“You could have assumed an alias like the rest of us do.”
“And you know how that’s recorded in The Company. All the way up the line. Too many eyes, even on SCI folders.”
He was talking about Sensitive Compartmented Information. Special clearance granted to only a handful of CIA agents or members of Congress. “You did this for internal anonymity?”
“That was a major part of it.”
Alex thought about that for a moment. “So…you, what? Spy on our own spies?”
“Mainly, yes.”
She shook her head. “Then who the hell is your handler?”
“Moss.” He tapped the wheel. “It was Tippet before that. And Flint before him.”
“The Director of Clandestine, whoever it is at the time, then.”
Edgar nodded. “It’s all passed through a verbal handoff. It’s not on the books, it’s not triple classified or top secret, it’s not locked away in some safe somewhere for untrustworthy eyes to see. I am eternally persona non grata.” He leaned back and took a swig of his coffee. “No record of me in Langley or even the DNI’s office.”
Ever since 9/11, the director of the CIA reported to the director of national intelligence. The DNI, well, he was appointed by and reported to only one individual. “What about the president?”
“Plausible deniability.” Edgar shrugged.
A total black op. For two decades. Longer, if there were others before him.
“And Jack?”
“He’s former MI6.”
“But he’s one of yours now.”
He nodded, and with the barest hint of emotion, said, “And he’s in trouble, Alex. We all are.”
“Then what’s our plan?”
“I have a source I need to meet with. He may lead us to Jack. But I need you to stay in the background.” He looked out the windshield. “You need to know more. You need to know everything. That’s what traditionalists like me call deep intelligence. And it starts with knowing yourself, particularly knowing what you don’t know. It won’t only save your career, it will save your life.”
Perhaps realizing he was being cryptic, he turned away and opened the door. “Unless it goes terribly wrong.”
As Alex watched him exit the car, she thought, Hasn’t it already?
Jack lay exposed in the iron tub, his mouth still dry, his head aching, and his stomach and chest slick with sweat.
Lockard had turned up the heat.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there. Most of a day and maybe part of a night, he figured, though he kept slipping in and out of consciousness with fatigue and dehydration and whatever Lockard had drugged him with.
About to nod off again, he heard a clack and the door swing open behind him.
The blade came into view before Lockard’s face did. Serrated and with a black rubber handle, it looked like a navy-issue MK3, maybe the one Lockard had used as a SEAL. A hard plastic sheath was hooked to the waist of his pants.
Lockard stood over Jack and turned the blade in his hand, the sharp silver edge flickering in the dim light. He watched Lockard with the anticipation of a patient waiting for his doctor to reveal the diagnosis. How bad was it going to be? Just painful, or fatal?
Lockard pressed the tip to Jack’s belly and Jack held his breath, tightened his abs as Lockard traced around his belly button and down to his pubic bone. Barely breaking the skin, he left a thin white line that slowly turned to bright red.
Jack closed his eyes in relief. If Lockard was going to gut him, he’d already have done it.
“Have you reconsidered?” Lockard asked.
“Reconsidered what?”
“Helping me. Helping yourself.”
“The sort of help you need requires a clinical psychologist.”
Lockard pressed the tip of the knife into the center of Jack’s bellybutton, and Jack felt a searing pain as the blade sliced into the unbearably soft flesh. After a moment, blood pooled into the bellybutton. Lockard said, “Be careful. I’m not in the mood.”
“Then what do you want?”
“The briefcase.”
“For God’s sake, I told you. I’ve no idea where it is.”
“Bullshit!” He grabbed the back of Jack’s head and pulled him forward, pressing the blade to Jack’s neck.
Jack gritted his teeth and stared at Lockard’s face from the corners of his eyes. “Even if I am lying, you shouldn’t kill me.”
“You don’t seem to understand the severity of your situation. You don’t know what you are fucking with. Who you are fucking with.” Lockard moved his grip to Jack’s neck, and tightened his fingers like an industrial vise.
