Trust Me

51

Rue du l’Abbe-Gregoire was a quiet street and Luke used the cabbie’s passkey to open the ground-level door of the building. He walked in.

The lion’s den. The truth behind his kidnapping. The truth behind his past.

It was tomb quiet. He walked up a narrow stairway. He had the cabbie’s passkey still in one hand and the gun he’d taken from the Night Road thug at the Tower in his other hand. The cabbie could have regained consciousness, called in and warned Jane.

Launcelot Consulting read the sign on the doorway. He tested the knob. Locked. He tried the passkey on the electronic pad next to it. It didn’t work. Tried again. Still didn’t work.

An idea struck him. He took his Saint Michael’s medal and pressed it against the pad.

The door opened.

His breath felt frozen in his chest. Because here was a threat far scarier than kidnapping or bullets or the unmoored violence of a Snow or a Mouser. Because here might be the truth. About his father, his stepfather, the shadows that had lain quiet close to his life, waiting to waken, and now dominated him. He raised the gun ahead of him and he stepped into the empty reception area. He closed the door behind him and he heard the lock take hold.

Dead quiet.

He moved through the rest of the office suite. The passkey opened every door but one. He saw cots, a table with guns, a small kitchen. It smelled like a small camp cabin: a lingering air of food, of cigarettes, of sweat. In one of the rooms, the corner held a single cot. Long dark strands of hair threaded the pillow. Aubrey’s rings, her watch lay on a bedside table.

Aubrey. They had kept her here.

He went into the next room.

Paper covered the walls. Clippings, photos, writings. Of Mouser and Snow and the thin black guy who’d nearly killed Luke and Drummond in New York.

It reminded him of his father’s study. His dad liked to post index cards and notes on a blank wall, scraps of history, economics and politics, to find the common links that would help him delve into a past mystery or outline a scholarly article or book. The sight of the collage of paper struck him; his father’s thoughts, put up on the wall.

He looked at the clippings and photos. The word HELLFIRE? was written on a piece of paper in the center, in his father’s handwriting. The wall looked like a project interrupted, as Quicksilver – his dad – tried to piece together the evidence about the Night Road.

Luke recognized the first photo as that of the man who’d been at the Houston rendezvous with Allen Clifford, recently shown executed on the Night Road’s site. He had small eyes, a weak mouth, nice hair. His driver’s license was next to him; his name was Bridger. A list of former addresses was posted next to his picture. But the photo next to him was a face seared into Luke’s brain, that of Allen Clifford. Alive, and then the press photos of him dead after Eric shot him. Luke read the handwritten notes beneath the pictures: Subject that Clifford is meeting with wishes to sell information on an impending multi-city terrorist attack. A date four days ago scrawled in: Subject meeting with Clifford, demands that they meet in open. Will not meet indoors, extreme paranoia. Insists on meeting at corner near Episcopal shelter on McCoy Street, near downtown, 9 p.m., Clifford to dress as homeless man, at subject’s request.

Mouser’s real name was Dwayne York. A blow up of his Texas driver’s license hung on the wall. He was a freelance web designer in Dallas. Ex-military. Dishonorable discharge. His friends called him Mouser because he got written up for shooting mice on the base. He had progressed to cats and dogs. A long history of loose ties to paramilitary groups; he had been implicated and spent time in prison for a loose connection to a radical group that tried to bomb a government building.

A picture, dated on the day his father’s plane went down. It was a security photo, a man in a maintenance suit, walking past a camera, head ducked slightly. It could be Mouser.

The bastard did it, Luke thought. He sabotaged my dad’s plane, he killed my dad’s friends, the son of a bitch.

Snow. Her real name was Roanna Snowden. One of the few survivors of the Children of the Lamb religious cult. He remembered the Feds besieging their compound; they had been massing weapons. He had just been a kid then, and so had Snow. She’d gotten a chemistry degree and then dropped out of sight. To make bombs, apparently.

The thin guy from New York. David Byrd, nicknamed Sweet Bird. A long list of crimes, a web of names with his at the center, prisons and terms served. Many of the names on the list were tied back to another network, a mosque in Queens, one with links to Wahhabi radicalists in Saudi Arabia. Stories of unsolved crimes where he had fallen under suspicion, including the murder of an assistant DA, were chronicled below his picture. Financial accounts that showed one of his associates had signed for cargo shipments carried by Travport. Luke remembered the name; Travport was the company that had bank accounts with Eric. Then a long list of recent attacks, small ones, against the city’s infrastructure: power stations, traffic lights. Small acts of sabotage, knife swipes at the soft tissue of everyday life.

