Once Dead

by Richard Phillips

  CHAPTER 23

  Rolf Koenig walked through the Kazakh night, as alone as he could ever be, his security bubble barely glimpsed as they moved along with him. Being the creator of the greatest space technology company on the face of the planet had its advantages, one of which was the privacy app Rolf had designed for just this purpose. He merely had to say his desired destination and it simultaneously calculated the best routes and updated his team with the route he selected, allowing them to provide the optimum level of protection while staying out of Rolf’s sight.

  Lightning crawled across the western horizon, revealing the distant storm clouds, still hours away from the cosmodrome. Directly above his head, Jupiter almost touched the Cheshire moon that lighted his way toward the launch pad. Though the rocket that would carry his payload into space had not yet been moved to that launch pad, Rolf felt the need to go there, to stroll across the exact space where the huge vehicle would rest, to look up at the night sky.

  Most people thought the vast Kazakh plains ugly, but if they were looking at the ground they were missing the view. Kazakhstan, especially this place, was all about the sky, and what a gorgeous sky it was. Rolf had fallen in love with it the first night he had spent here and that love had only grown stronger with each subsequent visit. It was why he slept the few hours he required during the day, just so he could soak in the night.

  A fresh lightning tree sprouted in the distance as Mother Nature painted the sky in rapid strokes, strobed the results, and then erased her magnificent creation, leaving its after-image burned into Rolf’s retinas. So beautiful. So fleeting. Like life itself.

  The thought pulled him back to the news that had sent him on this head-clearing walk. Roskov reported trouble in Berlin. And although the crime boss had tried to hide it, Rolf had heard in Roskov’s voice the undertones that told him the killer known as The Ripper had wrapped Roskov in a frenzy of fury and frustration.

  Roskov, operating with CIA intel, had sent a five-person hit squad to kill the ex-CIA fixer, but The Ripper had killed one of their team before escaping from the train station. Then he’d hunted down the rest of the hit squad, leaving their corpses inside the trunk of a car parked outside one of Roskov’s warehouses. It was a message intended to inspire fear. Intended to produce overreaction, exactly the kind of overreaction in which Roskov could lose himself. Rolf couldn’t allow that, not with the mission entering its critical phase.

  Rolf was seriously impressed. He’d always regarded Rachel as window dressing, a pretty face and body to escort him through the social activities his position required him to attend. Now she had refused to succumb to Roskov’s intimidation and had taken it upon herself to hire her own enforcer. More than that, she had apparently chosen exceedingly well.

  These were qualities Rolf hadn’t imagined she possessed, qualities worthy of any Koenig matriarch. In a single bold action, Rachel had demonstrated that she—and by extension, her family—was not to be screwed with.

  The thought sent a thrill shooting up Rolf’s spine. Maybe he’d found his life partner buried within his trophy wife.

  The feel of concrete beneath his feet brought Rolf out of his reverie, alerting him to his arrival on the launch pad. From this angle, without a rocket to fill the void between them, the steel framework of the launch towers framed the coming storm, the lighting seeming to connect the two superstructures. He almost expected to see Dr. Frankenstein step forward to draw upon that power to bring a new creature to life. But Rolf was the only doctor who would be bringing a monster to life in this place, and the monster he would unleash would make the Americans wish for Dr. Frankenstein’s.

  CHAPTER 24

  Janet parked the car a block away from Jack’s apartment building and walked directly to the entrance. She wasn’t worried about the BMW. One way or another, she wouldn’t be inside the building for that long. Besides, it was a rental.

  She’d thought about her next actions during the twenty-three minutes it had taken her to get here from her hotel and she had settled on a crazy gamble. If her gamble went bad, she might just find herself dead or worse, spending the rest of her days behind bars in Fort Leavenworth. But from everything she’d read and heard, Jack Gregory had always exhibited an uncanny knack for spotting a tail, so watching from a distance probably wasn’t going to produce acceptable results. And unlike Peter Sellers in the old classic movie Being There, Janet didn’t like to watch.

