The Shadow Artist

by James Grayson

  “Something else?” Lockard feigned surprise as he fingered the trigger of his HK.

  “In there, sir. You, um…”—Pierce looked around—“need to see it for yourself.” He tilted his head toward a doorway in the corner opposite the lamp. The door was half open but Lockard couldn’t see inside from where he stood.

  Still, he knew what they had found.

  Lockard nodded at one twin, then the other. “You did the right thing, soldiers.”

  Then he raised his HK and shot Pierce in the forehead.

  The twins stepped from each end of the room and both fired double-tap shots as Lockard fired his second. Six shots, six dead, three seconds. The quickest of the men managed to get a single round off with his MP5, errant but impressive even for a SEAL.

  As they checked the bodies, Mike lit a flare and dropped it near the doorway. “It’s here,” he said.

  Closing his eyes, Mark wiped sweat across his black-painted face. “What about our exit strategy?” He kept glancing at the bodies of the SEALs, as if he felt guilty.

  Lockard said, “Truck is at the back. And if my intelligence is correct, I’d say we need to load up. It’ll take us all night.”

  Mike walked to the stairs and glanced up. “As in a semi?”

  Lockard smiled. “Consider it a present from the CIA.”

  “Jes-us.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Lockard said, taking a few choice items from Pierce’s person: AN/PVS-15 binocular night vision goggles—very nice, a Glock 19, and matches. Passing by Mark, Lockard took the oil lamp and pushed open the door. The twins hovered behind him as he walked inside and surveyed the find.

  Cool and damp and lined with hundreds and hundreds of bottles, the room was large enough to park five pickup trucks side by side, and this wasn’t just a storage space. It was a giant wine cellar.

  Sneaky little Hussein boys.

  Preach the Quran and oppress your people by the words of Muhammad, damning the Americans and their hedonistic ways, yet live like the very people you have reviled all your life, drinking wine, smoking tobacco and other things, and enjoying pop music on your iPods and Hollywood movies on your flat-screen televisions. Not to mention skin flicks and prostitutes.

  A fraud at the cellular level.

  But Lockard didn’t care about that. He couldn’t give a roach’s dick about Saddam Hussein or his shit-ass sons. He only cared about what was pushed up against all those wine bottles and into the corners of the cellar, bulging to the point of spilling over and onto the floor and into the shelves.

  The scent of it was overwhelming, the world’s dirtiest and most intoxicating perfume. The sight alone was enough to take your breath away.

  There, at the bottom of this bombed-out and bullet-ridden palace, stacked on a cluster of wooden pallets, all swelling with the bulk of the load—half a person wide and chest high—were stacks and stacks, piles and piles, loads and loads of US bills. Not thousands of them. Millions.

  All one-hundred-dollar bills, shrink-wrapped to keep them from falling over.

  “Whoa,” one of the twins whispered from behind.

  Lockard took a step forward and peeled back a corner of the shrink-wrap, then unhinged a packet of bills and flipped through them.

  “As much as we expected?” one of them asked.

  Lockard tucked the stack back inside and turned to them. “More.”

  “How much, do you think?”

  Lockard tilted his head and stared.

  Eight standard shipping pallets, three feet wide on all sides by five feet high, each tiny packet containing ten thousand dollars. He closed his eyes, added the stacks, made the calculations. Then he nodded three times and opened his eyes.

  After turning back to the twins, Lockard could see them clearly in the lamplight, but neither man looked at him. They simply stood dumbfounded in the presence of the hoard.

  “Fuck me,” Mark finally said, standing in an awkward position with his face flush. He had sprung a hard-on.

  Mike stepped forward and asked, “What’s that?” while pointing at the corner of the cellar.

  Staring at the mini-pallet draped in a white plastic covering, Lockard frowned. “I’ll be damned.”

  He squeezed between two pallets and bent lower to inspect the load.

  Sure enough, the smell gave it away. Roasted almonds with a hint of tar. Lockard knew exactly what was hidden below. Not American, though—British. Weird—it really reeked of almonds.

  “Leave it,” he said. “We’ll take that last.”

