The Hunter

CHAPTER 52

Falls Church, Virginia, USA

Monday

16:54 EST

Sykes climbed out of his Lincoln and gave the door a good, satisfying slam. He squinted against the low afternoon sun, pointed the key fob at the car, and watched as the indicator lights flashed twice. It was hardly necessary. Crime in this government and CIA-heavy part of the state was virtually nonexistent, even though over the river it was rampant, but Sykes was a cautious man. He just wished he had been more cautious when Ferguson had said those immortal words to him: How would you like to be rich?

Yes had been the answer, hell yes. Sykes was on the last few zeros of his trust fund and didn’t much like the idea of having to downgrade his lifestyle. But that had been then; now Sykes would be happy if he managed to stay out of jail. It was supposed to be simple. A retired Russian navy officer was selling the whereabouts of some extremely valuable missiles to the CIA. Kill him and steal the information. Have the killer killed to prevent the rest of the CIA from finding out who hired him. Recover missiles and sell them on the black market. On paper it had sounded easy, but everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong.

Hunting an assassin around Europe while trying not to get busted by his own organization wasn’t what Sykes had signed up for, and it certainly wasn’t what he’d sold his honour for. Ferguson, old fearless bastard that he was, was hardly breaking a sweat. For him it was just one more messy operation in a lifetime of messy operations. Ferguson may have done this kind of illegal shit plenty of times before, but Sykes was as green to it as could be.

The air was still but cold. He could feel his insides jumping around all over the place. It was saying something that his stomach hadn’t exploded yet. For the last week he hadn’t dared leave home without a pocket full of antacids.

At the end of the drive was Ferguson’s beautiful three-thousand-square-foot colonial. The house was nestled within four wooded acres and was in immaculate condition. Sykes took a heavy breath as he approached. If things had been bad yesterday, today they were desperate.

Ferguson opened the door. He was dressed casually in a polo shirt and slacks and did not look pleased at the interruption to his sandwich. Sykes couldn’t remember the last proper meal he’d been able to finish that hadn’t played murder with his guts. With a monogrammed handkerchief Ferguson wiped the corners of his mouth while he finished chewing.

‘I figured you’d want to know straight away,’ Sykes said.

‘That sounds decidedly ominous, Mr Sykes.’

Sykes shifted his weight. He spoke in facts. ‘Tesseract returned to Paris. He met up with the girl, Sumner. There was a firefight. They’re both gone.’

There was an agonizingly long pause before Ferguson spoke. His voice was too calm and sent a chill along Sykes’s spine. ‘You had better come in.’

Sykes followed Ferguson into the hallway. It was the first time he had been in the veteran CIA officer’s house. For some reason Sykes would have expected it to be cold inside, but instead it was almost uncomfortably warm. Sykes unbuttoned the jacket of his dove-grey suit and let it fall open.

Ferguson’s house was sparsely decorated. A pure guy’s place. He’d been divorced for at least ten years, and as far as Sykes knew there wasn’t some crusty love interest. He noticed golf clubs near the door.

‘What the hell has been going on?’ Ferguson asked when the door was closed.

No foreplay then, straight to the ass raping.

‘Exactly as I said. Tesseract was spotted in Paris. I’m not sure exactly how at this moment.’ Sykes cleared his throat. ‘He went to Sumner’s apartment. Obviously we had no one on her after you had me redirect Reed after Hoyt.’

Sykes was pleased to be able to pass the blame so early in the conversation.

Ferguson was silent for a moment. ‘Then what?’

‘The French police tried to take him down. Needless to say, it didn’t work.’

Ferguson weighed the response for a moment. ‘I’ve just spent the afternoon teaching the director of national intelligence a lesson in the art of putting and this has somewhat soured my good mood.’ Ferguson pushed a hand through his hair. It was so thick Sykes used to think it was a wig. From the amount of hairs Sykes discovered each morning in the shower, he expected to be bald as a plucked chicken by the time he was Ferguson’s age.

‘This is the kind of complication we could have done without.’

‘We’re still safe,’ Sykes offered, more to satisfy his own anxiety than Ferguson’s.

The old guy huffed. ‘Thank you for that small assurance. I’m assuming we have more dead bodies.’

Sykes nodded. ‘He killed three, two more are in the hospital. I don’t know if they’ll make it.’

‘What do the Frogs know?’

‘As far as I know they don’t know anything. They don’t know why Tesseract was in Paris or who the girl was. The apartment isn’t hers and the one in Marseilles was rented under an assumed identity, so they won’t be able to connect her to the agency. Her cover is good. It should hold.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Ferguson said.

