Enemy Agents (14 page)

Milton let the silence between them linger for almost ten seconds, before he said, “Fine. I can’t stop you. But you had better realize what you’re doing. You’re about to send the six deadliest people in the world out for each other’s blood.”

Quarrel stared at the Globection logo across the street, feeling more purpose and drive than he had in his entire life. “No, sir.I’m sending them afte
r
min
e
.”

#

Jessica Swift was nibbling on a scone inside a lobby cafe in an expensive Zurich office building. Sitting alone at a small round table, she appeared to the rest of the world to be a shy woman waiting for her extra-hot coffee to cool.

In reality, she was casing the lobby security system. The Café was only a small section of the ground floor, and this building belonged to the Douxieme Banque Suisse. She still needed to know her way around the upstairs before she could break in, but she wasn’t planning on going that far until she was sure she knew the easiest way in and safest way out. She wasn’t sure she would find anything here; any records of exactly what had happened to Saleb and Jordan would have been in the file she already stole. But the contents of a box on the second floor of this building would likely point to a suspect, tell her
who
had shot Saleb and killed Jordan, and that was enough.

Swift and Saleb had come this far by hacking into the internal networks of several Zurich banks. It was relatively easy to hack a bank from outside now that everything ran on wireless networks. She was able to sit in a van parked nearby and run several encryption-breaking algorithms that had worked for her before, bypassing security and allowing her to login, undetected, as the bank manager.

The first bank they hacked was WBS, the same bank she had broken into before her little trip to pick up Saleb in the USA. Using information in the WBS system, she was able to identify the owner of the box she had robbed as Robert Roux. Further work showed that Robert Roux didn’t really exist. He had existed long enough to set up an account, open the box, and add an authorized signature for a woman called Helena Roux, and after that Robert was no more.

They had hacked every major bank in Zurich searching for anything else Mr. and Mrs. Roux may have been up to, and that hunch paid off. On the same day that Mr. Roux rented the box from WBS, he also opened a box at Douxieme Banque Suisse, and again he added Mrs. Roux as a signature. At both banks, Mr. Roux paid the box rental up front for ten years. That meant that there was possibly something else here, stashed away in Box 222, that would indicate just who Mr. and Mrs. Roux really were. It was only a possibility, a very slim hope considering that Jupiter had already tried to destroy the contents of one box, but Swift was willing to break in to find out.

Her cell phone buzzed. She felt no need to fake a local cover, so she answered in English.

“Hello?”

“Io.” It was the digitally-altered voice of her handler.

“Jupiter.”

“There’s a new situation. A problem within the community. We’re bringing you in.”

“You told me I had autonomy,” she started to argue.

“And if you want to live you’ll forgive my asking for one meeting.”

“Meeting?” Io and Jupiter had never met. Her training and indoctrination had been done in a warehouse facility in Kansas called the Academy, where she once heard the name Jupiter. A week after she was let out into the free world, the calls and texts from Jupiter started. The prospect of actually meeting the man who pulled her strings—the same man who ordered her to burn Saleb’s file—was enticing.

“When and where?”

“You’ll get a text.” Jupiter hung up.

Swift locked the government-issued smartphone, and put it into her purse. At the same time she withdrew a second phone, a cheap pre-paid disposable. She dialed a number from memory.

“Tony’s fix it,” said Khalid Saleb.

Swift rubbed her thumb across the receiver, creating a sound of rummaging. “Sorry, I dropped the phone.” This had all been rehearsed before they parted; a simple series of responses to ensure that neither was under duress.

“I can hear you very clearly.”

“I’m abandoning the Zurich job. Something’s come up.”

“What? You can’t just walk away from the only—”

“Jupiter wants to meet me. In person.”

Saleb barely paused. “When and where?”

PART THREE:

I DON’T APPROVE

OF YOUR METHODS

17

Jessica wore plain jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt to the bank in Virginia at ten in the morning on the day of the meeting. She went through the ceremony of code phrases and responses with the girl at the desk, and was treated to the bizarre elevator ride from a bank employee’s office down to the depths of the Counter Intelligence Bureau. There was a soldier, or at least someone who looked, stood, an
d
vibe
d
like a soldier, waiting at the bottom. He was dressed in a black suit and tie, but Jessica knew right away that this guy was basically there to kill anyone who wasn’t authorized. He scanned her right eyeball with a handheld device and told her to follow the yellow line.

The bunker under the bank was impressive in scale. It was grey and claustrophobic, but also awe-inspiring in a way. Jessica had always seen the espionage world from the grimy street level. She was recruited out of county jail, trained in a refurbished warehouse, and now worked day-in and day-out crawling through mud and dirt. The idea of a high-tech, ultra-secret underground lair was the stuff of science fiction for her. Yet here she was, following the yellow line through a bona fide underground spy base.

