His target, a border between shadow and light, grew close, taking on detail. He saw river grass, brown and dead. He saw the cracks in the ice, spidering out from the rocks of a shoreline. Some passed over his head, but he didn’t fall for their trap. He didn’t slow. They were mere changes in the structure of a solid mass, like veins of quartz in granite.
Lungs ready to burst, mind drifting on quartz and marble slabs, Ben dragged himself along the subsurface shoreline, clawing at rocks and grass to reach the other side. He wanted to put plenty of cover between himself and the cops to block both sight and sound. Only when he felt reality slipping from his grasp did he finally stretch out the SIG toward the shore ice and empty the magazine.
It didn’t do the job.
He punched the tight grouping of bullet holes. Blood colored the water around his knuckles. He punched again. And again. The ice gave, and Ben dug his knees into the silt and thrust his shoulders up against the break. Air brought a new level of cold to his wet skin. He breathed deep, ignoring the spikes it drove into his lungs.
Lying on the shore, Ben stared up at the evening sky. He wanted to stay there—sleep there.
“Get up.”
He spoke the words out loud. Hale had taught him that letting them remain silent in his head siphoned away their power.
“Get up!”
Ben rolled to his knees. The far shore lay four hundred meters from his island, maybe more. Behind him, through the island’s grove of evergreens, the red and blue lights still flashed. Within minutes, more cops would arrive. Hopefully they’d start behind him, not in front, and look for a body, not a fugitive.
His fingers stiffened. His limbs shook. Time was short.
At the slow pace of a low crawl, spreading out his body weight, he’d be dead or delusional from hypothermia before he reached the shore. Ben took the ice at a run, on feet he still could not feel.
Three times, he stumbled and fell. The second time, the SIG went sailing across the ice and he had to fetch it, adding several meters to his path. He couldn’t leave it out there for the cops to find. The third time he fell, the surface cracked. Water seeped up, and Ben scrambled onward on his belly. He crawled the rest of the way, into the setting sun’s last light.
A snow-covered berm separated the shore from a farmer’s field. The quiet voices of Ben’s arctic instructors warned him to sweep away his footprints as he climbed. As if he could. “What do you want from me?” he asked out loud. “It’s not like I brought a broom.”
You making excuses, recruit?
Hale. He’d always been the meanest, the loudest, but always right. For the same reason Ben had chased after the SIG, he needed to cover his tracks now. Pine scrub dotted the shore. He slid down a berm and broke off three small branches, using them to sweep his tracks as he made the ascent again. Too slow, recruit. You’ll never make it now. Why don’t we call this training evolution a fail and run you through the lake again? How about that?
“No, sir. I can finish.” Ben dropped down the berm’s other side and fell with his back against it, hugging his pack, with an empty gun and pine scrub clutched in a frozen grip.
Colonel Hale stood right in front of him, hands on his hips. No breaks, recruit. The colonel leaned in, offering a hand to help him up. Get that sorry corpse moving!
Ben let his mentor pull him to his feet. Did the rules permit such help? Would he still pass the training evolution? He didn’t care. He just wanted it to end.
A shed rose from the white ahead—shelter from the wind, a heat trap. Life. The instructors were never so kind. They’d have a padlock securing the door. Ben knew how to handle padlocks, assuming he could use his fingers.
He walked backward at an agonizing pace, covering his tracks until, without quite remembering how he’d gotten there, he found himself kneeling before the shed’s door. He dug around in his pack. Lock picks were subtle, but not the tool for this job. While other recruits wasted precious time hopelessly fumbling in the cold with rakes and picks, Ben found his compact bolt cutters and ratcheted the teeth down over the lock. Four cranks and the bolt snapped.
Before going inside, he stripped off his coat and rolled his body in the snow.
What are you doing, recruit? Have you lost your mind?
Probably. More than probably. Ben figured his mind was well and truly gone. A minuscule voice deep inside told him hallucinations had set in and set deep. After a few seconds of thrashing about and kicking up powder, he struggled to his feet and beat his chest and legs. Flakes of ice fell away, leaving mostly dry clothes behind. He swept the area with his scrub and ducked inside.
