranian military communications and other data systems, that the person then realized that his operation to strike a massive blow against the West had been discovered, that the man then decided that instead of shutting down the breach he would manipulate it in order to try to cast doubt over his operation, that the man then manipulated Hubble by sending certain e-mails, making certain telephone calls, and sending certain text messages? You don’t have to tell me about Hubble, but what would you say in response to my little hypothesis?”
The man lowered his head and said nothing.
Will smiled and pushed himself up from the floor. “Then that’s all I need to know.”
The NSA officer looked up at him. His eyes had watered. “You’re wrong about one thing. When I decided we had a breach, I immediately brought it to the attention of my superiors. But it was them, not me, who decided to ignore it.”
“Why would they do that?”
The man sighed. “My Hubble operation is as comprehensive as it gets. The breach accounts for less than one percent of the Hubble attack. The rest remains intact and undiscovered. The NSA decided that to do anything about the breach would compromise the whole setup. So they chose to ignore it in order to save the wider operation.”
“But why then distribute the reports from the breach when you know them to be false?”
The man shrugged. “Our intelligence customers believe wholeheartedly in the Hubble project because we tell them it’s completely accurate. For us to withhold any of its reporting could prompt them to question the entirety of it.” He smiled a little, but the look on his face seemed bitter. “Hubble alone has secured an extra two hundred million dollars of funding for the NSA this year.”
Will nodded. “I see.” He observed the man for a moment before speaking again. “You will go to work now and make sure that the breach continues to go unchallenged. You will also ensure that NSA never learns about our conversation this morning.” He glanced one last time around the kitchen before looking back at the NSA officer. He thought the man seemed honest and honorable, like a decent father and husband who didn’t deserve to be threatened in the way that Will had been forced to do to him on this day. He hated the actions he often had to take and the lies he often had to speak. He pointed at the man. “Do this, and you and your loved ones get to live. Fail, and everything you love will die.”
Fourteen
Will turned off the reading light above his seat in the Delta Air Lines 777 and closed his eyes. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he desperately hoped that his mind would give him some rest on this flight. He tried to relax, tried to detach himself from the man he was, tried to imagine being one of the normal people he was surrounded by in first class.
But the thoughts and memories coursed through him with ferocity and intensity before settling on the one memory he least wanted to confront.
He saw the large teenage boy smile and sniff the spring air as he strolled through the midafternoon day toward the house. He saw the boy kick at loose stones for no other reason than they were there. He saw the boy smile wider as he patted the school bag containing his report card. He saw the boy increase his pace so that he was almost running toward the nearing house.
The boy stopped and frowned but was not perturbed. The cars around the house were unusual, given that few people ever visited, and certainly not during a weekday. But the boy was still really a child, and he loved changes to his routine, and so he embraced the notion that something exciting and different lay ahead. He walked onward and combed fingers through his tousled hair to try to make himself look at least a little bit presentable. He examined the cars more closely and memorized the models so he could tell his friends about them the following day. He had no interest in cars, but he knew that some of his friends did.
The boy rubbed his shoes against the back of his trousers and then approached the rear door of the house. It was open, and he decided that was normal for such an airy and fresh day. He walked into the house, set down his book bag, and wondered if he could have some lemonade.
He called out, “Mother.”
He walked into the living room.
His life changed forever.
Fifteen
At eight-thirty the following morning, Will was again standing on rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie in Paris. The muscles in his back ached, and he stretched his arms to try to relieve the discomfort. The road around him was busy with pedestrians forcing their way through an overnight snowfall, and Will scrutinized them all.
He saw Lana emerge from her side street and then followed her. She was dressed in a heavy winter coat and boots but nevertheless looked elegant and sexy as she strode on, turning on to rue du Bourg-Tibourg. She walked into a café and sat at a window table. Will stood for a moment on the street, watching her. He saw her remove her scarf, and he saw her hair fall down across her back. He saw her order something from a waiter, and he saw her take out a folded newspaper. He walked into the café.
“Hello, Lana.” Will sat down opposite the woman and pulled her newspaper away from her face so that she could see him.
Lana’s eyes widened. She glanced quickly around the café before looking back at Will. She produced a slight smile. “Hello, Nicholas. You came back for me.”
“I told you I would.” The waiter immediately attended their table, and Will muttered to the man, “Un café allongé, s’il vous plaît.” The man left them, and Will turned back to Lana. “I do hope nobody is planning to join you here.”
Lana put her newspaper down and gathered her hair in one hand to place it over a shoulder. “Nobody.”
Will nodded, studying her face. She still retained the beautiful and hunted visage, but she seemed now to be projecting some strength, or hope. “How did you feel after our meeting?”
