The Fourth Option

by Matt Hilton

  I waited for clarity.

  ‘Suzanne Bouchard also died.’ He scowled at the wrongness of his statement. ‘According to Arrowsake she died,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time those bastards have lied to us,’ I said. Our old masters had played with the mortality of no less than three people in the past few years, and two of them had done a Lazarus. Of the trio only my brother John was truly dead, except the cabal behind Arrowsake had lied to me by swearing he was alive and in hiding, until I’d done their bidding and the truth finally came out. As absurd as it sounded, I wasn’t shocked to learn that another two dead people had been resurrected without the aid of supernatural intervention. ‘What was the line of bullshit they used with Sue?’

  ‘Drowning. Allegedly she was scuba diving off one of the Canary Islands and didn’t resurface.’ Rink shrugged. ‘I bought that line, because I knew she was into diving. Even experienced divers can easily get into trouble.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you that maybe Arrowsake also bought the line? What if they had nothing to do with the cover up this time? They were the ones who ordered Mercer’s death, maybe they have nothing to do with him resurfacing either.’

  ‘They’re a lot of “maybes” to consider, Hunter. We won’t know until we talk to Walter.’

  ‘Maybe not even then,’ I said, and finally elicited the faintest smile from him. I took out my phone. ‘Want me to do the honours?’

  ‘Not sure he’d answer if he sees my number,’ said Rink, which wasn’t exactly true.

  There were few contacts in my list, and I hit the number for Walter Hayes Conrad’s personal cell phone. Before it ever reached him, my call would be bounced via various servers and encryption devices. Walter was that secretive. But under the circumstances, it was probably best that our conversation wasn’t open to eavesdroppers. Still, despite the nature of my call, I put the phone on speaker so Rink could listen in.

  ‘Joe? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.’ As soon as Walter made the announcement I knew that he was lying.

  ‘It’s been a while, Walt, thought it was high time I got in touch,’ I said, making out a social call had been on my agenda for a while. But he would know I was lying too. Our conversations often took similar shape, half-truths and out-right lies on his part, gruff acceptance that I’d never get a straight answer on mine. Occasionally though, I could get what I wanted from him if I persevered and dug through the deliberate obfuscation. I’d gone beyond a point where I found his lies offensive, because it was simply in his job description to be deceptive. He was after all a CIA sub-division controller, whose secret went even deeper. He was also a direct conduit to Arrowsake, perhaps even one of the shadowy figures behind the recently re-established counterterrorism group Rink and I once worked for. This new incarnation of Arrowsake was a different beast than the one we’d belonged to, and there was nothing about it that appealed to my morality, while Rink passionately hated it.

  ‘Where are you?’ Walt asked.

  ‘I’m surprised you have to ask.’

  ‘Despite what you think I don’t keep tabs on your movements.’ Walter snorted out a laugh. ‘Not all of the time.’

  ‘I’m near Panama City.’ If he wanted to it would be a simple task for Walter to identify the source of my call.

  ‘Is Rink with you?’

  ‘I’m here,’ Rink growled.

  ‘Of course you are.’

  I looked at Rink and raised my eyebrows in question.

  ‘Go for it, brother,’ he said, urging I make a point and get the call over as quickly as possible.

  ‘Jason Mercer,’ I said into the phone.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You heard me, Walt. But I’ll repeat the name incase your hearing is failing in your old age. Jason Mercer.’

  ‘I heard you fine, son, I’m just unsure why you mention that name.’

  ‘So you do remember it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Walter was the one who’d sanctioned Mercer’s death. It was probably one name among hundreds, but I believed that he knew the name of every person whose execution he’d personally ordered. Perhaps their faces even plagued his dreams the way they did mine some nights. ‘I only question why you bring it up now.’

  ‘He’s alive, Walt, and I think you already know that.’

  I waited for his response, but Walter was silent for a moment. I wondered what lies he was trying to come up with. When his answer came it wasn’t what I expected. ‘I did suspect he’d survived.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time you saved the life of an enemy. What did you do, Walt: have him taken away to some secret bunker where he was coaxed back to health, held there and reprogrammed until you could mobilise him again? It’d sound crazy if I didn’t know it has happened before.’

