Marc placed his hand on the Mustang’s rain-slick hood. “Shelby Cobra GT-500. Solomon’s got good taste in motors.”
“Girl makes a point,” said Lucy, as she slipped into the passenger seat.
He didn’t look at her as he put the car smoothly in gear. “Belt up,” he said, fastening his seatbelt.
She barely had the connector snapped in place before the Mustang snarled, shooting away from the curb and into the sheeting downpour.
* * *
Exactly at the instant the clock’s hour hand snapped to ten, the door of the briefing room opened and the men holding John Farrier’s future in their hands entered. It was the first time he could recall seeing Royce and Welles side by side, under any circumstances. An example, he supposed, of exactly how serious this whole situation was. Shaking off his jet lag, he swallowed a yawn and Farrier looked up as they took their seats. He had decided on the flight from Rome that he wouldn’t get up for either of them, not until they gave him something that approached a degree of respect. Welles had one of his thick-necked security people with him, but Royce was alone. If anything, the head of K Section looked more strung out and weary than Farrier was.
“You look like I feel, Donald,” he told him.
Royce gave him a sideways look that was empty of anything. “We’re all making allowances,” he said vaguely.
“Some more than others.” Farrier drew himself up and turned to Welles. The bumpy ride in one of 99 Squadron’s C-17 transport planes had burned a steady bad mood into him, and given Farrier more than enough time to stack up plenty of stinging rebukes for the man who had dragged him home. “Let’s get this colossal waste of effort dealt with.”
Welles looked at him for the first time, as if he had just noticed Farrier was in the room. “In a hurry?”
Farrier leaned forward. “I don’t know what favors you called in, Victor, but you pulled me out of an operational cover in the middle of a major security incident without so much as a by-your-leave. I hope you think it was worth flying me back to London, because I’m going to make sure the director and the whole bloody operational committee know how you’re throwing your weight around.”
“You arrogant prick.” Welles delivered the insult calmly. “I mean, really. You have the temerity to bark at me when it is you that deserves the dressing down.” He shook his head. “Where do you think my authorization came from? Are you really so monumentally self-assured that you believe everyone at the Cross would just accept you had nothing to do with Dane’s appearance at the embassy?”
“It’s not like I gave him an invitation,” Farrier shot back. But then again, maybe I did, just without realizing it.
“Oh,” Welles tapped his fingers on the table. “That’s the line you’re going to follow? Because that’s as tissue-thin a denial as I’ve ever heard. You aided and abetted a fugitive, John. And the more I think about it, the more I’m certain that Rome wasn’t the first time.” He waved his hand at the walls. “Remember this room? Where we held Dane when he walked in off the street? You were with him.”
“I don’t recall that,” Farrier lied. “Try again.”
“I think you helped him get away,” Welles insisted. “And then you let him wander around a secure MI6 station like he owned the place. Which makes you culpable, in my book.”
“He was armed. I was being held hostage—”
Welles snorted with derision. “Please. I’ve read your file. If you wanted, you could have disarmed Dane and shot him dead before he got ten feet away.”
Farrier’s lips thinned and he looked toward Royce. “That would have worked out for you?”
Royce pinched the bridge of his nose. “Marc Dane was … is keeping secrets from this agency. If he had nothing to hide, he had no reason to run.”
“I’m looking at one right now,” Farrier retorted, shooting a glance at Welles.
Royce shook his head. “Point taken. But even so, when he came to you … To somebody who trusted him, he still used you.” The other man sighed, and he seemed to age ten years with the next statement. “Marc is off the chain, John. He is associating with non-state actors, criminals and mercenaries. He’s working to an agenda out of step with ours. That is not the behavior of a loyal MI6 officer.” Royce looked at Welles. “As much as I despise saying it, Victor is correct. Dane has gone rogue and we have to treat him as such.”
Welles sat back in his chair. “You recruited him from the Navy, helped train his team. You thought you could bring him back into the fold. You were protecting him. But that was the wrong call.”
