He’d given the Company bad intel. Again. No one was coming to stop the ship.
Ben’s failure could not be more complete.
69
The elevator doors opened to a rooftop garden with topiaries and deep green grass. Curved glass pillars, glowing blue, lit the space and bounded a winding stone path. Giselle walked Ben down a set of steps to the first stone and backed away, allowing a pair of grunts packing MP7s to move in and check him out.
One patted him down. The other stood between Ben and the garden, hands clasped behind his back. “Arms out to the sides, Calix. You wearing a wire? Locator?”
“Maybe you haven’t heard. I’m no longer in the Director’s good graces.”
The grunt snorted. “We’ll check anyway, if you don’t mind.”
The handsy one lifted the SIG from under Ben’s sweatshirt and held it up with a thumb and forefinger like a dirty sock. “Gun.” He handed the weapon off to Giselle and kept working until he came to the slight bulge of the injector in Ben’s right front pocket. Tess’s kick. He dug the cylinder out and wiggled it before Ben’s eyes. “What’s this?”
“Antibiotics.” He wished they’d get it over with. His arms burned from holding them outstretched, muscles worn to exhaustion.
“Doesn’t look like any pill bottle I ever saw.”
Giselle intervened. “He’s telling the truth. He used the sat phone we gave him to call in a medic. That’s a Company CO2 injector.”
“Whatever.” The man finished his checks by running a wand over Ben’s front and back. “He’s clean.”
The grunt blocking Ben’s path nodded to his friend and stepped aside.
Ben let his arms fall, grateful for the relief. “What about my meds?”
Mr. Handsy slapped the cylinder into his chest. “Fat lot of good they’ll do ya.”
Ben clutched the injector in his fist and let Giselle walk him into the garden.
A man with dark hair and a Mediterranean tan rose from a patio table near the path’s end. He spread his arms, and his black Mandarin-collar suit shimmered in the light from the pillars. “Ben Calix, as I live and breathe. What a joy it is to finally see your face.” He tilted his head and pulled the other chair from the table, making room. “It’s not as pretty a face as it might have been if you’d come to see me when Hagen so politely asked, but that can be remedied. Come. Sit.”
Giselle lowered Ben into the chair and helped him lean his elbows on the tabletop’s mosaic tiles. Ben recognized a fourth member of their rooftop party standing a ways off and looking out at Norfolk over the aluminum railing—the angry New Yorker who’d bawled out the dockmaster, and probably the one who’d planted the envelope and thumb drive for Ben to find. Jupiter had executed an impressive chess strategy, and seeing the young man gave Ben the feeling of looking into his playbook. “You brought a friend. May I meet him?”
“Not now. Terrance is sulking because I didn’t invite him to the grown-ups’ table. But the truth is, I only brought him to the garden to prove a point.” Jupiter opened his palm, and Giselle gave him Ben’s stolen SIG. With barely a look to aim, he swung the weapon out and fired.
Terrance collapsed, bleeding from a hole in his temple, utter shock in his open eyes.
Jupiter waved a hand at the two grunts. “Get him off the grass.”
Ben let out a deflated breath, watching the guards drag Terrance to the elevator. “Why?”
“Zoysia grass,” Jupiter said. “Highly impressionable, like a memory foam mattress. We can’t leave him there too long.”
“I meant why did you kill him?”
Giselle giggled. “He knows what you meant, mon rêve.”
“I killed him as a show of faith,” Jupiter said, handing her the gun.
“Faith?” That word again. The young man had put his faith in his boss as Ben had put his faith in the Director. Was one side any different from the other?
Jupiter wiped his hands on a napkin and set it aside. “Terrance held a high position in my organization. With that shot, I created a vacancy. I want you to fill it.”
“You’re right. You’re showing a lot of faith in my motivations. But what if I didn’t come here for a cure and a job? What if I came to stop this attack and kill you before your disease finishes me off?”