  ‘Martin Maxwell was different,’ Walt said.

  ‘Martin Maxwell was a psychopathic serial killer,’ I corrected him. ‘Mercer isn’t that different. The only difference was he didn’t keep trophies from his victims.’

  Walter exhaled into the phone.

  ‘You’ll probably doubt what I say, but I had no part in saving Jason Mercer. Rink? You’re the one who shot him, you’re the one who reported him dead.’

  ‘Don’t put this back on me, you son of a bitch,’ snapped Rink.

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I meant you were the one who carried out the sanction; was there ever any doubt in your mind that you’d failed?’

  Rink stared up at the moon again.

  ‘He’s carrying the scars where he was shot,’ I explained. ‘There was no way Rink could have suspected he’d survived the wounds he did.’

  ‘Rink reported positive confirmation of death,’ Walter pointed out.

  ‘Don’t speak about me as if I’m not here, Walt,’ Rink said without taking his eyes off the sky. ‘As far as I was concerned, I’d put two bullets in Mercer’s head. He was dead.’

  ‘That’s the point, son,’ Walt said. ‘You made a positive confirmation: so why would I send in a trauma team to pull Mercer out? How would I know that he’d survived when I had such trust in you?’

  ‘Two things,’ Rink said. ‘Don’t call me son, and don’t mention trust. There’s no trust between us. Never will be again.’

  ‘I understand. But it still proves my point. You believe you’d killed him, and at the time I’d no reason to doubt you. Things might be different now, but not back then.’

  I shook my head at Rink, stalling another angry retort. Argument would get us nowhere, particularly one where Walter’s trustworthiness was in question. The concept was largely alien to one whose entire existence worked through the manipulation and machination of others. Rink pursed his lips. But then he held up a hand to catch my attention. I pressed the phone against my thigh, muffling it as Rink whispered: ‘Don’t mention Sue.’

  I nodded, lifted the phone again.

  Walter had apparently been deep in thought. I could hear him breathing.

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m unsure,’ Walter admitted. ‘There’s much to learn. More importantly than that he survived, we need to find out who saved him, and why. What is he doing now, and for whom?’

  Those were questions I also wanted answering, among others. I closed my eyes, understanding where this was going. Calling Walter as we had, both Rink and I knew that we were tugging on the threads that inevitably connected us to Walter and Arrowsake, and what that would ultimately mean for us. So his next words came as a complete surprise.

  ‘I want you to stand down.’

  ‘Sorry? Say that again.’

  ‘So mine isn’t the only hearing that’s failing,’ Walter countered with a grunt of laughter. ‘You heard me, son. I want you to stand down. That goes for both of you. Walk away and forget you saw him. Leave Mercer to me.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Nope. I’m deadly serious. Forget Mercer, walk away, don’t look back.’

  I caught the squi
nt of Rink’s eyes, and took it as a greater warning than any that Walter made.

  ‘If that’s the way you want it, Walter, so be it,’ I said, but again it wasn’t the entire truth, and I knew Walter didn’t buy it. I cancelled the call before he could push the issue one way or the other.

  5

  There was a missed call notification on my phone. It was from Raul Velasquez, so I hit the reply button even as we got back in the Ford and Rink pulled away. ‘Hey, Val,’ I said when he answered. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘The address you gave me? It isn’t registered to an individual owner, but to a company.’ He gave me the name of a real estate agency based in Panama City. ‘I checked the local census records and it shows as being home to a single female by the name of Suzanne Carter. No husband, no significant other or dependents on the books, but that’s saying nothing. It’s dependent on whether or not the records are up to date, I guess.’ He paused, ordering details in his mind. ‘I dug a little deeper, to see what I could find out about Miss Carter. She’s forty-two, born in St Petersburg, Florida. Worked as a kindergarten teacher in Tampa until four years ago. Apparently she began working for this company as a licensed realtor after moving to Panama City a short time after. Seems to me like a strange career change, but what do I know about anything?’

