The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller (34 page)

O
AKWOOD
B
EACH
, S
TATEN
I
SLAND
, J
UNE
25, 8:32 P.M.

T
o Garrett, everything Ilya Markov said made sense. That didn’t make what he said right. But then again, the concept of rightness had never held much weight with Garrett; morality was a human construct, not an unalterable law of nature.
Good
and
evil
were words imbued with meaning by culture, not God. The universe didn’t give a shit about right and wrong.

Could he and Markov really be a team? Traveling the world, attacking the system, breaking down the walls that separated him from power? Garrett did not believe in the system, nor did he have any faith in the people who kept the system running. He wondered lately if subversion was his true calling—if chipping away at the power structure was what he did best. He was an outsider, a second-class citizen from birth, and no one was going to change that except Garrett himself. Markov’s idea of revolution was crazy—the ranting of a sociopath—and yet . . .

Rage burned in Garrett’s heart as strongly as any other emotion. Markov had been exactly right about that. They were, in their own odd way, a match for each other. They were almost brothers. Almost.

“I tell you to kill her?” Garrett said, as the hot wind coming off the bay snapped him out of his reverie and back to the present.

“That’s it. You say the words. Then you and I go off together.”

“Where? We’re on Staten Island. There’s no place to run.”

“I have a boat waiting. A fishing boat, loaded with fuel, captained by a young Bahamian. Just offshore. There’s a Zodiac beached on the rocks. Down
the path. We can reach the Bahamas in a week. Then fly to Venezuela. Prep the Myanmar job, rig the election. I even had a passport made up, with your picture on it.”

Garrett marveled at Markov’s preparation. Garrett had been right, thinking to himself in Battery Park, that he was marching off to confront some strange destiny, and that he had to do it alone. Was this his destiny? Was Markov his destiny?

“You’re lonely,” Garrett said. “That’s why you’re doing this.”

Markov smiled. “Yes. I am. Absolutely. Very lonely. I always have been.
And so have you.
”

Garrett felt a spontaneous ache in his heart. He
was
lonely. Terribly lonely, with few friends, distant family, and no real prospects for a lasting love relationship.

“You shoot her right here, in front of me?” Garrett tried to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“You want to see it happen?”

“No.”

“Uni will take her into the grass. So no one finds the body for weeks.”

“How do I know you won’t shoot me as well?”

Markov laughed. “I might. But then again, I could have shot you ten minutes ago. But I don’t want to particularly. I like you, Garrett. I wouldn’t have gone to these lengths if I didn’t want this to work.”

Garrett could see Markov smiling in the dim light. “I have one more thing to tell you. Perhaps this will help you make up your mind. Your friend here, Captain Truffant, no longer works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

Garrett looked from Markov to Alexis. “What do you mean?”

“She is no more a defense analyst for DIA than I am a bond trader. She works for Homeland Security. She didn’t tell you because she wanted you to keep on my trail.”

Garrett struggled with this information. It made no sense, yet it made perfect sense. It explained her interest in a case that had nothing to do with her job description. He looked to Alexis, mouth sagging slightly open. “Is that true?”

“He’s lying,” Alexis said.

“She has doubled up agency work for the last six months,” Markov said. “I
have the e-mails. I can show them to you if you’d like. It’s all spelled out very clearly.”

Garrett stepped toward Alexis. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“What does it matter? Who cares what agency I’m working for?” Alexis spit out the words. “He’s a con man and a terrorist and he’s lying to you about everything else, and you can’t listen to him, Garrett. He is tricking you. He has an alternative reason for everything. If you leave with him now, you won’t make it twenty-four hours before he shoots you and dumps your body in the ocean.”

“Why?” Garrett asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Garrett could see her face contort in the night, her mouth cracking at the edges. She let out a short sob, then seemed to swallow back her tears. “Why do you need to know any of it?”

“Because I used to love you.”

Alexis hung her head. She whispered, “It doesn’t make any difference.”

“I think it does. So do you.”

She had no answer, and Garrett wasn’t surprised. Alexis had always been ambitious, and working for another agency dovetailed with his understanding of her career—that it was stalled out at DIA, that she needed new avenues for advancement.

“Well?” Markov asked. “Your decision?”

Garrett stood motionless and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart.

He thought he might be able to take Markov right there, grab at his gun hand and shove him to the ground, hit him hard, again and again, and take the pistol away before the girl shot Alexis, but it didn’t seem likely. He wasn’t a cop; he wasn’t Agent Chaudry. He was a computer geek. His best chance of survival, as he calculated it, was to trust in his instincts. To trust in the thing that Markov needed from him: an ability to see the world as it was, not as you wanted to see it.
To see what was invisible to everyone else.
Because that, in the end, was the one thing that Garrett could do, the thing that made him special.

