The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

  ‘Just… beautiful,’ she said with a little sigh. ‘I’d seen it in movies but it’s not like in person.’

  Brennan gave her a sideways glance. She had a black cocktail dress on and he had to remind himself for a moment that he missed his wife and kids, because the dress was working overtime.

  ‘Well, you earned this,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t give a damn about official thank yous, or commendations, or any of that crap…’

  ‘Speak for yourself!’ she scoffed. ‘I want my job back when I get home. Without getting a little credit in this whole mess, that wasn’t going to happen. Plus, we get an official banquet and the Premier of China has to say nice things about me. This is absolutely lovely.’

  They walked over to their assigned dinner seats, their position nearest the long head table and dais, where the two leaders would speak after the meal. Norm and Zoey were sitting together whispering. They both smiled when Brennan and Lee announced themselves.

  Then Zoey leaned over to them and whispered. ‘I feel really out of place! They loaned me this dress and it’s worth more than most peoples’ mortgages. And the diamond, too.’

  ‘They rented me the monkey suit as well,’ said Drabek, who had a snazzy looking Fifties-cut black tuxedo on with a narrow bow-tie. ‘The shoes are pinching my damn toes.’

  Lee tried a rough head count but lost track. ‘There must be a hundred people here, at least,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Norm muttered, ‘who knew negotiating disarmament had to cost a thousand bucks a plate.’

  The PA system crackled to life and people’s attention shifted to the dais. The mayor gestured to his right and said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the Premier of China and the President of the United States.’ A recording of ‘Hail to the Chief’ began to play as the delegates were led from the side anteroom to the table. The President and his foreign guest were put right next to each other, their wives on either side, followed by wives of the mayor and deputy-mayor.

  It took a minute before all eighteen seats were filled. ‘Okay!’ the mayor announced, once everyone was seated. ‘Let’s eat!’

  Brennan was skipping dinner, which was off his high-metabolic diet cycle of small meals, every two hours. He looked around the conference room. David Chan had the last seat at the head table on their side, and Brennan noticed him staring right back. He did not look happy to see him. Brennan flashed him a smile, but Chan just turned his attention back to his food.

  What a piece of work, the agent thought. Like all of his ilk. Selfish, vain, arrogant. He’ll probably be their next premier. And could I honestly say we’ll be any better of with whoever we pick? Rubber chicken dinners always made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t had to attend one in years, not since the SEALs. But nothing had changed. Wealthy people on a free ride, no sense of dignity about what had just happened, no solemnity. No genuine feeling.

  Nonetheless, he knew, in a few minutes they’d all be called up to that front table, and they’d get a hearty Presidential handshake, and they’d all smile and be grateful just to be recognized, no matter how little, in the long run, actually changed. For folks like Zoey and Drabek, who didn’t get sucked into some international drama every six months, it was probably thrilling. But for Brennan, it was sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  The only thing that mattered would be what happened at the conference itself. Anything that protected Japan and South Korea from nuclear annihilation, that made life better for average people. That he held onto, a rationale for the madness. A human connection.

  After the dinner and ceremony had concluded, the dance began, the President leading the Chinese first lady in a waltz, other guests joining in after a few steps.

  Lee noticed Zoey had drifted away from the activity, toward the back of the room. Drabek had disappeared outside, potentially for a cigarette, though he’d claimed twice already that night that he was ‘done with the damn things.’

  She walked over to join the other woman. ‘You should be trying to enjoy this,’ she suggested.

  Zoey offered a game smile, but there was no doubt the grief was making it hard for her. ‘Yeah…yeah, I guess. They told Norm they’re looking into a government job for me. Apparently, I showed ‘great resilience in the face of extreme circumstances’, or something.’

  ‘It’s something,’ Lee suggested. ‘It’s one small positive out of this. A win. I’d take it.’

  Zoey nodded but her heart wasn’t in it. ‘All my life I’ve ended up alone. I sometimes wonder if I’ll eventually lose the ability to keep trying, or to really love people.’

