Dark Edge: Prequel to the C.O.I.L. Series

by D.I. Telbat

  Chapter Five – The Lie

  CIA Director Jacob Dench sipped his vodka, then set the glass down and cracked open his shotgun. It was a double barrel .12 gauge. Divorced and alone on his estate in East Maryland, he saw no reason why he shouldn't have a hobby involving guns. And Russian vodka.

  After reloading the shotgun, he threw the vodka glass into the night sky. His balcony provided the perfect shooting platform. The shotgun butt found its home against his shoulder and he pulled the trigger. The blast echoed across the manmade lake, around which only four mansions had been built. If the residents didn't like his late night hobby, they'd never said anything.

  "Because they know who I am," Dench said into the darkness. He poured himself another shot in a new glass and reloaded the gun.

  It had been a particularly bad day, and that usually meant his hobby lasted a little later than usual. Sure, drinking vodka was probably un-American, especially for an intelligence administrator who had earned his merits during the Cold War fighting Russians in East Germany. But he didn't care any longer. Though he was a patriot, it seemed like it had all been for naught. Communism was still threatening the world, and Russia was still flexing her muscles against weaker nations.

  And then there was Corban Dowler. If Dench had made a bet thirty years earlier, he would've wagered that Dowler would die before he turned against the Agency, America, and his family. But he'd turned. And for what? His God? A self-proclaimed Savior two millennia ago?

  Dench swore as he remembered his own daughter was a Christian. Her faith had been her downfall as well. That was her mother's doing, sometime after the divorce. Now Kim was gone—kidnapped and probably sold into some human trafficking slum ring in India. It was nearly impossible to trace such transactions, and more impossible to care much for a girl he'd never taken the time to know.

  "Christians!" Dench cursed, and threw another glass into the sky. When he shot it, the glass exploded. He flinched away but it was too late. The shotgun clattered onto the deck as he held his cheek, blood dribbling past a piece of embedded glass.

  He plucked out the glass, causing the wound to leak freely, but he didn't care. All that mattered was winning, and right now, because of Corban Dowler, he was losing.

  A report from Paris had arrived through Chip. A German agent had been mysteriously killed, probably poisoned, in Paris. That meant Nace "Pyvox" Scanlon was on Dowler's trail, but there was still no sign of either man—the hunter or the hunted.

  As long as Dowler was alive, he was a threat to Dench's legacy. Dowler had to die. The best the Agency had to offer, even though hardly anyone knew he existed, had refused to kill his target. Sure, it happened with agents, but not seasoned hunter-tracer agents who had nearly two-hundred operations under his belt. And those were just the ones in his file.

  Dench frowned at the piece of glass he'd taken from his cheek. The deck light passed through it, bent the light, and caused a tiny prism.

  Bending. Yes, Dench thought. That was the answer to Paris and the dead German. The problem that Dowler had become simply needed to be bent to Dench's satisfaction. Even Dowler himself would appreciate it, wouldn't he?

  Pocketing the piece of glass as a memento of the moment, Dench entered the house and went to his study. He logged into his work server via an encrypted satellite signal, and studied the Paris report more carefully. His deceit settled into place.

  If Dowler simply refused to kill anymore, that was a quiet problem for the Agency. But if he could turn Dowler into the Paris killer—and sell it to the Germans—then Dowler would be a problem for all of America. The President himself would send resources overseas to take care of Dowler. In the end, everyone would praise him, Jacob Dench, for how he had handled the Corban Dowler problem.

  So, Dowler didn't want to kill America's enemies? Then Dowler would become America's enemy number one—a hated murderer, a coward who poisoned random people in airports.

  Dench touched his cheek and admired the blood on his fingertips. No stitches. He wanted to remember this night through the remnant scar as the night he finalized Corban Dowler's demise!

  *~*