When he spoke, his words were perfunctory. “You already have full, unlimited access to everything that’s relevant,” he said.
Not so much a lie as an equivocation.
Relevant was interpretive.
Relevant was a man in a suit protecting his own interests, or sandboxing operations to prevent one blowing back on another, or holding on to classified intelligence above her clearance level, but reasons that might matter stateside, or might matter to long-term survival, didn’t matter right here and now.
Headquarters had failed her. The war room had failed her.
If she couldn’t have access to information from all available data sources, she would fail and her team would die. She said, “Identity and objective are always relevant, sir. Our man is not on the list, and we weren’t informed that another who is on it would be there. If we’d had accurate intelligence, Carson and Marino would still be alive.”
Hayes’s tone caught an edge. “That’s quite an accusation,” he said.
“Not an accusation, sir. You’re asking me to lead an operation under the same parameters that killed half my team. It does no favors for either of us if I pretend otherwise. Like I said, you want me to pull the pin and throw myself on that grenade, I’ll do it, but if you want my team to close out, then I need to know who we’re chasing and everything you know about him, relevant or not, classified or not.”
Hayes waited a beat.
“This is an unsecured line,” he said.
“Understood,” she said.
He wasn’t stating the obvious or reminding her of what he thought she’d forgotten. He was telling her this conversation had already breached protocol and that he was about to charge right through that breach in a good-faith gesture. He said, “First, you understand why we’re working from the top of that list?”
“Yes,” she said.
Well, she had understood until she’d discovered their target wasn’t on it.
She added, “I no longer understand how this op is connected.”
“Everything as briefed,” Hayes said. “But a new actor.”
Her gaze dropped to her feet. Inside her head, the pieces snapped.
She’d been aware that the Broker’s death had come as some form of coup within that underbelly world, and that the aftermath had been a bloodbath in which the assassins themselves had shortened the list considerably by killing each other. Same briefing, new actor meant the details that had launched the op were the same, but the original assassin was either dead or had gone to ground.
Jacques Lefevre, the man they hunted now, was the replacement.
That put sense to why headquarters had known his seat number before they’d known his name, but a whole lot else still needed answers.
She said, “Who is he?”
Hayes said, “We don’t know.”
She didn’t believe for a minute that headquarters was working entirely dark. “There’s always something,” she said.
He said, “You’ve heard of Karen McFadden?”
She forced the neurons to connect, drew up the memories.
The name had shown up in Christopher Holden’s files as last known target.
“I’ve heard the name,” she said. “I don’t know who or what it is.”
“McFadden was deep cover in a clandestine op out of Moscow at the tail end of the Cold War,” Hayes said. “Officially, she was rolled up by the KGB. Unofficially, file’s still open. Her handler was a double, triple who-really-knows, and you’ve already heard of him. We’re working from his list. Intel we’re pulling says she’s the one who unplugged him. For as long as there’ve been rumors about McFadden, there’ve also been rumors she had a child. The chatter we’re picking up points in that direction. You can infer the rest and deduce the urgency.”
She could, yes.
She’d seen a strong operative skill set and a man capable of slipping back into the United States unnoticed, which made him a true threat if a political assassination was in play. But this little slice of history didn’t explain why him, why now.
And it didn’t explain target’s accomplice-slash-sibling.
Or how Christopher Holden factored in.
Or why target seemed ambivalent to their presence.
And for all that mess, the assassination theory seemed a little too tidy and complete, but she had limited time and Hayes had limited patience, and what worried her most was getting lured into assassin-on-assassin cross fire, the way her team had been lured to Republic Square in Prague. Or, worse, having her team played against Emilia Flynn. She needed the lines clearly delineated or needed more access.
She said as much to Hayes.
Hayes said, “All four Tea Team, KIA.”
The words stole thought from her head and breath from her lungs, and she was, for a few seconds, speechless. New meaning layered over old, and thinking of Emilia now led to thinking of Nick, and that he’d died without knowing and that he was dead, and the world closed in on her again.
She forced agreement up her throat and out her lips.
“I need equipment,” she said. “And I’m going to need the rest of my team.”
The departure to Bratislava was coming up fast. She needed to get to Aaron, needed to get him on that train. She dropped handset into cradle.
She would, without a doubt, find her target.
What she did when she found him was yet to be determined.
CHAPTER 26
Toledo Executive Airport
South of Toledo, Ohio, USA
JACK
HE STEPPED FROM AIRSTAIRS TO TARMAC, FUEL FUMES AND WINTER cold kissing his lungs, the whine of the Gulfstream engines fading as he followed the cabin crew’s finger-pointing instruction toward the center of a squat, metal-topped structure, where administration offices and government offices combined under a single roof into a terminal of sorts.
Not that he needed directions to find it.
The building was the only one in sight, the only thing in sight, really.
This airport, with a runway just long enough to handle private jets and prop planes, was but a blip on the map. There were railway tracks in the near distance, and a freeway not too far off, and not much else for miles around.
