“Your declaration of innocence is a declaration that the Director is dealing falsely with you—his agent. You’re calling him faithless, thus proving yourself to be the same.”
Faith. That word again. “I am not faithless.”
“Really?” Dylan blew on the drive’s connector and plugged it into his machine. “Let me put this into geek speak for you.”
“Because that’ll help.”
“It will. I promise.” A window appeared on the left monitor—green computer code on a black screen. “I’m running a program to dig through the formatting data on your drive and look for hidden files. I’m mining for raw data. Ones and zeros, when you get down to the heart of things.”
“Binary,” Ben said.
“Correct. In geek terms, a thing is either a one or a zero. Either it is, or it isn’t. Our boss, the Director, is either the good guy we all follow, or he isn’t. We work on faith that he is.” Another window came up, symbols instead of code. Dylan squinted at the screen, as if he hadn’t expected to find it, but he finished his argument. “By declaring your severance unjust, you’re accusing the boss of being a bad guy, a zero. If that’s not being faithless, I don’t know what is.”
Ben opened his mouth to argue.
Dylan held up a hand to stop him. “Hang on. I found something.” He tapped the enter key. A whole series of files came up—lists of numbers and three-dimensional drawings of docks and piers. “Whoa. What do we have here?”
They both leaned in. “I think those are coordinates,” Ben said.
Dylan clicked through the files. “And these look like 3D radar and sonar returns. I think I know what this is, and it’s definitely not a virus.”
A roll of a trackball moved the files over to Dylan’s main screen. He dumped them all into a program he grabbed from the ONR site and waited. A time bar counted down. A single window opened. A digital ship sailed through a three-dimensional harbor, viewed from the waterline, with every obstacle above and below the surface visible.
Dylan rotated the image to a top-down view. The ship followed a red line through the water, heading for a pier. “This is navigational data for docking a large vessel.”
“Like an autopilot?”
“More like an auto–harbor pilot. GPS isn’t enough to safely dock a ship. But having the radar and sonar profile for the entire harbor gives a ship with the right propulsion system nanometer precision. Cargo companies use it to avoid paying for a human harbor pilot. They can just come in on their own. It’s totally legal at a lot of ports.”
“So, you’ve gotta ask yourself why,” Ben said. “Why did Sea Titan hide this totally legal data on the thumb drive?”
Dylan didn’t answer.
Ben nodded at the screen. “What harbor is this?”
“How should I know? There are no names.”
“You have the coordinates in front of you.”
“Oh. Right.” Dylan fed the last coordinate into the ONR’s tracking program, and the map jumped to a cargo pier in Baltimore harbor labeled SEAGIRT MARINE TERMINAL.
“Houston, we have a target.” Ben fell back in his chair. His body ached, as if prodding the genius had sapped the same amount of energy as running a marathon. “Okay. I’m assuming the ONR tracker can show us the schedule for Seagirt Terminal. Show me the bookings for the next couple of days.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Dylan tapped a few more keys, speaking in a voice that said I’m humoring you, boomer. “But if the Behemoth is in dry dock or even pretending to be in dry dock, it won’t show up.”
“No. It won’t.” Ben sat forward again, watching Dylan scroll through the list. “Stop. There.”
The cursor hovered over a slot allocated to a Jaspen ship. The Clementine. “That’s why the registration papers for another ship were in the envelope.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Run your ONR tracking program on the Clementine. The Behemoth is coming in under a different name.”
Dylan typed Clementine into the search bar. “Like they’re planning to repaint the ship enroute?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them.”
As before, the search came up empty, showing only the ship’s scheduled arrival in Baltimore for a slot before sunrise on the day after next. The ONR tracker showed no trace of the Clementine on the water. If Jaspen Cargo even owned a ship named Clementine, Leviathan had wiped her digital signature from the face of the earth.
Dylan ran the search three times. “This has to be a glitch.”
“What happened to all your certainty, kid?” Ben laughed, coughing and groaning as he did. “You’ve got a missing ship. Either the Clementine scheduled to arrive at Seagirt Terminal exists, or it doesn’t. A one or a zero. But you can’t say which. How do you like your binary theory now?”
