The Excoms

by Brett Battles

  Having no time to waste on disappointment, she sloughed it off and searched the room, hoping he’d left something behind that would tell her where he went. But there wasn’t even a scrap of trash in the bin.

  Probably headed to the airport the minute I reported for work at the hotel. In all likelihood, he’d been safely in the air when Alonzo sipped his deadly champagne.

  Sirens. Distant, and not unusual for a place like Manila, but given her current circumstances, she gave them a bit more attention than she would have normally, and realized they were moving closer.

  She hurried back to the doorway and examined it.

  “Ah, come on,” she whined as soon as she spotted the disk near the bottom of the jamb.

  She checked the door. Sure enough, there was a matching one on it. Both had been dirtied up to not appear obvious, but now that she’d seen them, she knew them for what they were—contact points.

  When she’d opened the door and moved them out of alignment, she’d likely triggered an automated phone call to the police.

  She looked back into the room. She was willing to bet that somewhere in the flat—maybe hidden under a floorboard or in the walls—was evidence of the plot to assassinate Alonzo. If the police found her, they’d find that, too.

  Perkins covering all his bases like a champ.

  I’m going to find you, you son of a bitch. And when I do…

  She wiped down the few surfaces she had touched and headed back up the stairs. On the roof, she moved to the front of the building and looked down just as the first police vehicle arrived. A moment later, two more joined it. That was more than enough for her.

  Using a discarded box and the imperfections of the wall, she climbed back the way she’d come, ran over to the stairwell entrance, and had just reached the door when—

  BOOM!

  She flew several feet before smacking down on the roof.

  Dazed, she blinked a few times before glancing over her shoulder. A roiling column of smoke and fire was rising from the space where Perkins’s building had been.

  There was only one logical explanation. Perkins had wired the place to blow up, most likely assuming she would be caught in the explosion.

  Her former op leader had reached a whole new level of asshole.

  5

  THE VOYAGE FROM Manila to Singapore took two and a half long, quiet, maddening days. When the harbor finally came into view, Ananke gladly paid the captain extra to have a skiff take her ashore instead of waiting until they docked.

  Though she still had the four disposable phones and handful of SIM cards, the SIMs were all for Philippine networks and wouldn’t work in Singapore. So the first thing she did upon reaching land was find a cab driver who would take US dollars, and had him drive her to a convenience store where she could buy several local SIMs.

  At a nearby park, she checked her voice mail. There was only one message.

  “This is Marcus Denton. You will return my call immediately.” Short and sweet and delivered with barely contained fury.

  Denton was the client contact on the Alonzo job, a job for which he’d stressed numerous times that no one was to die. Especially not Alonzo.

  He undoubtedly wanted an explanation.

  Or, she supposed, he could be calling to inform her that if she ever set foot in the States again, she would immediately be arrested and hauled off someplace like Gitmo to spend every day of the rest of her life as a guinea pig for experimental torture techniques.

  The message had been left only a few hours after she’d been taken to the Loretta’s Star so it was two days old already. Had that forty-eight hours of not responding destroyed her chance to convince him she wasn’t to blame for the assassination? Likely.

  Still, she’d have to try.

  Her first call, though, was to Shinji.

  “Huh?” he answered, more asleep than awake. “I mean, Nakamura Restau—”

  “Just tell me everything’s all right.”

  “Ananke? Are you in Singapore already?” She heard something falling to the floor, and then an annoyed mumble. A moment later, Shinji said, “Oh, wow. I guess you are, huh? Totally thought I’d set my alarm. Um, what was the question?”

  “Tell me that everything’s okay.”

  “Could you, uh, define ‘okay’?”

  “Shinji!”

  “Sorry, sorry. Yeah, so, um, I wouldn’t exactly say everything’s…well, okay. Mr. Denton called.”

  “Yeah, I heard his message.”

  “I mean he called me.”

  “You?”

  “I know, right? How did he get my number?”

  The ‘getting’ of Shinji’s number wouldn’t be that hard for someone with high-level NSA clearance like Denton. The real question was how her client knew Shinji worked for Ananke in the first place. The partnership was not one she advertised.

  “What did he want?”

  “To talk to you. I explained to him that you were incommunicado and that—”

  “Please tell me you didn’t use that word.”

  “Why not? It’s accurate.”

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “So you told him I was out of touch. And?”

  “And that I’d make sure you give him a call as soon as you surfaced.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Something different every time.”

  “What do you mean, every time? How many times has he called?”

  “Seven. No, wait. Eight times.”

  Ananke sighed. “He didn’t ask about the job?”

  “Once or twice, but I said I only handled getting you in and out, and didn’t know anything about what happened in between.”

  “Anyone besides Denton call?”

  While Shinji’s number was not known to any of her clients—except for Denton, apparently—Shinji did monitor the automated line that job requests came in on.

  “No new jobs, but, um, we’ve had some cancellations.”

  “How many?”

  “Five.”

  “Did you say five?”

