by Adam Hamdy
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Pearce replied.
So they drove on with nothing but the heavy rain breaking the silence. They passed a handful of twisted, buckled vehicles that blocked two lanes of the highway. Rain-soaked drivers gathered on the shoulder and gave statements to the police, while a few of those involved in the pile-up were checked by paramedics. Other drivers slowed to stare at the miserable scene, but Pearce wasn’t interested. He was trying to figure out how he could ever trust Leila again.
Chapter 92
Brigitte looked up at the biplane that hung from the high ceiling. She was sitting in a row of seats that were tucked under a large staircase which rose through the huge arrivals hall. People gathered in the vast space, waiting to greet travellers. The man next to her was on his phone, and scrolled through Facebook, pausing only to play inane viral videos. The woman to Brigitte’s left was reading an Anthony Horowitz novel. The blue and grey biplane was supposed to be some kind of inspirational link to the early days of flight, but it just made Brigitte maudlin. Those earliest planes had been used to drop chemical weapons on troops in the First World War, and here she was more than a hundred years later dealing with the consequences of the same evil. Would men ever stop developing foul ways to kill each other in their quest for power?
Brigitte leaned forward and rubbed her face. Her skin wasn’t as sensitive as it used to be and it felt as though someone else was touching her. She guessed she was experiencing the numbing effects of the fentanyl.
‘You OK?’ a voice asked, and she looked up to see Scott Pearce standing over her.
‘Not really,’ Brigitte said. She glanced round, scanning for danger, and spotted Leila Nahum leaning against the metal rail of the mezzanine balcony above them. ‘What I’ve got to say is for your ears only.’ She looked pointedly at Leila.
‘OK,’ Pearce said, leading her to a vacant table in a nearby coffee concession. They were directly below the balcony and out of Leila’s sight. ‘Kyle says you betrayed him.’
‘I did it to get inside,’ Brigitte replied as she sat down. ‘They had us under surveillance. It was the only way I could make progress. And I couldn’t tell him about it, because I needed his reaction to be believable. And mine too. I knew they’d interrogate me, so I used self-hypnosis and neurolinguistics to convince myself of the betrayal, but I didn’t turn, Scott, not for real. I slipped the knife in his pocket and made sure they took his false papers, credit cards and money in the van with him, so he could use them to escape the country. You know me well enough to know he’d never have got out if I’d really turned.’
Pearce considered her words, but she wasn’t interested in his approval.
‘It’s not important whether you believe me or not,’ Brigitte continued. ‘This is what matters.’ She checked they weren’t being watched and pulled up her sleeve to reveal a black patch on her shoulder.
‘What is it?’ Pearce asked.
‘This is what it’s all about,’ Brigitte answered. ‘Life. Death. This thing controls both.’
Chapter 93
Twenty-five minutes after she’d shown him the patch, Pearce sat back and looked at the Frenchwoman. Her eyes glistened and for a moment she looked as though her spirit had been broken. He reached across the table and touched her arm reassuringly. She recoiled instantly, as though she’d been stung. She sat upright and drew a mask over her emotions. A couple of breaths later and she’d returned to her icy self and looked at him with fierce indignation.
‘This is why I don’t want the others to know,’ she said. ‘They’d treat me like I’m sick. Pity.’ She spat the word. ‘Sympathy. They’re not my style. I told you because you’re like me. You’re a pragmatist.’
Pearce wasn’t sure he’d have her strength. How could she even think of being pragmatic in the face of such horror? If he reached across the table and removed that patch, she’d be dead within moments. What a curse to live with.
He’d been right to suspect there was more to the plot than fentanyl. Pearce had never heard of the Red Wolves before, but there was no doubt this was a geopolitical play. This thing they’d created, this weapon, could be used to enslave hundreds of thousands of people, millions perhaps. It was a tool they could use to blackmail governments, holding their victims hostage to the supply of the patches, or they could simply commit mass murder on a terrifying scale, by refusing to provide new product.
There was no way this stuff could ever be allowed to reach America.