Lana frowned a little. She gave a slight shrug. “More than anything else, I was surprised that I showed you my scars.” She leaned forward. “Why would I have done that with someone like you?”
Will smiled. “Someone like me? Who do you think that type of person is?”
She waved a hand. “You are someone who captures secrets and souls. That is what you do, is it not?”
“I suppose it is.”
Lana looked down at Will’s ringless fingers and then back up at his face. “Are you a kind man, Nicholas?”
He frowned and then laughed. “That’s a strange question.”
“Not really.” Lana placed one of her own manicured hands flat down on the table between them. “I’ve met so many unkind men in my life. It would be nice to know that you are not one of them.”
“I can be unkind when I need to be.”
“But not when you don’t have to be.” She smiled a little, and her eyes twinkled.
Will was about to respond when the waiter delivered two coffees to their table. He sat in silence for a moment and saw Lana move her fingers slightly closer to his. He looked out the window and watched fresh snow begin to fall on Paris, then turned back to Lana. “He is called Megiddo.”
Lana looked down and spoke quietly. “I know. It is the only name he ever gave me.”
“Then why did you not tell me that was his name during our first meeting?” Will felt the anger in his voice.
Lana shook her head. “It is not his real name, so it has no relevance.”
He gripped his coffee cup so hard it was a wonder the thing did not shatter. “Only I can decide what is relevant or otherwise.”
“Why is he so important to you?”
Will took
a deep breath and relaxed the grip on his cup. He looked at Lana’s lips and then her eyes and nodded once. “He is important to me because he wishes to kill others. It is my job to stop men like him.”
“That must be a lonely and thankless task.”
Will immediately recalled his meeting with his sister in Highgate Cemetery. He pushed the memory aside and smiled. “Why is it that people like you always think people like me are lonely?”
“People?” Lana’s voice hardened. “You said that if I’d been caught on my journeys in Bosnia, I could have been raped and tortured and then executed. How do you know I was never caught? How do you know that some of those things never happened?” She reached for her coffee but then withdrew her hand. “Do you think I am just like everyone else? That I’m just another person?”
“No, I don’t.” Will gazed out at the snowfall again and smiled as an unexpected memory came, the memory of five-year-old Will Cochrane throwing snowballs with his father. He wondered why the memory had come to him at this moment, then sighed as he understood that it was about innocence—his innocence, before the bad things came into his life, just like Lana’s innocence and purity before the bad men had beaten her and maybe worse. He looked at her. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to disparage you.”
Lana frowned before gently smiling. “Why did you come back to me?”
Will breathed deeply while watching Lana. He looked at her beautiful olive skin, her teak-colored hair, her large brown eyes, and her lips. He said nothing for a while, just looked at her. He wondered what her response would be to his next question, then suspected he knew. He toyed with the idea of not asking her at all, of reporting back to Alistair and Patrick with a lie. But Alistair and Patrick were men who lived and prospered in a world of lies and could never be deceived, not even by him.
He opened his mouth and said, “Lana, I—” His throat instantly felt dry. “Lana, I have something I must ask you.”
“I think I know what it is.”
Will frowned.
She looked away from him and spoke quietly, almost as if to herself. “There have been many times in my life when I have been reckless, knowingly foolish, maybe even naïve.” When she looked back at Will, her voice became stronger. “But I am not a stupid person.” She nodded. “You think I might be a means to lure out Megiddo. You want to know if I am willing to help you trap him.”
Will studied her eyes, tried to detect her emotions. He looked for signs of fear, hesitation, uncertainty, anger—anything. But he could not see any clear indications of the way she was thinking. He nodded slowly. “That is precisely what I want to know.”
Lana reached for her coffee cup again, and this time she placed her fingers around its base. She raised the cup and took a sip, then carefully set it back down. “I know why I stripped out of my clothes to show you my wounds. I did so because I wanted you to really understand what I’ve been through and what I’m still going through. I wanted you to look at me and decide that I was someone who could be exploited; someone who could be used to help you get Megiddo.” She frowned. “But I was surprised. You came to me and did not want me to stand before you seminaked in such a vulnerable situation. Other men in your situation may have been different. But at that moment I saw a gentle man who wanted nothing more than to protect me. I saw a man who was horrified by what he saw.” She smiled a little. “I think in that brief moment I saw a very kind man.”
Will felt confused and angry with himself, and before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “Would a kind and gentle man ask you to do something that was anything but kind or gentle?”
Lana frowned and shook her head. “I wanted you to know the truth about me. I wanted you to understand how much I’ve hated the man you now seek.” She leaned forward. “I want you now to know that the man you want is the man I want. I need you to understand that I want to help you in whatever way you see fit. Please, this may be my only opportunity to change my life for the better.”
