Enemy Agents (22 page)

Swift didn’t miss a step, sprinting down the hallway without a moment’s hesitation, working out the details of the escape on the fly while Quarrel followed and struggled to keep pace. She was trying every door on her left. The fifth door opened and she charged in. Quarrel, lagging several steps behind, followed her.

Inside, a mother was eating breakfast with a girl of about ten years old. They both screamed, but Swift just ran around the table, pulled their sliding door open and hurdled the three-foot concrete fence of their tiny patio. Quarrel ran by, gasping for breath, the gun in his hand making the woman scream. Quarrel caught the woman’s eye and coughed out “sorry” before hurdling the wall and following Swift across the pavement that circled the building.

Behind him, the mother ran out onto the patio and screamed at him, “You leave that woman alone!”

That scream was enough to draw out the attackers who had been stationed at the exit at the far end of the building. Two men came around the corner, saw Swift, and opened fire. Swift took cover behind a dumpster, and their attention turned to Quarrel. He fired four shots at them, clicked empty, and made it to the dumpster before they returned fire. The man in the suit and the Navigator were nowhere to be seen, no doubt fleeing the sound of sirens, which were blaring now.

The police were on the street around the building, their cruisers coming to a stop. Quarrel had only a quick glimpse of the area, but back here behind the apartment building there was no cover other than the dumpsters. They were very, very exposed here. There was a grassy field about the size of a soccer pitch, and then another identical apartment building. Quarrel poked his gun out to the side of the dumpster as a distraction for any potential snipers, then peeked over the top to see what was happening. The gunmen were gone, and there were flashing red lights washing across the pavement at that end of the building. Quarrel tucked his gun out of sight under his shirt.

“Cops went straight to the shooters,” he said.

“Never stop running,” she whispered, while her eyes told him which way to go.

Swift took off without any further instruction. In the tract of grass between the two buildings she was completely exposed, but neither the cops nor the attackers spotted her. Apparently, the cops and attackers were busy with each other. Quarrel came running a few seconds behind her, letting her lead him around to the front of the neighbouring apartment building. They made it to a road on the far side of that building, which was busy enough for a weekday at lunchtime. Swift ran straight out into traffic and into the middle of the first lane. An approaching car screeched to a stop and honked at her. Swift glared at the driver.

The driver leaned out her window and started to say something, but before she could get the words out, Swift pulled out her pistol and shouted “Get out of the car!”

Quarrel saw what was happening and pulled his gun. “She means business, lady. Get out of the car!”

The driver saw the guns and obediently got out of the car. Swift jumped into the driver’s seat and Quarrel opened the passenger’s door. He had to shove the woman’s purse off the passenger seat before he could get in, and Swift was pulling away before his door was even shut.

“People saw that. People see things, then they get on their cellphones, then the police show up. They’ll know which car we’re in in a couple minutes.” She was driving faster and faster, weaving through the traffic. “We have to get a few blocks away and quietly ditch this thing. Take the lady’s cash if she has any.”

Quarrel was surprised at Swift’s cold efficiency, but then he realized that her training had kicked in. In the same way that Quarrel was able to kill those men in a matter of seconds because muscle memory programmed him to aim and shoot, Swift was able to escape from a sticky situation without needing time to stop and think. It was automatic to her. In under a minute she was parking in front of a plaza with a convenience store, a dentist’s office, and a few other shops. She found an unlocked blue Honda Civic in seconds and had it running by the time Quarrel was in the passenger seat.

Five minutes later, they were just another car in the morning commute.

Quarrel’s cell phone rang. Swift shot him an angry look. “You should have ditched that.”

Quarrel checked the display. “It’s Milton.”

Swift pushed the button to lower the passenger’s side window. Quarrel stared at the phone, considered that Harry Milton was either trying to kill him or to save him, and chose to throw the phone out the window. He heard it shatter on the road.

“We’re on our own now,” he said as he rolled his window closed. “At least until we know who’s trying to kill us.”

“No we’re not,” she said confidently, “we just have to get back to Khalid. We have to get back to Europe.”

27

Quarrel and Swift drove out of Virginia and into the city of Washington, D.C. The little blue Honda hadn’t attracted any attention, but they both knew they weren’t out of danger. Neither of them needed to say it, but they could still be followed. They didn’t know who sent the strike team to Smith’s apartment, but it was either a team sent by “Digamma” or a CIB team that could have answered to either Boswell or Milton. If Milton was against them, then the full resources of CIB, including satellite tracking, would be deployed to hunt them down. And if their attackers had been sent courtesy of Mercier, there was no telling how much power “Digamma” did or didn’t have.

