The End Game (19 page)

“Len. Don’t.”

He just shrugged. “Don’t what?”

“Think about what you’re doing. They’ll never let you live.”

“Shut up.” Beyond the tension and the anger in his voice, I detected some fear, like he wasn’t totally comfortable with what he was about to do.

It was an opening, a vein to mine.

“They’ll own you,” I pressed. “And when they don’t need you anymore, they’ll put you down. You know that, right?”

He didn’t want to hear that. Instead, he shoved the gun in my face. “Enough. Call your bitch, get her back here.”

“Len—”

“Call her.”

I held his glare for a second, then said, “Go screw yourself.”

He grabbed my jacket and pulled me to my feet, looping his left arm around my neck, his right hand holding the gun to my head.

“Tess!” he bellowed. “I know you can hear me. You have five seconds to join us.” He started counting down them down, loudly.

I heard the faintest sound behind me. Lendowski was still counting, so I hoped he hadn’t heard it. Maybe Tess was working her way around us.

I yelled as loud as I could to give her cover, “Don’t! He’ll kill us both, get out of here—”

Then I heard the crunch of her feet, and Lendowski must have heard them too, and in the moment he tried to decide what to do, something slammed into the back of his head, a rock or a branch—I couldn’t tell. All I felt was the side of his skull bouncing off the back of mine, but he managed to stay on his feet. Down, but not out, he was already spinning around and taking aim at the trees, his left arm still choking me.

I shouted, “Stay down!” as I drove my right elbow as hard as I could into Lendowski’s side, then wrapped my right leg around his and pushed him over, bringing us both down.

As we hit the ground, his left arm loosened enough for me to roll to my right, trapping his right arm flat so that he couldn’t fire the gun.

“Tess! Run! Now!”

I thought I heard her take off as I balled up my left fist and slammed it against Lendowski’s right wrist. His grip on the gun loosened, and it fell away. I tried to grab the gun as I simultaneously rolled off him, but he landed a barrage of vicious blows to my midsection with his left before dragging me back from the gun, kicking me in the gut, and wrapping both hands around my neck.

I knew he was far stronger than me and would probably be able to take anything I threw at him, especially with him knowing I was weakening by the second, so I put every ounce of strength I had left into forcing myself upright so Lendowski didn’t have gravity to help him.

Kneeling on the frozen ground, Lendowski behind me, his thumbs digging into the back of my neck, I hoped that Tess was using the time to get back to her car and away.

I could feel myself starting to slip into unconsciousness—a state I had spent far too much time skirting in the past few days. I had to fight it with the idea of needing to ensure Tess, Kim and Alex were safe. But I couldn’t. His grip was too strong, and I was helpless. As I started to fall into a deep ocean of inky blackness, I thought about my dad. Maybe I’d find him. Ask him face-to-face what drove him to take his own life, when every cell of my body still wanted to live.

A loud sound reverberated through the dark water, turning everything upside down.

Suddenly the water was thinner. Lighter.

I was no longer sinking fast, but rushing toward the surface.

I felt the cold air against my face as I burst back into consciousness.

Tess was standing over Lendowski, the gun in her right hand, her whole body shaking with shock.

Lendowski lay on his side, stone cold dead. A big chunk was missing from the side of his skull. The blood oozing from the gaping hole appeared black against the dirty snow, spreading in slow motion as it seeped into it.

I pulled myself to standing, covered the ground to him, and pulled his gun from its holster and tucked it into my pants. Then I moved to Tess, put an arm around her and gently eased the gun from her grasp. She was shaking, a lot, her faraway gaze locked on Lendowski.

“Tess. Tess. Listen to me. It’s going to be OK.”

She didn’t answer. She just nodded, nervously.

“You weren’t here, all right? You were never here.” I leaned back a bit so I could look her squarely in the eyes. “Neither was Kim.”

She looked down at Lendowski’s corpse, still shivering. “I’m glad I was.”

I pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead, keeping her close, keeping my lips on her cold skin, feeling her veins throbbing away under my fingers. After a few long seconds, I pulled away and went back to his prone body. I fished through his pockets and pulled out his BlackBerry, which unsurprisingly was turned off. I stuffed both guns and his phone in the backpack.

“You need to go home. Before anyone finds him. I’ll drive you into town.”

“No. I’ll be fine. I’ll make my way back. You need to get out of here.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want you walking through the trail on your own. I’ll drop you where it’s safer. Then, just go home. They’ll be wondering where Lendowski is. Anyone asks, you went out for some air and a think. That’s it. You stick with that. You never saw me.”

She didn’t move. “What are you going to do?”

I looked down at Lendowski’s body. “Find the bastards who paid him to kill me.”

She placed a hand on my arm—her eyes locked on mine, grasping at anything. “He tried to kill you. Doesn’t that prove something?”

“They’ll just argue he was here to arrest me and I gunned him down.”

I could hear the desperation in her voice as she pleaded, “You could come back with me. I’ll sneak you in through the backyard, then you could go up into the loft space.”

