by Matthew Dunn
That vessel was now in front of them. A traditional dhow that had one big white sail, but no motor.
Reza parked the truck. “Fast, fast.” He stayed in the vehicle as the other men ran to the back, lifted the metal box, and carried it along a jetty and onto the boat. Reza was driving away as they lowered the box onto the deck. He was headed straight back to Shiraz, where he’d put the truck in a secure garage and leave it locked in there until he was sure that it wasn’t being looked for by Iranian police or the country’s more insidious security agencies.
Roger was a former member of SEAL Team 6 who had proficiency with most types of seafaring vessels. That experience enabled him to help Masoud and Firouz prepare the dhow to sail. It took them only two minutes to get the vessel moving. Roger scoured their surroundings as his Iranian assets steered the vessel and made adjustments to its rigging. For one hour the dhow crossed the Strait of Hormuz, and even as they exited Iranian waters unchallenged, he continued his vigil as they approached the United Arab Emirates and followed its shores until they entered Dubai’s creek.
The CIA officer only let himself relax when they reached the inner part of the creek where the majority of boats docked and unloaded their cargos.
The early morning sun and balmy air soothed his weary face; there were noises of birds and men and vessels, but they were quiet, as if the creatures were half asleep and respectful that others nearby were still in deep slumber. Roger wondered when he’d next sleep himself. Not for a while.
He placed a hand on the metal box. It had taken him three years to identify its location, and he’d done so using his own money, during downtime when he wasn’t deployed by the CIA and sometimes during vacation time when he should have been with his family. He’d sacrificed a lot to locate and extract the container by tasking his Iranian sources, bribing officials, analyzing old CIA reports, talking to former Iranian intelligence officers turned CIA assets, and putting his boots on Iranian ground to make his own inquiries. Many times he had risked capture, and he would have been killed if anyone had established his objective. And if that had happened, the CIA would have rightly disavowed him, because no one at the Agency had any idea what he was doing.
His biggest fear now was that the thing in the box was not what he thought it was. After he took it to the American consulate in Dubai and it was flown back to the States, he’d find out if his efforts now and during the preceding years had been worth the sacrifice.
He dearly hoped so.
Because the box was his gift to a British MI6 officer who’d saved his life countless times.
A man who deserved some peace of mind in his otherwise mangled life.
A comrade.
A true friend named Will Cochrane.
FOUR
For the past few months, MI6 and its American equivalent, the CIA, believed that I’d been sitting at home doing nothing. MI6 occasionally checked up on me, but it had always given me advance notice of its visits, meaning I could make sure I was at my South London pad when the service’s welfare department came knocking. Tonight, the agencies probably thought I was going out for a few beers to drown my sorrows. After all, tomorrow was officially my last day as an employed field operative of Western intelligence, because during my last mission a malevolent U.S. senator revealed my identity to the world’s media, I tore apart Washington, D.C., to get answers, and the joint U.S.-U.K. task force I worked for was shut down.
My employers told me I’d become a loose cannon without portfolio, and added that I should be grateful that they were giving me four months on full pay to allow me to idle and decompress after fourteen years of near constant deployment. And I was told to use that time to learn how to integrate into normal society. Trouble is, I don’t do decompression or integration well, and though I’ve enough sorrows to fill up a hundred lives, I rarely feel the need to drown them.
Instead, they are prone to drowning me if I stay still for too long.
So, I’d been busy. Secretly busy.
Traveling to different parts of the world; obtaining weapons, and other equipment, and secreting them in dead-letter boxes in the major cities; meeting my foreign assets and telling them that one day I might still have a use for them; and tying up loose ends. Only two people knew what I’d been up to: my former bosses, Alistair McCulloch and Patrick Bolte, from MI6 and the CIA, respectively. They’d helped me where they could with cash and information, and covered my ass when needed. But even they didn’t know that tonight I wasn’t propping up a bar in London. I was in Hong Kong, walking through the Temple Street Night Market.
It was a tying-up-loose-ends evening.
I was observing a Chinese woman, a highly prized intelligence operative who’d spent her entire career combating the West. I was behind her, disguised as a seaman on shore for a night out after twelve months on a tanker. She was unaware of me and the threat I posed. Around us were hundreds of tourists and locals, haggling with the multitude of vendors who’d crammed central Kowloon’s most popular bazaar with stalls selling counterfeit goods, clothes, noodles, and still-twitching bottom-feeding sea life. People were shouting, opera was being sung by troupes busking for a few dollars outside stinking public toilets, and junkies were arguing with old men as they faced each other over games of Chinese chess. Few people would hear a woman scream in pain if someone killed her on the street, and no one would care. There was too much sensory overload to notice anything odd in this bustling and bruising place: people banging into each other; a heavy rain descending from the late summer sky; vast banners with Cantonese characters overhanging the street and flapping loudly in the wind; glowing Chinese lanterns suspended in the air; the smell of crustaceans, soy sauce, and burning incense; and swaths of dazzling neon light around each stall.