  Velasquez was pushing for more information on what we’d gotten involved in, but I deemed it best that he was kept out of things for now. ‘How’d you find out so much about Carter so quickly?’ I asked him, more to divert his attention than anything. ‘Have you been taking tips from Harvey?’

  ‘Nu-uh. Wonderful thing called Social Media,’ he said. ‘Some people live out their lives on the social networks these days. I’m surprised you don’t have your own page, Hunter.’

  I ignored the suggestion. ‘Any current pictures of Carter on there?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m looking at one now. Shame: she’d be a good looking woman without the scars.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Can you send me a copy to my phone?’

  ‘No problem, Hunter. Wait up.’ I heard tapping from the other end, and thought Velasquez was juggling both his cell phone and computer at the same time. A chime from my mobile notified an incoming text message. I said my thanks and ended the call. Opened the text image.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Rink.

  ‘The house is registered to a private company, and it’s supposedly let to a woman called Suzanne Carter. My first thought was that it was a cover name for Sue, but Val found some pictures of Carter on line. It isn’t Sue.’ The woman I was looking at had a round face and large brown eyes, a slightly turned up nose, and swarthy complexion. She’d suffered a burn at one time, and the skin was a pink and white patchwork of scar tissue that extended from below her right eye, beneath her nose, pulled at the corner of her mouth and then extended down and under her chin.

  ‘Odd that they’d both have the same first name,’ Rink said, as I offered him a look at Carter’s photo. ‘We both know that when some one takes a new identity they often choose to keep the same first name to avoid confusion. When I heard what Val said to you, I also thought Sue had established a false identity. But that isn’t Sue, and she couldn’t even pass for Carter at a glance.’

  I gave a mental shrug. ‘Maybe Sue shares the house with Carter.’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t that important. That real estate agency, they’re the ones we need to learn more about.’

  Rink was correct. As soon as Velasquez mentioned the name of the company that owned the house, I’d mentally pictured the brass plaques on the wall of the office block I’d earlier followed Mercer and Sue to. One of those brass plates had carried the same company name. So Sue, via the house, had an association with the estate agency, and, through their earlier dual visit to the office, so did Mercer. It was possible that the connection was tenuous — Sue could have been visiting to pay her rent for all I knew, and Mercer had accompanied her — but I didn’t think so.

  ‘Walter told us to stand down,’ I said.

  ‘Walter can go screw himself,’ said Rink.

  ‘You know why he wants us out of the way, right?’

  ‘Of course I do. He’s going to send someone after Mercer.’ Rink glanced across at me, and probably saw the seriousness in my expression. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he can do what he likes with Mercer, but not at the expense of Sue getting hurt.’

  ‘I didn’t mention Sue, but I got the impression that Walter already knew about her.’ Where Walter was concerned, whatever went unsaid was more important than anything he shared. It had struck me that he hadn’t asked about where we’d seen Mercer, which meant he already had a good idea. And telling us to stand down was tantamount to admitting he was sending an assassination team there.

  ‘He sounded downbeat about it all, but we both know how the old fart works. He was practically jumping up and down in reality. You ask me, brother, we just gave him a link in the chain he’d been missing. You can guarantee that a wet team is being mobilised as we speak.’ Rink pulled the Ford into a gas station, but it wasn’t for the purpose of filling the tank. He spun the car around on the forecourt. ‘I have to warn Sue.’

  ‘This is the same Sue who just shot at you.’

  ‘The same Sue who shot to miss.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I admitted. ‘But that’s not to say she’ll be such a poor shot if you show your face a second time. Warning shots only work once, Rink.’

  6

  We returned to the house allegedly rented by Suzanne Carter, neither of us believing that Sue Bouchard has returned already. We were wrong. The big SUV was tucked up close to the house on the drive. The rear door on the driver’s side stood open. Its interior light was on. There were also more lights on in the house than before, this time Sue having lit one of the bedrooms upstairs. She’d dropped the blinds, but we could see her shadow darting back and forth: she was in a hurry.

  ‘Looks as if she might be getting ready to run,’ I said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you, suspecting what’s coming?’