They stood without speaking for what seemed like a long time. Sykes could almost see the wheels turning inside Ferguson’s mind. When he couldn’t stand the silence any longer, Sykes said, ‘I don’t understand how Tesseract tracked her down.’

‘Have you heard anything about the police finding her body?’

‘No.’

‘Then think again.’

Sykes couldn’t keep still. His fists were clenched down by his sides, knuckles white. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He didn’t find her,’ Ferguson said.

Sykes was as confused as he looked. ‘What?’

Ferguson explained it for him. ‘Either he contacted her first or perhaps she contacted him, but that hardly matters. What matters is she realized she’d become a target so agreed to meet him.’

‘But why? And how did she know before Reed got to her?’

‘Because she’s smart. Tell me if I’m wrong, but that’s why we used her.’

‘Yeah, but…’

‘Maybe she’s smarter than we thought. Maybe Kennard made a mistake and revealed his identity, so when he died she put two and two together. Or either of them could have become suspicious and deliberately broken protocol. Who knows?’

‘I guess that makes sense.’

‘So,’ Ferguson continued, ‘she runs to her cousin’s apartment in Paris, unaware that we know about it. She’s frightened; she doesn’t know what to do; she’s got nowhere else to turn, and so she goes to Tesseract for help. Maybe offering to tell him what she knows if he gives her the drive. Either he’s desperate and agrees or goes there to kill her and changes his mind and they decide to work together. She knows more, he’s more capable, so each can help the other. I would say that’s a pretty shrewd course of action.’

Sykes frowned hard. He’d been frowning a lot recently. ‘So what are we going to do?’

‘We sit back and wait,’ Ferguson said with annoying calm. ‘Either Tesseract will kill her as a precaution or maybe just for revenge once she’s no longer useful. That’ll solve one little problem if nothing else. Then Tesseract will disappear with the flash drive, and we’ll never hear from him again. We won’t get the missiles and we won’t get rich, but we’ll get to keep our freedom. Considering everything that’s happened so far I would consider that a victory.’

‘Or?’

Ferguson walked out of the hall and into the spacious kitchen. Sykes followed.

‘Drink?’ Ferguson asked.

‘I’ll take a beer,’ Sykes answered after a second’s deliberation.

Ferguson’s thick eyebrows moved closer together. ‘I was thinking more like juice or water.’

‘I’ll skip then.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Ferguson said. He opened the fridge and took out a carton of grapefruit juice. He poured himself a tall glass. ‘Or,’ he continued eventually, ‘they’ll contact us and try and do a deal. I think this is more likely. They’ll offer us the information if we leave them alone.’

Sykes exhaled heavily. ‘Okay. And if they do, will we?’

Ferguson looked shocked. ‘Of course not, you idiot. Where’s your head? No, we won’t leave them alone. If we do this right we can manipulate their coming together to give us an opportunity to take them both out and retrieve the drive in one go. We get our hands on those missiles and come out cleanly.’

‘You really think we can still pull this off with everything that’s happened?’

Ferguson stared at him with something approaching disgust. ‘I’ve got myself out of deeper holes than this, Mr Sykes, and still managed to smell of roses.’

‘What about Alvarez?’

The old CIA man sighed as though the whole conversation was beginning to bore him. ‘Alvarez is nothing more than a Boy Scout. I’ve never thought particularly highly of him. All he does is follow the path of least resistance. Look, what’s just happened is actually a good thing for us in a way. It’ll give the idiots in the department some more wild geese to chase. And all the while they’re being led further and further away from us. If Procter, Chambers, and Alvarez had a brain between them they would be looking for how someone could have found out about Ozols in the first place. Instead they’re trying to do things the other way around. They’ll never get anywhere that way. So keep your cool and this will all be over soon enough. And, with a bit of luck, when it is, there will be tens of millions of dollars waiting in numbered accounts for us both. I take it you still want to be rich? I know I do.’

Sykes nodded his agreement. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘it’s almost a shame we’ve got to kill Tesseract. I mean, the fact that he’s come this far shows how good he is. We could really use him on our team, couldn’t we? He’d make a great asset. Maybe we could bring him on our side.’

‘I’ll forget you said that.’

Sykes swallowed the dry nothing from his throat. ‘Sorry.’

Ferguson glared at him. ‘Have I not taught you anything, Mr Sykes? Never apologize. Ever. At worst it’s an admission of culpability, at best it just makes you look like a fucking chump.’