by Matthew Dunn
“Put the gun down.” The voice was not Will’s.
He spun around and faced a man who was pointing his gun at Lana and Will. One of the men whom Will had seen on the floor above. A Secret Service agent. He was alone.
The man looked at Will. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Will nodded. Now that the bombs were disarmed, he decided that his work was done. He decided that he had to tell the Secret Service what was happening here.
The man looked at Lana and fixed his gun on her.
Will said, “I am a British intelligence officer.”
The Secret Service man glanced at Will.
A shot rang out, and a bullet struck the Secret Service man in the center of his head. Will closed his eyes. He turned slowly to look at Lana. Her gun was pointing at the now prone and dead agent. She moved the gun so that it was pointing at Will’s head.
Lana smiled. “My next bullet’s for you.”
Will shook his head. “Why did you kill him? Why are you still holding a gun?”
“Because I have fucking nothing now. Because it seems I’ve always had nothing.”
Will sighed and briefly felt pity for her. “You could have had so much more. I hoped that you and I could have been together.”
“I know you did.” She laughed humorlessly. “I might have been a pawn in Megiddo’s game, but you were certainly a pawn in mine. I wanted you to love me. I needed your emotions for me to cloud any possibility that you might suspect my true role in Megiddo’s plan. I had to try to get you to expose your soul to me so that I could watch you suffer when you realized that your emotions had been totally duped.”
Will shook his head. He felt a coldness descend over his mind. He felt momentarily numb. “I see.”
Lana watched him without emotion. “We often see the truth only at the very end of things. We both now know our truths, but only one of us is going to walk out of this place.”
“I know.” In a movement that was too quick to be seen and stopped, Will stepped forward, grabbed the barrel of Lana’s gun, used his other hand to twist her hand, and took possession of the gun, now pointing it at her head.
Will held the gun close to her. He no longer felt numb, and instead his heart filled with anger, regret, and sorrow. “I lied to you. Megiddo never described you as a pawn in his game. I think he really did love you.”
Lana’s mouth dropped open in a look of total surprise. Which swiftly turned to anger. “You tricked me!”
“I stopped you from making a dreadful mistake.”
Lana’s eyes darted left and right, and she seemed to be making some kind of calculation. She looked at Will. “I have to be with Megiddo again.”
“No, Lana.”
She raised her hand and brought her cell phone close to her chest.
“Lana, do not do that.”
She smiled and moved her other hand toward the phone’s number pad.
“Lana, stop now.”
She moved a single finger close to the cell phone. Her smile faded. “In a different life, it would have been wonderful to get to know you.”
Will’s heart pumped fast. “Don’t touch that phone! Don’t trigger the bombs!”
Her finger moved until it was an inch from the phone. She smiled again. “Good-bye, Will Cochrane.”
Her finger descended to the number pad.
In that tiniest moment, Will knew that it was too late to say anything else, that action was all that mattered now, but as he watched her finger move and squeezed his own finger back rapidly on the handgun’s trigger, he felt nothing but overwhelming sorrow. He heard the sound of his gun, felt the weapon recoil, saw his bullet strike Lana in the side of the head and rip open her beautiful face. He watched her move away from him, her knees buckle, her body start to fall, and her hand release the cell phone. He saw the death of Lana Beseisu.
He dashed forward and caught the phone before it fell to the floor alongside her. He looked at the display screen and sighed with relief as he saw that his trigger finger had been quicker than hers. No number had been depressed.
He looked at Lana’s dead body and felt giddy and sick. He had thought this woman would change everything for him. But now he stared at her, knowing that she’d been prepared to help Megiddo slaughter millions of people for no other reason than her love for the monster.
He looked around and imagined the floors above him in the opera house, the boxes where the premiers’ wives were sitting during the performance, the other boxes and the ground-level seats containing the audience of children and the orchestra area holding excited child performers. He pictured bombs and fire raining down from the ceiling and tearing through all of that, causing the total war that would have resulted from the abhorrent act were he not standing over the dead body of Lana Beseisu. He shook his head in disbelief.
He looked at Lana one last time. There was so much he wanted to know about her, so much that did not make sense. But he knew that things could have been different. He knelt beside her and smoothed a hand against her bloody face. He ran his fingers through her hair and whispered, “If I’d been there at the beginning, you would not be here now.”
He closed his eyes and saw the young Lana walking desperately through frozen Bosnian woods, her clothes torn and offering no protection against the bitter winter, her legs staggering, her eyes wide with fear, her body weak and in shock after being raped, her mind focused only on reaching the besieged city of Sarajevo and being with the man called Megiddo. He imagined her falling to the ground, crawling through thick snow, pulling herself to her feet again, staggering forward, falling again, crawling again, but continuing to use all her remaining strength to find the man she believed was her savior. He watched every movement she made and every exertion take her inch by inch closer to a man who would corrupt her life so that it would end with a bullet in her brain.