He looked out into the darkness and listened to the sounds of the night. He tried to think back on his subway ride downtown, then the ferry across the bay, and the train and his walk to this isolated marsh. He had sensed a pattern, something just beyond his seeing, waiting out there for him to grasp it. But was it real? Could he trust himself to know for sure? If he stalled just a while longer,
perhaps it would all come clear to him. Or perhaps nothing in his life would ever become clearer than it was at this very moment, and that was his fate—to want certainty, and to never get it. Life was entropy and then chaos.

Garrett took a breath and nodded. “Okay. Kill her.”

Alexis let out a shriek, a howl of abandonment, and Garrett had to squeeze his hands into fists to keep from jumping out of his skin. He clenched his teeth, then waved an arm in the air, pointing back toward the houses and the lights. “Over there.” He put on a show of not wanting the thing done where he could see it. “Do it over there.”

“Don’t worry.” Markov put a hand on Garrett’s shoulder and ushered him down the cracked pavement of the abandoned road. Garrett shot a look back over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the young woman shoving Alexis in the other direction, toward the city, but sideways, into the marsh grass.

Good Lord he hoped he was right—that all those drugs and all that pain hadn’t permanently clouded his abilities.

“Is she coming with us? The girl?” Garrett asked Markov, trying to make conversation.

“Do you want her to? She’s quite smart. And good in bed. I think you would like her.”

“Seems like we’ll have the pick of the litter, so why bother?”

“Then she stays here, and we go off on our own. Whatever you want, Garrett. However you want it.”

Garrett looked over at Markov. He was a shadow in the night, nothing more. Garrett still could not see his face. Perhaps he wasn’t real at all, Garrett thought. Perhaps he was an eternal shadow, an ethereal presence in the night, appearing and disappearing at will. A ghost, a hallucination like Avery Bernstein, a dead man who was fucking with Garrett’s unsteady sense of reality. If so, then he had made a mistake, and Alexis would die. And he would want to die soon thereafter.

“You still don’t trust me; I see it,” Markov said.

“Why should I?”

“Exactly. Why should you? I wouldn’t expect it. We need time. And shared experiences to bond us. I mean, really, isn’t that the anchor of all relationships?”

Was Markov teasing him? Garrett could no longer tell. A scream pierced
the stillness, followed by the sharp crack of two gunshots, one after the other. The sound echoed for a moment, then was carried away on the wind. Garrett shivered, listening for some aftermath of the violence, but there was none.

Markov slapped him on the back. “
Pozdravlyaem!
Congratulations. Welcome to the team.”

Garrett swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. He listened as the wind died for a moment, and the sounds of the marsh and the city rose to his ears. He heard . . .

Nothing. No birds, no animals in the grass. Nothing.

He smiled.

He turned to Markov. “You’re finished.”

Markov tilted his head to one side, the way dogs do when they can’t quite make out the source of a sound.

“It’s over. Put the gun away. Or maybe take your own life. Quickly. Before you’re arrested.”

Markov stepped at Garrett, gun held high. “What are you talking about?”

“Listen.” Markov stopped and listened. Again there was silence. “Where’s the girl? Why isn’t she coming?”

Markov craned his head to look back at the marsh. Garrett could just begin to make out his face in the glow of the city across the bay. He was plain looking, much like his passport photograph, but with a hint of emotion as well. Perhaps it was just the moment, the rush of trying to figure out exactly what Garrett was talking about. Or perhaps Garrett was projecting his own feelings.

“Your girl is dead. Think about it. Two shots. Why would she shoot twice? She wouldn’t. She’d fire once to the head. Doesn’t fit the pattern. The FBI got her. They shoot twice, a double tap. The silence. Doesn’t fit either. The birds, the crickets—they’re spooked. The police are all around us. In the weeds. Hiding. Waiting to take you down. They followed me here, right from the very beginning. They were on the train, on the ferry, behind me on the street. You never had anyone following me, but they did. Too clever on your part. You made a mistake. A blunder. A big one.”

Markov let out a grunt. Just as when a chess player accepts a gambit—only to realize he’s been tricked by his opponent—the full weight of the situation was dawning on Markov with ineluctable force.

“I’ll kill you.” Markov pointed the gun’s barrel right at Garrett’s face.

“Okay,” Garrett said, a calm settling on him. He was ready to die. He didn’t want to die, but if he had to, this was as good a time as any. Alexis was safe, the city would not burn to the ground, and his paranoid theories had been proven right. At least he wouldn’t have to suffer through the headaches anymore. “Just get it over with.”