“We’ll head downtown. Park indoors. Walk indoors. Change what colours we’re wearing before we head outside again.” Swift was talking, but Quarrel wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or just repeating her training. She stopped to take a breath. “I just don’t know where we’re going to go now.”

Entering the city, Quarrel snapped his fingers and sat up. “I know where.”

An hour later, they stood in the entrance of a four-storey, red brick building on Q Street. Quarrel scanned the list of names next to the door, smiled, and pressed the buzzer.

“Where are we?” Swift inquired.

“Edwin Brown’s apartment.”

“Who’s Edwin Brown?”

“Don’t know. Never met him.” Quarrel cleared his throat. “Well, technically he doesn’t exist.” There was no answer from the apartment. “ . . . Which is why he’s not home. Pick the lock, OK?”

They rode up to the third floor and found Mr. Brown’s apartment, where Swift once again worked her magic on the locks so they could slip inside. There was a staleness to the air, dusty and very dry. Mr. Brown hadn’t been home in weeks, and the windows hadn’t been open in months.

“So how’d you pull this place out of your ass?” Swift asked.

“My job in Canada was paying the rent on this place. It’s one of three apartments our man in Washington used. I wasn’t sure whether he’d be here. Figured after my office got blown up, the agents would either switch over to CSIS or just fade away. Still not sure either way, but at least he’s not here. If I had to introduce myself, and explain our situation, I might not have been sure what to say.”

Quarrel dropped the yellow-covered book and Crowe’s digamma file on the table. Swift sat down, looked for an instant like she was going to start reading, then she slumped back into her chair and sighed. The tension and adrenaline of their morning was finally draining away, leaving her sleepy. She yawned and stretched, looking almost feline, before turning back to Quarrel to ask, “So can you read the book cipher?”

“Yeah. It’ll just take a little while to do it.”

Quarrel opened a few of Mr. Brown’s cupboards, looking for anything they could use. Whoever Mr. Brown was, he had a telltale Canadian love of rye whiskey. He had several varieties. Quarrel grabbed a bottle.

“Drink?”

Swift shook her head, trying to look nonchalant, but Quarrel saw the way her hands tightened into fists. “I don’t drink.”

“The Academy’s rules?”

“Mine.”

“Why?” he asked, deciding to put the bottle away and not drink in front of her.

She realized she was clenching fists and shook her hands loose. “It’s one thing in my life I actually control.”

#

Swift finally gave in to sleep. She had been awake for almost two days and she was unconscious the moment she settled into Edwin Brown’s bed. While she slept, Quarrel decided to play back the video to get a better look at Digamma. If Crowe’s theory was right, the reason no photos of Mercier existed was because the members of the Digamma conspiracy had deliberately erased him. That meant Quarrel had nothing to compare him to, to ensure that Digamma really was Mercier. The voice had no trace of a French accent, but then again Mercier had stopped being French decades earlier.

Quarrel hooked up the camera to Brown’s flatscreen TV and started playback. When the Lincoln pulled up, Swift had done a perfect job of aiming the camera at the passenger side of the car, so Quarrel could watch Digamma climb out. He had short, neatly combed hair and a perfectly tailored blue suit. He was obviously very wealthy and looked about the right age to be Mercier. Quarrel hadn’t bothered to sync up the audio to the video, so he was watching in silence now, as Digamma smiled and made chit-chat with Crowe. Quarrel felt sick to his stomach watching it, knowing that those opening statements by Mercier had actually been a test, one that Crowe had failed. Quarrel paused it before the sniper took his shot at Crowe. He stared at the paused image, captured in HD through a great zoom lens, studying the man called Digamma.

And realized that Digamma looked familiar. Quarrel had seen that face before. It took a moment to scan his memory to figure out where he was getting this feeling of déjà vu, but then Quarrel figure it out. The last time he’d been spying through windows. But that was too big to even think about. He had to turn on Brown’s computer and do a quick internet search to be sure. Had to see a photo to confirm his gut feeling. Once he saw the photo, there was no doubt.

He had spent an evening with Thorpe, spying in the windows of Globection’s head office. Watching for any sign of Fatale in the CEO’s office. They hadn’t seen her that night, but they saw plenty of the CEO. Hugo Zoeli, the President’s golf buddy; the nation’s second-largest military contractor. Quarrel opened a recent photo of Zoeli on the computer, and turned back to face the TV.

