by Jay Brandon
She reassured him again, and as he was asking about her husband the connection was broken. Stevie shrugged, closed his laptop, and went back to his job of talking ugly about America in cafes and union halls. He thought he would set off the demonstration within two days, and just hoped he didn’t get beaten up in the process.
Craig was early to meet his wife. They were to meet on the mall near six o’clock, in the shadow of the Jefferson Memorial. Corny, but Craig liked corny. He stood for a few minutes staring up at the standing statue, the slightly lidded eyes that really looked as if thoughts were passing behind them. Thomas Jefferson had not been a member of the Circle, but Craig had a private theory that Jefferson had inspired its formation—behind the scenes, more subtle than the masters of subtlety. There was absolutely no evidence of this, which to Craig confirmed his theory. Because if a man like Jefferson set out to do something secretly, there wouldn’t be any evidence, would there? Except for those children of Sally Hemmings’, of course, but that was a different matter. Craig held another extremely private theory that Jefferson had wanted to be found out on that score, as well.
Brooding about the founding of nations and the secrets of founding fathers, he began to have an idea. As he thought he walked, something he often did, and quite unconsciously. It was not unusual for him to find himself miles from home and with a few lost hours at the end of some deep meditation.
His mind turned, as it often did, to the middle east. There seemed no way out of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: two peoples claimed the same land as home. But Craig Mortenson didn’t believe in insoluble problems. This, after all, was the man who had brought down Communism. Something needed to be done to lift all the combatants’ eyes from their immediate conflict. Give them a larger conflict, perhaps? My enemy’s enemy is my friend. Could there be a common enemy for the Jews and Arabs? Who would that be, and who would be willing to play that role, perhaps for a generation?
Craig continued to think, his feet continued to wander, and by the time he had solved the middle east problem he realized that it was dark and he didn’t know where he was. Looking around, he no longer saw crowds. Slowly—coming back from miles and years—he oriented himself. He had walked down toward Lafayette Park. Alicia would be waiting for him. With that amused look of hers. She would spend the time communing with Mr. Jefferson and her own thoughts and wouldn’t be angry, especially after he told her what he’d come up with on his ramble.
He turned and the shorter, paler of the two thugs stuck a gun into his stomach. “Wallet!” he snapped.
“Certainly,” Craig said, holding his hands out to the sides in a placating manner. Idiot, he thought to himself. Wandering into a dangerous area like a tourist. And looking lost in thought, the perfect target.
So he stopped looking like that. His eyes hardened. He looked into the robber’s face. The man was thin and pale, blond hair poking out from beneath a navy watch cap. His hand holding the gun was steady, and there was no nervousness in his gaze. Oh, shit. This was an experienced criminal, not a druggie with an impulse. But maybe Craig could use that to advantage.
“My wallet contains very little cash, and only one credit card with a small limit and large identity theft protection. You could do better than this.”
He looked past the man holding the gun on him. The partner was larger, African-American, equally calm, with almost dead-looking eyes. His hands were in the pockets of his coat, which looked as if it had come from Goodwill after two or three owners. But something didn’t fit. Black-and-white teams were common in the movies and police forces, much less so among criminals in real life. Criminals usually came from classes that harbored prejudices, and if they had spent time in prison, as most criminals had, they would have fallen into groups segregated by gang membership.
Glancing down as if at his wallet, Craig saw the black man’s shoes. They were black loafers, polished and tasseled.
“My gratitude would be worth a great deal more than the contents of this wallet. If you wouldn’t mind escorting me back to my hotel…”
The gunman grinned. He didn’t even glance over his shoulder at his supposed partner. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Craig turned, taking a quick survey of the area. They were at the bottom of a small hill. There were people within a hundred yards, but not many. He was quite sure these two wouldn’t let him get to the top of the rise. Was there any message he could send, any clue he could leave?
But as they continued to walk he came to a worse realization than that he was about to be murdered. They were using him to lure Alicia. They would let him get back to the Jefferson Memorial, let her see him, before they made their move. Crowds of sightseers wouldn’t matter to these two.