And with those words, four gunshots exploded in the night.

O
AKWOOD
B
EACH
, S
TATEN
I
SLAND
, J
UNE
25, 8:47 P.M.

P
ain. Numbness and then weakness. And more pain.

Ilya Markov knew he’d been shot. He was probably dying.

He tried to squeeze off a shot at Garrett Reilly, but his arm felt horrifically heavy. It drooped toward the ground, and he heard another shot and felt his shoulder twist.

He fell to his knees. Shit, he thought, I am certainly dying.

He heard shouting all around him and saw the sudden glare of flashlights. Men running, women too, coming from everywhere out of the marsh grass.

God, how had he missed it? How could he not have realized? The gambit, he understood now, had been too great. The risk too large. Once the con at Vandy failed, he should simply have fled the city. But he had wanted to make contact with Reilly. He had wanted to bring the man onto his side. He honestly wanted that, and in wanting that—in wanting Reilly—he had made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Emotion was weakness. And most people—even Garrett Reilly—were just not ready to see the world as it truly was, full up with corruption and treachery and betrayal. The universe was a blank slate onto which only the most disciplined and powerful could imprint their desires. Only he could see what was real.

Someone shoved him to the ground, then kicked the gun from his hand and pinned his arms behind his back. He suspected that he was being handcuffed, but he didn’t know why. He was dying, after all—didn’t they see that?

A pang of loss filled his brain, as well as the panic that he, Ilya Markov,
man of many names and no country—no home—was about to be no more. He would cease to exist, the horror of all horrors, and would then embrace the void. And with his passing, no legacy would be left behind. He had seen to it that he was invisible, and now in death he would remain so—a ghost passing quietly to the other side. He felt horrible sadness in that, but also a strange feeling of completion. As an end point to his life path, that made sense.

He turned his head slightly, but the effort was enormous. He felt terribly weak. His thoughts were growing confused. There were memories. Chechnya. Grozny. Palo Alto, for some reason. A moment of tenderness with Uni. A kiss. Closeness. And then words. A blanket of calm. He looked up from the ground and could see Reilly kneeling at his side, looking into his eyes. Was this the last person he would see?

He supposed it was.

O
AKWOOD
B
EACH
, S
TATEN
I
SLAND
, J
UNE
25, 8:52 P.M.

A
re you okay?” Agent Chaudry jogged up to Garrett and shone a flashlight in his face.

“I’m fine.” Garrett squinted in the light. He looked down at Markov’s body, handcuffed, lifeless, lying in the dirt. “Is he dead?”

Chaudry knelt at Markov’s body and checked the pulse at his neck. “Yes.”

Garrett tried to sort through his feelings. Was he glad Markov was dead? Absolutely. But did some part of him feel remorse?

“Where’s Alexis?”

“Back toward the street.” Chaudry pointed down the road. “But I don’t think she wants to talk to you.”

Garrett stood up and rushed past Chaudry. A dozen FBI agents were combing through the marsh grass, and Garrett ran quickly past them, toward a clearing at the end of the road, where cop cars, ambulances, and unmarked vans were pulling up and unloading officers, EMTs, and crime techs. The darkened wilderness had blossomed into a melee of law enforcement activity.

Garrett stopped a beefy cop in a blue Windbreaker. “There was a woman. In an army uniform.”

The cop pointed back toward the street. “In the last cruiser.”

Garrett ran past the first four cop cars and stopped at the last one parked in the roadway. Alexis was sitting up front, in the passenger seat. A female cop was behind the wheel. The engine was idling.

Garrett reached out to tap on the window, but Alexis rolled it down with
out looking at him. Her eyes were ringed with black. Garrett guessed it was from running mascara. She was clutching a plastic water bottle to her chest as if it were a teddy bear.

“Tell me you knew,” she said, still not looking at him. “Tell me you were certain there were cops all around us, listening, waiting to save me.”

Garrett hesitated. Had he known? Had he known for certain? He’d asked himself these same questions before he’d given the order to Ilya Markov—the order to shoot Alexis. Can anyone ever know anything for certain?

He took a long breath, the cooler air from the bay blowing against his sweat-soaked T-shirt. “I didn’t know. Not for sure. But there was a pattern. Probabilities. I felt them building. . . . But was I certain?”

She turned to look at him, hurt in her eyes. There was truth, and then there were lies. There was reality, and then there was the veil that everyone knowingly pulled down around their eyes to make life more bearable. Once upon a time, Garrett believed you could believe in all of those things simultaneously.
But not now.

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t certain.”

Alexis rolled up the window without another word and the police car drove off.