The Coil

by Gayle Lynds

  “All right, Tony,” Potter grumbled, “you’ve softened me up. Now what is it?”

  “Simon Childs. Penetration agent. The former MP’s second son.”

  “Bright young man. Bit of a maverick, which I consider an asset under the right circumstances. Sporadically in trouble. Gives his chief fits. Real potential there,” Potter enumerated. “But you know that, right? Friend of the family?”

  Brookshire brushed it off. “Childs has left his assignment and is running rogue with a former CIA agent, Elizabeth Sansborough.”

  Potter frowned. “Why haven’t I heard?” He made a mental note to talk to Childs’s immediate supervisor.

  “The boy’s been hiding his tracks damn well. We happened to stumble over him on a different matter. At the best, it shows poor judgment. At the worst…”

  Potter pondered. “Sansborough? Ah, yes. The Carnivore’s daughter. I heard she was put out to pasture years ago.”

  “Clearly back in harness, apparently on her own initiative.”

  “She’s turned professional, like her father?”

  “Could be.” Brookshire sighed. “As you may recall, Childs is her cousin. We’d like you to cut him loose and declare him an isolate. We hope he’s going to come through this. But if not, we want no reflection back on the government.”

  Potter said nothing. It was the “we” that held his attention…we’d like…we hope…we want. Was Brookshire referring to the inner circle of government, or was he talking about Nautilus, the preeminent secret club of world movers and shakers to which Potter knew Brookshire belonged? The Nautilus Group had been behind many of the seismic global political shifts since World War II. Potter knew about such things, of course, although he would never—could never—be part of the group. He had neither the power nor the “team” mentality.

  Potter asked bluntly, “How do I know any of this is true?”

  “Because I never ask frivolously. Because we’ve known each other too long, through too much, to be less than honest with each other, especially now that we’re in the twilight of our careers. This is for the good of the country, Shelby my friend. I’ve never asked for anything personal, and I’m not about to start now. Liz Sansborough has nose-dived off the top of Big Ben, and it’s looking more certain she’s taking our boy with her. We don’t want to kill Childs, but we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t hurt us. If it comes to sanctions later, so be it. For now, let’s declare him taboo. He’s to receive no help. To interfere will endanger his life and, vastly more important, the service.”

  “This is the truth?” Which Potter knew was essentially irrelevant. Somewhere far higher up than he, someone in Whitehall needed Simon Childs on the shelf for a time-out. That was, in the end, all that mattered.

  “You can verify it yourself now that you know the situation.”

  “Oh, I will, Tony,” Potter said. “But I’m sure it will check right enough, and I’ll take care of it.”

  “Never doubted it, old man.”

  “And Tony? I expect I’ll take the honor, despite my grumbling. Even marry Janice, if she’ll have me at this late date. Come in from the windy cold, as it were, eh?”

  “Glad to hear it, Shelby. Glad to hear it. We must all have dinner after the ceremony. The four of us. Be in touch.”

  Alone in his office, Potter almost laughed aloud. Tony wasted no time. But on the other hand, Tony would also make sure they had that intimate dinner, and he would be genuinely pleased when Potter took the knighthood. Tony would also weigh in with Janice, promoting marriage. People like Tony always wanted everyone to play the same game, play it the same way—his way.

  Potter sighed. Whatever the real reason, Simon Childs would be cut off. The boy would survive, probably be the better for it. Stiffen his backbone and his skills. God knew, it had happened to Potter more than once in the old days. He dialed and leaned into the phone.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Boring to the outside world, the Office of Personnel had become Walter Jaffa’s new fiefdom. For five years, he’d headed the Directorate of Administration, once the nervous system of the CIA, until it was eliminated in 1998 and its vast responsibilities carved up and handed out like rare chocolates. At first, Jaffa had fought the reorganization. But he had been allowed to keep his grade and salary, and as one of the Agency’s most senior officials, he’d had his choice among Chief Financial Officer, Chief of Security, head of CIA University, and others.