65
The Haitian cab driver who picked Ben up outside the 7-Eleven a half mile south of Shady Oak didn’t seem to mind his hunched stance or sickly complexion. Maybe he picked up strung-out addicts at that corner all the time. He worked in the DC area, after all.
Cabbies use cameras and share info with other drivers—occasionally with the cops. Long walks and public transportation are the safest plan for a fugitive spy in the cold, but Ben no longer had the energy. His aches had doubled since his arrival at Dylan’s place. His muscles had lost half their strength. He’d have the cabbie drive him to a strip mall a couple of blocks from the motel.
“Take me to the pharmacy off Lukens Lane in Mount Vernon.” He kept his hood up as he dropped into the back seat. Dylan had pointed out new plague blotches on Ben’s arms and neck, and he wanted to keep the marks covered. The hood helped with his chills too. Mostly. Ben shivered.
The cabbie eyed him in the mirror. “You know we got drugstores dis side o’ Fairfax, fren. No need ta go so fah. I show you.”
Ben waved a handful of cash. “No.” He could barely get the words out. “This one is special. My prescription is waiting. Please.”
The look the guy gave him said I should be taking you to a hospital, but he put the cab into gear without another word.
Watching to make sure the guy kept his eyes on the road, Ben pressed his evening injection against his thigh. He barely felt the prick or the medicine’s cold rush. Each injection of Tess’s cocktail made less difference than the last—little better than placebos. He only had one left. Not great. He needed to survive another day and a half.
The Baltimore port schedule put the Clementine—aka the Behemoth—in her berth at ten minutes after five, two mornings away. Dylan promised to send everything they’d learned to the Company, but he made no guarantees. He could pass the intelligence, but he couldn’t make them act.
He’d also done Ben one more favor.
The failure of Dylan’s binary theory created doubt—something the kid didn’t experience often. Playing on the uncertainty, Ben convinced him to send a message requesting a meeting with the Director. As with the intelligence, the kid made no guarantees, but he agreed to make the request on Ben’s behalf.
“Give it at least a day,” he’d said. “Thirty hours or more. This will take time to pass up the chain, and the boss might be anywhere in the world. He’ll need travel time.”
Thirty hours. Cutting it close.
If the Director believed Ben’s tale, they’d have only a small window of time left before the plague ship’s arrival. A Company team needed to stop the Behemoth in the harbor before it reached the berth without setting off the bomb. If Leviathan saw them coming, they’d detonate the nuke’s-worth of CRTX in the hold, destroying half the city and unleashing the bacteria. If the ship reached the berth, the first tanktainer the cranes lifted from the deck would also unleash the bacteria, initiating a slow release of aerosol plague.
If the Director didn’t believe his story, Ben would have the same tiny window to stop all of that himself. Impossible.
Resting his head back against the seat, he stared up through the rear window and rehearsed his story. The details grew more
obscure with every passing minute. Focus came harder and harder. The empty branches passing overhead warped at the window’s edges, twisting and spinning him into delirium.
He saw Paris. His flat. Clara on the stairs. Groceries in one arm, dog in the other. The first of many similar encounters.
He’d first noticed her ice-blue eyes, partially hidden by random strands of blue hair. Maybe that’s why it bothered him so much. The blue hair stole well-deserved attention away from her eyes. Maybe. Her lips were moving, asking him a question. Ben strained to listen over the grinds and rattles of the taxi’s engine.
“We should get coffee some time—get to know each other. Good neighbors learn about each other’s lives. It helps see beyond our own tiny worlds.”
She couldn’t know about his life. No one outside the Company could know. “Sure, but I’m in a rush. Maybe some other time.”
Maybe some other time. Next week. When I come back from my trip. How many times had he put her off when she’d asked for nothing more than an hour and a cup of coffee? What he wouldn’t do to have that hour now. Ben had thrown himself into an unsanctioned relationship with a teammate instead.
But Giselle had been persuasive. Alluring.
He saw her walking with him in the forest near Chaville. They laughed and shared stories. Dylan’s unending complaints. Hale’s parochial schoolhouse wisdom. He could be himself with her. Giselle had made him feel safe.