Jupiter gasped in mock surprise. “Did you see my shocked face. Want to see it again?” He repeated the gesture, then flattened his features. “I saw the strain in your body while my men checked you for weapons. You can barely lift your arms, let alone fight.” He laughed. “Kill me? For what, some kind of perimortem catharsis? I’m not the one who wronged you. Quite the opposite. I’m offering the life the Director stole from you, and so much more.”
A slight nod brought Giselle over to pull Jupiter’s chair out for him. He walked to the rail. “I expect the Behemoth at any moment—the Clementine, as her hull paint shows now. And yes, we booked her reservation here, not Baltimore. A digital shell game.” He pointed at Norfolk’s long harbor. “There. Can you see her?”
Ben squinted, trying to focus through the blur in his eyes. Lights drifted on the horizon, a city skyline on the move. “I see her. Floating death.”
“Life, Ben. Not death. New life. Perfect control born of controlled chaos. Order created by a structured and well-planned apocalypse.” Still gazing out at the ship, Jupiter held up a pistol grip with a trigger and toggle switch for Ben to see. He flicked the switch up, and an LED on top flashed from green to red.
Ben stiffened. That thing had only one possible purpose.
Jupiter flicked the toggle down again. The light went green. “We gave the captain a manual detonation switch on the bridge, of course, but now that the ship is in range, I have full control.”
“You wouldn’t.” Ben put all the strength he could muster behind his voice. “If Giselle told me the truth in Spain, the volume CRTX you packed into Behemoth carries the explosive power of a sixty-kiloton nuke. We’re in the blast radius.”
“On the edge, actually. We might feel a hot wind and suffer a few broken windows on the lower floors, but nothing more. CRTX creates no ionizing radiation. The rest of downtown, however . . .” He flicked the switch up and down, over and over like a bad pen-clicking habit. Red, green. Red, green. A game. “I’m tempted, Ben. Half of Norfolk and Portsmouth will need new office space, including that hospital over there. And we’re standing at the top of a brand-new building. I’d make a fortune.” He stopped flicking, ending with the toggle up and the LED red—armed. His finger caressed the trigger.
“But that isn’t what you want, is it?” Ben hurried the statement, causing a fit of coughs. He held out a finger to stop Jupiter from taking any action before he managed to speak again. “A bomb even as big as this one and laced with plague is no apocalypse.”
“No,” Jupiter said, voice thick with disappointment. “This world has become too accustomed to death. A sixty-kiloton bomb and one or two cities filled with plague are not enough to overwhelm the system. Distributing the Behemoth’s tanks to recycle yards and storage lots across the nation is more elegant, and will allow the disease to strike with far, far more terror. No one will know the source. Invisible. Unstoppable.” He turned and gestured with the remote at Ben. “You see? We think alike, you and I. Visionary. You could go far with Leviathan.”
Another nod from Jupiter brought Giselle to Ben’s side. She lifted him from his chair and walked him out onto the grass.
“I appreciate that you came to me,” Jupiter said, “even though you took some prodding. The gesture means a lot. But we have a long way to go in the trust department. If you deliver, you’ll advance fast. If not—” He shot a glance at the bloodstain on the grass. “Show me your loyalty now and start this relationship off right.” Jupiter showed Ben a second device, an injector like Tess’s but with white, cloudy fluid showing through its window. “I am your cure, as I am the cure to all that ails this world. Come, Ben. Receive your first reward.”
Ben felt Giselle’s
warm whisper on his ear. “Go. You can take these last steps on your own. Kneel like a knight of old. He likes that. Then you will be healed and we can be together.” She ducked out from under his arm and eased him onward.
Ben’s every wheezing breath came shallower than the last. The city lights and the harbor merged into a muddled yellow-orange haze. He took one shaking step toward Jupiter, then another. The third step cost him the last strength in his legs and dropped him to his bad knee.
“Closer. And down on both knees, if you can,” Jupiter said, looking down at him. “It’s an older tradition, but important to me. It is a sign both to me and to my enemy of where your allegiance lies. Trust me. This act alone will show him the folly of treating good operatives like you and me as fodder for his designs. This act will hurt him, as I know we both want to do.”