  The thing that had convinced her was Garfield Kromly’s response to Levi Elias’s question about whether he thought it was possible that Jack had turned. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Janet had always had faith in her old CIA trainer’s judgment. Now she was about to put that judgment to the test.

  She opened the door into an unadorned entryway. This room had no security guard, no comfortable waiting area, only a single elevator and a door to the stairwell. Janet took the latter, ascending to the third floor. It didn’t surprise her that Jack would want to stay close to the bottom of the building, just in case he needed to make a hasty exit. Neither was she surprised to find the third-floor hallway almost completely dark, all but one of the light bulbs having burned out, that one illuminating a small circle near the hallway’s far end. A sliver of light shone beneath the third door on the right and Janet already knew it would be Jack’s.

  Walking directly to the door, Janet knocked three times.

  The door opened as her hand came away from the last knock and Janet found herself staring directly into the round black muzzle of a nine-millimeter H&K. She ignored it, extending her open right hand.

  “Hello, Jack. Janet Price. NSA.”

  CHAPTER 25

  A faint sound brought Jack to his feet, his H&K having filled his hand without his conscious awareness. No need to rack the slide, he kept a round constantly chambered. The presence of a manual safety was the only reason he preferred the H&K over a Glock. And despite the old Special Ops mantra that “My trigger finger is my safety,” the clutching bush of the Amazon had long ago taught him that other things had trigger fingers as well. A flick of his thumb combined with a squeeze of the trigger sent a round downrange just as quickly as he could with the Glock’s longer trigger pull.

  The distant sound had been that of a door softly closing, but not one of the apartment doors. This had been the distinctive click of the metal stairwell door latching closed. Jack moved to the side of his door and leveled the weapon, ready for the booted feet that would soon kick it in. But he didn’t hear any booted feet. If someone moved down the hall, they did it so silently that even Jack’s ears couldn’t detect the movement.

  Three loud raps surprised him, forcing Jack to change his plans on the fly. He jerked the door inward with his left hand as his right maintained the shooter’s sightline, finger tightening ever so slightly on the trigger.

  “Hello, Jack. Janet Price. NSA.”

  The woman who stood before him extended her right hand, holding it there in expectation of a welcoming handshake, no glimmer of fear in her dark brown eyes. Without taking his eyes away from her, his peripheral vision told him she was alone in the hallway. Jack ignored the extended hand, stepped back, and with a slight motion of the H&K, welcomed her into his apartment.

  She stepped across the threshold as Jack closed the door with his foot, grabbed her arm, and spun her face against the wall, the muzzle of the H&K pressed firmly against her right temple. Kicking her feet shoulder width apart, he patted her down with his left hand. Reaching inside her black leather jacket, he extracted the subcompact from her undershirt’s gun-pocket and tossed it onto the couch. Throughout the frisking, the woman remained calm, her lean, hard body offering no resistance.

  Jack’s gaze drank her in. Five foot ten, her body reminded him of a dancer he’d liked in the Broadway musical Cats. Tight jeans tucked into soft leather boots. If she hid a weapon there, she couldn’t reach it before he killed her.

  Releasing her, Jack stepped back, watching her turn to face him, her eyes sparkling with a hint
of something. Certainly not fear. He felt no fear in her. Excitement.

  Jack motioned her toward the kitchen table and she took a seat opposite the open laptop. Jack holstered the H&K, took a seat, and resumed his study of this fascinating young woman who, apparently with working knowledge of who and what he was, had calmly walked up to his apartment as if he’d invited her to dinner. Her long brown hair was tied up in a loose knot that enhanced the strong lines of her attractive face. But it was the ease with which she moved, the way her body relaxed into the chair, that Jack found so compelling. The way her eyes followed him reminded him of a cat watching a mouse. Hungry eyes.

  Jack knew the feeling.

  “So what brings Janet Price of the NSA to my apartment this many hours before dawn?”

  “Do we have to continue speaking to each other in the third person or can we talk like real people?”