Farrier hated the small part of himself that was agreeing with the internal affairs investigator, and he tried to silence it. “Marc is not a traitor,” he insisted. “But someone wants us to think that he is.”
There was a knock at the door that forestalled any reply, and it opened to admit Talia Patel. She gestured with the ever-present digital tablet in her hand. “There’s been a development,” she began.
Welles beckoned Talia into the room. “Let’s have it.”
She frowned. “The woman from Rome, Lucille Keyes. We found a few appearances between the time she dropped off the radar and the present day. Analysis points to a very strong likelihood that Keyes is currently in the employ of the Rubicon Special Conditions Division.”
Royce seemed surprised. “This is the first I’ve heard of any connection to a private military contractor…”
Talia seemed contrite. “It was a weak lead, or so we thought. I wanted high confidence intel before I brought it to you.” Her boss didn’t seem happy with that answer, but he didn’t press the point.
Welles turned back to Farrier. “Did Dane mention this to you?”
He shook his head, uncertain what to make of the new revelation.
“What does this get us?” Royce demanded, his apparent fatigue fading. “Do we have a current location on Keyes?”
Talia’s lips thinned. “We have something, but not a confirmed sighting. After this came to light, I had GCHQ watch Rubicon’s data traffic for any unusual increases in activity, and there has been a lot going on at their New York office over the last five hours.”
“Up with the larks over there?” offered Welles. “But then I suppose it is the city that never sleeps.”
She went on. “Newark Airport traffic control logged the arrival of a jet registered to the company late last night. I took the liberty of having our station in Manhattan put surveillance on the Rubicon building. One of their cars left in a hurry, and we tracked it across the bay to New Jersey.”
“How does that connect to Marc or Keyes?” said Farrier.
Welles took this in, ignoring the other man’s comment. “Where did the jet fly in from?”
“Kayseri, Turkey. But before that it made a brief stop-over in Rome.”
“He’s there.” Welles stiffened. “But we need to know that for sure.”
“There’s something else,” Talia added reluctantly, looking to Royce for support. He gave her a nod and she continued. “Our people on the ground are hearing reports of an incident aboard a ship at the Port of New Jersey. It’s not that far from the airport. Details are sketchy, but there were gunshots. A fire. Bodies have been found.”
Welles leaned forward. “We need to get on top of this right now. If Dane is on American soil, his potential to embarrass this country and this agency grows exponentially. If the cousins get a whiff of this, Six will take the blame for whatever happens next.”
Royce pushed back his chair and stood up, gathering himself. “Talia, contact our team in New York and tell them to mobilize whatever assets they need. Their orders are to search for Marc Dane and whomever he is now associating with, as quickly as possible. Make every attempt to secure a live capture…” He paused. “But lethal force is authorized.”
Talia said nothing, gripping the data pad in her hand. Farrier shook his head. “This is a mistake.”
“Your opinion is duly noted,” Welles retorted, and fixed Royce with a hard l
ook. “Donald. You’re going to keep me in the loop on this, no arguments. And I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that we need to make sure that the Americans remain completely ignorant of any operations on their turf. All it would take to put the damn cap on this mess would be blowback from the CIA.”
Royce gave a nod. “Agreed.”
“Bring me in,” Farrier insisted. “If Marc’s out there … I know him. I can help you reel him back.” John considered the possibilities, weighing betrayals against secrets, truth against potential lies. It worried him that he didn’t have a clear sense of what was right and what was not.
The withering look Victor Welles gave him told Farrier that nothing he could say would change the man’s mind about Marc Dane’s guilt. “You just sit there, John,” he said. “You just sit there, and wait. If you’re a good lad, I might be able to get you the cell next to Dane’s.”
* * *
The voices were thick and strange, and they came to Halil through a haze of noise like rushing water.
“Are you okay, son?” A man, an older man, with confusion in his manner.
