Black Skies (18 page)

“S
o what did he do to you?”

Morgan asked the question over a circular table at a dim Vienna bar. The waitress had just set a tall half-liter glass of a cloudy light yellow beer on the table in front of Morgan, who pushed it across to Lily Randall, and pulled the mineral water to his own side of the table.

“Do?” she asked, tilting the glass for a long draught of beer. She was in the same black turtleneck she had been wearing for the assassination—a turtleneck that said both “cat burglar” and “German sophisticate” at the same time. Her hair had been in a tight bun, which she now undid, letting her locks flow loosely down to her shoulders.

“This is about revenge, isn’t it?” said Morgan. “This whole thing with Weinberg.”

Her bright green eyes seemed smarter somehow. There was more than just the quick wit she demonstrated in Monte Carlo—her intelligence had depth. “What makes you so sure?”

“Nothing else would drive someone to do what you did,” said Morgan. “Leave your life and job behind. Risk losing everything, getting nothing better in return. What, you weren’t doing enough good at MI-5, you had to go after some random German billionaire, bad as he might be?
Please.
There’s only one thing that makes a person act that way. So it’s revenge. Got to be.”

“You sound like you know something about the subject.” Her eyes were defiant as always. She didn’t have the same manner as she had put on in Monte Carlo—the sex wasn’t turned on nearly as high, and he didn’t get the feeling that every word out of her mouth was meant to manipulate him now. But she was still hiding behind irony, deflecting honesty. Given that he had been pointing a gun at her not half an hour earlier, it was hardly any surprise.

“I might,” he said. “But I asked you a question. Answer me. Was this about revenge?”

The bar was filling up with people getting off work. The bar skewed younger than Morgan, but Lily, apart from not looking a bit German, fit in just fine.

“I just want him dead,” she said, not looking him in the eye.

“And I’m sure you have good reason. Hell, I’ve known him a few days and I already want him dead.”

She emitted a hollow laugh and drank. “Maybe that has something to do with those.” She pointed to Morgan’s bandaged fingers. The reminder made them throb with pain. “Or that shiner on your face.”

“No, that last one was you,” he laughed.

“Oops,” she said, not sounding particularly sorry.

Morgan ran his fingers gently over the bruise. “Look, Lily, whatever your reasons, we can’t let you kill him. At least not yet. We need to know what he knows and what he’s doing. But you can help us stop him. I could use someone with your skill to watch my back.”

“I haven’t forgotten that you kept me from killing him today,” she said. Then, relenting, she added, “It’s not like I’m doing anything right now, anyway. I suppose I’ll take any way that I can stick it to Weinberg. Okay, I’ll come with you.”

“It’s not the same, I know,” said Morgan. “But it’s
something.
And once this all blows over, well . . . I can tell you I wouldn’t miss the bastard if someone happens to off him. I might even come along for the ride. Provided you don’t hold me at gunpoint this time.” He shot her a teasing grin.

“No promises,” she said, smiling, warmth seeping in to her expression. “I might still have to shoot you before this is over.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to try,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take that thumb drive off of you.”

Maintaining eye contact with him, Randall reached into her shirt, slipped her fingers under her bra, pulled out the small plastic device, and handed it across the table to Morgan. He picked it up, and the plastic was warm to the touch. He attached the thumb drive to a device he had in his pocket and turned it on. Then he turned on the transmitter on his comm.

“I’ve got the drive,” he said. “I’m transmitting the data now.”

“You’re the man,” said Shepard. Randall finished off the rest of her beer.

“You might feel better if you pace yourself,” said Morgan.

“I think more beer is what’s going to make me feel better right now,” she said, raising her hand to call over the waitress. “So now that you’ve got what you want, are you going to give me the brush-off ?” she asked.

“I happen to be a man of my word,” he said. “I meant what I said when I invited you to come along. I could really use you.”

“I’m sure you could,” she said with a sly grin.

“Married. Remember?”

“Oh, you’re no fun.” The waitress came by, and Randall ordered a second beer.

“So what’s in this thing, anyway?” Morgan asked, holding the thumb drive between his index and middle fingers.

“No idea,” said Randall.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I was interested in exactly one thing: his schedule. Hoped to catch him off guard. There was a little too much in there for me to bother looking at everything. Plus, a lot of the files are individually encrypted. I didn’t have the time to go over each one, what with planning an assassination and all.”