She didn’t stray from the line. Sticking to the main corridors, she walked past rooms filled with computers and video monitors, and lingered in the doorway of a cavernous lab where young scientists were trying to melt a Kevlar vest, but seemed to be arguing over some details. At one intersection she noted a hum that was likely a massive air-mover to keep everyone in this place breathing. There was a room of nothing but guns, guarded by two more black-suited tough guys, and one room where people just watched the news on about twenty different news channels. She walked past a gun range that nobody was using, and a tech-support room where a tall computer technician was playing with the guts of a smartphone.

Finally, she ended up in a conference room. The room was round, with two doors exactly opposite each other. The one she had entered by following the yellow line was open, and the other door was closed. The entire room was dominated by the massive conference table, ring-shaped to match the round room. The ceiling was padded, likely to make it soundproof, and there were eight chairs around the table. At the far end, by the other door, there was a small lectern sitting on top of the table, and a white screen had been pulled down next to the other door.

Jessica was the first to arrive. She chose a chair on the left-hand side, not wanting to turn her back to either door. Some of the CIB workers passed by the open door, but nobody stopped to talk to her. Wherever Jupiter was, he didn’t seem to care that Jessica Swift was in the building.

Eventually, a man showed up. He was tall, forty-ish, with stubble on one side of his face, and an ugly burn scar on the other. Like Swift, this new man hadn’t brought anything with him to the office. He sat down directly opposite Jessica, likely because he also didn’t want his back to the door.

“Lovely sunny day out. Perfect if you’re wasting it a hundred feet underground.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of him. “Are you Jupiter?”

The man squinted at her. “What? Like the planet?”

“Nevermind.”

She shrunk a little smaller in her seat.

“My name’s Shark. You?”

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to say.”

“Make something up.”

“Io.”

Shark smirked and started quietly singing with a country twang. “Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. You smoke, I-O?”

She shook her head. Shark grunted, fished a beat up, bent cigar out of one of his many pockets, and began patting his body in search of a lighter. Finally he found it in a side pocket on his cargo pants, and lit up the stogie.

“Is that allowed in here?” she asked.

“That damned lab blows shit up all day long. I’m sure if they can do that, I can do this.” He blew a smoke ring, and another woman entered the room. This one was in her thirties, conservative, and carried herself very well. She seemed to be both solidly built and light on her feet. She’d be quicker than she looked, like a sleeping lioness. Swift realized she was sizing these people up, and then realized that even if one of them did try to hurt her, there was no escape inside this bunker. She continued sizing up each new entrant anyway.

“Sammy! Long-time-no-see, I heard you quit the biz.” said Shark. The woman sat next to Swift.

“I’m Samantha. Ignore the ogre,” she said, offering a handshake.

“Are you—” Swift started to ask, before Samantha cut her off.

“I’m just as in the dark about this meet as you are, kid. You’ll get no answers from me.”

“OK.”

Shark snorted. “She was probably gonna ask if you were Venus.”

“What?”

“Ask her.”

Both of the older agents looked at Swift, and she tried to shrink even further. Was she actually blushing? She felt so out of her depth here, in this place and among these people, and Shark’s cocky attitude was wearing her down. She reminded herself that she had a job to do. Someone here had betrayed Saleb and his wife. Someone was a killer and a traitor. She needed to find that person, and bring them down.

Next to enter was a British man in a dapper grey suit, who was carrying a leather briefcase. After nodding hellos to everyone, the Brit opened the case to reveal that it wasn’t for paperwork, but was actually a travelling bar. He pulled out two bottles of booze, a pair of steel martini glasses, and a silver shaker. Swift noted that he also had a back-up martini shaker, which looked like solid gold.

“Anyone for a martini?” He asked, as if that was introduction enough.

“It’s ten in the morning,” said Samantha.

“Not in London, my dear.”

“I’ll have one, Limey. A double.” Shark put his feet up on the desk.

The British man poured into the shaker, then shook it, then poured it out again into the glasses. As a finishing touch, he pulled a spoon and a jar of olives from the case, garnishing both drinks with a couple green orbs. It seemed Mr. British liked his drinks dirty.

He slid the double around the table to Shark. He spun the glass, putting some English on it, so it actually curved with the table on its way to Shark, slowing to stop an inch from Shark’s boot.

“Thanks, man!” Shark said, scooping up the martini and drinking it, pinky in the air, in one gulp.

“William Thorpe, MI-7, at your service.”

“Shark Scarret, not here at anybody’s service.”

Next to enter was a man in a black suit with a spiky crew cut, who didn’t acknowledge the others at all. He simply entered, sat at the nearest empty chair, and stared forward. Swift didn’t like him immediately, based on a gut feeling that there was something deeply wrong with him.

After that came another clean cut American man, this one in jeans and a t-shirt, rushing in as if he was late to the party. He had a gun strapped on his hip and gave an apologetic wave as he entered. “Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

Once he was settled, the new man stared at the burned man and looked perplexed.

“Scarret?”

“Howdy Jack,” said Shark.

“I thought you were dead.”

