by Matthew Dunn
He sat next to her on a wide chair suspended by ropes that gently rocked.
“How was work?” she asked her rocket scientist partner.
“Do you really want to know?”
Suzy laughed. “No.”
“Thought not.” It always amused him that he and Suzy could never talk about their jobs; his was so complex and specialized that one would need to be another rocket scientist to understand anything he said, and when she was with the Agency she wasn’t allowed to tell him what she did. He reckoned it was one of the reasons their marriage was so strong. They had to find other things to talk about. Plus, they were bonded by their love of their unexpected child and a passion for ballroom dancing. “I’ve got a recipe for Mexican chili con carne that I want to try out this evening. Okay with you?”
Suzy rubbed her hand over her husband’s. “That sounds good.” Since she’d left the Agency and become a full-time mom, Andrew had done everything he could to help out when he got home. He knew motherhood was tougher at age forty. Among many reasons, Suzy loved him for that. He was also a fine cook.
“The recipe says not to use ground beef. Instead, you use big chunks of braising steak. Then, at the end of cooking, you use two forks to shred the meat. You good with five chilies in the pot?”
“Why not?” She bowed her head. “Alistair was supposed to come here this afternoon. He never showed up. I baked him some cupcakes.”
“Did you tell him in advance that you’d baked for him?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
Her husband grinned. “If you had, that might have explained his decision not to visit.”
Normally, that type of comment would have made Suzy laugh. Not today.
“It would have been nice to see him, to say good-bye.”
Andrew frowned. “You okay?”
Suzy looked at the vista around their lovely Virginia home. “I heard some bad news this morning. Roger Koenig’s wife’s been murdered.”
“What?” Andrew didn’t know the Koenigs well, because they’d never been acquainted socially. Nevertheless, he’d accompanied Suzy to Roger’s funeral and had met Katy. “Do the police know why?”
“It doesn’t seem so. They’re pulling out the stops, plus the feds are all over the case because of Roger’s background. But at the moment, the killing looks random.”
“Jeez.” Andrew gripped his wife’s hand. “Sorry to hear that, hon.”
“Me too.” Suzy smiled, though she felt forlorn. “They were my boys—Patrick, Alistair, Will, Laith, and Roger. So many times, they pissed me off. But they always did the right thing by me. Honorable men.”
“You getting all mother hen on me?” Andrew hoped the comment would perk up his wife’s spirits.
It didn’t. “Probably.” She sighed. “You remember when I had to go overseas when I was pregnant?”
“With clarity. You caused me sleepless nights and never told me where you were. I still don’t know where you were.”
“It was Berlin. The boys and I shared a big apartment while they were doing their stuff in the field and I was telling them where to go.” She stroked Andrew’s hair. “I couldn’t tell you where I was because I wasn’t allowed to, plus I didn’t want you to get jealous that I was cohabiting with men.” Quickly, she added, “We had separate rooms.”
Andrew planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek. “I don’t doubt that for one second.”
“Thing is, Will Cochrane bought me a book he’d picked up at the airport. It was some self-help thing about juggling work and parenting. He gave it to me. I threw it at Laith, because I thought I was being patronized. I was wrong. At least, wrong in interpreting the boys’ intentions. They were in Berlin to spend days watching a hotel that contained a Russian hit squad. They took turns watching. Those that were off duty slept in their rooms; those that were on duty sat in the hotel lobby and elsewhere. When they were working, they took the book with them. All of them read it cover to cover and wrote notes in the margins about tips for my pregnancy. It was only when I got back to the States that I read the book and saw their handwritten notes.” She glanced back at the house. “Still got it somewhere.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it was endearing. They were like teenagers asking a girl out on a date for the first time.” Suzy cocked her head. “No, that analogy’s not right. More like big brothers who are helping their little sis buy tampons in the local store.”
“Men can get awkward about these things, but the good ones push through that feeling.”
Suzy looked back at the countryside around them.
Andrew continued holding her hand as he followed her gaze. “Going to rain tonight. We need it, though. Wash away this humidity.”
