Severance Package

by Duane Swierczynski

  He also knew Girlfriend must be bitterly disappointed—she’d had other plans for Mr. Goins.

  She must be a little worried. Her audition, so far, was more than a little shaky.

  And she had started out so strong.

  The arrangement had been simple: Execute Murphy, then demonstrate her skills on those present. One by one, over the course of an hour or so. Nothing terribly fancy, but demonstrating her varied abilities, knowing she was being observed on the network of fiber-optic cameras covering the office.

  If Girlfriend’s demonstration was impressive enough, she would receive the tools to escape the floor. Everything above thirty would burn. She would be extracted from the city, and given her reward: a promotion.

  The pay hike wasn’t enough to retire to a life of coconuts and limes and backrubs on some tropical island, but it was enough to change your perspective on life. Many people coveted leadership positions within CI-6, even though the agency had no official name or structure. Faith in CI-6 leadership was much like the nation’s faith in the American dollar: powered by sheer will and absolutely nothing tangible like a congressional mandate. (Hah!) Still, the power and resources available to leadership were astounding.

  For Girlfriend, ascending the ranks had more practical appeal. A promotion meant she could choose her location. In this case, Europe. She desperately longed to return to the continent. McCoy had enjoyed reading her screeds about the state of the American city, particularly Philadelphia, encoded in their communications over the past few months. They murder the young here, she once wrote. But most people care more about the sports teams.

  It also meant she could afford to take her mother out of the assisted-living hellhole in Poland and put her somewhere to die with dignity. Maybe even prolong her life by a few months, or as much as a year.

  Girlfriend wasn’t about the coconuts and backrubs.

  Or was she?

  That was the puzzling thing about the events of the morning. It had gotten off to a rocky start, with one of David’s younger reports … who was it … ah, Stuart McCrane, actually drinking the poisoned mimosa with little to no prompting. Stuart must have been a Boy Scout or an altar boy.

  Then there was Ethan Goins, who had failed to report to the conference room on time.

  In her defense, Girlfriend had tried to salvage the situation at the last minute:

  Should I look for him?

  No, no. We can start without him.

  Are you …

  I am.

  Once Stuart was dead, it was too late to search for Ethan. The operation had begun.

  This had radically altered Girlfriend’s operational plan. She’d been saving Stuart and Ethan for later. In fact, she’d ranked the direct reports, from hardest to kill to easiest:

  Murphy

  Felton

  Goins

  Wise

  Kurtwood

  McCrane

  DeBroux

  Murphy had been the real worry. Miss your opportunity with this guy and watch out. Girlfriend would have spent the rest of the morning running throughout the office, ducking and hiding, fighting for her life. And, most likely, would have lost.

  McCoy should know.

  So killing Murphy instantly was a necessity. Girlfriend had to lay the groundwork for weeks to pull off that kind of surprise. And she did.

  Not only that, but she’d pulled off a daring move that strained credibility when it was first pitched:

  I will shoot him and paralyze him. Not kill him.

  And right before the end, I will interrogate him.

  He will tell me everything.

  The last part remained to be seen, but as far as McCoy could tell, Murphy was paralyzed, and not yet dead. Props to Girlfriend.

  And at that moment, Girlfriend’s prospects seemed bright, despite the McCrane and Goins snafus.

  Girlfriend immediately proceeded to Amy Felton, and carried out her neutralization as planned.

  McCoy liked that one a lot.

  Tip to employees everywhere: Never tell your boss you’re afraid of heights. Especially if he’s the kind of guy who’ll write it down on a performance review.

  But then came the problem: Ethan was missing. He was supposed to be next. In fact, the whole thing with Amy Felton depended on Ethan being next.

  Big bad Ethan was sweet on Amy.

  Aw.

  Ethan Hawkins Goins, former Special Forces, had carried out some of the grisliest and most creative executions of Afghan warlords in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. His skill under extreme duress had brought him to the attention of CI-6. A loner by nature, he happily joined, using Murphy, Knox as a cover between operations. Ethan was a fierce warrior. Physically, Girlfriend was no match for him.

  The thing was, Amy Felton looked a lot like the high school girlfriend who’d dumped Ethan’s butt senior year, right before going off to Ivy League school in Rhode Island. McCoy even had someone in research dig up a yearbook; the resemblance was striking.

  What was funny about the nonaffair—painstaking surveillance had revealed that Ethan and Amy had never kissed, let alone done the deed—was that both assumed such an affair would be against the “rules.” As if an agency that didn’t officially exist could have a policy on employees dating each other?

  Such a situation, however, could be seen as a source of weakness.

  Girlfriend, too, had glommed this from one of David Murphy’s performance reviews.

  The way to break through Ethan’s defenses, Girlfriend reasoned, was to show him his beloved hanging upside down, thirty-six stories above the sidewalk.

  Stun, then kill.

  Then finish off Felton.

  With Ethan gone, though, weakened by the sarin blast in the fire tower, dispatched by Girlfriend in a spectacularly uncreative fashion—did anyone snap necks anymore?—that plan was gone.

