ALSO BY ALAN MCDERMOTT
Tom Gray Novels
Gray Justice
Gray Resurrection
Gray Redemption
Gray Retribution
Gray Vengeance
Gray Salvation
Trojan
Run and Hide
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Alan McDermott
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503904989
ISBN-10: 1503904989
Cover design by Tom Sanderson
CONTENTS
JANUARY 2018
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JANUARY 2018
CHAPTER 1
The thermometer on the wall said the outside temperature was 87 Fahrenheit, but to Farooq Naser it felt like a delicious 65 degrees. Three air conditioners hummed in chorus as they battled the Hyderabad heat—and, being the best that money could buy, they were doing a sterling job.
The house boy knocked on the door and entered, carrying a tray bearing a teapot and cup. He put it down on the desk and left without a word. Farooq poured himself a cup and sat back from his computer, one of three he’d splurged on after getting his share of the money he’d helped to steal from the ESO.
Eight million dollars went a long way in India.
At times, he wasn’t sure that Hyderabad had been the right choice of destination. He’d picked it because it was the birthplace of his parents, but upon seeing it for the first time, he’d wondered if he’d made a big mistake. It was as far removed from the United States as one could get. Simply getting off the plane had been an experience in itself, the heat enveloping him in a stifling blanket the moment he emerged.
Traffic was another thing that was going to take some getting used to. There didn’t seem to be any laws, except every man for himself. Tuk-tuks and motorcycles darted in and out of traffic like salmon heading for their spawning grounds.
There were pluses, though. Everything was dirt cheap compared to the States: having young Arnav at his beck and call cost a mere seventy-five bucks a month. Elsewhere in the house, he had Riya, the young woman who did the cooking and cleaning. That set him back another hundred. With the rent coming in at only a thousand US dollars per month, he could afford to live like a king here for the rest of his life.
He’d chosen the three-bedroom apartment purely because of the location. It was close enough to the center of Hyderabad that he could be anywhere within half an hour, even when pitted against the sea of vehicles that washed over the city every day. The place was bigger than he needed, with three reception rooms and two bathrooms, but its relative quiet allowed him to get on with his work.
Not that he considered it work, by any means. It certainly didn’t pay anything.
Not yet, at least.
Farooq’s passion was ones and zeros. When it came to writing code, he had few equals, which was why the CIA had hired him years earlier. His time with the Agency had come to an abrupt end when a supervisor with a grudge had planted a bottle of whiskey in Farooq’s desk drawer and canned him, but not before Farooq had written a back door into their computer systems. It was from the CIA’s coffers that Farooq had stolen fifty million dollars, money that had originally been meant to fund the Agency’s illicit programs. Instead, he’d used the cash to help Eva Driscoll in her fight against the Executive Security Office, the most powerful organization on the planet.
Henry Langton had been at the helm of the ESO for a number of years, as had many Langtons before him. They were the dark, shadowy men behind the governments of the world, the ones who kept 95 percent of the world’s population a paycheck away from poverty, while siphoning off the rest for themselves. They controlled the banks, the US Senate and House of Representatives, and their worth ran into the trillions. More than enough to bribe lawmakers to do their bidding. Many of the world’s conflicts were initiated by the ESO, who financed and armed both sides at great profit. The ESO’s sway had also been sufficient to force the United States’ intelligence services to do as they demanded, as Farooq had found out the hard way. With Langton now dead and the US president personally overseeing the investigation into the ESO, Farooq’s only concern was which application to build next.
He’d already updated and renamed his Taurus messaging app, which took cryptography to a whole new level. Even the NSA, with all its state-of-the-art hardware, wouldn’t come close to decoding the messages his users shared. Not that there were many users. He had a copy, as did Eva Driscoll, Carl Huff, Rees Colback, and the two Englishmen Eva had hired to help her bring down the ESO.
Farooq was currently working on a piece of software that would enable him to take control of cell phones. It was proving troublesome, but he loved nothing more than a challenge. Once he’d knocked off for the day, he’d take another shot at getting back into the CIA’s servers. It wasn’t something he expected to pull off, but it helped him relax in the evenings. Without that little distraction, it would be too easy to return to the bottle. Having given up alcohol—with Eva’s help, two years earlier—he didn’t dare give himself a chance of backsliding.
He heard another knock at the study door and glanced at his watch. It was too early for his dinner, and he’d given his staff instructions not to disturb him unless it was important.
“Come.”
Arnav walked into the room and handed Farooq a flash drive.
“What’s this?”
“A man came to the door and told me to give it to you, sahib.” Arnav placed the drive on the corner of Farooq’s desk and turned to leave.
