by Declan Finn
Besides, she was stunning.
He took her hand, lightly grasping her fingers. He said, “Wayne Williams.”
They stared into each other’s eyes. He noted she wore contacts.
He only looks dazzled, Catherine knew as he probed with his marble blue eyes.
Wayne believed it was possible her hair was a wig, but the rest of her cosmetics were very lightly applied.
He doesn’t seem like a brutal killer, she thought. But, then again, neither do I.
He thought there was something behind her eyes—there were many things behind her eyes: intelligence, complexity, curiosity, and inquisitiveness.
Wayne pulled his hand away gently. “Going away on vacation?”
She let her smile dim a little. “I’m afraid not. I’m going to see my father before he passes away.”
Wayne’s smile dropped. “I’m sorry.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Why? Did you do something wrong?”
Wayne’s eyes widened.
“I must apologize,” she told him. “My father is over seventy years old—he had me when he was forty. He’s had a good life.” She shrugged, and gave a full smile. “Although it’s not over yet. This is the third time he’s started dying on us. If I didn’t see the doctor’s reports myself, I would think he’s been crying wolf just to get everyone down there for a makeshift family reunion.”
Williams chuckled and shook his head. “It sounds so devious, even my father could pull it.”
Catherine smiled. It was far truer than he knew. “So, why are you going to Ireland?”
“Business, unfortunately.” He shrugged. “It’s long and complicated. I could tell you if you’re interested in sleeping on this flight.”
She laughed. “No. I came prepared for this one.” She leaned over and reached into her canvas bag. Her hand gripped the butt of her Glock.
“So did I, actually. Now were did I put … oh, I remember.” Wayne reached over her head and into the pouch in front of her seat.
Catherine started to straighten up, knocking the back of her head against Wayne’s outstretched arm. It felt like running into an iron bar. But he didn’t look brawny. She bent lower out of reflex.
Williams yanked back his arm, dropping the book he had been retrieving. “Sorry. You all right?”
She rubbed the back of her head with her left hand, her right still in the bag. “I’m fine.” She looked at him. He was an average built thirty-year-old. Did he have a lead pipe up his arm?
“Sorry.” He reached for Dead Simple, conspicuously locking his eyes on the book to avoid glancing at her legs, or the portion of sweater he moved around to get to the book. Catherine straightened. Wayne was grateful for the extra room.
Agent STRONGBOW stared at the top of Wayne’s head, and was slightly disconcerted. He was one of the first strangers who looked her in the eye and made a point of keeping it that way. He must’ve been a great actor if he was the butcher described to her. The theory became less and less plausible the more she thought about it. It made no sense: The attack poorly orchestrated, his father’s record—not to mention his mother’s.
“Unless you’re happy to see me and your anatomy is way off, I’m guessing you have a gun.” She reached forward. “Right…. here.” She flicked her index finger against the shoulder holster under his left arm.
Wayne locked eyes with her and started to reach under his coat. With a blur of speed, Catherine’s hand latched onto his forearm. Damn! His muscles were like taught cables. She definitely didn’t want to get into a fight with him.
Especially not here.
“If you looked closely at my hand, you will see I’m reaching for my identification with only two fingers.”
Catherine let go.
“My name is still Wayne Williams,” he said as she glanced at the case. It was his real ID. The picture bore great resemblance to a mug shot. She suspected the picture in her file would look something like this, if it had one.
After all, how do you make a card that says, “Catherine Miller, CIA wet work”?
She nodded admiringly and handed it back to him. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem,” he replied. Wayne stuffed the ID case back inside his jacket, and then he leaned over, his hand still out of sight. Then came the sound of a gun drawn from a holster. A small tent formed in the jacket as an outline of the tip of the gun was made perfectly visible.
“Now,” he said good-naturedly, about six inches from her ear, “tell me, what exactly are you doing with a gun in a canvas bag?”
She wanted to kiss him. He wasn’t as dumb as everyone else. Catherine had been dealing with the bottom ten percent of the gene pool for so long, she forgot about what the real professionals were like… which is why she had carelessly let the gun slip around to the side of her bag, bulging directly against the lining.
“Cops can own guns, can’t they?” she asked innocently. Wayne marveled. Her voice didn’t crack, and her brow was dry.
“Only if they have badges with them,” he replied. Why was he still smiling? “Somehow, I suspect you don’t have yours. Yes?”
“Right.”
“How did you get it on board? That isn’t in a cop’s salary range.” It was a guess on his part, but he felt it was more on target than anything else… after all, what sort of cop would bring her weapon on vacation? To Europe?
Catherine raised her eyebrows. She kept her composure, no matter how badly she wanted to drop her jaw on the floor. If you opened up his skull, would you find a computer inside?
“No, but it is in my father’s…” she lied. “I may have told a slight lie about his age—he’s fifty—and, you see, he has this bad habit of getting shot,” she hinted.
It took Wayne a moment to process this particular lie. “IRA-type?”
