Noble Intent

by William Miller

  “DCI’s office.”

  The voice was older and female. Ezra’s thick brow bunched over his nose. Did the new Director pick up her own phone, he wondered? He cleared his throat. “Uh… Is this the Director?”

  “This is her secretary. To whom am I speaking?” The tones were clipped and sharp, like a librarian with no patience for people who don’t understand how the Dewey Decimal system works.

  “Er, Ezra Cook. I need to speak to the Director.”

  “What department are you with?”

  Ezra considered how to answer that. Coughlin had never said what department they were officially attached to. “I work on B3 for acting DDO Coughlin and there’s… uh… something I think the Director needs to know about. Can I please talk with her?” After a moment Ezra added, “If she’s not busy.”

  Gwen gave a thumbs-up.

  “What’s your clearance and priority level?”

  Ezra’s eyes got big. Words failed him. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  “Clearance and priority level, please.”

  He unstuck his tongue and said, “I don’t have a clearance level to speak with the Director. I’m a computer tech. And I… well, actually, we…”

  Gwen nodded.

  “We came across something in the database the Director probably ought to have a look at. It might be something. It might be nothing. I’m not really sure. Is this a bad time? I could call back.”

  The elevator dinged and the sound caught Gwen’s attention. Her head swiveled in that direction, then she kicked Ezra hard in the shin.

  He winced and shot her a fiery look. “Whaddya go kicking me for?”

  Gwen hissed. “Coughlin.”

  Ezra hung up the phone and forced a smile onto his face as Coughlin approached. The acting DDO looked like he was barely holding it together. The bags under his eyes were darker and his armpits were damp. His face fired in a non-stop series of spastic ticks. He thrust his chin at the phone. “Who were you calling?”

  “My mother.” Ezra immediately regretted the lie. It was a flimsy excuse, but the only thing he could think of under the circumstances. To sell the lie, he added, “She’s sick.”

  Gwen put her hand in her coat pocket and kept it there.

  Coughlin stared at them for several seconds then said, “Have you made any progress?”

  Gwen and Ezra exchanged a look.

  “Well,” Ezra said, drawing out the word.

  “We’ve made some progress,” Gwen jumped in. “It’s a pretty complicated system.”

  “You said if you could get into the mainframe you could crack the system,” Coughlin said. “I got you clearance to enter the mainframe. Now did you crack the system or not?”

  Ezra hesitated entirely too long. He felt like there was a fire under his seat, cooking his bottom. “Yeah, we cracked it.”

  “And?” Coughlin demanded.

  “And we’re hunting up the files right now,” Gwen filled in.

  “What are you waiting for?” Coughlin asked.

  “Nothing,” both programmers said at once.

  Ezra turned to his terminal, brought up the operation reports and clicked delete. With backdoor access, he didn’t need clearance to alter files or delete them entirely and no one would ever know. Just like that, it was done. No fanfare, no alarm bells. The file simply ceased to exist. Except for the copy in Gwen’s pocket.

  Coughlin nodded to himself, satisfied. Then he turned and started back toward the elevator.

  “Um…” Ezra said. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “What?” Coughlin stopped and turned back.

  Ezra motioned to himself and Gwen. “What should we be doing now?”

  Coughlin’s forehead creased like he wasn’t sure what language they were speaking.

  Gwen said, “What do you want us working on, sir?”

  Coughlin put his hands on his hips and considered them with cold, dispassionate eyes. Did he know? Ezra wondered. His face was a twitching mask of unhinged lunacy, but his eyes were hard. They hid something nasty, Ezra was sure of it.

  Finally, Coughlin said, “Go back to what you were doing before and I’ll be in touch.”

  When he was gone, Gwen punched Ezra on the arm.

  “Ow!” He rubbed his bicep.

  “Your mother?”

  “It was the only thing I could think of,” Ezra said.

