The Kill Order

by Robin Burcell

  “She has to be wrong.”

  “We’ll obviously have to verify that. Sydney did a drawing. Before any of us saw the news.” He pulled the sketchbook from his bag and showed it to Marc. Sure, there was a resemblance. But who would ever suspect a man like Parker Kane?

  Marc whistled softly. “That is what you call a game changer, no?”

  “Definitely. I’m on my way to inform McNiel.”

  “Better you than me.”

  Griffin called McNiel the moment he drove out of the parking garage. “I need to see you at the office.”

  “Is there some reason whatever this is can’t be dealt with over the phone? I’m just leaving the White House and I have a couple of stops I need to make first.”

  “You’re going to want to see this.”

  “Give me half an hour.”

  ATLAS Headquarters

  McNiel was waiting in his office when Griffin arrived. “The least you could do is bring me coffee,” he told Griffin. “Tex does.”

  “Do I look like Tex?”

  “Not even close. It’s been a bad morning. So what do you have?”

  “Sydney’s sketch.” Griffin pulled out the book, flipped the cover up, then turned the pad so McNiel could see it.

  “This is who the girl saw?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brooks?”

  “Allegedly.”

  “And do we have someone in mind as a suspect, because I’m not seeing anything pop out.”

  “Parker Kane.”

  McNiel stared in disbelief. When the momentary shock apparently wore off, he said, “Okay, it resembles him, but it also resembles any number of gray-haired men in their early fifties.”

  “The girl has no idea who he is. She saw him on TV. She might be a liar and a thief, but I don’t think she could fake a reaction like that.”

  “She’s young, impressionable, and you know as well as I that you throw faces at someone, memory is fragile.”

  “Top right corner. Read Sydney’s notes. She described him to a T.”

  McNiel took the pad from him, read the notes, then set it down on his desk. “If this is Kane, and trust me, I’d like nothing better than to bring him down, I don’t think we have a snowball’s chance in hell of proving our case before he’s appointed.” He stared at the drawing for several more seconds. “Thank God we didn’t have this conversation before my meeting this morning. I ran into Kane when I was leaving the building.”

  “He knows about her?”

  “Someone forwarded the report. He knows about her, but not about her eidetic memory.”

  “What if someone tells him?”

  McNiel paused as though considering the matter. “I don’t think they will. And definitely not before his appointment is made.”

  “So what should we do about the sketch?”

  “We can’t let anyone see this. Most of all Kane. If it is him, if he was there, last thing we need is to spook him, because he’s going to see himself even if no one else does. As for the rest of the intelligence world, this does us no good. We need a solid case with irrefutable evidence. He has a lot of powerful friends in the government who wouldn’t think twice about shutting us down if they thought we were stepping out of line. We’re already close enough to the brink as it is.”

  “You think they’d go that far?”

  “Much farther,” McNiel said. “For over twenty years I’ve been searching for this man, and he’s been right in front of us. No wonder he’s slipped through our fingers every time we’ve gotten close. He’s been here. Watching us. Safe and secure that we were clueless, while he monitored our every step.” He took a breath, his gaze fixed on the sketch. “Our only saving grace these last several years was that the right hand doesn’t talk to the left, so we’ve actually managed to keep a few secrets.”

  “And we now are holding on to the one person who can ID Kane in the vicinity of a crime connected to him.”

  “Her life’s not worth a damn if he thinks she’ll be able to place him at the scene.” McNiel picked up the sketch. “If it is him, we’ve been searching for Brooks because that’s the name we’ve heard. His middle name is Bruxton. ”

  “B-R-U-X?” Griffin doubted he would have ever made the connection if not for the sketch. “I’m guessing we don’t want that spelling of Brooks mentioned outside this room.”

  “Definitely not. We have a very small and fragile window to investigate this.” He tossed the sketchbook onto his desk. “General Woodson’s right. This girl you picked up is a walking time bomb. Just not in the way we expected.”

  “One advantage. Kane doesn’t know that we have the sketch. Or that she identified him.”

  “If he has any idea that we have this . . . she’s dead.”

  “And what happens if he discovers she has a head full of numbers that he probably wants? Especially if he finds out what she’s capable of?”

  “Good point,” McNiel said. “Either way, we’re dead.”

  Donovan walked in at that moment, Griffin having called him in right after he phoned McNiel. “Pretty serious in here. Something happen while I was gone?”

  McNiel showed him the sketch. “It’s Kane.”

  “Parker Kane? Holy . . .” He sat, stared at the drawing, shaking his head. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around this.” They all were, and the three of them studied the sketch for several seconds, until Donovan broke the silence. “Okay . . . so, what’s the plan of action?”

  McNiel let out a slow breath, as though trying for some sense of calm. “This couldn’t be any worse. Here I was worried about Thorndike, when I took the lot of you from the CIA. Kane was just a pompous ass. I always thought it was a grudge thing. Sour grapes on Kane’s part, because I was given ATLAS and he wasn’t. Apparently I was wrong.”