“Puts me in the mood for a drink. Want one?”
“Sure.”
Suzy entered her kitchen. Next to the stove, the cakes she’d baked for Alistair were resting on a wire rack. They were black in parts, the icing she’d dolloped on top had cracked, and the cherries she’d placed on their crowns had burned. She picked one up and tapped it against the work surface. It was rock hard. Suzy smiled, thinking that Alistair had done himself a service by not coming here and saying good-bye. She grabbed two tumblers, tossed in some ice cubes, went into the living room, and fixed gin and tonics. She took the drinks back onto the porch and sat next to her husband. She raised her glass. “To new beginnings.”
Andrew was about to join her in the toast, but hesitated. “What was it like? The CIA? We never really spoke about it.”
Suzy smiled while recalling Laith and Roger hiding out in countryside similar to this, assault rifles in their hands, listening to Suzy’s instructions on their earpieces as they waited to take down an enemy combatant in Prague. “Mostly it was just paperwork.”
“Really?” Andrew knew she was lying.
“It’s all in the past now.”
“I guess it is.” He raised his glass and followed her gaze toward the forested countryside. “New beginnings indeed. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Suzy squeezed his hand.
Andrew squeezed back while continuing to look at the scenery. He felt utter contentment. This was everything he needed. Suzy, their child, their home, peace. His thoughts returned to what he needed to do to cook his wife a well-deserved meal. He picked up his glass and said, “Got to get my apron on, hon. Are you staying out here?”
He dropped his glass and screamed as he looked at Suzy and saw she had a bullet entry point in her head. She was lifeless, her mouth wide open and an expression of surprise on her face.
She’d involuntarily squeezed her husband’s hand as a bullet had entered her brain.
Patrick’s home, in D.C., was beyond the budget of a government employee, senior or otherwise. The large 1950s five-bedroom house had four thousand square feet, three bathrooms, walls of glass, vaulted ceilings, a slate terrace, a garden that contained seasonal plantings and two koi ponds, a two-car garage, and a workshop cum wine cellar. His wife had designed the interior and exterior after they’d bought the house a few years ago. It wasn’t particularly to his taste, but it didn’t bother him. In any case, he’d taken the view that he knew shit about home stuff and therefore his wife was perfectly entitled to make the place look the way she wanted. Plus, she was a highly regarded interior designer who’d made a lot of money in the last two decades and had paid for the lion’s share of the home anyway.
There were, however, two things he really enjoyed about the location. First, the garden had steps to the trails of Rock Creek Park, where he’d often take early morning walks. Second, the other luxury homes in the street were spread apart sufficiently that none of the neighbors bothered him. When he and his wife had first viewed the property, his wife had asked him in the garden if they should buy the place. He’d picked up a stone, stood with his back against the house, and hurled the stone as far as he could to try to hit the next house on the street. After the stone had fallen short of its target, he�
�d turned to his wife and said, “Yep. The place has my vote.” Patrick liked his privacy.
His sons were now grown and had left home a few years ago. And this week his wife was in Ottawa, attending a conference for designers. That meant tonight he could eat and drink what he liked. Outside, it was dark and raining heavily. He decided he couldn’t be bothered to jump in his car and buy ready-made food from the local convenience store. Nor did he want to go through the effort of cooking something from scratch at home. Standing in the kitchen, the tall, wiry, silver-haired CIA director ordered pizza, poured himself a Scotch, discarded his suit jacket and loosened his tie, and went into the wine cellar and workshop. It was the one area of the house that his wife had told him was his to do whatever he wanted with. That suited him perfectly, because the vast basement had no windows, and he hated the amount of glass in the rooms above—the windows and glass walls made him feel that whenever he was home he was a fish in a tank, available for all to see.
Though the many tools and a large rack of Bordeaux in the cellar reinforced the two main purposes of the room, Patrick had turned one end of his man-space into a comfortable place to relax. There was a wide-screen TV, a stack of DVDs, Oriental rugs, armchairs and coffee tables, and lamps.