As Jack’s breath left him, he realized what Lockard was doing. With a wide, steely grip, he pressed a thumb on one carotid and his middle finger on the other. He tried to turn away, loosen Lockard’s hold, but the man overpowered him like a machine. Jack twisted and groaned, but the image of Lockard over him turned to black as Jack’s vision began to fade.
Jack tightened his abs, pushed his torso forward, but it was no use. With Jack’s arms still restrained above him, Lockard had him in an impossible position.
Jack twisted and pushed, Lockard gripped tighter. Tighter.
Seconds later, the room abruptly fell to blackness.
When Jack came to again, Lockard was on top of him. Jack’s naked back was pressed to the floor, and his numbed hands were secured underneath him and bound with duct tape. One knee on each side of Jack, Lockard had him pinned tight. He had moved Jack from the bathroom to a small room with lacquered hardwood floors, tall ceilings, and rich baroque detailing. It was cold and damp and empty of furniture.
Jack could feel Lockard’s breath on his face. It smelled bitter, like stale coffee.
Lockard moved his hand and a cold plate of steel pressed against Jack’s cheek. The barrel of his HK45.
“Jack,” he said, “your position just got worse.”
Jack laughed—maybe he was losing his mind, but he couldn’t help it—and then decided he should cool it. He didn’t need this psycho too pissed off. Not yet. Jack had to figure out how to get him irritated enough to make a mistake, first. Then Jack could take him.
“You find it funny?” Lockard pressed the barrel of the pistol to Jack’s forehead.
Jack watched as Lockard stared into his face before letting his gaze move to his body. He said, “I like the little blonde hairs on your body. The way they glisten with your sweat.”
Jack reminded himself that this was part of the game. The purpose of keeping him naked was to make Jack feel self-conscious, vulnerable. Undressed, literally, by another man, he was supposed to feel humiliated.
So why was Jack starting to get the feeling that Lockard was serious?
The man leaned back and looked at Jack’s groin then licked his lips. “Yes, you are a specimen to the last hair.”
Okay. If he was serious, Jack could use that to his advantage. Sexual attraction or desire was the sort of emotion that made an opponent slip up.
Jack clenched his jaw to keep from smiling. He’d endured worse tests in military intelligence training. He could still take this psycho. Even from here. Even naked.
Jack centered his energy, prepared himself for the coming fight.
“Tell me where it is. Now.”
“Or?” Jack knew it would provoke him, but he needed to change his position, to adjust the leverage.
“Or this.”
Lockard widened Jack’s legs with his feet, opening him up. Threatening him.
Jack stayed centered, coiled his energy rather than fighting that first move.
But Jack needed Lockard to lean forward just a bit more, enough to give him room for a reversal. Jack whispered, “I said fuck off,” and Lockard took the bait.
Leaning forward, he whispered, “How about I fuck you?”
Jack timed it to the fraction of a second and the window of an inch. As Lockard leaned, Jack bucked, tipping the center of their collective weight from
his lower back to his shoulders and gaining the necessary momentum to throw Lockard forward.
Lockard rolled off Jack with a thud and spun to a knee, pistol raised and pointed at his chest as Jack thrust his hands below his feet, bringing them to his front, then sprang upright.
He wouldn’t shoot him, Jack told himself, and took the risk.
Spinning low, Jack drew a lunge from Lockard’s punching hand, allowing Jack to kick the pistol from the other hand and causing it to tumble across the floor. Then Jack spun left and raised a right heel high, arching all the way back and hammering Lockard’s skull with a crack.
Lockard tumbled forward just as Jack finished his momentum, and before he could regain his balance, Lockard punched his stabilizing leg.
Jumping upon impact, Jack avoided falling back. Then he countered, leveling a leg parallel to the floor, and thrusting forward with his heel aimed at Lockard’s stomach.
Lockard grasped Jack’s foot as he fell backward, pinning it between his forearms. Using his weight and strength, he took Jack with him, twisting and pulling him down.
