“So, you’re trying to stay one step ahead of those types?”
June nodded. “That’s one of my main roles, yes. It was no accident that I met your friends. The research gig in Germany was just a cover. I was there on assignment.”
Adriana stood there silently, still looking out over the murky water.
“Look,” June said after waiting, “I know this is sudden. And I’m sorry for being dishonest before. The truth is we need you. I’ve seen what you can do in the field. You have a skill set that very few possess.”
“I have my own thing.”
“I know. And it’s an admirable hobby…or whatever you call it. But the art can wait, Adriana. The world can’t. It needs heroes, guardians to watch over the innocent from the shadows. It’s time for you to use your abilities to help keep them safe. If you don’t do it, who will?”
Adriana didn’t respond immediately. She thought for another moment and then sighed. “You been practicing that?”
“Little bit.” June grinned.
“I’m no hero.”
“Which is the first prerequisite to being one.”
“So what, we travel the world hunting down terrorists and bad guys? Doesn’t leave a lot of time for our guys.”
“You’ve made do in the past, as have I. They’re out of the country most of the time anyway. Honestly, I doubt they’ll notice.”
“If we end up dead or held hostage somewhere, I’m pretty sure they’d notice.”
“Then we better stay sharp.”
“What happens if I say yes?” Adriana asked. “Is there a training program or something? Because I have to be honest: I don’t do that sort of stuff.”
“No. You don’t have to do anything like that. If you say yes, we begin immediately.”
“And if I say no?”
June averted her gaze and matched Adriana’s, staring out at the rapidly flowing river. “Then nothing. You go back to your hobby and dating Sean and whatever else you do in life. No harm. You’ll never hear from us again.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Yep. Just like that.”
“No hunting me down to kill me because I know about your operation?”
“We’re not in the business of killing good people, Adriana.”
“Just the bad ones.”
“Let me know if you’re interested,” June said as she turned to walk away. “Your talents would be a huge asset for us. I know that your work with the lost art is important to you, but think of the lives you could save. This is an incredible opportunity.”
June strolled away and disappeared around the corner, leaving Adriana alone in the rain once more.
“Did she just walk away?” Adriana muttered. Then she shook her head, realizing she still had no clue as to where she was.
She turned and started trotting down the asphalt toward the corner where her friend had gone. Adriana rounded the corner and was surprised to find June standing by a black Jaguar sedan.
“That was fast,” June said with a smile.
“I wasn’t saying yes just yet,” Adriana corrected. “I just have no idea where I am.”
“Liverpool, England.”
“I figured that much.”
“Get in, and I’ll take you wherever you want to go. No pressure. I’ve given you my best sales pitch.”
“I was in Munich,” Adriana said. “You gonna drive me there?”
“I’ll get you to the nearest train station.”
Close enough.
Adriana slid into the passenger side as June climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Sorry for getting your car wet,” Adriana said.
“Not a problem. It’s a company car.”
June shifted the vehicle into gear and sped away, kicking loose bits of rock and debris out from the rear tires.
She guided the car through the docks and back to a chain-link fence that started opening automatically just before they reached it.
“How is it funded?” Adriana blurted out.
June steered the car to the right and accelerated. New raindrops splattered on the windshield as soon as the wipers slung the old ones away.
“We’re primarily funded by the crown,” June explained. “The royals don’t need all the money they’re allotted. They haven’t ever needed that much. Most of the things they would have to pay for are taken care of by the government. So, we diverted some of their funding into our coffers.”
“You stole the queen’s money?” Adriana looked impressed.
“No,” June said with a laugh. “She’s the one who approved the allotment.”
“Oh.”
“The queen understands that times have changed since she was younger. Enemies of the crown and of humanity in general are no longer marching across a battlefield, carrying a flag that identifies their loyalty. They hide in the shadows, in basements, crumbling buildings, or sometimes in plain sight. You never know where they’re going to hit next. It’s our job to find out that information and shut them down before they can hurt anyone.”
June was right. Times had changed significantly since the queen ascended the throne. Every major war in history had pitted two sides against one another, each clearly distinguished. It wasn’t that way anymore.
“That’s why we’re called Shadow Cell,” June said. “We must get in where the enemy lives, operate in their backyard, take the fight to them. Not only that; we must make acts of terrorism unthinkable.”
Adriana’s forehead wrinkled. “Unthinkable?”
“We are messengers, Adriana. We send a message to anyone who would consider attacking innocents. If they bomb a church, we burn a terrorist training camp. They run a truck through a crowd of people? We hang their leaders in plain sight. We set an example. It isn’t always pretty. But it is the world we live in. It’s time for those with evil intentions to face equal punishment.”
“Sounds a bit vigilante if you ask me.”
June shrugged. “The law fails every single day. The United Nations is useless. And the governments of the world are tied up in boardrooms, bickering about their own issues, all of them looking out for their individual concerns.”