He sat in a chair, took a sip of his whiskey, and tried calling Cochrane from his cell again. It went straight to voice mail. Exasperated, he flicked on the TV and began scrolling through local news channels to see if there were any further developments in the investigation of Katy Koenig’s murder. There was nothing. The police had probably imposed a news blackout on the story, given the sensitivities surrounding her husband’s work.
Forty-five minutes later, he checked his watch. The pizza place he’d ordered from was always reliable and prompt. It was unlike them to be this late. He decided he’d call the pizzeria again, using the kitchen landline.
Colonel Rowe moved through Patrick’s kitchen, wearing a disposable white paper jumpsuit identical to the one he’d worn when he’d murdered Katy Koenig. He was gripping a suppressed SIG Sauer pistol. It had been his intention to use the handgun to shoot the CIA director through one of the many expanses of glass, but he’d only caught a brief glimpse of Patrick before the man had disappeared to a part of the house that had no windows. Probably that was the attic or basement. So he’d forced entry into the house to conduct the assassination at closer range.
He froze as he heard footsteps. They were very close. He readied his gun, but then the doorbell rang. He dashed to hide behind the breakfast bar in the center of the room, ducking out of sight just as Patrick appeared.
Patrick partially opened the front door until its security chain lock was at full stretch, saw the pizza guy, and opened the door.
The pizza man looked apologetic. “My moped broke down a few hundred yards from work. I had to freewheel it back and get a replacement.”
Patrick laughed while taking his pizza and then paid the guy. “There’s an extra five dollars for your trouble. Ordinarily, I’d suggest you get another job, but the trouble is, I rely on you for my dinner when my wife’s away.” He locked the door, returned to the basement, threw the pizza box onto a work surface, and grabbed a Remington pump-action shotgun from a cabinet drawer. After quickly loading the weapon’s extended magazine and placing spare cartridges in his shirt pocket, he used his cell to dial 911, then walked slowly back up the stairs.
Moments ago, when he’d come upstairs, he thought he’d seen movement out of the corner of his eye. Couldn’t be sure. But as he’d stood talking to the delivery guy, he had his wife to thank for being certain that there was an intruder in his kitchen. When it was dark outside and the lights were on, all the glass windows and walls reflected everything inside. That’s how he saw the man crouching behind the breakfast bar.
Katy’s murder, and now this. Coincidence? Patrick wasn’t buying that. And that meant he assumed the man in the house wasn’t some incompetent crackhead punk who’d broken into Patrick’s home to steal some valuables. Rightly or wrongly, he concluded that the man he was going to confront was highly trained and was Katy’s murderer.
He reached the top of the stairs, the butt of his gun planted firmly against his shoulder. He hadn’t fired the gun for a while, though he regularly cleaned its barrel and working parts; just in case he needed the weapon for a moment like this.
He thought about calling out to the intruder, warning him that he was armed. He decided, screw that. A man had broken into Patrick’s private property. And in all likelihood, he was an armed killer.
He entered the kitchen, scrutinizing its glass walls for telltale signs of the man. The intruder was no longer behind the breakfast bar or anywhere else in the room. Patrick walked into his spacious living room, moving his gun to cover the entire room. The entire outer walls of this room were glass; there was nowhere for anyone to hide. He wasn’t here. At ground level, that left a big area of the house that had once been three rooms, but had since been converted under his wife’s instructions into a single unit that she used when she worked from home. It had desks, tables containing albums of her design portfolio, sketches of house interiors on large sheets of paper attached to easels, cabinets crammed with books, photographic equipment including a camera on a tripod, and a large stereo system, which his wife used to play what she called her happy music while she was being creative.
There were archway entrances at either end of the room. Patrick came down a corridor and used one of them to enter the room.
At the far end of the hall, the intruder—head to toe in a white jumpsuit—broke cover and dashed across the workroom. Patrick fired his shotgun, the noise of the shot an immense boom, its pellets smashing through his wife’s camera stand, knocking over easels, and causing one section of the glass wall to shatter. But none of the shot hit the intruder.
