The Sniper and the Wolf

23

Ken Peterson sat impatiently on the sofa in Tim Hagen’s hotel suite while Hagen finished up with the prostitute he was shagging in the other room. A pair of Mexican security men sat on the far side of the suite playing cards and drinking Tecate beer. They were big men but not burly looking; professionals with a private Mexican firm who were licensed to carry .380 Walther PPK pistols. Larger-caliber bullets were considered military ammunition and therefore were illegal under Mexican law.

Eventually a bleached-blond Mexican girl came out of the bedroom, casting Peterson a benign look on her way to the door.

Hagen emerged a few minutes after taking a shower. “I didn’t know you were here already.”

“I got that impression,” Peterson said. “Listen, we’ve got a problem.”

A menacing shadow crossed Hagen’s brow. “I’m getting pretty sick of hearing that, Ken.”

Peterson was untouched by Hagen’s displeasure. “The hit on Pope went bad. His marine driver blew Ryder’s brains out.”

“Fuck!” Hagen swore, causing both security men to idly turn their heads in his direction.

“At least this way Ryder can’t talk,” Peterson remarked.

“But we’ll never get to Pope now. The president will surround him with a wall of steel. Does Pope know you sent Ryder?”

“Pope doesn’t know anything about me,” Peterson said, a droll grin spreading across his face. “But he was already suspicious of you.”

Hagen pointed a finger. “You’d better not even think of throwing me under the bus! My bases are covered!”

“Which is the only reason you’re still alive,” Peterson thought to himself.

“Relax,” he said. “It gets a little worse. The president’s going to withdraw Webb’s nomination. He’s naming Pope director of operations.”

Hagen felt suddenly nauseated, realizing it was the perfect move on the president’s part.

“It’s that damn Couture advising him! He knows Congress will have to approve the nomination.” He ran a hand over his head, looking around as if there might be a solution to their problem somewhere in the suite. “We’re fucked.”

“No, not yet,” Peterson said confidently. “Pope took a bullet to the lung, so he won’t be able to take the helm for at least a couple of weeks, and it’ll take him another month to thoroughly clean house. That gives us five or six weeks to bury what little evidence there is and generate whatever false documentation we need to cover our asses. Don’t worry, there are very few direct links to either of us. We’re extremely well insulated, so if the know-it-all-son-of-a-bitch comes after us, we’ll go on the offensive. We could tie up the investigation in congressional hearings for years if we needed to, but I don’t think the old man will let Pope push it that far. Oh — and there is your phone video, which is a very nice ace in the hole to have. Entire governments have been toppled by less.”

Hagen took a chair, reaching for a snubbed-out cigar on the table and relighting it. “What about Shannon?”

“Still on the loose, but still stuck on Sicily. He killed the Malta team we sent after him — along with a couple of Italian cops — and the Italian navy has since blockaded the island, checking all fishing charters, et cetera. It looks like he must have kidnapped an Italian girl when he stole her car, because she managed to contact her parents by cell. The police are searching Corleone now, so I don’t think it’ll be too long before Master Chief Shannon is either dead or in custody. And if he lands in an Italian prison, we can have him killed at our leisure.”

Hagen was long past believing that Gil Shannon could be cornered so easily. He felt his palms begin to sweat and subconsciously began rubbing them together. “I think it’s time for me to disappear.”

“Tim, you’re panicking again. Running will only make you look guilty.”

“How do you think I look hiding out down here?”

“Look, you’re a respected diplomat around Washington.” Peterson realized he needed to calm Hagen down before he did something stupid to put everyone in jeopardy. “You’re independently wealthy, and you’re allowed to take a vacation to Mexico whenever you want. But going completely off the grid is a bad idea.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Hagen agreed, attempting to buck himself up. But the truth was that he was a nervous wreck with Shannon still on the loose. “Maybe I should take a trip up to DC — or to New York for a meeting with Senator Grieves.”

Peterson absolutely didn’t want him meeting with Steve Grieves again before the Gil Shannon issue was resolved. Grieves was too closely linked, and he didn’t need those two cooking up anything behind his back.

“I think you’re fine right here,” he said. “Not too close, not too far away. You might look into some kind of a business deal, though. Real estate, maybe, to make it look like you’re involved in something lucrative down here.”

“That’s a thought,” Hagen said enthusiastically. “There’s a hotel in Cancún looking for American investors. Wouldn’t mean a lot of profit, but it would make my visit appear more legitimate…”

“And you know what? Screw Pope! Let him speculate all he wants. Once Shannon’s dead, he’ll have nothing to threaten me with. He’ll be the head of the CIA, and he’ll have to play by the rules like everybody else.”

“Exactly,” Peterson said, having intentionally failed to mention something else he’d discovered recently. Peterson’s White House spy had reported to him only hours earlier that Pope was now the head of some kind of top-secret Special Mission Unit: an SMU the informant had referred to as a “presidential hit squad.” Peterson doubted that Gil Shannon was this mysterious SMU’s sole operator, and he doubted equally that Pope would rest until everyone who had participated in the now doomed-to-fail intelligence coup was either jailed or terminated.

With this grim reality in mind, Peterson and Senator Grieves had already agreed that Hagen should be maneuvered into a position to take the fall. Hagen did, after all, have good reason to hold a grudge against the White House, and would make the perfect patsy.