There were photos, all overlaid on a map, of a shooting in Los Angeles, a bombing in Kansas City, a ruptured pipeline in Canada, the chlorine attack in Texas, as if whoever had assembled this collage – his father – was trying to piece together the people and the attacks, find the common links.

Looking at the map, a thought rose to his mind. The scattered bank accounts Eric had set up. California, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas – the locales of, or very close to, the attacks. Even the one failed attack – in Alaska, where the extremists had been arrested – he remembered the news account said the men were from Seattle. Washington state had been on the bank account list as well.

He stepped over to an array of computer screens. One screen showed a feed from the station at Les Invalides. In the screen’s corner was a frozen photo of himself, stepping onto the train at Champ de Mars. The cabbie must have gotten radioed reports, driven fast to each stop. Another photo of him, on the automated walkway at Les Invalides.

He could not believe that the place was empty. But then he considered. His father was a captive of the Night Road. The Frenchman was dead at the Tower and the cabbie was unconscious in the taxi. Maybe Quicksilver’s numbers in Paris were few. But where was Jane Mornay?

And if she was part of Quicksilver – part of his father’s organization – why had she done this? Why had she put Luke’s life at risk?

He tried the one door that the passkey denied again. Locked.

He tore down a curtain and wrapped it around the gun. He fired into the lock.

It took twenty minutes of intense arguing and haggling, but Mouser struck the unholiest of deals. The Islamic terror cell knew and trusted Mouser; he had previously sold them stolen credit card data from hijacked PCs. The cell’s leader listened to Mouser as he outlined his difficult request.

He needed a bomb, and he needed it right now.

The cell’s next martyr had planned to execute its Paris operation three weeks from now, during a visit by the Israeli prime minister. Everything was prepared. The martyr wanted to do his work.

Mouser said the cell’s leader needed to strike an office of the Israeli intelligence service, hidden in a quiet neighborhood. But they had to strike immediately. An attack on it would be a great blow before the Zionist’s visit. And Mouser could guarantee a strike, in payment, on Zionist targets inside the United States. As well, Mouser told the handlers what corporate stocks would be most affected in a massive planned American attack he referred to as Hellfire in the next couple of days: they could sell and buy accordingly, and realize a nice profit.

The cell’s leader was convinced. Sacrificing a martyr now could build a useful alliance.

Ten minutes after Mouser’s call, the martyr’s prayers were completed, and he was on his way, driving with deliberate care through the busy streets of Paris.

Behind the locked door was a small room. Luke saw a scattering of paper files, printouts; a large shredder sat in the corner. File cabinets filled a wall. He tested one. It slid open easily. It was empty. Another also empty, but he could see flicks of paper left in the bottom, like forgotten snow standing its ground in shadow. The third cabinet was locked.

He shot out the lock. His hands trembled. Inside were paper files, but only a few.

A file on his stepfather. Thick, and some of the papers torn free. They were old memos written by Henry on State Department letterhead, with sticky notes attached. Most of the memos touched on the rising challenge of cheap terrorism – how radicalist groups could gut a nation on the cheap with attacks on its infrastructure. Apparently this was Henry’s favorite topic during his earliest think-tank days. Scribbled, handwritten notes clipped to the various reports validated Henry’s long-ago musings. 9/11 cost a half-million dollars, inflicted $80 billion. Bali bombings, $2 billion in damage for a $60,000 investment. The Madrid bombings, $50 billion in damage for around $12,000 in marijuana, Ecstasy, and money. The London bombings, $3 billion in damage inflicted for $18,000 in expenditures.

As though these horrors had merely been the first act of what the Night Road might unleash on America and its allies. How high could they aim with fifty million dollars at their disposal? They could create a wave of 9/11s, an endless chain of attacks and horror, stretching over months, over years. And if the enemy was already inside the borders, working together across ideologies for their common goal – how much more dangerous could they be? Luke stuffed the file back into the cabinet. He was past feeling sickened; now he only felt a steady rage at how he had been used.