  “Fine. Why are you here and how did you find me?”

  Janet’s eyes narrowed as she studied his face. Then, taking a breath that gave the first hint of stress he’d seen in this startling NSA operative, she nodded.

  “Admiral Jonathan Riles sent me to find you. So here I am.”

  “That doesn’t answer my questions.”

  Once again Janet Price paused, her gaze travelling to Jack’s laptop. She gestured toward it with her hand, extending her index finger in a downward pointing gesture, touching the tip to the table in front of her and holding it there for several seconds. A light dawned in Jack’s mind. Reaching for the laptop, he pressed the power key and held it down until the computer turned off.

  “The NSA tracked me through the laptop? Mind telling me how they did that through a system I bought just a couple of days ago. A virus?”

  “Let’s just say the agency is adept at gaining access to someone’s computer. By telling you, I’m putting my life in your hands.”

  “You did that when you walked up to my door.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  This time Jack paused, letting the silence hang in the air between them. He watched as Janet leaned back in her chair, watched as she let the tension drain from her body, re-establishing the utter calm she’d maintained up until the last few moments. As she watched him watch her, the hint of a smile returned to her lips. Jack liked what he was seeing and she knew it.

  “You have my attention. Go on.”

  As Jack made a fresh pot of coffee, Janet told of how NSA analysts had identified unusual CIA activity in and around Germany, activity that correlated to Rolf Koenig, Vladimir Roskov, and a dead ex-CIA fixer named Jack Gregory. As he set a cup of the steaming black liquid in front of Janet and resumed his own seat, she wrapped up her narrative, explaining how Jonathan Riles had pulled her out of Cartagena with the mission of making contact with Jack. Once she’d gotten to Berlin, the NSA had found him, so here she was.

  Jack sipped his coffee, letting the bold liquid linger on his tongue before swallowing.

  “So Admiral Riles thought it was a good idea for you to walk right in on me.”

  “That was all me.”

  “Reckless.”

  “I’m still alive.”

  Jack closed the laptop, flipped it upside down, pulled the Swiss Army Knife from his pocket, and removed the screws which gave him access to the laptop internals. It took just three minutes to physically disconnect the built-in microphone and camera and reassemble the case. As he started to switch the laptop back on, Janet slid a tiny memory stick across the table toward him.

  “Among other things, this has a clean Linux installation and a drive-wipe utility. Since the MAC address is compromised, you’ll have to ditch that computer, but you can use the Linux install to clean your next one.”

  “And you think I’ll take your word for that?”

  “Garfield Kromly seems to think you’re pretty good at deciding who and what to believe.”

  The sound of his old trainer’s name slipping from this woman’s lips sent an electric shock through his body. As close as Garfield and Pamela Kromly had been to him in his past life, Robert’s death and its aftermath had robbed him of that relationship. Pam had died and been buried without him ever being aware of her illness. When Jack had learned of it, it had rocked him like the loss of his own mother. And as much as he’d wanted to contact Garfield to convey those feelings, he hadn’t done it. Now that relationship was lost, forever. And maybe that was for the best.

  “I used to be.”

  “Your choice.”

  Jack looked into Janet’s eyes, watched her unblinking gaze meet his, and made his decision. Grabbing the memory stick, he plugged it in and then powered on the laptop. Bringing up the BIOS screen, he set the system to boot from the USB device and restarted it. When the initial options screen appeared, he selected the wipe utility, typed “YES” at the confirmation dialog, and let it run.

  “Why me?”

  “Riles thinks you’ve stumbled onto something bigger than what you signed on for. He believes you could be a valuable asset. It’s why he sent me.”

  Jack laughed. “No thanks. Those days are over. Now I do what I’m paid to do and leave the big picture to you guys.”

  Janet leaned forward. “Going this one alone may not be such a good plan. The CIA activity I mentioned earlier is being kept off the DCI’s radar. That can happen if the Director doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know about it, because then it’s deemed a high-risk reward operation, one that requires plausible deniability.”

