The Shadow Artist

by James Grayson

  She said, “It was you who told him to back off.”

  “Yes.”

  Alex blinked once. “You were right to do what you did.”

  “I know.”

  Looking out to the icy water, she shrugged. “I mean, this was your calling. Not fatherhood.” Alex turned to walk to her hiding spot.

  Her father touched her shoulder and stopped her.

  “Alex, I lived in a world of mistrust, spies, and double spies. I didn’t know how to be a father. I didn’t know how to live in that world. I meant to protect you from mine.”

  “And yet…” she gestured around them with a small laugh. “Like father, like daughter, I suppose.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  They stood there, the flakes drifting to the path around them, silent, until a siren sounded nearby.

  “One more thing.” Her father leaned to her and with his face down, almost on Alex’s shoulder, he whispered, “If something happens here—you wind up back in the middle—you don’t know where the briefcase is. Period.”

  “Dad, I don’t know.”

  He stared at her, a confused look on his face. “Just tell them that.” He turned and walked away.

  Did she?

  Alex pulled on her gloves then made her way under the bridge and settled into the shadow, noting the blanket from around the corner had been tugged from view. Glancing at her watch, she counted just under three hours until the appointed time for Edgar’s source to arrive. That gave her plenty of time to think, and with nothing but the city sounds and river flowing near her, she let the events of the last few days flow with them. Lockard, Draganic, the SEALs.

  Alex rubbed her hands together in the damp cold, breathing into them and watching the walkway above. Few people were wandering around at this hour, though a drunk couple staggered near her and up the stairwell then across the bridge, their laughs muted by the snowfall, their footfalls traced in it.

  One thing Alex had a hard time wrapping her brain around was the billion-dollar bounty. Not only the value, but the sheer size and weight, the physicality of it. Yet as she tried to picture the cash, a few more aspects of the operation’s landscape formed for her. The mental sketch she had created filled in and the corners of the drawing appeared, began to take shape.

  First, Draganic. According to Interpol, the Serbian Whale was the most cunning money launderer in all of Europe. As a CIA man stationed in Eastern Europe before the Middle East, Lockard would have known this. Maybe he’d even crossed paths with Draganic a time or two. He would have found a way to cut the man a deal for his participation. A billion dollars is a whole lot easier to move once it’s in the banking system and Draganic was the key to that. So was the Isle of Man.

  But what had gone wrong between Draganic and Lockard? Someone had clearly betrayed the other. Or maybe they both did. Like her father said, money made people do strange things. And a billion dollars? Well, that could turn someone bat-shit crazy, couldn’t it?

  In any case, if Alex found Draganic, she’d find Lockard.

  With thirty minutes until the meet, Alex placed the listening device in her left ear. Paired with a device inside Edgar’s trench coat, the earbud allowed her to hear everything in real time.

  Alex wondered what deep intelligence Edgar was looking to gain with this meet and how it would it lead to Jack. How would it help fill in the rest of the drawing?

  And as she sat there, the minutes ticking off, the last half hour scrolling by, an epiphany hit, the kind that shifts the ground below you, changing your world forever. Like finding out you weren’t really an orphan. Like finding out your lover was spying on you for your father.

  For the third time in as many days, the Earth’s plates moved beneath Alex.

  Lockard was not involved by chance. He was connected to her, to her father. He was connected so deeply in this that there was only one way he could have the inside intelligence to pull off one of the greatest thefts in history.

  It’s why her father didn’t tell Alex who he was meeting with, why he had kept her in the shadows but nearby. To believe it, she’d have to hear it for herself.

  A set of footfalls echoed across the bridge and stopped. Her father said, “I’m in position and my contact is nearing. Stay alert.”

  Alex didn’t bother answering. Edgar was not wearing an earpiece.

  Another set of footfalls clanked on the metal grates of the bridge, and by the time they stopped, Alex was shaking. A searing, throbbing anger started in her chest and gripped her throat. She felt foolish, vulnerable, enraged, and ready to kill, all at the same time.

