Hunter: A Thriller (31 page)

He took a puff, blew a stream of smoke before continuing. “And we just couldn’t afford that. Not anymore. Not with the terrorist threat spinning out of control. I needed people who could be trained to operate without anybody holding their hands. People who would be willing and able to go out and mix it up with the
hajis
.”

She had to smile. Nobody ever accused Garrett of being Politically Correct. “So you signed off on it.”

“And sent Don right back home to make the pitch.”

Kessler picked up the tale again. “I invited Matthew to discuss something over drinks down in D-Bar—that’s a watering hole in a basement at the
Grad
College
. After some small talk, I brought up the
World
Trade
Center
bombing. The implications. Where it was all headed. I remember saying, ‘The next time will be much worse.’ My God, I had no idea, then.... Well, Matthew agreed with me. He was passionately opposed to radical Islam and keenly understood the dangers that it poses to the West.”

“So over beers, you pitched him.”

“I did. I told him my history with the Company; that one of my jobs was to find qualified candidates to help fight the war against violent Islamic fundamentalists; that I thought he had an extraordinary set of abilities to bring to the defense of
America
.”

“I bet he was floored.”

“He’s pretty reserved about showing his feelings. But let’s say that it was not at all what he had planned to be doing with his life. Over the next hour, I explained—as honestly and graphically as I could—the sort of contributions he might make. And the personal costs. He listened without saying a word, looking straight into my eyes the whole time. When I finished, I told him to sleep on it, and I called the waitress over for the bill.

“I’ll never forget the expression that came over his face. It had been tight, completely intense. All of a sudden, it relaxed. He looked slowly around the room, at things on the walls, at his fellow students. Then he picked up his mug of beer, drained it, and set it back down on the table, very deliberately. He held my eyes, stuck out his hand, and said: ‘I don’t have to sleep on it, Don. I’m in.’”

She glanced again at the photo, now lying on the coffee table. “As you say, an extraordinary young man. And now—he’s gone?”

“But not forgotten. His subsequent career in the Agency—if we could tell it—would be the stuff of legends.”

It baffled her. “How does a man like that go rogue and become an assassin?”

“That brings us back to motive,” Garrett answered, sitting down again
.
“Matt Malone had every reason in the world to hate and want to kill James Muller. You see, Malone was one of the officers that Muller betrayed to
Moscow
.”

“Oh!”

“So that’s motive. He also had opportunity—because he knew about the safe house. In fact, he’d been there himself once, to conduct an interrogation.”

Kessler said, “And also believe us when we say: He had the means. Many times, he had proven in the field just how lethal he could be.”

She paused, turning it over in her mind. “Okay. I believe you. Still, I’m having trouble getting my head around this. His motivation, mainly. Sure, Muller blew his cover, and he was pissed off. But
assassination
? That seems a bit over the top.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“It’s more than just being blown,” Garrett said. “After Muller tipped off the Russians, they tried to assassinate Malone. That was almost three years ago, March. He was in
Afghanistan
as an interrogator attached to a black ops team. The
Russkies
lured him into an ambush. They had a bomb waiting. Malone barely survived it. His face in particular was a mess. We flew him back to Walter Reed. He underwent extensive reconstructive plastic surgery.” He looked at her, said quietly: “Your late friend, Dr. Copeland, did the surgery himself.”

“Arthur?” she said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He was the best.”

“Imagine what that must have been like, Annie,” Kessler said. “Sure, we all take risks in this business. It’s part of the game. But you don’t expect to be betrayed by one of your own. You don’t expect to have your career, let alone your appearance, annihilated by a traitor.”

She stared at the face in the photo, hating the memory of James Muller even more. “So you’re sure he did it.”

“Malone is a stellar marksman. It all fits. No other explanation does.”

“We had it all wrong, then,” she said, sighing. She turned the photo around to face them. “You say he had plastic surgery, but this is an old shot. What does he look like now?”

Garrett shrugged. “I’d like to show you something more recent, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“There isn’t one.”

“But don’t we—”

“Not for him.” He leaned back and propped a foot against the edge of the coffee table. “There’s no file, either. We have nothing on him. Not even fingerprints. I’ll explain in a moment. In fact, it’s sheer dumb luck we have this single photo. It shouldn’t exist. It was taken surreptitiously by a Special Ops Group team member in
Afghanistan
. To impress his girlfriend, he admitted later. We canned the idiot for that; but he should consider himself lucky, because if Malone had known, he would’ve probably killed him. Anyway, it wound up at the bottom of the SOG guy’s file, and it turned up only after we began searching for anything that could help us find Malone.”

“Find him?”

Garrett said, “Two months after his admission to Walter Reed, he vanished from his hospital bed. That was the night before Dr. Copeland was going to remove the bandages from his final round of plastic surgery.”

ALLEGHENY NATIONAL FOREST
TIONESTA
,
PENNSYLVANIA
Thirty-one Months Earlier—May 15, 3:45 p.m.

