by Matthew Dunn
“And yet it was ultimately you who ended his life.”
Will was silent.
Patrick inhaled deeply. “However you intend to construct this operation, Alistair and I are in complete agreement that you must have support. And your priority must be to capture Megiddo, not protect Lana. You certainly can’t do both.”
“I can damn well try.”
“You talk of risk.” Patrick smiled a little, but his look remained cold. “Is that a risk you’re willing to take?”
Will said nothing.
Patrick nodded. “We’ve calculated that you need at least eight men for all surveillance, protection, and attack requirements. But I can only get you four specialists, and Alistair has advised me that he can’t get any shooters from MI6.”
“I thought this operation had been countenanced from on high? Surely the premiers would give us all the resources we needed?”
Patrick glanced down at an inch-high pile of loose papers. “You bring me back to that ‘but.’ ” He placed a thumb against the pile and strummed the papers’ edges. “The Hubble report I showed you is without doubt genuine. However, since its release, something else has happened. Hubble has been inundated with further signals from intelligence about other intended attacks across Europe and the U.S. It’s caused a state of high anxiety, to say the least, and it has stretched resources beyond reason. I was lucky to secure you four CIA paramilitary officers.”
Will frowned. “Are you getting results from actions taken on the content of these other NSA reports?”
Patrick shook his head and looked frustrated. “That’s the thing. The reports are informative enough to be taken seriously but not specific enough to guarantee results.”
“What does NSA say?”
Patrick rose from his chair and walked to a window. He placed his hands in his pockets and stared out. “You have to understand that we live in a world of bureaucracies and conflicting agendas.” He turned to face Will. “NSA is so damn protective of their precious Hubble operation that they’ve decided it cannot be challenged. I’ve asked them about the new reports, and they’ve told me to mind my own business. I can’t even get the president to order them to cooperate with me, since for him to do so would prompt too many intrusive questions from Congress.”
Will shrugged. “Well, providing you’re convinced of the validity of the initial Hubble report, these other reports should be of no concern to us. Aside from the fact that according to you it means my operation does not have enough resources.”
Patrick folded his arms across his chest. “I think these other reports could be of every concern to our operation.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t prove anything to you yet. What I can say is that these other reports look too similar to the original Hubble report of two weeks ago. But unlike the original report, I think the subsequent reports have been manufactured. The trouble is, only NSA can substantiate that view.”
“Good luck.”
Patrick smiled. “I should be wishing you good luck.”
He turned back to look out the window. “I told you that I’m used on extreme matters. I told you I needed you because you had a head start with the operation against Megiddo. What I didn’t tell you is that you also have another use to me.” Patrick turned again to look at Will. “You’re deniable.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“At seven-thirty tomorrow morning the children and wife of the NSA’s Head of the Middle East Counterterrorism Desk will leave for school and work. At eight-thirty the NSA officer himself leaves for work. I need you to be in Baltimore tomorrow to have a little chat with him before he heads off for his morning duties.”
Will frowned. “You want me to interrogate a senior NSA officer?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
Will thought about the question. “I’m willing to frighten him, even hurt him a little, but I refuse to torture a man who’s on our side.”
Patrick held up a hand. “I do have to make tough decisions, but thankfully making a decision to torture a Western intelligence analyst isn’t one of them right now.” Patrick walked back to the table. He said nothing for a while, just stood looking at Will. He then spoke quietly. “Alistair has warned me that you view your work as a means to take revenge against the tragedies of your early life. He’s warned me that you never stop, that you make immense personal sacrifices, that you care nothing for rules or protocols, and that your compassion for the weak and innocent is balanced with an unflinching desire to slaughter evil.” He raised his voice. “But he’s also warned me that there are aspects of your character that neither he nor you yet fully understand.” His voice hardened. “The operation to capture Megiddo requires us to play with the very highest stakes. For reasons that will become clear to you in a moment, I need to know that you can be controlled.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “I control myself.”
“How? How can you do that?” Patrick demanded harshly. “How can you do the things you do without professional and personal guidance? How can you continue to exist without those things?”
Will was silent before saying, “When my war ends, I may be forced to face those questions. But by then it won’t matter, because I’ll most likely be dead.”
Patrick waved a hand in what looked like frustration. “You are your father’s son, but through circumstance you’ve also become a distillation and a corruption of the man I last saw in Bandar-e ’Abbas.”
Will stood quickly and kicked his chair to the floor. He took two paces toward Patrick and glared at the man.
Patrick stepped back and raised a hand. “Please sit down.”
Will didn’t move.
“Please sit down.”
Will held his gaze on Patrick. “Be very careful with your words.” He sat and watched Patrick do the same.
Patrick seemed to be composing himself. “There’s another reason Alistair and I know that you’re the best officer for this mission. And that reason will change everything for you.” He nodded slowly and lowered his voice. “Everything.”
“What do you mean?”
