by David Archer
Noah looked at the man for a second, then handed the silent pistol to Dawson. “Go ahead,” he said. “This one is actually loaded.”
Dawson glanced at the pistol in Jenny’s hand and she pointed it at Garrity and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened, and Garrity suddenly looked relieved. The relief banished from his face a second later when the PSS made a distinctive click and a hole appeared in his forehead. Blood and brain matter sprayed the bed and the wall behind it, and the Director of Spear fell back dead.
Dawson glanced at Jenny again and saw that she had produced another pistol, which was aimed carefully at him. He grinned at her and winked, then handed the PSS back to Noah.
“We good?” he asked.
“We’re good,” Noah said. “See if we can find any intelligence here.” He slipped the pistol into his pocket, and the three of them began going through everything in the room. Jenny found Garrity’s cell phone and a computer, while Dawson came up with a notebook filled with what looked like some sort of coded scribbles.
“All right, let’s go,” Noah said. “Our work here is done, but we still need to get back to Kirtland.”
“Kirtland, Colorado,” Dawson said. “I finally get to meet the Dragon Lady.” He winked at Jenny again. “You can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m not too sure you should be,” Jenny said. “She might just decide to turn you over to me after all.”
Dawson lost his grin, but he followed Noah out the door without another word.
* * *
Their copilot had come down with a mild fever, so the entire flight crew was taken out of service. As a result, they were forced to spend the night in Rio while another flight crew was brought down from Houston. Noah and Gary took turns watching Dawson, but he made no effort to slip away. As far as Noah could tell, he was committed to doing whatever Noah wanted, as long as it meant he could stay alive.
They were called at four a.m. to tell them that the flight crew had arrived and the plane was ready to go. It took them only a short time to get checked out and then they dropped off the Range Rovers at the rental lots and made their way toward the charter gate.
The plane touched down at Kirtland at just before two p.m. local time, and a team of men was waiting to take charge of Dawson. Noah watched as he was loaded into a van and driven away, and then walked over to where Allison stood on the tarmac, waiting for them.
“Debriefing first,” she said. “We’re going to milk him for as much information as we can get, and then we will decide whether he’s worth trying to salvage.” She looked up at Noah. “I can’t believe you made a deal for me to hire the very son of a bitch who killed Donald.”
“Spear has been able to manipulate things on a global scale for a long time,” Noah said. “From what Dawson has told us, they have probably been around since the sixties or seventies. I felt that gaining intelligence about them might be worth the trade-off.”
“And as much as I hate it, you were probably right. From what we’ve learned from Renée over the last thirty hours, he knows a fair amount about the organization. If I don’t sanction him, I’m probably going to give him a team and send him out after as many of their people as he can find, but the team is going to have orders to terminate him if he goes off script even once.”
Noah nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. Let him clean up the mess.”
“Exactly.” She watched as the van drove away, then turned back to Noah and the others. “This has been a pretty busy airport, today. Four other planes have come in, and each of them had one of the people Dawson told you about. We have them in an interrogation facility out behind R&D.” She looked at Jenny. “Do you want to rest up first?”
“Oh, hell, no,” Jenny said. “Do you have any idea how much stress I got built up inside me? I need to let it out, and these are exactly the kind of people who need to help me relieve my stress.”
“Yes, I thought you would feel that way,” Allison said with a grin. She turned toward a young man standing nearby and clicked a finger at him. “This is Darrell,” she said. “He’ll drive you out there.”
Jenny smiled, and then she and Neil got into the car Darrell was driving. It pulled away a moment later, leaving Noah and Gary standing alone with Allison.
“When she gets done,” Allison said, “you’re going to have an awful lot of work to do, Noah.”
“I know,” Noah said. “But first, there are couple of things I’d like to take care of here at home.”
“Oh, really? A visit to your wife, maybe?” Allison smiled.
“Definitely,” Noah said, “but first I need to make a stop at the cemetery.”
* * *
Noah stood at the gravesite, noticing that the ground still looked freshly turned. It would take a while for the dirt to settle back in and smooth out, but that didn’t matter.
“I got him, Donald,” he said. “I got the man who ordered your death, but not the one who actually caused it.”In his mind, he heard Jefferson answer. “It’s all right, Noah,” the imaginary voice said. “Sometimes you have to make a trade. The nice thing about this life is that each and every one of us will eventually get what’s coming to us. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword, isn’t that what they always say?”
“Yes,” Noah said. “I suppose they do.”
“Then don’t worry about it. Dawson will get justice someday. Don’t let it eat at you until he does. You have too much work to do, Noah. And from everything I’ve been hearing, it’s probably just beginning.”
Noah turned off his imagination and walked away from the grave. He climbed back into the car Allison had driven him there in and looked at her.
“All done?” she asked. “Ready to go home?”
“For the moment,” Noah said. “I could stand a decent night’s sleep.”
