Michael Walsh Bundle (28 page)

Both a reprieve and a misdirection. He was officially off the case, but unofficially on it. He had no idea whether the president or Seelye was playing him, but at this point it didn't matter. Time to get what he was coming for and get the hell out.

The screen flashed: BOT APPROACH. A real 'bot this time. A small red light began flashing, at first slowly and then with increasing rapidity. It meant that his probe had been spotted but not yet ID'ed: full red would be confirmation, but he didn't intended to wait around that long.

His fingers flew: FALSNEGS TIL MIS/ACC.

There were workarounds against even the most sophisticated 'bots. He knew, because he had developed half of them. He could feed the crawler a steady diet of false negatives, contradictory instructions that would cause it to lose valuable time sorting through the mutual impossibilities, until his mission was accomplished.

He had taken something of a risk by his blunt, frontal assault on the databases, but it would still take counterintel a while to find a single command in a nearly infinite series of code lines. But it could be done.

One more thing: SEELYE SKORZENY MILVERTON POLLY CUNNINGHAM.

The 'bot's red light was still flashing, steadily. Then—something he didn't expect.

PRIOR ACCESS DETECTED. CONT? Y/N?

Somebody else, some other fox, had been in the hen house. The one who had set the FBI team on him. Hartley's cutout: Milverton.

YES

WORKING. The fastest artificial brains in the NSA server rooms whirred. A green light popped up.

MISACC read the screen. Mission accomplished.

DOWNLOAD. A flash drive, no bigger than his thumb, blinked as it absorbed the data.

DONE.

Quickly, Devlin shut down his terminal, using an extraction route that passed him through multiple, routine, authorized identities; it would take a little longer but it would cover his tracks.

He put the thumbnail drive into his pocket. Already, however, he'd learned enough.

He was off the case, but he wasn't.

He was marked for termination. Maybe Seelye would protect him as long as he could, and maybe he wouldn't.

He had to sort this out as quickly as possible if he was to have any chance at survival.

London, the terminus for Hartley's mysterious caller.

Milverton.

Ships. Something tugged at his memory. Something Skorzeny had said at his press conference, just before the missile struck. The name of his other ship, which was…on its way to Baltimore. The
Clara Vallis
.

Weather balloons.

The
Stella Maris.

Dancing Men.

Misdirection.

The
Clara Vallis
.

Oh, Jesus.

France.

L
ONDON

It was well after midnight by the time Amanda Harrington unlocked the door to No. 4 Kensington Park Gardens. The big house yawned, silent, nearly empty. She liked it that way, which was why she had lied about the sitter.

“I'm home, darling!” she shouted up the stairs; despite what had just happened, the humiliation she felt, she tried to sound cheery, motherly. The past few days had been very difficult, with the traveling and the treatments. Sometimes she wondered whether it was worth all the trouble. And then she remembered the look in the girl's eyes, and realized that the question had answered itself.

Not for nothing was No. 4 known as one of the finest private homes in London. Backing up onto the park, with a stunning solarium parkside, four spacious, elegant floors of living space, plus a basement and an attic, it had been featured in every social and architectural magazine in Britain over the past quarter of a century. And it was hers, all hers.

The first thing she did was take a shower, to wash every trace of him off her and out of her.

She was still shaking as she wrapped herself in her bathrobe and padded into the parlor. A 1927 Hamburg Steinway was the featured attraction, along with the collection of first editions, many of them signed, by Graham Greene, T. E. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, and T. S. Elliot.

There was a bar on a side shelf near the piano, well stocked, and she poured herself a whiskey before sitting down at the keyboard. Even if she only played ten minutes a day, it was better than all the therapy in the world. She choose something from memory, one of the Brahms Op. 116 piano pieces, the soulful and autumnal A minor intermezzo, because that was the way she was feeling right now.

This couldn't go on much longer.

Amanda Harrington was thirty-nine years old, unmarried, and had lived alone since her parents died.

