by Sam Powers
He scanned the backyard through the binoculars. Would a few hours matter? Probably not. Brennan always figured that when push came to shove there were two ways to do a job: the easy way and the hard way. The hard way would mean stealing a vehicle, setting it up at the front of the house then running through the place from the back, taking out the guards one by one and taking Boudreau out the front door to the car. Assuming she was even in the house.
The easy way? He scanned the street; halfway down the block a sign offered ‘voitures de location’, cars for hire. They’d be open in the morning, and there was a decent cheap motel down the street. No need to rush anything, maybe bring the police down on him. The extra day would give him some extra prep time, after all, and a chance to make sure Annalise Boudreau was available to be rescued in the first place.
It was early evening, the sun down, the light low. The guard at the backdoor was sloppy, straying every so often from his post and wandering forward into the garden; not far, but far enough to leave space between him and the door; far enough that the angle from the side wall entry point was behind his field of vision. The wall was about six feet high, and Brennan had waited until after dark, with little to no foot traffic about, before peeking over and looking for his opportunity.
As his surveillance had suggested, the man was inclined to walk further from the door when smoking a cigarette, maybe a subconscious hedge against annoying the non-smokers in the house. Either way, it gave Brennan time to get over the wall and drop into a shadow-covered corner.
He let the man take another pass, walking towards the door and then turning on his heel before pacing back towards the garden. Brennan came up behind him quickly but quietly, staying low, catching the man unaware until the crook of his elbow was already around the man’s carotid artery, cutting off oxygen. The guard slumped to the ground. Brennan scanned around the backyard to make sure they were still alone then dragged the man using his armpits until he was under the balcony that covered most of the back of the villa.
The sleeper hold was an effective technique but its victims usually woke quickly once blood flow was restored. He retrieved a pair of plastic restraints, looping the simple plastic ties around the man’s angles and wrists before covering his mouth with several wraps of duct tape.
Brennan had been glad for the extra day; he’d kept eyes on the upper floor windows, eventually catching a glimpse of Boudreau as she was escorted from her suite to the bathroom. Then he’d rented the vehicle, banked on the house sticking to normal schedules, and waited until the light was low, shortly after eight o’clock.
He put an ear to the backdoor but couldn’t hear any immediate presence. He glanced up; the upper balcony was ten feet above, a short flight of concrete steps to its right leading to the garden. Brennan took them silently, staying low to get past the first window on the floor, hugging the wall once he’d reached the balcony, sliding past the door to check around the corner of the window. It was a large bedroom, the doorway to an in-suite bathroom in one corner and a fireplace against the wall.
The master suite? He watched it for a few minutes but there was no foot traffic. He crossed in front of the door again and leaned around the corner to check the first room.
Boudreau was sitting on the end of the bed in a thigh-length red silk robe, her legs up and under her, her weight on her right hip as she flicked through the channels on a TV ahead of her, the look on her face more one of boredom than fear. The door to the room opened quickly, a man striding in. For a moment, it seemed as if he caught the slightest movement from Brennan out of the corner of his eye, as he turned that way, then quickly walked over to look outside without raising the window. Brennan scurried to one side and flattened himself against the wall as the guard peered each way through the glass; after a few agonizing seconds, he retreated into the room. The American gave it thirty seconds before slowly making his way back to the window’s edge, looking around it cautiously. Inside, the guard in the dark gray suit and white dress shirt was barking some sort of instruction at Boudreau and she was arguing with him. Brennan moved back to the door, leaning against it with his weight as he listened, in case anyone tried to open it at just the wrong moment.
The hallway sounded quiet. He tried the handle, depressing it slowly, waiting for the click to see if they’d locked it or just assumed the lower guard was sufficient. The latch drew back smoothly.
Mistake number two. He opened it a crack and peered inside. The corridor ran the length of the upper floor with two rooms on each side and ‘t’ junction flight of stairs halfway along leading to the lower level. The corridor was carpeted, and his movements were silent.
The second door to the left swung inward; Brennan’s instinct took over and he sprinted forward, catching the man walking out of the room by surprise. He was tall, in a light gray suit, and his hand flashed to his waist band, the pistol up quickly in his left hand; but Brennan was ahead of him, anticipating; he locked up man’s left wrist with his own right, twisting his own body away from the man so that they were practically back to back, wrenching backward on the gun arm and dislocating it at the shoulder, even as his trailing left elbow swung wide and backwards, driving into the back of the guard’s neck. Brennan spun a quarter-turn back the other way then drove a foot downward, hard into the side of the man’s knee, which buckled and tore.
He let out a shriek of pain as he went down, loud enough to be heard around the house.
Damn it. Could’ve done that more quietly, Brennan thought. He’d told Walter he’d avoid as much bloodshed as possible, keep anything related to Fawkes on the down-low. He strode towards the first bedroom. Using the suppressor might have saved me some trouble…
The first guard was waiting for him at the door, and the blade in the man’s hand arced outwards in a semi-circle, Brennan dodging backwards just in time as its shiny stainless steel surface flashed past him. He drove his palm into the back of the man’s shoulder, the nerve strike deadening the man’s arm; the man’s other arm came up instinctively to protect him even as the chair the woman was holding came crashing down on him from behind.
