Enemy Agents (13 page)

16

Quarrel’s next assignment was easy to find. It turned out that William Thorpe, the legendary British secret agent, was also in the USA, and also interested in Globection Corp. It was a no-brainer for Quarrel to spy on him next, using the excuse that the information he had heard from Maggie meant they were both after the same thing.

Thorpe was not what Quarrel had expected. Based on the file, Quarrel thought Thorpe would be the prototypical super-spy; all lean muscle, charm, and good looks. Instead, the Briton was carrying a bit of a spare tire under his rumpled dress shirt, his face was getting saggy, suggesting that if he worked out less he’d have jowls, and while he still had a thick head of hair it was mostly grey.

And the man drank like a fish.

Thorpe was staying in a hastily rented room in a high-rise tower across the street from GX’s New York office. This was technically office space, but it was totally empty of furniture except for a box of fluorescent light bulb tubes and a stack of drywall. Thorpe was making due with a box of high-end surveillance equipment, a cot, and a folding table that served as a well-stocked bar. An open suitcase of clothes lay against the back wall.

When he opened the door for Quarrel, Thorpe wasn’t angry at having to put up with a CIB sidekick the way the others had been, nor did he question Quarrel’s true intentions. Instead, he offered a handshake and an introduction, pointed Quarrel to the bar, and went back to the telescope he used to study the GX building.

“Got any beer?”

“No refrigerator, no beer . . . but that ice bucket’s full. Try the Irish whiskey.”

“Did Milton tell you why I wanted to come in on this?”

“You think Globection is stealing secrets; I’m after a guy whose fingerprints are on secrets stolen from Globection . . . ” The Brit looked over his shoulder at Chris, raised his martini, and smiled. “Good enough for me.”

Quarrel poured himself two fingers of the Irish and added a single ice cube from the bucket. “To catching the bad guys,” he toasted.

“God, you’re young,” scoffed Thorpe. Then he gulped down the remaining half of his martini. “But I’ll drink to any toast.” For a second there was silence between them, before Thorpe licked his lips and said, “I need a fresh martini.”

Quarrel picked up one of the two cocktail shakers—the gold one—and offered to mix the martini. Thorpe quickly stopped him. “Not that shaker, my boy. I’ve been using the silver one all day and clearly this place doesn’t have a dishwasher.” As Quarrel handed over the gold shaker, Thorpe nodded to the telescope, binoculars, and cameras set up by the window.

“Take a look. See if you have better luck
catching the bad guys
than I do.”

Quarrel was in no rush to peep in GX’s windows, since ultimately his job was not to catch GX but to figure out whether or not Thorpe was the source of the leak. But Thorpe reeked of cigarettes so Quarrel moved toward the window just to get a few feet of space between himself and the smell of nicotine. He picked up the binoculars and took another sip of the whiskey.

Sense memory took him back to the last time he’d had a drink of straight whiskey. It had been almost six months earlier, at the Christmas party in his Ottawa office. It was a strange, awkward kind of a party, where the fun was half-hearted because many of the attendees were still clocked in, and everyone was a government employee. Still, there had been a case of beer in the fridge and a makeshift bar on the side counter (a bar that was actually smaller than the one Thorpe had set up for himself in this empty office space). It had been the first, and now only, party that Quarrel ever attended with his co-workers. He was new, but not as new as Erica, who had been around only a few weeks before the party.

Sexual relationships in the office were explicitly forbidden. Not only was it a bad idea in a workplace, but among top-secret agents, “sexpionage” was a constant threat. Even outsider relationships required a security check, and relationships with people from the inside always came with serious risk. While there had been some smiles and flirtations between Chris and Erica, nothing ever came out of it, due to both parties following their agreement to not have a relationship with a fellow agent.

But there had been that shot of whiskey.

Everyone at the Christmas party was having a drink, but nursing it slowly. Nobody wanted to look unprofessional, so it was a strange vibe as everyone made idle chit-chat about their families or about shows they followed in the few hours they got to watch TV. Chris recalled how it had been Erica who pulled him away from a conversation with Scott from archives and into the kitchen. She smiled at him, a naughty we’re-gonna-be-bad grin that he could still see when he closed his eyes. For a second he thought she was going to push him against the wall and make out with him, but it wasn’t nearly so risqué. She had just wanted someone to do a shot with.

“This job is my dream and all, but this party sucks,” she had said. “And I’m the one they made go to the store to buy all this liquor that nobody’s drinking.”

Before Quarrel could object, she was pouring two shots of Jameson’s. “I figure we’re the new kids around here, so why not toast each other?” She handed him his shot glass.

“Have a merry Christmas,” said Chris.

“And a happy new year,” said Erica.

They drank.

A happy new year. She was dead by April.

They had put down the shot glasses, still facing each other, still standing close. The whiskey had given both of their faces a flush, and wincing from the whiskey had brought back a hint of Erica’s beautifully wicked smile. There had been a moment . . . (had there?) . . . a moment where Chris felt a strong desire for her. A moment where his rank was his job and her position as his subordinate fell away and he wanted to grab her, to kiss her, and to sneak away from the office together. And the longer that moment went on, the more urgently he had felt the need to act on it, until they were interrupted.

Peter Hershey walked into the kitchen, looking for a paper towel to clean up something he had spilled in the other room. He spotted the whiskey, but didn’t seem to notice Quarrel discretely taking a step away from Erica.

“Hey, at least someone’s acting like this is a party!” It was a bit forced, coming from a smarmy, insincere climber like Hershey, but then he picked up a clean shot glass, refilled the other two glasses, and offered the shots to Quarrel and Erica without much of a question about whether they wanted more. They drank the whiskey, grabbed a roll of paper towels for Hershey, and the three of them returned to the party. Somehow, Hershey had passed the paper towels back to Quarrel and he ended up wiping up Hershey’s mess while Hershey and Erica blended into the party together.

