“There’s one more thing,” said Morgan. He took the memory card out of his pocket and laid it on the table in between himself and Conley. “I believe this is yours.”
Conley picked it up and examined it as if it were a precious jewel. “This has traveled a hell of a long way to make it back into my hands.”
“And now what are you going to do about it?” said Morgan.
“Nothing yet,” said Conley, as he stowed the plastic chip in a jacket pocket. “It’s not enough anymore. Especially now that we know for certain that we can’t trust the Agency. We have to sit on this until we know the whole picture, along with the things you took from Plante.”
Morgan nodded. “Then we know what the mission is.”
“Cougar and Cobra, together again, huh?” Conley was smiling wearily, despite himself.
“Cougar and Cobra,” said Morgan. He grinned, then looked over at Alex, sitting at the counter with her mother. “I need to go over there. I need to explain this to my daughter. About what happened. And about why we have to go.”
“Good luck,” said Conley sincerely.
Morgan walked slowly toward the counter, making sure that his daughter saw him approach. He stood with Jenny in between him and Alex. “Hi, I . . .” he said, trailing off, without knowing what to say.
Alex looked up, her moist, puffy, bloodshot eyes expressing both devastation and defiance.
Jenny tenderly kissed her daughter’s head and got up. “I’ll let you two talk,” she said, excusing herself.
Morgan sat down on the stool beside Alex. She looked down at her plate, pushing a soggy fry around with a toothpick. He didn’t know what to say. Morgan could go into a war zone and face off against the deadliest men on the planet without a second thought. He had undertaken missions that endangered his life again and again. By the odds, he should have died five times over by now. He had come out of all that alive, and on all those assignments, fear had never hampered him. And yet, here she was, a still-impressionable teenage girl, and he was terrified to speak to her.
She sure wasn’t giving him an opening.
Well
, he thought, taking a deep breath,
I just have to go for it
. “Look, kiddo,” he started, “there are lots of things I wish I had done differently. One is that I should have trusted you with my secret. I should have told you years ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t.” He paused for breath. Her eyes, still looking the other way, showed the slightest signs of softening.
“Back at the cabin . . . you saw a side of me that I hoped you would never know, and I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “But I have never been sorry about anything I did to protect this country and my family. And in the end, it’s really about you, because you’re the most important person in the world to me. You and your mother. Did you know that?”
She didn’t look up, but a tear rolled from her eye and dropped from her cheek to the counter, her aloofness melting. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands were no longer playing with the plate but were in her lap. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she said bitterly. “That you did all those horrible things for my sake?” She looked away, sniffling.
Morgan took a deep breath. “I’ve got to go away tomorrow, early in the morning. It will be hard for me, because all I want is to stay with you and watch over you. But I have to go to protect you, and I might not make it back. That’s something I was always aware of, on every mission I went on. After I met your mother, I had to tell her, every time I left on a mission, everything I wanted to say to her, because I knew I might not get another chance. So I’ll say this to you, Alex. If I never talk to you again, if you never forgive me or understand me, just know that I love you, more than anything, and that everything I did, I did it thinking about what was best for you.”
She didn’t respond, didn’t look up, just sat there, choking on her sobs. He sighed, got up, and before he walked away, heard her say, quietly, “I love you, too, Dad. I just don’t like you anymore.”
He sighed. It would have to do.
C
HAPTER
30
L
ester Hodges checked his watch, but it was more a gesture of irritation than anything else. He had been sitting at his table for two at La Martine for over half an hour, and that was forty-five minutes longer than he was willing to wait for anyone, especially a punk junior senator from Pennsylvania. A waiter silently refilled his water glass. Hodges tapped the empty glass that had contained his gin and tonic. “Another one,” he grunted. “And don’t be stingy with the booze this time.”
Soon another waiter placed his sixteen-ounce New York strip steak in front of him.
It better be rare
, he thought. “Make it so rare, it’s illegal,” Hodges always said when he ordered, chuckling. But he wasn’t chuckling now. He took the steak knife and tore into the meat. It was a pale pink. He motioned to the waiter.
“You call this rare?” he growled, pointing to the steak as if the waiter had put a turd on the plate.
“My sincerest apologies, sir,” he responded, obligingly. “I will send it back to the kitchen at once, sir. We’ll have another one out for you right away.”
“Goddamn better.”
The waiter took the plate away, and Hodges hit his fist hard on the table. That idiot senator—some young Martha’s-Vineyard-vacationing asshole playboy who had probably read a book on negotiation tactics once and thought that made him enough of a man to play with the big boys—establishing dominance or some shit like that. Hodges ate whelps like him for breakfast. He didn’t need a book to tell him how to establish dominance. Hell, he’d
written
the book on intimidation. He could make that bastard shit his pants just by looking at him.
