“For the love of God!”
“You scream like a girl,” Moore grunted as he finally wrenched him onto the raft. Perry, meanwhile, had pulled himself on, grabbing a handhold on the buoyant edge. For a moment, the three men were able to do nothing more than lie sprawled on the floor of the pitching raft. Then Perry pushed himself up and crawled to the wooden box. He got out his knife once more and began prying the box open.
“As much as it pains me to agree with Burke,” Moore said, “you are well beyond the standard level of idiot. What could be so important in that crate that you thought you needed to risk all of our lives to save it?”
Perry let out a shout of joy as the lid came free. He reached inside, pulling out some straw-like packing materials, and extracted two bottles of Havana Club rum. Holding them up, he said, “Gaze upon them and weep, bitches! Since you were both so mean to me, I think I shall share none of this.” Indicating each man in turn with a bottle, he concluded, “Bite me and bite me.”
Moore reached over and grabbed the bottle from his hand. “All is forgiven,” he said, twisting off the top. “All is indeed forgiven.” After taking a long pull, Moore passed the bottle to Burke. “Here. We weren’t able to salvage any drinking water or food, so until we’re rescued, this is going to have to be our sole sustenance and your only anesthetic.”
Taking the bottle, Burke said, “That should be fine with Perry. Liquor has been his sole sustenance for quite some time.”
Perry, who had wedged the other bottle between his back and the side of the raft, gave a derisive laugh. “And my only anesthetic!”
Burke took a drink and passed him the bottle. “You know it’s true.”
“Was true,” Perry corrected, taking a long draught himself. “Was true.”
“Yes,” Moore said as Perry handed the bottle back to him. “You have definitely gone a long way toward straightening yourself out. That was, in part, my reason for inviting you on this trip. I had planned to tell you I’m restoring you to full active duty. Not just the suicide missions anymore.”
The news affected Perry instantly, and far more profoundly than he’d thought possible. Since losing his wife, Perry had been called upon to take assignments only on rare occasions, generally when the promise of a safe outcome was minimal. Although Moore cared for his field operatives deeply, he knew Perry was both a valuable asset in spite of the descent into the bottle and a screaming liability because of it. If there was a case where messiness was not an issue and survival was not likely, he called upon Perry, knowing the man no longer cared if he lived or died. It was a shitty use of a man’s mental anguish, but over the three years since the tragedy, there had been a handful of cases for which Perry was uniquely qualified.
Moved by his boss’s confidence, Perry cleared his throat. Finally, he said, “I guess that calls for a toast.”
Burke, who now had possession of the bottle, raised it and said, “To Perry Hall, the worst human being on the face of the planet. But the only guy I’d need in a foxhole.”
“I think the rum is already working,” Moore said, taking the bottle and lifting it. “To Perry Hall, who had the sense, when all around him had taken leave of theirs, to rescue the rum. And to my boat, which even now sinks below the cruel, remorseless waves of the Atlantic.” He took a drink and passed the bottle to Perry.
“And to James Burke and J. Carlton Moore,” Perry said, “who I wish had drowned, leaving all the rum for me.”
The three men laughed, their exhaustion forgotten for that brief moment, and then continued passing the bottle.
11
One of the most important qualities a spy can have is intuition, and Lyndsey Archer had it in spades. It wasn’t foolproof, but when it reached a certain level of intensity, it was almost batting 1.000. And it was creeping closer to that level the higher the agents followed Connor up the stairs.
“It’s not far now, ladies,” he said. And, true to his word, he stopped at the next landing and fished a key out of his pocket.
“No elevators in this country, huh?” Dot wheezed.
Connor flashed her a winning smile. “Out of order. Sorry.”
“Just get the door open, you dark-haired doofus. I’m winded.”
Connor obliged and then stood to one side to let them enter. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll whip up some drinks and then we can talk proper.”
“Sounds good to me,” Adabelle said. “I’d like a full explanation.”
