Authors: Matthew Dunn
As she stepped onto the trawler, Johanne thought three things. One, she’d never searched a boat before; two, community policing wasn’t supposed to be like this; and three, perhaps she should go for a drink after work with Daniel Møller—providing of course they weren’t hospitalized or dead.
Daniel seemed nervous. His hands were shaking and his face was covered with perspiration, though she could see that he was making every effort to stay in control. He was a scared man who had no choice but to face up to this situation and act brave, and that appealed to her. Less so his office habits, but guys can be like that, and she knew he meant her no disrespect. He needed a woman to make him better lunches.
Might be too late for that.
She followed him into the hold, recalling a jumped-up firearms instructor yelling at her during police training that she was the worst shot he’d ever had the displeasure of teaching. Officer Møller was in front of her, his upper body hunched, breathing fast as they entered a small cabin with bunk beds. He stopped by a narrow ladder, and pointed at his chest and the ceiling. He was going to somewhere above them, on his own. Oh yes, the place where they sail the boat, or steer it, or drive it, or whatever was the right term. That was good, bad, and bad. Good that she didn’t have to go up there, bad that Daniel might get his throat slit the moment he reached the top of the ladder and stuck his head into the tiny cabin, and bad that she’d be left on her own with a weapon that didn’t deserve to be in her hands.
She shook her head, eyes wide, at Daniel. What noise would he make if he were stabbed in the gullet? Worse, she decided, than the noises he made in their office.
But Officer Møller looked sternly at her and proceeded to climb. He must have been petrified.
As his legs disappeared from view, she spun around a full 360 degrees, too quickly, and her head felt momentarily giddy. She heard boots clanging on the metal ladder, the noise growing louder. Daniel coming back down? Or a murderer?
She trained her gun on the ladder. Her hands were shaking so much that she decided she’d have to fire at least three shots to stand a chance of hitting anything near the stairway.
Boots came into view, then legs.
Then Daniel.
Thank God.
Officer Møller shook his head. The cabin was empty. Did that mean they could leave now? Clearly not, because Daniel was moving onward, now holding his gun in two hands, his breathing louder than ever. Officer Møller obviously knew more about boats than she did and was leading her to a place they’d not yet searched.
He stopped by some steps, leaned right into her, cupped his hand over his and her mouth, and whispered, “The hold.” His breath smelled of raw beef and eggs. Johanne decided she definitely needed to wean him off that filth. “It’s the last place to check and most likely where he’s hiding.” He tried to smile, but the fear and tension on his face made it impossible to do so. “Drinks on me?”
Johanne nodded. Strange time and place for her to agree to a date, but under the circumstances, why not?
She followed him down metal stairs into the dimly lit base of the boat, swallowing hard while praying to God that fear didn’t make her suddenly burst into tears.
Will tensed and looked at his handgun. Any moment now. Had to be ready, move quickly, get the job done, then get out of here. No time to think now. Everything’s instinctual. No matter what comes your way, use maximum force, no hesitation, no guilt, no compassion toward anyone carrying a weapon.
Møller reached the bottom of the stairs, his pistol held at eye level, and braced himself for a gunshot to the chest or head. If that happened, he hoped Johanne had time to turn around and run away. It was her best option, and she should just keep running, away from the boat, the jetty, Tasiilaq, and her job in the police. At least his death wouldn’t then be pointless.
The boat’s cargo hold stretched the length of the trawler, not much bigger than a regular-sized living room, but was cluttered with crates, nets, lobster pots, tools, blankets, oilskin clothes, ropes, lanterns, and buoys. There were plenty of places for a man to hide.
He had to search the place thoroughly while acting like Johanne’s superior officer, even though he wasn’t even up to a bit of acting, let alone professional policing. Moving between the crates, he could hear Johanne behind him, breathing as fast as he was. The air was salty and fetid, from damp clothing and rotting fish and mollusks, and made him gag. Or maybe it was the wretched feeling inside.