Patrick fired at the area where he thought the man was taking cover—a large wooden writing desk. Shards of wood were ripped off the desk, and the spraying pellets destroyed his wife’s happy-music machine. Patrick pumped another cartridge into the gun’s breech and fired again, walking toward the desk, fearless, anger coursing through him.
The desk was five yards away.
Patrick pulled back on the pump action.
In that moment, the intruder briefly emerged from behind the desk and fired a single shot from his pistol before diving for cover again.
The bullet struck Patrick in the shoulder.
Patrick staggered back, but managed to stay on his feet. “God damn you,” he muttered between gritted teeth, his shoulder in agony.
He moved left to get a better angle on his target and blasted more of the desk to stop the intruder from firing another shot, the further pain caused by the recoil of the shot making him grimace. He wondered whether soon he’d become light-headed from the trauma. He couldn’t let that happen. Not until this was finished.
One way or the other.
He walked fast to get a clear shot of the man behind the desk.
The intruder wasn’t there.
He must have escaped through the archway leading back into the hallway.
Patrick spun around.
The killer was at the other end of the room. He’d used the outside hallway to double back and use the entrance Patrick had come through. The man in white was stock still, his handgun pointing at Patrick. The CIA officer fired his shotgun. But he was too late; the killer’s silenced round hit him in the chest, causing Patrick to fall backward and his shotgun’s discharge to hit a glass chandelier, which smashed to the floor.
Patrick breathed fast, sweat pouring over his face as he lay on his back and desperately tried to reload his magazine. The killer walked toward him. There was only time for Patrick to put one shell into the magazine and slam it back into place. His arms shook from excruciating agony as he tried to raise his shotgun and point it at the murderer. “Fuck you!” he shouted as he placed his finger on the trigger.
The killer smiled and shot Patrick in the head.
THIRTY-SIX
I’d arrived in Beirut. It was a city of memories for me. A woman I thought I loved had tried to sever my head in a house here, in which I’d discovered several decaying corpses just before her attack. Butterflies had blossomed out of chrysalises in her murdered father’s chest and had fluttered through a window into an azure Lebanese sky. I’d followed them after killing the woman I loved, but the insects were a mere glimpse of beauty and were soon gone. A Muslim cleric had stopped me on the street and asked me if I needed guidance. I was glad to be in his presence. He was selfless.
That was years ago now.
I’d like to think I’d moved on since then. In some ways I had. A killer, assassin, spy—call me what you will—is not always that person. It is a convenient label. Sometimes even the worst and best of us need simple pleasures, and I’d thought I’d reached a stage in my life where I wanted more of them.
I didn’t feel that way now, though. My friend Roger was dead, and I’d been assaulted by two men who were a lot like me. They’d know I was here because I’d flown into the country on my Richard Oaks passport. Perhaps they were watching me now.
I entered the Four Seasons Hotel and decided not to take the elevator, instead using the fire stairs to reach the second, third, and fourth floors, which I walked along in search of a hotel cleaner. When I found three of them exiting a room and placing sheets into a trolley, I asked them for directions to my room and resumed walking, once again using the stairs to reach the fifth floor.
The room was plush, but it was just another hotel room. During my years in MI6, I’d stayed in hundreds that were similar. I suppose I was privileged to have done so, but after a short while I became immune to the pleasures of such splendor. Without a partner, they are lonely places. I’d gained infinitely more joy from staying in the homes of impoverished families in Mumbai, Dar es Salaam, and Tripoli, among many other other cities. Most of them had belonged to my foreign assets. Their partners and children gave me food, sang to me in the evening, asked me about the world, lit fires to keep me warm, and placed mattresses on soil floors so that I could sleep in comfort though they did not. Ordering room service, scrolling through crap TV channels, and hitting the minibar while lounging on an immaculate hotel room bed does not compare to eating marinated lamb cooked in a clay pot in a one-room shack and served by friends. I find five-star luxury extravagant and wasteful. Amid poor families, one never finds waste, only carefully planned generosity that must always be accepted unless one wants to offend.