  ‘It’d be unwise to sit put,’ I concurred. Except, for now Walter had no idea about this house. Undoubtedly he’d have pinpointed the source of my phone call to him, but that had been from the waste ground alongside the river. Our friend Harvey Lucas was a bit of a whiz with technology; he’d previously shown me how to disable the location device in my phone so it couldn’t be tracked, unless it was in use. I’d switched off my phone after last speaking with Velasquez, as had Rink. There was no rush for Sue to abandon her home for now, but she couldn’t know that. For all she knew we’d been purposefully hunting her and had called in a strike team. I wondered if she regretted not shooting Rink now, and me along with him.

  In my line of work, I keep several grab bags ready for instances when I’m forced to move quickly. They contain cash, and fake ID, credit cards and burner phones, also weapons. If Sue Bouchard had returned home to grab a similar bag, she’d have been in and out of the house in half a minute. It suggested that she’d grown complacent, had never expected to be discovered living in this suburban neighbourhood, and was now reacting in a mild form of panic. I felt a little easier about her, because if she were still engaged in a similar nefarious game as Mercer used to be, then she’d have been prepared for an eventuality like this one. We had to consider if Mercer was still the monster he’d become in Sierra Leone — before Rink had halted his murderous rampage — or if having two bullets in his skull had changed him for the better. Determining Mercer’s current nature, and what the hell he was up to here, could wait. For now Rink wanted to ensure that Sue didn’t fall into the crosshairs of those coming to end things with Mercer.

  ‘How do you want to play this?’ I asked.

  Rink had brought the Ford to a halt under the same tree as before. It hadn’t hidden us then and wouldn’t now, even as the night had grown darker. Sitting there, we were easy targets if Sue decided to come out with her gun blazing. This time I doubted we’d get a warning shot. With
out answering, Rink set the car rolling, and he bumped up off the road and into Sue’s drive, blocking in the Mercedes. I checked the bedroom, and Sue must have heard us arrive. She’d stuck a couple of fingers between the blinds, prying them apart to check who was outside. The blinds snapped shut. Our angle didn’t give us a clear look at the shadow play as before. In fact I couldn’t see her silhouette at all, meaning she’d retreated deeper into the room, beyond the source of the light.

  ‘I’ll cover the back door,’ I said, even as I was slipping out. Rink went without comment towards the front door. Neither of us was armed, so we were risking our arses.

  I jogged around the side of the house and set up next to the back door on the rear porch. Faintly, I heard Rink knock on the door and call Sue’s name. There was a scuff of feet from inside, and suddenly the back door was yanked inward and Sue emerged. She clutched her tapestry bag, plus a bulging rucksack, in one hand, and her silenced pistol in the other. Silenced pistols, I reminded myself, were the tools of hitmen and assassins, and despite my reason for being there, I mustn’t underestimate Sue’s possible reaction. Rink knocked the front door again, and it grabbed Sue’s attention for a fraction of a second longer than once she might have given the noise. As she made the decision to ignore him, and use the opportunity to flee across the rear yard, she bolted out of the house, swinging her gun around as she sought danger. Thankfully for me, her first move was to swing the barrel towards the rear garden — her immediate direction of travel — so I was already in the arc of its swing as she jerked it towards me. I struck into her wrist with the edge of my left hand, immediately stopping it, and followed up with both hands to grab the gun, and strip it from her grasp. I had to for my safety, and for hers.

  Sue didn’t understand that I was trying to help.

  Her amateurish move with the gun told me that her combat skills were rusty, but nobody tried for selection with Arrowsake who wasn’t at the top of their game. Her skills might not have been used for years but it’s a bit like riding a bike. No sooner had I taken her pistol from her than she’d dropped her bags and snapped an elbow into my face. I dodged back, and the elbow missed, but then her follow up strike rapped her knuckles into the side of my head. If she’d caught me an inch or two lower on the neck, she would have dropped me cold, but as it were, my initial dodge had been accompanied by a dipping of my knees to retain balance. Her knuckles smacked my ear instead. It was sore, and I felt my ear swell in response, red hot, but it was preferable to being shot. I stepped away, keeping her gun out of reach, even as I stiff-armed her, palm planted on her upper chest, to make some distance.