Authors: Matthew Dunn
He looked down at them.
Their eyes were still wide with astonishment.
And now they had grins on their faces, continuing to spit and curse.
Will ignored them as he ripped off their upper garments, exposing their blood-covered torsos. “You’re monsters.”
Augustus laughed.
Elijah’s expression was intense as he said, “And right now, what are you?”
“I don’t know.” Will walked to the door leading to the pigpen, slid back bolts, pulled the door open, and sprinted to the pit’s exit as he heard the boars charge in, their grunts replaced by shrieks of ecstasy.
When Will reached his car, he heard another sound rising over the noise of the boars.
Two men screaming.
Will drove off the road, ten miles away from Arlington, and gripped the steering wheel tight. The vehicle shuddered while it moved over rough land and into a wooded area of deserted countryside. When he was satisfied he was far enough in, he stopped the car in a clearing. From the trunk, he removed two jerricans of spare fuel he’d stolen from Sheridan’s garage, doused the gasoline over the inside and outside of the vehicle, removed the car’s gas cap so its fuel tank was exposed, and tossed an ignited Zippo lighter onto the passenger seat.
He ran fast.
In part to get away from the burning vehicle in case it exploded.
But far more important, he needed to cover ten miles on foot to finish a journey that had started in Norway.
A
lthough it was five minutes after midnight, Ed Parker had no thoughts of going upstairs to join his wife in bed. In less than two and a half hours, it would be noon in Afghanistan.
The time when Cobalt would be blown to pieces.
A defining moment in history.
The CIA director turned the TV off and rubbed his clammy face, feeling restless and impatient, willing time to move more quickly. A glass of milk, he decided, might calm him down. He went into the kitchen opened the large refrigerator door, withdrew a milk carton, shut the door, and dropped the carton.
Will Cochrane was standing before him.
His pistol held in two hands and pointing at Ed’s face.
Ed showed fear but also resignation. “Looks like you struck a deal with Marsha Gage. And in order for you to get her to agree to that, you must have told her the truth.”
Will nodded. “Sit at the table and put your hands flat over it.”
Ed did as he was told. “My wife’s asleep upstairs. Please don’t let her see anything . . . bad.”
“I won’t kill you unless I have to.” Will stood on the opposite side of the table, keeping his gun trained on Ed. “You’re Ferryman. Antaeus’s spy. And your treachery is about to trigger something that will devastate the United States.”
“I’m not . . . not Ferryman. Gregori Shonin is that man.”
“He doesn’t exist, and you know that! As far as the Agency was concerned, Ferryman was the link to Antaeus. What it didn’t know was that in truth, you were that link.”
All trace of resignation was gone from Ed’s expression and was replaced by what looked to be genuine confusion. “No, no. This can’t be right. I thought you’d come here because you’d discovered that—”
“Enough, Ed!” Catherine was standing in the entrance, pointing a handgun at Will. “Keep your mouth shut!”
But Ed spun around to face her. “What is he talking about? Shonin doesn’t exist?”
The questions made Will’s mind race. As he kept his eyes on Catherine and his gun trained on Ed, he stated, “Catherine Parker is Ferryman.”
Catherine laughed. “I don’t have to say anything. Looks to me like we’ve caught ourselves America’s Most Wanted.”
Ed stood and looked imploringly at her. “What’s going on?”
Catherine’s expression was venomous, but she stayed silent.
Things were starting to make sense to Will. “It appears, Mr. Parker, that you didn’t recruit Shonin. Your wife did, while you were both posted to Prague in 2005. I’m guessing she told you back then that Shonin would only work for her, but that didn’t matter because you could pretend to the Agency that it was you who were running Shonin.”
Ed took a step closer to Catherine, and Will let him do so. “We knew the Agency would never let Catherine run someone so important, since she’s not a trained case officer. But we also knew the wonders it would do to my career if there was some way we could keep Shonin on board. I thought you’d discovered this and that’s why you came for me tonight. Catherine, what does he mean when he says Shonin doesn’t exist?”
She remained quiet, a hostile look on her face.
So Will answered for her. “Antaeus was pretending to be Shonin. Catherine knew that from the outset, or he told her sometime thereafter when he had his hooks into her. Either way, he recruited her rather than the other way around. Your wife’s been working for Antaeus all along. She’s a Russian spy.”
Catherine placed her finger on the trigger to shoot Will, but as she did so Ed rushed at her, screaming, “Spy?”
There was no doubt it was an accident.
She didn’t mean for it to happen.