  Girlfriend, though, was clearly trying to salvage what she could of the plan. Maybe she wanted to show off Ethan’s limp body to Amy, right before she killed her. Maybe she thought that would count for something.

  McCoy leaned back in his chair, thinking about that.

  Would it?

  Ania reached the south fire tower landing on thirty-six on the verge of collapse. Then she remembered: the sarin bomb.

  Oh, the work never ends.

  She had not planned on going near the sarin bombs. They were Murphy’s idea of fun, not hers.

  And she thought her plans would circumvent the need to deal with them.

  Not so.

  Ania dropped Ethan’s corpse on the landing and flipped open a compartment on her wrist bracelet and removed a tiny pair of spring-loaded scissors. She’d found them in a freebie corporate gift—a Swiss Army “card,” slim enough to fit in a wallet, but illegal to carry on airplanes—that had arrived at Murphy, Knox. It had been intended for Murphy; she kept it for herself. It came loaded with miniature versions of useful, simple tools. Toothpick. Nail file. Pen. Scissors. Her bracelets were full of ordinary tools like these. They tended to be the best.

  It was difficult to see the device from her perspective. Ania rarely thought her height was a problem—until situations like these. There were no stepladders, no boxes. She had to improvise.

  Ethan, from shoulder to hip, would be just about the right height.

  She dragged him across the landing, propped him against the metal door, then leaped onto his shoulders. There was the slightest moment of adjustment, of balancing. Then she stood tall. Perfectly poised. Ethan’s shoulders felt bony beneath her feet.

  For a moment, she imagined Ethan’s corpse coming to life, grabbing her by the ankles, and flinging her body down to the concrete steps. Then he’d be on her, teeth gnashing at the flesh of her throat, breath hot, and eyes closed.

  Even as a child, Ania suffered from an overactive imagination. It was what she possessed instead of toys. Now, she reassured herself: Ethan would not be waking up. She had snapped his neck cleanly. Thoroughly.

  F
ocus on the task at hand, Ania.

  She gave the device a proper examination. It seemed fairly simple: wires running to a power source, another to a sensor on the door, and a few others probably meant as decoys.

  But there, on a yellow wire, David Murphy’s perverted sense of humor manifested itself. Printed on the side of the wire: CUT ME.

  Murphy delighted in mind games. His performance reviews were just one outlet. Every casual encounter in the office turned into a psychological battle in miniature. Murphy’s tools were the cruelest of all: questions designed to both raise your defense and open a weakness simultaneously, forcing you to defend a position or statement while sowing the seeds of doubt in your brain. Over the course of the past few months, Ania had detected a pattern:

  There was no pattern.

  The correct answer was, almost without fail, the most obvious one. And the ones that weren’t obvious actually revealed themselves to be obvious later, with a little hindsight.

  You went scrambling around, trying to outrun him, outthink him, and usually the right answer was your gut instinct, the first answer on your lips. The one he tricked you out of.

  Ania wondered if the same would be true with these wires. Was the CUT ME a note to himself? Or did he expect someone to make it out here and try to disable the device, and knew that a message like CUT ME would drive that person mad?

  Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy turned his attention to the other monitor. The one showing the increasingly weird scene in the conference room. Where Nichole Wise was torturing her boss by shooting his fingers off, one at a time.

  Such a waste.

  In the second monitor: Wise was straddling Murphy, contemplating another finger. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it was two fingers gone: index finger and thumb. Murphy wouldn’t be snapping his fingers to the oldies ever again.

  Meanwhile, speaking of the digitally impaired, DeBroux was standing in the corner, clutching his injured hand to his chest. Another of Girlfriend’s clumsy little dismounts.

  Her own weakness.

  Girlfriend was supposed to save him until the end. Like, hello, #7 on the list? Instead, she sliced open his fingers, distracting her from Wise, who was able to exact some punishment before being taken down. Even then, it was only temporary.

  The impromptu torture of DeBroux also prevented Girlfriend from dispatching #5, Roxanne Kurtwood. Granted, she was a low-level target, but she was supposed to have been used for the audition, not accidentally neutralized by her own partner.

  All told, Girlfriend could boast only one and a half kills out of a potential seven: Ethan (and that was a sloppy, old-school kill) and Murphy, her first. Time was running out. And one of her remaining targets—the one she had failed to kill—had access to two weapons. Not exactly a résumé-builder.

  Maybe Keene was right. He did fall in love way too fast.

  Ania held her breath, closed her eyes, and then cut the wire that read CUT ME.

  Not that these measures would do a thing to protect her from a burst of weaponized sarin. It was human reflex. Over the years she’d learned to keep many things under control, but sometimes, humans needed to flinch. She allowed herself the luxury.

  The device did nothing.

  Murphy, again.

  She leaped from Ethan’s shoulders. Without her to balance it, the corpse slid off to the right, his head smacking against a red water main before spinning around and face-planting onto the concrete slab.

  Sorry, Ethan. One more stop before you can rest and await your cremation.

  Inside your girlfriend’s office.

  That was the only way to salvage a small part of the original plan. Haul Amy Felton back inside, and allow her to gaze upon the corpse of her beloved. Wait for the reaction, which would be captured on the fiber-optic cameras.

