“She didn’t,” I say as we round the corner. “Nora Kessler is the highest caliber of expert at what she does. You should not feel inept.”
“What exactly is it that she does, sir?”
“A little bit of everything, it appears, but her specialty lies in knowing the foremost weaknesses of the human psyche—love and fear. She’s exceedingly remarkable when it comes to manipulation—a puppet master pulling all of the strings with flawless precision—and just watching her with every one of you I think I’ve come to understand how she plays this game so well.”
We turn another corner and draw nearer the C. A fluorescent light flickers in the ceiling out ahead, casting a patterned shadow upon the walls. Two men stand guard outside Dorian’s cell.
“How does she play it?” Woodard asks slightly out of breath.
“What have you found on the source I sent you to investigate?” I ask, disregarding his inquiry. He will know in time, as will everyone else, but first I want to know more myself—since I did not hear the entire conversation during Izabel’s confession, I cannot be one-hundred-percent sure of my theory.
“Nothing so far, but I’m running a scan on the information you gave me. It might yield results. It’s crazy, but this whole thing is crazy.”
“And what of her blood sample?”
“Well, that’s what I came to find you for,” he says.
I stop in the center of the hall about twenty-feet from the men outside Dorian’s cell and I turn to Woodard.
He catches his breath; sweat beads on his upper lip; the armpits of his plaid shirt are discolored by moisture.
“I ran it through the database you gave me from The Order,” he begins as he flips open a blue folder in his hand, “and there were no matches to anyone within The Order, but there was a match to a hit.”
He hands me the paper from inside the folder.
“Does ‘Solis’ ring any bells, sir?” Woodard had not been in the surveillance room when Niklas was with Nora.
Yes, it rings many bells, James Woodard.
“Thank you for this,” I tell him, again avoiding his questions. I fold the paper into a square and tuck it away in the front pocket of my slacks.
Woodard’s confidence returns in the form of an uneasy smile.
“So I did good?” he asks, always needing the validation.
I simply nod.
“Find me again when you get those results back,” I say.
“Sure thing, boss.” He smiles proudly to himself as he scurries in a bumbling manner down the hallway and out of my sight.
The guards outside Dorian’s door step to the side as I walk up.
“They removed the bullets from Flynn’s shoulders, sir,” one guard says, “and stitched him up. He requested he not be restrained due to his injuries, but we followed through anyway.”
Sliding the key into the steel door, the lock clicks with an echo.
I close the door behind me after stepping inside the small room with only a tiny box window covered by bars to let in the sunlight. A metal bed juts out from the gray brick wall, covered by a thin cot. A toilet and a sink are shoved closely together near one corner.
Dorian sits on the metal cot with his legs over the side, his booted feet touching the dingy tile floor. His hands are cuffed in front of him. He is shirtless; blood seeps through the bandages on his shoulders.
He raises his head and looks up at me with concern in his face.
“I know I have some explaining to do,” he says, “and I will, but maybe right now isn’t the time? I’m more worried about Tessa. There’s not much time left.”
“I am making time for this,” I tell him. “Besides, I have no confidence in Gustavsson making it here before the forty-eight-hour deadline, so it will make no difference whether or not I take my turn with Nora.”
Dorian frowns.
“So, you’re just giving up?” he asks, apprehension and disbelief manipulating his features. “What about Mrs. Gregory—Izabel loves her like a mother. Are you going to give up on her?”
“This is not about giving up on anyone,” I say, “but facing the reality of the situation. Without Gustavsson’s cooperation, they are all as good as dead, and since there has been no communication with him, no sign that he intends to come here, I am simply shifting my focus on other matters.”
Dorian shakes his head and looks down at the floor.
“Tessa doesn’t know anything about you, or anyone in this Order, not even me,” he says in a defeated tone of voice. He raises his head again. “It was safer for her to tell her I work for U.S. Intelligence.”
“Because you know the nature of both,” I say, already knowing.
He nods slowly, grimacing as pain moves through his shoulders.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have told her anything,” I point out. “A professional operative, whether one who works for me or the CIA or for anyone else, would never reveal such a top secret job to anyone. You did it twice. First to Tessa, and then to Nora, to save your own life.”
“No,” he says quickly, “I never would’ve given up my identity to save myself. I wouldn’t give a shit if Nora killed me—I only told her because I knew that if I didn’t she’d kill Tessa.”
He is truthful in those words, I strongly believe.
“But even for her,” I say, “you should never have told her anything. She is a civilian. An innocent. And by telling her the truth, you made her an unknowing accomplice. And a target.”
“I know,” he says, shaking his head and looking at the floor again, “but when it comes to her, I’m weak. I always have been. You should know, Faust”—his eyes lock onto mine—“you love Izabel. You should understand why I had to tell Tessa something.”
“You told her simply because she had suspicions,” I say. “I could stand here all day and tell you why that reason is unacceptable, but that’s not why I came.”
“Are you going to kill me?” he asks almost listlessly.
