Alexander King Thriller Series: Books 1-3

by Bradley Wright

  Bobby glanced over at the linens on the couch. “Looks like you’re pulling double duty.”

  She followed his eyes. “Oh, yeah, well . . . that’s been a regular occurrence as of late, unfortunately. I just grab a nap whenever I can.”

  “You can always come work for me. Pay’s just as good, and nowhere near the stress.”

  Mary sipped her coffee, then set it on her desk as she took a seat. “That why you’re here, Bobby? To offer me a job?”

  Bobby hung his head. “I wish. But I’ve got a real problem, Mary.”

  “What’s the line from that movie? ‘A friend in need is a pest’?” She gave him half a smile as she tried to lighten the mood. Her quip fell flat.

  Though she smiled at him, Bobby knew there was some truth to it. She had so much on her plate as it was; he hated to add another helping.

  “I’m afraid that’s probably true. But you know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”

  “All right then, let’s have it.”

  He cleared his throat and stopped his right leg from fidgeting. “I can trust this stays between you and me?”

  “Of course.” Mary leaned forward, folded her hands together, and rested her elbows on her desk.

  “You remember Everworld Solutions?”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “How could I not? If it hadn’t been for my best operative, their money would have killed the president.”

  “Right, well . . .”

  Bobby didn’t know how to say it. No matter how he framed it, he sounded guilty. He was beginning to think coming to Mary had been a mistake. He thought maybe he should just stick to what was already in motion and let Doug get him out of his mess. Then he remembered Doug had custom ordered a “terrorist attack” to kill a young woman, and then held a gun to Bobby’s head when he questioned him about it.

  “You’re starting to make me nervous, Bobby. What is this? How much trouble are you in?”

  He felt some relief when she brought up him being in trouble. For some reason it made him feel as though he really was in a safe place with someone who could help him.

  “Real trouble.” His voice shook.

  Mary stood and rounded her desk. She took the seat beside him and scooted it around to face him.

  “Let’s have it, then. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.”

  Bobby nodded as he wiped the nervous sweat from his forehead.

  “I was an investor in Everworld. Senators Thomas and McDonnell convinced me it was a good investment. I swear to you, I had no idea what they were plotting to do with the money.”

  Mary was quiet for a moment. She checked her watch. “So now that you’re running for president, you’re worried that it might come back to bite you if word gets out you were involved in the scandal.”

  “I was worried about that . . . and that’s how I got in trouble.”

  “Let’s stop beating around the bush, shall we? I really have to get back to work.”

  Bobby didn’t mince words. “I hired Doug Chapman.”

  Mary’s reaction was immediate. “Ah shit, Bobby. Why the hell would you go and do that?”

  “So you know who he is?”

  “Know who he is?” Mary stood and put her hands on her hips. “I was the reason the last director was forced to fire him from the CIA. Son of a bitch is lucky he’s not in jail for treason. If Director Manning hadn’t covered Doug’s tracks, and his own, Doug would be rotting in a jail cell right now.”

  “God, Mary, I didn’t know all that.”

  “What? Why not?” Mary was incensed. She walked over to the bar cart in the corner of the room. She picked up a decanter and poured two drinks of brown liquor. “Why would you hire him without vetting him?”

  “I did vet him, Mary. But the people who recommended him didn’t fill me in on all the gory details. They just said he’d get the job done.”

  “What’s the job, Bobby?” She handed him a glass and took hers back in one shot. “You mentioned London on the phone. What don’t I know?”

  Bobby nosed his glass. He could smell the oak in the bourbon. He didn’t have the stomach for it, so he set it on Mary’s desk in front of him.

  “After my rally, he told me he had orchestrated the car bomb in London.”

  “What?” Mary shouted. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I had no idea, Mary. You know me. When he pulled me aside a couple of hours ago and told me this is what happened, I had the same reaction you did. I told him he was fired—that I never would have okayed something like that!”

  Mary began to pace the floor. “I can’t contain this, Bobby. This is an international crime. There’s no way this doesn’t blow back on you. You just killed your shot at becoming president.”

  Bobby of course had already had the same thought. He had all but resigned himself to that fact. His focus was now more on staying alive.

  “Yeah, I get that, Mary. I’m just trying to make sure Doug doesn’t do something else. He has to be stopped.”

  “Where is he now?” Mary asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  Mary walked over and downed the bourbon she’d poured for Bobby. “I know Doug, Bobby. If he finds out you’re here . . .” She trailed off.

  Bobby knew what she was about to say. “Try to kill me? Well, he already put a gun to my chin in the back of my own car. So I’m well aware of what’s at stake. That’s why I told you I didn’t have a choice but to come to you.”

  Mary leaned against the edge of her desk and sighed as she stared up at the ceiling. “Bobby . . . listen carefully.” She looked down and found his eyes. “Doug won’t try to kill you if he wants you dead. He was an elite agent here for years. His job was to make people disappear. You’ve gotten yourself into a real mess.”

  Bobby stood. He had no idea it was this bad. “Then I’m glad I came to you.”