“Wait.” Farooq had only made the acquaintance of a handful of people since arriving in the city, and only Samar knew where he lived. He couldn’t think why Samar would drop off a memory stick without bothering to offer an explanation. “Who was this man? What did he look like?”
“I have never seen him before, sahib. He was young, maybe twenty, but looked like you in body.”
&n
bsp; That didn’t sound remotely like Samar. His friend was in his mid-forties and had an expansive waistline. A far cry from Farooq’s rake-thin frame.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Arnav left, closing the door behind him, and Farooq picked up the drive, turning it in his fingers. There was no way he was going to insert it into his main computer—it could easily contain a virus—but he had a backup PC with a virtual machine mounted, which could be deleted and replaced with ease.
Farooq fired up the second computer and inserted the mysterious drive. He ran a virus scan, which came back clean. The drive contained only one item, an MP4 file. Farooq double-clicked on it and the screen instantly showed a familiar scene.
The local market was in full swing, with merchants hawking their various wares. The video had been taken from across the road, with vehicles breaking up the scene intermittently. After a few seconds, the camera focused on his friend, Samar. He looked to be haggling over the price of a copper pot; eventually he put it in his bag and handed over a few bills.
Why would someone send me a recording of Samar shopping?
Samar strolled through the market, stopping occasionally to check out some of the stalls. The camera zoomed in on his face for a few seconds, then panned back out, leaving Farooq with no doubt that Samar was the subject of the video.
For three more minutes he watched his friend meander through the market until he came to the road and waited for an opportunity to cross. The video panned out even more, and Farooq could see a bus approaching from the left. It wasn’t traveling at a great speed, due to the traffic on the road, but it was moving faster than a person could walk. Samar waited patiently for it to pass, but as it got to within five yards of his position, the unexpected happened.
Samar’s hands flew upward and his body lurched into the road. He looked like he was going to fall to his knees, but the bus hit him before he could do so. Unable to take his eyes off the horror before him, Farooq watched as Samar’s body bounced off the front of the vehicle then fell beneath the front wheel. The scene started to jiggle and the screen pointed at the ground as the cameraman ran across the road, then it focused once more on Samar.
Blood seeped from a wound on his head, but the real damage had been done to his torso. His chest had been flattened and a crimson pool was forming underneath him, like the wings of an angel unfurling in preparation for its final journey.
As Farooq moved to close the video, the screen faded to black and words began to appear in place of the horrific death scene. He watched as the blurred letters came into focus, revealing a message that was both succinct and terrifying.
WE FOUND YOU
CHAPTER 2
Eva Driscoll linked arms with Carl Huff as they left their apartment on Widenmayerstrasse and strolled along the riverbank until they came to Maximilianstrasse, the artery that fed into the heart of Munich. Normally they would have taken a tram from there, but the gray skies had vanished, and as the sun was making its first appearance of the year as January came to an end, they decided to walk the final mile.
Munich had been Eva’s idea. She’d visited the place once during her stint with the CIA. It had been a surveillance mission, and in those few days she’d developed a good feel for the city. It helped that she had a rudimentary knowledge of the language, and when you want to hide out in the open from the most powerful organization in the world, Munich is as good a place as any.
Not long ago, Eva thought she’d never see the outside of a prison cell again, never mind strolling the streets with her lover on her arm. She’d spent weeks looking for the people who ran the ESO, the men who had ordered the murder of her brother, only to wind up in a maximum-security prison facing life plus 150 years for multiple homicides. Fortunately, the president of the United States, Leonard “Leo” Russell, was not one of the ESO’s stooges. He’d begun an investigation into the syndicate and had granted Eva and her friends secret pardons.
Things might have been different if Bill Sanders, then head of the CIA, had sent Carl to kill her rather than save her. But Sanders had been looking out for number one, much as she’d suspected. If she’d died, his career and marriage would have gone down the toilet thanks to the incriminating video she had of the two of them.
She’d taken it during her CIA training, when Sanders had been head of clandestine services and Eva a raw recruit. Sanders had invited her to his cabin in the woods, and while no reason had been given, she hadn’t been naive enough to think it was for extra credit. She’d recorded their lovemaking and, days later, Sanders had received a copy with a warning that if she were ever considered disposable, his indiscretion would be laid bare to the world.
Eva often wondered what had become of her cohorts. When they’d been released, President Russell had told them that new identities awaited them in Kansas City. Ever the skeptic, she’d made them all stop off in Louisville, Kentucky, to get more false papers from her long-time associate, DeBron Harris. Armed with two new names each, they’d gone their separate ways, with Eva warning them not to share their new identities with anyone, not even each other. She and Carl Huff had stayed together, but what happened to Farooq Naser, Rees Colback, and the two Englishmen, Sonny and Len, was a mystery.