“Right,” said Morgan. “The assassination. You still haven’t told me what that’s all about.”

“Haven’t I?” she said, feigning absentmindedness.

“Oh, please,” said Morgan. “I know it’s revenge. What I don’t know is, revenge for what?”

“You really don’t know when to quit.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Her beer came, and she downed half of it in one go and put the glass down. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.” She took a deep breath. “Gunther Weinberg killed my parents.”

“Oh,” said Morgan. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Look, it’s fine,” said Randall. “I mean, it’s not fine. I hate it. But the fact that they’re dead—what else is there but to reconcile myself to it and move on?”

“Doesn’t sound like the words of someone who left everything behind to get revenge,” said Morgan.

“Grief is one thing, revenge is another,” said Randall. “Living in the past won’t bring my parents back. I know. I don’t think it’ll bring any kind of satisfaction or . . . or closure or whatever. And hating him for ruining my childhood won’t do me any kind of good. I know all that. So don’t tell me any of this, all, right? Don’t tell me it’s not worth it, that it’ll be hollow once it’s done. I know the whole speech. I’ve given the speech.”

“I wasn’t going to say any of that.”

“This isn’t about me, you understand?” she continued. “It’s about
them.
What good am I if I don’t get justice for my parents?”

Morgan didn’t quite see it. She was being too rational, too cool about this, and going AWOL to a rogue assassination mission was not the action of a cool and rational person. But he decided to let it slide.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Randall took another deep swig of beer. “My parents were investigative journalists, and they had some dirt on his company.” Morgan caught a hint of a slur in her voice. “They were going to expose a whole slew of criminal activity perpetrated by Himmel. You know, his corporation. And then a car ran them off a cliff.”

“Damn,” said Morgan.

“Of course, I didn’t know it at the time,” she continued. “I was only six when it happened. I always thought it had been an accident, and nobody disabused me of that notion. Then, as a teenager, I read the newspaper and police reports and discovered that there were suspicious circumstances around the whole thing. Some paint transfer on the car, tire marks on the road. I knew by then that it had been a murder, but I had no idea who had done it. I went a little crazy for a while there. Did the kinds of stupid things that teenage girls do, and then some.”

“Vandalism? Shoplifting?”

“Car theft, and a couple of other things besides. But it didn’t take. In the end, I turned my pain into determination. Doubled down on my studies. Went to a fancy boarding school on scholarship—and let me tell you, the upper-class girls never let you forget where you came from. They tormented me for a year. That is, until I broke the queen bee’s nose and threatened to slit their throats in their sleep.”

“You sound like you could make that threat believable,” he grinned.

“Helps when you have a reputation for being the crazy one. After that, I just focused on doing my work, getting the marks. Got into an MI-5 trainee program, and the rest is history.”

“Except that’s not all, right?” said Morgan. “Something changed. Something made you go after Weinberg.”

“About six months ago, I found out what my parents were doing when they were killed. Investigating Weinberg’s company for illegal trafficking. Discovered it totally by accident, doing some desk work one day. I came across a report on Weinberg’s company, and there, I found a reference to some research done by my parents—apparently they’d shared some of it with British Intelligence in the course of their investigations. I put two and two together. That’s when I started researching all I could about him. His family history, what his company had done under his leadership. Suspicions of piracy on the Black Sea, of massacring union leaders in Romania, of rigging local elections in Georgia—that’s the country, not the state with the peaches. So I decided to kill him—I just needed to figure out when, where and how. You know how it went from there.” She finished the last of her beer. “God, here I am, telling you my whole life story.”

“To be fair,” he said, “I did ask.”

“And what about you?” asked Randall. Her eyelids drooped slightly. “What makes the enigmatic Mr. Morgan tick?”

“I’m not really a complicated man—”

“Said the international man of mystery.”

“Ah,” he said. “I guess there is that.”

“Yes, there is that.”

“I admit, that is complicated. But I’m not.”

Morgan’s phone beeped, and he looked down at the screen.

“What’s that? Message from the wife?”

“That’s our cue to get to work,” said Morgan. “My people have something on Weinberg. And from the looks of it, it isn’t good.” He stood up and dropped a couple of bills on the table for the beers and the water. “You still have time to back out.”

