Rules of Deception

75

She stood ten feet away cradling a strange-looking gun in her arms, some kind of pistol with a silencer and a folding stock. There was no sign of a broken leg. Nor were there any visible injuries sustained from a three-hundred-foot fall. She looked at him as if he were a stranger, offering no indication that she desired to hug or kiss him, or that she was happy to see him at all.

“But I saw you,” he said. “In the crevasse.”

“You thought you saw me.”

“The blood…the trail in the snow…your leg was broken. I saw the fracture.”

“It wasn’t my bone. It was all incredibly sloppy. I had to work fast. When I found out-.”

“Emma,” he said.

“-that it was set for this weekend, I began to-.”

“Emma!” he shouted. “Is that even your name?”

Without answering, she turned and began jogging down the hill. Rooted to the spot, Jonathan was filled with a flux of emotions: wonderment, anger, elation, and bitterness, all of them warring with one another. It took him a second or two to sort his feelings out. Still stunned, he followed her down the road to where she’d left her car two switchbacks below. It was a VW Golf that had seen a lot of wear. He made for the driver’s side, but she was already there, opening the door and dipping her head inside the cabin. By the time he climbed into the passenger seat, the engine was running, the car in gear and beginning to move.

“I talked to the hospital,” he said. “The nurse there told me that the Emma Everett Rose who was born there died in a car accident two weeks after her birth.”

“Later,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything later.”

“I don’t want everything. I only want the truth.”

“The truth, even,” she said. “Right now, I need you to tell me something. Jinn’s flash drive. You’ve still got it, right? I mean, you didn’t really throw it over the cliff?”

Jonathan dug the second flash drive out of his pocket. “No,” he said. “I tossed yours.”

She snatched it out of his hand. “I’ll forgive you,” she said. “This time.”

Emma attacked the hill as if it were a racetrack, punching it on the straights, braking into the turns, downshifting crisply. Emma who couldn’t manage a stick to save her life.

Until now, he’d kept her identities separate. There was Emma Ransom, his wife, and there was Eva Kruger, the operative. He’d convinced himself that Emma was the true side of her-the authentic side-and that Eva was the cover. Watching her drive, he knew he’d been wrong. For the first time, he was seeing the real Emma, the woman she’d never allowed him to see. It came to him then that he didn’t know this woman.

“I didn’t expect you to be so good at this,” she said, when they reached the valley floor and turned west toward Davos and Zurich.

“What did you expect?”

“I was afraid you might chuck it all and disappear into the mountains for a few years. Pull the lone explorer bit.”

“I might have, if I hadn’t gotten the baggage claims. Everything went haywire when I picked up the bags. After I killed the policemen, I had to keep going. It was the only way to clear myself. Simone tried to convince me to leave the country, but when I saw what was inside the bag, I couldn’t run away. I had to know.”

“Of all the days for the train not to deliver the mail,” she said with a dismissive shake of the head. “I guess I was wrong about you going into the mountains.”

“I’ll forgive you,” he said. “This time.”

She laughed at this, but it was a concession and it rang hollow.

“And so,” he said. “Your turn. I’ll make it easy for you. Start with the mountain. What exactly did I see?”

A shadow fell across her features. Her change in mood was like a sharp drop in temperature. “Your patrolman’s jacket, of course. A wig. Ski pants. Stage blood.”

“How did you get down into the crevasse by yourself? It was way too dangerous to go solo.”

“I didn’t.”

“What do you mean you didn’t?” he snapped.

“I walked into it from below. You showed me the route once the summer after we were married.”

Jonathan closed his eyes as it came back to him. They’d come to Davos for a weekend to do some hiking and had spent an afternoon exploring the warren of caves and couloirs that honeycombed the glacier. “But those caves are only accessible during the summer. You can’t get in during winter, let alone during a blizzard.”

Emma tilted her head, which was her way of saying he was mistaken. “I didn’t go to that meeting in Amsterdam last Friday. I came here instead to see if my plan was actionable.”

“‘Actionable’? Is that spyspeak or what?”

