Beloved Enemy (16 page)

“Move!” Jack said from right behind her.

“I can’t! I hate heights!”

“Jaidee—”

“No! If I move I’m going to fall, I know it!”

“That’s what your brain is telling you, but it’s a lie.”

“Please don’t ask me—”

Hearing a sound behind them, Jack risked a look over his shoulder and saw the intruder at the blasted-out window. He held a Glock 9mm in his left hand. Jack had wounded his right arm, and from the awkward grip, Jack could tell he was right-handed.

The man braced himself against the side of the window sash and, aiming, squeezed off a shot. He missed, but Jack couldn’t count on them being that lucky next time. Leaning forward, he wound one arm around Jaidee’s waist.

“Let go,” he whispered in her ear.

“Let go? Are you crazy?”

“Trust me.”

“I don’t—”

“If you don’t let go now,” Jack said, “we’ll both be shot to death, just like Leroy.”

The moment she let go, Jack swung them back and forth, gathering momentum with each pass. Then he too let go and they flew through the air. Jaidee bit her tongue to stifle her scream. They slammed into the pole, and Jack using his knees as well as his free hand to grip the rough wood, scooted them around so the pole was between them and the man at the window.

Jack could feel her trembling against him. “Down we go now,” he whispered.

When they were almost on the ground, he glanced up to the shattered window. Only blackness greeted him; the man was gone.

*   *   *

William Rogers was the polar opposite of Henry Dickinson, Jonatha thought, as they ambled through the strip of trees guarding the Reflecting Pool from the constant traffic on Constitution. He was calm rather than jittery, his voice soft and as well-modulated as a TV announcer; his watery blue eyes held her gaze seemingly without guile, as opposed to sliding away to the left. He was not a big man, nevertheless he cut an imposing figure. He possessed an outsized personality. That he kept it in check so effortlessly impressed her further.

None of these observations made him any less of a suspect. On the contrary, a man like Rogers, so in control of both his thoughts and his emotions, clearly relaxed around strangers, might have been a heartbeat away from becoming her prime suspect if she were disposed to prejudge her subjects. She’d never make such a rookie mistake. When embarking on this kind of probe it was imperative that she remain impartial.

“So,” Rogers was saying, “I hear excellent things about you from Director Krofft. He doesn’t give compliments easily.”

“He’s been very good to me,” Jonatha said neutrally.

“What I can’t fathom is how successfully he’s kept you under wraps. If you’re half as good as he says you are, I’d think your name would have entered the lexicon of us mandarins before now.”

Jonatha gave him a sideways glance. “I don’t know whether you’re praising my boss’s skill at hiding me or doubting my abilities.”

“To be honest, it might be a bit of both.”

“I appreciate your candor, though I doubt Director Krofft would feel the same way.”

Rogers chuckled. “I’m certain he wouldn’t.” He cleared his throat. “Still…”

“Is this about my position inside the Company or my being a woman?”

“To be honest, I’ve never known Krofft to rely on a female agent.”

Jonatha made a mental note of his repetition. In her experience, people who repeated a phrase often meant the opposite. The jury was still out on Rogers; she’d have to keep an eye on where the rest of this interview went.

“I don’t believe the director thinks of me as a female agent.”

Rogers raised one of his eyebrows. “Oh? And why is that?”

“I’ve proved myself under fire. That’s the director’s benchmark for whom to put his faith in.”

“Explain please.”

They walked on. Jonatha could see, in the periphery of her vision, certain suits whose lips moved every so often as they communicated with each other wirelessly. They moved at the same pace as the national security advisor.

“When I was teenager,” she said at last, “I never lacked for suitors.”

“I can understand that,” Rogers said, seemingly ignoring her odd, anachronistic language. “With your flaming copper hair and green eyes, I’d imagine all the boys would have been buzzing around you.” He raked her with his gaze. “Even if you didn’t have those long, shapely legs back then.”

Jonatha released a small smile, like an aura, into the air around her. “Well, they never got anywhere.”

“Never?”

Jonatha felt the need to gauge his coming reaction. “There was someone outside of high school, someone who interested me. She was an auto mechanic, loved to restore vintage wrecks to gleaming works of pure genius.”

Rogers nodded, never missing a beat. “Later on, when you became a woman, didn’t you worry about your—choice?”

