Enemy Agents (23 page)

28

After Quarrel and Swift had run off in the early hours of the morning, leaving Boswell to scream at Milton, William Thorpe had plenty of time alone with Fatale. Under the effects of the truth agent, she was very cooperative, and Thorpe learned so many things. He learned about her boss, Martin Mercier; he learned about how Mercier had been hiding out in South America for years; he learned about how Mercier trained people to be assassins and double-agents for profit. She gave him everything he would need for MI-7 to give him permission to kill Mercier, and all he needed now was to actually find the bastard.

All of the other players in Quarrel’s big meeting the other day had been caught up catching a leak at CIB and in pointing fingers at each other. None of that mattered to Thorpe. He had been in the espionage game long enough to realize that there would always be leaks, doubles, and traitors, and when they were revealed, Thorpe would hunt them down. But until then, he had a score to settle with Martin Mercier.

The other agents were so concerned with leaks and stolen computers and other distractions that they didn’t realize how monumental it was for Mercier’s fingerprints to show up again. They didn’t realize that Mercier, active in the espionage world, was more dangerous than some anonymous group called Digamma. It didn’t matter to the others that years ago, when he was known simply as The Whisper, Mercier had been the best freelance assassin in Europe.

It didn’t matter to the others that when The Whisper killed an American general in 1986, the CIA stopped giving him work, and so The Whisper started working almost exclusively for the KGB. It didn’t matter that after the fall of the USSR, with Thorpe’s investigation proving that The Whisper was a French national named Martin Mercier, or that Mercier had tried to kill Thorpe.

It didn’t matter to them that The Whisper had fired a long-range sniper rifle at Thorpe, who was on his honeymoon in Jamaica.

It didn’t matter that the bullet missed Thorpe by inches and hit Julia in the head.

It didn’t matter that Thorpe’s wife’s brain took so much damage she would never walk or speak or take care of herself again.

It mattered to Thorpe.

And Thorpe was ready for a fight.

The other agents at Chris Quarrel’s meeting had been concerned with chasing each other, but doing so only ignored the bigger issue. They didn’t know where the leak started, but they did know where it ended: an assassin killing Matthew Crowe, inside a well-guarded embassy, during a party. If anyone could do that, it was Mercier. Thorpe was the only one on the case who realized that it would be easier to track the leak from that end: start with Mercier and work back to the mole. Thorpe worked alone anyway, so it was easy to stay away from the others and set out to solve this thing without them.

He wanted to be at the heart of this thing; he wanted to be the man who brought Mercier down. When it was clear that Mercier was involved with this Digamma group, that he was The Whisper, and when MI-7 had their proof, Thorpe could finally have his revenge. Sometimes over the years, Thorpe had wondered if he only kept the license to kill so he could use it on Mercier. Now, he’d have the chance.

Thorpe thought it was somewhat ironic that it was Quarrel who had helped him stick to this path. Because while Quarrel was off chasing phantom intelligence and duplicitous agents, he was ignoring the biggest piece of evidence in the whole plot: Erica Gibbons.

Fatale was a mysterious figure, much like The Whisper had been. Barely photographed, hard to pin down. But Thorpe knew human nature, and anyone who risked their cover to ask about a former lover had a soft spot, and soft spots were useful. It only took a few hours of pointed, drug-induced interrogation, with none of the torture that you so often heard about in American black sites such as CIB. She had given him the schedule that her interactions with Mercier went by, which suggested he would call her this morning. So he made sure her phone would still receive calls deep down inside the CIB, and they waited. Sure enough, at a little before noon, the phone rang. Thorpe was listening in through a connection they attached to the phone, and he knew Mercier’s voice immediately even though he hadn’t heard it in over twenty years. Mercier was calling to find out what happened when Fatale went to Quarrel’s hotel. She lied, wonderfully, and told Mercier that Jessica Swift had saved Quarrel’s life, and that Fatale had been forced to run away. She also added, with her eyes staring bitterly at the British agent, that “Thorpe was even easier to take down than you said. I just wish I had killed him.”