Craig stumbled and fell. Neither man made a move to help him. In fact they stepped back. The one with the gun growled, “Get up,” and his partner took his hands out of his pockets.
Craig came up much faster than they expected, with two handfuls of mud. He flung them both as he kicked at the gunman’s gun hand.
He had been right about the African-American man, who had a fastidious sort of look. He flinched away from the thrown mud. The gunman didn’t, so it hit him right in the face, obscuring his vision as Craig spun to the side. The gun fired, but Craig was no longer standing where he had been. The shot missed. He kicked the man in the crotch, reaching for the gun. He was much faster than they’d expected.
But that was why they’d brought back-up. The black man lifted the automatic in his own hand and fired twice. Both shots hit Craig Mortenson in the chest.
And a scream pierced the night.
The sound didn’t come from the victim. It froze the two assassins for a second, then they turned and looked up. Alicia Mortenson stood at the top of the hill, an expression of utmost horror on her face. The two men started running toward her.
Alicia had accomplished what she’d wanted, distracted the men from her husband. Could Craig survive two shots? At least they weren’t shooting him any more.
But now the men came relentlessly toward her.
Level 5
In Phase 2 of Level 5, Jack typed on his screen, we switch strongholds.
Words appeared slowly on his screen: you didn’t tell me that rule.
Jack made the symbol for a shrug. it’s just a game. here we go.
The figures of the opponents disappeared from the screen. Seconds later each player found his character in the other character’s headquarters. The other player, who Jack was certain now was Dennis Wilkerson, the National Security Advisor, began looking around his new environment curiously. Jack sat unmoving. On his split screen, his character just stood, hands at his sides.
It didn’t take long. Within five seconds the NSA’s character took a wrong step, the floor dropped out from under him, and he fell to his death on a bed of spikes. The character reappeared, having lost that round. This time he opened a door, just trying to get out, and a swinging blade cut off his head.
In his own mind, Jack could hear the NSA screaming in outrage. What’s happening? Jack typed on the screen, I told you you could alter your home court. And he closed his game on his opponent’s protests.
That was as much as he could do. Jack felt helpless. He looked around and wondered where he was. Arden had left him here. Where had she gone? Jack went outside and began walking toward the heart of Salzburg. He didn’t want to get too close. Security would grow tighter with every hundred yards he traveled now. But he hoped to find Rachel. He sensed she was here.
The night seemed darker than it should be, the streets less crowded. He heard a strange murmur that he couldn’t quite shape into words. Maybe the European wind spoke a different language. Jack had the feeling of being surrounded by an invisible crowd. In fact, there were very few people on the streets, which seemed odd.
Down at the corner a policeman in a light blue uniform watched Jack steadily, to the exclusion of all else on the street. Jack’s instinct was to walk straight toward the man, until he remembered
he might actually be wanted for the incident in Nice. So he turned instead and crossed the street, as if toward a restaurant that looked like the only open business on the block.
The street felt old under his feet, worn down smooth. The buildings were old too, but strong and stylish, stones with modest curlicues of architecture. As much time as he had spent abroad, Jack was American to his bones, and Salzburg made him feel strange. He expected to be stopped and asked for his “papers” at any moment. The citizens who passed averted their eyes, and if there were two of them they muttered just below the level of Jack’s hearing. A good place to start a case of paranoia if you didn’t already have one.
He didn’t want to go into that café. Its door looked like a mouth, a trap from which he would not emerge. He could break right instead, dart down the street. The policeman would blow his whistle and a dozen more might appear. Just as he thought he’d try it anyway, a woman in a trench coat came around that corner to his right and just stood there. She was slender and young and Jack might have been able to take her, but then again maybe not, as he watched the efficient movements of her hands as she lit a cigarette. Also a slight droop in a pocket that ruined the drape of her overcoat.
He went into the restaurant. There would be a back way out. Maybe he could call Arden.