“And you shall have it. Let me run to the kitchen and get started on those drinks.”
“Make mine a quadruple,” Dot said, still gasping for breath. “By the way, where’s the shitter?”
Connor pointed down a hallway. “Down there, last door on the left.” Then he disappeared around a corner, presumably to begin making the beverages.
“Dot?” Lyndsey half rose from the chair into which she had plopped a second earlier. “Are you okay? Do you need me to come with you?”
“I’m fine, just not as young as I used to be. You and Foxy McGee rest a spell. I’ll be back as soon as I empty my tank and take a breath or two.”
Lyndsey watched her go. Then she glanced at Adabelle. “You think she’ll be all right?”
Adabelle shrugged. “I don’t know. But do you want to be the one to go after her and insist she needs a babysitter?”
“Good point,” Lyndsey said and then sniffed the air.
Adabelle glanced at her. “You noticed it too?”
“Yeah. It’s a weird musty smell. I’ve never smelled anything quite like it. It’s not a particularly good smell, but not exactly bad either.”
“Maybe he collects old books or smokes the cheapest cigars on the planet.”
Lyndsey drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “God, I need that drink.”
A few moments later, Connor reappeared, bearing a tray loaded with glasses tinkling with floating ice cubes. “I didn’t know what all of you drank, so I gave everyone the same. The best whiskey I can afford.”
“That works for me,” Adabelle said.
Lyndsey’s eyes had lit up at the sight of the drinks. “And me. I’ll take Dot’s.”
Connor was about to begin passing out the drinks when the muffled popping of gunfire sounded from the street below.
Adabelle jumped up from her seat. “Charlie!”
Lyndsey was about to follow her lead when she heard a crash and saw that Connor had dropped the drink tray, revealing a nasty-looking pistol.
“Hold it right there, ladies. Adabelle, take your seat.”
“Connor, what the hell are you doing?” Adabelle demanded, edging reluctantly back to her chair.
“Preventing you from doing something very foolish.”
“You damn traitor.”
“Not a traitor. I’ve never worked for SpyCo, nor would I be caught dead in the employ of such a ragtag outfit.”
“You damn liar,” Adabelle amended.
Connor nodded. “I must plead guilty to that charge. Then again, it’s rather difficult to be a successful spy without telling a few falsehoods here and there.”
Lyndsey’s eyes bore a hole through the Irishman. “What’s going on below?”
“A murder, I’d imagine. While I was in the kitchen preparing the drinks, I sent off a quick little text to a few agent pals who’ve been waiting patiently for your arrival. They should be here soon, once they’ve confirmed your Aussie friend is out of the game. Then we’ll take care of you.”
A few more gunshots sounded and then all was quiet. Connor grinned.
“Well, that took a bit longer than I expected. Your new recruit must have been a natural.”
“I hope she sent all your pals straight to hell.”
“If she did, she deserves an immediate promotion and pay raise. We had six guys out there, all well-trained and itching for blood.”
There was a knock on the door. Connor backed toward it, still grinning. “Start saying your prayers, ladies, because this is where the train
pulls into the station.”
Then he opened the door.
A single roaring shot from a .357 Magnum sent Connor staggering backward into the apartment. Dot stepped inside, followed by a slightly pale but obviously fuming Charlie. Dot walked over and stood over the fallen enemy agent.
“This is where the train pulls into the station? Is that your idea of a clever death metaphor?”
Connor glared up at her, blood beginning to foam on his lips. “It wasn’t...all that...bad.”
“Have it your way,” Dot said, raising the pistol. “Then I suppose it’s time I punched your ticket. Tell the conductor you’re headed South.” Then she pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through the man’s head.
“Dot, we might have been able to question him,” Adabelle said.
“I was too pissed. Besides, he probably didn’t know a whole lot more than we do now. I don’t see him as a Zmaj confidant. Not part of the inner circle, ya know?”
“So he’s definitely from Zmaj’s organization?” Charlie asked, her face slowly shedding the twisted anger and returning to its naturally agreeable expression.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, Chuck. It has to be Zmaj.”