  “I’ll get your Secret Service detail doubled. And I’ll put the word out to look for him. But there isn’t much else I can do. I have an agent in the wind in London and a lot of cleanup work to do there.”

  “Thank you, Mary.”

  Bobby stepped forward and gave her a hug.

  Mary gave a quick squeeze, then pulled away. “When’s your next public appearance?”

  “They’re every day. I’m running for president.”

  “You should consider bowing out of the race. For your safety and your wife’s.”

  Bobby let out a sigh. There were a lot of people counting on him. He didn’t want to let them down, but he had to consider what Mary was telling him.

  “I’ll think it through.”

  Mary’s cell phone started ringing. “I have to take this. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Bobby nodded and turned for the door.

  “Bobby?”

  He stopped and faced her.

  She swiped her phone to accept the call and put it to her ear. “Be careful.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Bruges, Belgium

  “This is Director Hartsfield.”

  King finished his glass of water as he took a seat on the couch. “Mary, it’s X.”

  “Oh, thank God. I’m hearing from one of my agents about a man in a gray hoodie saving a girl from a car bomb. Then I’m seeing a guy in online videos who looks an awfully lot like you with a hat pulled really low, claiming to be MI5, when a woman gets shot by a sniper in the middle of the city. What the hell is going on over there?”

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing, Mary.”

  King had a lot of time to think on the quiet four-hour drive to Bruges from London, and all the getting through the Channel Tunnel. And a whole lot of things weren’t adding up. He knew he should be careful what he said to Mary, but he had never been good at holding his tongue.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I mean, the girl I saved—Bentley Martin, as you well know—showed up in my mailbox as my next target.”

  “What?”

  King detected Ma
ry’s sharp inhale, something he’d been taught meant genuine surprise. But he still had to be guarded.

  “You trying to tell me you didn’t know who my target was?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that I know exactly who your target was, and it was not Bentley Martin.”

  King’s blood ran cold. There were only two people who were ever involved in sending him his next mission: Mary Hartsfield and his longtime partner, Sam Harrison. King knew that Sam would never lie to him. She would die for him. And almost had on several occasions. If Mary was telling the truth, that meant someone was able to circumvent the top secret file before it got to Sam. The first thing King had to do was decide whether or not he could trust Mary was telling him the truth. She had always gone to bat for him in the past, and they had actually become friends, but when your own father turns on you, it’s possible anyone can turn on you. With Mary, though, it was the last thing King would expect.

  “X?” Mary said.

  “Just processing.” His mind was flipping through the scenarios of how this could have happened.

  “Have you talked to Sam?”

  “I called her, she didn’t answer. But it’s the middle of the night in Greece.”

  “I know.”

  King was growing frustrated that Mary wasn’t addressing the obvious problem. That there was a breakdown somewhere under her watch.

  “Mary?”

  “I already know what you’re going to say, X.”

  “Then don’t make me say it.”

  “Hold on, you’re not going to try to lecture me here, are you?”

  He didn’t expect her defensive tone.

  “I don’t follow,” King said.

  “You think I don’t know it was you who took out Andonios Maragos?”

  King knew it was only a matter of time before this came up. Of course, he would never admit it, even though he was fully aware Mary knew it was him.

  “I couldn’t be happier he’s dead, Mary. But it wasn’t me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  King doubled down. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. If I had killed Maragos, what does that have to do with you losing control of your organization to the point that an entire black op, which only you and Sam knew about, got hijacked? Am I burned? How bad is this?”

  King rose from the couch to pace the room. His blood pressure was on the rise, and he needed to walk it off. Mary was quiet, and in those moments, he began to worry about Sam.

  “You’re not burned, X. No one knows about you.”

  “How do my target files get to me?”

  “I can’t tell you that. It would put you in danger.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I almost got car-bombed, and a sniper’s bullet flew half a foot from my head, but you telling me how I get a file will put me in danger? We have to cut the shit, Mary. This is real trouble!”

  King’s heart was pounding pretty heavy.

  “Excuse me! Who do you think you’re talking to?!”

  King couldn’t hold his tongue. “Right now? I think I’m talking to the person who doesn’t want to say that there is a leak somewhere beneath her. I think I’m talking to the person who might get me and my partner killed. Sam and I can do this on our own, Mary. We’ve done it before. Don’t forget how we met!”

  King was ready for Mary to strike back, but it didn’t come. Instead, he heard her take a deep breath.

  “All right. Calm down. I can manage this. I know perfectly well what you are capable of, and I want to work with you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need me. Let’s take a step back and start putting this together.”

  King took a deep breath himself and went to the sink for some water. “How do you get the files to me? The agent I met in the underground earlier today?”

  “Special Agent Shawn Roberts. Yes, this time it was him. Whenever you get a file, I send Sam an encrypted digital file. It can only be opened twice—once when she opens it and again when she sends it to the agent that I tell her is working in your area. That agent doesn’t know that it comes from Sam, and they also don’t know that it is going to you. Both Sam and the agent are given an authentication code. Once the agent in your area sees that the code matches up, that agent puts together a file for you and leaves it in the place where the self-deleting, encrypted file tells them too. Like the place you picked up the file tonight.”