Will wondered what to say. He then decided he knew precisely what to say. “Lana, the only way you can help is by being dangled as bait for Megiddo. I would protect you as much as I could, but nevertheless you would still be in severe danger. Regardless, I’m supposed to be here to counsel you that your desire to help me is the correct one. But I’m not going to lie to you. I want you to tell me that you will not help us catch Megiddo.”
Lana didn’t understand. “Surely you want to catch him?”
Will looked away for a moment. He thought about what Alistair had told him about his father. He thought about what Patrick had told him about the Evin Prison room. He thought about Megiddo.
He looked back at Lana and tried to hide the aggression he felt. “I desperately want to get my hands on him.” He sighed. “But there must be another way for me to get him.”
Lana smiled and reached out to cup Will’s large hands in her own. Her embrace felt tender. “Then I know what you think. Now I know that my instincts about you were correct. Now I know that you truly are a gentle man.” She squeezed her hands around his. “But nor am I going to lie to you. You would not be here if you or others in your organization had alternative means to lure Megiddo from the shadows. So I have to take this opportunity. I have to help you, and if that means letting you use me to bring him out of hiding, then I am willing for that to happen.” She withdrew her hands and smiled.
Will kept still for a moment. He looked out the window again, at the table, at the lipstick traces on her coffee cup. Anywhere but at Lana. “You could be killed.”
“I feel as if I’m half dead already. What have I got to lose?”
He sighed and finally met her eyes, and this time he could clearly see strength and defiance in them. “I suspect that you have more reasons to live than you think.”
“Then let me find out. Let me do this and feel alive again.”
He nodded. He knew that there was nothing he could say to dissuade her from her decision. He also knew that she could have no real comprehension of the dangers she would face. An idea came to him.
He drummed his fingers on the table and said quietly, “So be it.” He thought some more for a moment before saying, “I want you to send a letter to him. I want you to seek his audience.”
Lana chuckled. “Do you have an address for him? Because I certainly do not.”
Will shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m working on that. The letter will be our mechanism to draw him out, for you to meet him and identify him and for me to capture him.”
“Why would he want to meet me?”
“You can say in the letter that you love him.”
Lana’s eyes flashed anger. “You are asking a lot of me. And in any case, he won’t meet me unless I have something considerably more valuable to him”—she frowned—“than love.”
“I agree.” Will took another sip of his coffee. When he put his cup down, he reached across and placed his hand over Lana’s fingers. He hoped the act would soften her anger.
Lana smiled. “You say he plans to kill people. They must be important people if he is involved and if you are tasked to stop him. He will not be distracted from his task.”
“Then, as you say, we must bring him something better than your love.”
For a brief moment, the anger returned to Lana’s face. She then laughed quietly.
Will smiled and drained the remainder of his coffee. His face was close to hers, and he stopped smiling. “You need to give Megiddo something irresistible, and I know what that can be.” He pulled her closer to him. “I can’t stop you from agreeing to help me, but maybe I can stop you from being the true bait. So this is what we’ll do. I want you to write to Megiddo saying that Western intelligence services have approached you. I want you to tell him that they know he plans to strike a massive blow against one of their countries. Tell him that an intelligence officer called Nicholas Cree has asked you questions about Me
giddo. Tell him I want to capture him. Tell him that you need to meet Megiddo urgently to pass along what you know. Tell him that you can help deliver the intelligence officer to him so that Cree can be tortured to ascertain whether Megiddo’s operation is completely compromised.” Will smiled. “Tell him that you will do this only if in return you can be with him again.”
Lana had been studying Will’s lips as he spoke. When she looked back up, her eyes held tears. She gently withdrew one of her hands from Will’s hold and ran her fingers over the side of his face, shaking her head slightly. “Do you understand the risks you are taking with such a man? You are telling Megiddo to kill you.”
Will imagined the pain his father must have felt in the Evin Prison torture room. “I want Megiddo to come after me. I want him to view me as tethered bait. I want him to realize too late that it is he who is the prey and I who am the predator.
“And then, like all true predators, I will rip my prey apart.”
Sixteen
I forgive you for holding a knife to my throat. But it’s going to take me some time to forgive you for thinking that I might have done something careless to lead a killer to your colleague.” Harry took a gulp of his Red Label whiskey. He was dressed in immaculate casual business attire and had one leg loosely resting over the other. He replaced the whiskey glass on the table beside him and wagged a finger at Will. “Mistrusting a man is one thing. Believing him to be stupid is another thing altogether.”
It was the evening now, and Will had been in London for three hours. He was sitting with Harry in the bar at Park Lane’s Dorchester Hotel.
“How long are you in town?” Will took a small sip of his own whiskey.
“Just one night and one day.” Harry brushed a hand over his trousers. “I have a very large shipment deal, and the paperwork can only be arranged here.” He grinned. “Discreetly arranged here.”