Emma ignored the remark. “It turns out that if you can find your way to the right spot at the base of the glacier, you can get into the caves. I programmed a handheld GPS unit, then route-marked the way up and back so I wouldn’t get lost if it snowed.”

“Which is why you insisted that we come to Arosa instead of Zermatt,” he said, feeling somehow complicit.

“I had good reason. It was our anniversary. We made our first climb here eight years ago.”

“‘Our anniversary.’ Right.” He knew then that she’d also lied about the weather report and sabotaged his two-way radio. “How did you know we wouldn’t go down and get you?”

“I didn’t really,” she admitted. “I gambled on the fact that Steiner and his team would be coming up the mountain to rescue a woman with a broken leg, not haul her out of a one-hundred-meter crevasse. Rope is heavy. I didn’t see them bringing more than was necessary. I was surprised they even had two lengths.”

“Steiner…you know his name.” He looked out the window. The hits just kept on coming.

“I had to hang around Davos to make sure things went as planned. I listened to his phone calls and radio transmissions. Don’t look so surprised. It’s a piece of cake to pull a cellular call out of the air.”

“And then? Didn’t you know that I would check on the baggage claims?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t get them. I wanted to retrieve the bags in Landquart myself, but it was too much of a risk. Once I was dead, I had to stay dead.”

Jonathan spun in his seat. “You were there? You saw what happened at the train station with the police? You watched what they did to me?”

Emma nodded. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. I wanted to help.”

He sank back, at a loss for words.

She went on. “Afterward, I trailed you back to the hotel, but I was too late. Some of our team had already been through the room. You arrived soon after they’d left. I didn’t have time to get inside. Once, I thought you might have seen me. It was in the woods behind the hotel.”

Jonathan recalled sensing the presence nearby and looking into the tree line, but he’d seen nothing.

Suddenly, he’d had enough. He wasn’t interested in the who, what, and when. It was all just window dressing. He wanted to know why. “What’s this about, Em?” he said quietly. “What are you involved in?”

“The usual,” she replied, never taking her eyes from the road.

“You’re supplying Parvez Jinn with restricted equipment to enrich uranium. That hardly qualifies as the usual.”

“Nothing he wasn’t going to get sooner or later.”

“Don’t act like that.”

“Like what?”

“Cynical. Like you don’t care.”

“It’s because I care that I’m doing what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing? Who do you work for? The CIA? The Brits?”

“The CIA? God no. I’m at Defense. The Pentagon. Something called Division.”

“But Simone said she was with the CIA.”

Emma considered this, brushing her cheek with her fingers. “Really? Actually, I didn’t know about her until today.”

“Why would the CIA want to kill someone who works for the Pentagon? We’re both on the same side, aren’t we?”

“Power. They want it. We have it. The tug of war’s been going on for a couple of years.”

“But I thought you hated the American government.”

A thin smile told him that he was way off base. Another illusion gone.

“So, you’re American?” he asked.

“God, I wanted to wait to get into all of this. It’s so bloody complicated.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Yes, Jonathan, I’m American. If you’re wondering about the accent, it’s real. I grew up outside London. My father was with the U.S. Air Force stationed at Lakenheath.”

“Did he steer you into this?”

“In the beginning, it was because of family, I suppose. Daddy being in the military and all. But I stayed because I’m good at it. Because I’m making a difference for something I believe in. Because I like it. I keep doing it for the same reason that you keep being a doctor. Because our job is who we are and nothing much else matters.”

“Is that why you picked me?”

“At first, yes.”

“You mean something changed?”

“You know what changed. We fell in love.”

“I fell in love,” said Jonathan. “I’m not sure you did.”

Emma looked at him sharply. “I didn’t have to stay with you. No one forced me to marry you.”

“They didn’t stop you, either. Who better to slide you into position for your assignments than a doctor who actually enjoyed serving in hardship posts? What exactly did you do in all those places? Did you kill people? Are you an assassin like that guy you shot back there?”

“Of course not.” Emma dismissed the suggestion as if she’d never fired a gun, let alone shot and killed two human beings within the last thirty minutes.

“What then?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You and Blitz and Hoffmann were selling uranium enrichment equipment to Iran. Jinn believed that you supplied the equipment in order to start a war. He said that we made a mistake going into Iraq without proof that they possessed WMD and that we weren’t going to do it again.”

