by Tom Wood
He ignored her.
She studied him, annoyed he wouldn’t take the bait, and then her expression became more serious. She glanced at Wallinger’s corpse. ‘Who were these guys?’
He tossed her the two IDs. She scrutinised them, running a thumb over each one in turn, as if she could measure their veracity by touch alone.
‘It’s a genuine ID and genuine badge,’ Victor said.
‘I don’t know either of these two,’ Raven said. ‘But it’s really not smart to kill federal agents. Whatever their temporary risk to you, you’ve done yourself far more harm than good. Do you know how many cops and government agents are in this city? Or in this country? Do you have any idea the lengths they’ll go to to get justice for these guys? You should have run. You should have done anything you could to avoid capture and get away, but you never should have killed them.’
Victor said, ‘You told me before they weren’t real agents.’
‘No, I told you they weren’t on genuine Homeland Security business. You’ve made things a lot worse for both of us by killing these two.’
‘Look at the knife,’ Victor said. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with it?’
She looked confused, as if trying to work out what trick he was attempting before deciding he was, to her surprise, being genuine. She leaned forward for a closer look. It only took her a second to see what he meant. He hadn’t expected her to take any longer.
‘Why did you stab him through the sternum?’
‘I should have gone for the ribs, right?’
‘Obviously, but with the blade thrusting on a horizontal axis so it wouldn’t have become trapped on bone. I would have thought you would know better than that.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I do know better.’
Her eyes rose to meet his own. ‘You’re saying you didn’t kill these two?’
Victor said, ‘I’m saying I didn’t kill this particular one, but I did take his clothes. He won’t need them again. The dead woman in the bathroom is my own work. She stabbed this guy here, and then tried to kill me. I was acting in self-defence. I haven’t stayed alive this long by killing those who I don’t need to, especially people who will be missed who have powerful friends.’
‘Why did this Guerrero try to kill you? And why did she kill her partner?’
‘She tried to kill me because I said your code name. He wanted to take me in. She couldn’t let that happen.’
‘Why would you use my code name?’
‘To test a theory,’ he answered. ‘And to find out if you were telling me the truth before.’
‘I’m offended.’
He shook his head. ‘No, you’re not.’
‘True, but this would all have gone a lot smoother if you would just trust what I tell you.’
‘I trust no one. Least of all the word of people who have tried to kill me.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not going to let that go, are you? It’s not healthy to hold on to grudges. Forgive and forget, as they say.’
‘What are you doing here, Constance? Why didn’t you get out of the city while you had the chance? I might not have found you again.’
She frowned. ‘I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.’
‘What are you doing here? What am I doing here?’
‘Apparently, I’m helping you see the obvious.’
‘Which is?’ Victor asked.
‘Halleck set you up.’
‘Of course he did. But I still don’t know why. He told me he didn’t send you after me. I believed him.’
‘That’s because he was telling the truth. He didn’t send me after you, it was the other way round.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I was after a Saudi prince.’
She was shaking her head before he’d finished talking. ‘He orchestrated it so I came after you, but his intention wasn’t for me to kill you. It was for you to kill me. So, technically, he was telling the truth. He must have thought you, being historically so effective at taking out threats, would be more than a match for me.’
‘Then he overestimated my abilities.’
‘More like he underestimated mine. But it’s irrelevant, because we both walked away from that encounter. Which gave him a problem: I was still breathing.’
‘Why does he want you dead so badly?’
Raven said, ‘Because I’m trying to stop him.’
‘Trying to stop him from doing what?’
‘Committing a terrorist attack on US soil.’
FORTY-SEVEN
‘The blackout?’ Victor asked.
‘We shouldn’t talk about it here,’ Raven said. ‘Not with two dead federal agents.’
‘I’m not going anywhere without answers. We’re okay for a few minutes. Even if someone were to walk in, what are they going to do? Send a carrier pigeon to notify the police?’
Raven frowned, then said, ‘The blackout is the first stage of it, yes. Not the whole thing. This city has had blackouts before. It’s no big deal and certainly not what you’d call a terrorist attack.’
‘Then what happens in the second stage?’
‘Now that, I’m afraid, I don’t know exactly. It’ll be a bomb though, for certain. Halleck’s people acquired two tons of black-market C4 earlier this year. A Turkish banker named Caglayan brokered the deal.’
‘So he was the true target in Prague,’ Victor said. ‘Halleck wanted me to sever the connection.’
Raven shook her head. ‘No, Caglayan was my target. Halleck knew I would go after him, that’s why he sent you after the prince, to make sure our paths crossed. I knew he would send someone after me, so I killed Caglayan and waited for Halleck’s assassin to arrive.’
He nodded, thinking that Halleck would have known about the prince’s activities from dealing with Caglayan and gone to Muir under the guise of the prince being a legitimate target, which he was.
‘And Halleck couldn’t have hired me to go after you directly,’ Victor said. ‘He had to trick my CIA broker as well as me. He couldn’t risk them knowing your name, because like me you’ll be on a list, and that could expose him. He even said he wanted to keep my broker in the loop. But I said no.’
