A Murder of Crows (42 page)

Hicks put the phone back in his pocket and laid his head against the window of the cab. It was a chilly spring evening. The cool glass dulled his growing headache. For the first time since he could remember, the Carousel of Concern in his mind had begun to slow.

Jabbar was dead. A preliminary search of her computer showed it was a treasure trove of information. Stephens had been neutralized. Schneider had fulfilled his purpose by corroborating the leak on the Weehawken black site and had also paid the price for crossing the University. His Mossad technicians were dead. The OMNI technology they’d stolen was in charred bits at the bottom of the Atlantic. The Trustees still loomed. The University was safe for now.

He hoped he’d be able to fall asleep when he got back to Twenty-Third Street. He’d need plenty of rest.

A cold war was about to heat up.

H
ICKS HAD
parked his Buick around the corner from Mark Stephens’ house. For the past half hour he had been watching the disgraced DIA operative via the OMNI satellite feed on his dashboard. Stephens had been working on the engine of a black Dodge Charger in the driveway of his garage.

The Stephens’ family home was located in a nice neighborhood in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. The house had five bedrooms, an attached garage, and a nice deck Stephens had built himself the previous summer. It even had a pool. The domicile was suburbia personified. The American Dream. It couldn’t have been more Rockwell if Stephens had built a white picket fence around the place.

But Stephens didn’t look like any of the happy people one might see in a Rockwell painting. He was wearing an old tracksuit and looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. His head and face—both normally smooth—had stubble with flecks of gray. Hicks understood why. Nobody liked to be fired, especially spies.

Especially when evidence of the leak about the Weehawken facility pointed to an anonymous account that appeared to be controlled by him.

Hicks tried to work up a little sympathy for the man whose life he’d ruined as he watched him work on his car. But sympathy had never come easy for Hicks, and it didn’t come easy now. Stephens had been warned, but had laughed at the thunder. Now he’d been burned by the lightning.

Hicks had hacked the calendar on Mrs. Stephens’ phone. He knew she would be leaving soon to take the girls to doctors’ appointments before picking up a present for her husband’s upcoming birthday. Hicks decided to wait until they’d left before he made his move. No sense in making a scene with the family around.

From his dashboard screen, Hicks watched Stephens’ five-year old twin girls run out of their house and hug their father’s legs. Stephens was careful to wipe the motor grease from his hands before he pulled them closer to them.

Even from a satellite camera high above the earth, he could see the relief the little girls brought to their father’s face. He heard their delighted squeals echo through the neighborhood. The image was beamed from thousands of miles away, but the sound was immediate.

Hicks decided to forget about Tali for the moment. He wasn’t certain she was pregnant. He wasn’t even sure if he hoped she had been lying.

He watched the dashboard screen as Mrs. Stephens give her husband a kiss on the cheek before shepherding the girls into the Honda minivan. Stephens gave them a final waive as they backed out the driveway, before he went back beneath the hood to working on his engine.

Hicks waited until the minivan was down the block and out of sight before he turned on the engine. The V-12 roared to life as he hit the gas.
Showtime.

He knew Stephens wouldn’t be glad to see him. He hoped he was smart enough to not do anything stupid. It would have been a shame to kill him. Those little girls seemed to love him so.

Hicks steered the Buick through the lazy tree lined streets of suburbia and slowly pulled into Stephens’ driveway. A presumptive move on his part, but one he hoped would show Stephens he had nothing to fear.

Stephens looked out at him from beneath the hood when the Buick pulled in and parked. He looked up when Hicks killed the engine and stepped out of the vehicle.

Hicks kept his hands up and bumped the door closed with his hip. Stephens might not be with the DIA anymore, but he was still highly trained and most likely armed.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Ace.” Hicks kept his hands up as he slowly turned in a complete circle. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not armed, and I’ve got nothing to hide. I even wore shorts so you could see I’ve got nothing on my ankle. You obviously rate pretty high with me because I fucking hate shorts.”

When he’d finished his circle, Hicks was glad to see Stephens hadn’t moved, either. But he didn’t look happy. “A man like you doesn’t need a gun to kill someone.”

“You need intent, too,” Hicks said, “and I didn’t come here to harm you, Ace. If I wanted you dead, I could’ve done it a whole lot quieter and from a lot farther away.”

Stephens checked both ends of the street. “You come alone?”

“I’m always alone.” He leaned against the hood of the Buick, as he had the last time they had seen each other. “I came here to talk. I’m going to lower my hands now if you don’t mind.”

Hicks lowered his hands as Stephens grabbed a rag and began to wipe at the motor oil on his arms. “I must be crazy for letting you stand there. The last time we talked didn’t turn out to well for either of us.”

“That was on you, Ace.”

