by Matthew Dunn
Laith was a heavy smoker, yet could run marathons in respectable times. And he could bench-press weights that would make a bodybuilder blush with envy. But he was a modest man, with a southern drawl, a razor-sharp mind, and a wicked sense of humor.
“Little man,” he said while cracking open another can of beer, “your legs will give you freedom. But this isn’t where it ends. One day your dick will get bigger, and for a while you’ll think it’s a mighty fine thing. It isn’t. Trust me—I’ve had three marriages, all failed. Women take your dick and at first think it’s a good thing. Then they blame it for everything. My advice to you is, keep it in your pants.”
“That’s enough, Laith.” Suzy sat on the chair next to him and handed him a homemade muffin.
Laith took a bite from it. “Jeez, woman. You cook this in a furnace?” It was rock hard.
“Andrew does most of the cooking at home.” She shrugged. “He’s a rocket scientist. He understands the science behind baking and stuff. I’m not good like that.”
But when she’d worked at the CIA, she was the Agency’s best analyst. Her ability to remember and process vast amounts of data was coupled with an ability to stay awake for days. “Andrew’s given me a cookbook. I’m trying to learn, but I guess I need to apply myself better.”
“If you want to.”
“That’s the trouble.” She grabbed Laith’s can of beer and took a swig, then handed it back. “How are your kids?”
“Good. As far as I can tell.”
“Your ex still being a bitch?”
Laith sighed. “I don’t like to think of her that way. She has her reasons, I guess—new guy in the house and all. But they’re my girls as well. I just want to be there for them. Teach them stuff. Wish she’d let me see them more often.” Laith glanced at Suzy. “Do yourself a favor. Don’t get divorced. It sucks when kids are in the equation.”
Suzy looked at her only child. She was lucky to have him at the age of forty. “You’re great with kids. Hang on in there. Camp on your daughters’ doorstep if necessary. Ignore the bitch and her latest boyfriend.”
Laith laughed; it was almost a bellow. “I thought you girls never broke ranks and spoke ill of each other.”
“Then you don’t know women. In any case, I’m a parent now. Gives you a different perspective.”
Quietly, Laith responded, “I hear you on that.”
“Are you going to Roger’s funeral?”
“Damn right.” Laith drained his beer.
Suzy asked, “Will you be wearing one of your army uniforms? I . . . don’t know much about army stuff.” Suzy was hesitant to mention Roger’s death because Laith had worked so closely with him and they’d often faced death together.
Laith placed the empty beer can by his feet. “I hadn’t thought about uniforms. But . . . I don’t think so. I never knew Roger when he was in the military. When we worked together, most times we were wearing jeans, boots, and jackets. Sometimes suits.”
“Then wear a suit. You can’t turn up to a funeral in jeans. His wife would . . .”
“Yeah, I get it.” Laith was silent for a few seconds. “What the hell was Roger thinking in Beirut? Turning his gun on the others? Just doesn’t make sense. I . . .” He stopped talking because his voice was starting to waver.
Suzy placed her hand over his. “Whatever the reason, he’s gone. We can’t change the past.”
Emotion and anger welled inside Laith, though it was not directed at Suzy. “Roger hauled me out of more shit storms than I can remember.”
“And you did the same for him.” Suzy rubbed his hand. “You going to be okay?”
Laith cleared his throat. “I want my friend back. But I know I ain’t going to get that. So, I want the way I knew him back. Don’t want him to be a murderer, or some guy who turned crazy. That’s not the guy I knew. That wasn’t Roger, full stop.”
Suzy got to her feet. “Wanna stay for dinner? Andrew’s going to be back any time now. And he can cook.”
Laith breathed in deeply to compose himself. “Nah, but thanks. Just wanted to see you’re okay.”
“Out of the section?”
“Yeah, out of the section. And, you know, since Roger’s death.”
Suzy picked up her son and said to him, “That’s enough walking for today, my adventurer. Say good-bye to Uncle Laith.”
Laith made the boy giggle by holding out his hand and then withdrawing it and making a funny face. “Stay safe, wanderer, and remember what I said about your dick.”
Suzy looked sternly at her former colleague. Her expression softened. “I worry about Will. They made him into something on the Spartan Program. How’s he going to survive on the outside?”
FOURTEEN
When I first met Roger Koenig, I probably appeared aloof to him. Then again, he came across that way to me. Some people disparagingly and crudely describe such encounters between men as pissing contests. I don’t think of them that way, certainly not in my line of work. Instead, they have real purpose: establish whether the man before you is a weak link; ascertain whether he has the strength of character to do the job under tremendous stress; forget what he says he is on paper and decide whether one day he is likely to make a mistake and you will die as a result.
But most men who work at the sharp end tend to yearn for more than that from their colleagues. Once the box has been ticked that they can do the job, we want what everyone else wants: friendship, banter, laughter, emotion, and companionship. Roger and I were no exception. We worked hard together, no doubt. He was the senior paramilitary officer in the joint CIA-MI6 task force I worked for before the unit was shut down. While I was running around the world being a spy, he’d watch over me; many times he’d stepped in and got me on my feet after someone or many persons had knocked me over. In that way, I thought of him as my big brother. A quiet type who’d nod at me as I dusted myself off, with an expression in his eyes that said he’d been where I was and the only way to learn from the experience was to keep going.