As she pulled the trigger, Ed moved in front of her, staring into her eyes with an expression of shock on his face.
Too late, she realized he was in her line of fire.
And too late, Ed lowered his gaze and saw what was happening.
Urgently, she released her finger, but the trigger was by now too far back.
Her gun fired.
She screamed and dropped her gun as Ed fell to the floor.
Tears poured out of her as she cradled her husband. “What have I done?” She looked up and didn’t care that Will had his gun on her. “Oh. Dear God, no! What have I done?” Catherine rocked back and forth while holding her dead husband.
Will rushed forward and grabbed her gun. “There’s no time for this!”
Catherine looked at her husband with tear-filled, bloodshot eyes.
“In two hours, Cobalt’s not going to be at the Afghanistan meeting. Someone else is. Who?”
Catherine looked around, desperation and misery written across her face.
“It’s all over for you now. Time’s running out!”
Catherine used the back of her sleeve to rub tears away. “The Russian deputy prime minister and the head of the United Nations. It’s a top-secret meeting. They’re trying to negotiate with the Taliban to ensure free movement of international aid into Afghanistan.”
Will nodded. “Antaeus knew about this meeting and told you to tell the Agency that Cobalt was the person going there. But Antaeus only recently found out the exact day, time, and location of the meeting.”
“Two days ago.”
“How could you do this?”
Catherine started slapping her forehead, her face screwed up. “In 2005, Antaeus discovered that I’d been unfaithful to Ed. He used that against me, seduced me. We had a brief affair.”
“And after that ended, he told you who he was and you went along with that because it gave the Parkers a chance to make it big time in the Agency.”
“That was the main reason. I told Antaeus that I wanted to get my marriage back on track, and he told me that was a good thing but we’d need all the help we could get.” She lifted her head. “Another reason was that Antaeus gave me something that Ed couldn’t.”
“A child.”
“Crystal.”
“Did Ed know?”
“He didn’t know, and Antaeus didn’t know. As far as Ed was concerned, Crystal was his. Anyway, a few months later Antaeus got married and had a child of his own. It wouldn’t have served anyone’s interests for me to share the truth. To this day, Antaeus doesn’t know he’s Crystal’s father.”
Will placed his finger over the trigger. “When the bomb drops, big time in the Agency comes to an end. You must have known that, so why agree to pass on false intelligence about Cobalt’s presence in Afghanistan?”
Catherine held her husband’s hand while smoothing her thumb over his skin and staring at him with glazed eyes. When she spoke, her voice sounded distant. “Antaeus’s strategy about reputation building. He had to make Project Ferryman an irresistible and fundamental truth to the CIA so that when Ferryman said Cobalt was in Afghanistan, the United States wouldn’t hesitate to act.”
“Colby Jellicoe, Charles Sheridan, and your husband all had their careers accelerated on intelligence fed to you by Antaeus.
Good
intelligence.”
Catherine’s voice was dead, her tears still streaming. “It
was
good intelligence—genuine Russian operations that Antaeus was willing to sell out to make Project Ferryman the Agency’s most credible and vital mission.”
Will opened his jacket and turned the radio set that was attached to his belt off Transmit and onto Transmit and Receive. Loudly, he asked, “You getting all of this?”
Out of the speaker, Marsha’s voice responded. “All of it. And the attorney general and heads of the Agency and Bureau did too. They’re witnesses, and we’ve recorded everything that’s been said. We’re calling off the drone strike right now.”
Will felt total relief. “I’ll keep Mrs. Parker here. Come and get her.” He switched the radio back onto transmit.
Catherine looked perturbed. “Prison, not death? Right now, I’d prefer the latter.”
“Not tonight. One thing that’s always interested me about Cobalt is that a lot of the intelligence pertaining to him has been Russian information that we’ve intercepted or learned about from Russian sources. I’ve got a hunch you might know something about this.”
Catherine was silent.
“Speak!”
Catherine looked at him, no terror in her eyes, instead a look that suggested her mind was disassociated from her body. “Antaeus used me to feed intelligence about Cobalt into the CIA. I’m not stupid; I thought something was odd about it all. One day I confronted him about it, told him I thought he had big lies up his sleeve. He didn’t grace me with an answer.”
“Of course not.”
“So, when he instructed me to pass on the intel about Cobalt’s location in Afghanistan, I told him no.”
“Because you suspected something was wrong with that intelligence.”
“It sounded to me like a setup. I quickly decided that Ferryman had always been about this. I’ve always worked for Antaeus because of what it could give my family. But I’ve never hated my country. On the contrary.”