  ‘Brennan said something about you being a street kid… I grew up on the streets of Hong Kong…’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that stuff, okay?’ She said it sternly. ‘My past is done. I’m going to try and move forward. Revisiting old wounds…’

  ‘Okay,’ Lee said gently, annoyed at herself for making the girl feel worse. ‘But you’re not going to end up alone. You do have friends.’ She spotted Brennan hovering near the arches, crowd watching. ‘I’m going to go talk to Brennan; want to come?’

  Zoey shook her head. ‘I’m good. I just… I guess I need to think about things is all,’ she said.

  Brennan nodded at Lee as she walked over. ‘She looks like she’s struggling.’

  Lee nodded. ‘As you know, this is not a world in which civilians thrive. She seems to be in quite a lot of pain.’

  ‘At least she’s got Drabek. He really dotes on her, doesn’t he? You think he’s…’

  ‘What? A dirty old man?’ Lee scoffed. ‘No, Brennan. Do you always think the worst of everyone?’

  It was probably a fair question, he knew. But he didn’t like Lee thinking she’d won one. ‘It’s kept both of us alive more than once, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, keep hanging onto the notion that I need your help in that regard,’ she suggested. ‘If it makes you feel more manly and secure, then all the better.’

  ‘Manly and…’ He blew off a little steam, then cut off his testy reaction early. ‘Never mind. It’s the job. It’s always about… hey: speaking of which, did you sit down and think this whole thing through yet? I mean, puzzle out how everything went down?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not my department. They’ll be debriefing us both until the next millennium though, I rather imagine.’

  ‘It’s just… the whole thing with the surgeon… something’s wrong with that.’

  She gave him a hard glance sideways. ‘You mean the intel I risked everything to obtain from North Korea? That ‘something’?’

  ‘Yeah. Wen Xiu is a nationalist of the first order, but the man used to be a university professor.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he wrote three volumes on the excesses and mistakes of the cultural revolution, volumes accepted by the government as canon, and work that absolutely eviscerates the legacy of Jiang Qing. I mean, he made her an even worse monster than she was. I get that being a government minister is a great cover for taking over a government; but if you were going to do it for ideological reasons, in the name of Madame Mao… why would you spend three decades prior to that shitting all over her legacy?’

  Lee frowned. She didn’t want to consider it, but he had a point. ‘That… is something I had not considered.’

  ‘Neither had I, until I looked the guy up. The cover would’ve been just as good without attacking the woman he supposedly believed in.’

  ‘You think I’ve gotten it wrong, don’t you? You think he’s not Dorian Fan.’

  She sounded apprehensive, and Brennan hoped it was over the risk, not the loss of face. ‘I… don’t know. I’m a lot less certain than our respective bosses, that’s for damn sure. And if we don’t have him, he’s a threat to world security every moment he’s free. And if they’re wrong about that, what about the old man’s tip, the three students. Perhaps there were others.’

  Lee nodded toward the head table. ‘They don’t seem to be too worried.’ The President and Premier had both take
n their seats and were chatting like old college friends, even as most of the room milled around on their feet. A Secret Service agent stood behind each of them, and she’d spotted at least eight more in plainclothes. ‘They look as if they’re rather taken with each other.’

  ‘Birds of a feather,’ Brennan suggested. He nodded over toward David Chan, who was standing near the doors to the hallway, a scotch and soda in hand, observing. ‘He doesn’t seem as happy.’

  ‘I get the sense he takes a certain pride in things going the way they’re supposed to. He planned much of this and it went to absolute ruin, until Americans intervened. I suspect he’s happy about Wen, though…’

  Brennan frowned. ‘Why? I thought they served on the state security committee…’

  ‘They were friends many years ago, when rising through the party. But Chan’s business successes and wealth made him unpopular with the more traditional communists. Wen felt betrayed, apparently. They’ve fought hammer and tong ever since.’

