The Nowhere Man

43 Unleash Hell

Evan sat before the monitor in the study on the fourth floor, his hands on the keyboard. The computer was brand-new; he’d watched Xalbador remove it from the box. That it was air-gapped, having never been hooked into the Internet, was helpful, but whatever cloaking and encryption software René had in place to hide the wire transfers would not be as impenetrable and untraceable as those Evan used. He’d learned at the elbows of the best technical security specialists in the world.

As had Van Sciver.

Van Sciver had a team of them in his employ now and more data-mining capabilities than René could possibly dream of.

Click a single button and unleash hell.

Maybe unleashing hell was the only shot Evan had left.

The heated vent above breathed warmth down his neck, making him break out in a sweat. Or was it fear, only now worming its way out through his skin? He’d spent so many years safe in obscurity, unseen and unexamined. Now the carefully positioned boulder he’d been hiding beneath was about to be rolled back, his life exposed to a blinding light.

He thought about the infinity he’d spent strapped to the gurney, an infinity that had lasted precisely two flaps of a blowfly’s wings.

He looked over at René, a last-ditch effort. “You don’t want me to do this.”

René smiled, folded his hands. “I don’t?”

“The wrong people will come. You will not be happy.”

“I’ve done this a time or two,” René said. “My procedures are completely secure.”

Evan said, “You don’t have any comprehension of what secure is.”

René snapped his fingers. With extreme caution Dex handed him a syringe. The clear, viscous liquid rippled inside. A single drop had nearly undone Evan. He couldn’t imagine what horrors a full injection would bring.

Taking a deep breath, he keyed a series of pass codes into the Privatbank AG Web site. He paused. “Once I click this button, I can’t control what will happen.”

René jammed the needle into the side of Evan’s neck. He brought his ruddy face close, sweat drops clinging to the points of his hair. He spoke through locked teeth. “I am done negotiating.”

Evan felt the twenty-one-gauge stainless-steel tube embedded in his neck. A half-inch movement of René’s thumb and he’d be trapped in an eternity of suffering.

He felt something leak out of him. The last of what he had.

He closed his eyes. Tapped the mouse. The loading wheel spun, and then a whoosh indicated that the money had gone.

René eased the needle out of Evan’s neck, and Evan allowed himself a quiet exhalation. He stared at the screen. WIRE SENT.

“What’s coming won’t be worth twenty-seven million dollars,” he said.

René turned to Dex. “Put this animal back in its cage.”

Dex seized Evan, yanking him to his feet and shoving him toward the door.

“At last,” Evan said, “we’re calling things what they are.”