The shed proved a bigger gift than he’d ever imagined the instructors granting. Tarps. Tools. Soil.
Ben tore open five bags of reeking fertilized soil and dumped it on the floor as insulation. The rest he stacked against the door to block as many cracks as possible, supporting his barrier with rakes and shovels.
When he finished, he sat down cross-legged on his heap and pulled a foil bar from his pack—something he’d mistaken for a food ration when the instructors first introduced him to his equipment. He peeled it open to reveal a white chalky stick and planted it in the soil like a baby tree. Now came the hardest and most important part. He had to light it.
The lighter’s striker hurt so much, as if ripping the flesh from his frozen thumb. But the flame came fast and unhindered, the beauty of a wind-blocking shed. The white stick caught with a miraculous dark blue glow, promising to burn long, hot, and smokeless.
As a final step, he crushed three hand warmers, starting the chemical reactions, and shoved them under his clothes. He stuck one in each armpit and one down the front of his pants—ignoble, but vital to recovering his core body temperature. The flame stick would do the rest. Or it wouldn’t, and he’d be dead by morning.
Don’t you fall asleep, recruit.
Why wouldn’t the colonel leave him in peace?
Don’t you do it. You know what happens when we fall asleep in severe hypothermia.
Ben knew. He remembered the academics. “I don’t care, sir. I just don’t care.”
The colonel vanished. Ben tried and failed to make Giselle appear in his place. He sat back against a bag of soil and covered his face with dirty, frostbitten hands, descending into shaking sobs.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up. “Giselle?”
Not Giselle. Clara. Her dog, with his ridiculous, happy-go-lucky grin turned in a circle twice and curled up in the soil between them, head on his paws.
She sat at his side. I’m here, Ben.
“Why? Why are you here?”
You know why. I’m here because you want me here. She patted his hand. Ben felt her skin—the softness of her fingers, the warmth. And I’m not leaving your side.
He nodded and closed his eyes, ready to let sleep come.
33
“Ben?” Clara jerked upright in bed. Moonlight crept in around the curtains, painting Sensen’s guest room in dim gray. No Ben. Only Otto, curled up in a nest he’d made from the bedcover. Why had she called out for Ben? The details of the dream refused to return to her. She shivered. Whatever the dream, it left her feeling cold.
Clara settled down next to her dog. “He’s okay, Otto. Ben can take care of himself.” The dachshund answered with a bleary I’m trying to sleep here frown, and she nodded. “Right. Sorry. Go back to sleep. I will too.”
Sleep didn’t come. Despite Otto’s warmth and the room’s mild temperature, Clara couldn’t shake the cold from her limbs. She peeled herself out of bed and pushed the covers up around Otto to keep him comfortable. Sensen had banned the dog from all furniture. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Halfway to the door, Clara paused and laughed at the absurdity of the thought. Her recent life had taught her the foolishness of that old phrase. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. In a world of spies and assassins, the exact opposite held true. What Ben didn’t know had killed Giselle. What Ben didn’t know would
soon kill him and perhaps many others.
Clara had thrust herself into Ben’s life at the flat, and in response, he’d protected her the way her brother took the brunt of her father’s drunken rage. She repaid her brother’s sacrifice by letting him join a foreign military, a decision that killed him. Now she’d repaid Ben by letting him run off alone and without answers.
“I should have gone with him,” she said, glancing back at Otto as she placed a hand on the door lever.
Did she mean Ben or her brother? Perhaps both.
The thermostat had to be somewhere in the hall. Sensen had an oil heating system like the one that caused the secondary explosions at Giselle’s place. The thought shouldn’t worry her. It’s not like these Leviathan people wanted to blow up the sniper’s home too.
Did they?
She definitely should have gone with Ben.
Clara placed each step on the wood floor with caution, careful of creaky boards. If she woke Sensen, his awkward-host mode would kick in. He treated her with the strangest brand of honor-bound hospitality, a mix of warm food and cold stares.
