Act of Betrayal

by Matthew Dunn

  “But what about the boars? Won’t Sapper’s DNA be in them?”

  Flail shrugged again. “Maybe. But pigs are on this earth to be slaughtered and eaten. I was due to kill them anyway. Plus, I’m a businessman. I’ve already negotiated sale of produce to fifty fast-food joints in Richmond, Columbus, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and D.C. I get ten cents on every three-dollar burger they sell that contains my pork. Makes commercial sense. And it’ll make me a lot of cash.”

  Kane laughed. “You’re feeding Charlie Sapper to the East Coast?”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “No.”

  Flail looked at the rolling hills and forest around him. “I don’t need to know why Sapper was killed. In fact, I don’t want to know. But I’m guessing it was vital her mouth was shut forever. Correct?”

  “Yes.” Kane swiveled to face the cool Virginia wind. “I want Haden dead. Under no circumstances can he be captured alive. But this is a very complex task. Haden’s got information that could bring down me and everyone who knows me.” He looked at Flail. “That’s why I’ve been asking you to do these tasks.”

  “To save your neck?”

  “No. I don’t care about that. My priority is national security. People like me come and go. National security doesn’t. You got that?”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Kane pulled Flail away from his men. Quietly he said, “There’s more work to be done. Are you up for that?”

  Flail nodded. “You’re playing a mighty complex and odd game. But I’m willing to do my bit.”

  Kane returned his gaze to the hills in the distance. “Haden’s out there. I have to be smarter than him. This is all about deflection. Don’t let me down.”

  Will Cochrane stared at the assassin’s car while recalling the first time his father had allowed him to sit on his lap in the driver’s seat and grip the steering wheel. Will was barely five. His father gently depressed pedals and kept his hands hovering near the wheel just in case. They were on an open stretch of road. Back then Will was fearful of the law and rules.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this, Pa,” he said.

  “Yes, we should,” his father had replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because there are no rules.”

  Will wished that memory could make him smile as he unlocked the car and drove fast.

  He wondered what his father would think of him now. James Cochrane was such a steady hand, bright, descended from persecuted French Huguenots who fled France for America in the sixteenth century, his ancestors changing their name so it suggested they were Scottish. James was a wise and calm man. God knows why he joined the CIA. He should have been a professor.

  But instead he wore a suit and sometimes held a gun.

  Even at the age of five, Will knew it made his father sad to be that person.

  Jason Flail was satisfied that Sapper was now fully eaten. “I’ve just heard that Fox is officially dead.”

  “I know. I have my sources in D.C. PD.”

  Flail smiled. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me what’s really happening.”

  Kane looked up at Flail. “It’s all about the colonel.”

  “What’s Haden done?”

  “You don’t need to know! But he’s back and I don’t fully know why. I suspect he wants all traces of Berlin neutered. Sapper’s dead; Fox is dead; Cochrane’s been dead for a year. All that’s left is me. Thing is, unlike you, Haden’s not selling consumed human flesh to burger flippers. He’s far worse. Bear that in mind if you ever meet him.”

  What Kane didn’t tell Flail was that there was a reason events were unfolding three years after the Berlin hit. And it had to do with Otto Raeder.

  Two weeks before the Berlin job, Haden drank whiskey, the aroma of oak cask alcohol hitting his nostrils and palate. Haden had three rules when drinking: one glass only, always when the body and mind were not fatigued, and never in the company of others. Whiskey, Haden reasoned, was a man’s drink designed over centuries to allow their brains to settle without hearing the clatter of others, most of all women. A woman in the company of a man and Scotch was a deadly combination, because men get angry when it is their never-to-be-disturbed prayer time.

  But only one glass. Haden was many things but was never a victim to other influences. Haden was always in control. Whiskey was a momentary pause for thought. And right now Haden’s thoughts were alive.

  Unwin Fox, Charlie Sapper, and Howard Kane had bought into the premise of the Berlin mission, but if anything went wrong the colonel could deal with them.