For the longest time, Patrick studied Will. “What’s your last memory of your father?”
Will narrowed his eyes. “I was five years old. I remember seeing him walk across a stretch of tarmac to an airplane. I was waving to him with one hand while holding my mother’s hand with the other. I saw him get onto the plane. And I never saw him again.” The anger within Will receded as he pictured the memory. “I later learned that the plane was bound for Iran.”
Patrick nodded. “That would have been his first and last trip into Iran and three weeks before his capture.” He broke eye contact for a moment, and when he looked back at Will, there was sadness in his eyes. “For the first year of his captivity, we knew from our agents that your father was moved around Iran by the revolutionaries and kept in cellars and other secret locations. But after the revolution of 1979, the revolutionaries became officials and your father’s incarceration was formalized. He was transferred to Evin Prison in Tehran and kept in solitary confinement between the frequent bouts of torture inflicted on him. In the seventh year of his imprisonment, your father was taken into the room that was normally used for his torture, but instead of seeing one of the many usual torturers, he was confronted with the revolutionary man who had set us all up. That man had now become an important person, and the prison guards stood back as he set about his task.”
Patrick closed his eyes and then slowly opened them again. “I later spoke to one of those guards, before I killed him, and found out everything that had happened in that room. I found out that the revolutionary man cut pieces off your father. I found out that the man attached a saline drip to your father’s body so that he could be kept alive longer while undergoing this brutal savagery. I found out that at the very end the revolutionary plunged his knife into your father’s broken body and extinguished his life.
“Since the murder of your father and later your
mother, you’ve spent your adult life righting other people’s wrongs. This mission will be different for you, but Alistair and I fear what effect it will have on your already ruthless psyche. This mission will be different because the man who tore your father apart gave him his name before killing him.
“That name was Megiddo.”
Thirteen
Will stopped his rental car and checked his watch. He exited the vehicle and stood on Sycamore Road in Baltimore’s desirable Cedarcroft residential district. He wore a British-purchased Gieves amp; Hawkes suit and a raglan overcoat, and he carried in one pocket an American-lent Beretta M9A1 pistol. He pulled up the collar of his coat to help shield against the icy early-morning rain and then thrust his hands into the pockets. He could see fourteen spacious houses on this two-hundred-meter-long road, and the house he needed was toward the end of the route. He lowered his head and walked quickly forward. Within a minute he was standing before a Dutch Colonial-style building. He rang the bell. A man opened the door, and Will instantly kicked him in the stomach, then stepped over the man’s shuddering body. He closed the door behind him and listened. There were no other noises coming from inside the large family home.
Will returned to where the man lay and crouched. He placed a hand around the man’s jaw and said commandingly, “Breathe.” Then he stood, ignoring the man’s moans, and walked through the front foyer and into a large kitchen. He turned and walked back to the man. He gently cradled a hand under the man’s head, pulled him through to the kitchen area, and placed him on the floor but in a seated position. The man wheezed, clutching his hands against his chest.
Will sat on the floor next to him. He prodded the man’s forehead and asked, “Has Hubble been compromised?”
The man inhaled deeply several times and then shook his head. “Whoever you are, go to hell.”
Will crossed his legs and interlocked his fingers. “A silly response.”
The man held a hand up to his mouth as if he were going to vomit. He screwed his eyes shut, and his breathing began to slow. Then he removed his hand and looked at Will. “If I don’t report in to work, armed men will come looking for me.”
“Because you’re a senior NSA officer?” Will smiled. “I doubt that anyone will come, but if someone does, then I’ll kill him just after I’ve killed you.”
The NSA officer shook his head again. “Who sent you?”
Will leaned back against the breakfast table. “Well, you can probably tell from my accent that it’s unlikely I work for one of your agencies.”
“Then how do you know about Hubble?” The man’s breathing seemed to be recovering from Will’s blow.
“Because you stupidly send Hubble reporting to everyone you deem to be an ally.”
The man took his hands away from his chest. “I doubt you’re my ally.”
Will grinned. “Maybe not. But I represent an affiliation of intelligence interests who are allies of Hubble’s insight. And we think you have a problem.”
The officer’s eyes narrowed. “You’d be crazy to think I’d tell you anything about how we get Hubble intelligence.”
“I’m not here to learn about Hubble itself. I’m simply here to ascertain whether you believe that Hubble reporting has been corrupted during the last fourteen days.” Will glanced around the kitchen and saw two used adult-size and two child-size cereal bowls beside the sink. He then looked back to the man. He hated the lie he was about to speak. Yet he knew that it was vital. “And I’m prepared to stay here with you all day to get my answer. But I swear to you that I will shoot dead the first person who interrupts our little chat.”
The man said nothing.
Will nodded. “I know how important the Hubble operation is to you personally. After all, the inspiration and the technology behind the Hubble technical attack was yours. As a result, Hubble has quite rightly given you praise and promotion within the National Security Agency. So”-he opened his hands and drummed his fingers on his leg-“it must be difficult for you to accept that your greatest achievement has been identified by hostiles and manipulated to their advantage.”