Her hands sank into the keys. You couldn't play Brahms by pounding the keyboard. Instead, you had to become one with it, ease into it, practically have sex with it, so that the tips of your fingers touched the strings, atomizing the keys and hammers and dampers and flanges and whatever else Cristofori had devised to come between the player and the played.

She wasn't sure if she really liked Milverton, or whatever his name really was. SAS men, she had found, rarely made good boyfriends, much less husband material, and at her age a girl had to think ahead. Especially now, in modern Britain, where the native population would be a minority in its own country in less than two generations unless the women of England stepped up to the wicket. At least she was doing her part.

Still, the more she thought about it, the more useful Milverton became. He had been freelancing, or perhaps just testing the waters, at the London Eye, but…there was always a next time.

She caught herself. Skorzeny, she was quite sure, had bugged her house, maybe even her brain. Despite what he had done for her and her daughter, there was no plumbing the depths of his malevolence.

She finished the piece and looked around the room, at the books on the bookshelves, at the names of long-dead authors who had believed in Britain, who thought its ideals would never die, who had lived, and sometimes fought and even died through the first and second Somme, and Dunkirk, and Singapore. And what had they given their lives for? New Labour? Posh and Beck? The Finsbury Park mosque?

She closed the keyboard, protectively. There was something about the purity of the ivories—ivories that were now illegal, perhaps even a hanging offense, in modern Britain. The country of Burton and Speke and Stanley, of the greatest hunters and explorers and scientists, had become a nasty little island of guilt, shame, and political correctness.

Fuck them, the sob sisters and the nancy boys and the chinless wonders who nattered about morality while they rutted with the commonest whores of the old Empire. Fuck the politicians who sold out their old constituencies in anticipation of the constituencies to come. This instrument was hers. This house was hers. The child upstairs was
hers
. She tossed back her whiskey and headed upstairs, to check on her daughter.

The girl was lying in her bed, where Amanda had left her. She didn't believe in nannies or any of that claptrap. Besides, the bindings were not too onerous and hardly left a mark.

The drugs were wearing off, but still working. Good. That made things easier, just the way the doctors had said they would.

“I'm home, darling,” she whispered, brushing the girl's fevered brow. “It's all right now.”

“Mama?” muttered the girl from her deep sleep.

“I'm here.”

“I want to go home.”

“You are home. This
is
your home. You're safe here. Safe in my arms.” How she loved her, despite all the adoption troubles.

The girl's eyes fluttered open briefly. But they were still blank stares, wide pupils, unfocused irises. The doctors had told her that this was natural, that after the shock and the trauma, it would take time. Days, a week, maybe a little more.

Amanda loosened the restraints, which were for the girl's own good. They left no visible marks. “I'm hungry,” the girl said.

“Dinner's on its way.” Thank God she had called ahead for delivery. Sometimes, without meaning to, she forgot. A lot had been going on this week. “Indian, just the way you like it.”

One of her phones buzzed. She glanced over: him. She decided not to take the call.

“Mama,” whispered the girl, “I'm scared.”

“Mummy's right here,” she said, stroking her daughter's hair.

“What happened?” said the girl, her voice still weak.

“Nothing, darling,” soothed Amanda. “Nothing.”

“There was a man. He hurt me. Then fire…” Totally normal post-traumatic stress reaction; at least that was what the shrinks had said.

“There was no man, and no fire, my darling,” she said. “It's all in your head.” She wondered if she should call Dr. Knightley, just in case a needle was needed, instead of the array of pills he had prescribed. But her soothing hand quickly had the desired calming effect, and the girl fell back asleep. Once again, the combination of Morpheus and morphine was irresistible.

The phone buzzed again. Milverton, this time. Once more, she didn't answer. Everybody had down time, even her. She'd call him back later, when she had poured herself another whiskey, when she got downstairs, when she had slipped out of her clothes and stood naked in the solarium, with all the lights out, staring into the darkness of Kensington Park, stripped bare and alone not with her thoughts, which were for sale, but with her emotions, which weren't. She might even invite him over, but she wasn't sure if she wanted another man's hands on her just now. Better to keep him on the hook, interested, pliable…useful.