Jack stopped just inside the doorway, took a quick scan of the tables, started to move through them, then his mind did a quick rewind and he stopped dead again. He thought he’d recognized the portion of a man’s cheek he’d glimpsed beneath a hat. But mentally Jack shook his head. Couldn’t be. And even if it was, he needed to steer away.
But then the man he’d thought he recognized was smiling and waving him over. Jack stood there thinking hard, wanting to get away, but then saw that the man was about to stand up and call his name, so Jack hurried over and sat down. He stuck out his hand and said as quietly as possible, but with surprise in his voice, “Professor Trimble? What are you doing here?”
“Jack! Well met. Didn’t expect you here. Why didn’t someone tell me? We could have joined forces. Good show you came, actually. See those men in the corner? I’ve been surveilling them. Now it looks as if I was waiting to meet a friend instead of following them in here. I think they might have been starting to get suspicious.”
In nearly every other situation, Don Trimble would have been one of the least suspicious people on earth. He had been an Economics professor at Yale when Jack went there, and also a Circle member. Jack had taken one class from him, been impressed by the man’s brilliance but barely able to stay awake til the end of the semester. But Trimble was deep inside the leadership of the Circle, much deeper than Jack, in both recruitment and long-term planning.
No one would ever have used him for a field agent, though. He was tall and thin and somewhat clumsy, his hands and feet like the unruly children of distracted parents. With his height and his baldness he stood out in a crowd; his long nose seemed to tremble when he was excited. At least he was wearing a hat now, and a trench coat. Secret Agent Man.
“Who are they?” Jack asked. He made some sort of gesture at the waiter, which perhaps didn’t translate well. Moments later a beer appeared at his elbow, in an elaborate stein.
“Not sure,” Trimble murmured, staring straight at the small group at the corner table. “Two of them are affiliated with Al-Quaeda, but one is French and two others Asian. An odd grouping, and at least three of them affiliated with terrorist organizations. I’ve been following them for two days.”
If that were so, the men must have spotted the professor a day and nine-tenths ago. Now they saw Jack, too. Jack turned his back on them. “What do you think they’re up to?” he muttered.
“Pretty plain. That summit begins tomorrow. It’s our one chance to lure the President out of this ridiculous turtle-posture he’s put us in. To get him to re-engage with the world. Groups like Al-Quaeda would do anything to stop that. When he comes they plan to kill him, pure and simple.” Professor Trimble looked feverish for a moment. He had never been this animated as a teacher. “It is absolutely imperative that we head off any such terrorist plot and that the President comes here. If he doesn’t, we’ve lost. The mission with which we’ve been entrusted for generations is a failure. If he comes and gets killed we’ve lost too. We’ve got to take out whatever all the terrorists on earth are planning, and we have less than twenty-four hours.”
Jack said, “Absolutely,” without much enthusiasm, then looked around again. “Any other leads here?”
Trimble calmed down and straightened his coat. His forehead creased. “Just in the last few hours I’ve noticed a young woman flitting about. Very young. Light brown hair, blue eyes, a quick step, a little reminiscent smile on her face once in a while. She’s been in and out of the area too fast for me to—”
“That would be Arden,” Jack said. He couldn’t help smiling himself at the “reminiscent smile” in Professor Trimble’s description. “Arden Spindler.”
“Ah. Knew she looked familiar. She’s up to something, though. I’m not sure she’s absolutely to be trusted. Have you ever done anything with her?”
For a moment the question left Jack at a loss. Then he managed, “As a matter of fact, we’re working together right now.”
“Oh. Well, then you’ll know what she’s up to. I saw her earlier, going into a building down the street. Odd sort of place. I called to her, but she didn’t hear me. Anyway, I’ve had to concentrate on these fellows.”
“Have you seen Rachel here, Professor? Rachel Greene?”
“Rachel? Oh yes, the Israeli girl. Your friend back in school, wasn’t she, Jack? No, haven’t heard a thing about her. Is she supposed to be here?” Trimble looked away from him as he spoke.
