by Lee Goldberg
“Because I want to be free,” Ronnie said. “Nobody should use credit cards or expose their faces to any surveillance cameras unless you want the government and every corporation knowing about everything you’re eating, drinking, wearing, watching, and using.”
“I don’t think the government cares what cookies I’m eating,” Margo said, “or what brand of tampons I’m using.”
“They certainly do,” Mei said. “China has a database that tracks the fertility, health, employment, financial security, and marital status of every woman in the country from age fifteen on up and ranks them by their ‘breed readiness.’ Whether you’re physically fit or menstruating is important data to them. So yes, they care about your cookies and tampons. I was one of the most breed-ready women in China, by the way.”
“Of course you were,” Margo said. “And proud of it.”
“Here you go,” Ian handed the phone back to Ronnie, who looked at the list and nodded in approval.
“This is going to be fun. Anything else you need?”
“Weapons,” Ian said. “What have you got?”
“Anything you could possibly want,” Ronnie said. “Except nukes.”
Margo grinned. “Do you still have a rocket launcher?”
“After what we went through last time,” Ronnie said, “I’ve got two.”
“Last time?” Mei looked at Ronnie incredulously. “You’ve done this kind of thing before?”
“If you’re asking if we’ve ever saved our country from going down in flames and stopped the New World Order from rising up from the ashes of liberty to stomp on our bones with their jackboots of tyranny,” Ronnie said, “the answer is yes.”
“Here’s what I have in mind,” Ian said, and quickly pitched his plot as if he were in a network meeting. It took only five minutes to lay it out. “Can you do it?”
“Putting on a show is what we do every day for a living,” Ronnie said, gesturing to Ian and Mei, then looking at Margo. “But he’s asking for a lot more out of you. Our lives will be in your hands. What we need is a stone-cold killer and what we’re getting is a dog walker who sings in bars. Do you even know how to hold a rifle?”
“I’ve got hidden talents,” Margo said.
“I can vouch for that,” Mei said, catching both Ian and Margo by surprise. “She can kill and won’t hesitate to do it.”
Ronnie looked between the three of them and shook his head. “Hot damn. One of these days you’re going to have to tell me what really happened in Hong Kong. But right now, the clock is ticking. Mei and I will be back in two hours with the party favors.”
As soon as Ronnie and Mei were gone, Margo called Healy.
The director of the CIA listened to Ian lay out the Russian plot. Ian’s conclusions seemed credible to Healy, especially given the president’s claim that the recording on Edney’s show was fake and his own doubts about the Viboras being part of the foiled drug-smuggling operation.
“You may be right, but it’s not actionable,” Healy said. “It’s all conjecture.”
“The dead Russian spy on my kitchen floor sure looked real to me,” Margo said. “We can tie him directly to Gustavo Reynoso, the two murdered women in San Diego, and the dead American couple in Porto. They are all real, too.”
Healy wasn’t used to field agents arguing with him, but that was part of what made Margo special. She wasn’t a typical agent and therefore achieved unique results.
“All that is true. However, there’s no evidence that proves Edney is a spy or that any of what you’ve uncovered is tied to a Russian invasion of Belarus and Georgia,” Healy said. “We’ll investigate Edney and get more intelligence on Russia’s military buildup. But what we have now is not enough to convince the president not to order an air strike or a ground assault on Mexican soil.”
“When is the attack going to happen?” Ian asked.
The answer to that was a military secret, and sharing it with Ian Ludlow, a civilian, could qualify as an act of treason, but Healy felt it was worth the gamble.
“Noon tomorrow at the earliest,” Healy said. “Can you get the evidence in time to prevent a war?”
“We’re going to try,” Ian said. “It’s probably better if you don’t know what we’re doing. I’m not even sure that I do. I’m writing the script as I go along.”
“That’s the way it usually is in this business,” Healy said. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“I need a Russian translator who can be constantly available to us by phone between now and noon tomorrow,” Ian said. “I also need all of Edney’s contact numbers and a back door onto his network web page.”
“No problem,” Healy said. “Anything else?”
Margo spoke up. “I’d feel better if we had more firepower. Do you have a few field agents here you can spare to watch our backs?”
“Absolutely not,” Healy said.
“We’re trying to prevent two wars,” Margo said.
“Now it’s two?” Ian said. “I felt enough pressure when it was just one.”
“I think an invasion counts as war,” Margo said.
“I don’t think so,” Ian said.
“What would you call it then?” she said.
“An invasion,” he said.
“Which is war,” she said.
It was like listening to a bickering married couple, Healy thought, and about as productive.
“I can’t send backup because you’re off-the-books agents,” Healy said before their argument could continue. “Officially, you don’t exist. Besides, if whatever you’re doing goes wrong, it could put the Agency in an untenable position, legally and politically. Now we have total deniability.”
“If any of us get caught or killed,” Ian said, “the secretary will disavow any knowledge of our actions.”
“Who is the secretary?” Healy asked.
“I don’t know,” Ian said. “It’s what the boss on the recording says to Peter Graves on every episode of Mission: Impossible, right before he wishes him luck and the tape explodes.”