“Yeah, no shit.” The shadow of the garage fell across Stephens’ face, but Hicks was bathed in sunlight. The sun would peak over the garage soon and be in his eyes. Hicks would be blinded, which was what he wanted Stephens to see. The reason for his visit was too important to risk a violent confrontation.

Stephens folded his arms and leaned against the side of his Charger. “I guess you got us all, didn’t you? Me, Avery, the joint task force. All of it shut down and boxed up and forgotten, especially the part about you and Bajjah. I don’t know how you did it, but you did. Fucked me over real good, too.”

Hicks saw no reason to deny or admit anything. “You flatter me, sir. Guys like you make a lot of enemies, especially in Washington. And last I heard, you didn’t get fired. You’ve been placed on leave pending the outcome of the Senate investigation.”

“Yeah, we all know how that’s going to go. This morning, the House Intelligence Committee announced they’re launching their own investigation this week. Avery and I will get blamed for overstepping our authority while the bastards who told us to go after you in the first place skate.”

Hicks had known it, too. “Avery’s a lot older than you. He’s got his pension and he’ll be allowed to retire. Fat fuck will be on his boat down in Boca this time next month.”

“His boat isn’t in Boca. It’s in Key Biscayne.”

Hicks knew Avery had bought a new boat in Boca last week in advance of his forced retirement. But he decided to let Stephens figure it out for himself. “You’ve been a good soldier in every sense of the word. And as bleak as it looks now, you still have a chance to come out way ahead of this thing.”

“Look at you being hopeful. I don’t know who you are, but I’d bet you know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Maybe in your world, Ace, but not in mine.”

Stephens stood a little straighter, examining Hicks as though he’d seen him for the first time. “All the time I spent chasing you, I never figured out who you were. I spent hours looking at your picture, trying to follow your movements, running down the shit you pulled to get Bajjah out of Philly. You look like some bum who lost his last buck at the track, but you not only kept me at bay, but you outran a semi and a Valkyrie drone and threw the entire American intelligence community into turmoil. And you still managed to find enough time to ruin my career.”

Hicks shrugged. “Maybe I did all of that and maybe I didn’t. But I’ll admit that I can do a lot of things, Mark. Things you could help with if you’re smart enough to see a good thing when it pulls into your driveway.”

Stephens laughed again. “You want to be my friend, man?”

“Why not? I’m not your enemy anymore. And if there’s anyone who ever needed a friend, it’s you.”

“Well my friends don’t get wrapped up in shootings at tourist spots in Toronto. And they sure as hell don’t have planes carrying Mossad members blown out of the sky. And don’t bother denying it. Just because I’m not in the game anymore doesn’t mean I don’t have my sources.”

Hicks smiled. “Now why on earth would I have had anything to do with such a tragedy?”

“Because guys like you have something to do with those kinds of tragedies.”

“You’re a cynical man.”

“No, but like you said, Stranger Man, I’ve been a good soldier for a long time. All I’ve got is a lot of random consequences that don’t seem to fit together, but it’s awfully strange when all the same kind of shit happens at once. I can’t prove a damned thing against you, but I guess I’m not supposed to, am I?”

Hicks avoided the question. “You’re not a soldier anymore. That part of your life is gone forever and it’s never coming back. But spending your time fiddling with an engine is a waste of fine talent. You’re out of the game now, but life doesn’t always have to be difficult.”

“Tell me how you’d make it different.”

“I could guarantee you an honorable discharge from the Army, full benefits for the rest of your life and a chance to keep doing the only job you’ve ever been good at.”

“Why?”

“Your record says you were one of the best Beekeepers in the DIA. I’m working on something where those skills would come in pretty handy.”

“Working for you? For the son of a bitch who ruined my life in the first place?” Stephens shook his head. “Now you’re talking a special kind of crazy. No thanks.”

“We all have bosses, Ace. No one says we have to like each other to get the job done.”

“No, but we have to be able to trust each other and I sure as hell don’t trust you.”

“You should. I haven’t lied to you yet, including bringing you down. I put you in this mess. And I’m the only one who can get you out of it. Sign on with me and I’ll have you discharged by the end of the week. You work for me the next day.”

“That fast? Mister, you don’t know the Army.”

“Son, you don’t know me.”

Stephens eased himself off the Charger and began walking around the garage. Hicks had seen Targets act like this before, mill around like a tiger in a cage, looking for a way out until they finally accepted they were trapped and laid down.

“Would working for you have anything to do with why you grabbed Bajjah?”

“Not directly. We’d be going after the people who paid Bajjah.”

“Jabbar?”

“Jabbar’s dead. And believe it or not, he had nothing to do with Bajjah. I’ve got all the proof you need in my car. I’ll let you see it, too, if you agree to work with me.”

“If Bajjah wasn’t working for Jabbar, who the hell was he working for?”

Hicks was glad Stephens was listening to reason. It would have been a shame to have to kill him. “How’s your Russian these days?”