But in time there was more to our relationship than work. We often shared a drink together; he invited me to his home in Virginia, where his wife would tell me to pretend to be a zombie and chase after their twin sons in the yard while she cooked us dinner—an experience she knew I was uncomfortable with at first, but one that made her and Roger laugh; and sometimes he would make me a cup of Assam tea and sit next to me in silence.
He was a very decent man, the only man I’d worked with whom I could call friend. And Alistair had told me in Scotland that Roger had recently been to Iran and done something incredibly special for me. I couldn’t understand how someone like that could murder three foreign allies. But I had to find out. I owed him that and so much more.
The issues I faced were significant. Every case I’ve worked as an intelligence officer has started with at least one piece of information that I’ve been able to use as a hook. These hooks have ranged from the obvious, such as a man wishing to defect and spill the beans, to tiny scraps of information that have given me a chink of hope from which I created a cavern of opportunity. I’ve targeted and successfully recruited an Iranian colonel based on the hook that his teenage daughter had taken to wearing tight tops; identified and caught a traitor because he’d started smoking again; got a London-based Russian diplomat to work for me after I learned that his credit card had been declined at a clothing store; and thwarted an assassination attempt against the pope because the would-be assassin was ashamed of his addiction to porn. Like men working abattoirs, a spy’s day at work involves putting hooks into people.
But I had no hooks in this case.
Only questions and the need for key data.
My train car was empty save for a young woman who was sitting opposite me. Earlier the car had been full, but nearly everyone had alighted at the last stop. I wondered if the woman wanted to move to one of the numerous empty seats so that she could have extra space. Perhaps she was conflicted, because to move would appear rude. Either way, she�
�d have to make a decision, because the next stop was London and that was two hours away.
With every mile we traveled farther south, the outside countryside became tamer and less contoured. I decided I couldn’t look at it anymore, grabbed my newspaper off the table in front of me, and immediately tossed it back down because I’d read it cover to cover twice.
“We should have flown,” the Englishwoman on the other side of the table said. Her tone was educated.
I looked at her and smiled. It was nice of her to speak to me; no doubt she was also seeking any distraction she could get. She was a brunette, in her late twenties, with striking sapphire-colored eyes, and was wearing jeans and a sweater. “We most certainly should.”
Normally I did fly, but I’d been watching my pennies and had secured a supersaver return train ticket at a fraction of the price it would have cost me to purchase a plane ticket. It was now ironic that I was traveling so cheaply, given that I was now carrying a brown envelope stuffed with Alistair’s cash.
“After London, do you have farther to travel?”
I sighed. “Regrettably not. London’s my home.”
“Regrettably?”
“I think I’m getting too old for the city.” I thought about the nineteenth-century American novelist Herman Melville’s observation that there are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear: the city of London and the South Seas. Melville was right, and that was why I still lived in the capital.
“You don’t look that old.” Her pure white skin blushed ever so slightly.
“Well, give it time.” I didn’t want her to be embarrassed. “I’m desperate for a coffee. Fancy one? On me.”
When I returned five minutes later with two coffees I’d purchased from the buffet car, she was once again composed. I sat down while saying, “My name’s Will.”
“Mary.” She offered her hand to shake. Her fingers were bare.
I shook it. “What about you? Live in London?”
“I live and work in London. I tried commuting in for a year once, but hated the commute more than living in the city. So I moved back. It’s the only reason anyone lives in London.”
Not for retired Major Mountjoy, I thought. He lives in London so he can be close to the queen, because the former guardsman still thinks he needs to protect her. “Been north of the border?”
She blew over the surface of her coffee. “Edinburgh. My boss sent me there last night. Some paperwork needed sorting.”
“I hope your boss is grateful. That’s a long round trip. He should have put you on a plane.”
Mary laughed, glanced at me while taking a sip of her coffee, then quickly averted her gaze.
I said, “If you like, maybe we could meet for a drink sometime. I mean . . . if you’re single.”
She looked momentarily confused and didn’t respond.
I was disappointed. Because though spies don’t like mixing with other spies, the most highly attuned of us can spot another from a mile off. And that’s why I’d just asked Mary out on a date. She hadn’t expected that. But I’d expected her nonverbal response. “He sent you.”
She frowned, but I could see she knew all was lost.
“Patrick. Or Alistair. But I’m betting Patrick.”
“What are you talking . . .” She drummed her fingers on the table and looked away. “It would have been nice.”
“To go for a drink?”
She nodded and I saw a trace of emotion on her face. “When did you know?”
“I’m afraid to say, straight away.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Mary, or whatever her real name was, said, “It was Patrick.” She reached into her handbag and withdrew an A4 envelope. “The data you need.” She handed it to me. “Patrick said you wanted it urgently.”
“When I next see Patrick, I’ll tell him that it came as a great surprise to me.”
“Please don’t patronize. You saw through me.” Her voice was trembling. She walked to another car.