“Who are you?”

The lips on the stranger’s face in the bathroom mirror moved, perfectly in synch with his own.

He stood frozen in place, unable to make sense of what he was seeing.

For weeks, he thought he’d accepted what had happened to him. With his usual cockiness, he figured he was prepared. In fact, he’d been eager for this moment.

But that was before he stared into this mirror—into the haunted eyes of a pale, swollen, bruised, unshaven face that he no longer recognized.

He exhaled loudly, suddenly aware that he’d been holding his breath. He shook his head—but stopped when the stranger shook his, too.

“Who the hell are you?”
he demanded, louder.

The stranger’s lips had moved again. And this time the voice registered. Deeper than his own. Not quite raspy, but huskier. The same trauma that had done this to his face had done something funny to his vocal cords, too.

He stopped.

His
face?
His
voice?

His heart was pounding and his head began to spin. He had to look away. He lurched to the bathroom doorway and leaned against the frame, stomach churning, fighting down the bitter taste rising in his throat.

The rustic living room swam before him dimly, gloomy from the towering oaks and pines that cloaked the cabin in perpetual shadow.

He noticed his duffle bag on the bare planks of the floor, where he’d dropped it a few minutes ago. Nearby, his worn leather jacket, draped over the back of an old wooden chair.

His eyes drifted to the double-barreled Mossberg he’d propped near the screen door that led onto the front porch.

Outside, the wind hissed through the leaves of the forest. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed.

A faint medicinal smell reminded him that he still gripped the remnants of the bandages he’d just cut from his face. He lifted the white tangle and noticed brown streaks of dried blood on it. Instinctively, he opened his hand to drop it, but the surgical tape stuck to his fingers. He waved his hand, but it still clung tightly. He shook his hand wildly, two, three times, grunting like an animal. The stained white wad finally spun off into the middle of the room, landing beneath the knotty-pine coffee table.

He was sweating now, and shivering. His tongue felt like a thick rag. He knew he was losing it. As he’d been trained, he closed his eyes, imagined himself on a puffy cloud, counted slowly as he struggled to control his breathing.

He wanted to step into the living room. But he couldn’t move. He knew he had to look again. Had to force himself to come to terms with what he had become.

He turned slowly. At first, he didn’t dare look into the mirror. He bent over the sink, propping himself on shaky arms. He remained that way for a moment, eyes down, staring at the rough floorboards beneath his boots. Until the knots and swirls in the wood grain arranged themselves into an
Edvard
Munch image of a distorted, howling face.

He clenched his teeth. Raised his gaze to the mirror.

The haunted stranger with the bruised jaw and swollen cheeks still stared back at him.

“Who am I?”
the stranger whispered at him.

*

For several days after he arrived, he could barely muster the will to unpack necessities, which he left scattered around the cabin. He didn’t eat much or go out. Didn’t read or listen to the radio. Didn’t bother to clean up or shave, either. He didn’t want to look again into the bathroom mirror.

Each morning, he put on a pot of coffee. Wrapped in a gray flannel bathrobe, he sat on the porch in the old, creaking rocker. Sipped coffee in the morning, wine in the afternoon and evening.

Sipping. Rocking. Staring off into the
Allegheny
National Forest
. Watching the oak leaves flail helplessly in the grip of the rising wind, as a cool low front moved in. Watching gray squirrels scramble and dig in last fall’s brown, rotting drifts. Watching flocks of black birds wheel under the gunmetal sky and scudding clouds.

Watching. Rocking. Trying to reconcile himself to the face in the mirror.

At dusk, sluggish from the wine, he limped up the stairs to the loft and stretched out under the scratchy olive Army blanket on the bed under the eaves. He slept without sheets, right on the bare mattress pad. He slept at least ten hours every night, his dreams haunted by images of violence.

*

Rocking on the porch and sipping
Malbec
during the afternoon of the fourth day, he thought about his first time here.

He was twelve years old when Dad—the tall, beefy man everyone else called “Big Mike”—brought him here for a week during deer-hunting season. They’d driven a couple of hours north of their sprawling home near
Pittsburgh
, taking the big Chevy pickup. Along the way, Dad revealed that the cabin was his private retreat; not even Mom knew about it. He went up here each November, he said, to get away from his high-pressure construction business and “recharge the batteries.”

The first day, Dad showed him how to clean and shoot his Remington “thirty-ought-six.” It was his first experience with guns. Dad patiently demonstrated how to safely carry, load, aim, fire, and clear the rifle. Then he set some empty soup cans out on the grass, with the slope of a steep hill as the backstop.

The first time he shot his father’s rifle from a standing position, the kick nearly knocked him down and left his ears ringing, despite the ear plugs he wore. But the blast sent a can tumbling.

Dad laughed and clapped. “Nice shooting, Mr. Boone! Now, try again. But this time, lean a bit more, like I showed you. And pull the stock tighter to your shoulder.”