  How could she have not seen it before? It had been right in front of her the whole time.

  The answer came: her father had been protecting her from it.

  And then the man spoke, and Alex’s life as she knew was over.

  “You Winters just keep getting in the way,” Deputy Director William Moss said.

  “No protection? The DDO came alone? Why, Bill?” A scuffing noise, like thumping static, sounded in the microphone; her father shifting his arms as he spoke.

  “Christ, Edgar…just give me the briefcase. Finish this mission and get back in the field.” Moss’s voice was loud and clear. He was facing her father. Probably had his hands in his long gray overcoat, like he did when walking into the offices on cold winter days at Langley.

  “Not yet.”

  “Where is it? Tell me you brought the goddamn thing.”

  “We need to talk, Bill.”

  “About what?”

  “Alex.”

  “What about her?”

  “Not what. Why…her?”

  A few moments of silence passed and then Moss laughed. “C’mon Edgar, it’s in the genes. Of course I’d use her to track my most skilled—and therefore most dangerous—asset. She was my insurance against you.”

  “You knew I’d burn myself, blow my cover for your tracker. Otherwise my own daughter would be left in that restaurant with the others. A bomb, one keystroke away.”

  And there it was. The bastard Moss had placed Alex right in the middle of a war zone. Used her not as much as a pawn, more like bait. And if the target didn’t take the bait, then she would have died.

  “Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental in your years, Edgar. She may be related to you, but you said yourself, you don’t even know her.”

  “You went too far this time.”

  “Think about it Edgar. A billion dollars. It would have been so easy to cut you in on a slice.”

  “I don’t want a penny of your blood money.”

  “Which is how I knew you couldn’t be trusted in the first place.”

  “I can’t say I’m shocked. Nothing you do could surprise me anymore.”

  “Good. Business is business. Now—”A flash of static, then, “—is that it? Can we get down to today’s business?”

  “Not quite yet. See, I’ve been thinking about it all, and there’s something that I just can’t reconcile. Like a timeline that doesn’t quite match up when a spouse is out of town. Or a cash register that’s a few dollars short one night. A simple discrepancy, but an important one. One that nags at you. Tells you there’s something larger behind it. An affair, a dishonest employee. A lie.”

  “Our lives are built on lies.”

  “Our lives are also destroyed by them.”

  “What the hell’s your point?”

  “That night. When—” a loud scraping noise and then the hollow echo of Edgar’s voice “—at El Descanso.”

  Then a massive pop blared in Alex’s eardrum and she tore the listening device out.

  She leaned forward and caught the glimpse of a foot—Edgar’s boot—using a toe to crush something into the walkway. The microphone.

  Damn it. Don’t shut me out again. Not now.

  Alex hurried from the shadows, stalked to the end of the footbridge, and pulled off the gloves. Then she drew out the SIG and bent back down as she listened to the soft echo of the two men’s vo
ices. The metal slide felt cold against her bare hand but couldn’t make out a word they were saying.

  Until Moss yelled, “Give me the goddamn briefcase!”

  A loud shuffling noise sounded, and then the sound of two slides being jerked back—rounds being loaded into pistol chambers.

  Alex moved to the top of the stairs, careful to stay hidden below the top stair but in a spot she could hear them without echo.

  Moss said, “What? Are we going to shoot one another over something that happened decades ago?”

  “We all should have died that day, Bill. Starting with you.”

  A boom sounded and then another.

  Shit. Alex crested the top stair, SIG drawn. Trying to make out the figures, blurry through the green glass.

  Both men staggered back. Moss, hand raised, gun pointed at her father. Another shot blazed from Moss’s pistol. Alex fired through the green glass before her, causing Moss to turn his head.

  Stumbling backwards, her father shot Moss again and then toppled over the railing, into the icy water below.