I felt low as I opened the envelope and began reading the contents inside.
There wasn’t much to read: a few details about Roger Koenig, statements from all of the Agency officers who’d had to force entry into Gray Site, and a grid reference giving the precise location of the complex. My heart sank. This scant data was all Patrick could get his hands on. The chances of its being helpful to me were zero.
Dickie had stories to tell—standing next to his broken-down tank in the Middle East while an Iraqi soldier tried to kill him; previously serving in the SAS and countering communist insurgents in Oman; growing long hair and a handlebar mustache to be an undercover state-sponsored hit man in 1970s IRA-ridden Ireland; and single-handedly storming an Argentinian machine gun post in the Falkland Islands. His stories were headline-grabbing tales.
But I was equally intrigued by the tales my two other neighbors had told me about themselves. Among those tales, David the mortician had once started using a scalpel to try to make a dead man’s face look better, but had stopped when the man screamed. Phoebe had once made a skimpy dress out of candy to officiate over the pretentious opening of her London art gallery’s latest show, only for the confectionery to melt under the heat of the gallery’s spot lamps and for her to be rushed to the hospital with minor burns and major embarrassment.
They’d only been dating for the last few months, and made for the most unlikely couple. David liked jazz and cooking, had a flabby physique, and wore scruffy clothes. Phoebe was into provocative fashion, any alcoholic drink with bubbles, and Chinese takeout, and her ideal night out was ringside at a middleweight boxing match. But somehow they worked. David calmed Phoebe’s excesses; Phoebe showed David that there’s more to life than death.
Today they were in my apartment. They often popped up to see me after I returned from my travels. On this occasion David wanted to know whether I’d brought him back a salmon to poach, and Phoebe wanted to know if I’d met a nice Scottish lass who could move in with me and she could be best friends with. They were nonchalant when I disappointed them on both fronts, because I’d told them that not all was bad news. I’d secured temporary work overseas, political advisory work for an NGO charity, I lied. I added the truth that I’d be leaving tonight.
David took this as a signal to go to my kitchen and start preparing me sandwiches and other snacks for my journey. I swear, in another life David must have been a farmer’s wife and mother of six children who spent most of her waking hours ensuring her family was well fed.
His girlfriend remained with me in my living room. Though she’s not my type, I love Phoebe—she is the epitome of a good-time girl who doesn’t give a hoot about anything remotely serious. And heavens above, she’s all woman and shows it. Sometimes I don’t know where to put my eyes when in her presence. Today was such an occasion. She was wearing the tiniest red figure-hugging dress and platforms, and her long black hair flowed down her naked back. All tits and ass, Dickie Mountjoy often inappropriately said of her, though, like me, he had a genuine soft spot for her because she had a heart of gold and could stand her ground against anyone.
“Darling.” Her eyes were penetrating and she struck a sexy pose. “While you’re away, I want you to put some serious thought into how you’re going to find a wife. When you get back, I’m expecting you to put those plans into action.”
“How?” I asked, feeling cornered. All Phoebe needed was a riding crop to finish off the image of a dominatrix.
“You’re a spy, for God’s sake. Identify someone you like, target her, make her do things she doesn’t want to do.”
“Like marry me?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound terribly romantic.”
Phoebe leaned forward in her low-cut dress and rested her elbows on my sofa. I wished she hadn’t. “Take her out to dinner and—”
“Just be myself?”
Phoebe pretended to look shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll never fin
d a wife if you do that.”
“You’re not helping, Phoebe.” I wanted David back in here.
Phoebe winked at me. “You’ve had female acquaintances in the past.”
“Most of them were killed.”
“Next time, be nicer.”
“I don’t mean killed by me!”
“I know, naughty boy.” She stood; I was relieved. Then she placed one leg forward, revealing the top of her stocking, and all relief abated. “Perhaps you’re a lost cause.”
Long ago, I’d come to the same conclusion.
She grabbed my hand, her expression now earnest. “Where are you really going?”
I said nothing for five seconds. “You’ll keep an eye on the major? His club’s being refurbished, so . . .”
“We’ll look after Dickie.” She squeezed my fingers. “Who’s going to look after you?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“When you’re working, yes. But when you’re not?”
I shrugged. “I can take care of myself then, as well.”
“I know. And that’s your problem.”
Thirty-six hundred miles away, Admiral Tobias Mason summoned Mae Bäcklund and Rob Tanner into his oak-paneled office in the Pentagon. As they walked in, Tanner was twirling his pen around his fingers as if he were a majorette. The admiral, sitting behind his large, leather-topped wooden desk, had allowed himself the informality of working without his suit jacket, but otherwise he was dressed sharp: crisp white French-cuffed shirt, silk tie fixed in place with a Windsor knot, immaculately pressed navy blue suit trousers, and black shoes that were polished to the standards of parade grounds.
His employees sat in armchairs. As ever, Mae Bäcklund looked respectful of her boss. Rob Tanner did not.
The admiral stated, “This evening, I will be dining with the First Lady.”
“She has the hots for you?” asked Tanner.