  Though he’d never met him, Haden had heard that Cochrane was in a whole different league—too smart, too capable a covert operator.

  Haden smiled. Cochrane’s capabilities would ensure he’d get the job done.

  Chapter 5

  Special Agent Marsha Gage was the FBI’s best man hunter.

  To her husband and two kids, she was an adorable and stoic prime example of the very best a woman could be. To her colleagues, she was a dogmatic pain in the ass who never stopped.

  The forty-one-year-old black-haired woman was sitting at her desk in her Bureau office, alone, late at night. Recently, she’d been tasked with only a handful of mundane jobs, the Bureau having decided that she was burned to a frazzle and needed some downtime. But Gage didn’t do downtime. She ignored the dictate and focused her relentless energies on the one thing that had been plaguing her mind.

  Will Cochrane.

  Once, she’d pursued the operative from Norway to D.C., after he disobeyed orders in a CIA operation that required him to sacrifice an American agent. He’d refused to make that sacrifice. The CIA went after him. Or so it thought. More accurately, he went after the CIA and it ended badly for everyone involved except Cochrane. It culminated in him putting a gun to Gage’s forehead. As petrified as she was at that moment, she had the deepest respect for the assassin. But she was a member of the law and didn’t let respect get in the way of police work. Plus, later Cochrane proved to be a cop killer and a slaughterer of civilians. People believed he was dead. Gage wasn’t so sure.

  Above her desk was a large whiteboard with newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, photos, and arrows linking one image to another.

  The board was her visual collation of all matters Cochrane. Her notes next to the images were erratic and constantly updated. There were many. Some of them were the following:

  Murderer? Good man? Crazed? Child kidnapper? Did that happen? Why did he kill these cops? Why didn’t he kill these American cops? Troubled youth. Compassionate. Hates dishing out death. The very best killer. Dead? Faked his death? Never does anything without a reason. Outsmarts everyone. Don’t let him get up close to you again. Way too dangerous. Unpredictable. Worse than you think. No, he’s not.

  In the center of the board was her written question.

  WHERE ARE YOU????

  She looked at the board, her desk lamp the only source of light in the room. The information on the board had been collected and assembled over months. She hadn’t been involved in the investigation a year ago to try to bring him to justice for the alleged murders and kidnapping. That investigation belonged to the NYPD. But from a distance she’d watched closely, always wondering why Cochrane fascinated her.

  Bo Haupman, a bear of a man and her boss, came into the room holding two mugs of coffee.

  “I’m going to get really damned pissed off with you,” he said as he put the mugs on her table and sat on a chair next to her.

  “I don’t care.” Gage was looking at the board.

  “I’m your superior.”

  “No, you’re not.” Gage wiggled a finger in her searing-hot coffee.

  Haupman smiled. “My superiors think otherwise. They think you need to be kept on a leash.”

  “But you don’t and that’s all that matters.” Gage smiled because she didn’t want to be too hard on Haupman. He was full of admiration for her and always went out of his way to protect her from others in the B
ureau so she could do what she did best: brilliant law enforcement. He was a kind man who’d gratefully hung up his pistol a long time ago after decades of doing things he found distasteful. Her gaze on the whiteboard unbroken, her tone was more sympathetic as she said, “You still need to go up two shirt collar sizes. You look like you’re being strangled.”

  “Mrs. Haupman—”

  “Loves you for who you are.”

  Haupman nodded. “It’s because of that I wish I was the shape I was in on prom night. She deserves better.”

  “She deserves you.” Gage’s voice hardened. “You here to give me some chickenshit job?”

  “No. There’s been a killing in Rock Creek Park. Right now we don’t have jurisdiction because it’s a local law matter.”

  “So why bother me with it?”

  “The victim’s CIA. That means—”

  “The Feds have to monitor the investigation. You’re asking me to be a caretaker to an investigation Washington PD is perfectly capable of conducting.” She pointed at the board. “You should be putting me on Will Cochrane.”