  Ania hoped she had enough left in her for a decent scream.

  Then … execute her. Whatever method came to mind would be fine. Maybe Felton would kill herself when confronted with the corpse of her beloved. Wouldn’t that be something?

  It was coming down to the end, anyway, and thanks to Ethan’s adventures in the fire tower, security was blown. She needed to wrap up.

  Prepare for travel—herself and Jamie.

  Then move on to the conference room, and complete her final transaction with David Murphy.

  Ania opened the fire tower door quickly, scanned both sides of the hallway. Clear. She propped the door open with her foot and dragged out Ethan’s corpse.

  She was too weak to heave him over her shoulders again. Her trapezius muscles had been worked beyond failure; even Paul’s kinky demands had not been enough to keep her body in the shape she desired. Another reason to leave America, and its slothful lifestyle, as quickly as possible.

  Just a little longer now, she told herself. Down the hall, through the door, a quick left—and if all was clear—three doors down to Amy’s office. Then no more carrying bodies. No more physical exertion, beyond strapping the escape gear to her body.

  And plucking David Murphy’s eyes from his face.

  Crushing his skull.

  Running her fingers through his brains.

  Hearing the sound of the boom, hot and furious, below them all.

  Keene was on his second glass of orange juice when his source called back.

  “Working on a Saturday, are you?” said a male voice with a Geordie accent.

  “Oh, is it Saturday?”

  “Funny. I have what you need.”

  They were speaking through a VoIP connection, scrambled and rescrambled a half dozen times between their two locations.

  Ordinarily, VoIP was about as a secure as a college sophomore with two roofies at the bottom of her pint glass. Unless, that is, you had encryption and cryptographic software not available to the general public. Which could make VoIP remarkably secure, especially when considering that most intelligence agencies would no sooner tap a VoIP connection than tap a set of two soup cans and string.

  Keene was a bit of a VoIP fanatic. It was his favorite way to communicate, short of encrypted e-mails. He hated cell phones.

  “Shall I send you a research packet?” his source asked.

  “Yes. But how about some highlights.”

  “Now?”

  “I’m insanely curious.”

  “Fine. Your boyfriend there …”

  Keene chuckled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just your choice of words. I’ll tell you later.”

  “You say that as if we’ll ever be in the same room again.”

  “So bitter. Please continue.”

  “Your man? He’s not telling you everything about Philadelphia.”

  “Really.”

  “If someone gave the order to dismantle that company, it didn’t come from us.”

  “The orders mentioned a bit more than dismantle.”

  “I know.”

  “Who could authorize something like that?”

  “Who couldn’t?”

  Just as Keene had suspected. You try keeping a chain of command together in an organization that didn’t exist.

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “This will all be in the research packet, but it appears that our company in Philadelphia flew a bit too close to the sun.”

  “How so?”

  “Financing something they really shouldn’t have. A kind of weapon and tracking device rolled into one.”

  “Which we didn’t authorize.”

  “It didn’t come from us.”

  Damn it.

  “Look,” his source said, “if you’re planning on going to Philadelphia, don’t. There are already alarm bells going off. If I were you, I’d stay by the sea.”

  Keene thanked his source, made vague plans about meeting up for a drink in Ibiza one of these years. “Sure, Will, I’ll be here holding my breath while booking the plane ticket online,” his source replied. Keene pressed the cold glass of orange juice to the side of his face. He fe
lt feverish.

  Ania dropped Ethan in front of Amy’s door. Inside her bracelet was a master key for every office on the floor. She’d made it her first day of work. Turned out to be relatively useless. For an intelligence organization, people here had a funny way about not locking their doors. Too many of them were probably raised in the American Midwest.

  Mainline Protestants. Way too trusting.

  Once inside, she dragged Ethan’s body into the office, closed the door behind her. Locked it, just in case, even though there was nobody left on the floor to check on her. Unless Jamie had regained consciousness.

  Even if he had, that would be fine. This could be part of his education.

  Ania walked over to the window. No point in arranging Ethan’s body if Amy had already died of fright. She gripped the leather belt. It lifted far too easily.

  Ania peered over the edge of the window.

  Amy was gone.

  The conference room door slammed open. Amy Felton staggered inside and dropped to her knees.

  “Where is she?”

  “Amy?” Nichole said, lowering her pistol. “Where were you?”

  Jamie was just as surprised. For a moment, he forgot about his throbbing hand and considered this new development. Good God—Amy was still alive. Had anyone else made it, too? Like Ethan?

  “Where is she?” Amy repeated, and this time it was a bit of a shriek.

  “Who?”

  “That bitch.”

  “She got to you, too, huh?”

  “We need to kill her. Now.”

  Amy was pale and trembling, but also looking like she could tear a person in half—the long way. She leaned against the conference room wall and allowed herself to ease down it, gently touching down and placing her palms against the floor. Her fingers clutched at the carpet.

  Nichole left David and, pistol still in hand, approached Amy.

  “We need to show our cards,” Nichole said. “We all know what this place is, but I’m not sure whose side we’re playing on.”