  Griffin thought about the implications of such an appointment. ATLAS, being an entirely covert group, had a certain autonomy not afforded to other government agencies. “Imagine if Kane had been appointed instead.”

  Donovan gave a cynical laugh. “And here we thought keeping the right hand from knowing what the left is doing was a bad way of running the government.”

  “Exactly what I said,” McNiel replied. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, what about those times when we have shared? How many operations has he managed to sabotage? We have no idea what he’s been privy to.”

  “So we assume he’s been privy to a lot,” Griffin said.

  McNiel eyed the drawing. “He’s had twenty years to gain the upper hand. Twenty years of watching our every move in the investigation of W2. What better way to stop us than shut us down?”

  “You think he’ll try that?” Donovan asked.

  “It’s not only a matter of when, but how. Budget cuts? Merger? Sudden plane crash with all of us aboard? Piper saw him, and he knows we have her. He’s been threatened in a big way. His advantage is that he knows we won’t say a thing until we have proof, and the word of a twenty-year-old girl with a police record is not going to cut it. I can tell you this. Once he’s appointed, our days are numbered.”

  “Then we get to him before he gets to us.”

  “I wish it were that easy. God help us if anyone who is working with him learns we are looking into this,” McNiel said. “Therein lies our biggest problem. We don’t know who we can even bring in.”

  “We can trust Pearson.”

  “If this goes south, Pearson’s greatest advantage will be staying well away from us.”

  “Hell,” Donovan said. “We have to go public. This drawing goes out to everyone. We state who we think it is—not that it’s Parker Kane—that it’s Brooks.”

  “No,” McNiel said. “I’ve already thought of and dismissed that idea.”

  “Why? At least if something happens to us, it’s on record.”

 
“He’s had the president’s ear over the last three years, never mind where he’s worked. You’re talking decades of having a spy in the midst. What administration is going to want that to come out?”

  Donovan gave a sarcastic laugh. “Which administration hasn’t had a spy in their midst? What about Miles Cavanaugh? He was actually advising the president in security matters.”

  “Not for very long. And he’s conveniently dead, which makes it easy for the president’s office to close the book with none the wiser. This . . .” McNiel shook his head.

  “How’s this different from any other intelligence agency?” Donovan said. “There’s the FBI. They’ve had a few. Robert Hanssen. You can’t ask for a bigger intelligence disaster than that.”

  “Hanssen wasn’t bending the president’s ear. Kane is. Couple that with the Devil’s Key and the nightmare if that gets out, that we’ve had the capability to spy on every country who’s running that software. Even worse, that it’s not the SINS program at all, but the chips, which makes us all vulnerable—”

  “Maybe,” Griffin said, “we can buy some time.”

  “How?”

  “We have Sydney do a second sketch. A fake one that looks like anyone but the real suspect. If nothing else, Kane won’t know we’re looking his direction.”

  “She’s already on their radar,” McNiel replied. “I don’t think we want to draw any more attention to her. Like I said, if that is Kane in the sketch, and everything points to it being him, he knows we have Piper. He knows she saw him, and that there’s every chance she’s already told us. And he knows that’s all we’ve got, which isn’t enough. You can’t convict a man of twenty years of espionage based on the testimony of one girl unless you have twenty years of proof. And if he manages to get a copy of the Devil’s Key, he’ll have the means to eradicate twenty years of evidence no matter how condemning, and re-create enough evidence to exonerate himself.”

  “It’s that powerful?” Donovan asked.

  “So I’ve been told. Why do you think we’ve worked so hard to destroy every known copy?”

  “We’re batting zero, boss,” Donovan said. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  “Right now our best bet is to get this girl into witness protection. Get her out of here, somewhere safe, so we can regroup. As a matter of fact, call them and verify that they’re on their way. The sooner we get her where we won’t have to worry, and free up Marc and Lisette, the sooner we can go after the real threat.”

  17

  “Witness protection?” Piper suddenly lost her appetite for the pizza on her plate and stared in disbelief at Lisette.

  They were seated at the kitchen table in Lisette’s apartment. All Piper had mentioned was that she wanted a job similar to Lisette’s, so she could see Europe, maybe eat real pizza made in Italy, not the frozen stuff, and Lisette just sprang it on her.

  “Like on TV?” Piper asked. “Where they change your name and make you live in some small town without any of your friends?”

  “The key word being live.”

  “Why can’t you just find the people who did this and take care of it? Isn’t that what you guys do?” she said, looking from Lisette to Marc. “You’re secret agents. You’re supposed to be able to stop people like them.”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “It seems pretty simple to me. If your friend had called the police when I told him to, they’d probably have those guys by now.”

  “They might,” Lisette said, getting up to take her empty plate to the sink. “But the people who are after you will simply send two more. And then two more after that.”

  “I don’t believe that. I didn’t even see their faces. I saw that other guy. And he left before the murder. Why would they want me?”

  “For what’s in your head,” Marc said. “They have one goal in mind, and that is to get you to tell them, number for number, what you saw. They’ve even been known to torture—”

  Lisette took a frustrated breath. “Marc . . .”

