Shadow Code (A John Kovac Thriller Book 2) (John Kovac Thriller Series)

by David Caris

  The woman turned and walked back up to the house, choosing not to hear this last remark.

  Watching Feryal enter, closing the door behind her, Megan was confused. Nothing about this place made sense to her. She put a hand into her pocket. She felt for the photograph and found it, lying flat against the cold metal of the solid-state drive.

  Megan realized she had some questions that her father would need to answer, and answer to her satisfaction, before she said a word about Kovac or Paris.

  Chapter 54

  Kovac used the chef’s knife to get it done.

  It had been a long time since he killed with a knife like this – premeditated, one man after the other – and both terrorists begged in broken English for mercy.

  Kovac didn’t hear a word of it. And nor did anyone else. He was parked off to the side of a narrow road, on the edge of a forest overlooking a vineyard and field, the latter little more than endless mud. Ahead of him, the road continued, running through trees, their spindly trunks coated in vine and surrounded by thick, waist-high weeds. He had driven almost as far as Tours, and the plan was to head for Spain. If he found himself the center of a manhunt, he wanted to be out of France and as far from Paris as possible.

  He’d already doused the truck and the men in gasoline, and now that he was done with the knife he set the truck ablaze. He had considered forgoing the knife altogether and letting both men burn, but he had wanted to kill them himself; had wanted both of them to see him do it and sense there was no hope. He had read enough in their phones to know what they were planning, what they would’ve done to countless elementary students, and the heat of the blaze felt good.

  Kovac crossed the road. He cast a casual eye across the mud and vineyard, but he was alone. He walked to the scooter he had stolen before coming here – transported in the truck, and removed ahead of the dousing – and put on the small black helmet.

  He started the engine.

  He was hungry and he was tired, but he had a long ride ahead of him. His first priority now had to be getting across the border. He didn’t have an exact destination, nor any real plan, but with a manhunt looming France was out.

  Chapter 55

  Luther squinted out the SUV’s window, fighting the glare of the afternoon sun. He was staring into a garishly pink cafe. ‘This is the place?’ he asked, hoping against hope.

  ‘Like I said, best cafe in this area.’

  ‘This is revenge? For me showing up like this?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad.’

  Megan got out and led him into the cafe, completely ignoring a short queue. Luther’s three bodyguards followed.

  The cafe had pink walls coated in flowers and pink neon decorations. From what Luther could see, it also had pink lattes. A majority of the clientele were young women, many posing for selfies.

  A waitress spotted Megan. She rushed to show her to a table and take an order. Megan chose – of all things – a beetroot latte. It arrived a few minutes later, by which time Luther had insisted on them moving to a secluded table downstairs. He didn’t need the paparazzi today and nor did Megan.

  The beetroot latte, when it arrived, looked to Luther more like a salmon latte. But Megan promised it was good.

  ‘You come here often, I take it?’

  Megan nodded. ‘I have a girlfriend who loves it, so yes. Enough to be known.’

  His own coffee, mercifully, was brown. He took a cautious sip then picked up a menu.

  ‘So how was your flight?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Fine. Nice work in that press conference.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was an awkward silence, as chit-chat failed them without either one of them wanting to say Kovac’s name first.

  Thankfully a waitress appeared, perhaps having seen Luther go for the menu. He ordered a croissant and Megan surprised him by distractedly asking for the same.

  When the waitress departed, Megan seemed cagey. She stirred her beetroot latte with a kitsch teaspoon and eventually said. ‘I don’t want to sound insecure, Dad, but where’s Bishop? What did you put him on?’

  Luther calculated quickly, and decided to reveal what he could. There was enough background noise and general din in the cafe not to worry about bugs. He filled Megan in on the mission in Pakistan, then on Mehmood and the Chinese BoNT processing facility. ‘It’s what we feared. Peng manufactured enough BoNT to attack every city in the world ten times over, and all of it labeled as if we produced it. Curzon will be facing a fight for survival. Another attack on the heels of London – however small – and we’re done. With the hack hampering our ability to coordinate a response, the PR damage alone will kill us.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ Luther asked.