  In the end, he had chosen the Office of Personnel; it was not only visible at every level of the CIA, it was critical, from employee recruitment and screening to retirement. It gave lie-detector tests to find sleepers, moles, and those with the potential to be turned, and it oversaw the NOCs—those brave officers in non-official cover, whose lives in the field were on the line every day.

  Jaffa took his duties seriously. Every time he walked past the windowless white cubicles of his various special groups, he felt a surge of pride. He liked his religion, and he liked his wife and children. He enjoyed his success, his work, and the Agency.

  He entered his office and sat in the comfortable chair behind his paper-laden desk. It was nearly six o’clock, a time when he occasionally had these thoughts. In this frantic age, to end most days with a sense of spiritual fulfillment was unusual. Raised on the windswept prairie of South Dakota, with a hard-drinking father and a work-worn mother, he had put himself through the University of South Dakota, waiting tables in Vermilion and Sioux City and working through the blistering summers on the wheat combines. Physical survival was what mattered in those days, and that meant getting ahead. Now spirituality was the core of his life. His friends were only the most serious Roman Catholics, the most traditional and High Church—fellow members of Opus Dei, “God’s Work.”

  His phone rang. One of his phones. But not the one that normally rang. Jaffa stared at it—his direct line, used by only the most important people, from the DCI on up. He straightened his back, lifted the receiver, and made his voice firm, authoritative.

  “Jaffa,” he said.

  “Do you enjoy your job, Walter?”

  Jaffa did not recognize the voice—tinny, distant, as if mechanically disguised. The Chief of Personnel did not receive such camouflaged calls. He groped beneath his desk for the button to alert security to activate call-trace electronics.

  “Berlin, 1989,” the disguised voice went on. “West Berlin in those years, to be exact. There was a girl—”

  Jaffa’s finger did not press the button. His hand moved slowly back up to the top of his desk. His forehead broke out in a sweat.

  “Her name was Elsa Klugmann,” the tinny voice continued. “Sixteen years old. Pregnant with your child. Her father was high up in the BND—a hard man, not one anybody would want to cross—”

  Her father. Walter could still see the bulldog face, its icy implacability. In those days, West Germany’s BND—the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Intelligence Agency—was finally emerging from political scandal, years after Chancellor Willy Brandt’s government was brought down when a Stasi mole was uncovered at his right hand. After that, the BND tightened up, became as merciless as the Stasi itself, although they never stooped to the wholesale bugging, brainwashing, and blackmail to which the Stasi subjected their own citizens in East Germany.

  Not, he thought bitterly, that he could attest to it from personal experience.

  He had loved Elsa, but it had been a sin to have sex before marriage. When Herr Klugmann learned what Walter Jaffa had “done” to his girl, he ordered her to have an abortion, although Jaffa begged Klugmann to let him marry her.

  Herr Klugmann was an atheist. His own father had been not only an atheist but a member of the SS. He was damned if he would let that verdammter Schweinehund marry his Elsa. He wanted Jaffa gone. Permanently. So he arrested a Stasi spy and planted papers on him that incriminated Jaffa as a Communist asset. He promised the panicked Stasi operative that he would go free, if he helped destroy Jaffa
.

  Elsa sent a message, telling Jaffa about it and begging him to rescue her. Jaffa was desperate. At that point, the CIA knew nothing about any of it. Once they did, his career would be over, and he would still not be able to save the child.

  Jaffa prayed for hours, using the cilice—the spiked thigh band—for self-mortification, until God at last gave him an idea: He had an inheritance—nearly $100,000. Using a connection provided by the legendary spymaster Red Jack O’Keefe, he contacted the best contract assassin—the Carnivore. When he accepted you as a client, you were guaranteed the wet work would be perfectly executed and never traced.

  Five days later, Herr Klugmann and his Stasi collaborator died in a tragic car crash on the way to federal court. A freak accident, German police said, caused by mechanical malfunction on a steep hill. The Klugmann family was desolated, although Frau Klugmann recovered enough to remarry within three months. By then, Walter and Elsa were also married, and he had secured a transfer back to the States.