In a single body roll, Lockard spun Jack and fell atop him on the floor.
Damnit.
Lockard slammed Jack’s face on the ground and drove a knee in his spine.
“That was a mistake, Pope.”
No, the mistake would be to stop now. But before he could try again, Lockard choked Jack with his forearm, pulling his neck up and back. Jack wedged a row of fingers underneath and managed a quarter of an inch of breathing room. He wouldn’t submit. He wouldn’t give in. Jack pulled at the psycho-SEAL’s grip as the oxygen escaped him, and Lockard tightened, digging the knee into Jack back, pulling Jack’s head and neck up further.
“Tell me!”
The white of the sun faded as Jack’s vision began to turn gray. Then black.
He bucked, and Lockard drove the butt of the pistol into the back of Jack’s skull. “You will tell me.” He released the chokehold and slammed Jack’s cheek against the wood floor again, blasting a bright yellow and black star in his vision.
But Lockard was off him.
Jack said, “You’re losing this fight.”
Jack moved to roll over, and Lockard said, “Am I?”
Then Jack felt Lockard drag him backward across the room. His genitals scraped across the waxy floor, burning the skin. Jack pushed up with his bound fists, but Lockard kicked him down again.
Jack tried to spin, to look back, but Lockard stopped dragging then speared Jack’s spine with a knee.
And then Jack felt him, Lockard’s cold fingers between Jack’s legs. “Then how can I do this?”
Jack twisted his head to see. His pants. Are they off? Is this still a humiliation game? Or is he—?
Then Jack felt it. Lockard was separating his buttocks.
It was too late.
Lockard pressed against Jack’s entry and he felt it was cold. Lockard pushed. And Jack froze. Unable to move a millimeter. Unable to breathe.
It was the barrel of his gun. Between his legs. At the edge of his anus.
And Lockard pressed it further, into him.
It hurt and Jack tightened against it, but in this position, bound and face down, he was defenseless. A man at the mercy of the brute strength of another.
Lockard left it there. Made Jack feel it inside him.
Bile rose in Jack’s throat to match the burn he felt from the barrel of the pistol. He swallowed it down. Tried not to move a single millimeter as his mind swarmed. He’d read countless times about how some women just lay there as they are being raped, paralyzed with fear, gripped with the thought that they just wanted it to end. They just wanted to make it all disappear. For the life of him, he could never understand that feeling.
Until now.
But he couldn’t just lay there. He had to fight back. Even if it was fatal.
Then Lockard shifted positions. He’d leaned close enough that Jack could feel his breath on his neck as he said, “It looks as though you like this.”
And Jack realized that he must be looking halfway back behind him. And if so, he had finally fucked up.
With the last of his will, the final ounces of his energy, Jack thrust his hands straight back over his head, pounding the back of his fists into Lockard’s temple, and twisted to the side. Releasing himself from the violation.
The pistol fired with a loud bang, sending a bullet into the floor.
Lockard rolled along with Jack as he spun, but Jack moved his arms as fast as he could, as far as they would go. As they rolled over again, Jack grabbed the knife from the rubber sheath.
Lockard forced Jack onto his back and pressed a forearm to his neck. Then Jack thrust the knife down, spearing Lockard’s other hand into the floor.
Lockard yelled and Jack slipped from beneath him.
Lockard yelled again, leveling a flat-footed blow to Jack’s chest. Jack was hurtled across the room, and his back and head slammed into the corner of the wall.
Blinking and gasping for a breath, the wind blown out of him, Jack watched Lockard place the Glock down and pry the knife from the floor, from the flesh between his bones.
Breathing hard and shaking his head, Lockard looked at the hole in his hand, blood streaming down his elbow onto the floor. He raised the Glock, pointed it at Jack’s head.
He stood stone still as Lockard let his aim lower to Jack’s abdomen, then a few inches further.
A boom echoed in the small room.
