Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller (19 page)

“Back into the city.”

“I’d really prefer not. I’d really prefer just to go to the nearest police station,” she said. “The sooner I have this dealt with and I can get away from here, the better.”

He started the car without responding and backed up slightly then pulled out of the curbside space. Traffic was light as he followed the streets to the main highway back into Paris. After about five minutes she said, “We’re not going to the police, are we?”

Brennan shook his head. “There are some people I work with who will want to talk to you first, so I’m taking you to the American embassy.”

“But… I’m a French subject.”

“You’re an assassination target, Madame Boudreau,” he said. “The people after you believe that you have vital information about Lord Anthony Abbott…”

“They’re wrong.”

“Maybe so, but they’ll stop at nothing to get it, and some of them are very powerful; there’s no guarantee you’d be safe with the police.”

He kept his eyes on the road for a few more moments before stealing a glance her way; she had one arm folded across her stomach, protective, the other elbow leaning on the arm, her fist under her chin in a pensive pose, her face morose and her pale blues eyes dim pools in the passing amber road lights. “So I don’t get a choice?” she said.

“Not if you want to live,” Brennan said. He felt guilty. Whatever they thought she had… “Did Lord Anthony give you anything in the last few weeks, a gift of some sort perhaps?”

Her hand instinctively went to the locket around her neck and Brennan caught the tell. She saw his look. “It’s nothing, just a locket with a cameo in it, an ancestor of Anthony’s.”

The drive to the embassy took another half hour, Brennan occasionally stealing glances at the piece of jewelry out of his peripheral vision, knowing he’d have to tell them to take it as soon as they arrived.

He wondered if she had anything else to remember her late lover by; he hoped so. He hoped they didn’t go too hard on her in trying to drag things out. It would be easier for everyone, he knew, if the locket contained some of the answers they required.

DEC. 18, 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The call came through on Fenton-Wright’s encrypted office line, which meant it was urgent, and probably from one of the few men in the country allowed to tell him what to do.

“David Fenton-Wright,” he answered.

The voice didn’t identify itself. It didn’t need to. “I’m back stateside,” Brennan said. “We need to meet.”

The deputy director dug deep to curb his temper. “You’re supposed to be on leave, officially. We’re not supposed to be in contact. How did you get this number, anyway?”

Walter had given it to him two years earlier but Brennan wasn’t about to tell Fenton-Wright that.

“Never mind that,” Brennan said. “I want to know what happened with the package in Paris.”

“Safe and sound, and that’s all you need to know right now,” Fenton-Wright said. “The girl has been sent with some compensation to her sister’s house in the south of France.”

“And the locket?”

“An encoded microdot for which only we have the key. It would have been useless to any outside parties at any rate. But you did well in recovering the woman, I won’t deny that. We’re confident she knows nothing of real value.”

“So now what?”

“Now nothing. You’re to stay out of contact until we need have new intel on the shootings. But for now we’re confident Bustamante was our most likely suspect.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Yes, because I’m renowned for my sense of humor,” Fenton-Wright said dryly.

“But I told you he was clear on the fact that he wasn’t involved, and there’s all the other stuff he said, the stuff about Khalidi, the nuke…The situation has changed.”

“And where should we direct you, agent Brennan?”

“That’s part of the problem: I have no idea.”

“You weren’t supposed to interact with Bustamante. It was supposed to be surveillance.”

“It was unavoidable.”

“The news said one of his own guards shot him.”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t care. At any rate, I don’t need operational suggestions. In fact, as I said, you weren’t supposed to make contact with me, even on an encrypted line.”

“So what now? My target is down.”

“Head back over the pond. You’re too hot, and I don’t want you around here right now. Stay in Paris until I contact you. You’re in D.C.?”

“Yeah.”

“For now, as I said, we assume Bustamante was our man. I’ll advise later on how – or if – we’ll proceed.”

“What about the item?”

“Leave it with me; consider it off of your playing field, need-to-know. And you don’t.”

Fenton-Wright had a level of contempt in his voice that Brennan thought only a field agent had the right to express. He made a mental note to add it to the long list of reasons to look for payback one day as he hung up the call.

Fenton-Wright buzzed through to Jonah Tarrant. “Jonah, get me an update psych assessment on Joe Brennan. Ask them to concentrate on his issues with authority.”

Tarrant didn’t ask why. He knew the implication, that they might need something to hold over Brennan later. He didn’t like it, but he imagined David didn’t either; it was just part of the game.

Brennan met with Walter Lang at the latter’s new favorite pub, which was eight blocks further west than the Czech brewpub and, as far as Walter knew, had yet to be uncovered by anyone in the media.

Walter looked sickly, Brennan thought. He’d always been a pale guy, but he was pasty, off-white, and it looked as though he hadn’t been sleeping well.

“You okay?” he asked, right after sitting down across from him, back to the wall and eyes on the door.

“Sure, sure,” Walter said. “You know how it is. They’ve got me burning the candle at both ends on this thing.”

“I talked to David today,” Brennan said. Walter looked surprised by that. Brennan filled him in on the conversation. “He basically told me to stand down, and to stay out of the country in the meantime.”

“Have you seen Carolyn since you got back?”

Brennan looked away quickly, guilty at the thought. “No. I know I should, but I also knew David might tell me to make myself scarce. It’s so close to Christmas; I didn’t want to get the kids’ hopes up that I’d be here on the day.”

“I get that,” Walter said. “Tell me again what he said about the hot item?”