Dorian Flynn is not afraid to die, and a part of him I believe wants to. Perhaps he has thought about death more than any of us, I do not know, but there is no shortage of quiet despair inside of this man. The smiling, facetious face he wears in front of all of us is just a mask covering a somewhat troubled soul.
“You have five minutes to explain,” I announce. “At the end of that five minutes, I will know whether or not I’m going to kill you.”
He nods.
A betrayal such as this one, when an operative secretly works for another employer without my knowledge, would almost always come with the heaviest of consequences—immediate death. But one must be careful to dish out such a sentence before first knowing from that person what information has been leaked, and to whom. And the fact that he is a private contractor for U.S. Intelligence also means that I must be prepared to have more than just Vonnegut and The Order coming down on us, if I kill him. Depending on the nature of his status with his superiors and what kind of private contractor Dorian is, it might be smarter to keep him alive.
“I’m a SOG agent,” Dorian says, “and in case you think I’m easy to break, that if you ever were to send me on a mission and expect me to break if I got compromised, you’d be wrong. I was commissioned just to observe and gather information first. But when the time was right, I was allowed to approach the leader and tell him the truth about who I am, and then present the deal prepared by our government—I was going to tell you the truth eventually.”
“You said approach ‘the’ leader.”
He nods. “Yes. My mission started in Bradshaw’s organization, before you took over and I became a part of yours. The CIA has been searching for Vonnegut for more than thirty years. Kind of like that succubus out there”—he nods toward the wall, indicating Nora—“Vonnegut is a ghost. No one that I have ever known or heard of even knows what he looks like, or if he’s even a man. Just when we thought we had him, we’d find out at the last minute that the suspect was just a decoy. There is no bigger bounty on any man’s h
ead on this planet than the one on his.”
“So you were implanted into Bradshaw’s black market organization, hoping to find information on Vonnegut?” I believe I know the rest of the story, but I must be sure.
“Yes,” Dorian answers. “I tried to get into The Order ten years ago, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t like they were taking applications. It was impenetrable. Elusive. So, I settled for one of the black markets. Much easier to get into, I guess because they’re not as careful with how they do business. Anyone who kills innocent people for money is too blinded by greed to care about risk and reckless choices.”
“And you assumed that because the black markets and The Order were in the same business, that being on the inside of one would eventually lead you to Vonnegut.”
He nods again. “I know it was a stretch, but it was all that I had to go on. Microsoft and Apple are two different entities in the same business, in competition with one another, but they keep up with each other because they have to. Know your competition, right?”—he shrugs, and then winces when he realizes it was not such a good idea considering the state of his shoulders—“but it did pay off somewhat,” he adds. “Look where I am now”—he laughs—“in a fucking cell where some shot-nosed bastard of a teenager jerked off while he did his time, but my boss happens to be a man who was once closer to Vonnegut than any other man I’ve ever known.”
“So then what was this deal from the government?” I ask, purposely evading his accusations.
“A partnership,” he says. “In exchange for all information on Vonnegut and an ongoing hunt for him, the United States would remain deaf and blind to your operations, and in addition, would provide you with all necessary essentials—funds, authorization into top secret files, anything—when working an assignment for us.”
I raise a brow.
“Working for you?” I reiterate with quite a bit of disbelief. “I have no interest in working for anyone other than my clients. I did not leave The Order to become a slave to another employer. I am the employer. And that is how it will remain.”
“Well I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, backtracking, “just that there are some criminals that can’t be caught, people who we need more information on but can’t seem to get. Your Order, Faust, is the kind of organization that can get these things done faster than we can. Sometimes it takes a killer to know a killer, a spy and a thief to know the movements of a spy and a thief. Not to mention Gustavsson—I have to say, I’ve met a lot of interrogators, but I’ve never met one quite like him. But it would be a partnership, we’d be sort of like clients, but with a lot more money and means.”
I glance at the small box window momentarily in thought.
“But just the same,” I say, looking back at Dorian, “I have no interest. Tell me, why Vonnegut exactly? Why is the bounty on his head the highest? And if the government is looking to employ, or work with an organization like mine, why would there be a bounty on his head at all? Why not just seek Vonnegut and his Order for this partnership? His is larger than mine and has been around for a much longer time.”
“Because we have reason to believe that Vonnegut is much more than the leader of an assassination ring,” he begins. “He also deals in weapons and drugs and girls. Dubai. Colombia. Brazil. Venezuela. Mexico. He is everywhere. He has no boundaries. We also believe he sells weapons and information to terrorists.”
“You believe,” I say, “but you have no evidence of this.”
“No,” he answers solemnly, shaking his head. “We have the kind of evidence that’s right there on the cusp of being irrefutable proof, when everything adds up and it all points to him and you know he’s the guy, but it’s just not enough to actually prove it. It’s why we need inside information to connect the dots, to fill in the goddamned holes.”
Dorian winces and adjusts his body on the metal cot, attempting to straighten his back. His top teeth clamp down over his bottom lip and his face hardens in an agonizing display.