Hodges was so angry, he almost missed the man who had walked into the restaurant, cruised right past the hostess, and headed straight for his table. This was a man in his late thirties or early forties, wide-shouldered and solidly built, in serious shape, wearing a garish Hawaiian shirt, large sunglasses, and carrying a thin folder of some kind. Hodges had never seen the man before in his life, but like so many people he had just met, Hodges disliked him. The man pulled out the chair, straddled it, and sat down, encroaching on his space, facing him from across the table.
“Hello, Lester.”
Hodges’s eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you?” Hodges saw another man approaching: Keller, his chief of security, who had been watching from a corner of the room. He stood by. If Hodges raised a finger, he would throw this guy out into the street like a dog and give him a couple kicks in the gut for good measure. All he had to do was give the signal.
“What the hell are you, a journalist? You with some newspaper or something?”
“No,” the man said, laughing. “Not quite. I’m more of a freelancer. My name,” he continued, “is . . . now listen well, because I want you to remember this, and it looks like you’ve had a few already, and you might forget. I’m known as Cobra.”
Hodges looked speechlessly at the man, this man known up until this moment by code name only. The man who had been causing him so much trouble, whom no one seemed to be able to find, and who was now sitting so close to him at a table, it was as if they had a goddamn lunch date. All he could do was stare.
“So you’ve heard of me,” said Cobra. “Good. That makes this even simpler. I want you to listen well. I know you answer to someone. You’re not smart enough to pull this off on your own. I want you to tell him that I found you, and I want you to tell him that I’m coming for him. He can hide, but sooner or later, I’m going to get him.”
Hodges laughed uproariously. “What the hell are you gonna do? As far as I’m concerned, you’re a fly on the wall. You’re an ant under my feet. In fact, I’m having a hard time figuring out why I shouldn’t just have Keller here take care of you right now.” He noticed that some people in the restaurant were staring.
“Oh, I don’t think you want to do that, Lester.”
Hodges gave the signal, and Keller reached out to put his hand on Cobra’s shoulder. But Cobra was quicker. He blocked Keller’s arm, grabbed two of his fingers, and snapped them back with a sickening crack. His leg swooped under Keller, causing him to fall hard, drawing gasps from other patrons and staff.
“What are you looking for here?” demanded Hodges angrily. “A payoff or something? You looking for money, Cobra?”
“No, Lester, I’m not interested in your money,” he said. “Here’s what I want. I want to watch you squirm. I know what your division has been up to. Your dirty little secret: I know, and I want you to know that I know. And I want your boss to know, too. And I want you two to go on with your lives, knowing that I’m coming for you. When you least expect it, I’ll strike, and I’ll hit you both hard. You got that?”
Hodges could only glare at him, his right hand gripping the steak knife involuntarily. Through his fury, he said, “I don’t know who you think you are or what you’re hoping to accomplish here, but you should remember something, too. You’ve threatened the wrong man this time, and believe me, you’re gonna pay.”
Cobra got up, looking satisfied with himself, and turned to walk away.
You think you won, don’t you?
Hodges thought. He motioned for Keller to approach. Keller, who had quickly gotten to his feet despite his injured fingers, leaned down, and Hodges said quietly, “Follow that man. I want to know his real name, his address, and the name of his goddamn third-grade teacher by the end of the hour! And have the car brought around.” Keller motioned to the other two bodyguards and gave them instructions while cradling his injured left hand. Then he rushed out the door to follow Cobra. Hodges got up and charged behind him. The maître d’ made the slightest move to get in his way. “Put it on my tab,” Hodges barked at him. “And don’t you dare charge me for that overcooked steak!” He barged past, out of the restaurant, into the sunny DC street.
His town car pulled up. Once inside, he got out his phone, fumbled with the buttons, and made the call. The phone rang twice, and then he heard, “Les, what is it?”
“Ed,” he said, “I gotta see you. I don’t care where you are or what you’re doing. I gotta see you
right now.
”
Morgan hit the street at a brisk pace, and with a mere glance toward the gray sedan he knew was parked on the curb across the street, he turned and began walking west. The street was a wide, one-way thoroughfare, sidewalks packed with pedestrians who occasionally broke off randomly to cross the street. The use of the crosswalk here, if it ever happened, was purely incidental.
“You think he’ll bite?” said Conley’s voice in Morgan’s ear.
“Yeah, he’ll bite,” said Morgan, after tacking a Bluetooth receiver to his ear for show. It would attract less attention if people thought he was on the phone, but the real transmitter was an undetectable earpiece that was lodged in his ear. It was state-of-the-art and practically invisible. Not the kind of equipment available at Radio Shack, but Conley still had the contacts in the city to hook them up. “I got a chance to size him up in there,” Morgan continued, dodging a woman with a baby stroller. “He’s got more balls than brains, that one. You got the tracker onto his car?”