  “So we get it on the truck, then what? A CIA Gulfstream can’t handle this much money. It’d be too heavy.”

  “Now you know why we need Draganic. His Boeing Business Jet is sitting at an abandoned airstrip, forty-seven miles from here.”

  “Is that Brit, Angus, still piloting?”

  “He’s already there,” Lockard said. “Better hurry now. We’re supposed to be dead.” After ripping open the first package, he hauled about a hundred pounds of bills up the stairs, and the two brothers followed with stacks of their own.

  It took two full hours to haul the endless piles of cash up and into the truck. Without ceremony, Lockard, drenched in sweat, doused the compound with the insurgent’s stash of kerosene and dropped a single match, incinerating the palace, the helicopter, and the bodies inside. As far as the CIA and navy knew, they’d all perished in the failed mission.

  Two hours later, after driving the forty-seven-mile stretch by moonlight alone, the men transferred the hoard of cash to the waiting jet and disappeared. The three of them sat in the aft, wide awake and wordless, for the rest of the night. Staring at the bounty of the greatest heist in the history of the world.

  One-point-three billion dollars.

  Lockard opened his eyes and zeroed in on Alex Winter and Jack Pope rooting around in the house of the man who now stood between Lockard and his money.

  Up against that, neither of them stood a chance.

  Twenty-Five

  Evan Lockard.

  Alex stared at the photo on the CIA dossier, known as a 201 file. She remembered the name. She had met the boy, now a man, at Langley back in 1995. Both their fathers had earned the honor of having stars forever etched in white marble on the Memorial Wall at Langley. Both were also listed in the Moroccan goatskin-bound Book of Honor after dying in the El Descanso restaurant bombing in Spain. Squinting at the photo, she was sure of it. Lockard who had killed Aaron. Then he had tried to kill Alex.

  Why?

  She thumbed to the next page of the 201 and read about Lockard’s background as a Navy SEAL. Lockard had commanded a team called Red Cell, a unit that acted as Russian terrorists to test the defenses of various US military bases and stations around the world. A highly secretive operation, Red Cell had been able to penetrate dozens of sensitive locations, even overtaking a whole naval base along with a nuclear submarine.

  Right in Groton, Connecticut.

  Shaking her head, Alex read on.

  After retiring from the SEALs, Lockard joined the CIA’s Clandestine Service. Where he graduated into the elite operative training program dubbed—wouldn’t you know it—Talonstrike.

  Well fuck me.

  Lockard was then sent to the Middle East, where he was stationed in Islamabad and then Baghdad, all the way up until three weeks ago. That’s when, according to the dossier, Lockard was killed, along with an entire team of Navy SEALs, in a high-value-target, blast-and-grab mission in western Iraq.

  So how was it that Alex had just fought him—hand to hand—in a half-finished high-rise in London?

  She placed the folder down and picked up another. Inside were the dossiers of two brothers, the O’Doyles. Seeing the photos of them, she slumped onto the metal stool. Also Navy SEALs, these two had served in Red Cell along with Lockard before joining an elite SEAL team named Striper. The same team that was killed along with Lockard in the Iraqi mission three weeks ago. These men had not died that day, either.

  They died
when they tried to kill her on their motorcycles two days ago.

  How did Edgar have all of this?

  Alex dropped the dossiers onto the desk and leafed through the pile of papers along the edge. This stack contained articles and white papers about banking, money laundering, and offshore havens including the Caymans, Bahamas, and other island locales. On the bottom of the stack sat a legal pad with notes about banking governance and formation laws in the Isle of Man.

  In Edgar’s handwriting.

  After picking up the last folder on the desk, she studied the photo clipped to the papers. An older man in a large BMW sedan. A thick, fleshy scar extended from the man’s ear down his neck and into his shirt. No date on the photo, but a piece of tape with the words Serbian Whale was stuck to the bottom. The reviled child molesting money launderer.

  Alex wondered if Draganic was suddenly doing some bill bleaching in the Isle of Man.