  Haupman sighed. “Marsha, please listen to the facts. Cochrane’s dead, his body swept out to sea.”

  Gage swiveled in her chair. “Where’s proof of death?”

  Her boss was exasperated. “Come on, Marsha. He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge a year ago. The Coast Guard confirmed there was a massive riptide that night. There’s no way they could find the body. So I should be asking you, where’s proof of life?”

  Agent Gage tapped her desk, deep in thought. “For special operatives, the sea is the worst place to work. It’s too unpredictable and unforgiving. Yet Cochrane survived that crazy twelve-month training program MI6 put him through, part of which was survival in the North Sea during winter. Later, they shot him out of submarine torpedo tubes so he could swim ashore in the Med and Siberian Sea to execute targets. There’re so many other examples. A man like that knows the sea.” She was earnest as she said to Haupman, “He’s operated in every harsh climate known to man. He knows the elements. He knew exactly what he was doing when he threw himself off the bridge.”

  Part of Haupman agreed with Gage. But if he presented her assessment to Bureau directors, it would make her sound paranoid and disengaged with reality. Her seniority would suffer. Right now her career was deliberately on hiatus, but she was a rising star and tipped to one day be the first female head of the Bureau. Haupman never wanted to reach those dizzying heights. But he knew enough about Bureau politics at the top to realize that Gage could easily derail her ascendancy if she was too bullheaded. “Leave this alone. It’s not good for you.”

  “It’s not in me to leave things alone,” she said quietly.

  “I know.” Haupman touched her hand. “That’s why I’m here, to shield you from the shit. But one day I won’t be here. Shark-infested waters at the top and all that. How will you manage without me when you haven’t got a political bone in your body? And plus, maybe we should just let Cochrane rest.”

  The last comment got Gage riled. “Look at the board. They say he murdered his sister in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel; assaulted two NYPD officers on an Amtrak train, easily unarming them and putting them on their asses without pulling a weapon; commandeered a civilian’s vehicle at gunpoint and held the weapon to the driver’s head as they fled; killed two uniforms at the house outside Roanoke, two detectives as well; murdered the homeowners—the great-uncle and -aunt of the ten-year-old twin boys Cochrane expected to adopt; kidnapped one of the boys, Tom Koenig, the son of Cochrane’s former CIA colleague; gunned down in cold blood two Lynchburg cops who’d tried to arrest him; and then held an entire restaurant at gunpoint before tying them to each other and leading them to the bridge in front of hundreds of cops and the media. All of that one year ago and over just two weeks. Cochrane must be brought to justice. He can’t rest.”

  Haupman looked at one of Gage’s handwritten board notes.

  I think he’s innocent.

  “Agent Gage, this is becoming an obsession.”

  “To get to the truth!” Gage withdrew her hand.

  “You want to prove he didn’t do those things?”

  Gage shook her head. “I want to prove what happened, whether that means setting him free or putting a needle in him.”

  Haupman smiled. “Always the black-and-white objectivity?”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “And if he’s alive and guilty?”

  “I’ll kill him.”

  Chapter 6

  Josef Kopański—Joe to his colleagues—was a silver-haired fifty-year-old with not an ounce of fat on his rangy frame. Hands as strong as clamps, the NYPD detective was renowned for his ability to put a bullet exactly where it needed to be put, with unflinching nerves and without the need for backup. Joe Cop Killer, his colleagues called him, though never to his face. The nickname derived from the moment he shot a sheriff in the head because the sheriff was holding a gun to his wife while intoxicated. A widower, Kopański had no woman in his life. He wasn’t looking for one. Even if he were, it would have been difficult. Half of his face was good-looking, the other half deformed after a crack addict threw nitric acid at him. He didn’t care. He’d gotten used to being a loner. Police work, he frequently incorrectly told himself, was all he needed. And alongside his detective partner, he broke more murder cases than anyone else in NYC.

  He pulled out his gun in Queens and wondered if hatred was about to undo everything he’d worked for and pledged.