“You ought to since you’re the one who put me on death row,” Shark sucked on the stogie and grinned. “But death row ain’t permanent.”

The new man, Jack, shouted with rage. Getting very loud and hostile, he jabbed a finger in the air toward Shark. “I don’t know how you ended up here, you son of a bitch, but I—”

“He’s here because I called him, Jack” said a voice from Swift’s right. Someone had finally come through the other door. There was a young man—the one who had spoken—and another man who looked to be in his seventies.

“So this is about the nukes?” asked Jack. The very word ‘nukes’ made Swift a little bug-eyed. “Is Scarret here to testify?”

“No, no, no,” said the old man, stepping up to the lectern while the younger one stepped to the side. “Jack, you did great work twenty years ago when you caught Scarret. But in those twenty years he has been a valuable asset for the CIB. Which is what all of you are, which is why you are here.”

The old man went into a speech:

“Some of you know each other. Some of you don’t. Almost all of you know me. I am Harry Milton, and I created this bureau for the purpose of hunting down the people who threaten Western intelligence agents. And today I’m here to tell you that we’re facing a threat to our agents like we never have before.”

The old man paused and the younger one put a messenger bag on the desk and started pulling out some files. In the moment of silence, Swift chimed in. “Did he say nukes?”

“That’s not your case, Io.” said the old man.

“Get back to ‘facing a threat.’ All that stuff,” said Samantha.

“We are facing a threat that’s more dangerous than CIB has ever faced. To be blunt, we’re facing one of you.”

For a few seconds, everyone looked around the room, as if the traitor would stand up and wave. After the awkward silence, the younger man spoke up. He clicked a remote, and a projector on the ceiling put a photo on the screen. It was a plain-looking man.

“This is Matthew Crowe, he was CIB’s best deep-cover agent. Deep cover in this case meaning nobody even knew who he really was when he was out in the field. He completely assumed the identities of his marks, and Harry assures me he was the best in the world.”

“And one of you killed him,” added Harry. “The only records of his last mission were stored in this building right here, on the secure server and in my own files. For someone to know where he was, and what identity he was assuming, they would have needed access to either my office or the main server. The only people to have that kind of access are in this room right now.”

The younger man started passing out the files. Each one had a name on it. The one for Jessica wasn’t labeled Io, but sai
d
Jessica Swif
t
. So much for codenames.

“This is the information on everyone here. We need to find the traitor, but we can’t do that if we don’t have our top agents in the field. And right now, our top agents just happen to be the suspects.”

“So lock us up,” said Swift.

“What?” asked Jack. Based on his file, his last name was Hall.

“If the worst traitor ever is in here, lock us all down until you sort it out.”

“I don’t think so,” snapped Shark.

“That doesn’t work,” explained Harry Milton, “because this is a game of chess. I can’t take five of my pieces of the board just to get one of theirs.”

“Plus there are nuclear components running loose in this country, and wasting time on a mole hunt won’t change that,” said Jack.

While they were talking, Samantha Boswell had been reading through the files. “You gave them my address?” She screamed, out the blue. “I have kids living there, you little son of a bitch!” She was screaming at the young guy.

“They’ve been moved,” said Harry in his calmest voice. “And nobody will know where they went until this is over. You can video-chat with them tonight.”

Now Shark was reading the files, and while he didn’t shout, his voice was tinged by undisguised rage. “You gave them everything. My service history, my criminal record, missions I went on, people I killed. Cartels don’t forgive the kind of shit I do. If word gets out that certain deaths are on my hands, certain kill-squads would be sent for me. Maybe if you’re trying to protect information, don’t give everyone all my top secret shit, right?”

The young man answered, “All this does is even the playing field. Whoever’s been digging around in the files already knows everything about you. Now the good guys know as much as the bad guys do. ” The younger man was trying to sound confident in the plan, but his nerves were showing.

“So I guess I’m done chasing drug lords? All hands on deck to catch your leak?” asked Shark, his voice calming.

Swift raised her hand like a school kid. “Did you say bad guys? Plural?”

The younger man nodded. “There’s no way to say for sure that there’s only one traitor. We hav
e
at leas
t
one leak, maybe more.”

Boswell sounded exasperated. “You just ruined my daughters’ lives on the hunch that I can find whoever it is you’re after? What if the moles outnumber the good guys? Ever think of that?”

The younger man, whose own information was not in the file he had given everyone, stared Samantha hard in the eyes for a moment, and nodded. He had no rebuttal, just hope that good outweighed bad. If there really were more traitors than loyal spies, this meeting could result in a massacre. With nothing left to say, the young man moved on with his briefing. He clicked his remote and the image changed to a blown-out shell of a building.

“This was the office park bombing in Ottawa a couple weeks back. What you may not know is that there was a secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service office inside.
My
office. And everyone I knew was killed. Before they blew it up, the office received some interesting pieces of a puzzle. One was this . . . ” He clicked again, and the next slide was a strange letter F.