“First, it wasn’t a choice. Second, if I worried about everything, I’d never leave my house.”

He laughed. “True enough.” Then his face clouded over. “But, still, especially in politics—”

“I’m not in politics,” she said. “I’m in the business of secrets.” She tilted her head. “You see the irony.”

“Indeed I do.” Rogers considered a moment. “So Krofft doesn’t mind.”

“I think the director is amused. He enjoys watching the guys try to hit on me.”

“Why?”

“He says it gives him an inner sense of satisfaction.”

“That they can’t have what he can’t have.”

Now she laughed. “I like you, sir. I like the way your mind works.”

*   *   *

“Come on,” Jack urged. “We have to get out of here before—”

“I don’t know whether I can.”

They moved through the patchy shadows cast by the jungle of draped lines over their heads. Jaidee was still shivering uncontrollably, and he threw an arm across her shoulders in an effort to calm her.

“Jaidee,” he whispered, “you have to shake off your fear. You’re on the ground now, but if we don’t get out of this alley right now—”

It was too late. The gunman, blood dripping from inside his jacket, appeared at the end of the alley. As he began stalking toward them, Jack retreated, pulling Jaidee with him.

“What are we going to do?” she said.

Looking up behind them, Jack saw how the cyclist had reached Connaston’s bathroom window. There was an iron ladder that led up along the side of the building all the way to the roof.

“Quick!” he whispered. “This way!”

Taking her hand he pulled her to the ladder, then, hands at her waist, lifted her up. To her credit, she didn’t cower, but, understanding their dire predicament, began to climb. Jack waited for the gunman to come in range, then overturned a galvanized metal trash can and, kicking it hard, sent it rumbling toward him.

Then he turned and leaped up the ladder after Jaidee. The first shot dislodged a chunk of wall to their left when they were halfway up. Moments later, a second shot pinged off a rung of the metal ladder. But by then, Jaidee had launched herself over the low parapet, onto the roof. A third bullet took a chunk of cement off the top of the parapet just as Jack went over.

For a moment, he lay beside Jaidee, breathing heavily, then they began to get up. Jack was on his hands and knees when something crashed into him, driving him backward against the parapet. His head slammed against the cement. For an instant he blacked out, then he recognized the face of the cyclist. Her lips were drawn back in a rictus of rage. She had her hands around Jaidee’s neck, squeezing so tightly the girl couldn’t draw breath. She bore down on Jaidee with such savageness he thought,
an instant more and she’ll kill Jaidee
.

Black lights flashed behind his eyes and he could feel his veins pulsing, see their branching, on and on, reaching from his eyes to his brain.

Then, he had his arms wrapped around the cyclist’s waist. He heard a scream, not of pain so much as frustration. With a surge of fury, he ripped the cyclist away. The cyclist, squirming, almost jabbed Jaidee’s eyes out, but at the last instant, Jack hurled her sideways, away from them both.

The cyclist stumbled hard against the parapet. Jaidee, scrambling up, kicked her in the chest. The cyclist screamed again, her clawlike hands shot out, grabbing Jaidee in a desperate attempt to regain her balance.

Jack struck her so hard on the nose her hands flew to her face, and over the parapet she went, tumbling head over heels through the air, plummeting down, crashing into the electrical lines, which acted like a webbing to cradle her fall. But then one of the lines broke, the live ends sparking and fizzing. Somehow the cyclist had the presence of mind to scramble away, but as if it were alive, the fizzing ends pursued her, arcing through the air, then dropping onto her back.

The electricity shot through her, and she arched, spasming, her eyes popping in their sockets, her feet drumming uselessly. Then she fell through the rent in the wires, crashing headfirst into the pavement of the alley.

Jack heard the gunman’s curses rising up the side of the building from below and turned away.

“Are you all right?” he said to Jaidee. “Can you walk?”

“I … I think so.” Her voice was no more than a hoarse croak.

“Then come on.” He supported her as she rocked back and forth. “We need to go.”

It was then he heard the high-low wail of a police siren approaching the building with alarming rapidity.

*   *   *

Ripley was hip-deep in Leroy Connaston’s life, pieced together from various clandestine sources she had hacked online, when she came across something that gave her such pause that she immediately began to back out of every site. As she worked to leave no electronic fingerprints, she prayed that this wasn’t the time she finally made a mistake. She desperately wanted to remain unseen.