  “Or it could be a rogue Iran–Contra type operation.”

  “That thought occurred to us. Either way, they have way too many assets involved for any independent operator to handle. Even you. You’re going to need backup.”

  “That hasn’t always worked out well in the past.”

  Janet stared at him for several seconds, then leaned back. “Okay. What about a temporary partnership of convenience? No long-term strings attached. You stay on your mission, but if you come across something for us ‘Big Picture’ folks, you let me know about it. In the meantime, I feed you intel you can’t get otherwise.”

  Jack considered. Janet was the smoothest operator he’d run across in recent memory. More than that, he knew she believed everything she was telling him. That combination made her very, very dangerous.

  Noting his pause, Janet continued. “Also, on that memory stick, you’ll find a special communications program. It will encrypt any document you want to send me. More than that, it monitors a number of high traffic, public websites, and can embed the encrypted message within public images. It will also identify, download, and decrypt any messages I’ve posted for you.”

  Jack shut down the laptop, packing it and the memory stick into its carrying case, and then stood up.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good enough.”

  “I’m going to get dressed, grab my things, and walk out of this apartment. You’re going to stay right here for twenty minutes after I’m gone.”

  “When will I know your decision?”

  “If you don’t get a message through your encryption program, then you’ll know not to look me up again. If you get a message, I’ll be asking for something to verify just how valuable you really are.”

  Janet nodded and then remained sitting as Jack walked across the room, dropped his towel on the floor and dressed. He packed his few belongings into a backpack that he slung over his left shoulder, stepped into the dark hallway, and shut the door behind him. By the time he secured his equipment to the motorcycle luggage rack, donned the black helmet, and stepped astride the Beemer that carried him out of the parking garage and into the night, he finally managed to purge the image of Janet Price relaxing at his kitchen table from the forefront of his thoughts.

  Janet watched Jack unselfconsciously drop his towel and reach for his clothes. Once again she was struck by just how little body fat separated the killer’s skin from the muscle that moved beneath it. Perfectly proportioned, marred only by the scar patterns on his chest, sh
oulders, and back, it was a body that put dangerous cravings in her head.

  Janet pushed those thoughts aside and watched Jack walk out of the apartment, remaining seated long enough to allow him to enter the stairwell before walking over to the couch to retrieve her H&K. Sliding it into the gun-pocket, she moved to a more comfortable spot on the couch to wait. She’d give Jack thirty minutes before she took action, even though he’d only told her twenty. With Gregory, it was best not to rush.

  Once the wall clock indicated she’d waited long enough, Janet took her encrypted cell phone from her jacket pocket and speed dialed the number. Levi answered on the third ring.

  “Elias.”

  “First contact.” Janet felt the two words roll off her tongue with just a hint of satisfaction.

  “Target’s response?”

  “Guarded, but he’s considering our proposal.”

  “Okay. Let me know when the situation changes.”

  “Wilco. Janet out.”

  Despite the security encryption provided, the call still went out over a cell-phone network instead of a direct SATCOM link. That meant it was vulnerable, so no specifics could be used in conversation. The short call also reduced the likelihood of a trace. But there was no use in hanging around Jack’s old apartment longer than necessary.

  When she reached the BMW, Janet was pleasantly surprised that it appeared as she had left it, not even a hubcap missing. Climbing in, she brought the powerful engine rumbling to life and pulled away from the curb. Giving one final glance at the run-down apartment building as it disappeared in her driver’s side mirror, Janet switched on the radio. Yes, all in all, it had been a fine night indeed.

  CHAPTER 26

  “What you got for me?”

  Jacob Knox spoke into the sat-phone with a voice that carried a hint of the growl that had been building inside him since he had landed in Berlin. He’d expected the resources available to Nolan Trent to have provided The Ripper’s location on day one, but he’d been sitting on his ass in Berlin for three days now without one actionable piece of intel and he didn’t like it. Gregory was the one who was supposed to be flying blind, not him.