‘How long do you have before the dose runs out?’ Pearce asked.
‘Three or four days,’ Brigitte said. ‘At least that’s what they told me.’
‘Then we’d better get moving.’ Pearce stood, and they walked into the main arrivals hall. He looked up at Leila – another problem, but one that could wait. He nodded at her to signal the all clear, and she started towards the stairs.
‘We’re going to need a piece of your patch,’ Pearce said to Brigitte. ‘I want to give it to Clifton. See if we can put Huxley Blaine Carter’s resources to good use. They might be able to replicate the synthetic hormone.’
Brigitte nodded, but Pearce sensed little hope in her.
They waited for Leila to join them, and as she limped across the hall, leaning on her collapsible cane, she eyed Brigitte with hostility.
‘Well?’ Leila asked.
‘She’s good,’ Pearce said. ‘We’re up against a clock.’
Leila nodded, but her expression didn’t change. It was clear she didn’t trust Brigitte, and she was right to be suspicious. The Frenchwoman’s tale might have been a ruse to get her back inside the team. As they left the airport, Pearce wondered just how much he could trust either of his companions.
Chapter 94
Pearce went into the motel room first. Wollerton was lying on the bed, watching TV. The bathroom door was closed and the shower was running. Wollerton looked round as Pearce entered.
‘Where did you . . .’ he cut himself off when he saw Brigitte, and after taking a moment to digest the situation, he leaped to his feet.
‘Start talking,’ he said sternly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Brigitte replied.
‘She set you up to get inside,’ Pearce explained.
‘You had no right,’ Wollerton said to Brigitte. ‘How can we trust her?’
‘We don’t have to trust her,’ Pearce replied. ‘We just have to listen.’
The shower stopped.
‘Even if she’s telling the truth, she gambled with my life,’ Wollerton said. ‘If I hadn’t—’
‘If you hadn’t what?’ Brigitte cut in. ‘Had a knife? Had your false identities? Your credit cards? Money? I helped you escape.’
Wollerton hesitated.
The bathroom door opened and Robert Clifton stepped out, wrapped in a towel. He did a double take when he saw the stand-off.
Brigitte surprised them all by barging past Pearce and jumping over the bed. She grabbed Clifton and hurled him against the wall.
‘You son of a bitch,’ she yelled. ‘What have you got us into?’
‘I . . . I don’t . . .’ Clifton stammered.
Wollerton looked perplexed, and Pearce crossed the room and tried to pull Brigitte off the man, but she resisted. Leila entered and shut the door behind her.
‘You sent us over there totally unprepared,’ Brigitte said. ‘You knew what we were up against, and you sent us there alone.’
‘I didn’t,’ Clifton protested. ‘You know what I know.’
‘Really?’ Brigitte challenged. ‘Why was Huxley’s father killed? What was Tate Blaine Carter doing? How did Huxley know about Black Thirteen? About Narong Angsakul and the Egyptian prison break?’
‘Systems,’ Clifton responded fearfully. ‘Algorithms. He watches the world for this sort of thing.’
‘Why?’ Brigitte asked.
There was a moment of silence. Brigitte had asked all the right questions and had shifted attention from herself to the former NSA director and his paymast
er. If she was playing Pearce and the others, she was doing it masterfully. Pearce believed her, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility the Red Wolves were using the patch as leverage to force her to betray them.
‘They did things to me over there,’ Brigitte said. ‘Things . . .’ she tailed off. ‘I wasn’t prepared. None of us were.’
She looked at Wollerton, who nodded sympathetically.
‘I’m sorry,’ Clifton replied. ‘I don’t know anything else. I swear. We’re trying our best to figure out what’s going on.’
‘But you know it’s bigger than who controls the drugs coming through the Port of Seattle,’ Pearce suggested.
Clifton nodded. ‘We all know that.’
‘There’s a geopolitical angle,’ Pearce said, finally managing to pull Brigitte away.
The fight had left her and she looked as though she might cry. No one else would understand her emotional turmoil. They might think she’d been tortured, but they’d have no idea she was living with a death sentence.