“This isn’t a TV show,” Healy said. “This is reality.”
“You say that like there’s still a difference.”
Considering the situation, Ludlow was right. There was really only one thing Healy could say to that.
“Good luck,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Fox Studios. West Los Angeles, California. November 14. 8:47 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
It was easily the best day of Dwight Edney’s life. He’d broken one of the biggest news stories of the century. He would be remembered as one of the greatest journalists in history because he’d broadcast the secret presidential recording that plunged America into a war with Mexico.
The war hadn’t happened yet, but Edney realized that was the Kitchen’s goal. It hit him while he was on camera, doing his fifteenth or sixteenth live interview with another network from his show’s set. He’d remembered what Rachel had said to him in the oil field.
“You’ll know it when it happens . . . The whole world will.”
Edney fumbled whatever he was saying on camera, but he quickly caught himself and continued on autopilot, parroting back the same answers he gave the previous fourteen or fifteen times. But once the interview was over, he had to take a break to think things through.
Edney left the studio and went outside to get some air and to ask himself why Russia wanted America at war with Mexico.
And then he figured that out, too. He’d played a pivotal role—no, the key role—in Russia’s first steps toward resurrecting the Soviet Union.
As a mindless puppet.
He’d had no idea what he was doing. He was essentially reading the lines he’d been given, an actor in someone else’s drama who couldn’t even be trusted with the full script.
And suddenly the greatest day of his life didn’t feel so great anymore. He was a fraud, and so was the story that guaranteed his place in American and Russian history.
It made him sick.
That was when his cell phone rang. He answered it. “Edney.”
“This is Ian Ludlow and I desperately need your help.”
Edney recognized the voice, but it didn’t make sense. One of his producers had told him Ian had died in a fire that morning. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not, and as soon as the killers find out, they will hunt me down. At best, I only have a few hours to live,” Ian said, his voice quivering with terror. “You’re the only person who can save me.”
“Why me? I humiliated you on my show.”
“Because you were right. I was a fool thinking with his dick,” Ian said. “Wang Mei used me. But it wasn’t to escape jail in China for financial crimes or to become a star in America like you thought. All of that was a cover story so she could deliver sensitive intelligence to the CIA that her father stole from the highest levels of the Chinese government. You were duped, too. She used you, and your show, to help sell her story to the CIA.”
Edney’s heart raced, like someone had just jammed a syringe into his chest and given him a hot shot of adrenaline. “She defected?”
“That’s what she wants the CIA to think,” Ian said. “But it’s a double cross. She’s actually a Chinese spy on a secret mission and I can prove it. That’s why they want me dead.”
“Who?” Edney asked.
“Chinese intelligence,” Ian said. “You’re the only one who can help me.”
Yes, he was. And it was incredible.
Five minutes ago, Edney had been a bitter fraud, a puppet who had no actual involvement in the history-making manufactured news story that he’d broken.
But now here was his chance to break another major story, one that was true, one in which he was the driving force, not an actor playing a part in the Kitchen’s contrived script. And broadcasting the startling news only hours after his last blockbuster revelation would prove to America, to the Kitchen, and to himself that Dwight Edney actually was a groundbreaking journalist for the ages.
The call was a genuine Godsend.
“What’s your evidence?” Edney said.
“The files that Mei had on the microSD card that was embedded in her thigh,” Ian said. “I copied them all.”
In her thigh?
This was great stuff.
“Come down to the studio and I’ll put you on the air,” Edney said. “We’ll unpack this story together for the American people.”
“No, no, no,” Ian said. “I can’t risk stepping out of hiding and anybody seeing my face. The Chinese have eyes and ears everywhere. They can take control of every security camera and cell phone in Los Angeles. You need to get me and take me somewhere safe.”
“There’s no place safer for you to be than in front of fifty million people,” Edney said. “They wouldn’t dare come for you on live television.”
“Come alone,” Ian said. “If you can get us back to the studio alive, I’ll reveal everything.”
“Where are you?”
“The Fashion Square Mall in Woodland Hills,” Ian said. “It’s abandoned.”
“Of course it is,” Edney said. “You’re a writer. Don’t you know that meeting in abandoned places is a cliché?”
“Because it works. It’s a huge space with lots of places for me to hide and I’ll be able to see you without you seeing me,” Ian said. “The door to the old Barnes & Noble will be unlocked. Walk through the store into the center of the mall. I’ll reveal myself when I’m satisfied it’s safe. Be here in an hour or you’ll never hear from me again.”
Ludlow hung up. Edney went straight to his car, but a thought occurred to him as he got into the driver’s seat. If Ludlow was right, and he was being pursued by Chinese assassins, then Edney was making himself a target, too.
I could get killed.
He didn’t want that to happen. Fortunately, he’d recently met someone besides his mother who specialized in death.
Shutters on the Beach. Santa Monica, California. November 14. 9:27 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Beth Wheeler was relaxing on a chaise lounge on the deck of her oceanfront suite, watching the moonlit, crashing surf and nursing a glass of white wine, when one of her two burner phones vibrated on the table beside her. Dwight Edney was the only person who had the number of that phone. The other phone was for the Kitchen.