  “On a secure interoffice line?” She motioned to the handset. “Now he knows something is wrong.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The silver Audi rumbled over the hard-packed lane and braked at the turn-off to the abandoned church. A hundred meters of open ground, dotted with naked trees, separated the car from the grim stone edifice. The sun had gone down, leeching the last of the warmth from the frozen hills surrounding Vesoul. Large white flakes swirled down out of the black vault of the sky and settled noiselessly on the ground before melting.

  Grey was behind the wheel. Warm air poured from the vents and fogged up the windows. Preston sat in the passenger seat, wrapping his blistered hand in a fresh white bandage. The wound had begun to ooze a foul-smelling puss. Grey said, “You going to be able to shoot with that hand?”

  Preston frowned. “Have I got a choice?”

  “No,” Grey said, “I guess not. When this is over, we’ll get you to a hospital.”

  “When this is over, I’m disappearing,” Preston told him. “I’ve got enough to live on. I’m going someplace warm and spending the rest of my life drinking piña coladas.” He peered through the falling snow at the church. “I don’t see the Peugeot.”

  “Probably stashed it in the woods,” Grey said.

  “Lot of open ground to cover.”

  “Yeah,” Grey agreed.

  “Probably knows we’re coming,” Preston remarked.

  “Don’t lose your nerve.”

  “This guy was a Green Beret,” Preston pointed out. “We should have a dozen guys for this job.”

  “Yeah, that would look real good on the video feed back at Langley. Besides,” Grey reached into the backseat for a pair of fully automatic MP5 Heckler & Koch submachine guns. “Noble hasn’t got one of these.”

  He passed one to Preston, along with a pair of thirty-round magazines, and said, “We kill the Green Beret and Gunn, torture Duval, and find out the name of his failsafe. Then tell Langley nobody survived. That’ll be the end of it. The new Director will be pissed, but what can she do?”

  Preston jacked a magazine into the little automatic and slaped down on the charging knob. The bolt shot forward with a hard clack. He didn’t look happy about walking into a firefight with Noble. Fear crept onto his face but he said, “Let’s just get it done.”

  Grey cranked open the driver side door and a breath of cold air hit him. Spots of color appeared in his cheeks. The temperature had plummeted. Snowflakes lighted on his head and shoulders as he climbed out. Cold seeped through his coat and into his bones. Silver clouds rose like ghosts from his open mouth. Preston glanced at him over the roof of the car and Grey nodded. They started across the long stretch of open ground.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Sam’s fingers were pins and needles. She stood with one shoulder against the stone jamb, watching snow drift down through cracks in the weathered timbers of the door. She could see a large, skeletal oak ten yards away, but the road was lost from view. The night was preternaturally still and sound travelled in the quiet. Noble was in the nave, working on his science project. When he finished, he had several meters of rope doused in lighter fluid, wrapped around brightly colored BICs.

  Sam kept her attention focused on the yard, but her lips remembered his kisses and she could still feel his eager hands on her skin. The memory kept her warm in the gathering cold and set her heart galloping. A pleasant fire formed in her belly at the thought of Jake holding her tight. Sam chewed her bottom lip. She wanted him with a longing that was close to a physical ache, making it hard to focus on anything else. The thought was almost enough
to make her forget about the world of trouble she was in. If she lived—and that was a big if—she would spend the rest of her life in hiding. Was one night with Jake too much to ask?

  She silently cursed Duval. If not for his whistleblowing, none of this ever would have happened. Sam wished she had turned a blind eye Bonner’s operation, and then immediately regretted the thought. Duval was a little man with a coward’s heart who had tried to do the right thing. He had broken a string of international laws along the way, but his intentions were noble.

  Jake appeared at her side without warning. One minute she was alone, the next he was standing there next to her, peering through gaps in the boards. Sam started and put a hand to her chest. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  She opened her mouth, about to say he had snuck up on her, and thought better of it. Instead she said, “All set?”

  He nodded and held up the length of rope. It looked like a long string of Christmas lights with BICs instead of colored bulbs and gave off the stench of lighter fluid. Noble strung the concoction across the narthex, in front of the door, and under the stained-glass windows.

