Sam Kent sat on one side of the small oval table. Across from him was another man, younger, fitter, shorter, with hands like bricks and a torso like a wall.
His name was Anthony Zim.
He did not go by Tony.
“They picked Robie for obvious reasons,” said Kent.
Zim nodded. “Good choice. He knows what he’s doing.”
“And he’s not off the grid like you.”
“I’m not off the grid, Mr. Kent,” Zim corrected. “I’m offline. There’s a difference, a big one.”
“I realize that,” said Kent quietly. “I was instrumental in putting you there. Where we could maximize your talents.”
Zim said nothing. He placed his palms on the tabletop. Even sitting he kept his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. He could move in an instant if he needed to. And over the years he had needed to on many occasions.
“Jessica Reel,” said Kent.
Zim just sat there, waiting.
Kent continued, “She’s out there and she’s growing more troublesome by the minute.”
“She was always good at that.”
“I take it you knew her well?”
“No one knew Reel well. Just like no one knows Robie. They kept it all inside. Just like I do. Goes with the territory.”
“But you worked with her?”
“Yes.”
“And Robie?
“Twice. Both in support roles. Turns out he didn’t need the support.”
“Can you take out either or both of them, if it comes to it?”
“Yes. If the conditions are right.”
“We can try to make sure they are.”
“I need you to do better than try.”
Kent frowned. “I came to you because I understood you were one of the best.”
“You’re asking me to go after two people who may be as good as me. Singly I can probably take them. Together, there are no guarantees.”
“Then we have to make sure they never get together.”
“Robie is tasked to go after her. Maybe he’ll get there and save you the trouble.”
“There have been recent developments with Robie that give me some concern about that happening.”
Zim shifted his weight slightly. “Such as?”
“Reportedly he’s starting to think for himself on this rather than following orders. And it’s more than that.”
“I need to know it all.”
“Reel has been communicating with him. Telling him things.”
“Manipulating him, you mean. She’s good at that.”
“I didn’t think you knew her well?”
“I knew her enough to know that.” Zim leaned forward an inch. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“I’m listening.”
“Let it play out. Robie kills Reel. Or vice versa. Or they kill each other.”
“That was the original plan. It may still happen,” replied Kent. He leaned forward until he was only a few inches from Zim. “You’re the fail-safe. And if I’m reading things correctly you’re going to be deployed to get the job done. I can’t count on an ideal world. That’s a sucker’s bet and involves an element of luck that I simply can’t depend on.”
“Then the conditions better be right.”
“As you suggested, I will do better than try.”
“How?” said Zim.
“Jessica Reel isn’t the only one who can manipulate.”
“Not as easy as it might look.”
Kent said, “I don’t think it’s easy at all. It’s very difficult, in fact.”
“So how?”
“I’ll take care of that. You take care of your end.”
“That’s all I get?”
“Compartmentalize. It’s the best protocol all around.”
“You’re not the sort I expected.”
“You mean a judge?”
Zim shrugged.
Kent smiled. “I’m a special kind of judge, Mr. Zim. My time behind the bench is limited to a very few cases. The rest of the time is spent doing other things for my country. I like doing these other things far more than my infrequent rulings from the bench.”
“You must have pull. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”
“I have more than pull. I’m often the one doing the pulling.”
“When will I be deployed?”
“The exact timing is unknown. But if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly it will be very soon. You’re to be ready twenty-four/seven. Move at a moment’s notice.”
“Story of my life,” replied Zim.
“Let’s hope it’s not the story of your death.”
“Goes with the territory.”
Kent sat back. “You keep saying that. I might start believing it.”
“I don’t expect you to understand it, Mr. Kent. It’s a small club I’m a member of.”
“I actually can understand that.”
“I don’t think so. Not unless you’ve killed as many people as I have. And there aren’t many in the world who have.”
“How many have you killed?”
“Thirty-nine. That’s one reason I’m interested in Reel. She’d make an even forty.”
“That’s impressive. And of course Robie would make it a very uneven forty-one.”
“Not something I would lose sleep over, I can assure you.”
“Glad to hear that.”
Kent smiled. The muzzle was against Zim’s forehead before he had time to react.
Zim’s eyes widened as the metal pressed against his skin.
Kent said, “As I mentioned, I wasn’t always a judge. I checked your file. You’ve been working for eleven years. Is that right?”
When Zim didn’t answer Kent pushed the muzzle harder against his face. “Is that right?’
“Yes.”
Kent nodded. “I pulled an even twenty. That was before they put a cap on time in the field to fifteen. I think people these days have gotten a little softer. I never even had decent night optics. Did four kills in the dead of night with a flashlight and a piece-of-shit Vietnam-era sniper rifle. But I still got the job done. And by the way, I never bragged about my kill total.”
Kent pulled the gun’s hammer back. “One more thing: did I mention that there was a test involved in your selection?”
“Test?” asked a bewildered Zim.
“If an old man could get the drop on you, I don’t think you’re much use to me. You’re not even qualified to wipe Robie’s or Reel’s ass. Which means this interview is officially over.”
Kent pulled the trigger, the gun fired, and the round destroyed Zim’s brain. He fell backward out of his chair.
Kent rose, wiped the blood blowback off his face with a handkerchief, and then holstered his gun.
He looked down at the body. “And for the record, I finished with sixty kills. There’s only one person out there with more. He’s old-school. Just like me. I never would’ve gotten the drop on him like I did you. Asshole.”
