The Devil's Game (The Game Trilogy Book 2)

by Sean Chercover

  Daniel’s eye was drawn by movement on the screen behind the bed. Three men had entered the reception room. Two were military men dressed, like the soldiers stationed here, in unmarked uniforms. The third was a tall blond man wearing the uniform of a Roman Catholic priest.

  Conrad Winter.

  And he was now talking to the sergeant at the desk.

  Daniel’s gut clenched as he stared at the screen, his mind racing.

  Conrad Winter was in this facility . . . and would know Daniel on sight.

  Mess up in there, no way we can get you out alive.

  “Bad news then, is it?” said the man strapped to the bed, regaining his smile.

  Daniel took a deep breath, slowing his mind. He raised his watch and clicked the button to stop the chronograph, zeroed it, started it again, all while watching the screen as Conrad Winter placed his palm on the reader and walked through the inner door. Then another deep breath while visualizing the floor plan from the case file. Anything less than perfect timing and their paths would surely cross, and that would be that.

  He held position, focused on the empty elevator in the bottom-left of the screen. Another slow centering breath, as Conrad Winter and his two military escorts entered the elevator. Conrad pushed a button. The door slid closed.

  Time to go.

  As Daniel reached the door, the man in the bed called out, “Til vi treffes igjen, Prest.”

  Daniel jogged down the hallway to the stairwell, then up the stairs, grateful they were keeping the man on B3 and not B12. Slowing enough to quiet his footfalls as he passed B2. The doctor had said his office was on 2 and it was possible that Conrad was headed there first.

  Keeping his speed in check, Daniel entered the ground-floor hallway and strode back to the door to the reception room. He pushed on the bar, but nothing happened. He rapped on the steel door three times with his ring, glaring at the camera mounted to the wall.

  The door buzzed and opened, held by the sentry.

  Daniel addressed the sergeant at the desk. “Your paranoid doctor has just wasted a day of my life. Call the car around, I’m leaving.” Without waiting for a reply, he crossed to the exterior door. The soldier with the rifle stepped aside and Daniel said, “The door, sergeant. Now.” He pulled his mirrored aviators from his breast pocket and put them on.

  The thick metal door buzzed. Daniel stepped out into hot West Virginia sunshine. He checked his watch—six minutes since Conrad’s arrival. They’d let him walk out of the place, so it was a solid bet that Conrad didn’t know of his presence before arriving. But how long would it take? Did he know of Daniel’s presence by now? Two minutes from now? Two minutes ago? Daniel whipped out his cell phone, texted:

  Blown—CW on-site—SOS.

  A car pulled around the corner. The same black Lincoln Town Car stretch limo that had picked him up at the Greenbrier Hotel that morning. And the same young soldier stepped out to open the back door for him. Daniel let him.

  “Back to the hotel,” he said as the car rocked into motion, “and step on it. I have real work waiting.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  They cruised down the treelined two-lane highway for about twelve miles before everything went sideways. The soldier in front lifted a cell phone to his ear and said, “Mobile One. Yes, sir. Affirmative.” A solid black divider began to rise, isolating Daniel in the backseat. Just before it closed, Daniel heard, “Please repeat that instruction, sir.”

  And then he was alone.

  The car began to slow. Daniel’s phone vibrated. The incoming text read:

  Seatbelt.

  The car slowed further, then swung into a U-turn as Daniel clicked his seatbelt and pulled down the center armrest and held it tight, bracing his head against the seatback.

  Something hard blasted through the windows in the front of the car. The car shook, swerved, crashed into something, and bounced off it. Daniel whipped from right to left, smacking the side of his head against the window frame.

  Then everything just stopped. Daniel’s head hurt. His ears were ringing and the world was muffled but he heard the muted click of the door locks. The door beside him opened and Pat Wahlquist reached in with one hand and pulled him out. A grenade launcher hung from Pat’s other hand.

  “You might not wanna look in front,” said Pat, “that guy’s got no head.” He pointed at a green Subaru idling empty across the road, front doors standing open. “Your chariot awaits.”

  Daniel heard all the words but they sounded far away, somewhere behind the ringing in his ears, which had grown into a wall of sound separating Daniel from the world around him.

  “What?” he said.

  Pat pulled him toward the getaway car. “Dude, we gotta motor. Snap to.”

  8: RAT RACE

  Sometimes stopping for a coffee on the way to a meeting can change the world. Everyone does it, but nobody considers how that simple decision splits the arrow of time, creates a fork in the road, chooses one path over the other, thus cementing their fate until the next decision.

  It had taken twenty minutes to get off the highway, load up on fast carbs and black coffee, and get back on the highway. Twenty minutes. Had they arrived twenty minutes earlier, Conrad Winter would’ve been able to intervene before Dr. Assclown uploaded the bloody file to the bloody enemy.

  And the coffee wasn’t even good.

  Conrad dropped the computer cord he’d ripped—too late—from the wall. The doctor still sat at his computer, looking like he might have a stroke. Conrad turned to his DIA liaison, said, “Colonel Dillman, alert the driver. Return the intruder here, preferably alive and in great discomfort. And show me what we’ve got on tape.”