“Yes. I’ll do it.” Ben bowed his head and shoulders, using the movement to hide the movements of his hand. He held Tess’s kick tightly in his palm, where it had been since the pat-down at the elevators. A touch of a button extended a three-inch needle from the injector and primed the CO2 charge.
The remote trigger, still armed, had become a red blur in Jupiter’s right hand, and the delicate antidote injector barely a shadow in his left. A promise of death and the hope of delaying disaster in one hand. A promise of the life Ben deserved in the other.
Ben fixated on the shadow. The life he deserved. Justice. He’d suffered so much injustice and answered it with so much rage. His ears rang with his own rasping voice shouting at the Director hours before. I deserve better!
The Director hadn’t answered—not then, and not now. Instead, Ben saw the Korean girl from the train. He felt her gentle fingers touching the swollen knee that now throbbed beneath him. Stop asking what you deserve, Ben. Try asking, What is my purpose?
What is my purpose?
Ben put his full weight on the bad knee, gutting through the pain to bring his leg into a better position beneath him, then plunged the kick’s needle through his own sternum, straight into his heart.
70
For the first time in days a full breath of oxygen filled Ben’s lungs, accompanied by the scorching sting of a needle stabbed into his heart. His falling blood pressure surged. Adrenaline and painkillers coursed through his system. His mind and vision cleared beyond any level he’d ever experienced. He sprang forward, going for Jupiter’s detonator.
Jupiter backed into the rail. “Shoot him!” His finger clamped down on the trigger, but Ben had him by the wrist, and he had a thumb over the toggle. As the trigger closed, Ben flipped the switch and swept Jupiter’s legs out from under him.
The LED went green.
Gunfire cracked.
The two fell sideways together.
Ben held his breath until their shoulders hit the grass. He felt something snap under his hip, heard the crunch of breaking glass. The antidote. So, that was that. In minutes, he’d be dead.
At least he’d been spared the sight of thousands dying in the explosion.
During the fall, he’d noted four rapid shots from Giselle and the guards. One slug fragged off the railing, slicing his cheek. But with the kick numbing the pain, he didn’t care.
The shock of hitting the ground had loosened Jupiter’s hold on the remote. Ben wrenched it from his hand and rolled, using his would-be boss as cover.
Jupiter writhed in his grasp. “Let . . . go.”
Ben didn’t bother answering. Out on the channel, the Behemoth continued maneuvering for its berth. He’d bought the world some time, but not much. If he could survive long enough to call in the Company—alert them to the Behemoth’s location—maybe they’d stop the cranes before they pulled the first tank clear and activated the aerosol release.
Unlikely.
With senses heightened by the kick, Ben became aware of men and women in black armor appearing over the garden walls. The elevator doors opened to reveal more grunts in suits. Jupiter had more guards. Of course. Men like him had whole armies at their disposal. Ben’s desperate play had been hopeless from the start.
Another burst of gunfire erupted across the garden. Ben hunkered down as best he could behind Jupiter and raised the remote to smash it against the concrete base of a railing post.
“Don’t!”
He froze. Ben knew that voice.
I don’t owe you a thing.
Cautiously, he lifted his head. “Sir?”
The Director walked through the topiaries, ignoring the path and tromping down the Zoysia grass, with an armored escort and dead grunts in suits lying all around. An agent at his shoulder turned and fired. Another body fell.
What was happening?
The Director reached Ben and plucked the remote from his fingers. “Smashing it might trigger the bomb, son. That’s remote device 101.” He passed the device to a waiting agent who locked it in a padded case. “I thought Hale taught you better.”
“Yes, sir . . . He did.”
Was this a dream, or was Ben dead? He replayed the last burst of gunfire. A bullet must’ve found his head. Yes. Shot through the skull before the disease could get him. Weird.
Three agents fought to pry an angry, bellowing Jupiter from Ben’s one-armed hold.
“Let him go,” the Director said. “We’ve got him now.”
Ben nodded absently and relaxed. As they stood Jupiter up, he saw blood staining the white shirt under that ridiculous Mandarin jacket—a stomach wound. Looked bad. An agent shoved an injector into Jupiter’s neck and the screaming stopped. Jupiter went limp.