  Kopański didn’t give a rat’s ass. This was more important. He grabbed his cell phone and called his partner.

  The death factory in Queens was a sensory overload of noises, smells, and images. Cows were moaning, aware that something was badly wrong. Calves were being taken from their mothers. Mothers were also victim to the conveyor belt. One by one they were being electrocuted to knock them senseless yet still alive. Stupefied and prone, the bovines’ arteries were sliced open, some of the cows unaware of what was happening to them, others vaguely conscious and screaming. Rivers of blood were directed to troughs by men in overalls and holding power hoses. The air was rich with the scent of musk, shit, and uncooked flesh and blood. Those beasts still alive used their hooves or heads to try to break free. They stood no chance of escape. Cows were brought here, processed, inspected for diseases that might contaminate humans, put in their cells, and sliced open. This was a Queens slaughterhouse.

  The sight of such systematic killing didn’t bother Joe Kopański because he’d already imagined this was how it was done. The detective had seen too much suffering in his career and personal life to be shocked by yet more pain and death. Plus, he had something else to worry about. He had a gun in his hand and was searching for a piece of scum.

  The Polish American moved through the large room, workers looking at him, the cacophony of death all around the detective. But he did not slow his pace.

  Finding the rapist was all that mattered.

  “Where is he?!” he shouted as some of the spray of water mingled with blood hit his face and shirt.

  The workers didn’t respond. They had no idea what was happening.

  He ran to the end of the factory, conveyor belts above him rotating massive carcasses on hooks, blood dripping from partially severed heads. That’s when he saw him: the butcher, slicing his blade through a suspended cow’s throat, his white apron splattered crimson.

  The man looked at him and instantly knew the detective was here for him. Kopański gave no warning as he fired his gun. The bullet would have hit the butcher in the forehead. But the butcher swung the carcass between them, the detective’s bullet striking the dead cow’s heart. The butcher ran. Kopański pursued.

  They raced out the rear entrance of the factory and into the darkness, Kopański catching only white flashes of the butcher.

  Kopański’s limbs ached as he chased the younger man. He didn’t worry. He knew he had something the butcher didn’t have: no fear of death.

  Th
ey ran through side alleys, streets; past hookers, lovers, drunk kids chowing down on falafels, and crazies strung out on whatever it was that got them through the night. The butcher leaped over barriers in alleys and kept running. Kopański shot him in the leg.

  The cop saw the butcher limp into a doorway, his hand shaking as he inserted a key and unlocked a door. The butcher entered his apartment block. Kopański followed.

  Blood droplets were all over the stairwell as Kopański ascended to the top floor. The trail led him to the home he had been watching for weeks. The butcher’s home. It took minimal effort to enter. The detective found the rapist in the corner of his bedroom, clutching his leg, whimpering.

  Kopański took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his bloody white shirt.

  The butcher grinned between gritted teeth. “The pictures.”

  “Maybe.” Kopański knew his career was about to die. He hadn’t built enough evidence against the butcher. But it didn’t matter. The women on the wall were good women.

  They deserved peace.

  The butcher pushed his hand against his leg, his face desperately trying not to display the agony he was undergoing. “You can’t prove anything!”

  Kopański walked to the wall displaying the photos. He placed a finger on one of them. “You raped my daughter.”

  The butcher could not move but abject fear was writ across his face. “I . . . I had no idea, I . . .”

  Kopański strode up to him, lifted him with one hand by the throat, and tossed him across the room like a useless rag doll. The butcher bounced off the opposite wall, displacing most of the photos, and hit the floor screaming.

  “You did it on prom night. You and my Susan. Same class. Same dance. Ten years ago. That’s when it started. And it didn’t stop. One woman a year ever since. But now you’re speeding up.”

  The butcher spat blood. “Get me a lawyer!”

  “There’s no need for that.” Kopański raised his gun. “See, a man like you deals with flesh all the time. You’re numb to it. You don’t think of it as living. All that matters is what it can give you in return. You don’t need a lawyer.”