Amanda rose and tiptoed away from the bed. She didn't want to risk the chance of waking the girl. The phone buzzed once more. It wasn't a call, it was a text message, from Skorzeny. She ignored it for now. The girl stirred. She must have heard the buzz. “What is it?” she said in her sleep.

“Nothing, darling,” replied Amanda.

The girl might have smiled. “Are we going home?”

“We are home,” replied Amanda. “Remember?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Never better. Now go back to sleep.”

“Good night, Mom,” said the girl.

“Good night, Emma.”

Her phone buzzed once more. She let it ring and turned on the telly. The president of the United States was announcing that he had closed down the stock and commodities markets until further notice. Betting on the bears, the Foundation had just made another 40 million pounds sterling.

Maybe, for once in her life, everything really was right with the world. Maybe she had done her job well. Maybe she had finally got her reward.

She turned off all her phones. Beeb-2 was rerunning highlights of
Beyond the Fringe
. The world could wait, for a change.

L
OS
A
NGELES

The taxi pulled into the parking lot of the Griffith Park Observatory and a woman and a boy got out. “Eddie Bartlett” had been watching them all the way up the hill, to make sure they weren't being followed, but the cab checked out and there was no tail. He put away his binoculars and sprinted down the steps from the roof to meet them at the entrance.

What he was about to do he would never have done under ordinary circumstances. But these times were hardly ordinary. Since the nightmare at the Grove, his world had been turned upside down, and he knew that for this woman, this Hope Gardner, the nightmare had started a day earlier, and had been even worse. At least Jade was going to make it.

Still, he was going to have to turn her down.

They were standing on the outside steps as he walked right past them, heading for his car. He eyeballed them both and the woman's visual matched up to her driver's license photo. He started his car and pulled around toward the front. The radio was still nattering on about the
Stella Maris
, the ship that had gone to the bottom in Long Beach Harbor. Danny didn't buy any of the bullshit story they were putting out, about how some explosive gases had reached critical mass in one of the compartmentalized holds, and had ignited with a random spark. Somebody had put that ship down, and part of him wished that he had been in on the operation. But he was still too wrapped up in his own grief. Maybe that—his grief—was why he had agreed to this meeting. To assuage his own by imbibing somebody else's.

The woman and the boy were mesmerized by the view, as all tourists were. Back in the days before smog, this had been one of the great observation posts in southern California, not Mt. Palomar caliber, but close. California must have been something back then.

“Mrs. Gardner?” he called out. She turned. “Get in, please. You in the front, Rory in the back.” They got in. He drove off quickly.

At first nobody said anything. She had already told him plenty on the phone. He knew the story, she knew the drill.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked. Brave woman—getting in a car with a total stranger. Brave him, opening up to a civilian. But he felt guilty—he had been ready to sacrifice her and the boy and now here they both were, no thanks to his judgment. He and Devlin had saved them both, but had cost Diane her life.

They were heading deep into the park, over the crest and onto the side that looked toward Glendale and Burbank. There were riding trails and golf courses and the Los Angeles Zoo on this side, but plenty of solitude as well.

There was a fire trail he knew, one of the roads the fire department used as access in case of trouble. A few years ago, there had been a big fire up here and even at a distance you could easily see which parts of the park had burned and which hadn't.

He ignored the warning sign to keep out and entered the access trail. If any cops bothered them, well, he knew all the cops from Hollywood Station. It was little more than a dirt road and the car bumped heavily. Sometimes dirtbags hid up here, kids fucked in their cars, illegals hid out, and the occasional dump job wound up under six inches of dirt. Those were the chances he had to take.

He found a clearing and parked. They were hemmed in all sides by pine trees; the only thing he could see was the sky.

“Rory, you stay inside for now,” he said, leaving the air conditioner on. It was blazing hot, still fire season, and the pine needles cracked under his feet as he and Hope got out of the car.