  ‘I know all that. What else do you have him on?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’ Luther kept his face blank, even as his mind drifted to the journalist who had peppered Megan with questions about Kovac. Thanks to Ben Lewis, that journalist would soon be joining Bishop down at the coast, along with two other house guests, Mehmood and Anna.

  Megan gave up waiting on an answer. She stood and got two napkins in preparation for the croissant. She returned and sat down, and put a photograph on the table. ‘One of my key IT people resigned suddenly for no reason last week. Cooper McConville. I wasn’t informed.’

  Luther noted the disconnect. The photo from his past sitting there between them, raising all sorts of questions, and Megan talking as if she had never placed it out in the open.

  A pincer attack.

  He decided to address the photo first. After landing in London and hearing Megan was at the Kapoor’s house, he had figured this question was coming. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where you got that photo, but the answer is yes. It was an affair.’

  Megan seemed to think for a moment. ‘I guess you’re entitled to a certain degree of privacy on something like that, even if it was my mother you were cheating on.’

  Luther noted the cold tone. He swallowed hard. ‘Thank you.’

  Megan tapped the vivacious young beauty in the photo. ‘Is this the woman who hugged you? Back at the Kapoor house?’

  ‘Yes. I take it you found this in her house?’

  ‘The skylight.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Kapoor. He put it in the skylight before he blew his brains out. I think he knew his wife would be the one to eventually open that skylight. I didn’t understand until now, because it takes effort to put something high up behind a blind like that. Maybe he wanted it to flutter down, a last word on the matter?’

  Luther said nothing.

  So Virat had known all along…

  Luther noticed a young man photographing his girlfriend in the staircase that led down to this lower level of the cafe. He was photographing her in front of a pink neon sign that read: ‘Love is a miracle”.

  He refocused on Megan. ‘Since we’re on the topic of Bishop – Bishop attempted to bring Kovac in. We tried to grab him before the bombing at the soccer stadium. Someone got in the way.’

  ‘I know.’

  Luther concentrated on Megan’s face. ‘And shortly after that, Kovac visited your office.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then your loft apartment.’

  ‘What are you getting at, Dad?’

  ‘Then you stayed the night at his house.’

  She said nothing, forcing him to spell it out. ‘Are you sleeping with him, Megan?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the fishing boat in Japan, at the exchange. The explosives. What did Kovac say about all that?’

  ‘You first.’ She folded her arms but shifted uncomfortably. ‘Cooper McConville. I looked into it. He was fired. But no one could say who did it. And now apparently he’s missing?’

  ‘I fired him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Luther shook his head. ‘Your turn, I believe.’

  Megan took another sip from her latte. ‘What are you asking? Do
es Kovac know that the explosives in Japan were real? Yes. He knows we sold him out for Lottie.’

  ‘Knows or suspects?’

  ‘Suspects.’ Megan gave a shrug, as if the distinction didn’t matter.

  Luther leaned in. ‘And how does he feel about that?’

  ‘Why fire Cooper? He was effective. You intervene and do that right before a hack? A hack that starts with Virat Kapoor, whose wife you were screwing?’

  Luther noted that Megan was putting things together quickly. He had left his nebulizer in the SUV, and with his mind clouded by jetlag and oxygen deprivation he was struggling to keep up let alone compete. He could feel himself losing track of the various threads she was deliberately opening. ‘Who says the hack started with Kapoor?’

  Megan turned her phone around. ‘I got a text five minutes ago. Juliette’s staff are saying this all started with a routine software upgrade issued by Wilson Software Solutions. A company we entrust with high-level access, yet also a company we don’t seem to pay. Instead it operates on a shoestring budget, out of a house belonging to a woman you –’

  ‘You’re angry,’ Luther said. ‘So I let it pass the first few times… But if you insist on putting it in crass terms again, I won’t be saying another word to you about any of this.’