Files on Eric. Lots of notes about his bank, Marolt Gold, which seemed to specialize in nice wealthy Americans and a few people of dubious integrity. The notes suggested the bank had been under Quicksilver’s eye for the past several months due to its connection to a certain Arab billionaire, who was suspected of funding terrorism. A photo of Eric and Aubrey, taken in happier times, big sunglasses hiding most of Aubrey’s face but not her happy smile. Photos of the two of them walking through Versailles – he remembered that Aubrey had particularly wanted to go there, and that a variant of versailles had been used as a password on Eric’s laptop.

Good God, he thought. How long had Quicksilver been watching Eric?

A file on Luke. The words DO NOT CONTACT were stamped in red on a photo of himself, a fairly recent one, leaving Henry’s house in Washington last Christmas.

Christmas back in his ordinary life, and his father was watching him. How many holidays had he mourned his father’s passing, felt it most acutely with the taste of egg nog and the smell of pine, and his father had been watching him? Watching him mourn, watching him live his life.

Unless it hadn’t been his father watching him.

What if it had been Jane instead? Jane’s phone was registered to this address. How did she connect to his father?

A file on his mother. The word, eliminated? and the date of her death stamped on the file.

He sank to his knees. Eliminated? The question mark made it worse. Had Henry killed her, even though he himself had nearly died in the accident? He rifled through the file but nothing announced a brutal truth – photos of her and Henry, taken under surveillance, a history of her personal life. Photos of the wrecked car.

‘Mom,’ he said and then he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. His chest ached. What truth about her had been hidden from him? Had she known his father was alive? It was inconceivable she could have kept such a secret from him. And she had gone from being married to a man Luke considered a hero to a man Luke knew was a contemptible snake, the basest traitor.

He gathered the papers. Tucked them into his knapsack, sealed it shut. The other files were on people he did not know, dozens of people whose names meant nothing to him. Except one. A file on Aubrey Perrault, with the word Lindoe alongside in parentheses. He opened it. Empty. All the papers, whatever had been here, were gone. As though Aubrey had been erased.

He heard the whisper of the door open and turned and a young woman stood there, gun in hand. Leveled at him.

‘Don’t raise your gun. Drop it.’ Her accent was British.

He obeyed. She didn’t lower her gun.

‘You’re a bit too late for the reunion,’ she said. ‘Hello, Luke Dantry.’

‘Hello, Jane.’

‘Kick the weapon over to me.’ She sounded like a teacher gently issuing an order to a preschooler.

He did. She kicked the gun under a table.

If she was surprised by his use of her name she didn’t show it. She looked as calm as if she’d just sauntered into a good restaurant to enjoy a glass of wine with friends. But she still didn’t lower the gun. Her voice sounded like ice chipping, falling onto cold steel. She flexed a smile. She might have been pretty once but a hardness cast into her face made her unattractive. ‘Well, thank God you’re safe.’

‘Yes. Thank God I’m safe,’ Luke said. ‘Because I’m the key to all this, aren’t I?’

‘Key?’

‘To your plan. Your scheme.’

‘Scheme sounds so vicious.’

‘I couldn’t figure it out at first. My stepfather thought Quicksilver was behind my kidnapping. It wasn’t them. It was you. You alone. You’re part of Quicksilver, but you were working on your own. You betrayed Quicksilver. You had Eric kill Allen Clifford to get Quicksilver’s attention, to set them off after the Night Road. You were the Quicksilver agent assigned to watch Henry, to watch me, after my mom died. And you discovered the Night Road, and that Henry was getting all this money. You started a war between the two groups. Just so you could grab the Night Road’s money and let Quicksilver take the blame for it.’

‘Very good. I watched your stepfather and a thoroughly nasty billionaire finalize a deal in a London park. That’s why I knew I could steal the money.’ She flexed that awful superior smile again. ‘One can hardly be a traitor to a private company. I prefer the term free agent.’

‘Drummond, and the rest of Quicksilver, didn’t know about the fifty million. Only you did. You kept the information from my dad and the others.’

‘A waste, really,’ she said. ‘You might be smarter than both your fathers.’

‘And I was the perfect pawn for you to use. I had a father in Quicksilver, a stepfather in the Night Road. I get involved, and both sides heat up the war. This is the secret war that Drummond referred

to. It’s not going to be fought in the open. It’s like the new CIA vs KGB.’