He wished he’d been there as she dragged her mind and her desecrated body through the terrible war-torn forests. He would have gone to her, taken her hand, and walked her away from Sarajevo and the deadly man it contained. He would have spoken soft but commanding words to her. Come with me. I am taking you to a better life.`
Fifty-Three
Will looked at the clear blue sky above him, at the snow-covered Swiss Alps around him, at the empty mountain valley far below his feet. His cell phone rang, and he saw that the caller was Alistair. He answered, listened to what the Controller had to say, shut his phone, and turned to look at the ski chalet beside him. He pulled out his handgun, strode quickly through the snow, opened the door to the building, and walked through one room before entering another.
Harry was there, seated behind a desk, smoking a cigarette. Two British Special Forces men flanked him. They had brought Harry to this place after tracking him to the city of Lausanne.
Will moved up to the desk, kicked a spare chair to one side, pointed his gun at Harry’s head, and said, “Talk.”
Harry lifted his face so that he was looking at Will. He looked exhausted but not terrified. Instead he had the look of a man who had moved beyond fear to a state of resigned calm, a calm driven by the knowledge that his execution was now inevitable. He scratched the stubble on his chin, extinguished his cigarette, and lit another one. He took a sip of water, cleared his throat, frowned.
Will slammed his boot against the desk, causing it to bang against Harry’s chest and sending a glass of water to the other side of the room. “I know you’ve been working with Megiddo all along. Talk.”
Harry winced in pain, placed his cigarette in an ashtray, put both of his hands flat down on the desk, and spoke in a strained but measured tone.
“When Megiddo realized that the NSA had discovered he was planning a massive strike against the West, he decided to adopt a dual strategy to hide the details of his attack. First, he manipulated the NSA breach to send misinformation about the location of the attack and to
stretch Western intelligence resources. Second, he decided to lure out a Western intelligence officer with the endgame of getting that officer to believe that he had discovered the location of the attack. He deployed me and Lana for that second complex task.” He looked away briefly before fixing his eyes on Will. “Your Head of Sarajevo Station introduced me to you, I decided that your gravitas made you perfect for the role, and I killed Ewan so that I had a direct link to you.”
Harry looked at one of the Special Forces men. “May I have another glass of water?”
“No, you may not!” Will shouted the words. “Keep talking.”
Harry breathed in deeply. “We had to make everything look credible—the letters via the Iranian embassy in Croatia, the Iranian surveillance team following Lana—making Megiddo appear cautious. And all the time Megiddo manipulated the NSA communications breach, including trying to get you to think the real target was Berlin. But you uncovered that ruse, so he decided to focus solely on the second strand of his strategy. He used one of his men—the man you knew as his deputy, Gulistan Nozari—to act as if he were Megiddo. He got me to alert you to the HBF offices, he had the man Dzevat Kljujic killed to add weight to the notion that Megiddo was operating out of those offices, and he ensured that the deputy’s name was listed in those offices for discovery by you when you inevitably searched the place.” Harry frowned. “He was sure that you would be convinced that his deputy was Megiddo, so he was therefore very surprised when you did not follow or seize Gulistan Nozari. He realized that you had not automatically assumed that Nozari was Megiddo. He realized that Lana could therefore not pretend that the man was Megiddo or you would have become suspicious of her. She had to tell you that the man she met in Sarajevo was not the man you sought.”
Will nodded. “If I was so important to Megiddo, why did he allow his men to attack me in Zagreb and Vienna?”
Harry shrugged. “You forced him to do so by deliberately revealing your identity in your letters and by ensuring that you were seen with Lana in the Diana Bar of the Westin Hotel. His men had to go after you aggressively, but Megiddo hoped that your men would rescue you immediately after your capture. As it happened, you killed most of Megiddo’s men and were not captured yourself, so you solved that problem for him.”
Will moved closer to Harry. “After you disappeared, were you aware of what subsequently happened?”
Harry shook his head, picked up his cigarette, and inhaled smoke. “How could I?”
Will nodded. “It’s clear to me now that Megiddo changed his strategy after realizing that his ploy of using his deputy could not work. Instead he ordered his men to seize Lana in Boston, knowing that I would go after her and rescue her and hoping that I would believe her when she told me she’d spent time with Megiddo and learned the location of the attack.” He narrowed his eyes. “Megiddo nearly succeeded.”
Harry sighed. “Our objective was always to get you to think that Camp David was the target, when in fact the Metropolitan Opera House was always the real target.”
Will moved his gun closer to Harry. “How did Megiddo get employment passes for the opera house? How did his men plant their bombs without fear that they would later be detected?”