  ‘You’re hardly saying a word as it is.’ She leaned in too, meeting him at the middle of the table. ‘The fact is, you’ve clearly been running this company the whole time. You didn’t retire after Peng. And not only are you connected to this hack somehow, but you’re also trying to kill Kovac.’

  Luther sat back, defeated, doing battle with a bizarre mix of emotions. On the one hand, he was irritated by her ability to pin him like this. On the other hand… well, there was no denying his pride. She had almost made it look easy. ‘If I wanted Kovac dead, Megan, Bishop would’ve killed him already.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Megan seemed ready to go for the kill, but the croissants arrived.

  Like a bell marking the end of the eleventh round, Luther thought. And he wouldn’t survive a twelfth.

  He took the deepest breath he could manage, wondering whether he could lie.

  No. Not with his brain as it was. He wouldn’t pull it off. Selective truth was the safe path forward.

  He waited until they were alone again, then relented: ‘Okay. Fine. The truth. We have no choice. Thanks to Daniel, Peng nearly destroyed us. Peng found out about Kovac, about Bishop, even about my decisions as King. I…’

  ‘Whatever it is, Dad, just tell me now. I’ll figure it out eventually.’ She tapped the photo. ‘As soon as you heard where I was, you came hurrying to get me. You didn’t want me talking to your mistress. Why not?’

  Luther ignored this and stuck to his own script: ‘Megan, calm down and listen to me. You’re right.’

  She blinked in surprise. Then her eyes narrowed again. ‘About?’

  ‘All of it. I’ve decided to sacrifice Kovac.’

  It took Megan a moment to absorb this. ‘Jesus Christ, Dad.’ She glared at him. ‘You’ve lost your mind.’

  ‘But Bishop refused the order. You’re right about that, too. I suppose I received his answer to that question in Japan, back when he chose not to blow up the fishing boat.’

  ‘Sacrificing Kovac for Lottie I could get my head around. But you’re telling me you’re going to kill him just because he wants a normal life?’

  Luther shook his head, impatient to explain. ‘Kovac has always been like a son to Bishop. That’s why Bishop gambled on Lottie being a double. No other reason. I gave Bishop clear orders and he ignored them. That told me Kovac was a threat. He had – still has – power over Bishop.’

  ‘You sound so paranoid right now.’

  ‘And you sound naive. Hear me out.’

  Luther noticed the couple taking photographs were still on the staircase. That felt odd to him. There were other places to take selfies in this cafe, a lot of them. He focused in on the man. Young, with a face that started wide but narrowed sharply to a sorry excuse for a chin. He had a backpack, which he had dropped on the stairs. He now crouched, as if to pull something out. Luther’s bodyguards, positioned around the cafe, noticed this too. They subtly closed in.

  When the man stood again, he confirmed Luther’s suspicions. He produced a camera with a large lens. The man had been using his phone until now, but he clearly wanted a shot that would command top dollar.

  Luther subtly gestured for his bodyguards to hang back. He refocused on Megan, deciding to let things play out with the photographer. He didn’t want to interrupt this conversation, which had the potential to determine nothing less than his daughter’s memory of him. He needed to navigate it as well as he could – and far better than he had so far.

  Megan said: ‘So if it wasn’t Bishop, who did you employ to kill Kovac?’

  ‘I created an auction on the dark web.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, that was you?’

  ‘You’re aware of it, then.’

  ‘Of course I am. Kovac is, too.’

  ‘I needed someone invested in the hit. Someone who would do it well, and immediately cover their tracks.’

  ‘Someone who wouldn’t lead back to you, you mean.’

  ‘Exactly. Who Bishop could then kill – taking his own revenge.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘No, I’m a realist, Megan. And you need to be one too. Kovac is a weapon. All weapons can be turned on their owners. And all weapons run their course. They wear down. They become dangerous.’