Ben felt limp too. His legs refused to respond to his commands until the Director bent down and helped him to his feet. His bones ached. His cheek burned. He touched it. Blood. The bullet fragment wound. Not a dream.
I’m not dead. Not yet.
Across the lawn, an agent sat at the table with the Chinese mosaic tiles. Another kneeled beside her, treating an arm wound. She smiled at Ben from under her helmet, giving him a nod.
Ice-blue eyes. So familiar. If only he could remember why.
His thoughts failed him. With the kick fading, the fog of the disease crept back in. The blue eyes drifted away from him, and Ben followed their lead until his gaze settled on a blonde woman. He knew this one, even by the back of her head. Giselle lay facedown in the grass. No one tended to her. They all seemed busy with other things.
The Director had Ben’s whole weight now, holding him up. Ben’s muscles had nothing left. His heartbeat slowed. The kick was gone.
Not yet. He had things to say.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know, son. I know.”
“The Behemoth. There’s a manual switch for the bomb.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve been watching—listening.” The Director peeled something from Ben’s sleeve and held it close enough for his failing vision to bring it into focus. “Remember this? An echo, like the one you used in Rome. Passive. Undetectable. I planted it on you when I shoulder-bumped you at the cemetery.” He grinned. “I like to kick it old school.”
“You followed me.”
“Every step of the way. By sacrificing you, we drew Jupiter into the open. We’ve got him, Ben. And with the intelligence we extract, we’ll take down Leviathan and all the organizations tied to their operations.”
A low hum sounded from above, so much stronger than Ben’s fading pulse. A FLUTR medevac craft. The Company needed to get their wounded prisoner to a hospital before he died. Ben saw the dark shape against a darker sky—four ducted rotors, swiveling into position for a soft and stealthy landing. He smiled. “I’ve never been this close to one. For Jupiter?”
“No, son. Jupiter can take the next flight. I called this one in for you. Before you go, please understand that I’m proud of you—so very proud.”
They were the last words Ben heard.
71
Ben woke to the irritating nip of a finger flicking his nose.
“Hey, wake up.”
A hand lingered over his face,
backlit by white fluorescents, ready to flick him again.
He made a groggy swat at the target and didn’t get anywhere close. “Clara, you really have to stop that.”
She’d been there like an angel at his side since he first woke on the gurney with an IV bag of cloudy white fluid pouring into his veins, rolling across the hospital roof. He’d tilted his head back to see the FLUTR craft lifting off, already banking away. A real FLUTR medevac—like the ones the Company reserved for the brass and top-tier agents.
In the hours—maybe days—since, morphine drips and doctors with ventilators had pushed Ben in and out of consciousness. Clara still hadn’t explained where she’d been or why. He didn’t care. Not too much, anyway. She was with him, whether he deserved her or not.
“I’m going to sit you up a bit. The doctors said it would help your breathing. Can you support your weight?”
“Some. I think.” Ben pressed his hands into the mattress, surprised to feel his muscles working so well. “Yeah. I’m good. Let’s do it.”
With an electric whir, the bed tilted, and Ben scooted back into a comfortable position.
Clara adjusted his pillows, supporting his neck, and when she eased his head back again, he turned toward her, crinkling a fresh bandage on his cheek. “Amber.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Clara.”
“I mean your hair color. You didn’t go back to blue.”
“Blue was the Director’s choice, not mine. Your psych profile suggested it would mess with your head. Something about upstaging my eyes.”
Ice-blue eyes.
The morphine muddled Ben’s mind, but not as much as the disease had. He remembered ice-blue eyes under blue bangs in a French stairwell. Ice-blue eyes above a dachshund, unwelcome in Sensen’s kitchen. Ice-blue eyes under a black helmet on a garden rooftop.
Her arm.
Through the sheer sleeve of Clara’s dress shirt, Ben saw a bandage. “You were there. You’re—”
The Paris Betrayal Page 28