His head banged against a low-hanging naked lightbulb, which swung wildly on its single cord, throwing haphazard light into the hold’s dim recesses and causing Johanne to shriek. He grabbed the cord to steady the bulb, silently cursed, and continued moving around the room. Both officers checked behind anything that could conceal a man, lifted blankets and nets, kicked stuff to see if it prompted a killer to bolt from his hidey-hole, and finally used whatever tools they could find to lever open every crate in the room.
When they were finished, Møller looked at Johanne. Tears ran down his cheeks as he said between sobs, “He’s not here. No one’s here. Thank . . . thank . . .” He could no longer speak, and instead stepped forward and hugged Johanne. They were alive.
Will Cochrane scrutinized the coastline and felt relief. No cops, no others, no danger.
He thrust his pistol into his jacket, leapt from the small rubber dinghy into knee-deep water, flicked open a knife, and used it to slash the rubber. He watched the strong ebb take the shredded boat quickly back out to sea, grabbed the two oars that were floating by his legs, and walked onto the thin strip of pebbly beach. After five minutes, both oars were buried under stones. Within a couple of hours, the wash would probably expose them again, but by then it wouldn’t matter. He’d be long gone.
He ran off the beach, up higher ground until he was on an empty area of ice-covered flatland, beyond which were mountains. Spinning around, he went down on one knee, pulled out the scope from the sniper rifle he’d left in Norway, and stared through it. Three-quarters of a mile away was Tasiilaq. He could see the port’s jetty, the trawler, the captain and his crew, and a man he didn’t know standing close to them while holding a pistol. A man and a woman, wearing cop uniforms, exited the boat and joined the group. The woman was smiling, the man was speaking, and both were holstering their pistols. The other man gave him his handgun and slapped him on the shoulder before turning toward the captain and holding out his hand. The captain hesitated, then beamed, shook the man’s hand, reached down into the crate by his feet, and pulled out a bottle of bourbon, which he uncorked with his teeth. He passed the bottle around and everyone on the jetty took a swig. The male cop held his hand to his chest and vomited onto the pier before smiling and shaking his head. The female cop laughed, then she too threw up. Their bodies were reacting to the fear and adrenaline they’d felt moments ago.
Will had known he might have trouble getting off the vessel once it had berthed. That’s why he’d insisted that instead the trawler crew lower a dinghy alongside the boat while they were still out at sea, so that Will could row to a place on the shoreline that was out of sight of the port.
He was glad it had happened that way and that the people who’d come looking for him had ended the day’s adventures with nothing worse than a glug of the captain’s awful liquor. And he was also relieved that he hadn’t needed to confront any other potential danger on this bit of coastline.
He pulled his jacket hood onto his head and ran toward a destination in Greenland that contained people who were infinitely more deadly than those he’d seen a moment ago.
C
IA director Ed Parker was standing on a Washington sidewalk. Next to him were Senator Colby Jellicoe and his Agency colleague Charles Sheridan. Cars moved slowly past them with their windshield wipers and headlights on full because the torrential downpour made visibility poor, though it was only midafternoon. On the other side of the street was the imposing Dirksen Senate Office Building, renovated fifteen years previously to make its numerous committee hearing rooms more television friendly. In thirty minutes, Jellicoe would be sitting in one of those rooms, with cameras pointing at him while he testified to some of his colleagues.
Parker raised his umbrella so that he could see Jellicoe’s face. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
Jellicoe smiled.
Sheridan did not. “Shut up, Parker.”
“Don’t talk to a senior officer . . .”
“Senior to me by one grade, and only ’cause your paycheck says so.” Sheridan flicked a finger against the tip of Parker’s nose. “Having a fancy title doesn’t give you the right to get all ladyboy on us.”
Parker was about to respond but knew there was no point. Sheridan loved conflict, and a retort would play right into his hands. He looked at Jellicoe. “Your mind’s made up?”
Jellicoe nodded, his grin still fixed on his flabby face. “Back channel, the deal’s already been done with the Norwegians, so we might as well make it public.”
“Why?”