Adriana gazed out the window. She remembered talking to Sean so many times about his experience with the Axis agency. He swore he’d never go back to it—that the danger, intrigue, and living a life on the run weren’t worth it.
Then again, it seemed he’d gone from the flames into the fire by moving to IAA. He and Tommy found themselves in no end of trouble.
“Sean used to talk to me about his time with Axis,” Adriana said in an absent tone. “He claimed that it was never-ending, that when one mission was completed, another one was there waiting. Your director said that he only wants my help to take down the Red Ring. We both know he wants more than that. He wants me to be a full-time agent. I have a personal life now, people I care about. I saw what this sort of work did to my father, how it changed him. He couldn’t be there when my mother needed him—when she was dying. I don’t want to be involved with something that will take me away from the people and things I care about. Life is too short.”
June listened quietly as she drove the car. She turned into a train station on the right and parked as close to the entrance as possible.
She shifted the vehicle into park and looked over at her passenger. “I understand, Adriana. Truly, I do. Someday, perhaps there won’t be a need for our kind anymore. I will be very happy to see that day come. Until then, however, the ones who defend humanity against the forces of evil—ones who can—must choose to take a stand or watch from the sidelines knowing they could do something to stop the mayhem but didn’t. I choose to stand. I don’t judge you either way. And we will still be friends. I just thought I would offer.”
Adriana gave a feeble nod. “I understand. Thank you for the invitation. Although you guys might want to rethink the whole kidnapping recruits and putting bags over their heads. I have a phone, you know.”
“Yeah, I agree.
It isn’t a very cordial way of bringing someone in for a job interview.”
Adriana opened the door and put a foot out onto the wet pavement. “Thanks again, June. But I think I’ll pass. I have a lot going on right now, especially with Sean. I have a chance to make something with him that I’ve never had with another man. I don’t want to blow it.”
“I totally understand. I don’t want to mess things up with Tommy either. Do me a favor? Please don’t tell him. I know that eventually I’ll have to come clean, but not yet. After all, it is a secret agency.”
“My lips are sealed,” Adriana said. “Good luck, June. Be careful out there.”
“You too.”
Adriana closed the door and watched her friend pull away. She stared at the sedan until it disappeared around the corner of the train station before turning and walking up to the ticket office.
After purchasing her pass, she entered the station and found a bench on the platform where a small group of people gathered to wait on their train. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and sat down. Her notes from the case she’d been working on were still there. Thankfully, the people in charge of Shadow Cell hadn’t permanently confiscated her belongings or altered them—not that she knew of, at least.
“Now, where was I?” she muttered to herself as she scanned a picture of a painting that had disappeared at the beginning of World War II. “Where might you be?”
3
Paris, France
Adriana sat at a cafe along the street in the 10th Arrondissement. Bicyclists pedaled by in a casual rhythm, clearly in no hurry to get wherever they were going. Pedestrians strolled by at a similar pace, leisurely and carefree. The high late morning sun beamed down brightly, and despite a chill in the fall air Adriana didn’t feel the cold in her black hoodie.
She traced her right index finger along the lines of an article on her computer. It was a newspaper piece, written more than forty years prior about a piece of art that went missing from a private collection. The collector—an Italian national—had failed to give the exact details about the painting, though he claimed it was a priceless masterpiece.
It was a strange story, to say the least. Why not tell the insurance companies, the banks, and the authorities the name of the painting’s creator? And what of the title? It seemed like a foolish thing to not give enough details to aid in the recovery of the painting.
Foolish—unless the Italian collector was doing his best to hide the fact that he’d somehow procured a piece of art that belonged to someone else.
The man’s name was Marco Conte according to the article. He’d built up a vast fortune immediately following World War II, taking advantage of huge gaps in the market left after Mussolini’s fascist regime had been overthrown.
His main source of revenue had been textiles, but after a little digging Adriana learned that the guy had a darker side.
He dealt in the arms trade, shipping weapons to rebels in various countries during a time when everyone felt like they could win their freedom and, if not freedom, something far more important: power.
Conte didn’t care where the weapons went. And according to her research, he didn’t seem to mind that many of the guns and ammunition he sold had a high rate of malfunction.
She figured it was karma that he was killed on a private shooting range when the gun he was using misfired and put a batch of shrapnel through his face and brain.
It took hours, days even, searching through the scores of electronically stored microfilm and old records before she found the image she was looking for. When she did find it, she knew that Conte was the man she’d been searching for.
That still didn’t explain where the painting was now, nearly forty years after it had been taken from him. Adriana had a source here in Paris that could help, someone who’d worked as an assistant curator at the Louvre. The woman also had plenty of connections in the criminal underbelly of Paris. If anyone had information concerning the missing Conte painting, it would be her.