  “I did.”

  “How many do we have lined up?”

  “Before cancellations, seven. So now two.”

  “Thanks. I can do the math.”

  A pause. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “As opposed to all the things I’ve liked so far?”

  “You’re really not going to like this.”

  “Just tell me.”

  He took a deep breath and blurted out, “All five want full refunds.”

  Up until that point, Ananke had been pacing a path at a quiet end of the park, but Shinji’s words stopped her in her tracks. To book Ananke required a deposit of half her fee. If the job went away, the money stayed. That was industry standard.

  “Did you remind them what nonrefundable means?”

  “They claim it doesn’t apply in this situation.”

  “In what situation?”

  “Right, um, soooo…I did a little checking around, and apparently, well, uh, you’ve been excommunicated.”

  Ananke had not been rendered speechless for years, but that counter had just reset to zero.

  Shinji said, “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” she managed.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  She blinked. “About what?”

  “The money. Should I refund them?”

  “Not yet. I’ll…um…I’ll get back to you.” She hung up.

  Denton.

  He must have been the one behind the blackballing. Perkins wouldn’t have had that kind of pull.

  She needed to talk to her client.

  She needed to talk to him right now.

  It was a little after 3:30 p.m. in Singapore, which meant it was twelve hours earlier in New York, where Denton worked. But he did say return his call immediately.

  “Yes?” The crisp, no-nonsense male voice that answered did not belong to Denton.

  “I’m returning a call.”r />
  “Name?”

  “Ananke.”

  A pause that could have meant nothing, but she knew better.

  “Hold,” the man said.

  The wait lasted ninety seconds before Denton came on. “I assumed you weren’t going to call at all.”

  “As my colleague told you, I was indisposed.”

  “That’s unfortunate.” The words were stated matter-of-factly, the angry tone of his voice mail nowhere to be found.

  “Not sure I agree. It was better than ending up in a Philippine jail.”

  “Well, you did commit murder.”

  “I definitely disagree with you on that.”

  “So you’re saying that you were not the one who delivered the drug that killed Alonzo?”

  “What I’m saying is that the drug I was told I was delivering was R-ToFF. I performed my job exactly as presented.”

  “And yet a man is dead.”

  “Ultimately not by my hand.”

  Denton said nothing for several seconds. “I take it you’re accusing Mr. Perkins.”

  “It’s not an accusation. Perkins supplied the drug. He had to know what it was. If he won’t tell you the truth, put him in a room and I’ll get it out of him.”

  “If only that were possible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not playing this game with you. Please do not—”

  “Wait,” she said, sensing he was about to hang up. “I had no knowledge of Perkins’s plan whatsoever. I’m being set up. You have to see that. If necessary, I’ll find him and make him tell you the truth.”

  “Here’s what I suggest you do. Go someplace quiet. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll live through the week. Good-bye, Ananke. Don’t call this number again.”

  “Hold on! What are you—”

  But the line was dead.

  She almost hit redial, but what more could she say that she hadn’t already? She needed to give Denton more than assurances. She needed to give him Perkins, tied up and talking. And to do so, she needed help.

  She called Shinji back.

  __________

  GIVEN ANANKE’S—TEMPORARY, she hoped—banishment from the intelligence world, she thought it best to keep as low a profile as possible while she hunted for Perkins. To this end, she took a cheap room in a hotel far from the city center, using a brand-spanking-new, never-before-seen ID. Once ensconced in her new hideaway, she dropped her things on the bed and turned on the TV to BBC International.

  Not surprisingly, news of Alonzo’s collapse and death dominated the broadcast.

  Fan-freakin’-tastic, Ananke thought as she popped another aspirin.

  A photo from his final campaign event appeared on the screen. In it, Alonzo and his wife had just taken glasses of champagne from a server who was turning away. The picture zoomed in until the server’s face—Ananke’s altered face—was in profile. The screen was then split between a close-up of this photo and a clearer one of her looking toward the loading-dock camera.

  “Philippine authorities are looking for a woman named Jessica Santos,” the reporter said. “She worked that night as a server, and was the one who presented Mr. Alonzo with the champagne he drank seconds before he collapsed.”

  The only bright spot Ananke learned from the broadcast was that Perkins still hadn’t fed the authorities information about who she really was.

  The next story was about Alonzo’s funeral, scheduled for the following day. Crowds were expected to fill the streets in his hometown around the church where services were to be held, and for those who couldn’t attend, it was to be shown live on all the major networks.

  She muted the volume and jumped into the shower. Unfortunately, all the hot water in the world wasn’t going to wash away the layers of anger and guilt that clung to her. Unwittingly or not, she had allowed herself to be used as Perkins’s puppet. And that was a stain she would have a hard time removing.

  Hearing her phone ringing forced her to finally get out. After a quick wipe down, she grabbed the cell off the counter and checked the caller ID: SHINJI.

  “Tell me you found him,” she said.

  “Kinda.”