But there were also big chunks of darkness in the street, and that was where most people moved, their eyes transfixed by the areas of brilliant glow, like flies attracted to illuminated and electrified death traps.
Street-canny prostitutes chose to work the low-rise tenements behind the stalls. This was a place where they could do their business without being noticed.
It was also an excellent place to ply death on unwitting victims.
I increased speed as the woman picked up her pace, then stopped as my target perused a stall containing fake silks made out of rayon and powdered rhino horn that was actually a lethal combination of ground stone, fiberglass, and bamboo root. I watched the target to see if this was a deliberate stop to catch sight of me.
The target moved; I moved.
I had a knife on me. It was the best weapon for tonight. My target would be taking no chances and would almost certainly be carrying a silenced pistol or blade.
We were getting close to my kill zone.
The woman checked her watch, made a physical gesture of annoyance, and turned toward me.
Shit!
I was a mere ten feet away from her, alongside lots of men, women, and kids. I willed her not to notice me. I had a job to do, and it was one that would take the woman completely by surprise.
But she didn’t spot me amid the throngs of people. She was clearly preoccupied, pulling out her cell phone and making a call. I was close enough to hear her end of the conversation. She was instructing her partner to get his car started and pick her up in five minutes or she’d stick something sharp in his gullet.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Not if another man had his way.
For he wanted to stick his knife into her gullet.
And I was here to stop him dead.
My target walked fast toward the woman, his blade exposed. I rushed at the large Chinese man, grabbed his chin from behind, and plunged my blade into his throat. As he slumped to the ground, the Chinese woman’s shock was amplified when she saw my face.
I walked past her, muttering, “Your cover’s blown. Get out of China. Time to retire to somewhere safe.”
The Chinese intelligence officer knew me well. Years ago, I’d turned her i
nto an MI6 asset so that she could spy on her countrymen. Recently, I’d learned that her colleagues had discovered her treachery and tonight were deploying one of their best assassins to punish her. No way was I going to let that happen to such a courageous woman.
She opened her mouth to speak to me.
I didn’t stop and within seconds had vanished into the night.
And in ninety minutes I’d use an alias passport to fly back to London.
No one would know that tonight an English killer had been in China and that his real name was Will Cochrane.
FIVE
The reason Admiral Tobias Mason no longer wore a naval uniform was that five years ago he’d reached a stage in his career where he’d felt embarrassed by how he looked. He’d spent thirty-four years on water, half of them captaining U.S. warships, and frequently being the ultimate power in several thousand square miles of ocean. The problem was that this gave him too many medals on his uniform. While inspecting his massed naval ranks on a sunny parade ground five years ago, the medals had made him think he looked like a throwback military dictator.
Mason hated the idea of looking like a dictator because he was by nature a nonconformist who didn’t like uniforms. In many ways he was the antithesis of a military man; the only reason he’d run away to sea as an adolescent was because he craved adventure. Nevertheless, his superiors in the navy quickly recognized his superb intellect and passion for unconventional tactics. They promoted him, and kept telling him that one day he’d be an admiral. Mason didn’t like the flattery because he could never jettison his nonconformist mind-set, nor did he wish to. His idol was the nineteenth-century British admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane, who’d been a maverick throughout his career, improvising naval strategies that were brilliant. Cochrane tore the rulebook up and won. But he was still made to dress like a clown.
Shortly after his revelation about the uniform, the navy had asked Mason if he’d like a job on dry land that didn’t require him to wear a uniform.
As he took a seat at the long rectangular boardroom table in the subterranean White House Situation Room, the diminutive silver-haired admiral wondered, not for the first time, whether he’d made the right decision to leave the sea. Dry land sometimes felt like it had too many captains trying to sail the same ship. It seemed that way now as America’s political elite took seats around the table. They all knew Mason, though none of them really understood what he did for a living. Since he was by nature a private man, it pleased him that they didn’t know he’d been singled out for a very discreet role that required him to be the president’s confidant and to think through solutions that were beyond the intellectual capabilities of the president’s other advisers. It was a role that on paper didn’t exist.
The president walked into the room and sat at the head of the table. His chief of staff was close behind him and turned on three wall-mounted TV monitors with video links to the premiers of Britain, France, and Israel.
After formal introductions and greetings were exchanged, the Israeli prime minister dominated the first fifteen minutes of the meeting. He told everyone that a week ago a senior Hamas official had been killed by an Israeli missile strike in Gaza. Nobody in the room seemed particularly interested because Israel had announced the kill hours after it had happened. But as the Israeli premier moved on to the reason why this meeting had been summoned at such short notice, he made no attempt to hide his anger. His voice shook as he spoke about yesterday’s assassination of Israel’s ambassador to France. He spoke about how they’d gone to school together, served in the army together as young men, attended each other’s weddings, and on more than one occasion shared a drink while watching the sun go down over Tel Aviv.