  “I never thanked you,” he said.

  Sam’s brow pinched. “For what?”

  “Mexico,” he said. “You saved my life.”

  “I don’t think Hunt would have really killed you,” she said, but the words sounded false, even to her ears. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was at the door, peering into the dark. A narrow shaft of starlight illuminated his profile. Sam said, “He still has a limp from the shrapnel. Blames you, by the way.”

  Noble chuckled. “I don’t know what you see in that guy.”

  “Is that jealousy I hear?”

  “No,” he said. After a few seconds he added, “Yeah. Maybe. A little.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m through with him.”

  “Finally figured him out, huh?”

  “Let’s just say I got a peek behind the curtain.”

  After Mexico, Sam had seen the real Gregory Hunt. Anger and jealousy were eating him up. When Foster took a tumble, Hunt’s rising star had fallen back to earth fast. He was cleared of any intentional wrong doing, but his all-star status with the Company was shot. He spent his days riding a desk. His nights were spent chasing skirts and boozing. He resented Noble and resented Sam because of Noble. Things between Sam and Hunt had finally ended in a crazy screaming match.

  One setback had been enough to derail Hunt’s entire life. Sam doubted if he would ever find his footing again. Noble, on the other hand, had lost his career with the CIA, lost his home, was saddled with his mother’s medical debt, and he just kept on dealing. He put out life’s fires one at a time with the same quiet efficiency he did everything else.

  A wave of bitter regret gripped Sam. She realized she had bet on the wrong horse. Hunt was a boy, obsessed with status and prestige. Noble was a man. He wasn’t the most eloquent man in a room, probably never would be. Sam never expected him to quote Baudelaire, but you could count on him when the chips were down. And right now, every chip Sam had was on the table.

  Jake’s mouth twisted into a frown. “Just as well. You deserve better.”

  A tight knot of nervous tension formed in her chest. She tucked a loose stand of hair behind one ear. “Maybe you want to pick up where we left off?”

  “Can’t right now,” Noble said.

  She blinked and cleared an obstruction in her throat. “Are you seeing someone?”

  “Yeah,” he whispered.

  Sam felt the earth beneath her feet crack and fall away. In some secret corner of her heart, she had thought Noble was a sure thing, someone she could keep on the back burner in case the stable guys with the good careers didn’t work out. Now he was gone, slipped through her fingers. She had waited too long.

  “Oh. I see,” she said. “Well, she’s a really lucky girl.”

  Noble turned to her in the dark. His brow wrinkled in confusion then he shook his head. “No, I meant I see someone out there.” He motioned to a gap in the planks. “They’re here.”

  “What?” She stuck her face to the boards and peered out into the gloom, using her peripheral vision to scan for movement. The human eye has two different kinds of receptors; cones in the center of the pupil detect color, and rods on the outside of the pupil detect shape and movement. Rods make it possible to detect a black cat at night from the corner of your eye, but cones make it disappear when you look directly at it. Sam said, “I don’t see any…”

  A dark figure detached itself from the deeper black and moved in a crouch with a machine pistol clutched in both hands. A moment later she spied a second figure moving across the field. They were keeping plenty of space in between them.

  “Wait,” Sam said. “I see them. Going to be hard to hit anything in the dark.”

  Her knees felt like runny eggs. Despite popular Hollywood portrayals, the CIA doesn’t train their people for open conflict. The Farm teaches recruits basic weapon skills and hand-to-hand combat for emergencies, but the focus of spy training centers on espionage skills. When they need guys with combat training, they recruit soldiers from Special Forces, guys like Noble. Sam slipped her gun from her waistband, cradled the weapon in both hands and concentrated on controlling her breathing.

  “Noble?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t kill them if you don’t have to.”

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “It’s so dark out here I probably can’t hit anything anyway.” He took a step back from the wall, pushed his Kimber straight out in front of him, and aimed through a split in the boards. “Ready?”