  ‘Huh.’ Brennan tried to trace a line from Chan’s gaze to the head table. Sure enough, he seemed to be studying his nation’s Premier the way a lion watches an unaware gazelle at a drinking hole. ‘I wouldn’t want to be the people ahead of him these days…’

  Then he frowned again. Zoey had wandered over in Chan’s direction. She hadn’t tried to, but she’d caught his attention nonetheless, eyeing her from a slight side-rear angle as if she were a model in a men’s magazine, tilting his head to study the curve of her buttocks in the tight evening gown. ‘And… he’s a dirty old man, too,’ Brennan said with a sigh. ‘Humanity sucks.’

  A few yards away, Norm Drabek took a load off and, while no one was looking, took one of the rented dress shoes off under the table, then the other. Then he rubbed his aching feet. What was it about age, he wondered, that made a man’s feet hurt? He’d walked a beat as a twenty-something straight out of the academy. Surely that would’ve been worse on them than a few days of running around New York.

  He scoped out the room, trying to get a sense of how the others were doing. Brennan and Lee were standing by an arch near the back of the room, just behind and to his left. The agents looked ill at ease. His gaze followed the crowd along the wall to the door, where Zoey was chatting with David Chan, the billionaire. She looked sheepish and embarrassed, and he had a scotch tumbler in one hand, like something out of an old Playboy Club shot. Drabek felt a surge of irritation at the man’s interest, a parental concern for the way he was looking at her.

  Then he caught himself and felt foolish. If she’d proven anything, it was that she could take care of herself. She’d been so strong and resilient, despite what she’d been through. Sure, when they met, she’d been frightened. That’s what had attracted him to help, like he couldn’t for his daughter. Like he couldn’t for Nicole.

  But then, ever since that first day, Daisy had found the strength. Nicole had never been able to find that resilience. That toughness and bravery. He blamed himself. They’d given her a good home, a loving mother who was always there even when he wasn’t. Compared to that, Zoey had had nothing, a street kid. But she was resourceful, clever, strong, with an inexhaustible will…

  He looked at her again, then down at his socked feet, his toes wiggling in glorious freedom. Then he looked at her again as she chatted with Chan.

  It seemed… wrong.

  Not morally so, though losing Nicole had sometimes made his thoughts and feelings meander in that direction. Instead, it just seemed… off. He’d met dozens like that in his time as a cop, abandoned children, forced to hustle and make it on their own, often from abusive homes. There was always trauma under the surface, wounds that rendered them vulnerable at the worst possible occasions.

  But not Zoey. She’d always acted like her past was only skin deep.

  Brennan slugged back the last of his scotch but didn’t take his eyes off Chan. He’d sidled up to the girl and the were talking closely. He glimpsed Drabek, seated, out of the corner of his eye and wondered whether he was getting uncomfortable.

  Chan leaned in to say something to the girl, whipping off his glasses and chewing on one ear piece like some sage professor, or something; for a man of his age, Brennan thought, the entire display was nauseating.

  They were only about a dozen feet away, he gauged. He considered throwing a cocktail weenie at the man, just to throw him off his ‘game’. They were standing under the lights in front of the main doors, the girl’s white skin and tattoos seeming even more starkly contrasted against his tuxedo and…

  Brennan squinted. Chan had something behind his right ear; it looked like…

  A scar. A large, vertical scar. The kind someone might have after plastic surgery. He whispered something to Zoey, and she nodded once, then turned. She began to walk directly toward the head table.

  Something’s wrong. He could feel it in his bones, though no one else seemed to notice. The dance floor was packed as she approached it. What had Lee said, about the possibility the old man was wrong? Or perhaps, even, lying to them – he had been a devotee of Madame Mao, after all. What was it Master Yip had said, that the little one was the saddest of them all.

  ‘The little one,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Eh?’ Lee replied.

  ‘It’s her.’

  ‘What’s her? What are you babbling about now, Brennan?’

  ‘Becky, the other girl! The little girl in the story, Amy’s sister. We forgot about Becky.’

  ‘You’re saying… what?’