Liar. Traitor.
Giselle sold him out. Clara ran into a sniper’s field of fire to save him.
A speed bump bounced his head off the vinyl. The taxi. The pharmacy. Ben didn’t want the cabbie pulling up to the building. He had to control what the cameras saw. He dropped his cash over the seat. “Stop here. This’ll do.”
Ben stumbled out of the taxi into the parking lot. He trudged toward the store, tripping over a speed bump, caught himself, and walked on, fighting through a fit of coughs to keep his face low and shielded from the cameras.
When the coughing fit ended, he still heard the cab’s rattling idle. The guy hadn’t driven away. Ben glanced back.
The Haitian lifted his chin. “You stay safe, fren. Get ’ealthy. Okay? You need another ride, you call. Ask for Rayan. I come.”
Ben gave him a grateful nod. He doubted he’d live long enough for a next time.
He waited under the pharmacy awning, in the security camera’s blind spot, until the cabbie drove out of sight, then limped over to the sidewalk for the two-block hike to the motel.
A police cruiser rolled up to the intersection ahead. The cop looked his way. He flashed his lights.
Ben made an abrupt turn and hurried at a hopping gate across the parking lot of a small grocery. His knee cried out for mercy. Dylan’s nonlethal rounds must have cracked something.
No coincidences. The kind Haitian cabdriver had called the cops, maybe to help a man he saw as an addict get clean, or maybe he supplemented his income by feeding them intel on the DC drug scene.
Got caught in a cab, huh? In your condition? Hale haunted him, grumbling in his ear. You know better, kid. Sloppy. Real sloppy.
“I was tired,” Ben said, ducking into a service alley between the grocery and the pharmacy. He suppressed the pain in his knee and the aches in his body and picked up his pace. “I cut a corner.”
And we know how well that goes.
“I’m almost dead. What do you want from me?”
A whoop-whoop sounded from the grocery lot—one cycle of the siren. The cop was playing this cool.
Contingencies are key, right, kid? A good spy always has an escape route.
Ben nodded to the voice at his shoulder. “I got that part right. I have a way out.” A patch of woods with a creek running through it separated the pharmacy strip mall from Highway 1 and Ben’s motel. The creek, part of the area’s drainage, ran for miles. He could hide there for a while. He just had to get over the six-foot fence behind the grocery.
The dumpster helped. Ben climbed up and took the fence with a single up-and-over heave. He favored his bad knee on the landing, and wound up turning his ankle on the other leg.
Perfect. He limped into the woods. At least there were no new sirens.
No sirens doesn’t mean no police. Cops are sneaky. Spot one cruiser and expect three more. Look left, kid, toward the street.
Ben caught a glimpse of white and blue through the trees. A police cruiser ghosted along the road next to the woods. Slow. Searching. Why did Hale always have to be right?
His hand grazed the injector in his pocket—Tess’s kick. She’d said the burst of energy could last up to five minutes. After that, depending on the progression of his disease, he might never move again. He pulled his hand away. Not yet.
A steady slope brought him down to the creek. Ice clung to the larger rocks, but most of the drainage ran free. Ben steered clear of the water, keeping to the trees along the bank as long as possible, then splashed through a moss-covered culvert beneath a cross street. The cold sliced into his shins.
South of the culvert, the creek cut a deepening path to the Potomac. When Ben tried to climb the steep bank, he fell in the mud. A well-placed stone found his damaged knee. He slid down into the water, holding it, stifling an angry cry. “Aagh!”
Are you crying now? Go ahead. Get caught. Give up.
“No. I need to see the Director. I need to finish this.”
You sure? Look up. There they are.
Ben spotted another cruiser on the road above. He retreated into the culvert and sat down in the cold wet and the muck to wait out the cops.
Hours later, he stumbled through his motel room door, kicked it closed behind him, and collapsed on the bed, grabbing a bottle of ibuprofen off the nightstand. He swallowed four pills and let the open bottle roll onto the comforter behind him. The voice in his head—Hale’s voice—ordered him to peel off his soaked clothes and nurse his knee and ankle. Ben laughed at the voice and closed his eyes.