The moment had passed. That was the only time Quarrel had come close to ignoring his common sense and hooking up with his beautiful co-worker. After that, it was a nice, slightly flirty working relationship. He had never once met Erica outside of office hours other than for the occasional field-training session. Of course Hershey and Erica had ended up breaking the no-sex rules together on at least one of those field-training missions, and looking back on it Quarrel was glad for them, finding something in each other before they died.

Quarrel set his glass of whiskey on the small table in front of the window and used the binoculars to study the front entrance to Globection headquarters. It was six at night, and people were filtering out of the building, one or two at a time.

“So what are you hoping to see—someone in a window, someone going in the front door . . . ?” he asked Thorpe.

“Either works. I’m after a girl.”

“The one who, um, left you . . . ”

“—naked with a dead body in that hotel, yes. That’s the one. She’s working with someone else. Someone worse. An old assassin from the Cold War days who I would very much like to speak with.”

“So who is she?”

“Rochelle Noir, also known as Fatale. She`s a very expensive free agent. She was in the CEO’s office poking around. I staged a meeting with her, and she told me she was his assistant, which lined up with what I had seen. So I took her to bed, thought everything was going smoothly, however . . . ” Thorpe paused, pouring his martini into the glass, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip.

Quarrel finished the sentence: “ . . . She wasn’t his assistant.”

Thorpe nodded. “This was obviously the first time I`d met her, but her reputation is wonderfully twisted. A real black widow. Heard a story a few years back that Fatale escaped from a Turkish prison by seducing the warden. Got interrupted halfway through killing him. As the story goes, she ran three kilometres stark naked before she vanished into the Black Sea.”

“And you’re hoping she’ll just walk in the front door of GX’s office? Even after she knows you’re poking around”

“If you know how to spot someone without a stakeout, enlighten me.”

Quarrel shrugged, took a sip of his drink. “You got a photo?”

“Sure.” Thorpe picked up a stack of papers from the seat of the chair, flipped through it, and handed Quarrel a photo of the girl who had framed him. She had dark brown hair, beautiful cheekbones, and big, dark eyes.

“Happy new year,” said Quarrel.

“What?”

Quarrel shoved the photo into Thorpe’s face. “You sure that’s the one? This is the right photo? The girl from the other day?”

“I think I know her quite intim—”

“—Erica Gibbons.” Quarrel chugged the rest of his drink, the ice cube clinking against the glass. “Her name is Erica Gibbons.”

“You’ve met?”

“Yeah. Used to work together.” And then, with a heartbreaking realization dawning on him, Quarrel continued, “She blew up my office.”

#

Ten minutes later, Quarrel was on the phone with Milton. The idea that Erica was still alive—that Erica was the one who bombed CSIS-2—was still spinning wildly through his head. Thorpe had offered him another drink, and he’d taken it, but the world was spinning for entirely different reasons than alcohol.

Erica, who had worked in CSIS-2 for almost six months.

Erica, who had been good enough to walk into Jack Hall’s training camp without raising Hall’s suspicions.

Erica, who had lured the legendary Triple-Eight into a trap within weeks of “dying” in the Ottawa bombing.

Erica, at the office party with a grin on her face.

Erica, expertly defeating Hershey in a paintball game.

Erica, sleeping with a superior the night before the office blew up.

Erica, alive.

But she wasn’t Erica Gibbons, traitor. She was Rochelle Noir, assassin.

And then his mind started to realize the immensity of the information. There was more going on than just a double agent in CIB; there was a deliberately placed professional who had made it within the very heart of CSIS-2. Suddenly, this investigation wasn’t just about a leak; it was about a long-term, international conspiracy spanning different secret agencies at the very apex of the intelligence world. And with his mind firing off like a fireworks pinwheel, with his stomach burning from hard liquor, Chris Quarrel told Thorpe the real reason he was there. He told Thorpe about the mole, about the small list of suspects. And then Quarrel gave voice to a plan.

And William Thorpe smiled in agreement, and the plan started to form. It was simple, obvious, and wildly unpredictable. It was the tactical equivalent of throwing shit against the wall to see what would stick. But it was a plan.

Happy New Year.

“Sir, I don’t think me tailing these guys is going to accomplish much. I have a better idea.”

“Do you now?” said Milton with more than a little condescension in his voice.

“Yes, sir. We need to get you, me, and all of your suspects into a room. And we have to tell them that there’s a traitor in our midst.”

“Are you insane? You want to blow every single cover—”

“What I want is to catch the double. Sir. I can’t do it alone. I need the best, and the best just so happen to be the same people on your suspect list.”

“Quarrel, this is reckless. They’ll tear each other apart. My entire operation—”

Quarrel was getting nervous now, but he needed this gambit to work. He pushed forward, his words coming faster and angrier than he had intended. “Mr. Milton, as a member of CIB with high-level access, you yourself are not above suspicion. And if you interfere with my method of cracking this case then I’ll have no choice but to tell my suspicions about you to every single one of the contacts you’ve set me up with. How would Jack Hall take the news that you might be a terrorist? Or Agent Hinkston? Or Senator Anderson and the defence appropriations committee?”

Milton sighed loud enough for Quarrel to hear. “Kid, you were supposed to be easy to control.” Quarrel could practically see Milton slumping back into his leather chair.

Now Quarrel dropped his trump card. “I already booked the meeting. I called the other agents first. You were the last to know. I only called because I need you to bring in Jessica Swift.”