Will lowered his gun because Catherine was no longer a threat. “You knew that if America dropped its bomb, the backlash from the international community would be severe. At best, America would be kicked out of the UN Security Council, made to abandon every overseas U.S. military base, and have its balls cut off to the extent that its days of being a superpower were forever dead. At worst, Russia, its allies, and countries that were previously not its allies, would go to war with the States.”
Catherine bowed her head. “It was Antaeus’s master plan. Cripple America.”
“A country you love. I’ll ask you one last time: How could you do this?”
Catherine kissed Ed’s forehead and began rocking back and forth. “When I told Antaeus about my suspicions that something was wrong with Cobalt and that I wouldn’t tell the CIA that Cobalt was going to be in Afghanistan, Antaeus looked genuinely flummoxed. But he’s clever, very clever. He asked me how my husband was faring in the spotlight of Ferryman glory. I told him the truth.” She held her husband close. “That Ed hated being overpromoted and this exposed; that he was a good man.” She started crying uncontrollably.
“If I were Antaeus, I’d have seen that as an opportunity to tell you the truth and give you and Ed a way out.”
“Seems you and Antaeus are the same man.” Catherine was shaking. “He did tell me the truth. Said he’d manipulated me to feed crap about Cobalt, but had also used other means to build Cobalt’s profile. He called them his ‘dominos’: snippets of intelligence, conversations that he knew could be eavesdropped, information placed in certain places that could be picked up by others. All of it was crafted by him. He could stand his dominos up facing the West, and with no effort he could make them topple over toward you. You see, he’d spent years planning this. Of course, it was only recently that he learned about the joint Russian-U.N. trip to Afghanistan. But he’d always believed an opportunity like that would one day come along. When it did, he had to have Cobalt right where he wanted him.”
Will nodded, because this was the final missing piece of the jigsaw.
One that had been crafted by a brilliant Russian spymaster.
“Your sole motivation to work for Antaeus was to better your family. But over time you realized the one thing you hoped for your husband was the one thing that he hated. Promotion. So, Antaeus told you the truth to change your mind about not relaying the intel about Cobalt’s Afghan meeting. And the hook was that the fallout after the bomb was dropped would destroy Ed’s career, and give you your husband back. I suppose there was an SVR retirement fund in place too.”
“Ten million dollars.”
“Where do you think Cobalt is right now?”
Catherine placed her cheek against Ed’s. “I’ve no idea. Laying low I guess.”
Will shook his head. “Wrong guess.”
Catherine frowned.
Will crouched before her and placed his hand over hers and Ed’s. He didn’t know why, because Catherine had very nearly caused untold pain. Perhaps it was because he felt sorry for all pawns manipulated by the minds of the greatest intelligence officers.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Cochrane.” Catherine’s regret was tangible.
“So am I. You knew Gregori Shonin was a myth. Thing is though, he wasn’t the only one, and you’ve been completely played for a fool. Terrorist activities that had been attributed to Cobalt were in truth atrocities that had been conducted by thousands of other terrorists. There wasn’t one man who was financing the majority of them.”
Catherine stared at him, openmouthed, shock written across her face.
Will ran a finger against her tears, stood, and threw his handgun across the room. He’d learned the truth and felt nothing but disgust that the world of espionage reduced people to winners and losers and the dead. “Cobalt doesn’t exist.”
O
ne week later, Will was wearing an orange jumpsuit, had shackles on his ankles and wrists, and was shuffling along a brightly illuminated corridor inside ADX Florence—a Federal Bureau of Prisons supermax penitentiary in Colorado. Four burly armed guards surrounded him as they led him through the part of the facility where he’d been kept for seven days in solitary confinement.
They forced him into a room that was bare of anything save a metal table and four chairs, all of which were molded to the floor to prevent them from being used as impromptu weapons. He was pushed down into one of the chairs so that he was facing the seats on the opposite side of the table. The guards took up positions in each corner of the room.
He waited for approximately twenty minutes, no one speaking, no explanation given as to why he’d been dragged out of his cell and brought here. He supposed it could be another meeting with the prison governor, who’d already told him that sometime soon he’d be moved to another high-security prison so that he didn’t have time to plan his escape, and that he’d keep being moved until a decision was made about his fate. Or it could be another tedious interview with a Bureau agent or CIA officer, wherein they’d barrage him with questions about what had happened during the last few weeks before walking out of the room and threatening to throw away the key to his cell because all he’d given them were lies, manipulation, and crap.
So he was surprised when the door opened and Marsha, Alistair, and Patrick walked in and sat opposite him.