“He looks real sick to me,” said a woman, and Halil thought he smelled something sweet on her. “I reckon he’s some kinda junkie. A Mexican.”
“You don’t know shit, Sally.” Someone poked him, a brisk shove in his chest, a gruff voice close by. “He ain’t a Mexican. He’s one of them Ay-rabs. I seen enough of them when I was in Desert Storm.”
Halil tried to open his eyes, but the effort was great. His limbs were slow and heavy.
The woman snorted. “We all heard your war stories one time too many, Jake.”
“Hey, I know what I’m talkin’ about…”
The jumble of accented words was difficult to follow, and Halil gave up. His senses slowly returned, the world stitching itself back in about him, layer by layer.
Through blurred vision, shapes took form and crowded in. He reacted with fear, trying to retreat back, but there was nowhere he could go.
Faces loomed large over him. The old man, clad in a stained apron that smelled of stale fried food. The woman in a server’s uniform, peering at him like he was some kind of unusual creature. A heavy man with a scraggly ginger beard and deep-set eyes beneath the peak of a greasy trucker cap. They were all too close, all talking at once.
The whole world had a peculiar, dreamlike quality to it, and with sudden realization he knew it was horribly familiar. His hand slapped limply at his neck, where the American with the dead face had stuck the needle in him. Drugged, Halil thought, the concept large and ponderous like a glacier cutting through a turgid sea. Like before, on the ship. Drugged to sleep.
Another figure joined the three surrounding him, and Halil’s heart leaped into his throat. A man with skin as dark as ebony, his gaze hard and pitiless. He wore a uniform with a large metal badge, and the heavy shape of a handgun at his hip. “What the hell is this?” He seemed angry at Halil’s mere presence.
The dark man brought a tide of memory rising up from Halil’s thoughts, of other men in other uniforms, other policemen who had come to him on the day his mother and father had perished. They brought death with them. Panic surged through his veins, an electric shock of fear that made him flinch.
“Hey!” The dark man’s expression grew stern. “Are you high, son?”
“He’s on somethin’,” offered the woman. “Been shooting up in the restroom!”
“You don’t know that,” said the old man, but no one was listening to him.
“Maybe he doesn’t understand.” The trucker waved a hand in front of Halil’s face. “Could be he’s like, one of them re-tardeds.”
“Habla espanol?” said the policeman. He was so close Halil could see the jumble of foreign words on his badge.
Halil tried to reply, but it was hard to form speech
“They don’t teach Ay-rab kids nothing,” added the trucker, with a sage nod.
The dark man suddenly pulled back, and his hand dropped to the butt of the pistol in his belt. “Goddamn it. The kid is high,” he told the others. “I’m sick of these tweakers. See his pupils? Gonna have to get him out of here, take him somewhere safe.”
Somewhere safe. The words cut through the fog of Halil’s thoughts like a searchlight. He remembered the officers who had come to the door of his family’s home, in their uniforms and wearing their bright badges. They too told him they would take him somewhere safe. Because he was just a boy with two dead parents and no one to care for him, and an orphan could not live all on his own.
And no matter how much he had cried, they had refused to let him stay. The policemen struck him with a baton just like the one the dark-skinned man carried at his waist, dragged him weeping into the street. His life shattered in that moment, the broken pieces of it falling until they came to rest in the dust and the pain of Khadir’s orphanage.
Halil would not let that happen again.
They were all talking about him, talking about what they would do with him as if he were not even there. As if he were a child, without the will to speak for himself. Now the policeman was drawing a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
Then it was happening, and Halil could not stop himself. He did not want to stop himself.
Halil’s hand slipped across the table and clutched a glassy cylinder full of sugar. He put all his strength into a sudden jerk of movement and slammed it into the side of the man’s head.
Glass exploded in a crunch of sound and the police officer’s face was doused in a torrent of powdery granules. The woman let out a cry as the man lost his balance under the force of the surprise attack. Halil saw him fall away and crack his temple against the countertop, eyes rolling back to show whites as he continued his drop to the floor. There was blood.