  ‘Zoey. She’s the assassin. Not the other two, not Parnell. They were just ghosts, just sleepers sacrificed to put her in the perfect position. The perfect false flag…’

  Lee looked around frantically for a secret service agent. She covered the ten feet to him and whispered loudly, to avoid any panic but still trying to be heard over the group of young delegates laughing in a group, next to him. ‘I need you to radio your men by the head table, there may be an attack.’

  ‘Pickup what?’ the man yelled over the group. ‘Miss, if you could speak up… Sorry…’ He held up a hand, a voice coming through the radio. Then he turned back to her, ‘You’ll have to give me a moment, ma’am, my superior needs to speak with me…’ He began to shuffle toward the other side of the room.

  ‘Aiyah!’ Lee exclaimed. She turned back to Brennan and shook her head that she couldn’t get through to the man.

  ‘Tell your people!’ he called back. He nodded across the room and she saw the group of four Chinese secret service, sitting together quietly.

  Brennan looked back to the dance floor. Zoey had begun to make her way through the mass of swaying partygoers. He saw her dip low for a moment, as if retrieving something from the floor, but lost sight of her. There were too many bodies, and she was a small woman. He began making his way over, pushing people aside, increasingly frustrated. In the midst of the dancefloor he saw a glint of chrome; he reached into his back waistband, then realized he didn’t have a piece; they’d been individually patting down every single guest at the main doors in the wake of the incident. The only people carrying were secret service agents and a few cops.

  Cops.

  He looked over at Drabek. He was standing, despite his stockinged feet, staring in the same direction as Brennan. Then he looked over and caught the agent’s eye, then shook his head. He wasn’t local law enforcement, so he wasn’t armed. They reacted in tandem, both running for the crowd, shoving dancers aside. The PA system blared a folky polka, a lighthearted group song. ‘GUN!’ Brennan screamed into the crowd, his voice drowned out by a chorus of three claps, everyone joining in.

  Zoey was just yards from the head table. She stood tall, drawing the pistol from hip height, extending it, Brennan too far to react, screaming in vain as she sighted the Chinese Premier, his face frozen in shock and surprise. The crowd swayed in front of Brennan at just the wrong moment, his line of sight cut off, the crack of each gunshot echoing off the ballroom walls.

  The crowd screamed on mass, peop
le peeling away from the dance floor, panicking at the scene. Most of the head table were on their feet. Brennan saw movement to his right.

  It was Lee, her right arm extended, pistol in hand even as the Chinese security agent behind her pawed at her to get his weapon back.

  Zoey lay on her back in a pool of blood, her head cocked awkwardly to one side, her torso twisted ungracefully at the waist. Her face was placid other than the small trickle of blood running from one corner of her mouth, her blue eyes wide open but vacant, free finally of the burden of life. When she was still Becky Sawyer, she’d been the fastest girl her age. But it had still never been good enough, never enough to save them from the monsters who lurked down the street. And after that, there had never been a real moment, where she was herself. Just a parade of identities, biding time, fitting in, learning skills, chief among them how best to manipulate hearts.

  Brennan looked over at Drabek, expecting him to rush over to her. But he just stood there, arms at his side, shoulders slumped, weighed down by the sort of sadness that can rob a man of his soul.

  EPILOGUE

  LANGLEY, Virginia

  Brennan watched through the one-way glass as a colleague debriefed Drabek. In the three days past, they’d already gone at him for some twenty hours. It was like Tarrant personally blamed the veteran cop for letting her get so close.

  ‘How’s it going in there?’

  Speak of the devil. ‘Jonah. He’s holding up. How much longer is this going to go on?’

  ‘Until we’re damn certain he knew nothing. They finally got something more recent on ‘Becky Sawyer’. Remember that trainee who disappeared, Sara Evans…?’

  Brennan was stunned. ‘Mike’s star pupil?’

  Tarrant nodded. ‘Plastic surgery. They were going to leak her identity to the Chinese and American media; no one would believe that she wasn’t an undercover assassin once a prior tie to the agency was established.’