Brennan recounted the conversation again, Walter looking more incredulous throughout. “So basically he suggested Bustamante was rambling incoherently.”

Walter was quiet while Brennan talked. When his friend had finished, he took a swallow of his beer, then said, “I think it’s true.”

Brennan was shocked. “What?”

“At least, the part about the South Africans losing it. They couldn’t admit it, because doing so would have meant admitting it existed in the first place. The rest of it? You got me. We’d heard rumors that it was behind the high radiation readings among the wreckage of a coastal bus crash…”

“…out of Lima, Peru, in 2009. My sources heard that, too.”

“There was a known Chechen dissident onboard the bus when it went up, a man named Borz Abubakar. Security footage from the bus depot had him boarding the coach.”

“So it’s possible the nuke – or its payload, anyway – is on the bottom of the Pacific.”

“Sure,” Walter said. “It’s also possible that it’s not which, for obvious reasons, is a bigger problem.”

Brennan was quiet for a moment, nursing his beer.

“What’s your thinking?” Walter asked.

“Nothing. Just that it’s a hell of a way to spend a Christmas, you know?”

“You don’t have to. You don’t have to go right away; you could go home, spend some time with Carolyn and the kids.”

“You know the job comes first, bud. It’s always been that way.”

“Sure,” Walter said. “But no one’s got you on a schedule. You said it yourself, you’re technically on leave. David can go fuck himself, frankly. This Khalidi thing isn’t going to change the world, whatever’s going on, if you take three or four days off for your family at Christmas. Maybe remember that some of us aren’t so lucky, you know? You want to know what I think, Joe? I think you did what you were ordered to do; you completed your assignments. And if there’s more out there? Well… there will always be more out there. The world won’t end without you. Not right away, anyway.”

“Maybe so,” Brennan said, before taking another swallow from the beer. “Maybe so.”

He stood pat on the single beer so that he could drive to the airport in safe fashion, and said goodbye to Walter after twenty minutes of conversation. He left the pub, his rental weaving its way south. The Japanese compact slipped its way onto Twenty-Fifth Street, then onto M Street, before crossing the river via Highway 29 over the Potomac River Bridge. A light turned red and he sat there staring at it for a few seconds, transfixed. He didn’t have to take the parkway to Dulles. He could head in the other direction, back to Annandale. Walter was right. No one was stopping him.

The light changed. Brennan paused for a moment longer, lingering on the decision; then finally, he stepped on the gas.

Twenty-five minutes away, Carolyn sat in the living room alone, a glass of Bailey’s and ice in her left hand. She was hunched forward slightly, leaning her elbow on one arm of the chair, the drink perched with semi-permanence just a few inches from her lips. But she ignored it, staring ahead, deep in thought as the six-foot artificial Scotch pine blinked its Christmas cheer behind her, the fireplace crackling in the background.

She’d been dwelling all night on whether he’d make it home for the holiday; even if it was just for a few days, a week before the big day. There was snow outside, the kids presents were already bought and wrapped. They could find an excuse to tell them Santa had come early; she could cook them all a big bird, they could get tipsy after the kids were in bed, maybe work on another…

She shook it off and glared at the door again. She’d fixated on whether he’d make it back after finding out at work that Joe had been successful, that he’d covered Fawkes’ tracks and recovered intel on the group targeted by the sniper. That meant he was done, didn’t it? At least for now?

Carolyn looked down morosely at her drink. She loved him, even if she sometimes took advantage of his willingness to follow the ‘happy wife, happy life’ credo. She felt guilty, wondering if her career was responsible for the wedge between them of late; then she frowned and shook it off. That was bullshit, she thought. Whatever had distanced them – perhaps even just actual distance itself – was something they could work out. If only he would come home for Christmas.

She took another swallow of Bailey’s, relishing the warmth from the fireplace. They’d been married a dozen years now, and both would have to admit the romance had died down, replaced with a comfortable familiarity – when that comfort wasn’t being undermined by their often separate objectives. Maybe it was his fault; maybe realism suggested her job was the one that needed the most protection, the one that allowed her to come home to her kids each night.

The last of the Bailey’s stared up enticingly at her, a thick, sweet way to get a little buzz on. The truth was, she thought, trying to blame one another wasn’t going to do their relationship any good. And if there was anything to get past, it was merely the resentment that simmers when words are left unsaid.

She stared at the door for another minute, but it remained sturdy and stoic, unmoved. Was it too much to ask for a break? To look up and pray to a higher power for some real help? Or was she just being selfish? There were so many people out there in the world that had it worse than their family. Maybe the thing to do, even if he didn’t make it back for Christmas, would be to put on a brave face for the kids and try her darnedest to make a positive from a negative; it was the same attitude that had gotten her ahead at the agency so quickly, after all.

But it didn’t stop her from feeling sad, and from missing Joe. She drained the rest of the Bailey’s and sighed.

The deadbolt on the front door turned.

Carolyn drew in a quick breath and stood up, both hands on the glass as the door swung open.

Joe stepped inside.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Surprise.”

She smiled and chewed nervously on her lower lip; it felt like he’d just asked her out again for the first time, and he had the same stupid look on his face as he’d had so many years before.

DEC. 24, 2015, RURAL VERMONT, NEAR THE CANADIAN BORDER

The asset was home.

But it wasn’t really home. It was America, but it was a rented cabin, little more than a three-room shack on the shore of Lake Salem, just outside Newport, Vermont.