He’d flown Prague to Toledo on Moscow’s dime.
Toledo was his choice, as was the detour through Nassau that allowed him to preclear US airspace in the Bahamas.
The Russians had set the time frame, handled logistics.
He was traveling on their papers—a French passport with a backstopped legend that would have made Clare weep in envy—genuine documents for a genuine individual with impeccable references but, more importantly, a travel history limited to the European continent.
A visit to any of the Five Eyes countries would have ruled him out. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, they all shared signals intelligence and biometric data.
Several Pacific nations posed a similar risk for different reasons.
Every year the world’s borders grew less porous. Every year it got harder to slip between the cracks. But the world hadn’t yet united in a single biometric database, and so Jack’s face and Jack’s voice had been the first of this traveler’s records siphoned into US biometric repositories. He’d set the baseline. A new hairline, prosthetic facial adjustments, the man’s own fingerprints covering his, and a set of balls forged in the pits of hell had been enough to get him a few cursory questions, a quick declaration, and the thump in his passport that sent him on.
This stop now was just a pass-through formality.
He rolled the small carry-on into the terminal, toiletries and clothing he hadn’t asked for but that the Russians had insisted he take because empty-handed globe-trotting drew attention. He checked his watch and set a five-hour countdown.
That was about how long he figured, give or take, before the Russians who’d been so eager to make friends, provide flawless credentials, and shell out heavy cash to get him into the country, s
tarted leaking those same details through the same communications channels they’d used to leak his travel itinerary out of Dallas and put the kill team on his trail.
Life, it seemed, was destined to run on constant replay.
It hadn’t been Clare’s doing, but it was still another damn test.
The Russians had already known what Jill was capable of from her work for the Broker but they’d had no reference point for him. By their reasoning, if he wasn’t skilled enough to outsmart a kill team following him into Europe, he wasn’t smart enough to play decoy for her within the United States.
That’s what he’d been from the moment he checked in solo on that Dallas flight, a political assassin leaked to Washington by supposed Kremlin defectors, an offering borne out of a temporary ideological alliance for the sake of greater global good. And while the US government pursued him, Jill, always the deadlier one, would continue on undetected.
She’d make a kill of her own, and the world would recoil.
The media machine, in a race to be first to report, would rush unverified details into the tinderbox, and the troll farms would feed the partisan frenzy, and the country would devour itself from the inside. Such was the treachery of spies.
Jack exited the building.
A black Yukon waited at the curb, placard with his name on it in the window, a Russian-arranged private car to get him to Detroit, where he’d catch a Russian-booked commercial flight to DC and check into a Russian-booked hotel.
As if he’d be fool enough to put his life in their hands.
As if they were fool enough to believe that he would.
Mental games upon mental games, so easy to get lost among them.
The driver was African American, male, late fifties, shaved head, barrel chest, starched shirt, sharp tie, and shoes mirrored to a high-polish shine. Not the look or feel of an undercover Russian operative, but assumptions were what got a person killed.
He opened the rear door, stashed Jack’s suitcase in the trunk, slid in behind the wheel, and lifted a large manila envelope off the passenger seat. “Delivered by courier about ten minutes ago,” he said. He handed it back.
The envelope was blank.
No name, no address, not that there’d ever be a question as to who’d sent it.
The Yukon pulled away from the curb.
Jack opened the seal, pulled the pages out far enough to leaf through them, and nudged them back. He glanced at the rearview for a glimpse of the driver, who appeared about as interested in him as a contractor would be in watching paint dry. Jack plied a French accent to match the name and passport. He said, “You have done this chauffeur for much time?”
The driver’s focus stayed on the road.
“’Bout six years now.”
“Is good work?”
“Pays the bills. Helps put my sons through college.”
“Toledo College?”
The driver looked up briefly. Spontaneous parental pride oozed from every part of him in a way even Clare, the mynah bird of human emotions, couldn’t mimic.
“Stanford,” he said. “Cornell.”
Jack said, “The father is very proud, yes?”
“Proud as hell. Boys worked hard. Earned it.”
The guy was authentic.
That didn’t rule him out as an operative, but most of the cards stacked the other way. Odds of a Russian cleanup crew coming in from behind weren’t zero, but United States intelligence building a trail forward from here was likelier. Jack didn’t trust either, but any warning realistic enough to be taken seriously carried an equal risk of causing erratic behavior, which would draw enough attention to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was a shit position to be in, made worse because those who pursued him likely knew and would use the weakness against him.
Jack said, “This small airport, you do much work here?”
The driver said, “Mostly Toledo Express. Sometimes Detroit.”
Jack nudged the envelope into the driver’s field of vision. “And this courier for documents, this is regular thing?”
The driver dipped the blinker, changed lanes. “See ’em a couple times a month, though I can’t say I’ve ever had a plain envelope handed through a window like that.”
“But is the same company to bring this, yes?”