  Unbelievable. It was Daniel Byrne on the bloody tape. That little prick. Conrad had half expected Daniel would end up working for Carter Ames, but to encounter him in the field so soon? Was it even possible, could Daniel have been a Foundation asset before he left the Vatican? No, he’d shown no sign of it, and Conrad had kept a close eye. It was as it appeared; Trinity’s case had brought them together.

  So the Foundation had rushed Daniel into the field. Good.

  On the tape, Daniel Byrne was standing facing Major Blankenship’s bed. Blankenship was saying, “Det skjedde før i Mandal, hvor det åpenbare var engang skjult og det skjulte vil åpenbares . . .”

  Conrad’s cell phone vibrated and he checked the screen. Charles Carruthers, number-two man to Conrad’s boss, the director of the Council for World Peace. This day just keeps getting better and better.

  “Yes?”

  “The director requires an in-person progress report, without delay,” said Carruthers.

  “I can’t come to Singapore right—”

  “We’re not in Singapore, we’re in Barbados.”

  “Even so. The situation’s too fluid right now and I have to make a stop in Atlanta.”

  “The director has pressing issues of his own, Conrad. This will not sit well.”

  “Hang on,” Conrad put the call on hold as Colonel Dillman waved for his attention.

  Dillman patted his short gray mustache, said, “We’ve lost contact with the driver.”

  “What?”

  “His cell’s gone dead. We’ve dispatched an intercept team but they’re nine minutes out.”

  There was no choice to be made. Conrad knew he had to draw a proverbial line in the sand—now was the time. The director had assigned this project to him; he’d just have to trust Conrad’s judgment. He took the phone off hold. “Tell the director the Foundation knows about this one. They sent an operative and they have a copy of the medical records. I’ll brief him by sat phone once I’m in the air”—a glance at his watch—“two hours from now. I’ll get to Barbados as soon as I can but if I don’t make that stop in Atlanta, this whole thing could blow up in our faces. Conrad out.”

  He
ended the call, signaled to Dillman, and the two men stepped out into the hallway.

  “We tie this off,” said Conrad, “right now. You need to give the order.”

  Dillman simply nodded and led the way back into the office. He walked straight to the doctor, still slumped in his chair, and barked, “On your feet, captain.”

  The doctor stood, a little unsteadily. “Yes, sir?”

  “You just sent top secret records to one of the most dangerous terrorist networks on the planet. The legal word for that is treason, and the penalty for treason is death.”

  “But—but . . . I didn’t know,” pleaded the doctor. “I made a mistake, sir. I’m not a terrorist.”

  “If I say you knew, you knew,” said Dillman without pity. “And if I say you didn’t, then the penalty is ten to twenty in the stockade followed by dishonorable discharge, your pension stripped, medical license revoked.” He stood in place, boring holes into the doctor with his gaze, as the doctor’s own eyes welled up with tears. Finally he said, “But I will give you one chance to prove yourself worthy of my effort to cover this mess up and keep you in your current position.”

  “Anything—anything,” the doctor sputtered, “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Dillman glanced at Conrad. Conrad gave him a nod. Dillman turned back to the doctor. “You will now take us downstairs, where you will prepare a syringe and send our brain-damaged major to a peaceful and merciful death.”

  The doctor’s gaze hit the floor for a moment but quickly returned, carrying a mix of fear and guilt . . . and relief.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  9: LAST DANCE

  Washington, DC

  Evan Sage returned the cell phone to his breast pocket and adjusted his tie as he approached the table. Vanessa gestured at his untouched salmon, room temperature by now. Her plate was two-thirds empty, as was the bottle of good French rosé on the table, the condensation like cold tears prisming the flickering candlelight.

  She sipped her wine as he took his chair again. “Welcome back.” A forced smile, aborted.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Twenty-seven minutes. Long break between courses, Evan. I understand it’s work, but I can’t pretend to be happy about it.”

  “I know, sweetie, and I am sorry but it’s about to get worse.” He caught the waiter’s eye across the dining room, signaled for the check. “There’s a situation. I have to leave right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Out of the city.”

  Vanessa’s expression hardened at his evasion. “I don’t suppose you’re allowed to tell me for how long?”

  “I don’t know how long.”

  “Days? Weeks? Months? Years?”

  “C’mon, don’t be like that. A couple of days, maybe a few weeks.”

  Vanessa put her wineglass down, picked up her red leather clutch. “Well, happy anniversary of the day we fucking met.”

  They cabbed it back to their stylish Georgetown townhouse in heavy silence. When he tried to open conversation, Vanessa cut him off with a look that said: Civilized people do not air their differences in front of others.

  Vanessa’s townhouse, really. She’d made him an equal partner in choosing the place, but she’d bought it with her own money. He could never afford a place like this on a government salary.

  Evan had to give her credit: The money didn’t matter to her. She found his choice of public service noble, and she even urged him not to chase the big bag of money regularly dangled in front of him by intelligence contractors in the private sector. Not that he needed urging, but it was her way of assuring him the money really didn’t matter.