Martin Mercier hadn’t just disappeared twenty years ago. He hadn’t just erased his old identity. He had started a new life, a telecommunications company that had grown quickly and expanded into weapons and mercenaries. Martin Mercier, Digamma, the linchpin of whatever was happening, had become Hugo Zoeli.

Zoeli had an army of private military contractors. He had UAVs, satellites, and a mole in CIB. Chris Quarrel was up against the most powerful unelected man in the country. He decided he needed that drink after all.

#

It made no sense to call the CIB. Someone from that office had set up the trap that Mercier had sprung. Someone, likely to be either Milton or Boswell, was trying to get Quarrel killed. Calling them meant risking that they could track his location. But he had to tell them. There were still good people in CIB. People Quarrel knew wanted to do the right thing and stop whatever catastrophe Mercier was orchestrating. They deserved to know just who and what they were up against. He turned on Brown’s computer, attached the camcorder to it, and called Milton using a voice over internet service.

“Where are you?” he shouted as a greeting when Quarrel’s call finally made it through.

“I’m in hiding. Now, we’re going to this as a video call and I want to see that there are several agents in the room.”

“Why should I do that?” Milton demanded.

“Because I want to know that other people will hear this. If you don’t put me on speaker, I’m sure Hinkston at the CIA would love to know what I’ve got.”

Milton swore and went away. While Milton was distant, Quarrel switched to a video call and set the camera on a shelf, pointed at himself. He was careful not to show any windows, since they would betray his location. After a while, the monitor lit up with a video image of several people standing in the large “command centre” at CIB, the room where Milton barked orders. There was Gig, the gun guy; Meg, the mad scientist; Kilo, the computer tech; as well as an assortment of people who identified themselves as analysts or guards. Quarrel thought they must have wired him through a laptop webcam, since they all looked below frame as they talked to him.

“So what was so important?” Milton asked.

“I just met Matthew Crowe. And Martin Mercier.”

“Crowe’s alive? And with Mercier?”

Quarrel ignored that. “Twenty years ago, a man called Digamma paid top agents at the CIA, KGB and MI-6 to erase him. They removed his files, his photos, his fingerprints. They let him start a new life. That’s why Martin Mercier disappeared so long ago. He became a new man.”

“Thorpe came to America because someone matched his prints. So your case falls apart,” said Milton. “You’re wasting my time.”

“The Brits still had his prints because the mole at MI-6 screwed up. That’s why they found his prints when they recovered stolen documents from Globection. But they never realized
why
his prints were on it: Martin Mercier is Hugo Zoeli.”

A few of the analysts behind Milton gasped.

“That’s absurd. There’s no way a man like that could—” Milton started.

“Hugo Zoeli is an Italian citizen and after the Digamma plot, nobody had his records on file. The only things we know about Hugo are the things his false papers tell us.”

“OK, we’ll look into Zoeli,” said Milton. “But where the hell did you go this morning?”

Quarrel told them all the story of the morning’s events. Smith’s betrayal, Crowe’s theft of the Smith identity, the meeting at the parking garage, everything. By the time he was done, several of the analysts were talking to each other, shaking their heads in confusion.

Milton was turning to face some other agents, no doubt ordering them to steal the parking garage investigation from the local police. When he turned back to the screen, he said, “Anything else, Mr. Quarrel?”

Quarrel leaned in toward the camera. He was pissed off and he wanted everyone listening to know it. “Someone tried to kill me today. Someone who knew where I was this morning. Someone at CIB. My money’s on either you or Boswell, so where is she?”

“She left after you ran off with her suspect.”

“Thorpe?” he asked, knowing that Thorpe had been interrogating Fatale that morning.

“He ran off with
your
suspect.”

“Fatale?”

“He told me she would set up a meeting with Mercier. I guess we’ll see how that goes now, huh?”

Quarrel tapped the keyboard and ended the video call. He pulled the other phone from his pocket; the cheap disposable phone he used to keep in touch with Thorpe. He dialed Thorpe’s number, since he didn’t keep anything programmed into the phone’s memory, and waited. After eight rings, there was no answer. He hung up and tried again, making sure he was dialing each number correctly. There was still no answer.

Thorpe was gone, most likely to the same sort of meeting Matthew Crowe had just walked into, and Fatale was leading him right into it. If it went anything like Crowe’s meeting, Thorpe was doomed.