The driver checked the mirror, met Jack’s gaze.
He was slow to answer. “Just an old, beat-down guy in an old gray Buick,” he said. “Asked if I was waiting on you, said he’d been paid to courier a package, handed me that, and said to give it when you got in.”
Jack held eye contact, said nothing.
These questions weren’t for him—he already knew the answers.
He let time do the explaining, and said, “I am sorry, my friend. We must change destination to Cleveland.”
The driver’s fingers tapped along the steering wheel.
He checked the mirrors, and adjusted the temperature. They were the motions of a man who, realizing he was heading into uncharted territory, was buying time.
This was good.
The driver said, “Cleveland is an extra hour in the opposite direction. I’ll need to call in to dispatch, make sure the vehicle has that kind of availability.”
Jack dug into his jacket, pulled out a grand in crisp, clean Benjamins, and slid the Russian pocket money between bucket seats. He said, “We can perhaps skip formalities to make for the easier trip?”
The driver glanced at the bills.
Debate marched across his face.
This was also good.
Jack offered another couple thousand and then reassurance that the destination wasn’t the issue. “Cleveland is not so far,” he said. “But a difficult passenger with many demands makes a good reason to take the rest of the day from work, yes?”
The driver sighed, took the cash.
Jack tugged a single page a few inches out of the envelope and, as if reading off an address, said, “Downtown. West Tenth Street. Aloft Hotel. You know it?”
The driver reached for the GPS. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”
The Yukon neared Interstate 280. The driver took them south. They rode in silence, incremental miles putting distance between Moscow’s plan and Jack’s own, and he emptied the envelope and perused months of detailed surveillance—times, dates, and locations meticulously tracking the senator’s movements, a record of cell phones and vehicle plates, home and office addresses, the wife’s routine and kids’ after-school schedule, and a hefty dose of kompromat on the staff members—all of it information someone preparing for a hit would find helpful in getting up close in a hurry and getting away faster still.
No question as to where it’d come from, only why.
He was the decoy, tasked with a kill the Russians didn’t expect him to make on a mission they didn’t expect him to survive.
Not that they’d exactly put it that way.
The suit and his bodyguards had returned in the morning, as promised.
He’d been on the bed, staring at the ceiling, watching them in his mind’s eye, as they made their way through the front and into the hub and down the hall, passing one body after the next. They’d entered his room, weapons drawn.
He’d said, “Have a seat. Let’s talk.”
It’d been a very different conversation from the one they’d planned.
The suit had asked him about Anna, and he’d told the truth, said he didn’t like people suffering unnecessarily and he didn’t trust them not to hurt her. And he’d asked again to meet Dmitry, which the suit had refused outright.
No surprise.
Dmitry was the control mechanism, the one piece of leverage they held, a threat that didn’t need to be spoken to be understood. Maybe don’t go getting your father killed before you even have a chance to meet the man.
What the suit had offered was a hero’s welcome from Mother Russia when this was over. Citizenship. A house and stipend. A country in which Jack would have safe haven, an obvious need because, clearly
, the Americans no longer wanted him as one of their own, and what kind of country was the USA anyway if the government sanctioned extrajudicial killing of its own citizens?
As if the same thing and worse didn’t happen in Russia.
But that was different.
Of course it was different. Russia wasn’t a democracy. Russia didn’t hold itself out as a beacon of morality to the rest of the world, active measures and all that.
Their offer was only partially true.
They never expected to have to fill their end of the bargain.
For him, the only way out was to die or to fake his own death, and faking death meant the rest of his life on the run. Easy enough in principle. He had no roots, no home, no family and, child of the world that he was, he was capable of adapting anywhere. But that left him with a mother he couldn’t trust, a sister who hated him, killers at his back, and a half-cocked, fucked-up plan that would make him persona non grata in every connected country he tried to enter.
That was Clare’s legacy, not his.
He had been running his whole damn life and was over it.
He wanted to go where he wanted, when he wanted, for reasons he wanted, not because his mother or father or sister or the goddamn Kremlin had made their own set of plans. If he hadn’t been willing to be Clare’s puppet, he damn sure wasn’t about to start performing for someone else, and so he’d agreed to the job for the same reason he’d returned after setting Anna free.
It was the fastest way to get what he wanted.
Or the dumbest way to die.
He shoved the papers back, folded the envelope, and stuffed it inside his jacket.
Intelligence, like a parachute, was only as good as the hands that had packed it, and this was more of a tangled death trap than the means to a safe landing.
Didn’t mean he couldn’t repurpose it, though.
He leaned back, shut his eyes, and puzzled through the mental maze in a search for Jill and couldn’t find her. Instead of the positional awareness that connected him to her when their fates intertwined, he had the guilty memory of her loping across the plaza with that damn SIM in her pocket, and the fatalistic acceptance that the laugh-filled hour they’d spent playing cards in her room in Prague might be the last of their shared bond.
Liars' Legacy Page 22