He stumbled forward off the seat and went to the semi-conscious policeman. Halil tore the big pistol from its holster, and the woman’s cry became a full-throated screech.
The sound made Halil wince and he involuntarily tightened his grip on the weapon. Thunder sounded inside the diner as the gun discharged a single round into the floor, cracking the aged tiles.
Now Halil’s panic washed out of him and infected everyone else in the room, as the figures seated at other booths all bolted into motion, running for the door. There was chaos all around, and he winced in pain as the prickling agony in his gut returned.
Halil stumbled, the gun in his hand heavy and dangerous, the muzzle swinging back and forth past the faces of the man with the cap, the woman, and the old man in the apron. None of them dared to move, not with the threat of death in his grip, and not with the injured policeman lying on the floor.
* * *
Marc kept the Mustang at a steady pace down the arrow-straight highway, holding the car just under the speed limit. He lost himself in the action of the drive, his world narrowing to the sparse traffic sharing the road and the feel of the vehicle over the wet asphalt.
Lucy was nimble enough that she could slip back over the gap between the front seats to the small space in the rear. In the mirror he caught glimpses of tawny skin, a flash of white underwear as she shucked off the damp tactical gear for something less military-looking.
“Enjoy the show?” she asked, as she climbed back into the passenger seat and snapped her seatbelt into place.
“I’m driving,” he replied, by way of denial.
“That you are.” Lucy loaded one of the fresh Glock semi-automatics Kara had brought from the Rubicon office. Satisfied, she seated the gun in a paddle holster under a loose black flight jacket. “Where’d you learn to handle a muscle car?”
“I play a lot of Forza when I’m on downtime.”
“Uh huh.” He could see her studying him out of the corner of his eye. “So, you gonna tell me what happened back on the boat?”
“You were there.”
“Not for all of it.”
He shot her a look, eyes flicking briefly from the ribbon of black before them. “We got the intel. That’s all that ma
tters, yeah?”
“You killed that merc. Grunewald.”
“No one’s going to weep for one less assassin in the world.” Marc’s lip pulled into a sneer. “And for the record? It was gravity that killed him, not me.”
“Did you do that for Sam?”
His hands tensed reflexively on the steering wheel. “What do you mean?”
Marc heard her sigh. “Back in Turkey, that night … I heard you say a name in your sleep. I’m guessing it’s someone important to you.”
“She died.” He told her before he could stop himself. “They made it happen.” Marc didn’t need to explain who they were.
“You don’t have to justify it to me,” Lucy said gently.
“I’m not,” he snapped. “Grunewald threatened the lives of my family. The Combine murdered my team. I’ve got all the bloody reasons I need.”
She was silent for a long moment. “It’s not an easy thing to end someone in cold blood. Takes more out of you than you’d think.”
A hard retort was forming in Marc’s thoughts, but then he caught up to the woman’s tone of voice and remembered exactly what Lucy Keyes was, what it was that she did best. He said nothing, just nodded.
Bright color blinked behind them, and he glanced at the wing mirror, seeing the flicker of red and blue strobes. The skirl of a siren reached his ears and Marc eased off the gas, pulling the car over into the slow lane as the boxy shape of an ambulance screamed by in a flash of lights and spray, hooting at everything else on the road.
Lucy leaned forward. “What is that? Up ahead?”
They crested a low rise, following in the ambulance’s wake, and there in the middle distance were more flashing strobes from a cluster of emergency vehicles. Cars and trucks formed a tailback behind a line of smoking road flares that cordoned off the highway around a gas station and roadside diner. Marc slowed. He could see policemen gesturing to the drivers, trying to turn them around.
“Ah, hell.” Lucy rocked back in her seat. “Must be an accident or something.”
Marc tapped the sat-nav set into the Mustang’s dashboard. “If we have to double back, we’re going to lose the bus for sure.” He rolled to a halt, and one of the cops started toward them.
Nomad Page 38