Jellicoe didn’t answer, and that confused Parker even more. The senator had told the Norwegian government the truth about what had happened in Norway and had given them Will Cochrane’s name as the rogue officer behind the fiasco, though he’d naturally omitted any mention of Antaeus and Project Ferryman. In doing so, he’d completely defused political tensions between the States and Norway to the extent that the Norwegians were fully cooperating with Marsha Gage to hunt down the MI6 officer. But Jellicoe couldn’t be so candid in a televised hearing. Instead, he’d have to say that a classified Agency operation in Norway went wrong, that the Norwegians were on our side, and that an investigation was under way into why the operation nearly caused a diplomatic furor. Some of the senators facing Jellicoe would naturally ask him for further specific details, but at that stage Jellicoe would have to keep his mouth shut on the basis of national security.
So, what was the point of airing a drastically sanitized version of events at a public hearing? Perhaps, Parker speculated, this was about nothing more than Jellicoe getting his ambitious face back in front of the cameras. Yes, that was it. For a long time, Jellicoe had ridden the crest of a wave because of Ferryman. Parker could tell that Jellicoe was ready to take another step up the career ladder, perhaps to chairman of the SSCI. Or maybe—Parker shuddered at the thought—to head of the CIA.
That evening, Ed Parker entered his home in Arlington and poured himself a large Scotch. He didn’t always drink whiskey after work, but he’d had a bad taste in his mouth all day and needed something fiery and toxic to burn it out.
Catherine was in the garden greenhouse, tending begonias, achimenes, and cyclamens while singing to the plants. Gardening was a relatively new hobby for her and made her smile and relax, and anything that made Catherine happy and contented was a damn fine thing as far as Ed was concerned. She was wearing a gray woolen cardigan with leather elbow patches and her favorite “hippie chic” skirt, which reached her ankles; her raggedy gray hair was kept in a bun by two knitting needles. She described it as her pottering look, though in recent years it was rather more the predominant Catherine look. Ed didn’t mind. She looked gorgeous, the way that many middle-aged women do when they relax into life after surviving all the crap. Moreover, Catherine was not only Ed’s loving wife; she was also his perfect antidote to the pissing contests he had to put up with in the Agency.
He knocked a few times on the kitchen window until she heard him, looked up, and smiled. He raised the full glass of liquor to the window, pointed at it, mimicked gulping it down in one, then crossed his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and wobbled his head as if he were blind drunk. Catherine laughed, knowing that it was her husband’s call to arms to share an aperitif with him after a bad day at work.
His cell phone beeped, and to his amazement he saw he had an SMS from Sheridan. He’d never received a message from him before, and didn’t even think the man knew how to send them from his phone. Probably Sheridan’s long-suffering wife had finally succeeded in getting the grumpy bastard to learn how to use the cell, even though she barely spoke to him after their marriage had nearly fallen apart during their last overseas Agency posting. Given that they had no children, there was no one else in the Sheridan household who could have taken on the unenviable task. The image made Ed smile, and he imagined Sheridan huffing and puffing about civilian technology being just for kids. Of course, Catherine had rightly pointed out several times that Ed was equally useless with technology, and recently she too had needed to explain to him the basics about texts, contact lists, and how to press Send. He took a sip of his whiskey, read the message, and frowned.
Did you see him in action? Jellicoe nailed it. Screwed the bastard to the wall.
Catherine entered the kitchen, pulled out the knitting needles, bent over, and swished her long hair to release raindrops gathered during the short walk between the greenhouse and their home. “Cocks In Agency day?”
That put the smile back on Ed’s face. “Yeah, one of them.”
Catherine walked to the refrigerator. “Well, there’s only one thing to do.” She grabbed a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a chilled glass and poured herself a drink. “Pizza delivery, followed by me taking a soak with a bit of
50 Shades,
and”—she blew him a kiss—“see where it goes from there?”
Ed loosened the knot of his tie. “What about Crystal?”
Their nine-year-old daughter.
“Last-minute sleepover at Debbie’s place.”
Ed shrugged. “We’d better make the most of it then.” He walked into the living room, flicked on the TV, and started trying to find the right channel while muttering, “Fucking . . . fricking . . . shit . . . why, why, why do they make this playback thing so damn complicated?”