She nodded. Please just buy the story. Just let it go. I don’t want to see what happens if you try to turn me in, but it won’t be pleasant, for either of us.
Wayne bobbed his head slowly from side to side for a moment or two, as if balancing the possibilities. In actuality he didn’t have a choice, and he knew it. He had only one job: stop someone from making Europe glow in the dark. He slid Agent Lansing’s H&K back into his holster.
“Has your father ever considered using a bulletproof vest?” Wayne asked her.
Catherine laughed so loud, passengers stopped to see what was so funny—before the final boarding party shoved them along. It was a laugh that was half relief and half amusement.
“Maybe I’ll get him one for his next birthday.”
“If he lives that long,” Wayne replied.
“He probably will,” she told him. She turned in her seat, her back leaning against the corner of the chair. “So, going to Ireland to check on the President’s security in January?”
“You could say that. If Belfast were tied up any tighter, the buildings would be crushed together.” He shrugged. “But sometimes being part of the advance team means nitpicking.”
“And is that what you’re ‘boring’ job is going to be?”
Wayne simply smiled. The smile fell. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a stewardess with a bright yellow life preserver. He and Catherine silently groaned in unison. Both of them had seen this far too many times before.
“When you’re going into the water at three hundred miles an hour,” Wayne muttered to himself, opening Dead Simple, “life preservers are only good for marking the crash sight.”
Catherine inwardly nodded and opened Assassin. And out of the corner of her eye, STRONGBOW watched him, trying to decide if he was partner or prey.
* * * *
The last thing either of them needed was a bomb on the plane, which is exactly what was parked in the overhead bin exactly three feet behind Wayne and STRONGBOW. It had a timer, an on/off switch, and weighed about two pounds, one of which consisted of a substance known as C7, a descendant of the ubiquitous C4. C7 was nearly twice as strong as C4, and just as pliable. For this
instance, it was molded into an alarm clock, the digital timer acting as a clock face.
Luckily for everyone, it wasn’t meant to go off on the flight.
In the aisle seat below the bomb was a man five-foot eleven-inches in height, with a black widow’s peak and darker, bushy eyebrows. He stroked his goatee as he delved into the tourist brochure he took from the pouch in front of him. He had a strong chin beneath the beard, and penetratingly dark eyes.
His parents had named him Michael, after the Irish war leader Michael Collins. It was fate’s twisted bit of humor his last name was DeValera, like the first head of the Republic of Ireland. But, for this trip, he took the name Michael Dredd. It was actually less conspicuous, and, in a way, far more accurate. Even the minor splinters of the IRA would dread him… Assuming any were still alive once he was finished with them.
And given the fallout from a nuclear bomb, I doubt they will be.
Chapter 9
Since Catherine finally made contact with Wayne she had to decide what to do with him. He was going to Dublin, as she was. If she was lucky, he’d stay the hell away from the Doyle Hotel. She couldn’t stay close to him—even sleeping with him was out of the question. If he was on the plane to do his job, then he’d want to keep noncombatants out of the way. If Williams headed there to set a nuclear weapon, he wouldn’t want to risk talking in his sleep.
Besides, who knows where he’s been, she thought. Is Mississippi’s age of “consent” still only seven?
All through takeoff, Wayne stayed glued to the book, as did Catherine. They both knew that takeoff and landing were the most dangerous periods in the flight. Neither wanted to be looking if the plane went up in flames.
* * * *
The dazzling woman tapped Wayne on the shoulder. He looked up from the novel.
She raised her eyebrows inquiringly. “Could I get through?”
He nodded. “But I’d wait sitting down if I were you.”
“Excuse me?”
He gestured backwards with his head. “It’s occupied at the moment.” He took her stare in stride. “What other reason is there to stand up in the middle of a flight?”
She gave her head a little shake. “That’s not it,” she told him. “But how do you know someone’s in the rest room?”
He tapped his ear. “Footsteps. If they’re moving hurriedly, they need to hit the porcelain…or steel— whatever they use on these planes. When they’re moving slowly, that means everything came out all right.”
“Why exactly are you keeping track of these footsteps?”
“Because I’m sitting on the aisle.” He cocked his head to one side for a moment. Then he turned down the corner of the page he had been reading. He stood up as the restroom door opened.
Catherine stared at him in amazement. No one’s hearing was that good.
She recovered and smiled. “Do you hear dog whistles, too?”
He shook his head. “No, not anymore. Sorry.”
* * * *
Catherine looked in the mirror, watching the violet eyes stare back at her. Her chestnut brown wig was securely fastened, but she felt like a few screws needed tightening. Whatever Wayne was, he was good. Terrifyingly good. The last time she had come across an operative this talented, it was in a mirror.
Her assessment of her skills was no exaggeration, either. She was thirty-three years old, and in her eight years as an operative she had killed ninety-six people. That averaged a sanction a month, not including bodyguards or other miscellaneous missions such as this. So she could honestly say she wasn’t bad at her job, considering all of those she killed had foiled at least two prior attempts by her less competent former colleagues. She still suspected that someone at the Agency thought of her as “The Final Option.”