‘Because you didn’t want anyone other than Halleck to know what you were doing,’ Raven added. ‘Which he would have predicted.’
Victor said, ‘So it was you who I was communicating with then in Prague.’
She said, ‘I was pretending to be Caglayan while you were pretending to be the prince’s accountant.’
‘You’re good,’ he said. ‘You almost killed me.’
‘Almost,’ she echoed. ‘As you can imagine, that two tons of plastique will make some serious mess in an urban environment.’
He said, ‘A bomb doesn’t first require a blackout.’
‘That depends where the bomb is planted, doesn’t it? No power means no CCTV to record them placing it, overstretched emergency services, no cell towers, no —’
‘I understand how electricity works.’
She nodded in apology. ‘Whatever Halleck plans to blow up, the blackout is necessary to make it happen. I don’t know any more about the attack than that, but what I do know is that this blackout is only going to be active for twelve hours. Well, under twelve now. So whatever it is Halleck is planning, it has to be occurring very soon. Sometime tonight.’
‘Under the museum you said, “It’s started.” How do you know how long the blackout is going to last for? You also told me when the lights went out that it wasn’t you this time. Explain.’
‘I didn’t activate it,’ she explained, ‘but I caused it. I made sure the virus got into the system.’
‘I assume you mean a computer virus.’
‘A computer virus, yes. A pathogen, we called it. We stole the idea from the Israelis. Mossad used one to knock out an Iranian nuclear reactor by making the turbines run too fast. Set Tehran’s enrichment plans back several years. They released the virus into the world and sat back and waited while it infected compu
ter after computer, doing no damage but spreading exponentially until it naturally found its way on to a USB stick that someone took to the nuclear power plant. Obviously, the computers that run such things aren’t linked up to the web. It worked brilliantly. They were a bit more sophisticated than us. I broke into the house of one of the guys who works at a power plant upstate and infected his home computer with our virus to make sure it got into the power plant’s system on the right timescale. The Israelis were a lot more patient than Halleck.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Victor said. ‘Halleck works for the government. Why is he going to commit a terrorist attack in the US? He’s no terrorist.’
She stood and stepped towards a window, giving him her back. ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’
‘I don’t buy it.’
‘I bought it at first,’ Raven explained, turning to face him again. ‘When he first had me killing people I couldn’t rationalise as bad guys. I believed his bullshit about sacrifice and the greater good and all of those clichés. But eventually I figured out that he works for whoever pays him the most. More often than not that’s the government. But not always.’
‘Halleck said you lost a teammate in Yemen. A lover. He said you blamed him and were going after his people in revenge.’
She looked sad for a moment and avoided eye contact. ‘I did lose a man I cared about in Yemen. But it was no one’s fault. The intelligence was bad.’
The intelligence was bad. Halleck had used the exact same words. The man was a skilful manipulator, hiding the lies within truths to convince Victor of his veracity.
‘And who is paying Halleck this time?’ Victor asked.
‘They are.’
‘And who exactly are you talking about?’
‘The one per cent. The old white men. The guys who run the world.’
Victor said, ‘I don’t do conspiracy theories. Who?’
‘The man who Halleck has been answering to this time was a lobbyist for the arms industry.’
‘Ah,’ he said, understanding. ‘Cause a false flag attack and blame it on… let me guess: some hotspot in the Middle East?’
She nodded. ‘Cue increased defence spending and billions more to the share values of the corporations who manufacture the bombs and bullets. Like I said: the old white men who run the world. Do you know why they call it a false flag attack? It dates back centuries, from naval warfare, when ships used cannons and sailors fought each other with swords and hatchets. It was a ruse, flying the flag of your enemies to deceive the target ship, allowing you to sail close enough to strike. But the ship flying the false flag would raise its own before engaging in battle. It would admit the deception before the fight began.’
‘I don’t imagine Halleck will show the same kind of honour.’
‘Of course he won’t,’ Raven agreed. ‘Governments have been doing this, and getting away with it, forever. In 1962 a plan was drawn up to justify the invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro. The Department of Defense put together Operation Northwoods to sink ships and shoot down planes and blame it on Cuba. It was never put into action, but it wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last.
Victor said, ‘This lobbyist will know who he’s working for.’
Raven shook her head. ‘Don’t be naïve. He’s only a middleman. Besides, there isn’t someone in charge of this. There isn’t even a conspiracy. It’s just the way it works. It’s like a consensus. In fact that’s what I call them: The Consensus.’
‘The Consensus,’ he repeated.
‘The old white men who keep the wheels turning for their benefit, and those who support them. In this case it’s all about peacetime, which is bad for business. The US spends over a trillion dollars a year on defence, most of it going to US arms manufactures. That has to be justified. There has to be war to keep that bankroll. The problem is there’s been too much of it recently. The politicians need to be able to justify those wars. They need to get public backing. No better way to do that than have something blow up.’
‘I’d like the name of the lobbyist all the same.’