“I thought so, but maybe she’s coming later.” Jack slumped a little more in his chair. He looked all around the restaurant. Six occupied tables, out of a possible dozen. The bartender was cleaning a glass with a bar rag—the same glass he’d been cleaning since Jack had walked in. The restaurant patrons were couples or groups, but mostly men. None of them looked overtly at Jack.
“I need to ask you something,” Jack said softly to Don Trimble, which caused the professor to look at him intently. “But I need more urgently to find the men’s room. Know where it is?”
Trimble gestured a direction with his head, a gesture broad enough for everyone in the restaurant to see, as Jack had hoped. “Down that little hallway, I think.”
“Thanks. Be right back.”
Jack stood up, moving like a man with a rather urgent mission, not meeting any eyes. He entered the short hallway, momentarily out of sight of everyone. Two doors at the end of the hall had symbols on them, broad enough to understand. Jack instead took the first door he came to on the right. It was locked, but not very sturdily. A few moments’ manipulation got him through it. Jack went inside, found himself in a dark, empty office, and opened the door a crack to look back out into the corridor he’d just left. In only a few seconds three men came into the hallway. They all walked resolutely toward the doors at the far end. Two of them went into the men’s room and one into the women’s.
Jack closed the office door and looked around. Heavy curtains hung behind the desk. Jack went and pulled them open and found a window, to his relief. He raised it shakily, trying to be quiet, and slipped out. He stood for a moment in the alley and closed the window behind him. He glanced down the alley that would lead to the back of the restaurant, but that was the direction the men who had gone into the restrooms would be going. So Jack turned and ran, fast, the other direction, toward the street from which he’d come, hoping that anyone who’d been watching him would have shifted to have a view of the restaurant.
They hadn’t. When he was within twenty yards of the street that young woman stepped around the corner and stood waiting for him, hands in her trenchcoat pockets. She didn’t smile or otherwise acknowledge that he was coming.
Jack skidded to a halt. Trench coat woman wouldn’t be alone. He turned
, saw a fire escape back that way, and headed toward it. Just as he reached the bottom, though, he looked up and saw the man on the roof at the top of the fire escape. These people knew his habits.
A bullet pinged off the metal next to him. Jack ran the only direction he could, across the alley, where another window beckoned. Covering his head with his arms, Jack dived through it.
Forces scrambled into motion. The woman disappeared, heading around to find another entrance to the building. At the other end of the building, half a dozen more men headed into it from that direction. They would have the first floor blanketed in seconds, then close in.
In a large room a few blocks away, Bruno Benjamin sat in an overstuffed chair and smiled at one of the screens in front of him. “This is so much fun,” he said aloud to no one. “What kind of idiot gets any satisfaction out of a video game?” He turned a knob and spoke into a small microphone. “He’ll re-emerge from the same window. Be ready.”
On the screen, after a beat of four or five seconds, Jack’s head came out of the window he’d dived through. He looked both ways down the alley, which seemed quiet now. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, Jack climbed back out and dropped down into the alley.
“Jack, old friend, you are so predictable,” Bruno said, and sat back and folded his hands over his stomach and enjoyed himself, watching the screen.
Jack felt safe for the moment. But which way? They were down there to the left, down to the right, they might have left people in place while they searched the building at his back. He would have to bluff or be faster than a bullet…
Wait a minute. What about going back into the restaurant the same way he’d come out? Find another way out on the other side of the building. No one would ever suspect him of going back to his starting place.
Acting on the thought as soon as he had it, Jack started quickly across the alley, on tiptoes. He tripped on something and fell to the left, which saved his life, as a bullet went through the space where he’d just been standing.
Uh. Jack heard the shot, heard the bullet slam off the pavement, but didn’t know where it had come from. He looked both ways down the alley, saw no one. Then he remembered, just in time, the other direction. He jumped to the side just as another bullet filled the space he’d just vacated.