‘Brigitte discovered an organization called the Red Wolves. Chinese ultranationalists who’ve developed a chemical weapon that’s delivered via fentanyl patches. It attacks the endocrinal system and shuts down the production of PTH, which leads to death through suffocation in seconds. It’s the toxin used in the prison break and the Meals Seattle and community centre attacks. The patch delivers a synthetic hormone that replaces PTH, but the moment the dose runs out or the patch is removed . . .’ Pearce left the implication hanging. ‘The Red Wolves have sought control of the West Coast drugs business so they can get this stuff out to hundreds of thousands of addicts across America.’
There was a moment of stunned silence.
‘This information came at great personal cost,’ Pearce said, as Brigitte stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.
‘They could hold entire nations hostage,’ Clifton remarked.
Pearce nodded. ‘Or kill thousands by cutting off the supply.’
Wollerton whistled. ‘We need to take this in. FBI. NSA.’
‘Brigitte said they’d compromised Chinese Intelligence,’ Pearce replied. He saw Clifton agreeing with him. ‘And Black Thirteen proved MI6 has been infiltrated.’
‘Yeah, but this is different. We’re not talking about a few hundred lives; we’re talking about thousands. Hundreds of thousands maybe,’ Wollerton protested.
Pearce glanced at Leila darkly, and she looked away. ‘We think there’s a link between the two operations; Black Thirteen and the Red Wolves.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Wollerton said.
‘I wish I was,’ Pearce replied. ‘So we’ve got to assume there’s a chance US Intelligence has been infiltrated.’
‘By who?’ Wollerton asked. ‘You’re talking about state-level intervention. There’s only a handful of organizations in the world that could pull off operations like this.’
Pearce shrugged.
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Clifton said.
The bathroom door opened, and Brigitte entered, carrying a glass. There was a tiny cutting from the patch in the bottom. ‘I was able to get this. It’s a piece of one of the fentanyl patches,’ she said. She took it to Clifton, who shrank back. ‘Huxley has labs. Get his people to analyse this. Find out how it works. If we can’t stop the Red Wolves, the world is going to need a way to cure people who’ve been exposed to the patch.’
Clifton hesitated.
‘The powder is airborne. The patches work by touch,’ Brigitte told him. ‘As long as you don’t touch it, it can’t hurt you.’
Clifton nodded and took the glass. ‘I can get this to one of Hux’s facilities in San Francisco. He’s going to need to know about what’s happened.’
‘And since it seems we can all trust each other again,’ Pearce remarked, ‘we should move back to the building on Union Street. It’ll make a better base of operations than this place. And we’re going to need every advantage we can get if we’re going to work out a way to stop the Red Wolves.’
Chapter 95
Two hours later, they were gathered around Leila’s desk in the large open-plan space on the fifteenth floor of Huxley Blaine Carter’s building on Union Street. Clifton had arranged a chopper and was en route to San Francisco with the piece of Brigitte’s patch.
Leila sat in the chair by her laptop, and Wollerton leaned against her desk. Brigitte was cross-legged on the floor, looking utterly fatigued. Pearce could only imagine the stress of living with a ticking clock. She had three days in which to replace the patch or find another way to keep herself alive.
‘The formula is controlled by two men,’ Brigitte said. ‘Li Jun Xiao and David Song. No one else knows it. They murdered the scientist who developed the XTX toxin and the synthetic hormone.’
‘So we kill them and destroy the production plant and this stuff dies with them,’ Wollerton remarked.
‘What about the shipment?’ Leila asked. ‘We can’t let it reach the streets. If we destroy the supply, anyone who’s been exposed to it will die.’
Pearce stopped pacing and looked at Brigitte, who blanched.
‘We find out what ship it’s coming in on,’ Wollerton said. ‘And we sink it.’
Pearce’s old mentor didn’t know it, but he’d just suggested Brigitte agree to a death sentence. She got to her feet and walked over to the other desk, which was covered with gear. She leaned against it, and Pearce caught Wollerton and Leila exchanging puzzled glances.