  The whispery voice on the phone said, “I doubt Langley will view this as a small matter, not to mention the reactions of the attorney general and the German police. In or out of prison, your survival will be brief. The BND has a long memory—and an even longer arm—when one of its own is assassinated.”

  No one succeeded in the CIA, certainly did not rise high, without iron control. None of his fear showed in Jaffa’s voice. “Who is this?” he demanded. “I don’t know where you got this fantasy, but I guarantee—”

  “Threats are a waste of time. I have a solution for you. You have a retired agent named Elizabeth Sansborough. I expect you recognize the name.”

  Jaffa felt as if he were standing at the edge of a bottomless void. The man did know, because the Carnivore’s only child was Liz Sansborough. Jaffa’s life of service was over. His work, his wife, his children—gone. He had expected this day to come, despite the Carnivore’s near-mythical secrecy. Someday, someone would find out he had hired an assassin to terminate his children’s grandfather.

  The man said, “Am I correct, Walter, that she came to your attention recently?”

  He recalled a minor report that she might have activated herself. But that was for operations. Still, as the question lingered in his ears, he began to hope. This bastard wanted to make a deal.

  “Yes,” Jaffa said cautiously.

  “Her father left files. A complete record. You’re in there, Walter. In detail.”

  “No!”

  “If you do exactly as I say, your file will be destroyed.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Paris, France

  Simon parked two blocks away, closer than he considered prudent, but he was in a hurry and worried about Sarah. As he got out, shapeless forms with the parched voices of addicts whispered pleas from the night’s shadows. A bar door opened, and laughter and cigarette smoke billowed out. The muggy air was clogged with the odors of dust and cooling asphalt.

  He wanted no problems to slow him, but the night had a ragged feel to it, as if anything desperate could happen. He pulled a bouquet of wilted flowers from a trash bin, snapped on his sunglasses, and headed off into the night with a vacant smile, as if he were mentally unbalanced. He carried the flowers in front in both hands, like an upright corpse. With luck, he would look deranged enough, or dangerous enough, that the locals would figure he was not worth their trouble.

  A pack of young men covered with tattoos and body piercings advanced as if they owned the sidewalk, their expressions dark and angry. The hair on Simon’s arms rose, and he studied them for weapons, but they moved past as if he were invisible.

  Two blocks later, he turned into an alley that was a narrow canyon between towering tenements. A ribbon of moonlight ran the length of the cobblestones to the other end, while the shadows on either side were black and forbidding.

  He lobbed the flowers into a garbage can and advanced, his nerves afire. When Sarah emerged from a shadow, smiling that million-watt grin of hers, his heart beat faster. There was just enough light that her short hair glowed like a halo around her face. As she hurried toward him, paralleling the stream of moonlight, he imagined he could see that sexy mole that was so tempting at the corner of her mouth.

  Suddenly, she was running.

  Surprised, he felt himself open his arms with a guilty thrill. His steps quickened, eager. He wanted to pull her to him, inhale her scent, hold her—and saw she was no longer smiling. Her eyes had narrowed, and her right hand hung low at her side, urgently signaling: Keep coming forward. Keep doing what you’re doing.

  Her gaze was locked on something beyond his shoulder. He started to look, but she swung her finger left and right—no. A chill shot up his spine. The skin on the back of his neck puckered. He listened but heard nothing unusual.

  He kept up his pose, his arms still wide. “Darling!”

  Sarah lunged past.

  Simon heard her shoulder bag hit the pavement. He whirled as her foot lashed up and knocked the arm of a man who had been just six feet behind. Something shiny—a stiletto—dropped with a metallic clatter and skittered into the moonshine.

  Simon started to rush to help, but she deflected a punch and chopped left and right with paralyzing sword-hand strikes into either side of the man’s neck. Simon was amazed at her skill and speed. She had the advantage of surprise, but that did not explain the professional level of her execution. There was no pause, no motion wasted. If she had hesitated or made the tiniest mistake, she could be dead—and so might he.