When she was done, Ripley sat back in her task chair, staring at the blank screen. Then, on an impulse that was as paranoid as it was irresistible, she shut down her computer, unplugged it, and closed her eyes for a moment. Her hands were in her lap, and when she became aware of how violently they were shaking, she stood up, crossed the room where she lived and worked, ran the hot water in the kitchen sink, and put them under the cascade. As the warmth penetrated her chilled flesh, the quaking subsided, along with the accelerated beating of her heart.

She stood, bent over, elbows on the sink, staring out at the Place des Vosges. The sight never failed to calm her. It was the oldest planned place in Paris, and, to her mind, at least, the most beautiful, with its symmetrical lines of trees, like sentries standing guard over the four fountains at its corners, bubbling like flutes of champagne. Part of its exquisite charm was that it was surrounded by royal house fronts of red brick, stone quoins, and elegantly vaulted arcades, which now housed restaurants and cutting-edge art galleries, as well as, on the weekends, itinerant musicians and singers, unfailingly of exceptional quality.

Ripley’s large, lofty apartment was ensconced in one of these buildings. Though her various employers believed her to be living in London, Gibraltar, or Geneva, these were fictions she had created to keep her whereabouts secret after she decamped from Washington, D.C., a year ago.

Ripley was her hacker’s moniker, the name by which all her clients knew her. Her real name was Caroline Carson. She had been a computer hacker all of her adult life. Nothing else interested her as much as delving into other people’s secrets. She had worked her cybermagic for a number of people, the last of whom was the Syrian. She had left him, abruptly and without warning, when Jack McClure was closing in on him. No one knew more about the Syrian’s business than Caro. In D.C., just before she left, she had helped Jack find the Syrian. That he had been unsuccessful in killing the master terrorist had sent Caro to Paris and into complete anonymity. She had no idea how seriously the Syrian was hunting for her, but with his obsessive, narcissistic nature, she had no trouble imagining the worst. No one could protect her, no one could save her. In her mind, it was just a matter of time before the Syrian, or, more likely, one of his professional assassins, found her and put an end to her life. She had considered staying on the run, but she’d be damned if she was going to spend whatever time was still allotted to her fleeing from country to country. She had made a life for herself in Paris’s Marais; she loved it here, so here she would stay until the end.

Shaking off these morbid thoughts, she turned off the water, dried her hands on a dish towel, and went back to her computer, plugged it in, fired it up, and got back to work. She regretted taking the Connaston commission now that she knew he had been involved up to his neck with the Syrian. She never would have agreed to it if her connection with Deckard hadn’t been so tight. She had met him five years ago at DEFCON, the hacker’s convention. Later, they had met once more at the Hacker’s Secret Ball, a yearly event, a movable feast, whose location was so closely guarded it was only revealed twenty-four hours in advance. It was up to its invitees to find their way to it. Not very many received invites. Only the top-tier hackers, the crème de la crème from DEFCON even knew it existed. That year, it had been held in Abu Dhabi, a place she hoped never to return to. There were almost fifty attendees that year—a high-water mark that had yet to be equaled. Deckard was a dead-eyed man with the skin of a lizard, but he had a mind that dazzled Caro. No one used their real names, no one was allowed to ask personal questions. The ball was to have fun, trade secrets, and, best of all, learn new ways into increasingly unhackable software. Deckard was in charge of a demonstration that year, and his was the one Caro found most fascinating. They had been cyberfriends ever since.

Now, staring at a summary of the material she had purloined, she wondered why she hadn’t heard of Leroy Nathaniel Connaston before. It was he who had created the proprietary software she had used when she was working for the Syrian. She vividly recalled asking Iraj who had built the program, but he had never answered. Once, she had picked a fight with him over the dead air of his deliberate silence. The argument had ended abruptly and stingingly when the Syrian slapped her so hard she lost her balance. He had stared down at her where she fell on the Isfahan carpet, as if she were a soiled rag someone had forgotten to throw away. She never forgot that look, which was almost worse than the blow, and that was the moment she had decided to jump ship. She waited for the right moment, when he would be sufficiently distracted to allow her to escape. She would be eternally indebted to Jack McClure for providing that distraction, though she had never admitted it to him and never would.