He didn’t open them again until morning.
Not morning. The light slipping in through the crack in the curtain was all wrong. He’d slept until the afternoon—almost evening.
“Gotta move. Things to do.” Ben had to say it out loud to convince himself.
Sitting up proved too difficult. He rolled off the edge of the bed instead, leaving a muddy depression behind. The ankle held, a little sore, but the moment he tried to put weight on his other leg, he gasped. The swelling on his knee looked like someone had stuffed a tennis ball under his jeans. A wrap might help stabilize the joint. He tossed down more ibuprofen and looked around. “Where’d I put the duct tape?”
Ben found the tape on the bathroom sink, but in the brighter light, he noticed the grime in his fingernails and the mud caked on his hoodie and jeans. Disease or not, he didn’t want to see the Director that way.
“Better shower first.”
Ben pulled the hoodie and T-shirt over his head in a single gingerly move, and the shriveled, spotted thing staring back at him from the mirror sucked away whatever heat remained in his blood.
66
Día de Muertos. The creature in the mirror reminded Ben of a Day of the Dead costume. Dark veins crept up his neck and the right side of his face to blacken the skin at the corner of his mouth and beneath his eye. The blotches on his chest and right arm had swollen into bulging knots. The oldest, on his abdomen, had broken the skin and crusted over with pus.
Ben grabbed the toilet’s rim and retched.
Both mind and body wanted to expel this dark spirit. A half-digested egg white protein bar splashed down, surrounded by yellow bile and red swirls of blood.
Blood. The same decay he saw on the outside had eaten into the lining of his stomach. Had it set to work on his organs too? He needed to be careful. His blood contained deadly pathogens. Ben poured bleach into the bowl.
Stumbling into the bedroom, he ripped open his backpack and fished around inside. “Come on. Where are you?” He turned the bag upside down and shook it. Tools,
first aid supplies, and homemade explosives wrapped in cellophane spilled out. With one more shake, Tess’s cocktail injector dropped onto the carpet, the last one. Ben sat back on his haunches, and rammed it into his bare arm.
He felt the medicine go in, but nothing else—no relief. The monster inside had grown too daunting and too armored for Tess’s pea-shooter weapon. He still had the kick injector in his pocket. He banished the thought of using it from of his mind. Twenty-four hours, give or take. He only had to survive one more day.
The shower helped. At the very least, the steam hid the ugly creature in the mirror. Without the dark details, Ben could see a semblance of the spy still in there—still pressing on. He dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, slammed down another four ibuprofen, and let his eyes close once more, unsure if they’d ever open again.
Hey, wake up.
Ben groaned.
Clara. Smiling. Blue hair falling to one side as she rolled onto her shoulder under the boat tarp and readied a playful finger to flick his nose. I said wake up, silly.
“I’m . . . I’m awake. Why did you let me sleep?”
I didn’t let you do anything. You are the one in charge, remember? Now get up and get us moving.
Ben’s eyes snapped open. The empty room broke his heart. Night had fallen.
Passing in and out of consciousness wouldn’t do. He considered the kick.
“This will wake you up,” Tess had told him when she explained how it worked. “You’ll feel like a new man—aware and capable. But the crash will come soon and come hard. It’s one of the drawbacks. The kick is the ultimate gateway drug. Instant addiction, and nothing will ever satisfy the need. You’ll want it the rest of your life. For you, that won’t be long. If you take this in the latter stage of your disease, the crash alone might kill you.”
Maybe he should start with some coffee.
He made a pot, drank two cups, and poured a third before checking the clock by the bed.
Ten o’clock. Time to go.
He’d set the meeting for eleven p.m., long after closing time at Arlington National Cemetery. Ben took the Metro from Vienna/Fairfax Station, and the smattering of passengers traveling at that late hour parted wherever he walked. At the first stop, Dunn Loring, a young woman boarded with a sleeping baby. She hugged the child to her chest and hurried past Ben to the back of the car. He didn’t blame her.
The Paris Betrayal Page 26