  Alex sprinted up the last of the stairs and across the walkway. Moss lay crumpled against the wires below the railing. His Beretta had fallen from his hand and a pool of blood bloomed in the snow below him. His eyes were open and he was gasping for breath, blood seeping between his gloved hands. He turned his head, looked at Alex, and said, “Help.”

  Darting across the footpath, Alex yanked off her overcoat and kicked off her boots. She climbed onto the steel railing and searched the river below. Nothing. The blocks of ice were almost stagnant, so he couldn’t have gone far. She took a deep breath. Told herself she could do it. She’d hesitated once and regretted it. Besides, her father would do it for her.

  Right?

  Alex willed the thought away, closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and dove.

  Forget the training in the cold Pacific. Fuck the water’s toasty bullshit.

  This was agony.

  Alex’s body immediately began to shake as she peered deep into the inky water, swimming furiously, reaching out her arms, searching for her father right below the surface. Blackness spread below her and sparkling white ice floated above. She spun and searched and swam and spun again, and again. Then, knowing she’d kill herself if she stayed under any longer, Alex surfaced.

  Her muscles began to lock up and she gasped frigid air as she fought her way through the slushy water to the edge of the river. Spasming, Alex hauled herself up onto a concrete piling. Blinking and shaking, the cold overtaking her body, she tried to sit up but couldn’t move. Her feet and hands were numb, her strength annihilated by the dive. Her internal temperature had dropped to severe levels; her nervous system was shutting down. Alex was going to black out. If she didn’t warm up soon, she was going to die. And just as she had the thought, her vision blurring, Alex saw him. Wandering toward her and hauling his blanket over a shoulder.

  Right before her vision faded, the homeless man took the blanket off his back and wrapped it around her.

  Thirty-One

  Natasha paced in the kitchen, holding a coffee cup. She hadn’t had a sip in over twenty minutes. Still, she cradled the cup like it was a Fabergé egg. She supposed it was her nervousness that kept her from drinking any more caffeine that morning.

  Her mind was occupied with the task at hand.

  She wanted nothing more than to leave this prison of boredom in Gstaad. There was nothing to do up here if one didn’t like to ski, and she hated it. The cold, the snow, the drunken celebrities, obnoxious and entitled. Boring beyond belief. But the good thing was that the house, a new construction with solid floors, was quiet and didn’t creak.

  This would help her succeed in the small exchange. The tiny betrayal was dwarfed by Zoran’s offenses, but still, if he caught her, who knew what he would do.

  Natasha stopped pacing and stared at the snow-draped trees outside the kitchen window, listening for sounds in the room above her. Zoran had been camped in that office for over four hours. He had made phone calls, turned the television louder, then softer, then changed the channel. He opened the safe and closed it, then opened it again. He’d left the office only once, stomping across the house to the bedroom and retrieving a black duffel bag, one she didn’t even know he had. Strange things, this man did. Maybe he was filling it up with toys for his next escapade. His next romp with the runway sluts.

  Finally, Natasha had all but given up, retreating to the kitchen to wait him out. After dumping the coffee into the sink, she retrieved the phone from her purse.

  A small Blackberry, the same make and model as Zoran’s, the phone was also scratched along the side and at the corner of the display. A perfect replica that the man named Evan Lockard had left in the glove compartment of her Jaguar.

  How had he done that?

  She had left her vehicle parked in the Gstaad house garage while she was in the Turks, and when she returned, voilà. The phone was sitting there. Lockard had bypassed the house’s security system, somehow entered the garage without disturbing any doors or windows, and slipped into her vehicle to hide it for her.

  He was like some sort of spirit, this man.

  Thinking about this, Natasha finally heard Zoran’s clumsy footsteps in the hall above her. He was walking away from the office and to the bedroom.

  Still holding the replica, she hurried across the kitchen and, kicking off her heels, toed her way up the stairs and into the hall. She stopped there and listened. Zoran was speaking to someone; he must have been on his precious phone.

  If that damn thing had tits, he’d marry it.