“Central Perk,” she said.
“Very funny,” Edney said. “I need your help.”
Edney didn’t sound scared to her. He sounded excited. That worried her. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing to do with the war we just started,” he said, a smug superiority creeping into his voice. “Something new has come up.”
“I don’t work for you, Dwight.”
“Trust me, the Kitchen will be thrilled about this,” he said. “I just got a call from Ian Ludlow, the novelist who helped the actress Wang Mei get out of Hong Kong last summer. They were guests on my show. Someone tried to kill him this morning by setting his house on fire.”
She sat up, alert. She had a dozen questions, starting with:
How did Ludlow survive?
Does Edney know I tried to kill Ludlow . . . and why?
Is Ludlow playing Edney?
Is Edney playing me?
But the question that she decided to ask was far less incendiary than those and was posed with weary disinterest.
“Why should I care?”
“Because Wang Mei is a Chinese double agent sent here to trick the CIA. Ludlow can prove it and that’s why the Chinese want him dead,” Edney said. “He’s willing to tell all on my show. It will humiliate American intelligence and that’s going to thrill the Kitchen.”
That was encouraging news. It meant that Ludlow didn’t know who actually tried to kill him or that he was handing himself over to the assassins he was running away from. It also meant that Edney was still clueless about Ludlow stumbling onto the Kitchen’s operation and that she was involved in a bungled assassination attempt.
Those were very, very lucky breaks for her. And that made her very, very nervous. Luck wasn’t something she believed in.
But she didn’t have time to ponder her discomfort. She had to kill Ludlow right away and it would probably be impossible to make it look like an accident now. She also had to kill him before Edney could get him on television.
There was no way Edney would go along with that, at least not willingly. He was too self-centered to sacrifice a scoop that would make him even more famous for the good of their primary mission. She decided that the easiest thing to do would be to just put a bullet in Ludlow’s head the moment she saw him and worry about Edney’s reaction afterward.
“I still don’t see what you need me for,” she said.
“Ludlow is hiding because he’s terrified that Chinese assassins are already hunting for him again. I’m on my way to get him at an abandoned mall in Woodland Hills. I have to show up alone or he’s in the wind. I doubt the Chinese have any idea where he is, but if there are killers around, I need you to watch my back and make sure we get out alive.”
“I’m not your bodyguard,” she said.
“Maybe not, but I’m the Kitchen’s biggest asset in this country. They need me now more than ever. If Ludlow and I get killed, how do you think they’ll feel about that? Especially if it happens on your watch?” Edney said. “But if we pull this off, it’s going to be a huge win for our side. And if I mention to our friends that I couldn’t have done it without you, we’ll both be heroes.”
“We already are,” she said.
“I’m doing this with or without you,” Edney said. “Are you in or not?”
She sighed. “Where are you meeting him?”
“The Fashion Square Mall in Woodland Hills,” he said.
He was already on his way and it would take her at least forty-five minutes to get there. The timing was lousy and she didn’t like it.
“Don’t go in until I text you that I’ve arrived,” she said.
“You won’t know I’m there,” she said. “Unless there’s some killing that needs doing.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The Fashion Square Mall. Woodland Hills, California. November 14. 9:55 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Edney drove once around the mall and discovered that it wasn’t entirely abandoned. The ground floor of a former department store was temporarily occupied by the local post office and an AMC movie theater was still in business on the opposite end of the mall. The rest of the mall between those two anchors was derelict and decaying.
The post office was closed, but the movie theater drew enough cars that Edney was confident that Ludlow wouldn’t notice if Rachel showed up. Of course, that also meant that the Chinese hit squad could be around, too. Edney was glad he’d thought of calling Rachel to watch his back.
The Barnes & Noble was on the other side of the mall from the movie theater. He parked in front of the bookstore, its windows blackened and its sign long gone, leaving only the sun-scorched outline of the lettering on the filthy brick facade. A tattered banner advertising discounted Halloween costumes and decorations, a remnant from a pop-up store that had occupied the space for a few weeks, dangled above the doorway.
Edney checked his watch. It was 9:55 and still no text from Rachel. The minutes were ticking away. He’d lose Ian in five minutes if he waited for her and that was a risk he was unwilling to take.
He got out of his car, looked around the empty parking lot, and approached the front door of the store. The door opened with a rusty squeal and he stepped inside. The interior was lit by a few fluorescent ceiling lights that cast a piss-yellow glow over the black spray-painted partitions, scattered monster masks, plastic jack-o’-lantern pumpkins, and spilled candy corn left behind by the pop-up Halloween store.
Edney made his way through the store and out the back entrance to the center of the murky mall, sporadically lit by freestanding construction lamps set up in various spots throughout the vast space and powered by long lengths of extension cord.
There was something strangely postapocalyptic about walking through the abandoned mall, a place that had once been so full of people and commerce. Some of that energy lingered in the air like static electricity and he could still smell the grease that stuck to the walls from the deep-fried meals prepared in the food court.