Annalise’s eyes were wide, the broken pieces of the wooden chair in her hands.
“Merci, Madame” Brennan said.
“Uh huh.”
“Are there any more?”
She nodded, her eyes drifting towards the stairs.
“Follow me,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of a friend.”
She looked down at the guard. “How will we get out of here?”
“Just a second,” he said. Brennan ran towards the stairs, timing the overhand punch just as the first guard climbed the last step. He crashed backwards into the man behind him and both went down. They hit the landing, the first man unconscious, the second struggling to find his feet. Brennan dove down the five steps feet first, driving his heels into the man’s temple as he began to rise, the bulky enforcer collapsing in a heap.
Back on the second floor, Annalise heard the crashing of bodies but stayed rooted to her spot, frozen, wondering just what the hell was going on. If I get out of here, I swear, I’m moving in with my sister in Biarritz and never coming back to Paris…
The stranger’s head poked back around the corner of the stairs. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded vigorously then realized she was still holding a piece of chair. She put it down carefully on the floor, like she’d offended it. “Perhaps we should leave now.”
“I’d have to agree. I’ve got a car out front, the black Mazda.” He gestured towards the stairs and she scurried over to join him. They headed downstairs cautiously, the entryway just ten feet from the last step. “I think we’re good,” Brennan said.
They headed outside, the muted evening street lights casting spotlight ovals on the sidewalk. The car was as advertised, parked in front of the house next door. They climbed in, Annalise taking the passenger side. “Where are we going?”
“Back into the city.”
“I’d really prefer not. I’d really prefer just to go to the nearest police station,” she said. “The sooner I have this dealt with and I can get away from here, the better.”
He started the car without responding and backed up slightly then pulled out of the curbside space. Traffic was light as he followed the streets to the main highway back into Paris. After about five minutes she said, “We’re not going to the police, are we?”
Brennan shook his head. “There are some people I work with who will want to talk to you first, so I’m taking you to the American embassy.”
“But… I’m a French subject.”
“You’re an assassination target, Madame Boudreau,” he said. “The people after you believe that you have vital information about Lord Anthony Abbott…”
“They’re wrong.”
“Maybe so, but they’ll stop at nothing to get it, and some of them are very powerful; there’s no guarantee you’d be safe with the police.”
He kept his eyes on the road for a few more moments before stealing a glance her way; she had one arm folded across her stomach, protective, the other elbow leaning on the arm, her fist under her chin in a pensive pose, her face morose and her pale blues eyes dim pools in the passing amber road lights. “So I don’t get a choice?” she said.
“Not if you want to live,” Brennan said. He felt guilty. Whatever they thought she had… “Did Lord Anthony give you anything in the last few weeks, a gift of some sort perhaps?”
Her hand instinctively went to the locket around her neck and Brennan caught the tell. She saw his look. “It’s nothing, just a locket with a cameo in it, an ancestor of Anthony’s.”
The drive to the embassy took another half hour, Brennan occasionally stealing glances at the piece of jewelry out of his peripheral vision, knowing he’d have to tell them to take it as soon as they arrived.
He wondered if she had anything else to remember her late lover by; he hoped so. He hoped they didn’t go too hard on her in trying to drag things out. It would be easier for everyone, he knew, if the locket contained some of the answers they required.
DEC. 18, 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The call came through on Fenton-Wright’s encrypted office line, which meant it was urgent, and probably from one of the few men in the country allowed to tell him what to do.
“David Fenton-Wright,” he answered.
The voice didn’t identify itself. It didn’t need to. “I’m back stateside,” Brennan said. “We need to meet.”
The deputy director dug deep to curb his temper. “You’re supposed to be on leave, officially. We’re not supposed to be in contact. How did you get this number, anyway?”
Walter had given it to him two years earlier but Brennan wasn’t about to tell Fenton-Wright that.
“Never mind that,” Brennan said. “I want to know what happened with the package in Paris.”
“Safe and sound, and that’s all you need to know right now,” Fenton-Wright said. “The girl has been sent with some compensation to her sister’s house in the south of France.”
“And the locket?”
“An encoded microdot for which only we have the key. It would have been useless to any outside parties at any rate. But you did well in recovering the woman, I won’t deny that. We’re confident she knows nothing of real value.”
“So now what?”
“Now nothing. You’re to stay out of contact until we need have new intel on the shootings. But for now we’re confident Bustamante was our most likely suspect.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yes, because I’m renowned for my sense of humor,” Fenton-Wright said dryly.
“But I told you he was clear on the fact that he wasn’t involved, and there’s all the other stuff he said, the stuff about Khalidi, the nuke…The situation has changed.”
“And where should we direct you, agent Brennan?”
“That’s part of the problem: I have no idea.”