Catherine took the controller from him, pretended to be exasperated, and asked, “What program?”
“Senate hearing. Four o’clock this afternoon.”
It only took her a few seconds to find. “I’ll call for the pizza. Usual?”
“Yeah, but extra jalapeños.”
“Not concerned about heartburn?”
“Least of my worries.”
Catherine laughed as she walked out of the room. “On your head be it, but don’t let it spoil our fun later tonight.”
Ed slumped into the sofa and pressed play. God, there was Jellicoe, sitting behind a desk and microphone while facing seven senators, his ridiculously expensive suit only serving to make the plump man look like a 1920s mafioso with a heap of cash but no taste.
Ed turned up the volume.
Fifteen minutes later, he turned off the TV and briefly considered resigning from the Agency. Because Jellicoe had told everyone watching the hearing that the Agency was hunting a British intelligence officer named Will Cochrane, had pulled out a photo of Cochrane and held it up so that the room’s cameras could zoom in on it, and had concluded that it would be better for anyone who saw Cochrane to kill him on sight rather than risk attempting to capture him alive.
Though Ed had as much vested interest in Ferryman as Jellicoe and Sheridan, and had agreed that Cochrane needed to be captured, he’d wanted the manhunt to be done under the radar and Cochrane to be punished by due legal process. Plus, he’d learned that Cochrane had an incredible history of serving Western intelligence. Whatever reason Cochrane had disobeyed orders in Norway, he still deserved to be treated with respect. Now, his name and face were blown and Jellicoe had encouraged everyone who owned a gun to shoot to kill if they spotted him in their backyard.
Catherine sat next to him. “Everything okay?”
Ed shook his head in disbelief. “Our best . . . best operative. We . . .” He gestured his glass toward the television, spilling whiskey on the carpet. “We . . . It’s not right. We shouldn’t be doing this to him.”
Lindsay Sheridan looked at the silver-framed photo of Charles and her standing together in their college graduation gowns and couldn’t decide if the image was making her feel sad or regretful. They looked so young then, happy, her with the nice engagement ring Charles had given her a week before the photo had been taken, Charles with his arm around her and an expression of pride and contentment. What a nice man he’d been then, before he’d joined the Agency, before they’d gotten married, and before they’d been posted overseas several times, culminating in her indiscretion with a fellow diplomat. She couldn’t blame him for being angry about that—not at all—but she could blame him for what led to her being unfaithful. Over the course of years, he’d become a changed man, distant from her and sharp-tongued. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d wanted just to run away from him. All right, they had joint ownership of their home in Montgomery County, but that was the only complication they’d face in a divorce settlement, given that they had no kids. That, and the fact that he had an almighty psychological hold over her.
She placed the photo next to others on a mahogany side table, rubbed a duster over all the frames, and sighed. A world-class education, and yet she was reduced to dusting a house for a man who showed no signs of loving her.
She heard the sound of tires on the gravel driveway and glanced across the sumptuous living room. Outside, she could see a limousine. One of the men in the rear was her husband, the other was Senator Colby Jellicoe. Oh Lord. That meant brandy and cigars stinking up her home, with her being banished from the living room while the men spoke in hushed voices about world affairs and how to spy on them.
It was a shame Ed Parker wasn’t with them. At least then these types of meetings were bearable. Ed was a nice guy, would help her prepare drinks in the kitchen, chat to her, raise his eyes in disdain when Charles or Jellicoe would be barking orders at her from the other side of the house, tell her that she’d lost ten pounds even though she hadn’t, and say that his wife Catherine sent her love and dearly hoped that Lindsay was fucking her way through the neighborhood just to spite her ungrateful bastard husband.
The difference between Catherine and Ed’s marriage and her own couldn’t have been more stark.
How times had changed since their days on the diplomatic circuit. Then she’d be at her husband’s side, wearing a ball gown and gorgeous perfume, looking radiant, and working the room to support her husband’s work for the CIA.
Now she was reduced to being treated with contempt and locked away from all things glamorous, interesting, and intelligent.
God, she wished she could turn back the clock and undo some of the things that had happened. Too late now. She was condemned to this life.