“How the hell did you get outside?” Lyndsey asked. “Last we knew, you had gone to pee.”
“On our way to the building, I spotted one of the agents in the shadows across the street. Once in the apartment, I decided to fake an attack of old-lady-itis to get out of sight. The bathroom has a window that opens toward the street, and once those losers made their move, I started picking them off. Charlie, here, didn’t miss a beat and took out two. The others ran.”
“Thanks for leaving me as bait,” Charlie muttered, a light scowl crossing her face. “Suppose something had gone wrong? What if Connor had pulled his gun before you made it to the bathroom? What if the bathroom hadn’t had a window?”
“Stop your whining,” Dot said. “You can’t spend all your time thinking about the what-ifs.”
“She’s right, though,” Lyndsey said. “This could have gone terribly wrong.”
Dot threw up her hands. “What is this, a full-fledged mutiny? Lest anyone forget who they’re talking to, I’m in charge right now. Moore is on some hellish ocean voyage from which he may not return and we’re in a foreign country where people think sticks are called shillelaghs. And technically, something did go wrong. Six jack-weeds tried to kill the lovely Miss Perkins. That does not fall on the ‘something so right you wanna squeal about it’ side of the spectrum. Far worse still, I never got my quadruple drink!”
Adabelle shook her head and laughed. “Okay, Dot, okay. We admit that you’re a genius and had everything under control from the beginning. Now, let’s get you that drink. Then maybe we can search this place and figure out where to go next.”
THE WOLF WAS glad to be free of Zmaj, even if only briefly. He’d left the castle on foot and walked to Drimnagh, where he paid a teenage boy 25 euros to drive him to Dublin. Once he was near enough to the city but far enough from Drimnagh, he put a bullet in the back of the boy’s head and left him and the car where it rolled to a stop, off the road and in a quiet field of heather. Few who saw the Wolf lived to talk about it, unless that person was a peer. The boy had definitely not been. The jury was still out about Zmaj.
The Wolf took a deep breath, trying to clear his lungs of the stench of the castle that had settled there. No, not the castle. It was the man himself. Zmaj, though clearly alive, carried with him the atmosphere of a sepulcher. It was as if he was decaying while his heart still beat.
Zmaj had already made good on the Wolf’s initial payment. He’d directed one of his people to make the transfer and allowed the Wolf to watch him complete it. A moment later, a vibration on the Wolf’s phone confirmed that the money had indeed been deposited in his numbered account.
So now it was the Wolf’s turn to make good. Zmaj wasn’t looking for a few good men; he was looking for a paramilitary force to eradicate the burr in his sock that was SpyCo. Although he had not mentioned it to Zmaj, the Wolf had heard chatter regarding the interactions between his organization and SpyCo. For all the assurances that they were still essentially a ripe berry waiting to be plucked, he knew the SpyCo agents had in fact bested Zmaj in every encounter, including the face-to-face meeting in Istanbul.
It was probably true that all of the leaks in SpyCo’s network had not yet found the right Dutch boy to poke his finger in, but there were more of the little fellows plugging more of the holes than Zmaj was admitting.
Once the Wolf was within the city limits, he hailed a cab. His factory was in the harbor district, and as much as the air was doing him good, he needed to get there faster than his feet could reasonably be expected to carry him. Cab drivers, he’d found over the years, fell into two categories: the ones who asked for a destination without even looking in the mirror, and the ones that looked at every fare as the potential subject of a future police interrogation. Or to put it another way, there were those who survived having the Wolf as their passenger and those who did not. This fellow smelled of alcohol and barely looked at the road, let alone his rearview. The Wolf was not sure the man would survive the day, but that would be because he drove his cab into a lamppost, not because the Wolf drove lead into his skull.
He directed him to an address four blocks from the factory and tossed a handful of euros into the front seat as he exited.