Kent walked out the door.
CHAPTER
51
REEL WAS STARING AT HER PHONE. On the screen was a familiar face, at least from a distance.
Will Robie looked back at her.
She knew she should have told him more during the standoff in Arkansas. But in truth she had been stunned to see him there. She had convinced herself that somehow the agency had been able to follow her and sent Robie in for the kill. That had rocked her, made any faith she had in him disappear. That faith had been restored when he hadn’t killed her, of course. But now she was afraid for him.
If the agency found out he had the shot but hadn’t taken it, Robie would be in serious jeopardy. And if she tried to communicate with him again and he agreed to work with her, something she had thought she wanted, then he would be in even graver danger. Killers would be sent after him. And he hadn’t prepared to go on the run like she had. As good as he was, he wouldn’t survive. They had too many resources.
I
have to go this alone.
She pulled the white paper from her bag and read through it again.
Having now met Roy West, she would have hardly expected the man to be capable of piecing together a plan of such complexity. Unfortunately, his decision to plot mass murder against his fellow citizens to fuel his bizarre rage against the government was entirely in keeping with the essence of his white paper. It and he were insane.
And anyone who subscribed to what was in that paper was insane as well. And dangerous.
West was dead. He couldn’t harm anyone ever again. But there were others out there far better placed to execute the Armageddon outlined in his paper.
Country by country.
Leader by leader.
The perfect jigsaw puzzle.
If death and misery on a massive scale had a face, it could be West’s perverted masterpiece.
And then there was the unknown. The person who she felt certain had to be out there. The three levels above West. The top-top-secret clearance. The person who had wanted the paper. Who had wanted to know the master jigsaw puzzle.
Roger the Dodger. Who was he? Where was he? And what was he planning right now?
The attack against Janet DiCarlo was predictable, but Reel had never seen it coming until it was too late. DiCarlo was alive, but for how long? Reel would have loved to sit and talk with her old mentor. To find out what and how she had discovered something that had led to her nearly dying.
But that wasn’t possible. Reel had no idea where DiCarlo was. And she would be heavily guarded. And yet if the attack against her had come from the inside, how safe would she be wherever the woman was?
Reel looked down at her phone again. Should she chance it?
Without stopping to think about it anymore, she pecked the keys and the message was sent to Robie, despite her having just decided not to communicate with him again. But it was a different sort of query, one that they couldn’t hold against him.
She didn’t know if she would get an answer. She didn’t know if Robie trusted her or believed her. She remembered being part of his team early in her career. He had been the most professional among a group of consummate pros. He had taught her things, without really saying much. He sweated the little details. They were the difference, he told her, between making it or not.
She had learned some of what had happened to him earlier in the year. He had done the unthinkable for people in their profession. He hadn’t pulled the trigger. He had disobeyed orders because he believed them to be wrong.
The average citizen would think there was nothing special in that. If you thought something was wrong, why not disobey? But it wasn’t that easy. More even than regular soldiers, Robie and Reel had been trained to follow orders without question. Without that unbreakable chain of command, without that devotion to authority, the system simply didn’t work. Nothing could interfere with that.
But each of them had disobeyed orders.
Robie had refused to pull the trigger. Twice. The second time was the only reason Reel was still alive.
But she had pulled the trigger. She had killed two men who worked for the government. Both constituted crimes punishable by long imprisonment or even death.
Reel wondered if Robie was still coming after her. She wondered if right now he regretted not killing her.
Her phone buzzed. She looked down at the screen.
Will Robie had just answered her.
CHAPTER
52
ROBIE LOOKED AT HIS SCREEN. His fingers had just finished typing. He wondered how long before people from the agency would contact him.
Or kick down his door.
Alive. For now.
That’s what he had typed and sent her in response to her simple question:
DiCarlo?
Robie continued to stare at his phone screen, part of him hoping that she would text again. He had many things he wanted to ask her. Things he hadn’t had time to ask when he had seen her in Arkansas.
He had just about given up when another text from Reel dropped in:
GPB.
GPB?
Robie was certainly not up to date on the latest Internet acronyms. And he had no idea if GPB was one of those or was a coded message from Reel. If it was coded he had no idea what it meant.
But why would she think he would?
He sat back in his chair and thought back to the last mission they had done together all those years ago. It was about as routine as you could expect in their line of work. But something had gone wrong, which sometimes happened.
Robie had gone to the left and at the same second Reel had darted to the right. If they had gone in the same direction, they both would have been dead. As it stood, they neutralized the threats coming at them from two sides.
Robie had thought about it later and even asked Reel why she had gone the opposite way, because there was no visible threat on either flank yet. She really couldn’t answer him other than to say, “I knew you were going the way you did.”
“How?” Robie had asked.
She’d asked a question in answer to his. “How did you know which way I was going to go?”
And he couldn’t answer her other than to say that he had just felt it. It was that simple. Not that he could literally read her mind. But he knew what her reaction would be in that exact situation. And she knew what his would be.
That had never happened to him again. Only with Jessica Reel. He wondered if that had been her last time too.
When the call came he looked at the screen and then put his phone away. It was Langley. He didn’t feel like explaining to them why he had done what he had. In one sense he didn’t feel it was any of their business. If they could keep secrets from him, he could keep secrets from them. They were all spies, after all.
And that’s when a totally unrelated thought entered his mind. Well, part of his mind must have been thinking about it as he took this walk down memory lane.
Reel had told him few things about herself, but one had struck him.