The officer sat in silence for nearly one minute. Then he, too, glanced over at the sink area before looking back at Will. He closed his eyes a little, rubbing a hand over his belly. He shook his head. “Two weeks ago we did start receiving a new stream of reporting from the Hubble source. Over the course of a few days, it became clear to me that the style of these new reports was nearly identical to the old stuff, but with content that was forcing us to chase after bomb plots across the West without results. I formed the opinion that someone had breached Hubble and was feeding us false information.”
“How could that happen?”
The man peered at him before repeating, “I won’t tell you how we get Hubble intelligence. Whatever you think you can do, my masters will be able to do worse to me if I betray Hubble.”
“I understand, but hear me out. What would you say if I told you that a person or persons unknown had discovered a technical attack against Iranian military communications and other data systems, that the person then realized that his operation to strike a massive blow against the West had been discovered, that the man then decided that instead of shutting down the breach he would manipulate it in order to try to cast doubt over his operation, that the man then manipulated Hubble by sending certain e-mails, making certain telephone calls, and sending certain text messages? You don’t have to tell me about Hubble, but what would you say in response to my little hypothesis?”
The man lowered his head and said nothing.
Will smiled and pushed himself up from the floor. “Then that’s all I need to know.”
The NSA officer looked up at him. His eyes had watered. “You’re wrong about one thing. When I decided we had a breach, I immediately brought it to the attention of my superiors. But it was them, not me, who decided to ignore it.”
“Why would they do that?”
The man sighed. “My Hubble operation is as comprehensive as it gets. The breach accounts for less than one percent of the Hubble attack. The rest remains intact and undiscovered. The NSA decided that to do anything about the breach would compromise the whole setup. So they chose to ignore it in order to save the wider operation.”
“But why then distribute the reports from the breach when you know them to be false?”
The man shrugged. “Our intelligence customers believe wholeheartedly in the Hubble project because we tell them it’s completely accurate. For us to withhold any of its reporting could prompt them to question the entirety of it.” He smiled a little, but the look on his face seemed bitter. “Hubble alone has secured an extra two hundred million dollars of funding for the NSA this year.”
Will nodded. “I see.” He observed the man for a moment before speaking again. “You will go to work now and make sure that the breach continues to go unchallenged. You will also ensure that NSA never learns about our conversation this morning.” He glanced one last time around the kitchen before looking back at the NSA officer. He thought the man seemed honest and honorable, like a decent father and husband who didn’t deserve to be threatened in the way that Will had been forced to do to him on this day. He hated the actions he often had to take and the lies he often had to speak. He pointed at the man. “Do this, and you and your loved ones get to live. Fail, and everything you love will die.”
Fourteen
Will turned off the reading light above his seat in the Delta Air Lines 777 and closed his eyes. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he desperately hoped that his mind would give him some rest on this flight. He tried to relax, tried to detach himself from the man he was, tried to imagine being one of the normal people he was surrounded by in first class.
But the thoughts and memories coursed through him with ferocity and intensity before settling on the one memory he least wanted to confront.
He saw the large teenage boy smile and sniff the spring air as he strolled through the midafternoon day toward
the house. He saw the boy kick at loose stones for no other reason than they were there. He saw the boy smile wider as he patted the school bag containing his report card. He saw the boy increase his pace so that he was almost running toward the nearing house.
The boy stopped and frowned but was not perturbed. The cars around the house were unusual, given that few people ever visited, and certainly not during a weekday. But the boy was still really a child, and he loved changes to his routine, and so he embraced the notion that something exciting and different lay ahead. He walked onward and combed fingers through his tousled hair to try to make himself look at least a little bit presentable. He examined the cars more closely and memorized the models so he could tell his friends about them the following day. He had no interest in cars, but he knew that some of his friends did.
The boy rubbed his shoes against the back of his trousers and then approached the rear door of the house. It was open, and he decided that was normal for such an airy and fresh day. He walked into the house, set down his book bag, and wondered if he could have some lemonade.
He called out, “Mother.”
He walked into the living room.
His life changed forever.
Fifteen
At eight-thirty the following morning, Will was again standing on rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie in Paris. The muscles in his back ached, and he stretched his arms to try to relieve the discomfort. The road around him was busy with pedestrians forcing their way through an overnight snowfall, and Will scrutinized them all.
He saw Lana emerge from her side street and then followed her. She was dressed in a heavy winter coat and boots but nevertheless looked elegant and sexy as she strode on, turning on to rue du Bourg-Tibourg. She walked into a cafe and sat at a window table. Will stood for a moment on the street, watching her. He saw her remove her scarf, and he saw her hair fall down across her back. He saw her order something from a waiter, and he saw her take out a folded newspaper. He walked into the cafe.