  Leaning against the wall, wondering if she should sneak back downstairs, Natasha closed her eyes. This was very stressful, this part. All to catch this man doing something wrong, something illegal. Something that would put the bastard back into prison and free her from him for good. The listening device that Lockard had placed in the replica phone would solve everything for Natasha.

  She would soon be free.

  Then she heard it. The water running in the master bathroom.

  Finally, her chance. Zoran was stepping into the shower. Surely he couldn’t take his little electronic lover inside there with him. Maybe he left it on the bed.

  Listening closely, Natasha tiptoed closer to the bedroom. From what she could tell, Zoran was fumbling in the walk-in closet for clothes. Natasha peered around the doorway, but pulled back just as Zoran exited the closet, carrying a dark suit and a pair of black dress shoes.

  Holding her breath, Natasha listened from the edge of the doorway.

  She could do this, she told herself. She must do this. Someone had to stop this despicable man. This animal. This grotesque beast. He had to be caught doing his illegal things.

  Natasha would be the one to do it.

  His footfalls slapped against the tile floor of the bathroom, the glass shower door creaked open, then clicked closed.

  Taking a deep breath, Natasha gathered her resolve and darted into the bedroom.

  The charcoal suit lay spread across the bed, stark against the white, pure down duvet and soft, purple cashmere throw Natasha had bought for the bed last year. She wondered how many whores he had fucked on this bed. Her bed.

  Her cashmere throw was probably crusted with fluids.

  Natasha banished the thought as she hurried to the other side of the bed and searched the side table, under the jacket, in the closet. Where was the phone? Where had he left the damn thing? He was just talking on it!

  After checking the side-table drawers and the top drawers in the closet dressers, she found nothing.

  Dammit.

  Tiptoeing back across the bedroom carpet, she peeked from the doorway of the bathroom and, sure enough, there it was sitting at the edge of the sink, his sink. His precious Blackberry.

  Three feet from the shower.

  This was it, though. He was obviously leaving after the shower. This was Natasha’s last chance.

  Palming the replica in her hand, s
he now wished she weren’t wearing this damn skin-tight dress. If she’d been wearing pants, she could have hidden it in a pocket. But pants made her thighs look puffy. In contrast, the dresses accented her boobs. Her boobs were fantastic, too, the best part of her.

  She stepped into the bathroom, careful to keep the replica against her left leg, out of view of Zoran, and heard him startle in the shower.

  “What do you want?”

  “I am needing something.”

  “What?” He stood behind the water-speckled glass, facing her with his hands on both hips, no shame, giving her a full display of his swollen gut, with gray and black hairs covering his body up to his chest and over his shoulders. A bushel of it over his shriveled kolbasa.

  Natasha kept walking forward, straight to the counter, and said, “I am looking for my lip gloss. I think I left it in here.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes, I am going outside of the house.”

  “Good. Go.” He turned around and poured a glop of shampoo in one hand and rubbed his almost bald head with it. What did he need so much shampoo for? This man had more hair on his ass than his head.

  Thankful he had turned, though, Natasha opened the cabinet and watched him from the corner of her eye as she reached across to pick up his phone. Just as her arm extended across his sink and her fingers touched the device, he yelled, “Shut that door. It’s cold in here!”

  Natasha jerked, knocking Zoran’s phone off the counter and onto the floor, its battery case popping open and the battery skittering across the tile and under the toilet.

  “You idiot! Get it and fix it! And make sure your hands aren’t wet!”

  Breathing hard, her heart pounding against her chest, Natasha felt her face turn as red as borscht. “Why are you insisting on placing it so close to the edge? It is the fault of your own!” she yelled back as she bent over, still hiding the replica phone in her left hand.

  “The battery—don’t forget to put that back in!” Zoran was wiping shampoo off his face with one hand and pointing with the other, watching Natasha.

  “I know, I know!” she said, placing the replica phone on the tile next to her foot.