Severance Package (20 page)

Bruised.

Battered.

With another busted lip. Swallowing her own blood. Feeling it burn a hole in the lining of her stomach.

Stop it. Take stock of yourself.

Ania rested on the lower step, next to Ethan’s body. Her tongue found another shard of tooth; she pulled it loose with her tongue, sucked the blood from around it, then spit it at the
wall. It bounced from the cinder block and landed on the guard’s chest. There you go. A souvenir.

From Ania.

Forget Victim; she could reclaim her birth name now. Molly Lewis was dead. She was dead the moment she poisoned her husband, mixing the potato salad while he slept. And “Girlfriend”? After this grievous setback, she wasn’t sure the name still applied.

Ania Kuczun lives.

Thirty-five hundred miles
away, McCoy walked away from the monitors and opened the fridge. It was an American-style fridge—oversized, with a ridiculously large freezer. Neither McCoy nor Keene had ever frozen anything. It contained one item: ice cubes. McCoy scooped some out now and put them in a rocks glass, then filled it with single-malt Scotch. He put the glass to his mouth and drank steadily, as if consuming a sports drink.

In the living room, Keene stared at his partner. He hated seeing him disappointed.

Keene wanted to go over to him now, try to untangle the tight knots of muscles in his back and shoulders. That was where the stress hit him.

But Keene knew better, from experience. Best to leave the man alone.

“I’m going out for a bit,” he said. McCoy didn’t seem to hear him. He was busy pouring himself another Scotch.

How about you drink a Scot instead?
Keene had once said, in a light moment.

Now was not the time for that.

Keene took his valise with laptop and cell, along with notepad and paper. He could work on some of the Dubai operation in a secluded booth at the pub just as well as he could in the apartment. He didn’t need to start surveillance for another hour and a half.

The barman nodded to him, brought him a bag of crisps and an ice-cold orange juice. Keene was probably the only Scot within ten miles who didn’t touch alcohol or red meat. He liked to keep his mind clear, his body lean. When he first started in his line of work, back when he had another name, he told himself that the drink was necessary; it kept the darkness contained in a lockbox. Slowly, he realized that the alcohol only strengthened the darkness—emboldened it. Eventually, the alcohol locked him inside the box, along with the darkness. He didn’t need that again.

When Keene first met McCoy, it had boggled the man’s mind.

“You’re a Scot? And you don’t even drink beer?”

Keene shrugged.

“So much for a drunken shag,” McCoy had said.

Their relationship was a complicated one.

Keene tried to work on some of the trickier details of Dubai, but his mind kept wandering out the pub door, down the block, and four flights up. To McCoy, and his “Girlfriend.” He wondered idly: Why did he pick that code name?

What puzzled him the most, however, was the former operative known as David Murphy.

McCoy had told Keene about him some time ago; Murphy was famous for stopping a 9/11-style plot a full two years
before
the original 9/11. Clinton was still in the White House; the United States was still reeling from Columbine. The plan was a hybrid: suicide bombers in twelve American cities, armed to the
teeth, with bombs jacked into pulse-checking wristwatches. The bombers were told to choose the most crowded location. Reveal weapons—preferably assault rifles. (The jihadists had been paying
careful
attention to Columbine.) Take out as many people as you can, stopping only to reload. When law enforcement or armed civilians come to take
you
down, rejoice in Allah, for the watch will tell the bomb your pulse has stopped, and the bomb will do
its
job on the police and emergency technicians.

Anyway, Murphy caught wind of it through an informant, arrested one would-be bomber, then extracted the entire plot—along with names and addresses—through a method of interrogation that still had not been revealed.

In uncovering the plot, Murphy erased many, many sins.

After 9/11, Murphy had joined an organization without a name. Some wags called it “CI-6.” This was a joke—a mutant blend of CIA and MI-6. Neither intelligence organization had anything to do with it, or knew much about it beyond rumor. CI-6 was another beast entirely. The blackest pocket of the blackest bag—in no visible way was it attached to any official budget line of any government.

The way Keene had heard it, CI-6 had started as a joke in the crowded upstairs bar at Madam’s Organ on Eighteenth Street in Washington, D.C.