Jack waited for the searing pain of a gunshot in his groin, but it didn’t come.
Lockard had shot between his legs.
Lockard stepped forward and thrust a heel into Jack’s stomach, driving him to the floor. “You will soon wish I’d killed you.”
Then Lockard turned and left the room, locking Jack inside.
Jack thinking, Unless I kill you first.
Thirty
As expected, her father had devised a meet straight out of a Cold War spy novel, complete with lookouts, listening devices, and a bridge. All he had to do was make a call to set it in motion. Alex restrained herself from pointing out that he’d have to use a cell phone, modern-day technology, to do that.
Edgar’s contact could lead them to Lockard and Jack, but it was someone he obviously didn’t fully trust. Alex knew he couldn’t let on to that, though. He had to act like it was as normal as the sunset to see this person alone. The nuance could be the difference between getting information or not. Between life or death.
Taking a circuitous route along the side streets, they made their way to the walkway parallel to the Thames, the predawn sounds of nearby traffic muted by the accumulation of snow, snowflakes melting on their faces as they followed the path. Her father said, “Settle in and just listen, unless I give the signal.” He would use the word retribution if he needed backup or sensed something was wrong.
“I’ve done this before, Dad.”
“Prague, last winter.”
“Wait. How’d you—”
“Who do you think was waiting for your signal?” He pulled his trench coat closed and belted it.
Alex stared at him for a moment and decided not to even respond.
She reached to her back and touched the butt of the SIG. She had thirteen rounds left after engaging Lockard earlier. On a battlefield that would be minuscule; in a spy meet it was nearly infinite. Edgar hadn’t told her yet whom he was meeting, and she knew better than to ask. This business was built on information compartmentalization. He had a reason for keeping that to himself and she had to respect that reason. When Alex was a rookie agent, this kind of secrecy had driven her crazy. Later, once she was in the position of compartmentalizing herself, she understood.
“That’s the meeting site.” Halting behind a lamppost, her father stared out at the Millennium Bridge. The footbridge’s long steel piping, steel foot grates, and steel cables, caused it to resemble a giant creature’s spinal column. Green plates of glass capped off stairwells at each end, and every c
orner of the structure held a pocket of snow.
As Alex studied the meet’s entries and exits, a man approached from the darkness to their right. Hunched over and carrying a bag full of oranges, he had thick dreadlocks that grew right into a tangle of a beard. He looked cold and his face was drawn to his cheekbones, as if he had been eating nothing but scraps for years.
Her father stepped deeper into the shadows.
Alex stepped forward and met the man’s gaze as she reached into her jeans. She handed him a twenty-pound note, folding away the queen and her jeweled crown.
With the tiniest watery eyes, the man stared at the bill and merely smiled as he stuffed it into his own pocket. Then he turned and walked down the stairs beside the footbridge, shivering with his oranges.
“That was kind,” her father said.
“Least I could do.”
“And reckless. He could be eyes for someone.”
Alex watched the man disappear around the bend of the stairwell. “He didn’t look like he was pretending to be starving.”
“Let’s get to work.” Her father pointed east, to the far side of the bridge. “I expect my contact will be coming from there. The best place for you will be at the bottom of the stairs on this side.” He pointed to where the concrete support plates came together and formed a small dark wedge at ground level.
“Fine,” Alex said, peering at a cardboard box and blanket jutting from the opposite nook.
Her father held out a hand. “Got that drawing?”
She pulled the sketchbook from her overcoat pocket and tore out the page with Lockard’s half profile. Handing it to Edgar, Alex thought of Jack with that man and what he could be doing to get what he wanted.
She said, “About Jack.”
“He wasn’t supposed to fall for you.” Her father pocketed the drawing and stared at her. “That wasn’t the plan.”
Alex nodded, believing that Jack was not a raven—the male version of a female spy known as a swallow. She’d have caught onto him if he’d seen her as a target. If he were using sex to pry secrets from her. She hoped.
The Shadow Artist Page 21