She said, ‘His name is Alan Beaumont. Or, to be more precise, it was his name.’
Victor said, ‘You killed him,’ and she nodded.
‘I’ve been doing what I do best, trying to stop Halleck.’
‘But Halleck’s going forward anyway?’
Raven said, ‘I was too late getting to Beaumont. He’d already transferred the money to Halleck. Now, the vested interests are expecting their fireworks. Halleck’s got a job to do or he’s going to make some extremely powerful enemies.’
‘Okay,’ Victor said. ‘Then it’s time to leave the city. I have no desire to be a casualty of Halleck’s attack.’
‘Good luck with that.’
He said, ‘I don’t believe in luck,’ and headed towards the door.
‘Well, whatever you do believe in, you’ll need its help.’
Something in her tone made him turn round. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you’re going to be Halleck’s patsy. By coming here you’ve set yourself up to take the blame for the attack.’
FORTY-EIGHT
He was silent for a long time. He thought about the book and the safe house and the coded message and believing he had tracked Raven to the museum. A trail left by Halleck’s people to take him to a certain place at a certain time.
You’re coming with us, the guy in the blue suit had said. At that moment Victor had thought the team had wanted to take Victor into their custody because of his association with Raven. Now, he realised that must have always been part of Halleck’s plan.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Victor said. ‘Halleck couldn’t have known for sure I would want to meet him; he couldn’t have known I would come after you nor how I would go about it. I found one of your Dominican cigarette stubs in Prague. It led me to Marte.’
‘I always knew Jean Claud would sell me out,’ Raven said. ‘But I could never bring myself to kill him merely as a precaution. I guess scaring someone only works for so long. He gave you my aliases?’
‘Yes, and then —’
He stopped himself because he knew the rest. He had passed the information on to Halleck, who had told Victor about the apartment.
He shook his head, annoyed at himself. ‘He gave me this address and I didn’t question it. I came straight here. You were right, I did set myself up.’
‘Don’t be too harsh on yourself,’ Raven said. ‘Halleck is a master at this kind of thing. He fooled me for years.’
‘I should have known better. I do know better.’
‘Life is one long lesson. We never know how much we learned until we’re facing the end.’
He considered this, then said, ‘But I could have killed you in Prague. He wanted me to kill you in Prague. If I had, I would never have been here now.’
She looked at him with some sympathy. He never liked such looks. She said, ‘Then he wouldn’t have used you. He would have used someone else. Maybe one of his own men even. But, he didn’t need to, did he? He had you. You made it easy for him by trying to find me. You gave yourself to him. You gave him a perfect patsy: a professional killer coming to New York of his own accord.’
‘I told Guerrero and Wallinger not to judge me on my recent actions. I told them I was usually a lot better at this. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’ve simply been lucky until now. And I don’t even believe in luck.’
Raven stood up from the folding chair and retrieved the paperback novel from the floor. She thumbed through it. ‘He didn’t make it easy for you. That’s why you fell for it. If at any stage it didn’t feel right; if it felt easy, you would have smelled a rat. Put that down to Halleck’s competence, not any incompetence of your own.’
He shook his head again. ‘It still doesn’t make sense. Even giving me this address he couldn’t guarantee I would be in the city for the day of the blackout.’
She looked at him like he was missing somethin
g obvious, which he realised he was.
‘Ah,’ Victor said. ‘The blackout happened today because I’m in New York.’ She nodded. ‘And the museum… Another good trick. It’s a good location for a clandestine meeting. I didn’t even suspect a trap.’
‘I told you: Halleck knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s been operating for a long time.’
‘If you hadn’t been there to warn me I might be dead by now.’ He paused. ‘I guess I should thank you.’
‘Only if you want to.’
He swallowed and said, ‘Thank you.’
She bowed her head a little. ‘You’re welcome.’ She looked around the apartment. ‘We should make a move. Even with the NYPD overloaded, we’ve probably outstayed our welcome.’
Victor looked around the apartment too and nodded. ‘I thought the camping gear was here because you liked to keep your safe house free of anything identifiable, but it serves his narrative, doesn’t it? He’s had a huge crew following me around the city. Just to observe, one of them told me. But also to record, no doubt. Someone will have photographed me entering this building. After the attack, this will be my apartment where I planned it.’ He glanced at Wallinger’s corpse. ‘And these two told me they were looking for you. They said you were a terrorist. But they were here to add to the deception. They could have testified after the fact to my presence. When I came back here, Guerrero must have known the plan to grab me at the museum had failed so she tried to take care of things herself. Wallinger was obviously not part of Halleck’s network. He thought he was just doing his job.’
Raven shook her head. ‘That’s not how Halleck operates. Guerrero wouldn’t have known what was going down. Only a few key people will be in the know. I was one of them.’
Victor ran through the two conversations he’d had with the two Homeland Security agents, especially the second one before Guerrero attacked him. ‘Then it was because I said your code name. She didn’t know about the museum. She didn’t know about Halleck’s crew following me. But she did know about you. That I did too marked me for death and made her partner collateral damage.’