  As the man toppled backward, the moonlight caught his face. Christ. It was that bastard from Jackie Pahnke’s photo store again. Simon ran to him.

  Panting, Sarah stared down. “Who is he?”

  As he told her, Simon snapped up the stiletto, stepped on the blade, and broke it from the handle. He kicked the halves into a trash pile. “I saw him again in a photo shop right before I drove here.” He stared at her sleeve. The cloth was wet and dark—blood? Now her face revealed fatigue and tension, hidden earlier by her big smile. She had put on a great show. “You’re hurt.” He gestured at her arm, concerned.

  “It’s nothing.” Liz pushed her throbbing wound from her mind. If it’s not life-threatening, don’t think about it. What was important was that Simon was here. She looked him up and down, savoring his rangy body and handsome face, his smashed nose and intelligent eyes. She was growing fond of him.

  He nodded, scanned the alley once, and crouched to search the man’s pockets. He would argue with her about her arm later.

  She knelt beside him. “So he followed you.”

  “Looks like it,” Simon admitted. “I never spotted a thing.”

  “He’s good.”

  Simon found no identification or clue to as who the killer was or why he was in pursuit. He pulled a Glock from the fellow’s shoulder rig and checked the ammo clip. It fired 9-mm Parabellum cartridges. The clip was full. He set the Glock beside him and inspected the man’s shoes. They had crepe soles, which explained why his tread had been so quiet. When Simon looked across at her, she was staring at the weapon.

  The gun was a Glock 19, a self-cocking automatic that was reliable, compact, and relatively lightweight, because some 40 percent of it was molded from plastics. Police and military forces around the world, including in the United States, favored it or the Glock 17L, essentially the same weapon but with a longer barrel.

  As she stared, Liz felt a wrenching moment of indecision, the final few seconds in which one could still rethink one’s position. In the end, it was simple: All violence was wrong. She knew the future—if there were to be a future—would be without violence, no matter how distant that future might be. But the future was also now. What she—what any of us did now created the future.

  Torn, she felt again the pain of her guilt about Sarah. Tish Childs. Mac. The dead men in the Eisner-Moulton warehouse. The dean and his wife. Kirk.

  “What is it?” he frowned, puzzled.

  “Give me the gun.”

 
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Changed your mind?”

  “Seems so.” Her tone was emotionless. She took it, hefted it in one hand, and turned it from side to side, getting the feel. “It’ll do.”

  As Simon watched, she rose to her feet, and her gaze and the pistol moved effortlessly together, as if they were connected. She was standing sentry without being asked. He noted this as the memory of her karate attack lingered in his mind. For a journalist, even one who had received special training at the CIA’s ultra-secret, highly regarded Ranch, she was remarkably capable.

  On the dark alley floor, the man moaned. “He’s coming around,” she said.

  “Time to have a chat with the bugger,” Simon agreed.

  A second, less insistent moan followed. Keeping his voice low, Simon demanded, “Who are you? Who do you work for?”

  The man had a face that seemed untouched by emotion, almost unused. Simon bent to shake him, when suddenly Sarah’s palm rammed Simon’s back, catching him by surprise. He sprawled onto his face, lying on top of the attacker.

  Sarah dropped flat beside him and whispered, “Stay down!”

  He turned to look at her. She was staring back toward the alley’s mouth, where he had entered. The Glock followed her line of sight to a stout woman who slipped along a shadowy tenement wall as she pulled an Uzi from a shopping bag.

  Without a word, Simon carefully rolled off the semiconscious man and aimed his Sig Sauer. Behind the woman, street traffic continued to hum past.

  He whispered, “She doesn’t look dangerous.”

  “She’s a professional killer,” she whispered back. “She makes herself look soft and overweight, but that’s muscle. She carries a shopping bag and acts like an ordinary housewife so she can lull people, make them careless.”

  The woman had not bothered to change her appearance—the same cropped brown hair, the same red-brown lipstick, the same serviceable trousers, blouse, and jacket. She advanced carefully, searching for something…or someone.