The Switch

80

Everything fell away from Tanner’s world. There was just the grinding pressure of the gun against his temple and the gleaming, wild eyes of the man holding that gun.

Tanner could feel an odd vibration and realized that the gun was shaking in Abbott’s hand. Abbott was probably jacked on adrenaline. That was dangerous.

“Are you sure you want to kill me?” Tanner said.

“Where’s the goddamned laptop?” Abbott ground the muzzle into his temple. It felt like he’d broken through the skin.

“I know you don’t believe someone stole it from my gym locker, but that’s the sorry truth.”

“Then what was this whole damned charade about?”

“I’m sorry,” Tanner said. “I thought you’d take it and go away.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why the hell would I want to keep it?”

“Why? You know damned well why. You’re keeping it for leverage, or maybe you plan on selling it. Your business is tanking, and you need the money.”

Tanner heard Sal groan and shift on the floor.

“Put the gun down,” Tanner said.

He felt the pressure of the muzzle against his head and he thought about whether this would be the last night of his life. “If you put down that gun, everything can go back to the way it was.”

“Everything changed when your friend came at me like a goddamned idiot,” Abbott said.

“You’ve got a life out there,” Tanner said, “and it’s yours if you want it. You know that?” He wondered whether he could snatch the gun away from Abbott without causing him to fire. He didn’t think so.

“Shut the hell up,” Abbott said, and the pressure of the steel on Tanner’s temple increased.

Will’s heart was jackhammering. He found himself staring at that one spot on Michael Tanner’s temple, the indented skin where it met the black steel muzzle. He couldn’t look at the face of the man he was about to kill. Maybe he’d killed someone already, maybe the guy on the floor, the guy who’d tried to take him down; maybe that was number one. Maybe Tanner would be number two.

He was in a long tunnel, and ahead of him was just that patch of skin and the muzzle of the pistol.

His index finger touched the cold steel of the trigger. Just touched it, tickled it. It didn’t take a lot of pressure to fire this gun. Artie Collins had told him he’d done a trigger job, modified the sear, reduced the trigger pull to near zero. You just had to give it the slightest pull.

“No more games,” he said. “Where the hell is it?”

This man, Tanner, was for some reason hell-bent on destroying him. And more important, on destroying the boss.

And ultimately it was Will’s fault. For agreeing when Susan Robbins told him she wasn’t going to sit in that SCIF all day, Could you please make me a copy? For giving in to pressure. He should have refused, for her sake.

But he hadn’t. He’d made a mistake. This all wouldn’t be happening if he hadn’t done it. It was his responsibility to fix things.

He couldn’t let Tanner torpedo Susan’s career, her future presidency. Or his own future as chief of staff to the president.

The intelligence bureaucracy would not want any of this made public. Tanner’s death would be swept aside, along with any public mention of CHRYSALIS, into the black memory hole. Theta, the NSA’s action component, would make sure of it. Make sure it looked like a suicide, or a struggle between Tanner and the guy on the floor beside him. They’d fix it up. The gun was untraceable. This could all be made to go away.

“Did you ever seriously think you were going to survive this?” asked Will. “You think they were going to let you walk this earth knowing what you know? I hate like hell that this is where it’s going, but this is where it’s going.”

He thought of the maddened raccoon in the garage that day long ago, and he knew how to switch to that place deep inside, and he knew he had it in him to finally pull the trigger.

Tanner forced himself to take a breath.

He said, “You’re the chief of staff to a major politician; that makes you a Washington power broker, okay? And the father of a beautiful little kid. Don’t you want to keep that life? You need to ask yourself that. Because if you squeeze the trigger, it all goes away. This will get traced back to you. Our friends at the NSA will know what happened. It will hang on you like a big black lizard perched on your shoulders. And you’ll never be safe. Your life as you know it will be over. Your worst enemy, Will—”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Your worst enemy isn’t me, Will. It’s you. Right now you’re your own worst enemy. But you can make the right decision. You can decide to put that gun down and save the life you have.”

Abbott said nothing.

“Listen to me when I tell you — it isn’t too late for you,” Tanner said. “And here’s what you need to know, Will. You’re being recorded right now. You’re on video.”

Abbott said nothing.

“That’s why Sal was here. He brought in this home security device he has. It’s on his desk — that black thing. It records audio and video, it’s got an HD camera, and it’s got a motion-sensor in it, and it’s been recording everything you’ve been saying. You’re on Candid Camera, Will. You kill me and the evidence is recorded and your life is over.”

A few seconds later he felt the pressure against his temple ease up. Abbott had pulled the gun away from his head. Tanner turned slightly toward Abbott and could see him lowering the gun. Abbott’s eyes shone with tears.

“You made the right—” Tanner began, but then something warm misted his face, and he heard Abbott say, “Uh.” Tanner blinked and turned and saw a small red oval on Abbott’s throat explode, an instant later, into a jagged gash that gouted crimson. Abbott’s face looked stunned and then slack, the head lolling ridiculously, the eyes staring, unseeing.