“Oh, please,” she said, walking out ahead of him. “Like I’m going to be outdone by a bloke who won’t even drink a pint.”

“I
t seems things are a lot worse than we imagined,” said Bloch.

Morgan and Randall had gotten themselves a room at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna—Morgan had been adamant about getting two beds—and had set up a three-way video call with Diana Bloch at Zeta Headquarters and Lincoln Shepard, still in Monte Carlo. Morgan and Lily sat side by side at the room’s hardwood desk, made hasty introductions, and they jumped right into the business at hand.

“Do you know what an EMP is?” asked Shepard.

Morgan was about to respond when Randall preempted him. “Electromagnetic pulse. An expanding wave of electromagnetic radiation.” Any sign of drunkenness had completely left her voice and posture, and Morgan wondered whether that had been a put-on as well. “If it’s strong enough, it can pretty much wipe out any electronic device for miles. They were discovered as a side effect of nuclear detonation in the forties. There have been several attempts to create an EMP-only weapon, some of them successful, but never deployed in the field.”

“Someone was head of her class,” said Shepard.

“So what’s this about, Shepard?” asked Morgan.

“The EMP device,” said Shepard. “We found specifications to one on the contents of Weinberg’s hard drive. A Russian prototype weapon.”

“So he’s trying to get this weapon?” Morgan asked.

“He already did,” said Bloch.

“He stole it from a train yesterday as it was being transported to Siberia for testing. We just found out when Shepard looked into the whereabouts of the thing.”

Morgan swore. “That’s bad news.”

“Aren’t you sorry you didn’t let me kill him now?” asked Randall.

“What can he do with the EMP?” asked Morgan.

“Take your pick,” said Shepard. “Shut off the lights in any major city in the world. Hit the Pentagon, NORAD, even take out the entire US electrical grid, with a well-placed strike.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Morgan. “Do we have any idea what he’s planning? Any idea what the hell this has to do with the Secretary of State?”

“None whatsoever,” said Bloch. “Although I think it’s probably safe to assume that, given the abduction of the Secretary, the target is likely to be in the United States.”

“Something’s bothering me,” said Randall. “Why is he doing this? What the
hell
kind of connection could these things have with each other?”

“Opportunity?” ventured Shepard. “Because they’re there? Sometimes it’s as simple as that. The chicken just wants to get to the other side.”

“I don’t buy it,” said Randall. “Not for one minute. Weinberg’s a clever bastard. There has got to be some angle here.”

“Do you know what I think?” cut in Morgan. “I think he’s bored. I think he just ran out of better things to do with his fortune. I think we have a man who thinks he can slap America in the face. Who does something because it’s just the next logical step. The next thing he can do to assert his power. I think he got tired of
just
being president of a multibillion-dollar corporation. He wanted more. And now he has the US Secretary of State and a dangerous weapon on his hands. He wants to bring America to its knees. And, do you know what?
We won’t let him.
I don’t care why he’s doing it. I’m going to stop him.”

“Hear, hear, Mr. Morgan,” said Randall. “So I suppose the question is, what
are
we going to do about it?”

“We don’t know where the EMP is,” said Bloch. “We don’t know where Secretary Wolfe is. But we know where Weinberg is.”

Randall perked up at this. “Oh?”

“Weinberg’s left Vienna,” said Shepard. “He’s on a plane, on a flight path to the Greek island of Santorini. He owns a villa there.”

“I say it’s time to take action,” said Morgan. “No more nibbling around the edges, no more undercover. Let’s take the fight to him. Bring him in and put the screws on him, and find both the Secretary and the EMP.”

“I have to agree with you this time, Cobra,” said Bloch. “We tried subtlety, and it failed. We can’t afford to wait this time. We need to take decisive action right away. I’m deploying the tactical team to Santorini to go after Weinberg. Cobra, I want you to meet up with them there. Ms. Randall?”

“Yes?”

“I understand you have some kind of vendetta against Weinberg. But you also appear to have some very valuable skills. If you can put aside your thoughts of revenge, perhaps we can use you in this mission.”

“I’ll help if I can,” said Randall.

“Good,” said Bloch. “Then you two had better get ready. You board your flight to Greece in two hours.”