Harry blew out smoke. “That was down to me. I established that before the concert the Metropolitan Opera House was to undergo some major renovations, particularly to the stage, the floors, and the auditorium and balcony seats. Because of the amount of mess caused by the renovations, I knew that the place would need extra cleaners during the week preceding the concert. I set up a company, approached the management office, said my company specialized in professional cleaning work, said I had a team of five people I could subcontract to the building, and said that they were very reliable and cheap, and could do aerial cleaning work if required. The management office snapped up my offer because they were desperate to get the place looking good for the event but were still short-staffed. Megiddo chose four of his men and one woman to bring in thirty bombs over the course of five days. The bombs were small—each of them is about the size of a thin paperback book, and the bombers could easily conceal them on their persons as they came and went from the building during the course of those days.” He massaged his temples. “The cleaning work required a thorough cleaning of not only the ground level but also the vast ceiling area. Most of the bombs were to be secreted in ceiling alcoves, much too high to be seen and detected, and in any case they were all caked in wax to minimize scent.”
“All the bombs were found and safely removed by the FBI.” Will frowned. “How did the bombers pass security checks to work there?”
Harry extinguished his cigarette with a shaking hand. “Megiddo identified a woman in the Western intelligence community who was senior, who had the ability to wipe clean the records of the bombers minutes before they entered this country—and who had financial problems.”
Will looked sharply at Harry. “Who is that person?”
“I don’t know. Megiddo decided that the woman was very useful and that her identity had to be protected. But I do know that the individual was not told why she needed to wipe clean the records. Instead she removed any traces showing that the bombers were IRGC, took Megiddo’s money, and kept her mouth shut.”
“Even though that woman did not know why the individuals’ records had to be erased, she’s still a traitor. She’ll be found and punished.”
Harry sighed.
Will gripped his gun. “How did Lana get into the opera house?”
“It was never the plan for her to be there.” Harry shrugged. “The easiest thing for her to do would have been to take the identity of the female bomber in my cleaning crew.”
Will nodded. “Megiddo came to me at the end. Why?”
Harry shook his head. “He was diagnosed with cancer. The assault on the opera house and the wars that would follow were to be his final work, his greatest masterpiece. He realized that he would not be alive long enough to fulfill his ambitions to lead the Arab and Persian nations.” He met Will’s eyes. “As soon as he found out who you were, it was always his intention to come to you when he felt that nothing could stop the bombs from going off. He wanted you to know about his father before he killed you. But he also knew that you might kill him, so his plan was to tell you about the opera house, knowing that you would go there and die. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by coming to you.” He exhaled slowly and raised the palms of his hands. “That’s all I know.”
Will moved his finger over his gun’s trigger.
Harry looked at him and smiled. “You were not what I expected. You made me see things differently. That’s why I decided to tell you everything about Megiddo’s plan when I was due to meet you at my house.” His smile faded. “But Megiddo discovered my treachery and came to my house to kill me. I escaped only because you arrived and he had to hide himself.” Harry carefully withdrew another cigarette from the pack on the desk, lit it, and examined the burning tip before looking at Will. He smiled again, but this time the look held sorrow. “I worked for Megiddo because he told me that if I did not do so, he would release my name and location to various Bosnian Serb men who would take pleasure in tearing me apart for what my men did in that Serbian village during the war. I worked for Megiddo because I was a coward who wanted to protect my own neck, even if that meant the deaths of millions.” He sighed. “I couldn’t do it in the end.” He brought the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled smoke, and nodded once. “But I deserve to die in this house, and I am glad it is you, not Megiddo, who is going to be my executioner.”
Will glanced at the two Special Forces men. “Leave the room. I don’t want you to witness what is about to happen.”
The men walked out.
Will picked up a chair, positioned it directly opposite Harry, and sat down. He placed the muzzle of his gun against the agent’s forehead and asked quietly, “Are you ready for this?”
H
arry nodded. “I am.”
“Is there anything you wish to say to me before I pull the trigger?”
Harry smiled. “Your men told me you killed Megiddo. I am glad that I am about to die knowing that you won and he lost.”
Will nodded, stood, held the muzzle flush against Harry’s forehead, readied his finger against the trigger, and braced his body so that it was still. He breathed deeply and relaxed his hand. “I am not going to kill you, Harry. You’re too useful to me.”
He lowered his gun.
Harry frowned.
Will looked toward the windows of the mountain chalet. He looked at the Alps beyond them. He looked over the Swiss mountains to the east. He smiled, turned, and looked at Lace. When he stopped smiling, he spoke with steel in his voice. “I have a new mission, Harry. You are a man of means. You have particular, rare talents and connections. You can help me.”
Spartan raised his gun again and pointed it at the agent. “People are either my allies or my enemies. Which one are you?”
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Luigi Bonomi, Alison and the rest of the team at LBA, Judith, the team at Orion (U.K.), the team at HarperCollins (U.S.), and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).
About the Author
As an MI6 field officer, MATTHEW DUNN recruited and ran agents, coordinated and participated in special operations, and acted in deep-cover roles throughout the world. He operated in highly hostile environments, where, if compromised and captured, he would have been executed. Dunn was trained in all aspects of intelligence collection, deep-cover deployments, small-arms, explosives, military unarmed combat, surveillance, and infiltration.
Medals are never awarded to modern MI6 officers, but Dunn was the recipient of a very rare personal commendation from the secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs for work he did on one mission, which was deemed so significant that it directly influenced the successful conclusion of a major international incident.