Allison patted his arm. “I’m pretty sure there’s a little blonde waiting to make sure you get one.” She put the car in gear and drove away, heading out of town toward Temple Lake Road.
TWENTY-THREE
Neil wasn’t a fan of watching Jenny work, so he decided to visit R&D while she went to the interrogation facility. Being technically minded himself, he was always welcome there and Wally was delighted to show off some of his new toys.
Jenny didn’t mind. She knew that he could be squeamish at times, and she didn’t want to have to think about him while she was enjoying herself this way.
Senator Mitchell was first. He was sitting in one of the interrogation rooms, looking slightly bewildered when the diminutive blonde walked in.
“Are you here to tell me what’s going on?” he asked. “Because I don’t have any idea what this is all about, and it’s getting a little old just sitting here.”
Jenny grinned at him. “I guess you could say that,” she said. “Actually, I’m here to ask you a few questions. If you answer me properly, then you get to have a good day. If not, then I get to have a good day.”
Mitchell narrowed his eyes. “Young lady, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Spear,” Jenny said, and she watched his face for a reaction. She saw it, just a split second of pure terror that crossed his face before he managed to get it under control.
“Spear? What is that?”
“Now, see? That’s exactly the kind of wrong answer I was expecting.” She reached behind herself and pulled out a couple of the karambit daggers, hooking her index fingers into the rings and giving them a spin as they came into view. “Next time you give me a wrong answer, I’m going to demonstrate just how much I love these little toys of mine.”
Mitchell got up out of his chair and stood warily, watching her like a hawk. “Now, see here,” he said. “This isn’t legal. I don’t know where you and I are, but this is…”
“This is the place where you can either tell me the truth or I can skin you alive, one square inch at a time, and nobody is going to get the least bit upset about it.” She giggled. “Especial
ly me, I love this stuff.”
Mitchell swallowed hard. “But I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about…”
Before he could even react, she had spun herself around and dragged the tip of one of the blades across his chest. The blade was sharp, cutting through his shirt and the skin underneath as if both of them were made of tissue paper. It happened so quickly that Mitchell didn’t even register that he had been cut until the warm blood began to flow down onto his belly, making him look down.
Suddenly, it hurt like hell, and he screamed.
“Tell me about Spear,” she said. “I want names, places, all of it.”
Mitchell clapped his hands onto his chest, trying to hold the flayed skin together, but the blood was oozing between his fingers. The cut wasn’t terribly deep, but it was bleeding rather profusely.
“But I don’t know,” he said. “I swear to you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
The second blade flashed and a piece of his earlobe fell to the floor. This time, he felt the pain as soon as it happened, the white hot pain that came with the removal of a piece of useless but sensitive skin. He howled out loud, and tried to keep one arm over the wound in his chest while he slapped the other hand onto his ear.
“Two for two,” Jenny said. “I’ll bet you that I can take the other ear off completely, what do you think?”
Mitchell clamped his mouth shut and swallowed again, then took a deep breath and looked at her. “Okay! Okay, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just stop that, you’re going to make me bleed to death.”
Jenny lowered the knives and looked at him, and an expression of disappointment came over her face. “Hell, you’re no fun,” she said. She turned and looked at the mirror on the wall. “Okay, he’s all yours,” she said.
The door opened a moment later and two men came in. They stood there and looked at Mitchell as Jenny walked out of the room, noticing that each of them was wearing a pair of the deception detecting glasses Wally’s people had developed.
Another man was standing in the hallway, waiting for her. He pointed toward another door and she stepped through it. Arthur Adams, Deputy Attorney General of the United States, looked up from his chair by the table.
“Well, hello,” he said with a smile. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Jenny returned the smile. “You could say that…”
* * *
Sarah was delighted when Allison dropped Noah off at the house, and it didn’t take her long to drag him into the bedroom. First, he let her know just how much he had missed her. Then, since he had spent most of the last two days awake, keeping track of Dawson, he curled up close to her and went to sleep.
Neil and Jenny arrived back at the trailer around six, and Neil came over to the house. Sarah had heard him pull in and slipped out of bed to tell him that Noah was sleeping, and seemed to need more rest. Neil nodded and whispered that he would see them in the morning, then made his way back over to the trailer, where Jenny was showering off the blood that was coating her when she had gotten back to him.
Noah awoke at six a.m. and made his way to the kitchen to start coffee before Sarah got up, then went back to the bedroom and went to the shower. He was trying to rinse the shampoo out of his hair when the shower door opened and Sarah climbed in with him.
“Need some help?” she asked.
“You can wash my back,” Noah said. She did so, then turned him around and proceeded to wash the front of him just as thoroughly. By the time they were finished in the shower, the water was getting cold.
They climbed out and toweled off, then slipped into casual clothes and headed for the kitchen. Noah poured them coffee while Sarah started bacon frying and got out the eggs she was going to scramble into an omelette. The bacon was just beginning to sizzle when Neil and Jenny knocked on the door.
“How did it go?” Noah asked Jenny.