Thorpe ignored that and tapped his watch. Fatale nodded to say she understood and told Mercier she needed to see him in person to hand over some files she had stolen from Quarrel. Mercier told her he would find a quiet spot to meet and let her know. He called back several hours later and gave the address where he wanted to meet, and a quick check showed that this was an abandoned farm a little north of Baltimore.

While Milton ran around screaming about his investigation, about Quarrel and Swift and something about Jack Hall and the Pentagon, Thorpe was busy going over his plan with Fatale. She would be the bait to lure Mercier into the open. Then Thorpe would swoop in to take Mercier down, alive if possible. Thorpe wanted to squeeze Mercier for information before he killed him. He wanted Mercier to know that it was William Thorpe who killed him. And when the time came, Thorpe would kill Mercier in the only appropriate way: with a bullet to the brain.

Thorpe managed to convince Milton to let him take Fatale out of CIB, in order to lure Mercier into a trap. Milton didn’t trust anyone, so he had forced Thorpe to take three tactical agents with him. They were former Marines, good in a fight but likely to get in the way if Thorpe needed to bend the rules at any point.

Fatale drove a silver SUV the CIB provided for her, with two of the agents in the back seat. Thorpe had stressed repeatedly that if Fatale ever needed them to duck down and get out of sight, they were to do so. He didn’t trust them to listen.

Thorpe followed in a red Porsche Cayman, customized by MI-7 to suit Thorpe’s needs. It wasn’t subtle, but it was fast. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use the car’s speed, or any of MI-7’s little treats for that matter. They drove out of Virginia and into Maryland without incident.

Fatale pulled into the lot of an abandoned farm, circling the turn-around and putting the SUV in park. Thorpe pulled in after her and was relieved to note that he couldn’t see the agents in the back seat. He drove into the old barn, pulled out of sight, and turned off the Porsche. Milton’s third agent, a big buy called Brannock, looked over from the passenger seat.

“I’m gonna get out and set up upstairs. I saw a window,” Brannock said.

“Fine, stay out of sight. And if you have to fire, shoot for the knee. I want this guy alive,” said Thorpe. Brannock nodded and climbed out of the car.

Once the hulking agent was gone, Thorpe turned up his earpiece. “It’s your show, Ms. Gibbons.”

The woman’s voice was calm and silky in the earpiece. “Five minutes, he’ll show.”

Thorpe spoke again, “Agents Charles and Fengen, are you are out of sight?” he asked in a mocking voice, like the stern old English schoolteacher. He expected a chuckle, or an annoyed swear, but got no answer.

“Agents, report.”

Static.

“Fatale, what the hell is—”

Her voice was still calm and smooth. “Sorry, Billy-boy, your friends didn’t make it.”

“God dam—”

“They’re still in the car, but I don’t think they can talk right now. Or ever.” She laughed a little.

Thorpe fired up the Porsche, the engine roaring to life. “Brannock!” he shouted.

Brannock, watching the road from his heightened vantage point, shouted through the earpiece. “We’ve got cars coming from both directions. Jesus, I’m picking up men on my thermals—”

Brannock’s body fell from the loft, crunching against the concrete behind Thorpe’s car.

“Sorry, Billy,” Fatale teased over the earpiece, “the only one getting taken alive today is you. Your old friend Sidorov would like to finish what he started. What was it? Tarred and feathered?”

A hulking SUV pulled into the barn behind Thorpe, blocking the way he had entered. It was black, not Fatale’s silver, so whatever backup she had managed to call in was already here. There was no other way out of the barn.

The doors opened and a team of men in black body armour climbed out, raising machine guns. Thorpe could tell in a glance that they were professional killers. Before they could get far from the SUV, Thorpe flicked open a panel on the dash and accessed the weapon controls. A heads-up display projected on the touch-screen control panel, which Thorpe aimed by dragging a finger. Then he fired.