  Sam sighted on the indistinct shape of a man moving in the darkness. The two figures were less than twenty meters away now. Their feet made soft shuffling noises in the dead grass. Sam slipped her finger into the trigger guard and said, “Ready.”

  “Now.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Grey stopped twenty meters from the darkened church and took a knee. Instinct screamed a warning to his brain. The night was eerily quiet and the cathedral squatted in the dark like a grim stone monolith, glowering at him with blank eyes. Stone walls and thick stained glass made it a perfect defensive position. Noble would have the front door guarded. It was the only weakness. The boards were warped and the metal bands were caked with rust. The rivets looked like bloated boils. Either Noble or Sam, maybe both, waited on the other side. Grey waved until he got Preston’s attention.

  Crouching with the H&K stuck out in front of him, Preston acknowledged Grey with a quick shrug.

  Grey cradled his submachine gun in the crook of his left arm, pointed to Preston, and then signaled for him to circle around the building. Preston gave the thumb and forefinger for Okay. He turned and started around the side of the church, giving the front door a wide berth. There was bound to be a rear exit, and Grey wanted to be sure Noble didn’t slip out the back while they were coming in the front.

  They should have a dozen guys to cover the church from every angle but that wasn’t an option. Things were happening too fast and by the time they rounded up a crew, Noble would disappear again. Like it or not, Grey had to make do with just himself and Preston.

  Keep your eye on the prize, Grey told himself. Stop Duval and his confederates from opening the next Cypher Punk vault or go to jail for life. Grey had over three million dollars sitting in an account in the Cayman Islands and a house on the beach. He wasn’t about to watch it all go up in smoke. He should have cut ties with Coughlin and Bonner after the first million, but there was always more money to be made. At least a dozen times, Grey had told himself he would do one more job. But one job lead to the next. Now he was stuck cleaning up Coughlin’s mess. Find out the name of Duval’s failsafe and then you can quit, thought Grey. Buy a new identity and head to South America.

  He rose to a crouch and started for the corner of the building. He hadn’t gone two steps when the bullwhip crack of a gunshot
shattered the silence. Grey saw the flash and heard a lead slug burn past his shoulder. His heart leapt up inside his chest and started to dance.

  Twenty meters on his right, Preston threw himself to the ground and mashed the trigger. The night came alive with the sound of small arms fire. Bullets hissed and snapped. Preston triggered his weapon with wild abandon, shooting at the front of the dilapidated cathedral. Tongues of fire leap from his muzzle. Empty brass spun through the air. Bullets whined off stone and hammered holes in the stained glass.

  Grey sighted on the front door and squeezed. The little automatic spit a stream of bullets. Warped timbers splintered under the impact. He held the trigger down until the bolt fell on an empty chamber with a muted clack, dropped the spent magazine, and dug a fresh one from his pocket.

  Every farmhouse for two miles must have heard the shots and be dialing the police right now, thought Grey. He rocked the new magazine into his H&K, chambered a round, and sighted on the front of the church.

  Inside the narthex, Noble had fired two quick rounds and then put his back to the wall. Grey and Preston responded with a full auto barrage. Heavy led slugs drilled through the rotting door and ricocheted off the walls. A round snapped against the stone over Noble’s shoulder and set his ears ringing. He turned his face away and grimaced. What he wouldn’t give for a pair of earplugs right now. An AR15 and a bulletproof vest would be even better.

  Sam was on the opposite side of the door with her back to the wall. She narrowed her eyes against the onslaught. Her brow pinched and her lips pressed into a thin line. Strands of silky black hair fell across her face. Noble waited for a lull in the action and then gave her the signal to move. She nodded, took a breath and then sprinted toward the opening to the nave.

  Noble covered her movement with three shots. He wasn’t aiming, just firing blind. His instructors at Fort Bragg would have recoiled at the idea of undirected fire—never shoot at a target you can’t see—but desperate times call for desperate measures. It was a waste of ammo, but got a response. Another long peal of automatic fire punished the front of the church, chipping away at the stonework and turning the door into kindling.