“Kinda boring,” she said. “The Englishman was the most entertaining of the bunch, but even he caved in before I could really start cutting deep.”
Noah nodded. “Did you learn anything good?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I left the real interrogation up to Allison’s people. I guess they just wanted me to soften them up, let them know what would happen if they didn’t cooperate.”
“That was probably an effective technique,” Noah said. “I doubt any of them wanted to see you again anytime soon.”
“What’s going to happen to them now?” Sarah asked. “After Jenny gets done with them, do they just send them off to prison or something?”
“Maybe the special prison,” Noah said. “The one they kept Allison in for a while is used when a high-ranking official needs to be kept on ice. Either that, or they end up in the potter’s field.” The potter’s field was the cemetery where those who were terminated by E & E locally were buried. None of the graves had names on the markers; they had numbers only, so that it would be possible to identify who was buried where, should the situation ever be necessary.
Only Neil showed any remorse at the thought that these traitors might be terminated. He shuddered once, but didn’t say anything.
Noah’s phone rang at that moment, and he saw that it was Allison calling. He picked it up and hit the speaker button as he answered.
“Camelot,” he said.
“It’s Allison,” she said, unnecessarily as ever. “My office, nine a.m. Bring everybody, even Sarah.”
Sarah’s eyebrows shot upward, but she didn’t say a word.
Noah answered, “We’ll be there,” and the line went dead.
“Why me?” Sarah asked. “Is she going to send me out with you after all?”
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “I suppose it’s possible.” He dialed Marco’s number, also on speaker, and wasn’t surprised when the man answered instantly.
“Noah? Are you back?”
“We got in yesterday,” Noah said. “I just needed to get some rest. Thing is, Allison just called and said to bring everyone to the office at nine. How’s Renée doing?”
“She seems perfectly normal,” Marco said. “Doc Parker says he wants to talk more with her, but that he thinks her biggest problem now is just feeling like she let the team down. I keep telling her it wasn’t her fault, but you know how women are.”
“No,” Jenny said. “Tell us how women are, Marco.”
“Hi, Jenny,” Marco said, chuckling. “You know what I mean, she just keeps trying to blame herself.”
“It could be worse,” Neil said. “She could blame you.”
“I wouldn’t mind, if it would bring her out of the funk. No, really, she seems to be doing okay most of the time. Like I said, she just feels like she messed up.”
“Well, if Doctor Parker is comfortable that she’s all right, she may get a chance to prove herself. We brought in Dawson, and between him and some other people that were rounded up, I gather we got some intel on others involved in this whole conspiracy. I suspect we’re getting ready to go out on another mission, so I hope you enjoyed the couple of days you had off.”
“I’m up for whatever we need to do,” Marco said. “Nine a.m., right? We’ll be there.”
“See you then,” Noah said, and he cut off the call. He dropped the phone on the table and dug into the omelette that Sarah put in front of him.
She put a couple more plates in front of Neil and Jenny, then made one for herself and sat down. “I figured you guys would be over,” she said. “I think Neil can smell the bacon as soon as I put it in the skillet.”
“Hey,” Neil said. “I didn’t smell it until we got into your driveway.”
They ate breakfast together, something they did fairly often, and then Neil and Jenny sat at the table drinking coffee while Noah and Sarah went to dress properly for the day. By the time they returned to the kitchen, Jenny had already made a second pot of coffee. Noah and Sarah got another cup each and sat down, and Noah let Neil and Jenny fill Sarah in on how the mission had gone.
“We’ll find out when we get there,” Noah said. “Although, I can’t say I really like the idea of you going out on a mission. If it’s up to me, I think you need to stay here.”
Sarah stuck her tongue out at him. “In that case, I’m glad it’s not entirely up to you.”
* * *
They arrived at the offices of Brigadoon Investments a few minutes early, all of them riding in Neil’s big Hummer. He parked it in the underground garage and they took the elevator up to the top floor, where Allison’s office and conference room were. The receptionist, a new girl they hadn’t seen before, told them to go on to the conference room.
They walked in to find Marco and Renée already there, along with Allison and Molly. Neil went to the side table and grabbed a couple of donuts and coffee, but the rest of them just sat down around the table.
“Molly?” Allison said. “Go ahead.”
Molly, who had been Noah’s childhood friend, cleared her throat and pointed to the video screen behind her. A remote in her hand clicked and a number of photographs appeared on the screen.
“After interrogation of all the prisoners last night, we identified more than fifty individuals involved in the Spear organization,” she began. “Almost all of them are ranking political officials in various countries and they are being rounded up, but there’s one person we’ve yet to locate.” She waved the remote again and the collage of photos disappeared, to be replaced by one image that made all of them stare at the screen.
“That’s not possible,” Sarah said. “He’s dead, I killed him myself!”
The image they were looking at was that of Nicolaich Andropov, the former Russian superspy who had gone rogue and kidnapped Sarah twice in attempts to trap Noah and kill him.