  “She needs to know what the dangers are.”

  “Don’t you have a report to type?” she replied, then gave him a pointed look.

  “This is not something to sugarcoat.”

  “I am sure McNiel asked for that report to be finished.”

  Piper pushed her plate to the center of the table. “How? How are they going to find out about me if there’s no one there to tell them?”

  “Your prints,” Lisette said, “are all over your friend’s warehouse. The moment they learn your name—and they will if they access the police department’s records—you will be on their radar. Even if they don’t yet know about you, it’s only a matter of time before they do, and from there all too easy to discover your ability to retain entire documents in your head. Unless you can guarantee that no one knows. That no one has ever mentioned this anywhere electronically . . .” Lisette looked over at her, her brows raised. “Facebook? Twitter?”

  “This is stupid.”

  “It is what it is. Are you done? I’ll rinse your plate.”

  Piper handed it to her, then stalked over to the couch, throwing herself onto the cushions and crossing her arms. “How long will I have to stay in hiding for?”

  “We don’t know. But you won’t be alone. I promise.”

  Alone . . . Piper reached over, picked up the remote control and turned on the TV, done talking about this. Her whole life had gone wrong ever since her parents’ divorce, her mother’s spiral into drugs, her father’s heart attack that sent her and her brother into foster care. And then there was that stupid accident, when her foster father took her to see a baseball game at spring training where the line drive hit her in the head and caused this stupid eidetic memory thing to happen. Everything had sucked, all because of some stupid baseball game.

  And now this. She stared at the TV through a blur of tears, trying her hardest not to cry.

  Marc took one look at her face and said, “I should go work on that report now . . .” He grabbed his laptop from the table and carried it to the bedroom.

  Lisette eyed Piper. “You okay?”

  Piper scoffed. “Perfect,” she said, then switched the channels on the TV, finally settling on SpongeBob SquarePants.

  Lisette stood there a moment longer as if deciding whether Piper was about to do anything stupid, like run outside when she knew there were potential killers after her—right. Finally she walked toward the bathroom, saying, “Shout if you need anything.”

  A few minutes later, Piper heard the water turning on in the bathroom. The moment the steady sound changed pitch, indicating Lisette was actually in the shower, Piper glanced at the front door, wishing she had the guts to leave. The memory of Bo’s black and white Converse shoes just visible as she walked past his office that night was enough to convince her that taking off was the wrong move, even if she did know the alarm code. Whoever these people were, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, and she wondered what they would do to her once she rattled off those stupid numbers everyone was so hot to get.

  What was so damned important about them that someone was running around and killing people?

  Had to be money, she decided, getting up and walking to the window, peering out the blinds to the street below. Millions, probably. Otherwise why would anyone care? She looked around Lisette’s apartment, wondering what it would be like to live somewhere this nice, and if wherever they were going to take her would be anything similar. Well, hopefully not too similar. Judging from the lack of anything personal in the place, at least in the way of photos and the like, she had the feeling that Lisette wasn’t here much.

  Her stomach rumbled, and deciding she’d have that pizza after all, she walked over to the kitchen, then noticed Lisette’s purse and cell phone. She glanced back, saw Marc’s door closed, and heard the shower running.

>   She liked Lisette. And one thing she didn’t do was steal from someone she liked. She was curious, however, and only meant to look inside the purse. There was no gun, not that Piper expected one. Lisette wore her weapon on a holster, and as long as Piper had been there, she never left it unattended.

  The wallet was nice, soft burgundy leather, not like anything she’d ever seen in a store, and she opened it, surprised when she saw a passport. She recalled Lisette saying she was French. Piper had never been out of the country herself, and flipped through the pages, noting the different stamps. Just about every country she could think of was on there. And some she wouldn’t have thought of. A lot of visits to Italy, she noted, and the thought made her smile. She had seen the looks Marc gave Lisette when he thought Piper wasn’t looking. Different from the looks that Zachary Griffin had given the sketch artist.

  There was a sadness about that man, she thought. One that hadn’t been there before they left California. Something had changed in him. Something between him and that sketch artist, she thought, and wondered what had happened to cause it.

  She turned to the last page of the passport book, running her fingers around the edge, wondering if she’d ever be able to travel like that. See places she’d only read about in books . . .

  It wasn’t fair that because of an accident that had happened through no fault of her own—that she’d seen documents that meant nothing to her—she’d never have the chance to go anywhere. She’d be stuck in some stupid little town, where everyone dressed in stupid pastel colors, living in some stupid state she probably wouldn’t even want to visit anyway.

  Life sucked, she thought, as she slid the passport back into the wallet, then, because habits were hard to break, examined the credit cards as well as the bit of cash. Life had always sucked starting long before she’d been hit in the head with that damned baseball. That accident had only made it worse. Bo had been her first friend who didn’t look at her like a freak, and yet, when it came right down to it, he told those gunmen where to find her. And now these government agents wanted to hide her out for the rest of her life?