  “So it was agent Roberts who changed the file to Bentley Martin.”

  “We don’t know that, X. I know Roberts. He wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t say it. You and I have both been double-crossed enough to know better.” King chugged another glass of water.

  “You’re right about that.”

  King decided to try the polite approach. “Can I tell you what I think we should do?”

  “Please.”

  “I need to go see Agent Roberts. But I can’t leave Bentley here by herself. I need an agent to come and stay with her, but I have to be able to trust them. I promised Bentley I’d keep her safe.”

  King could hear some typing in the background.

  “Umm . . . let me see,” Mary said. “I have four senior agents within two hundred miles of you.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me. Can you trust them? Do I know any of them?”

  “I also have a special agent in Brussels, actually. He’s tracking a businessman, but it’s not a high-level target—wait a minute—I think you—oh yeah, you know him. Agent John Karn. Helped you back in Washington with Anastasia Maragos.”

  “Agent Karn is in Brussels?” King couldn’t believe it.

  “Sure is.”

  “Karn saved my ass once. I’d definitely feel Bentley is safe with him here.”

  “That’s only sixty miles or so. I can have him there before sunrise. But that just adds another person who knows you’re not dead. You okay with that?”

  “I don’t have a choice. Send him. But before you go, I need something else.”

  “Name it.”

  “I need to know the real identity of the woman who got shot beside me in Leicester Square.”

  “Why were you after her, anyway?”

  “Because I didn’t save Bentley Martin from the car bomb, I saved Karen, her look-alike.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll get to it. Here’s the short version. Bentley said this woman went by the name of Karen Panos. She said they’d met randomly at a bar, become close, but then things became strange.”

  “Strange. And you think that means she isn’t really Karen Panos.”

  “I think she has been posing as Bentley.” That made the explanation extra short.

  “Wait, what?”

  “Bottom line. This Karen was definitely not who she said she was. I’m certain she was an undercover agent for someone. She blew up my apartment trying to kill me. And she just moved and fought like she’d been professionally trained.”

  “I need more than this to go on, X. Why would an agent be posing as a billionaire’s daughter?”

  “The same reason someone switched my target to Bentley.” King peeked through the shades of the living room window that overlooked the shimmering canal. “Someone is covering their tracks. Karen and Bentley look almost like twins. In the file, the reasoning for Bentley’s kill order was because she was instrumental in moving money and cooking the books for her father’s company. The one that helped Everworld fund the terrorist group that the Maragoses were involved with.”

  “But you don’t think it was really Bentley?”

  “She’s an English major. Wants to be a writer. Nowhere near a math whiz.”

  Mary took a moment. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Which part?” King said.

  “Well, I understand why someone would want Bentley dead. If someone involved with Everworld thought Bentley had information damaging to them, that would make sense. How they got the file to you is another disturbing story for another time. What I don’t get is why would someone have this Karen perso
n pose as Bentley? I don’t see the logic or strategy in that.”

  “I don’t either. But I really don’t care. I just want to follow the trail from Karen to whoever hired her. I think that road will lead me to the person in charge of the entire terrorist organization.”

  “Okay, I’ll put some people on it. In the meantime, Agent Karn is on his way to you. He just messaged and said he’ll be there in an hour. And I’ve been trading messages with Agent Roberts in London. I told him I need him in Calais, France, as soon as he can get there. I figured you two could get there around the same time after you wait for Agent Karn to get to you. He’ll be at a place called Total. It’s a twenty-four-hour gas station with a small coffeehouse inside. You can decide how to handle Agent Roberts once you get there. I’ll message you his cell number so you can coordinate. And you can also drill down on what happened with your target file that was switched to Bentley. We need to know if Roberts ever even received Sam’s encrypted file, and if not, what happened. From the story he told me about the mysterious gray-hooded man in the underground who saved his ass, he owes you at least one favor.”

  “You did all that while we were talking?” King said.

  “Who would have thought the director of the CIA could multitask, huh?”

  “Sarcasm. Okay.” King laughed. “I’ll get things rolling with Agent Roberts on Karen since he’s used to maneuvering in London—”

  Mary interrupted. “And I’ll work this Karen angle from my end, see if I can track down how the target file got swapped. That way we’re coming at it from both ends. If we’ve got a hole, we need to plug it, STAT.”

  “Yeah, that might be a good idea. Listen, before I go, if Bentley wasn’t my next target, then who was?”

  Mary laughed. “Some lucky son of a bitch who gets to live a little bit longer than he would have.”

  “Touché.”

  “Stay in touch, X. And be careful. I’ve got an idea where some of our problems in London might be coming from.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  King wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Mary take a sharp inhale. Either way, she didn’t answer him.

  “Mary?”

  King pressed the phone against his ear, straining to hear what he thought sounded like someone’s voice.