Collision

28

“You’re telling me my best friend is your worst enemy.” Ben turned the Mercedes into the parking lot of the apartment. Pilgrim leaned against the window of the passenger seat. He had just finished telling his story of Indonesia to Ben.

“I think he’s your worst enemy, too, Ben.”

“Sam Hector and the Dragon can’t be the same man.” Ben parked the car, turned off the engine. “Sam isn’t British and he was never bald. He never worked for the CIA. He has an entire life history. I know it.”

“Accents and hair can be changed. Did you know him ten years ago?” Ben was silent. They went inside the apartment.

“Ever meet any of his college friends? People he worked with before he started his company?”

“No. He worked overseas for the army. He was a military liaison to allied armed forces.” Ben muttered the words as if he were reading them aloud from a resume he knew by heart. Sam, taking him on a fishing trip to Florida to celebrate a big contract. Sam, introducing him to Emily, then two years later, toasting him and Emily at their wedding. Sam, voice breaking, paying tribute to Emily at her funeral.

Sam, an assassin? No.

“Ah. That was his cover, then. Being a liaison officer allowed him to move around easily. Kill wherever he was needed.” Pilgrim turned to him. “This is why I wasn’t going to be offered a job with the rest of the Cellar. He knew I’d recognize him.”

Ben turned off the engine.

“He wanted people to think that the Dragon was dead; that was his execution I was supposed to hear in the next room. He walked away from his cover in the CIA to set up his company. Maybe with the CIA’s help. Maybe on his own.”

“Oh, Christ.” Ben felt his stomach sink. His mouth went dry. “Sam’s first big contract with Hector Global was in Indonesia. With the foreign ministry, consulting work to their security service. Because there had been an attempted assassination against a prominent government family…”

“Holy Jesus, Ben. He played both sides. As the Dragon, he set up the attack on Gumalar that the CIA wanted done. He must have even killed his own informants, put their hands in that bag-if he was vanishing as the Dragon, he didn’t want any locals who could name him or ID him. The Indonesian intel guys in the park were there because he told them I would be there, doing a job on their own soil. Then he switched sides, told the Indonesians he could get the CIA to back off if they gave him a security contract. He launched his company with the blood of innocent people… He profits from ruining a perfect CIA operation. He makes it look like he’s lost his cover and even his buddies at the CIA buy it; they stay in bed with him. Maybe he paid them off. He profits from protecting people who were funding terrorists.” Pilgrim shook his head. “He destroyed my life…”

Ben reached for Pilgrim, touched his shoulder. Pilgrim flinched, pressed his fist against his mouth.

“I told them the Dragon was alive; they told me I’d killed him with that shot before I ran. They covered for him and sold me out. Jesus.” He sank to the floor, cupping his head in his hands. “I’m going to kill him.”

“No wonder you preferred not to have a partner all these years,” Ben said. “What was your family told?”

“I looked up the news accounts later… They were fed a story that I was smuggling drugs on the side. I’m sure they were told that I died in the jailbreak Teach staged.”

“I’m sorry, Pilgrim.” He thought of the drawings of the girl, her imagined transition from toddler to teen, Pilgrim’s only connection to his daughter.

“So he gets you out of the way and uses my name.” Ben was quiet. “That means…” He stopped.

“Finish the sentence, Ben. It means the Lynch brothers worked for him. It means the gunmen were in Hector’s pocket, too, and he sent the gunmen into the Homeland office to kill us all. Including his own people. Just like back in Indonesia.”

Ben’s temples began a slow drumbeat pound. “You understand this goes against everything I’ve ever known about this man. He puts loyalty and country ahead of all. He kept me going when Emily died.. he was there for me…”

“You understand he spent years living a double life. Fooling you, or anyone else, is going to be easy for him. He pulled the double frame on us. It’s no coincidence Barker gave me your identity. Hector knows I’m a threat to his takeover of the Cellar. You’re somehow a threat to him, too.”

“No.”

“Those dates you showed me. You said Emily died two years ago. Same time McKeen gets bought by a mystery company. She was an accountant. Maybe she found money being used she wasn’t supposed to know about.”

“Now you’re reaching too far. Sam adored Emily.” He thought of Emily, laughing on the phone with Sam, in the minutes before the bullet ended her life. No.

“Get it through your head. You don’t truly know this guy. He’s a trained killer, Ben, and the most manipulative bastard I’ve ever known. Jackie is driving a car registered to a company he once had dealings with. He’s connected.”

Ben was silent for a long minute, thinking of Sam’s insistence on not meeting him in a public place, of the soft, bored click of the abacus while Ben had begged Sam for help. “Okay,” he finally said.

“We’re going to his house,” Pilgrim said. “Force him to tell us where Teach is.”

“No, we’re not. That’s suicide right now. His house will be a fortress. It’s also exactly what he would expect,” Ben said. “We’re going to beat him by doing what he doesn’t expect.”