“You weren’t supposed to interact with Bustamante. It was supposed to be surveillance.”
“It was unavoidable.”
“The news said one of his own guards shot him.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t care. At any rate, I don’t need operational suggestions. In fact, as I said, you weren’t supposed to make contact with me, even on an encrypted line.”
“So what now? My target is down.”
“Head back over the pond. You’re too hot, and I don’t want you around here right now. Stay in Paris until I contact you. You’re in D.C.?”
“Yeah.”
“For now, as I said, we assume Bustamante was our man. I’ll advise later on how – or if – we’ll proceed.”
“What about the item?”
“Leave it with me; consider it off of your playing field, need-to-know. And you don’t.”
Fenton-Wright had a level of contempt in his voice that Brennan thought only a field agent had the right to express. He made a mental note to add it to the long list of reasons to look for payback one day as he hung up the call.
Fenton-Wright buzzed through to Jonah Tarrant. “Jonah, get me an update psych assessment on Joe Brennan. Ask them to concentrate on his issues with authority.”
Tarrant didn’t ask why. He knew the implication, that they might need something to hold over Brennan later. He didn’t like it, but he imagined David didn’t either; it was just part of the game.
Brennan met with Walter Lang at the latter’s new favorite pub, which was eight blocks further west than the Czech brewpub and, as far as Walter knew, had yet to be uncovered by anyone in the media.
Walter looked sickly, Brennan thought. He’d always been a pale guy, but he was pasty, off-white, and it looked as though he hadn’t been sleeping well.
“You okay?” he asked, right after sitting down across from him, back to the wall and eyes on the door.
“Sure, sure,” Walter said. “You know how it is. They’ve got me burning the candle at both ends on this thing.”
“I talked to David today,” Brennan said. Walter looked surprised by that. Brennan filled him in on the conversation. “He basically told me to stand down, and to stay out of the country in the meantime.”
“Have you seen Carolyn since you got back?”
Brennan looked away quickly, guilty at the thought. “No. I know I should, but I also knew David might tell me to make myself scarce. It’s so close to Christmas; I didn’t want to get the kids’ hopes up that I’d be here on the day.”
“I get that,” Walter said. “Tell me again what he said about the hot item?”
Brennan recounted the conversation again, Walter looking more incredulous throughout. “So basically he suggested Bustamante was rambling incoherently.”
Walter was quiet while Brennan talked. When his friend had finished, he took a swallow of his beer, then said, “I think it’s true.”
Brennan was shocked. “What?”
“At least, the part about the South Africans losing it. They couldn’t admit it, because doing so would have meant admitting it existed in the first place. The rest of it? You got me. We’d heard rumors that it was behind the high radiation readings among the wreckage of a coastal bus crash…”
“…out of Lima, Peru, in 2009. My sources heard that, too.”
“There was a known Chechen dissident onboard the bus when it went up, a man named Borz Abubakar. Security footage from the bus depot had him boarding the coach.”
“So it’s possible the nuke – or its payload, anyway – is on the bottom of the Pacific.”
“Sure,” Walter said. “It’s also possible that it’s not which, for obvious reasons, is a bigger problem.”
Brennan was quiet for a moment, nursing his beer.
“What’s your thinking?” Walter asked.
“Nothing. Just that it’s a hell of a way to spend a Christmas, you know?”
“You don’t have to. You do
n’t have to go right away; you could go home, spend some time with Carolyn and the kids.”
“You know the job comes first, bud. It’s always been that way.”
“Sure,” Walter said. “But no one’s got you on a schedule. You said it yourself, you’re technically on leave. David can go fuck himself, frankly. This Khalidi thing isn’t going to change the world, whatever’s going on, if you take three or four days off for your family at Christmas. Maybe remember that some of us aren’t so lucky, you know? You want to know what I think, Joe? I think you did what you were ordered to do; you completed your assignments. And if there’s more out there? Well… there will always be more out there. The world won’t end without you. Not right away, anyway.”
“Maybe so,” Brennan said, before taking another swallow from the beer. “Maybe so.”
He stood pat on the single beer so that he could drive to the airport in safe fashion, and said goodbye to Walter after twenty minutes of conversation. He left the pub, his rental weaving its way south. The Japanese compact slipped its way onto Twenty-Fifth Street, then onto M Street, before crossing the river via Highway 29 over the Potomac River Bridge. A light turned red and he sat there staring at it for a few seconds, transfixed. He didn’t have to take the parkway to Dulles. He could head in the other direction, back to Annandale. Walter was right. No one was stopping him.
The light changed. Brennan paused for a moment longer, lingering on the decision; then finally, he stepped on the gas.
Twenty-five minutes away, Carolyn sat in the living room alone, a glass of Bailey’s and ice in her left hand. She was hunched forward slightly, leaning her elbow on one arm of the chair, the drink perched with semi-permanence just a few inches from her lips. But she ignored it, staring ahead, deep in thought as the six-foot artificial Scotch pine blinked its Christmas cheer behind her, the fireplace crackling in the background.