It would all be so easy, she thought, to put it all aside. All she needed to do was to wipe her face down with soap, throw out the wig and pop out the contacts. She had a few hundred thousand in getaway cash in Switzerland. She could live well in Italy for a decade—with American money, she could probably buy a small village or two.
Then she laughed. Catherine had one of these moments every year or so. The first time it happened, she was about to laser paint individual floors of an office building in Serbia so the President didn’t have to bomb the entire country back to the Stone Age. She had laser painted half the targets that blew up. That wasn’t even half as stressful as going after nuclear weapons.
But there was something that worried her even more than nukes. Even more than Williams. She didn’t even know she had been heading to Langley until four hours before she showed up. So how did two men know when and how to find her coming out of the Company’s headquarters? How could they know what she looked like?
And how do they know I exist?
* * * *
Wayne thought back to the FBI parking lot. How did they know he was coming? His reputation couldn’t have preceded him; he hadn’t had a reputation for six years. Yet there they were—men waiting with rocket launchers. If they had wanted to take out Judith Stevens, that was one thing; they had the rifles.
But the people who tried to wipe him out had tried to blow both of them away. Someone wanted the Secret Service out of the picture. Technically, they were. Stevens had total control over the investigation; if anyone in the lower ranks knew about the nuclear weapons, he or she would have met Wayne. Now that Scofield would, naturally, blame everything on Williams, he too was officially agenta non-grata.
But how did they know I exist!?
* * * *
Michael DeValera closed the airline magazine. This could get boring real fast.
He stuffed it back into the pouch in front of him and dug the photo out of his shirt pocket. It wasn’t a bad picture, considering it had been shot with a telephoto lens attached to an instant-develop digital camera, but it still left a lot to be desired. She held herself with a military bearing, and he could get an average on the height, but that was about it. Her complexion was vague, and her eyes were a dark color. Brown? Amber? Black? The long, red hair kept getting in the way for almost every shot—except this one, and even then it still covered part of her face.
“Nice picture. Your girlfriend?” asked an interested voice over his right shoulder.
DeValera looked up into attractive, bright violet eyes. He looked down at the picture then back at her, thinking up an answer.
“She’s my sister,” he lied quickly. “She’s stationed somewhere in Dublin.”
The woman thought for a moment, biting the inside of her cheek. “I never heard of an army base in Dublin.”
Neither had Michael. “It’s fairly new, actually. And it’s Marine, not army.”
Catherine Miller smiled. “I never could tell the difference.”
“Neither could I.” DeValera gave a relaxed smile before his eye was caught by a silver band on her left hand. His smiled dropped.
“Have a good day.”
She walked back toward her seat and Michael sighed, watching her all the way. She flowed even in a sexless sweater and jeans. She made it to her row and kissed the man on the aisle. Why did all the good ones have to be taken?
Michael looked back toward the photograph of the assassin STRONGBOW, with her stiff Marine bearing. Maybe she was a lesbian.
* * * *
Wayne puzzled over difficulties more complex than he could’ve imagined when Catherine gently kissed him on the lips. He nearly jumped.
“Would you mind pretending to be my husband until after the flight?” she asked him.
The expression on his face was comical as he slowly stood to let Catherine back in. Now what was going on?
Once they were both seated, Catherine explained. “I need a ‘husband’ to go with the ring.” She showed him the back of her hand. There was a silver band he was certain wasn’t there before. “Just walking up and down the aisle was enough to make me feel like I was being eyed by every post-pubescent male on this plane.”
I’m surprised that the n
ewly pubescent males didn’t look at you, too. He nodded. “Understood. It’d be my pleasure. You’re divorced?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I didn’t see a tan line on your finger, so I’m guessing the band is from a previous marriage.”
She smiled. “Not quite.” STRONGBOW turned her hand palm out to reveal a glittering sapphire on the other side of the ring.
He grinned.
The overhead speakers produced a soft brogue, saying, “Tonight’s in flight movie will be a Golden Oldie, an American film called In the Line of Fire: a story about a Secret Service agent versus a dangerous assassin.”
Wayne kept a straight face. Catherine laughed.
* * * *
Director David Grant of the Central Intelligence Agency waited for a call from an old friend. Grant knew he was old, at least for the business he was in. Technically, the federal government would’ve given him his generous pension years ago, but he claimed to be having too much fun, and—damn it!—he had had the body of a man at least ten years younger. And after the two dead men found less than five blocks away from Langley, he knew something had gone wrong with STRONGBOW. She had to have taken out both men. It was her pattern: never use the same gimmick twice in a row. Essentially, her pattern was that there wasn’t one, just a fractal in chaos theory. The only trouble for her is that she didn’t repeat herself—where as true chaos did.
David scooped up the phone halfway through the first ring.
About time. “This is Grant.”
“MONIAK,” the voice replied softly, his voice tainted with a little Russian. Damn it! He even sounded young.