An urgent errand—Sensen’s words—had taken him away for most of the afternoon, and he’d returned with clothes in her size and dog food for Otto. These are for you. He’d dropped the bundle on her bed and walked out. As a houseguest, she’d never felt so well looked after and unwelcome at the same time.
A quiet walk to the hall’s end, close to the double doors of Sensen’s bedroom, revealed no thermostat. Clara frowned. Downstairs, maybe? She reversed course, and the deep rumble of Sensen’s voice touched her ears. She backed up a step. Yellow light peeked out through the crack between the doors. Another rumble. He was talking to someone, but who? She stilled her breathing and listened.
“Yes, sir. He came to me.”
By he, Sensen had to mean Ben.
Cringing at the stupidity of her impulse, Clara pressed an eye to the crack. Through the blur of her eyelash, she saw the sniper at his desk, speaking to someone on a tablet—a sir, perhaps the fabled Director. Sensen’s body blocked the screen, and he wore a lightweight headset and microphone, preventing her from hearing the other half of the conversation.
“No, sir. I didn’t . . . I see. Yes, I let him go. I gave him Rotterdam. I thought it would keep him busy . . . A ship? No, sir, I—”
A long pause. Sensen bowed his head as if cowed by a reprimand.
“He’s too close to what, sir? Who is . . . Understood . . . Yes. Zürich . . . I’ll pass him the time and coordinates. If he survived Rotterdam, he’ll follow through with the rendezvous. Calix is convinced of his own innocence. He won’t miss a chance to declare it to a Company man . . . Yes, sir. I’ll leave at first light.”
Sensen went quiet, listening again, until finally, he let out a sigh. “What about the girl? I can’t simply—”
The person in the monitor seemed to cut him off again.
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.”
Clara fought to keep the pounding of her heartbeat from giving her away.
The girl. Me.
She’d been living under the self-imposed delusion that Sensen was his own man, honor-bound to keep her safe. But she realized now that he had a master—a spymaster. Of all Clara had learned in her short time in this secret world, the most frightening lesson was that spies favored missions and causes over people. Sensen’s spymaster didn’t know her—didn’t care about her. Had she just become a liability?
Sensen set his headset down, rubbed his temples, and swiveled in his chair.
Clara lurched back from the door, praying he hadn’t seen the movement. She hurried back to her room, the thermostat long forgotten.
I’ll leave at first light.
She and Otto had a few hours, if that. Sensen might come for her in the night, for all she knew. And then, assuming she’d understood the conversation correctly, he’d go after Ben.
34
I HAVE YOUR BOY
Jupiter watched the small window at the top of his holographic screen, waiting for a response. He’d been checking morning and night for two days, waiting for a response. One would come. His old friend always answered, but always in his own time. The Director had set up the untraceable chat in a remote corner of the electronic ether years ago, when Jupiter disappeared from his old life and name. The Director created the room to bait him, keep tabs on him. Jupiter knew this. But such portals worked in both directions.
A chime sounded from the remote server.
CALIX SAYS DIFFERENT. HE CLAIMS HE’S STILL LOYAL—SAYS HE’S BEEN FRAMED.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF LOYALTY? YOU DEMAND IT FROM YOUR SUBJECTS, BUT SHOW NONE. CALIX IS LEARNING THAT NOW, PERHAPS MORE THAN ANY WHO CAME BEFORE HIM BESIDES ME. HE’LL ABANDON YOU. WHEN I’M FINISHED, THEY’LL ALL ABANDON YOU.
The cursor blinked, unused for several minutes. Jupiter snorted and shut the server down.
Terrance climbed the gently curving staircase from the visitor lot to the main manor of Jupiter Global’s executive retreat. Soft blue lighting gave the rose marble steps a lavender hue. He had no fear of approaching his boss in the predawn hours. Jupiter wanted Dr. Kidan’s updates on Patient C Prime the moment they became available.
He found his boss on the back lawn, wandering barefoot in his Zoysia grass—not unusual. Terrance knew better than to walk on the grass himself without invitation. He waited for Jupiter to look his way and waved his tablet. “Sir, I have news.”