Her smile flickered.

Luke said, ‘And that war gives you ample smoke and fire to make a getaway, drop out of sight. You could be presumed dead or captured by the Night Road. You brought Eric to Drummond’s attention, promised him you could hide him from the wrath of the Night Road. He could trade information on the Night Road, Mouser, my stepfather, for his new life. But the fifty million was a secret between the two of you. You’ve let your own friends be murdered and captured. Just for dirty money.’

‘Money isn’t bad. Money’s joy, security, a life free from worry. Rather different from a job with Quicksilver. The benefits package, I found lacking.’ She raised the gun, ever so slightly. Better to hit him between the eyes. ‘You offered Quicksilver the accounts where the money’s been hidden for Aubrey.’

‘Yes. I have the file with the account information.’

‘I have the encryption key.’

‘Two halves of the puzzle. Held by the queen and the pawn.’

‘I despise chess,’ she said, frowning. ‘Give me the account numbers, Luke. Now.’

The martyr watched the target building. He was nervous; he had not expected to go to paradise for weeks, and now he had no time to comport his mind toward calm. People strolled past it; no one came in or out. On the other side was a Christian bookstore, with apartments above it; on the opposite side was an art supply store. Selling the tools to make godless images, he told himself. He tried not to think about the two pretty young women standing outside in the dank air, finishing their Gitanes, laughing. He smoked Gitanes, too. He tried not to look at them but their lovely faces drew his gaze like a magnet. He was weak and temptation was strong. They laughed and the smoke wreathed their faces, and he reminded himself they were devils, nothing more. Paris was a city full of devils. The virgins given in heaven would be far more desirable, flashing eyes, water-pearled thighs and smiles of rapture.

He drove past twice, looking the part of the man seeking that simplest of urban pleasures, a parking spot. When he completed his orbit back in front of the target building he was glad the two girls had either left the street or gone back inside the art shop. He didn’t want to look at them again.

‘You can put the gun down, Jane.’

‘Can I?’

‘Let’s discuss terms,’ Luke said.

The softening of her smile was an acknowledgment that they were moving toward the truth. ‘Terms. You give me the fifty million and you walk away, and you hope the Night Road never finds you. Mouser might flay you alive if he gets his hands on you, and he might not be the worst of it.’ She gestured at the photos of Mouser, Snow and Sweet Bird. ‘They’re insane but functional. I’m sure they could take a very memorable vengeance against you.’

‘Two of the three are dead,’ he said. ‘I’m not exactly scared of them the way I was.’

‘I’d kill Mouser if I were you. He won’t give up.’

‘So I give you the money and I get nothing.’ No way she would let him live. She had nothing to gain from it.

‘I’ll offer the same deal I gave Eric. I promised I could buy a new life for him and Aubrey. You keep a quarter-million. You vanish. I’ll help you set up in a nice backwater.’

‘You’re just as bad as the Night Road. You completely screwed up my life, you bitch. For what? So you can have what you want, and everyone else be damned, and you don’t give a shit about innocent people.’

‘You make me sound so bad, Luke. Honestly. It’s a day’s work. We’re keeping cash away from terrorists, after all. I’m much less nasty than the Night Road. Now. The file, please. I have the encryption key on the computer in the other room.’

He stepped into the corridor. He would only get this one chance. She stepped away from the window, the pistol focused on him.

Finally a parking spot directly in front of the building opened up. An elderly man eased his Peugeot out of a slot and, talking to himself, drove down the rue de l’Abbe-Gregoire.

The martyr parked with care; one had to be a good parallel parker to survive in Paris, and he was. He did not weep but he thought of his father, dead two years from a cancer, his mother, who would not understand. The sky was milky with rain. He wondered if there would be cool rain in paradise; he could not remember if weather was mentioned. It felt like someone else was operating his muscles, as though they moved of a different accord than his own brain and heart. He wished for his mother’s touch, he wished he had not seen the girls in the art shop, he wished he had finished school, but none of that would matter. He was being weak. The glory that awaited would surpass all. Wouldn’t it?

The martyr lifted a device that had once been a game controller. Wires led to the gateway to paradise. He was afraid. A tiny voice inside him screamed do not do this.

He silenced the voice with a heaving sigh and pressed the button to the game controller.