The more the story was retold, the more the details were simultaneously obscured and embellished. One current version had it that the whole thing started as a bet, much like the Vietnam War. But this much was certain: a person of political influence met up with a person of lobbying influence, had way too many pints of Pabst Blue Ribbon one night—hell, it was a blues bar, what were you supposed to do, sip Johnnie Walker Black among the civilians?—and started talking about what to do about all these goddamn terrorists. Though in the smoky haze, the word was pronounced
terrizz.
As in,
We gotta stop the got-damn terrizz.

On a car ride to a houseboat party on the Potomac, a loose plan was formed. Secret financing secured. Types of operations determined.

“It’ll be like the CIA and MI-6 got drunk and went to bed together, then didn’t tell anybody the next day.”

Hence, CI-6.

Pickle your brain in enough Pabst, it’ll seem funny to you, too.

There was no official name for the covert offspring of that drunken evening.

Those parents weren’t around to see their child take its first step; the political fixer found himself caught up in a Capitol Hill scandal soon after and was drummed out of the city posthaste. The lobbyist, too, was caught in the vacuum pull of the tidal pool. But other men were in place to handle the birth, education, and development of this fledgling life-form. The baby grew fast.

The baby grew so fast, it quickly forgot its parents.

The baby grew so large, it forgot parts of itself, like a toddler running through an antique shop. Such a baby doesn’t realize that swinging its arms out willy-nilly will shatter rare teacups and serving plates. All of that is boring anyway. The fun thing is to
run.

Guys like David Murphy were a vital part of the baby.

On the outside, Murphy had surprised his fans within the conventional intelligence world by retiring and starting a financial services company. Like, what?

He called it Murphy, Knox.

Even the name was a gag: Knox=NOCs, CIA slang for “nonofficial covers.” Murphy and his NOCs.

Murphy had quickly become a key player in CI-6.

So had Keene, once he saw how useful he could be. How much more power he could wield working for an outfit like this.

But what was Murphy mixed up in that, suddenly, he had to
wipe out his front company? Along with more than a few of his employees, including several operatives?

This was the problem with the baby that was CI-6. An invisible structure meant a hazy sense of self. Lack of accountability.

Could a guy like Murphy just go and wipe out his own front company on a whim?

Sure he could.

But why?

And did everyone else know about it?

McCoy wouldn’t be much help in this department. He was too distracted by Girlfriend. He was more about recruiting—“nurturing talent,” he was fond of saying—than running operations. Keene couldn’t complain; it was how they’d met. Keene had liked being wooed. But now, he worried that his man didn’t have his eye on the full picture here.

Keene fired up the laptop and hit the phones. Told the barman to keep the OJ coming.

David was imagining he was inside a Wawa, and he was browsing the aisles, and he had an unlimited operational budget.

He was able to procure microwaveable hamburgers, Italian submarine sandwiches—Philadelphians called them “hoagies”—tubs of cottage cheese, ooh, cottage cheese. That suddenly sounded good. If he could get himself up off this floor, and take care of everything that needed taking care of, he’d fix the elevators and ride down to the lobby and walk out to Twentieth Street. Just a block south … okay, two half blocks south, if you counted the stupid little side street below Market … there was a Wawa, right at Twentieth and Chestnut. He sneaked down there at lunch, sometimes. A man in his position was expected to dine at one of the Market West hot spots. Truth was, he hated those places. Gimmicky names, nine-dollar cheeseburgers. He
preferred to buy lunch in some common place, bring it back in a brown paper bag, feast behind his closed office door. And Wawa was one of his favorites. The refrigerated dairy section was along the right wall. He could see the stacks of 2 percent cottage cheese, blue plastic containers, stacked in the middle. Oddly enough, the whole-milk cottage cheese was too cloying, while the 1 percent skim version was too acidic. Two percent was perfection. Perfect chunky creamy goodness …

Someone touched his face.

“I know you’re still there.”

A female voice.

Someone he recognized. Sort of.

“I’m going to bring you around. But a bit of warning: This is going to hurt.”

Hurt?

Hurt was fine.