  “Kinda?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that.”

  “Sorry. What should I say?”

  “You should just tell me what you found.”

  “Perkins is dead.”

  For a second it was as if all the noises of the world had stopped. “What?”

  “Perkins is dead.”

  “I heard you the first time.”

  “Then why did you say ‘what’?”

  “How did it happen?”

  “There was an explosion in Manila the same night as the mission. According to the police report, it took out a whole building. They found his body in the rubble.”

  The skin on Ananke’s arms began to tingle. “Where was this explosion?”

  “You want the exact address?”

  “If it doesn’t inconvenience you.”

  The sound of a keyboard clacking. “Here we go. Paz Street. Crap, no number listed. According to the news report, the body was found in a dress shop on the ground floor. The place is just south of—”

  “I know where it is.”

  “You do?”

  “Was Perkins mentioned by name in the news report?”

  “Nah, just ‘body found.’ His ID came from one of my contacts.”

  “How good is this contact?”

  “Never had a problem before.”

  Even ignoring the evidence she’d seen that Perkins had already fled the building, the explosion had been large enough to rip apart anyone inside. Meaning identification would have needed to be made by DNA, a process that took time. The results would then need to be cross-referenced to find a match, in this case with someone not even from the same country. It had been less than seventy-two hours since the blast. Even a week wouldn’t have been enough time.

  “Forget about the body. It’s not him.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “He’s still out there. Find him.”

  6

  ANANKE ARRIVED IN Shanghai skeptical of the tip from the anonymous source Shinji had dug up. The informant claimed Perkins’s employer had secured a thirty-fourth-floor apartment in a building along the Huangpu River. Though the employer’s identity was not given, the implication was that it was a large Chinese firm that did a lot of business in the Philippines and was not pleased with the possibility of Alonzo becoming the next leader.

  While the explanation felt far too detailed and ready-made, Ananke had no other tangible leads so had little choice but to check it out. She would do so very carefully, however.

  Under the cover of darkness, she flew a whisper-tech miniature drone with mounted camera—arranged by Shinji—around skyscrapers along the river toward the target building. Within the first two minutes after the device arrived at its destination, Ananke picked out half a dozen suspicious men loitering outside the building, and three others she positively identified as hunters she had worked with in the past. She flew the drone up to the thirty-fourth floor and spied inside the supposed safe house.

  Two men lounged on a couch in front of the TV, neither one Perkins. On the coffee table in front of them was a pair of pistols. A check through the other windows of the apartment revealed no one else.

  The safe house was not so safe.

  After that disappointment, Shinji found a promising lead in Seoul, so off Ananke went.

  Though Perkins was not there, either, she found evidence he had been less than a day earlier. Using Korea as the starting point, Shinji traced Perkins’s trail, sending Ananke to New Delhi, then Abu Dhabi, then Cyprus, and finally to Rome.

  In the Italian capital, the clues took Ananke to an unused storefront on the east end of the city. A check inside revealed it was empty, but someone had been present very recently, probably even spent the n
ight.

  Ananke discreetly showed a picture of Perkins to people working at the shops along the street. She received only shaking heads until she entered a small market half a block away.

  Like elsewhere, the clerk was already in the process of saying no before Ananke had even finished setting the picture down, but once the woman actually saw the image, her head stopped moving.

  “Si,” she said, her lip curling in disdain. “I have seen him before.”

  It turned out Perkins had purchased some cigarettes, but it was the way he looked at her teenage daughter that had made the impression on the woman.

  “When was this?” Ananke asked, her Italian flawless.

  “Two hours ago. Maybe a little more.”

  The moment Ananke exited the shop, she contacted Shinji.

  “Motorway footage, street cams, whatever you can get your hands on,” she said. “Look back no more than three hours. You’ll find him somewhere.”

  She was right.

  Exactly forty-three minutes before she’d arrived at the store, Perkins appeared on a security camera feed four blocks away. He was on foot and in the company of three men—bodyguard types and armed, if the bulges under their jackets were any indication.

  Shinji bounced from camera to camera, tracing Perkins’s route.

  Ananke hurried back to the motorcycle she’d obtained upon arriving in Rome, and then, with Shinji’s voice in her ear guiding her, followed Perkins through the city, past the Vatican, and toward the airport.

  “He must be leaving the country,” she said as she sped southwest. “Check flights. Whatever he’s booked on, get me a ticket.”

  By the time she reached Fiumicino airport, Shinji had determined Perkins was scheduled to fly out on a Delta Airlines nonstop flight to Atlanta, Georgia. He was using the name Carl Pinter and had a ticket for business class, row 3, seat A. Shinji had purchased Ananke a seat in the same section, only at the back on the other side, row 9 seat J.

  She reached the gate just as boarding began. From the cover of the economy-class crowd, she watched the business-class passengers file past the gate agents into the tunnel to the plane.

  The sixth person to have his boarding pass scanned was the very not dead Noah Perkins.

  Ananke grinned.