“What, and watch DVDs while you sneak me up some energy bars and a carton of milk?” I threw a weak smile at her. “Go home, Kim. It’s dangerously close to your curfew.”

“How can you find them when everyone’s out looking for you?”

“I’m going to even up the odds. Don’t worry. I’ve got an advantage here. I know how this game is played.”

She threw her arms around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. After a minute or so, I gently peeled off her. I reached into the backpack and gave her back the gun she’d brought me, along with the box of ammo. “Keep it near,” I told her as I put away the one she’d use on Lendowski. “I seem to be building up a collection of FBI Glocks.” Then I took a fresh burner phone from my jacket pocket and handed it to her. “I’ll call you on this. I dialed my number from it, so it’s stored in the call log. Call me if you don’t feel safe for any reason.”

“I won’t feel safe till you’re in the clear and back home with us.”

I nodded. There was nothing I would have liked more. “We’re going to get through this, Tess. I promise.”

She looked at me for few seconds, then nodded back.

I nodded back, then started to drag Lendowski’s body toward the tree line.

31

New York City, New York

Across the street, I could see the nightclub that Kurt had designated as our latest meeting place. All manner of leather-garbed, tattooed and pierced night creatures were standing outside, smoking. It didn’t look like where I imagined Kurt would spend his Saturday nights. Maybe Gigi was broadening his horizons.

After ensuring that Tess was safely ensconced in a cab and heading home, I’d left the stolen Caprice in a parking garage near White Plains station and taken a train into the city. Kurt had been out with his gal when I’d texted him, and he didn’t seem at all pleased that he had to interrupt their date for an urgent powwow.

I’d changed into the clothes Tess had brought me, ditching Lendowski’s suit and parka in an alleyway dumpster beside an Italian restaurant. I’d given the discarded items a generous coating of week-old pasta sauce to dissuade anyone from reclaiming them while on a high-calorie dumpster dive. I’d also taken the holdall that now carried the three Glocks and the stuff Tess had brought me and shoved it into a dark, tight spot behind it, making sure no one saw me and figuring it stood a reasonable chance of still being there when we left the club.

Satisfied as I could be that there was no one watching the place, I crossed the street and headed for the entrance, angling my face away from the CCTV cameras bolted to the building’s facade. I was well aware of our intel-gathering agencies’ capabilities when it came to finding a needle in a haystack, and I knew that, from here on, I’d need to avoid any kind of camera or even a phone call if I didn’t want the monster servers that picked through anything they could sink their claws into to get a lock on my trail.

Before I could get through the door, two hundred and fifty pounds of bouncer blocked my way. “Wrong door, buddy.”

I held up the denim backpack. “I need to change. The wife hates this side of me. Had to sneak out.”

He thought about this for a moment then nodded me in, grudgingly. “Go on.” As I stepped past him, he called after me, “You’ll have to tell her eventually, you know. One way or another, secrets always find a way out.”

Everyone’s a guru.

I maneuvered myself through a murder of Goth girls—some of them looking no older than Kim—and went inside.

Time to really screw up Kurt’s evening.

Strobing lights and bizarre electronic music pummeled my senses as I made my way through the dark and sweaty catacomb-like space. I found Kurt and his new friend seated at a small table at the back, away from the frenetic dance-floor crush. They were both dressed in full costume, but the clientele was so freakish they fit right in. I was the one who looked way out of place.

Kurt, dressed in a red tie, high-collared white jacket and blue cape, smiled weakly. “We were on our way to a
Final Fantasy
all-nighter at a pop-up cinema. No time to go change and not too many places we could go to dressed like this. Gigi suggested we meet here.”

Gigi looked at him quizzically, then struck a coquettish pose—chin resting on the backs of her hands. “Not Gigi. Lumina.” She flashed me a grin. “From
Final Fantasy Thirteen
. And he’s Cid. Cid Raines.”

So she was also averse to using real names.

Terrific.

Lumina—pink hair, black bodice reining in her hard-to-ignore chest, pink-lined sweeper tailcoat, short feathery skirt and black mid-thigh stockings—looked me up and down. “So this is the Fed?”

Kurt nodded, looking intensely uncomfortable. I assumed he had filled her in while they were waiting, and while I wasn’t massively comfortable with it, I didn’t really have time to worry about such subtleties.

Even here, with the sound system at less than full tilt, no way was anyone going to hear what we were saying, so I decided to dive right in.

“Kirby’s dead. And the evidence says I killed him.”

Kurt’s face lit up. “Jesus. What happened?”

I gave him and Lumina a brief overview—from my arrival at Kirby’s house to my escape from Federal Plaza. Keeping with my recent theme, I omitted the parts that featured Tess.

Gigi listened intently, unfazed—which surprised me. Kurt, on the other hand, looked more and more uncomfortable.

I got to the end and shrugged. “So here I am.”

Gigi gave me the raised eyebrow. “To kill one government employee may be regarded as a misfortune; to kill two looks like carelessness.”

I smiled. It was my fault. My own natural flippancy was obviously infectious. “Oscar Wilde. Nice.”

Gigi smirked with unexpected appreciation.