“Did Parvez say all that? May he roast in hell forever.”

“That’s a nice way to talk about a man you screwed.”

“Fuck you, Jonathan! That’s not fair.”

“Not fair? You lied to me for eight years. You pretended to be my wife. Don’t tell me what’s fair.”

“I am your wife.”

“How can you say that when I don’t even know your name!”

Emma looked away. If he’d been expecting a tear, he was disappointed. Her expression was set in stone.

“Well?” he demanded. “Is it true? Are you trying to start a war?”

“We’re trying to stop one.”

“By handing out nukes?”

“We’re only hastening matters along, so we can control how the situation develops. We supply Iran with the technology they so desperately want now, and then expose their work to the world. It’s about being proactive. We can’t afford to be caught unawares. Not this time. And besides, it won’t be a war. It will strictly be an air campaign.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Don’t be so damned naïve. Some people can’t be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. If Iran gets them, you can jolly well bet that the really bad boys will have them soon after. That’s all there is to it.”

“And what’s going to happen when they retaliate?”

“With what?” Emma asked. “We gave them the equipment to make a little enriched uranium. Now we’re going to take it away.”

“Jinn said they have cruise missiles. If anyone attacks their enrichment facilities, they won’t hesitate to use them. The president of his country is planning to announce all this to the world next week.”

“Jinn was lying,” said Emma with the same unalloyed confidence, but her face had gone pale. “Iran doesn’t have any cruise missiles.”

“He called them Kh-55’s. He said that they’d come into possession of four of them a year ago and that they’re at their base in Karshun on the Persian Gulf.”

“He was bullshitting you.”

“Can you take that chance? If the United States or Israel bombs Iran, the mullahs in Teheran will turn right around and launch on Jerusalem and the Saudi oil fields. Then what do you think will happen?”

“Christ.” Emma frowned, the muscles in her jaw working furiously. “Kh-55’s? You’re sure of it?”

“You know what they are?”

“The Russians called them the Granat, or pomegranate. They’re long-range subsonic cruise missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. They’re old as sin and the guidance systems are out of date, but they work.”

“Not good,” said Jonathan.

“No, not good at all.” Emma frowned. “He talked about having a surprise for me when I saw him in Davos. Double-dealer.”

Jonathan saw that he’d struck a nerve. “If you’re so sure of yourself, why did you have to disappear?”

“Sure of myself? God, do you really believe that?” Emma looked over at him. “Do you know what a drone is?”

“More or less. One of those remote-controlled planes that fly around forever taking pictures. I know they can fire missiles, too.”

“There’s one in Switzerland now being readied for an attack. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but Blitz let it slip. He was my controller, the only one who was allowed to see the whole picture. He said it was going to be the most important thing we’d ever done. It was the boss’s personal mission.”

“You mean, it’s you guys-it’s Division-that’s planning on taking someone out with it?”

“Not someone. Something. A passenger jet.”

“They’re going to shoot it down here? In Switzerland? My God, Emma, we’ve got to tell the police.”

“They already know. At least, some of it. The man who tried to stop you back there in Davos is running the investigation. His name is Marcus von Daniken. He heads up the Service for Analysis and Prevention, the Swiss counterespionage service. He’s convinced that you’re masterminding the plot.”

“Me?”

“Essentially, it boils down to the fact that von Daniken believes that you are me.”

“Because I was at Blitz’s house?”

“Among other things, yes. You were smart not to go to the police. You’d have spent the rest of your life in jail. Killing the policemen was the least of it. You knew too much about Thor…about Division. We have friends who would have seen to it. Anyway, that’s why I had to disappear. I decided that I have to stop this whole thing. I have enough blood on my hands, but until now, it’s never come from innocents.”

“So you know when it’s going to happen?”

“In a few hours, more or less.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

For the first time, Emma met his gaze full-on. “I’m still your wife.”

She reached out her hand and Jonathan slipped his fingers into hers.

“We have to tell von Daniken,” he said.

Emma glanced at him, her eyes wet with tears. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”