“All right, Mrs. Gardner,” he said. “It's your meeting.”

At first, she didn't know what he meant. That was what he got for using Hollywood-speak; even if you weren't in the Industry out here, you talked like you were. “I mean, you asked to see me.”

Hope nodded. It looked like she hadn't slept a wink in three days. “Yes. Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.” She took a deep breath. “As I said on the phone, I want to hire you.”

“And as I told you, you can't afford me,” he replied.

“I don't care. Jack had a sizable insurance policy, with a rider for accidental death, and I'm prepared to spend every penny of it if you can help me find my daughter.”

“I told you. She's probably dead.”

“Probably is not good enough for me.”

Danny kicked some dirt. “Ordinarily, I would never have taken your call. Never agreed to see you. Never would have invited you out here. But I cremated my wife this morning and…”

“We had our service yesterday,” she said, simply. “Then we got on the plane.”

“I'm sorry. Sorry for your loss, sorry for your trouble. But I don't see how I can help you. Why don't you take your kid and go home. Start over. Rebuild your life. That's what I'm going to do.”

Hope was surprised that it was so easy to hold her emotions in check. She was so much stronger than she ever would have thought, before all this happened. She had come all this way. And she wasn't about to take no for an answer.

“You're a liar,” she said. “That's not at all what you're going to do. You're never going to rest until you get revenge.”

She was uncomfortably under his skin. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I saw you chop that man's arm off…with a smile. You're a killer, so don't try to pretend otherwise.”

Danny felt his heart racing. This little woman had just rocked him back on his heels in a way no man could. “Like I said, it's your meeting.”

“The 160th. You guys are supposed to be the best.”

He looked back at the car. There was a video player built into the backseats, and he had put a movie on for Rory. “We're pretty good.”

She took that as a yes. “So's Xe, I hear.”

Danny was impressed; this lady had done her homework. “We try. We take a lot of bum raps, but whenever any Congress critter or media nitwit needs to keep his ass safe, we keep his ass safe. Not that we get any thanks for it.”

“I know she's alive.”

“I already told you—”

“I don't care. A mother knows these things…Besides—I know about the other man. And I want to hire him too.”

“What did you say? About another man?” That part she hadn't mentioned on the phone. She had his full attention now.

“The man who saved Rory's life when the bomb went off. An angel, he called himself.”

“Can Rory describe him?”

Hope was confused. “I thought you might know him.”

“I might,” said Danny. “But I need to hear from Rory first.”

“Okay.” Hope had thought to keep Rory out of this, but she realized that would be impossible. They walked back to the car. As they did, she said, “So does this mean you'll help us?”

“I haven't decided yet,” said Danny.

They got into the car, feeling relief from the heat, dry or otherwise. Danny glanced at the temperature gauge on the dashboard—well over 90. A red-flag day. “Tell me about the man you saw, Rory,” he said. “The angel.”

Rory threw his mother a look and she nodded: go ahead. “I didn't get a real good look at him,” he began. “All of a sudden, he just grabbed me and we both dove in the big trash can. I was scared—you know…”

“But he said he was an angel. What kind of angel?”

Rory shrugged. “I asked him if he was a missionary. Like in cannibals and missionaries. I like to play that game. Do you?”

Danny looked at Hope and Rory, a woman and a child. Not helpless, exactly, but as vulnerable as the missionaries to the cannibals. “Looks like I'm going to have to,” he said.

He knew what he had to do.

He had to keep them safe.

He had to help Hope find her daughter.

He had to avenge Diane and give himself and Jade something to live for.

How he was going to do all this, he had no idea. He'd already missed three calls from “Tom Powers,” but somehow he had to track him down.

“Are you in or are you out?” Hope asked him. An hour in LA and she was already speaking the local lingo.

“Let's go,” he said, slamming the car into gear and roaring down the dusty trail toward Hollywood.

Twenty minutes later they were flying down Highland Avenue. The Kodak Center was the new fresh underbelly of the entertainment beast, where the Oscars were now held, a vast, sprawling complex that took in everything from the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, west to what used to be Grauman's Chinese Theater, now owned by the Mann group. The one with the hand-and footprints.