Which was the whole point. If she didn’t know where they were, she couldn’t give them away, and vice versa.
While none of them were technically fugitives from the law, they still had to keep their heads down. The ESO wasn’t just some old boys’ club that met once a week to discuss sports; these were the people that shaped the lives of everyone on the planet. They started wars when it suited their purpose, they interfered with elections in every major country, and they controlled 99 percent of the world’s money. They were above the law in every way, and despite Russell’s promise to shut them down, Eva was under no illusions. An organization that had been able to effectively run the planet for the last eighty years was not going to be disbanded by a president who’d barely been elected to the White House. If Russell’s opponent hadn’t been implicated in the death of a prostitute during the campaign, Russell would have become the forgotten man.
Eva and Carl reached their first stop of the day, the Louis Vuitton shop, where they bought a couple of shirts for him and scarves for both of them, then they wandered the streets, looking for somewhere to have lunch. In the few weeks that they’d been in Munich, they’d rarely eaten at the same place twice. Today they found a small restaurant tucked out of the way, and took seats at a table covered in a red gingham tablecloth.
Carl removed his hat and rubbed his bald head. That, along with the goatee beard and moustache, meant he bore little resemblance to his former self. At first Eva had objected to him shaving his head, but she kind of liked the way he looked now. He also blended in well with the locals. For her part, Eva had dyed her hair platinum and cut it into a bob, also a common look in Munich.
A waitress appeared and took their orders, then returned soon after with the bottle of white wine Carl had chosen.
“I was thinking,” Eva said as she sipped her wine, “maybe we could drive down to Kitzbühel for a few days. Take in the slopes, cuddle up by a nice warm fire afterward.”
“I don’t see why not.” Carl smiled. “I think we can afford a week off.”
For those that tried to engage them in conversation, Eva and Carl gave the same story each time. They were graphic designers who worked from home. In truth, Eva had stolen enough from the CIA slush fund to keep them comfortable for the rest of their lives. Farooq had been given his share—eight million—as had Rees Colback. She’d also given the English guys a couple of million each to help them disappear. That left just shy of thirty million dollars to feed, clothe, and house them for the rest of their days. With a budget of half a million a year, they figured they could just about manage it.
“I’ll book a hotel room as soon as we get back,” Eva said, rubbing her foot up the inside of Carl’s leg.
Their food arrived, and Eva tucked into her sea bass w
hile Carl tackled the house wiener schnitzel.
“After we leave here, I’d like to go and buy some luggage. It’ll be—”
Eva’s phone sang in her purse, a tune that almost stopped her heart. She had set a specific ringtone for this particular application, and her hands trembled slightly as she reached into the bag. As she took the cell out, her worst fears were confirmed. The notification on the locked screen was from Farooq’s Shield messaging app.
“Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
Eva looked up at Carl, and the concern on his face mirrored hers.
She entered her PIN into the phone and opened the message. “It’s from Farooq.” She read the missive twice, then handed the cell to Carl.
“I guess that’s Austria cancelled,” he said, passing it back. “We have to warn the others.”
“If this is who we think it is, we’ll have to do more than just give them a heads-up. We’ll need a plan.”
Eva opened Shield and composed a response to Farooq’s message. After hitting Send, she put her phone on the table, waiting for him to get back to her. It wasn’t a long wait. She replied once more, then put the phone back in her bag. She took a few bills from her purse and left them on the table. “We have to go. Right now.”
They walked quickly back to Maximilianstrasse and took a cab to their apartment. Carl entered the code for the communal door and, once inside, pulled a SIG from inside his jacket. Eva took her pistol from her purse and followed him up the flight of stairs. The landing was clear, and no one had disturbed the small piece of paper she’d put in the crack of the doorway. Carl used his keys to let them in, and after checking the apartment for threats, they began stuffing clothes and essentials into their bags.
Not that there was much to take. They hadn’t been naive enough to believe Munich would be their final destination, and so the apartment was virtually bare. They had the essentials, but there was nothing to turn a set of rooms into a home.
Apart from the bear.
They’d spotted it at a flea market a couple of weeks earlier and Eva had fallen in love with it. It was the size of a coffee mug, but flat and with a clock set in its belly. It reminded Eva of a similar trinket she’d had as a kid. Hers had sat on the table next to her bed and would wake her for school, but the mechanism in this one had failed a long time ago. Carl had caught the look on her face when she saw it, and that had been enough to convince him to part with a whole euro for it.
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