The second day, Dad led him into the forest to show him how to stalk deer. He explained the difference between “up-wind” and “down-wind.” How to find a good spot and keep still. How to wait and let the animals come to you.

That night, a snowstorm blew in. When it cleared the next morning, Dad took him out to do some tracking. They crunched through the powdery drifts about a half mile from the cabin, picked up the tracks of three deer and followed them to a half-frozen pond. But the animals had already gone.

Dad pointed to a nearby grove of trees surrounded by tall bushes. “There’s a good place to set up. The wind is right, and we’ll watch the pond right through those bushes.”

The plastic-covered
Pennsylvania
hunting license pinned to Dad’s
camo
jacket flapped in an icy gust, and he shivered as a cold finger of the wind poked down the neck of his own jacket. His father seemed to notice.

“Problem, Matt?” he asked.

“Uh—no.”

Dad looked at him, his pale blue eyes twinkling.

“Too cold?”

“I’m fine.”

His father smiled that slight, crooked smile of his and nodded.

They took up a spot behind the bushes about thirty yards away, sitting on a fallen tree trunk after brushing off the snow.

And waited.

The wind swirled through the white-crusted bushes and drove tiny stinging crystals into his face. His eyes watered, his nose ran, and his breath raised a frosty fog. Even through thick woolen gloves and heavy boots, his toes and fingertips were going numb. Within fifteen minutes, his teeth were chattering. Ashamed, he clenched his jaw to try to make them stop.

After half an hour, he thought he was going to freeze to death.

But Dad didn’t seem to notice either him or the cold. He remained still and watchful, straddling the log with the left side of his body angled toward the pond; his Remington lay across his knees with its muzzle pointed in that direction. His big, bare hands were tucked into a fur hand-warmer on his lap. His eyes, squinting against the wind under the brim of his hunting cap, were the only things that moved, constantly scanning the area in front of him.

After forty-five minutes, he finally couldn’t take it anymore and turned to say something—but stopped when Dad suddenly raised his hand, demanding silence. Then he pointed.

Out of a line of pines on the opposite side of the pond a large buck emerged, moving one halting step at a time. It turned its head in brief jerks, its large rack of antlers tilting with each move, its nostrils testing the air.

He felt his heart begin to race. All awareness of the cold vanished.

Dad again motioned him to remain still. Moving with infinite patience and precision, he smoothly drew his bare left hand out of the fur, then, very deliberately, raised the rifle to his right shoulder. Suddenly it became apparent why he’d sat with his left side toward the pond: All he had to do now was lift and aim the weapon without turning or shifting his body, perhaps alerting the nervous animal.

Dad didn’t have a scope on his old Remington. He simply looked down the fixed sights on the barrel, slowly drew in a breath, then let out a little white cloud through his nostrils and held the rest.

He remembered turning to watch the deer when the unexpected blast in his ear caused him to flinch and slide right off the log into the snow. He saw the buck spasm, partly rear up, then fall. Its legs twitched twice and then it was still.

“Clean shot.” Dad said it to himself, quietly, simply.

“Wow!” Bounding to his feet, he caught the amusement in Dad’s eyes, and he charged over the powdery surface to where the deer lay. A crimson stain was spreading in the snow beneath its tawny shoulder. His father came up beside him, leaned over the antlers and moved his forefinger, counting.

“Twelve points. This old guy’s been around a while.” Dad straightened, towering over his son. “Now, we earn the privilege of taking his life.”

They muscled the carcass back to the cabin—or rather, his father did most of the muscling. Still, it was a long trek, and when they arrived, he was sweating despite the cold, his aching lungs gasping for breath. He watched in squeamish fascination as Dad strung up the buck from a tree branch and demonstrated how to gut and clean it.

“I could truck it up the highway and have somebody else do this first part,” he explained, wiping his long, sharp knife on a rag. “But I want you to see what’s involved. Meat doesn’t just come out of a grocery store in plastic wrap. Somebody has to kill an animal before we can eat it.... When we’re done here, we’ll drive it down to Tionesta. A guy there will finish the job, and in a day or two we’ll pick up our venison.”

Dad paused and looked at him.

“Still cold?”

“Huh?” He had completely forgotten about the frigid temperature.

Big Mike grinned. “I know you were freezing your ass off out there. But you didn’t moan and groan about it, and you kept still. And you see? Patience was rewarded.” Dad punched him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son.”

His father went back to work, but continued to speak.

“Proud because you’re not a whiner. That’s important.... First thing I watch for when I hire a guy is: Does he make things happen, or does he make excuses?”

He reached into the buck’s abdominal cavity, pulled out a bloody, lumpy mess and dropped it onto the plastic sheet he’d spread under the deer.

“See, Matt, there’s two kinds of people,” he went on. “And the difference is in how they see themselves. One guy says to himself, ‘I’m the boss of circumstances.’ The other guy says, ‘I’m the victim of circumstances.’”