  The Department of Homeland Security paid Evan $162,000 per year, which is not a terrible salary until you compare it. The private sector offered Evan a starting salary of between $650,000 and $780,000, plus bonuses, a luxury expense account, and the opportunity for rapid advancement.

  But Evan was performing a public service, defending his country—god how he hated the word “homeland”; it sounded just one step shy of “fatherland”—and his fellow citizens. Working his ass off for less.

  Evan found the word “noble” embarrassing whenever Vanessa said it, although he would go as far as “honorable.” Truth was, he’d gotten into the field because his inner twelve-year-old thought it would be fun to catch Bad Guys.

  Turns out, it was a lot of fun.

  But it was getting harder all the time. Evan had graduated the Department of Homeland Security training program in a class of forty-three—along with twenty-seven other men and fifteen women. In the years since, the CIA had poached four men and three women, the NSA had poached six men and four women. The private sector intelligence corporations had hired away fourteen men and three women.

  Leaving three men and five women from the class of forty-three. Which might have suggested that women were, in the aggregate, more motivated by public service than men, or more loyal, or less willing to compete in the private sector.

  Or some combination of the three.

  Anyway, there was a massive brain drain and the Intelligence and Analysis division of DHS had become the redheaded stepchild of the intelligence community. Morale was low, and the constant churn in the executive suites ensured it would stay low—the culture was unstable, shifting every time they installed someone new at the top.

  Frankly, it sucked as a place to work.

  But Evan really enjoyed catching Bad Guys.

  Vanessa dropped her purse on the black granite kitchen counter. “I’ll put coffee on.”

  “We can’t let this come between us,” Evan offered.

  “Little late for that.” Vanessa filled the coffeemaker’s water reservoir, spooned grounds into the basket. “Honey, you’re forty-two years old. When will it be enough?”

  He wanted to say: When terrorists stop trying to kill us. He wanted to say: When are you going to pull your head out of your privileged Harvard ass and wake up to what the world is?

  He judged neither would be helpful.

  He said, “I stop dirty bombs from exploding in our subways. I stop airliners from falling out of the sky.”

  “And you get off on the action. Still gives you a boner.”

  “So? I get off on saving American lives. Sue me. My job is more important—”

  “Than being a pension fund manager?” she snapped. “Looking after the life savings of Americans? Bravo—score a point for you.”

  “I was going to say, more important than anything else I can imagine myself doing. Not everything is about you.”

  “Actually, nothing is about me, or even about us.” Vanessa shook her head. “Hasn’t been, for a while. And I’m not asking you to stop saving lives, I’m asking what kind of life we’re building together.” Her left thumb began absently turning her engagement ring in circles around her slender finger as she spoke. An unconscious gesture that had become more frequent this year. Their engagement was now twenty-eight months long and they still hadn’t set a wedding date. “I’m asking, when do you plan to stop playing James Bond and start playing M?”

  “I never lied to you about my ambitions,” Evan said. The silence lingered as they looked into each other’s eyes, neither willing to budge. He tried to lighten the mood with “And I’m not a spy,” but it fell flat.

  Vanessa dug in her bag and lit a Benson & Hedges menthol on the gas range. “Shit, everyone’s a spy nowadays. The world just keeps getting meaner.” She blew out a long stream of smoke. “I know you think I’m being selfish—fine, maybe I am. Maybe it’s hypocritical, but I want to live something that at least resembles a normal life. And I want to live it with you.”

  Nothing Evan could say would fix this. Tossing out the word “bioweapon” might make this particular trip less of a heat score, but he knew there would be blowback. If he said it, it would actually increase Vane
ssa’s desire to see him riding a desk in DC. He stole a glance at the clock above the range. He poured a mug of coffee mid-brew, returning the carafe to the machine in time to avoid a flood. He added a little cold tap water to his mug so he didn’t have to wait for it to cool, took a long sip, and chose his next words.

  “Vanessa, I want to work this out but I have to meet my team at Joint Base Andrews in seventy-two minutes so I can go play superspy and save more lives. I’m sorry you have a problem with that. But I love you too much to mislead you. I have zero intention of becoming a desk jockey in the foreseeable future. At some point, yes, but . . . five years? I doubt it. Ten years? Maybe—probably. I just can’t make that a promise. You need to decide if that makes this relationship untenable for you.”

  She shook her head. “Jesus. The way you talk about it, you sound like a goddamn lawyer negotiating a deal.”

  He drained the coffee mug in three swallows. “I have to pack.” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, leaning down for a kiss. She returned it, but it was a kiss laden with sadness.

  A kiss good-bye.

  “Okay,” she said, stepping back from him, “let the record show, you never lied to me about your ambitions.” She took another deep drag on her cigarette, blew it out. “But when you get back from your new adventure, you need to move out.”

  10: BIG SHOT

  London, England

  The immigration officer behind the counter at Heathrow swiped Daniel’s passport and read what came up on the monitor, then turned his attention to the declaration card.

  He said, “The nature of your business, Mr. Byrne?” His accent said Birmingham.

  “Management consultancy,” said Daniel.

  “For who?”

  Daniel handed over a UNEX Incorporated business card bearing his name. Title: Senior Analyst. He said, “We work for Fortune 500 companies, help them find efficiencies.”