Mason wasn’t watching him. Instead he was observing his American colleagues and the premiers of France and Britain. Did any of them know why they were here? Even the U.S. president hadn’t been given a clear agenda for the meeting by the Israeli premier, except that it was to discuss what happened in Paris. But Mason was sure he knew where this was headed.
He checked his watch and estimated the Israeli would drop that bombshell in three minutes. In fact, he was fifteen seconds wide of the mark. And that’s when the room became a chaotic cacophony of people trying to talk over each other, some with insincere smiles on their faces, others looking hostile and slapping their hands on the table. During the following hour, the chief of staff had to call for order seven times. The room seemed evenly split between those who were supportive of Israel’s bombshell and those who were against. Mason was the only person who was silent throughout this unproductive period of too many generals and chiefs and secretaries of this and that all trying to take control of the ship and drive it in the wrong direction. He wanted to sigh, but maintained his composed and professional demeanor while his mind raced.
The chief of staff called for order again, this time with the look of a man who’d rip anyone’s head off if they didn’t comply.
The president began asking people individually not only for their calm assessment but also whether there was a solution to this problem. All of them gave their views, and none of them had the slightest idea what to do about them. The president turned to the head of the CIA, the one man who technically would have some answers. He did, but the answers were unsubstantial and certainly not enough to placate the Israeli premier.
Finally, the U.S. president locked his gaze on Mason at the other end of the table. He asked the admiral if he had a solution.
All eyes were on Mason.
He didn’t yet speak.
Didn’t need to.
Instead he gave the tiniest of nods.
Admiral Mason was chauffeured in a bulletproof vehicle from the White House to the Pentagon. The car stopped in the secure underground parking lot; Secret Service men escorted him through the vast labyrinth of corridors to his office and returned to their vehicles. Mason entered the large oak-paneled room that he’d furnished like the captain’s quarters of an eighteenth-century man-of-war and pressed a button on his desk’s speakerphone. “I’m back. In here now. Both of you.”
Mae Bäcklund and Rob Tanner entered without knocking and sat in leather armchairs facing their boss.
Tanner was in his early twenties and had the ready charm and confidence of a man who didn’t have a care in the world. Courtesy of the Michael Anthony Salon at 661 C Street, his auburn hair was cut in a medium-length ruffle that looked asymmetrical yet was strand perfect and fashioned to exude playboy nonchalance. His suits, hand-tailored by Michael Andrews, hung gracefully on an athletic physique that carried no surplus fat because it was toned by a personal trainer. And his teeth and eyes shone, because they were fixed that way. On the surface, Tanner was a fraud. He was, after all, a trust fund baby, though unlike the majority of those who shared his financial ease in life, he had a Harvard-sharpened barrel-load of intellect. It wasn’t enough. Tanner wanted to position himself to one day have power. And real power, he understood, rested in Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. That was why he was in Mason’s shitty office, sucking up rules and regulations and pocketing a government salary that barely made a dent in the bill for a bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay fizz.
Tanner needed Mason to set him on a path where riches and cleverness would pale into insignificance compared to what could be achieved by a click of his fingers. The admiral knew that, and Tanner didn’t care, because if Mason didn’t employ him he’d have to employ someone just like him. Mason mentored Tanner, knowing that one day Tanner might try to stab him in the back. The trouble for Tanner was that nobody had ever successfully outwitted the admiral.
Mason needed his employees to have independent wealth. Those he’d previously employed had lacked that financial freedom and had quickly left to work in high-salary positions in investment banks and law firms. It had been a major irritation, because Mason required subordinates who would see out the duration of the tasks at hand. But that requirement came at a cost, and in the case of Tanner it was having to endure the yo
ung Harvard grad’s inflated ego and flippancy.
Mason had trawled Ivy League universities to find someone with Tanner’s attributes. None of them suited him, and it was only by good fortune that the young man’s résumé had landed on Mason’s desk with a Post-it note on page one stating that the guy wanted a job in government.
Bäcklund was different. She’d worked for Mason for half a decade, and had seen other employees come and go. Only she remained, because she was loyal, selfless, and adored Mason. It helped her work considerably that she was also calm, cerebral, and courageous in thought and conviction. Bäcklund was fully cognizant of the fact that Mason viewed her as the perfect counterbalance to the Machiavellian exuberance of the young bucks whom he’d handpicked to assist him. Her usefulness in countering Tanner’s excesses was no different. But that wasn’t the sole reason why Mason had hired her. Mason had been a dear friend of her father’s, so much so that her dad had asked him to be his only child’s godfather. Fourteen years ago, Mason was a ship’s captain when her dad had asked him, “Do I walk from this?”
“Admiral, you’re on your deathbed,” Mason had replied.
“I expect better precision from you, Captain.”
“Yes, sir,” Mason had said. “I’ll walk out of the hospital room. You’ll float.”
“I want angels and trumpets. Can you organize that for me?”
“I’ll try my best, my friend.”
“Want you to try harder on something—my daughter, Mae. With Patty gone, she’s all that’s left.”
“I don’t have much money, but it will always be enough to look after her.”