Adriana picked up the phone from the table and started looking through the contacts. She passed June’s name and paused for a second. It had been two days since the bizarre encounter with her friend. Two days since being abducted and waking up in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Liverpool. It seemed forever ago, like a distant faux memory from a dream.
How June had managed to keep her exploits a secret from Tommy, Adriana didn’t know, but sooner or later a secret that big would come out.
She kept scrolling through the names and found the one she was looking for. She started to tap it when she heard a low boom. It was in the distance, probably a half mile away. Then the earth shook. The table vibrated, and her coffee cup jiggled on its saucer.
Adriana and the other patrons looked up, befuddled. A second later, everyone started looking around at each other, checking faces to see if anyone had an explanation.
The first clue as to what happened was a pillar of black smoke that appeared over the buildings across the street. Then there was another low boom, this time a little closer than the first.
Adriana sprang from her seat and turned to face the cafe’s manager who’d come out onto the patio and was staring at the strange site along with everyone else.
“Do you have a basement?” she asked in hurried French.
“Yes,” he answered in kind. “Why?”
“Get all these people down there. Now!”
“Why?”
“It’s an attack!”
Some of the patrons rushed into the building with the manager. Others sprinted for their cars, thinking a quick getaway was the best option. Some sat in their chairs, faces washed pale with shock, unable to move. There were at least a dozen like that.
No way she could help all of them. She turned and sprinted across the suddenly gridlocked street, heading for the sounds of chaos.
She jumped and slid over the hood of a car, landed on her feet on the other side in mid-stride, and kept going. The driver yelled something in French. She was too far away to hear him clearly, but she assumed he’d hurled some kind of profanity.
The clouds of dark smoke billowed into the sky. Screams filled the air and echoed through the canyons of concrete, steel, and glass. The arrondissement had gone from a peaceful sector of the city to Armageddon. Most of the people she encountered were running the opposite direction. Adriana didn’t blame them. She, on the other hand, wasn’t wired that way. She had to help however she could.
It was another full three blocks before she found the first signs of what happened. As she rounded the last corner at the border where the 10th and 11th Arrondissements met, she saw the remains of a compact car amid a raging fire. Sirens filled the air, but as yet only one cop had arrived on the scene and appeared to be helpless in the midst of the disaster.
Bodies were strewn everywhere. A quick sweep of the area told Adriana there were at least twenty casualties, and that was only on this side of the car. There was no way of knowing what had happened on the other side.
She instantly assessed the situation.
The car was parked next to the sidewalk, mere feet from a sidewalk cafe not unlike the one she’d just left. Not a car accident. Based on the blast, the charred building next to the wreckage, and the number of casualties, there was no questioning what happened.
This was a terrorist attack.
An ambulance roared around the corner and skidded to a stop. The paramedics rushed to the closest victims and began checking their vitals. Adriana knew the ones they left on the ground were already dead. Their job was to help the living. The dead were beyond saving.
She saw the smoke from the second explosion. It was a few blocks away. She imagined the scene there was much like this one.
Her heart sank, and she swallowed hard. Two more police cars arrived along with three fire engines. People were yelling orders now, collecting those who were standing nearby. Most of them had tears in their eyes, streaming down their cheeks. Some were in shock, unable to grasp wh
at had just happened.
Amid the anarchy, Adriana saw something strange out of the corner of her eye. She twitched, turning her head toward the movement. It was something in a building across the street on the corner. A curtain moved. It was subtle, hardly noticeable, but she’d seen it. The window was open, and she could see a set of fingers holding it back as if waiting for something.
The threat wasn’t over yet.
While emergency crews flooded the crowded street, Adriana charged toward the entrance of the building where she’d seen the movement in the window. It was four stories up. There was no way she could get there in time.
She saw a gendarme running toward the scene and grabbed him by the arm. “There’s a sniper,” she said. “Get this area clear.”
He looked at her with puzzled eyes and then shook her hand free. She’d spoken in perfect French, so she knew he understood. Apparently, he wasn’t going to take advice from a civilian—much less a tourist.
Adriana ran to the entrance and hurried through the door. Her head turned rapidly one direction and then the other until she found the elevators. That wouldn’t be good. If there was a shooter up there, he could have booby-trapped or disabled them.
She didn’t have a second to lose.
“Stairs it is.”
By the time she reached the fourth floor, the top of her legs burned and her calves were tight, but she didn’t slow down. She barged through the door and into the fourth-floor hallway. It took a second of looking down both ends of the hall before she got her bearings. She ran to the right, heading for what she believed was the apartment where the shooter was hiding.
At the end of the hall the corridor came to a T. She turned right again and moved as fast as possible on the tips of her toes. The floor creaked as she passed the next-to-last door, and she froze for a second. She grimaced, hoping the noise wasn’t audible inside the apartments.
When Shadows Call Page 2