Just before the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard, Danny turned right into the parking garage and headed to the lowest level.

There wasn't much to subterranean Los Angeles, not like New York or even Seattle, but he had a small piece of it. The Red Line ran right under the complex and where subways traveled, so also did clandestine offices flourish.

Instead of punching the button, Danny slapped an ID card up against a plate on the elevator bank. The doors opened. Then he pushed a key into the console. “Security code, please,” said an electronic woman's voice. Using the floor keys, he punched in a five-digit number. “Going down,” said the synthesized voice, even though there were no “down” floors visible.

After what seemed an eternity, the doors slowly slid open. Even three stories beneath Hollywood Boulevard, it looked like a normal office floor in anybuilding, anywhere, USA.

Danny led them down a private hallway. Hope caught a glimpse of people in some of the offices—cops, guys in suits talking quietly into telephones. He unlocked a door and ushered them into a small office. At once, Danny set to work, firing up computers, flicking switches, checking voice mails. Video screens flickered to life, audio streams came online; from a tomb, the room was suddenly alive with activity.

Furiously, he punched numbers into a keyboard, from time to time consulting old-fashioned black loose-leaf code binders, flipping through pages of what to her eye looked like gibberish. It wasn't gibberish to Danny. Every keystroke, every glance, had a purpose.

Nothing. He had mined every database, run every kind of tracking software, done a dozen concentric-circle relationship charts, and he still couldn't find out who the hell Tom Powers was, or how to contact him. One-way streets were a bitch, especially when they were blind alleys.

He was about to turn to Hope and tell her that he was sorry, that he couldn't help her after all, when suddenly Rory said—“Cool. An iPhone.”

There it was, in his bag. It had been there all along.

Fucking Skipjack.
That
was how he was going to get in touch with Powers, whether he liked it or not. Walk the dog backward…

Its contract with the U.S. government stipulated that Xe had to be ready to put a team on the ground anywhere within twenty-four hours. Sub rosa, untraceable. Just enough men to do the job, but not one more than necessary. He couldn't roll without the kind of authorization that Powers could pull, but with it, in a heartbeat, he could have a full complement of men who had served in the 160th: in, up somebody's ass, out. The Night Stalkers.

The
Stella Maris
. That had to be what “Powers” had been calling him about. Somehow, it must be related to what had happened at the Grove. And, in his grief, he had blown the assignment. Nobody could blame him for that, but—

Thank God Jade was going to make it. When he'd visited her today, she was awake, barely. Her eyes had lit up at the sight of him, and for a long time he said nothing. He just sat there, stroking his little girl's hair and telling her everything was going to be okay. He didn't say anything about Diane. He didn't know whether she knew, whether she remembered. She'd learn soon enough.

He thought of Diane and all the pain and rage and guilt and blame came flooding back. And yet, she was gone and no amount of remembrance could bring her back. It could only honor her, passively—

“Stay a little longer, Daddy,” came a weak little voice. Danny looked down at Jade and squeezed her hand.

“I'll be back as soon as I can and not one second less. And then we'll go for that chopper ride…all of us.”

But maybe it was more appropriate to honor her memory actively. Proactively.

What the hell was Powers up to? Whatever it was, it was big. Whatever had started in Edwardsville, it was time to finish it. For the sake of his family—for the sake of all their families—he had to be a part of it.

Well, that was what he had this office for. Up to now, he had abided by Powers's rules. But this was no time to stand on ceremony.

It wasn't simply a matter of a last-number call-back. Powers's contacts went through multiple cutouts. But however many there were, in the end his call would have to be vetted by the Skipjack chip embedded in Jade's iPhone, a chip that Powers himself had placed there. He could reverse-engineer the sequence, and one of those cutouts, no matter how many there were, would have to be real, and would accept the handshake from its very own mole, inside a little girl's cell phone. He had no idea how long it would take, but there was no time like the present to start.