  Reading through his file, she saw that Draganic had been banned from financial investment activities by seventeen securities enforcement agencies around the world, just as Jack had thought, and Interpol-compiled list of Draganic’s assets showed the mansions he’d told her about in Dubrovnik and Gstaad, plus another in Seychelles…along with fourteen cars, and a new Boeing Business Jet.

  Un-fucking-real.

  The last sheet in Draganic’s folder showed a photo of a man named Pachai Randeep, along with a list of hedge fund experience beneath. Most of the positions he held were in derivatives and structured instruments.

  Mr. Randeep was no bucket-shop broker.

  Stuck to the back of the folder, a piece of paper was covered in bubbles and names and lines, again in Edgar’s handwriting, connecting Evan Lockard to Draganic, and then the O’Doyle twins, and Draganic to the Isle of Man, and then a company called Prince Alexander Capital. The words UK and Canary Wharf were scribbled under the Prince Alexander bubble. All three of the SEALs’ names were listed in a bubble labeled Iraq CIA mission, and the bubble was arrowed to Sarajevo then to Isle of Man. A simple dollar sign was drawn into the two long arrows.

  Just then, Jack called to her from the bottom of the stairs. “Alex?”

  “Yes?” She said, staring at the map of connections.

  “Perhaps you ought to have a look at this.”

  “What is it?” She called without full attention.

  “I’ve found something in the icebox.”

  Lockard watched Winter in the kitchen for a good ten minutes. He told himself he was just making sure Edgar was not inside, that Pope and Alex were the only ones there.

  But that was a lie.

  Truth was, this was no ordinary woman. She would not come easily. She would put up a fight. Lockard had seen her perform savate, a kicking-intensive martial art that originated from French street fighting. She had used the form to escape a brawl inside a nightclub in Tangier, after a few men had hit the firewater a bit too hard that night, and like a testosterone cliché, had started pawing her.

  Idiots. After splitting open the soft tissue of the first man’s eye with her bare heel, she’d fended off three others with a bottle and a glass. Lockard, tucked in the corner and sitting alone that night, was almost tempted to help the fellow spy, but decided to sit back and watch as she dismantled three more. He’d then followed her for several blocks before she shook him off.

  It might have been the closest thing he’d ever felt to love.

  He’d felt a shadow of the emotion again, after their brawl in the London high-rise. And here she was now, as if preordained.

  Lockard reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the pouch with the meds. A simple, albeit strong dose of benzodiazepine, known as Benzo in Company circles, would sedate a person, but keep them mobile.

  Lockard prepped the needle and drew the clear liquid from the bottle into the syringe. Tucking the device into the palm of his hand, he watched her move for another moment and then disappear up a stairwell. So smooth and easy and strong. It was a shame she had chosen the other side on this one.

  War was war.

  The hand.

  That was all Alex could think of as Jack called up the stairs from the kitchen.

  The briefcase that Edgar had intercepted. It was here.

  With a picture of it clear in her mind, she hustled the papers back together into a stack and placed them on the desk.

  “Don’t touch it,” she called down.

  But Jack didn’t answer.

  Pope called out to Winter from the kitchen just as Lockard stepped through the splintered door into the small entryway. Winter answered from the stairway that was now behind him, and he turned and peered up the spiral staircase. Must have been some sort of attic or eaves up there.

  He didn’t see a way to close it off without making noise, but was satisfied enough that Winter and Pope were separated. That made things infinitely easier for him.

  Crouched low, he hurried into the corner and reflexively touched the hip holster of his HK45. Footsteps sounded from the kitchen, Pope coming straight to him.

  “I’ve found something in the icebox,” he said, stepping into the entry.

  Lockard pounced from behind, taking Pope in a quick chokehold while keeping his right hand loose with the syringe. Tightening his forearm, he thrust the tip of the needle into the thick jugular vein in Pope’s neck.

  “Don’t touch it,” Winter called down.

  Pope tried to yell, but paralyzed vocal cords rendered him mute.

  “Stay calm,” Lockard said, pulling the needle back out just as quickly.

  “Bloody bastard,” Pope slurred as he stumbled forward.

  “No blood at all, yet.” Feeling Pope slump, Lockard dragged him toward the door.