“Look,” he says with a heavy sigh, “my intention was never to betray you. None of you. I don’t expect you to believe me after today but I don’t think of myself as just another operative following orders, or a spy—I actually like being here. You all kind of feel like my family. But if you intend to kill me, I’m not going to beg for my life, Faust. I’m not the begging type. But for Tessa, I am asking you to do whatever you can to help her. None of this is her fault.”
I go toward the door.
“The thing is, Flynn,” I say, turning to look back at him, “you have betrayed me by feeding information on my Order to your superiors. As long as you’ve been with us, there is nothing you can say to make me believe that you have not reported what you know about us thus far.”
“I wouldn’t try to tell you I haven’t done that.”
I nod and open the door.
“I’ll get back to you after this other issue is resolved. You will know my decision then.”
“Hey,” he calls out and I stop without turning to look at him, “can I at least get some pain killers?”
I shut the door without a word.
12
Izabel
With only about six hours left before the forty-eight are up, I spend most of my time watching Nora from the surveillance room, racking my brain trying to figure out who she is. At least one of us is supposed to know, but so far…nothing.
She sits tied to that chair; her legs and ankles and torso wrapped many times and pulled so tight she can hardly move; her forearms and wrists are bound to the metal arms, in addition to the chains and cuffs. But despite all that, she doesn’t look uncomfortable. It’s like she’s no stranger to this; either that or she has so much patience and discipline that she can tolerate it.
I hate her. I hate her for what she’s done to Dina. To Woodard’s daughters. And still, even though it looks like Dorian is a traitor, I hate what she’s done to his ex-wife. I hate her for making me tell her the darkest secret I’ve ever kept.
But what I don’t understand is how I can also envy her.
Nora Kessler is who I’ve been striving to become since I met Victor and chose this life with him—strong, intelligent, skilled, confident, but most of all…taken seriously. She’s a fucking master and I’m a novice. If she were much older than me, in her thirties or forties maybe, I wouldn’t feel so amateur compared to her, but she can’t have but a few years on me. How in the hell can she be so experienced?
Nora looks up at the camera, snapping me out of my thoughts. I feel like she’s looking right at me even though she can’t see me, and I get the sudden urge to talk to her again. I don’t know why, but the need is strong and I find myself fighting against it.
She grins as if she knows someone’s watching and I look away from the screen.
Niklas is sitting to my right, reading a magazine. A cigarette is tucked behind his ear. A cup of coffee sits on the table next to his elbow.
He still hasn’t spoken to me much since his confession with Nora. It’s starting to annoy me.
“You don’t have to be a dick,” I say.
He slides a finger between the pages and flips one over casually. “Yeah I do,” he says calmly and without looking up. “Haven’t I always been?”
“Yeah, actually you’re a pro at being a dick,” I say, “but I think I prefer the rude, mouthy you over this silent-treatment one.”
“I don’t recall ever giving you a choice.” He flips another page.
I sigh. “Niklas, what happened to Claire isn’t my fault.”
“Never said it was.” He still hasn’t looked up, or raised his tone above I-don’t-really-give-a-shit.
“But why do you hate me so much? Because she died? Can your brother not be happy?”
Finally he looks up and his eyes lock onto mine; the half-turned page paused on his finger.
“Happy?” He smiles with mock disbelief. “There are a handful of words that don’t really apply to this kind of life, Izabel”—it actually stings this time
that he doesn’t call me Izzy—“and ‘happy’ is one of them. That’s for people with white picket fences and bratty kids n’ shit.”
He closes the magazine and tosses it on the table; it lands on a keyboard. Then he leans forward; the smile still present on his unshaven face now laced with mockery. “What was it that Nora said to you when you were in there with her, before the audio was turned off? Inexperienced, overly confident and too far in over your head—it was something like that.” He pauses. “Well she was right.”
I swallow down my hurt feelings and my shame, and pull at all of my strength to keep it from showing.
Niklas leans back in his chair again and crosses his arms over his chest. He props his left boot on top of his right knee.
“You never should’ve been brought here,” he goes on. “You never should’ve been allowed to know what we do, much less being fed the delusion of thinking you could do it too. You don’t just decide one day that you want to be a contract killer, or a professional spy. And you never will be. You may hold your own on some missions, you may ‘prove your worth’”—he makes quotation marks with his fingers—“but you’ll never be on my brother’s level, or on mine, no matter how much you train because you weren’t born into this life or started training young.” He shakes his head, glances at the surveillance room door and then says, “Do you really think that Victor has ever once”—he points a finger upward—“trusted you to go on a mission without him or one of us to protect you? Think about it—have you been on a mission alone? Has Victor ever sent you out alone?” He shakes his head again, this time in answer of his own question; a vague smile around his blue-green eyes. “And he never will. Even when you think you’re alone you know his men are in the shadows watching you.” He picks the magazine back up and opens it to the center. “A solo mission will never happen. At least not until he realizes that you need to die, then he’ll send you out on your own. It’ll be easier for him to stomach than killing you himself.”
Niklas’ words cut through me like a dull blade through flesh and bone. My stomach swims with humiliation and pain. For a long time I can’t even look at him, not out of anger for his cruel words, but out of shame because I believe them. Deep down I think I’ve always believed them.