‘He’s right,’ Brigitte said at last. ‘We’ve got no way of identifying which container the shipment might be in, or even how many containers they’re using. If we miss just one . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Sinking the ship is the only way to be sure.’
Leila checked her laptop. ‘There are fifteen container ships on their way to Seattle from China, all scheduled to dock this week. There’s nothing in Ziad Malek’s port system that gives any clue to the vessel’s identity. We’re going to need human intelligence.’
Pearce had been thinking about the problem ever since he’d learned about the nature of the shipment. ‘I know someone who might be able to help us,’ he said. ‘I want you to work up an ops plan for taking out a container ship,’ he told Wollerton and Brigitte. ‘Get Robert involved. See what resources Blaine Carter can offer us.’
‘And me?’ Leila asked.
‘Pull together everything you can on Evan Hill and his associates,’ Pearce replied. ‘See if you can link him to the Red Wolves.’
‘Tayib,’ Leila responded reluctantly, using the Arabic word for OK.
‘And you?’ Wollerton asked.
‘I’m going to see an old king,’ Pearce replied.
Chapter 96
Pearce caught a cab to Massachusetts Street and collected his bike, which was where he’d left it the day he’d met Rasul and his men. There was no queue outside St Martin’s Shelter, but a few men and women gathered in the seating area beside the building, smoking and talking. Most of their faces were prematurely aged and their clothes were ragged and dirty. These were the people who’d be on the front line of the Red Wolves’ plot to strike at America, but Pearce wondered how the US government would react. If the plan involved blackmail and the Red Wolves tried to extort money or geopolitical influence, would the government save people many already considered to be lost? Would those in power value the lives of addicts? Or would they let them die?
Pearce was determined the question would never be asked, let alone answered. He pulled on his helmet, kicked his bike into gear and sped across the city to Webster Point, an upmarket neighbourhood where mansions nestled in tree-covered, waterfront plots. High hedges offered the residents a degree of privacy, but as he rode along Laurelhurst Drive, Pearce caught glimpses of Lake Washington and the rich green mountains that towered in the distance.
Pearce found the gate for 3022 Laurelhurst and stopped beside the video intercom. He removed his helmet and pressed the buzzer. Less than a minute later, the high black metal gates swung op
en.
Pearce rode along a short drive that was lined with evergreens. After a hundred metres, the wood gave way to a large lawn and the drive widened as it came to an end in front of a huge waterfront house. The property stood at the edge of Lake Washington, facing Kirkland and Hunts Point. Down beyond the small back garden, Pearce saw a speedboat bobbing roughly against a jetty – the rain continued unabated, and the chop of the water told of an approaching storm. The Mediterranean-style mansion must have had a footprint of at least five thousand feet, and was two storeys high. Deni and Rasul Salamov were waiting in the driveway with two of their bodyguards. Abbas Idrisov, their wizened financial advisor, hovered by the front door. When the bike stopped, father and son approached, and after Pearce had removed his helmet and dismounted, Deni embraced him.
‘You saved my family,’ Deni said. ‘You saved my people. I owe you everything.’
‘I don’t know what we would have done without you,’ Rasul agreed, shaking Pearce’s hand.
‘Come inside,’ Deni said, ushering Pearce towards the house.
As they crossed the driveway, Pearce saw Essi Salamov at one of the upstairs windows. She was standing beside her lover; the man Ziad had beaten up.
Chapter 97
‘Who’s the guy?’ Jack asked, looking down at the men heading into the house.
‘I don’t know,’ Essi said. Her brother had introduced him as Amr, but somehow she suspected that wasn’t the man’s real name. He’d intervened to save them at the community centre, and when she looked at her boyfriend of the past few months and recalled how he’d been beaten in the street at the hands of Ziad Malek, she wondered whether he’d have been brave enough to stand up to the man who’d tried to kill them. ‘I think he’s a friend of my brother. He was the one who saved us at the centre.’