As he crossed the street, a green Chevy Impala roared down the road, missing him by inches. He felt a flush of anger and thought about pulling his weapon, if only to put a few holes in the receding rear window, but let the emotion pass. Probably another carload of drunks. He wondered if he’d forgotten some drinking holiday. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of drivers under the influence.
At last he reached the factory. The building appeared to have been abandoned long ago, and every door and window was either barred or padlocked securely. Most of the locks appeared rusty, as if they’d been in place for a decade or more. But as he turned down an alley at one end of the building, he pulled his phone from his inside pocket and tapped the screen a few times. An instant later, a delivery bay door, which appeared to be the type that rolled up into an overhead cylinder when opened, instead moved as a solid unit, tilting back far enough for the Wolf to crouch and pass through before silently closing behind him.
The portion of the building that Zmaj had seen was essentially a stage set. None of the doors within the area led anywhere, save one that appeared to be an old broom closet, but had a secret panel that passed into the real Wolf’s Lair. It was to this section he passed now. Every door in the factory was guarded by a hand-picked sentry, dressed all in black and brandishing an automatic rifle. They were trained to stand directly in front of the door to which they were posted, and to move only for him. There were no verbal greetings, no pleasantries. The man merely stepped aside and opened the door, allowing the Wolf to pass through before resuming his blocking position.
He went into a small but well-appointed office. It was spartan but contained everything he needed. He sat at a small desk that held a closed laptop and a multi-line communications system. Setting his cell beside it, he flipped open the screen, which immediately lit. He punched in his password, canislupislupis, then paused as the icons filled the screen.
When the militant arm of Irish resistance gradually phased out at the semi-official ending of The Troubles in 1998, most of the Army’s best soldiers were either dead, in prison, or, like the Wolf himself, already moving on to new causes. They tended not to keep in touch or hold annual reunions. The real movers preferred total anonymity. But the Wolf knew where all of them were, and how to reach them.
After making sure his computer was thoroughly cloaked behind layers of firewall, VPN, and other forms of security and encryption, he doubled clicked on an icon that was simply a black square. Beneath it was the word “Matchstick.” He smiled every time he saw it on his screen, though he very rarely used it. The name was meant t
o indicate that, when clicked, it would rekindle old flames.
Two seconds after he activated the program, the lines on the comms switchboard began to light. Within thirty seconds, every button was flashing, save one, which the Wolf now punched. As he did, the flashing buttons began to glow steadily and the Wolf said,
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. Whatever projects currently hold your attention need to be abandoned immediately. I have an opportunity for each of you, and if you pass it up, I promise you’ll never forgive yourselves.”
12
The sea, they say, is a harsh mistress. J. Carlton Moore was calling her a host of other names. Burke and Perry watched as their boss sat, more or less upright, literally screaming obscenities to the water that now lay flat and calm around them.
“Flat-chested whore! Spiteful bitch!”
“Boss, I don’t think insulting the Atlantic Ocean is going to bother it much.”
“I don’t care! First she swamps my boat. Then she refuses to kill the two of you, and finally she gets all peaceful and pretty, just when a little wind might do us some good. Just like Rebecca Condon. Blows everybody else all over the place, but when she gets to me, she’s convent-bound.”
Perry leaned toward Burke. “No more for him. I think he’s comparing the ocean to some tart he knew when he was a kid or something.”
“Tart!” Moore shouted at the water.
“It’s a good thing we’re alone out here,” Burke said. “If any bad guys saw us like this, they’d never take SpyCo seriously again.”
“Speaking of SpyCo,” Perry said, “why the hell did you choose that name for the organization? It doesn’t exactly sound intimidating. It’s worse than SMERSH.”
“It’s a palindrome,” Moore mumbled.
Perry frowned. “A palindrome, as my sodden brain recalls, has to read the same forward and back. The palindrome of SpyCo would be OcYps. That doesn’t work.”
“Not palindrome,” Moore said, shaking his head. “What’s the one that seems self-contradictory?”
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