A rocket launched out of the rear left turn signal light, impacting the black SUV and blowing the whole hitman crew straight to hell. Thorpe launched another rocket, this time through the front left headlight, and blasted a hole in the barn in front of him. He stomped on the gas and the Porsche roared outside. He was circling back to the road as soon as his tires touched the field.

“Where are you going?” Fatale taunted over the earpiece. “You think I only had one truck full of guys?”

Thorpe’s Cayman raced past her silver SUV and fishtailed onto the paved country road. Another black SUV tried to turn sideways to block him, but Thorpe’s car was too fast, and he only had to pull half-way onto the shoulder to avoid it. Now the SUV was only blocking Fatale’s vehicle from the pursuit. He could hear her swearing in his ear.

As he rounded a corner, Thorpe hit the button to release a series of caltrops from the back bumper. A few seconds later he watched in his rear-view mirror as Fatale’s silver SUV popped its tires on the multi-pointed metal spikes and slid off the road, and then the black SUV followed, ramming into Fatale’s truck from behind. He saw fatale’s door open, knew that he had the advantage back again, and did a quick one-eighty.

Roaring back toward the crashed SUVs, he saw Fatale dive for the gutter just as he launched the front right rocket, which blasted the black truck. The explosion also devastated Fatale’s CIB-issue silver truck.

He pulled to a stop and immediately Fatale popped up, a gun in hand, and fired a shot at Thorpe’s driver’s side window. The bulletproof glass stopped it.

“Fine bit of acting you did,” he told her through the headset.

“It’s amazing what people will tell you if they think you’re under a truth agent. All I had to do was agree with your questions and you told me so much.” She smiled at him through the window. “I don’t meet with Mercier. I do, however, have standing plans to get busted out of custody should I ever need a hand. You were so kind to help out.”

Thorpe sighed, knowing that the shred of hope he had for getting to take down Mercier today was fading. At least he could take Fatale back to CIB. “Drop the gun and surrender. This car still has machine guns and you can’t kill me from out there. Your little game didn’t work.”

“Sure it did. We killed Milton’s men and you got me out of CIB.”

“And now I’m taking you back in.”

He heard a cell phone ring and watched Fatale calmly tuck the gun away and answer a phone he had never seen before from her front pocket. Where the hell had she gotten that phone?

She walked right up to the side of the Porsche, and held out the phone toward his window. He was tired of her games.

“Toss the phone, lie on the ground, and surrender,” he ordered.

“You don’t want me throw this phone, William.” She said with a malicious look on her face.

“Why? Will it explode?”

“No, silly. It’s for you.”

“Tell Martin we’ll talk sooner than he thinks. I know that was his voice on the line this morning, and I will bring him down.”

“It’s not Mercier,” she said, giving the phone a little shake. She took a few steps toward the car, until she was actually tapping the phone against the bulletproof window. “You should have left me alone. Gone after that mole that my old friend Chris is looking for.”

“Your friend Chris thinks you blew up his building. You’re going down for terrorism.”

“Maybe. After you take this call, you won’t be so sure.”

“You must be joking.”

“It’s just a phone, William. You don’t even have to hold it. Just take a look at the screen.” She pressed it against the glass. Thorpe didn’t want to give in and look, knowing it was a trap. He expected that the screen would likely flash a blinding light the moment he looked, but even if it did, he also felt very secure in the MI-7-issued car.

She grinned. “It’s a video call from Jolly Old England.”

Finally, Thorpe gave in and looked down to the screen, and his heart almost stopped. The screen showed a shaky image. “It’s Saint Michael’s, William. It’s your wife.”

He couldn’t ignore it now, his eyes reflexively focused on the screen. And there she was, lying in bed, her eyes open and teary, as someone recorded her. She had bruises on her face. Her lip was swelling. She was helpless, barely able to move on her own, completely unable to cry out, and someone had come to the room where she slept and beaten her. Thorpe felt all his control, his composure, all the walls he built around himself and dared to call “Triple-Eight,” breaking inside himself. His hands shook and he gripped the steering wheel so hard he thought he’d break it off.