Returning to the porch through the grass with his silver kurta pajamas lit by the moon and stars, Jupiter seemed more deity than man. And why not? It took a demigod to plot so perfectly the journey to this moment.
Jupiter had watched Wuhan and other labs across the globe following the first SARS outbreak and invested heavily in the key industries affecting the outcome. And in 2005, he moved his headquarters and production power to Spain, taking full advantage of an economic future no one else saw. Spain’s 2008 collapse emptied cities and flooded the streets with stranded workers. To Jupiter, it brought real estate, prime port positions, and a near-unlimited supply of desperate test subjects. What foresight. What intensity of vision.
“Good morning, Terrance. You have news?”
“It’s C Prime, sir. He’s on the verge.”
Jupiter took a seat at his patio table with his back to Terrance, raising the holographic screen from the glass surface with a gesture. “Give me details.”
“The patient evacuated his bladder twice during the night, and the collection system flagged a high white blood cell count. After cross-referencing the result with the evening’s round of blood tests, Dr. Kidan believes he’ll go symptomatic later this morning.”
Jupiter had called up the patient’s results on his display. He studied a three-dimensional blood image from an electron microscope. “Time?”
“Eight fifteen local. Give or take ten minutes. Also, there’s been a report from Rotterdam. The Princess.”
“I saw.” Jupiter swiped a finger through his display, sliding a text communication and security video from the ship into view. “I read the report an hour ago while working on something else. Our friend Calix has been busy.”
“The Dutch police think he’s dead.”
“Not likely.”
Terrance poised a stylus to take notes. “Our reaction?”
“Locate Calix.” Jupiter brought up a map of Northern Europe and isolated the section around Rotterdam. “He’s desperate to communicate with his master—to defend the honor we’ve stolen from him. Our people are watching the web for certain markers. Have them focus on traffic in this area.” Plucking the map from the hologram, he flicked it over his shoulder through cyberspace to Terrance’s tablet. “Once you have him, put Duval on his trail again.”
“Consider it done.” The stylus paused. Terrance watched his boss over the tablet’s edge. “So, may I confirm an appointment for you to meet Dr. Kidan in the observation room?”
Jupiter raised his bare feet from the pavement and let his c
hair spin to face Terrance. “How confident are we in this result?”
“Dr. Kidan’s confidence is high.” Terrance made sure to emphasize the distinction. If this went wrong, as it had before, he wanted none of the blame. He’d seen what had happened to Dr. Kidan’s predecessor.
His boss offered him a reassuring smile, as if reading his thoughts. “Do you trust me, Terrance?”
“Implicitly, sir.”
“Then don’t fear me. I didn’t rescue you from New York three years before the pandemic only to kill you for someone else’s mistakes. What did I say when I found you, running hustles in Central Park?”
“A scourge was coming.”
“You believed me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your faith bore you out. Do you still believe?”
Terrance nodded.
“Good.” Jupiter returned to his display to call up a picture of his parents. The photo matched the one hanging inside the house—a wealthy Greek American and his wife, obviously pregnant, standing in a sea of Hong Kong protestors. Jupiter didn’t have to say a word about it. Terrance knew the story.
The street hustles Terrance’s crew ran in New York, from shell games to melon drops, were all about creating the illusion of randomness and chaos while exerting perfect control. Terrance’s ambition and skill in managing that crew—a form of chaos themselves—caught Jupiter’s attention and earned him his position. But Jupiter, driven by the loss of his parents, had learned to manipulate chaos itself.
Jupiter’s parents, passionate activists, survived Hong Kong’s violent 1967 labor riots, and stayed on for the peaceful marches of 1968. They returned to America late in his mother’s pregnancy, only to become two of the first victims of an outbreak that claimed more than a million lives. The marches had been a breeding ground for the Hong Kong flu. Jupiter’s mother died in premature childbirth. His father passed hours later.
“Bombs and bullets.” Jupiter’s gaze remained fixed on the photo. “Policemen with batons. Screaming families. Yet only fifty-one died in total. The chaos became peace, and from that peace—like a butterfly—flew a virus that killed a million.”
The Paris Betrayal Page 14