  Then the bastard elbowed him in the jaw.

  The man swung his arm free, then gave a guttural boof as he thrust a shin to the back of Lockard’s leg, but his strength had been sapped and the blow landed errant and weak. Lockard pushed him forward, out the door, and into the snow.

  Alex heard a scuffle and then a throaty boof from Jack in the mudroom below her.

  She didn’t want to call out again; it would be easy for an attacker to shoot blindly through the floor, and she had nowhere to hide in the tiny room.

  Drawing the SIG, she moved away from the stairwell and pressed flat against the wall, minimizing exposure to possible gunshots. After hearing the door kicked open, she counted to five and bounded downstairs, three steps at a time.

  Hugging the wall, Alex peered outside into the muted afternoon sunlight and driving snow.

  A man held Jack in a headlock, pulling him toward the stream’s edge.

  If she shot from here, she’d have as much chance of hitting Jack as she did the man. So Alex bolted into the snow, staying low and arcing wide around the yard to keep them from hearing or seeing her. Though she still couldn’t get enough of a bead on the man to fire, she could now see his face.

  And Lockard saw her, too.

  Grabbing Jack by the hair, he ducked low, using him as a shield as he dragged him through the slushy water. Damn. As tough as Jack was, he had no chance with Lockard—not with that man’s training. Jack looked hurt, too, somehow disabled.

  Instead of firing wildly from that distance, Alex sprinted back through the snowy field and to the front of the house. She jumped into the Porsche, jammed the keys into the ignition, and thrust the SUV into reverse. She steeled her mind against the throb in her shoulder and pounded the gas to swing the car around. Slamming the clutch, she switched from first to fourth in less than three seconds, and rocketed toward the fence at the back of her father’s yard.

  She shielded her face with a forearm as the nose of the Porsche crashed through the railings, the splintered fence popping up and over the car.

  Bounding on the open field alongside the stream, she saw Lockard—now a solid fifty yards ahead and on the far bank—forcing Jack into the passenger side of a Range Rover. He spun silt, then took off, barreling along the opposite side of the stream.
Alex figured he would cut out into the field and away, but then saw the mangled wire-and-wood fence laying twisted in the high grass, and stretching as far as she could see. If Lockard drove through it, he risked a blowout or, worse, a tangle of wire around his car’s axles.

  Yet the Rover chewed through the high grass along the stream bank with ease. Alex gunned the engine, racing down the opposite side of the stream, a good thirty yards behind Lockard but gaining ground.

  A cluster of trees and brush signaled a fence line on her side of the stream up ahead. The row was too thick to drive over, even in the SUV. She could try to break through, or veer a hard right and hope she didn’t lose too much ground in the maneuver.

  Instead, Alex slammed her foot on the brake and downshifted, causing the engine to scream and the vehicle to go from a hundred kilometers per hour to thirty. Then she jerked the wheel left and punched the accelerator, aiming the Porsche’s nose at the stream.

  The stream was too wide to leap across with no incline, so she slammed into the water then turned to drive upriver, the shallow water splashing up onto the windshield as she shifted and hammered the accelerator again.

  Lockard wasted no time, barreling forward on the soft earth and snow, gaining ground as Alex bounced along the chalky bottom and rocks. Spotting the gradual incline on the bank ahead, Alex pulled the wheel left and climbed the bank as she tipped the Porsche to forty-five degrees. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up, smearing thick wet snowflakes across the glass as she upshifted to four and then five, but she got the Porsche up to a hundred again.

  The Rover might be a machine, but this bitch was a rocket.

  Lockard must have realized then he’d lose the race, because he slammed on the brakes and spun the vehicle one hundred and eighty degrees. Then he jammed the accelerator again, and headed back along the stream bank. Straight toward Alex.

  Unblinking, Alex stared at the man behind the wheel as the Rover raced toward her. He was little more than a silhouette behind the falling snow, but he still looked insane: face forward, shoulders high, both hands gripping the wheel. Jack was unmoving next to him, his head slumped against the passenger seat, body bouncing with the movement of the vehicle.