  On the staircase, the girl had taken up position between Luther and the table. She was posing. The man started taking pictures of her again, but with the big camera now. He was maintaining the illusion she was his focus, but Luther noted he was in the background of each shot. Megan, too.

  Still he let it run. He needed more time.

  Megan said: ‘So what, that’s why you fired Cooper without telling me? So he wouldn’t detect the auction?’

  ‘Cooper set the auction up for me.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You killed him, too?’

  Luther realized he had lost control of the conversation. Megan was making leaps, but landing squarely on her feet. He saw he had been wrong to choose selective honesty. She was connecting what he had felt were scattered and disparate dots.

  And she wasn’t ready for the answers.

  ‘What upsets you most?’ he asked. ‘What I’m trying to do, or that I did it without burdening you?’

  Megan shook her head, clearly disgusted. Then she seemed to make another leap. Her face clouded over. ‘Anna.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Simple logic. You’re telling me you’re cleaning up any and all loose ends. If I look into it, will I find Anna’s vanished like McConville? Is this how we solve everything now?’

  Luther said nothing for a moment. He was trapped by his own stupidity, his own overconfidence. He had messed up here – badly.

  ‘This is so wrong.’ Megan pushed her croissant towards the middle of the table.

  ‘He met with her, Megan. Here in London.’ His voice dropped to a raspy whisper. ‘Kovac met with her. He’s gathering evidence against you, against me.’

  ‘And your conscience? Where’s that in all this? Your fucking God committee of one? What happened to that, Dad?’ Her eyes were suddenly alight with anger. ‘When I was a baby, you couldn’t bring yourself to kill some of the men who murdered my sister. Proportional justice, you called it. Now suddenly you’re happy to kill a guy like Cooper McConville just because he knows something? What about his family, his kids?’

  ‘He was stealing from us, Megan, selling confidential information on the dark web. That’s why I chose him. As for his family, he walked out on them last year – for a woman younger than you.’

  ‘Right. Infidelity. Because you’ve never done that.’

  Luther felt himself swallow, struggling to do it. His throat was dry, his breathing thin and ineffective. He reache
d out and took Megan’s hands, feeling a rising panic now. His head was swirling. ‘Megan, please. We have this company. You and me. And unless we’re ruthless, that will be taken from us. Nothing is assured in this life, do you hear what I’m trying to tell you? It’s important. I’m not going to be around forever.’

  She pulled her hands back.

  He left his where they were, in an open appeal. ‘There is no advantage which cannot be stripped away. I’ve made mistakes. I don’t deny that. I’ve done things I regret. But Cooper McConville isn’t one of them. We are under attack.’ He tapped the table twice to emphasize these last two words. ‘Even before London, we ran the very real risk of Government scrutiny. What do you think it’s going to be like now? Even if the attacks stop with London, they’ll requisition every computer, every file, pour over every document…’ He pushed the photograph towards her. ‘I’m cleaning up, as you say, because I’m preparing us for war. Nothing less. Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me you refuse to help?’

  Luther’s train of thought was interrupted by the photographer. The girl had edged out of the frame now, and the man on the stairs was taking photos of Luther and Megan unobscured. Luther heard the soft clicking, even over the din of the cafe.

  He had let it run as long as he could, but was now out of time. Even Megan picked up on it, swiveling at the soft but insistent sound of the shutter.

  Luther straightened up at the table and pointed, and his bodyguards immediately closed in. One attacked the photographer from above, coming down the staircase. The other two crossed the bottom level of the cafe and closed in from below. They did it subtly, but there was no questioning their effectiveness. In less than thirty seconds, the three men had everything the photographer and his “girlfriend” owned. They led them both up the stairs.

  Megan watched until they were gone, then turned back. ‘Did you ever consider it might be better to surrender it all?’

  ‘No.’ He decided he might as well tell her everything. He had nothing to lose now. ‘Megan, I know who we’re up against here. Bibi Dauguet.’

  Megan recognized the name from her conversation with Kovac.