Kurt said, helpfully, “His wife’s a writer. She’s—”

I shot him a withering look. “I did manage to read a book or two long before I met her.”

Gigi grinned. “I have to admit I lost it myself with my adorable panda when he told me who you were, but this is all magnificently fucked-up. It’s like you guys are living some old-school ARG.”

Kurt gave me the eye roll. “Alternate Reality Game, dude.”

Gig swatted him and said, “He knows that.” Then she turned to me, all serious now. “What do you want us to do?”

“I’m not sure. Anything new with our search?”

Gigi said, “The CIA servers started running some kind of purge two hours after I started snooping around about the black ops you were interested in. I backtracked through the commands on the relevant server and it definitely wasn’t an automated systems procedure. Someone went in and told the archive to overwrite anything connected to those ops. From the way the instructions are configured, I’d say someone didn’t want their trail visible to the sys admins, which means the purge is outside standard data policy.”

My head was spinning, and not just from the music. “OK, so you’re saying you’ve hit a wall?”

Her mocking expression emasculated my question. “No wall’s impenetrable, G-boy. I’ve left some anonymous botnets running. They mimic multiple internal searches of the SCI database. I’ve asked them to trawl for anything connected to the files. They’ll come home to mama. But that might take a while.”

“A luxury I don’t have.” I felt deflated. “I don’t have anyone else to turn to. And I need to start fighting back.”

Kurt held his hands out, defensively. “Dude, seriously, we can’t—”

“I don’t mean it like that, relax. But maybe there’s stuff you can help me with.”

“Such as?” Gigi asked. I didn’t sense resistance in her tone or her expression. More like excitement.

“Listen to the chatter. See if my name comes up. This is a CIA and FBI situation, and it seems like they’re keeping the whole thing hushed up—for now. I’m thinking neither agency wants to look inept, and it’ll be much easier for whoever’s after me if the cops aren’t in the way.”

Still in something of a daze, Kurt nodded. “Sure. OK. I guess.”

Gigi put a reassuring hand on Kurt’s arm. “We can do that. It’s
this
guy they want. Now go get us some drinks because you’ve heard all this before while I need vodka.”

Kurt got up and headed for the bar, and I asked Gigi, “What about that reporter? The Portuguese one in the Corrigan file?”

Gigi leaned in toward me. “Octavio Camacho. I looked into that.”

“He died shortly after the meeting with Corrigan in which he was mentioned, right? Back in 1981?”

She nodded. “Yes. In a rock climbing accident. On top of being a hotshot investigative reporter, he was also an avid mountaineer. The coroner’s report found death by misadventure.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, that and some scattered references about him on the DI’s servers, but they’re heavily redacted. He was definitely someone of interest for a brief period of time. Before he died.”

She gave me a knowing look. I didn’t disagree.

“No other hits on Corrigan or Corrigam or any other obvious misspellings?” I asked.

“Nope. And nothing else in any CIA or DI files—or at least not in the ones I could get into before the purge started.”

Kurt placed a White Russian and a couple of beers on the table and sat down. I was so bummed out I picked up my beer and almost downed the whole thing in one chug.

Gigi gestured to Kurt, who handed me his beer as a chaser.

I was warming to her.

She crossed her legs, flashing me way more thigh than a happily monogamous man should ever catch sight of. “Where are you going to stay?”

I was already halfway through Kurt’s beer. “I don’t know. Some crappy motel somewhere.”

“No way. You’re coming home with me. I’ve got plenty of space.”

Kurt looked utterly crestfallen. “Hang on, hang on. Serious?”

“The man needs a pad, Snake.”

I looked at them, totally lost.

They caught it. Kurt said, “Snake Plissken?” Still nothing. “Kurt Russell’s character?
Escape from New York
? No?”

Clearly, I was going to need a translator around these two.

Kurt turned back to her and said, “I haven’t even stayed over yet.” There was a clear whine in both his expression and his tone.

Gigi laughed. “Hey, can’t have Mommy getting too lonely, right?”

His face fell even further.

She elbowed him in the side. “Chillax, Snake, I’m only messing with you. You can come too. And who knows . . . Maybe—”

I threw up my hands. “Stop. Please.”

Kurt’s expression went back to the guileless smile I had always found so appealing. It was clear my appreciation of Kurt’s many qualities had company, though there were certain qualities that would need to stay silent in my presence for this to work.

Gigi downed her White Russian and stood up. While she was taller than I expected her to be, her feathery skirt was so short I had to look away. My eyes caught sight of five guys and what looked like a drug sale going down in a dark recess of the club, away from the bustle. The negotiations seemed heated and for a second it looked like it was going to get nasty, then they settled down and got back to business. I had to remind myself to stay cool and can my instincts since I couldn’t do anything about it anyway, so I looked away, trying to find something less burdensome on which to settle my gaze, only to be drawn back to my freaky friends and the micro skirt.

Gigi grabbed Kurt’s arm, pushing him toward the door. “Come on, Cid. Lumina’s feeling frisky.”

As I trailed in their wake, the idea of being someone other than who I really was seemed immensely appealing.