Marsha was clutching a white envelope, and she looked considerably different than when he’d last seen her in the alley off Wisconsin Avenue. Her hair was immaculate, and she was wearing an elegant suit. It didn’t surprise him that Alistair was also nicely dressed. The MI6 controller rarely liked to be seen in public in anything less formal than a three-piece suit, topped off with a Royal Navy tie and hair that was always cut at the two-hundred-year-old Truefitt & Hill barbershop in London’s St. James’s Street. But the fact that Patrick was also wearing a suit worried Will, because the CIA officer was normally a roll-your-sleeves-up guy. He never dressed up unless something bad was about to happen and he needed to look the part.
Marsha said, “I know my colleagues have asked you the same questions countless times during the last few days, but now that I’m here in person, I’m going to ask the same things. How did you get to Canada?”
“I flew first class with British Airways.” Will smiled. “It was a lovely flight. Very peaceful.”
“You know anything about a Norwegian trawler vessel berthing and being boarded by Danish police in Denmark?”
“Why would I? Sea travel makes me queasy.”
“A downed aircraft off the coast of Nova Scotia containing a dead Russian female intelligence operative?”
Will remembered Ulana telling him that all paperwork had been approved for her to adopt a baby boy. “No.”
“If circumstances had been different, would you have killed any of the police officers you encountered in Nova Scotia, at the Canadian border crossing, or in Union Station?”
“I’m not a cop killer.”
“You shot one of them in the shoulder.”
“He was trying to stop me entering your beautiful country. I was rather displeased with that. I presume he’s recovered?”
“He’ll live.” Marsha tapped the envelope on the table. “Final question: You know anything about the deaths of Sheridan, Jellicoe, or twins called Augustus and Elijah?”
Will glanced at Alistair and Patrick before returning his gaze to Marsha. “Their deaths are a terrible tragedy.”
Alistair laughed.
Marsha did not. “All four were”—she frowned while trying to think of the right word—“
executed
in the space of a few hours, the same evening you later confronted Ed and Catherine Parker. Was that your Night of the Long Knives?”
A reference to when Nazis killed many of their German political opponents in a purge in 1934.
Will moved his hands onto the metal table, causing the chain between them to rattle against the surface and the guards to take a step toward him.
But Will held the palms of his hands up and smiled. “Now, Agent Gage: I can forgive you for accusing a gentleman like me of murder. However, tut tut: Comparing me to a Nazi? My grandfather and his brothers killed Nazis for a living.”
“I’m drawing a comparison to the event, not the personalities involved. Did you kill Sheridan, Jellicoe, and the twins?”
Will kept her gaze, his eyes unblinking. “Has Ellie Hallowes been laid to rest?”
Marsha nodded. “In a grave next to her parents. The Director of the CIA personally placed the Distinguished Intelligence Cross in Ellie’s hands before the casket was sealed.”
The Distinguished Intelligence Cross was the Agency’s highest decoration, awarded for extraordinary heroism. Only a handful of officers had received the medal since the creation of the Agency in 1947.
The act touched Will deeply, though he wondered if Ellie cared about medals. He thought about the jewelry box he’d returned to her, wishing he’d been able to place it in her hands. “You went out of your way to help me.”
“Not help you, but help get to the truth behind Ferryman.”
“Fair enough, but nevertheless it was help that you didn’t need to give and could have prompted severe repercussions against you if it hadn’t paid off. So, I’m going to give you something in return. If you choose to ask your question about the deaths of Jellicoe, Sheridan, and the twins one more time . . .”
The guards placed their hands on the butts of their pistols.
“. . . I promise you that I will answer your question truthfully.”
Patrick and Alistair frowned.
Marsha stared back at Will, oblivious to everyone else in the room. “The truth?”
“The truth.”
The room was silent. Everyone was motionless.
It seemed like minutes later that Marsha broke her gaze on Will and put her finger on the white envelope. “In here is a joint letter from the president of the United States of America and the prime minister of Canada. They’ve signed it, and it’s stamped with the seals of their offices. The letter has been witnessed and countersigned by the U.S. attorney general and the chief justice of Canada. It says that, due to your outstanding devotion to Western national security, you are pardoned of all crimes known to be committed by you in their countries. But there’s a catch. Both premiers have told me not to give the letter to you if there are other crimes you’ve committed that they don’t know about and that would need to be investigated, particularly if those crimes involve murder.”
Will nodded slowly. “I respect their position, and I respect your authority. I’m prepared to give you the truth, no matter what the consequences.”
“Why?”