As long as he woke up to a blue plastic container of Wawa 2 percent cottage cheese, already open, white plastic protective layer already peeled back, white plastic fork gently shoved into the side.

And crackers. Plenty of Nabisco saltine …

Nichole held the adrenaline shot two feet above David’s chest, then stabbed down and thumbed the plunger.

A supersize dose of epinephrine—the so-called fight-or-flight hormone—pumped into David’s heart and made a lightning tour of his circulatory system.

The reaction wasn’t immediate. It took a few seconds.

But soon David was spitting blood and convulsing.

Then he said, “…
crackers.”

Jamie realized that he’d been holding his breath for a full minute.

Nichole didn’t waste a second. She flung the empty syringe across the conference room and placed her left foot on David’s throat. She applied enough pressure for him to start squirming slightly, even though he was still in the process of regaining consciousness.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

“Can’t … breathe …”

Jamie touched Nichole’s shoulder. “Hey, you might want to ease up—”

Nichole slapped Jamie’s hand away. “Don’t.” Then, she said to David, “Everything, or I snap your neck.”

“Ffffffine.”

Nichole eased up. Slightly. As far as Jamie could tell, neck-snapping was still a distinct possibility.

Jamie was still stunned, despite all that had transpired in the past thirty minutes. If you had called him at home yesterday and told him that he’d be seeing Nichole with her foot pressed against David’s neck in the conference room, with Stuart’s dead body lying in the corner, Jamie would have laughed. Okay, part of him would have hoped it was true. But most of him would have laughed.

Now here it was. Everything took on that harshly lit look of surreality. The hyperreal. The couldn’t-actually-be-true-but-here-it-was.

Nichole was saying: “Who ordered this? And why?”

David smiled, which was creepy, because his eyes were still closed. “Who do you think?” he asked.

More foot pressure. David winced.

“I’m not asking about what I think. I’m asking about what you know. Tell me now and I’ll get you the medical attention you need. Refuse and I’ll be the last thing you see.”

David swallowed. “I used to masturbate to your face.”

A grim smile flashed on Nichole’s face; then she removed her
foot and straddled David’s body. Both hands on the sides of his head. She turned him so they were face-to-face. Her thumbs were at his throat.

“Who is it, David? Who wants us all dead?”

“You’re looking at him, big girl.”

Nichole shook her head. “You report to somebody.”

“At least I’m not a mole.”

“Who do you report to?”

“A mole with a wet hole. Nee-COLE.”

She dug her thumbs in deeper. David gasped, but he continued speaking anyway.

“You’re out of your league, Nichole. Why do you think it’s been so hard for you to penetrate me? But I bet I could penetrate
you.”

“Tell me about Molly.”

“Oh. Yeah. Her.”

“Who is she?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Liar.”

Nichole removed her hands, then paced around the conference room.

“What about the lockdown? Tell me how to reverse it.”

“Since you’re giving orders,” David said, “let me give you one of my mine. A Big Mac. Two patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, all of that good stuff.”

Nichole drove a fist into his face.

It was an audacious move, David thought—punching someone in the face who’s already been shot in the head.

A bullet, lodged in the skull, could easily loosen and work its way into brain tissue, making him a drooling side of beef on a conference room floor.

Perhaps Nichole didn’t care.

Maybe the crack about the “hole” was a step too far.

Maybe it was his Big Mac order.

Thing was, David wasn’t trying to be difficult. Well, maybe a little, but it was mostly the truth: He was absolutely ravenous. He’d been starving for months now, the hunger inside him mutating into a constant, sentient, insatiable thing. Telling his stomach no would be like telling his lungs not to crave air.

He didn’t know how or why it had begun, but he realized that something was amiss when he drove home after work one night, pulled into a Bertucci’s off Huntingdon Pike, ordered two large pizza pies, fully loaded, along with three orders of garlic-and-butter breadsticks, then transported his bounty to his kitchen table and methodically consumed everything—every shred of dough, cheese, sun-dried tomato, shiitake mushroom, red pepper, black olive, and crumbled sausage—within an hour. No TV. No newspaper. No thoughts about the workday. Nothing to distract him but the pizza and breadsticks.