Will sighed. “Because I of all people know that the truth matters. I’ve spent the last two weeks thinking about nothing else.”
All eyes were on Marsha.
Nobody spoke.
Finally, she said, “There’s only one witness to one of the incidents, and her description of the man who broke into her home doesn’t match yours.” Marsha’s eyes flickered.
Will knew Marsha didn’t believe Lindsay Sheridan’s version of events.
But she thrust the envelope across the table. “So that’s case closed as far as you’re concerned.” She looked at the guards. “Get him out of these darn shackles. This man’s saved the States from a shit storm and deserves to be treated better than this.” The guards tried to object, but Marsha barked, “Do it, or you’re messing with an executive order from the president.”
After he was liberated from his cuffs, Marsha stood and held out her hand.
Will got to his feet and placed his scarred hand in hers.
She shook his hand firmly, turned, and walked out of the room while calling out, “If you come to my jurisdiction again and cause trouble, I’ll be the first one to put you back in here.”
Will smiled.
“Sit down, Will.” Alistair intertwined his fingers and looked at the guards. “Leave us.” When the guards were gone, Alistair said, “Task Force S has been shut down. There’s no future for you in MI6 or the CIA.”
Will shrugged. “Up to a moment ago, I thought I was facing life imprisonment or the needle. Thoughts about my future career were the least of my worries.”
Alistair studied him. “Patrick and I still carry a lot of power in our agencies. Plus, no one can touch the rather healthy slush fund that we’ve tucked away for a rainy day.” He smiled at the inadvertent poetry. “You’re unemployable in the normal world, and the secret world can’t afford to lose someone of your capabilities. So here’s what we’re thinking: you become self-employed but we’re your only clients. When we want a deniable job done, we pay you one-third up front, the balance on results. But we won’t want to know how you get those results.”
“And you’ll stand in a court of law and deny any association with me if things go wrong?”
“Correct.”
Will looked around the room. “Rather strange place to be conducting a job interview.”
Alistair had a genteel smile on his face. “Will, I think this is probably the least strange thing that has happened to you.”
Will thought Alistair had a point. “Have you established how Catherine Parker communicated with Antaeus?”
Patrick answered, “We have. Cell phone calls to set up meetings. And encrypted bursts between two covert comms transmitters, for use when they couldn’t meet but intelligence needed to be relayed.”
“You got Parker’s transmitter and her key code to operate the system?”
“Yep. Doesn’t help us, though.”
“What’s going to happen to Parker?”
“Life imprisonment. No chance of parole.” Patrick sighed. “Her daughter’s been put into temporary foster care. Reckon she’ll be moved from family to family, rather than staying put somewhere permanent, ’cause not many parents want to adopt the child of a traitor.” His expression steeled. “After what he nearly pulled off, I just wish we’d got Antaeus. Maybe that’ll be the first job we give you: get the bastard.”
Will shook his head. “He was merely doing his job. In any case, last time I tried to kill him, I lost, Antaeus lost, and his family lost. Do you have a pen and paper?”
Alistair withdrew his fountain pen and a notepad. “What are you thinking?”
Will wrote carefully on a sheet of paper and put the note in front of the men. “This.”
Alistair read the note before handing the paper to Patrick, who frowned.
Will asked, “Do you think you can pull this off?”
Patrick laughed. “I’ll move heaven and earth to get this done. Will, this is brilliant.”
“I don’t care about brilliance.” Will looked at Alistair. He’d been through so much with this man, who meant more to him than just being a high-ranking colleague. Sometimes Alistair was a pain in the ass, other times a pompous mandarin whose superb intellect could think in Latin, French, Arabic, and a host of other languages; and then there were his eccentricities, including his love of falconry during his retreats to his Scottish mansion, where he fed his beloved kestrels with dead baby chicks that he, and any other foolish guest who stupidly dared to come and stay for the weekend, had to spend evenings peeling the skin off before feeding them to the birds of prey. God had broken the mold after creating Alistair.
But he was so much more than what you saw on the surface.
To Will, he was a surrogate father.
And Patrick was Will’s surrogate uncle.
Both men had served alongside his real father and were there at the end.
They’d subsequently supported his family, without Will or his sister knowing.
They were complex, tough, yet ultimately magnificent men.
Will looked at them both and felt like their child.
A kid who was all bravado and uncaring of scratches and bruises caused during his imagination-driven adventures in the forests surrounding his home. And yet one who also needed love and security.
Now that security was being taken away from him.
By men who were acting like a mother who knew the time was right to cut her apron strings.
He had to trust their judgment.