“Without great complication,” said Conley.
“That’s why I always picked you as my partner, Peter. Now, what do you see?”
“You’ve got a tail,” said Conley, unworried. It was all part of the plan. “About thirty paces back and closing. Tall man, black hair. He looks like he’s holding something in his hands.”
“Yeah, that’ll be his fingers,” Morgan chuckled. He went on without looking back or giving any sign that he was aware of the man following him. “Just like old times, eh?” Morgan said jovially.
“I’d love to reminisce, Cobra, but I think your attention would be put to better use by concentrating on the mission, huh?”
“Just be where you need to be at the right time, and leave the rest to me.”
“Got it, partner. See you in”—a short pause—“three minutes, twenty-six seconds. Out.”
Morgan squeezed his way past pedestrians, sustaining a pace that was quick enough to keep his tail on the verge of losing him but not hurried enough to actually lose him.
Two blocks down, Morgan turned a corner, and the busy road became a tiny back street, wholly residential, with parked cars half on the sidewalk, where an old woman carrying groceries was the only soul in sight. He walked another block and didn’t have to look back to know that Keller was behind him and closing.
That’s right, asshole, just keep coming
.
Morgan turned into the alley and made right for the trash can. He took off the lid, stuck his hand in, and his fingers closed around the grip of Wagner’s tranquilizer gun, right where he’d left it, along with a tiny belt of spare darts. “Just in case,” Conley had said.
Morgan and Conley had predicted that he would be followed out of the restaurant and decided it wouldn’t do to kill someone in a crowded city. A corpse attracted police and the media. On the other hand, when people see a guy passed out in the alley, they assume he’s drunk and, for the most part, leave him alone.
Morgan hid behind a Dumpster and clicked the safety off. He had taken Keller by surprise in the restaurant. To be bodyguard to a guy like Hodges, Keller would have to have some serious combat training. Plus, he must be a good ten years younger than Morgan. This guy would be able to handle himself.
All the more reason to bring him down with the first shot
, he told himself.
He heard Keller’s footsteps, hurrying down the alley. This was going to be even easier than he had thought. He raised the gun to take aim. Keller would be wearing body armor, but the needle would go right through the bulletproof mesh. Morgan aimed it about chest-high and inhaled. Keller passed the Dumpster, moving at a measured trot toward the end of the alley. The dart left the muzzle with a whisper and plunged into Keller’s back. He yelped in surprise and spun around, a savage look on his face.
Fall. Fall, Damn it!
He didn’t. He saw Morgan and charged. With no time to reload, Morgan tossed aside the gun and the darts and braced for impact.
He ducked as Keller swung at his face, but the bodyguard followed it up by sinking his fist into Morgan’s gut. Morgan doubled down involuntarily, and Keller elbowed him hard in the back. Morgan fell forward on the paved ground.
He lay there for a second, dazed, until he felt Keller’s arm wrap around his neck, getting him in a choke hold. He groped for the dart gun, hoping to use it as a bludgeon. His hands hadn’t found the gun, but they had closed around something—the tiny belt of darts.
Keller raised him to his feet, the meaty, muscular arm tightening its grip on Morgan’s neck, cutting off his air and circulation. He could feel himself fading away as he thrashed, trying to break free, to no avail. He only had one chance. With fumbling fingers, he flipped the plastic covers off each needle in the belt. Holding the curled-up belt in his fist, he stabbed it, as hard as he could, into Keller’s neck.
Keller released him and staggered back with a roar of pain. Morgan relaxed. But Keller didn’t and retorted with a hell of a right hook to Morgan’s temple, which caused him to trip on a discarded cardboard box and fall forward. His head fuzzy, phasing in and out of focus, Morgan was dimly aware of Keller bending down and picking up a two-by-four. Morgan rolled onto his back just in time to see this mountain of a man, looming for what seemed like miles over him, raise the piece of wood far above his head, ready to come down and crush Morgan’s skull. Still dazed from the punch, Morgan could only raise his hands ineffectively, waiting for the blow.
It didn’t come. He looked up at Keller and saw that he had an oddly blank look on his face. He blinked hard three times, frowning in dumb confusion. Then his fingers slackened, and the plank fell to the ground. He tumbled forward, onto his knees, and collapsed on top of Morgan.
It took more strength than Morgan expected to roll him off and onto his back beside him. Morgan got up and wobbled to the far end of the alley, aching all over. The alley opened to a back street where Conley sat in the idling car.
“What the hell happened to your face?” asked Conley. Morgan touched his face and noticed that blood was trickling down his nose, which was tender and swollen.
“I thought you said the effect of the tranquilizer was instantaneous,” said Morgan, his voice muffled because his nose was blocked by the blood and swelling.
“Well, you know,” said Conley, “as with all your narcotics, your mileage may vary. There’s a first-aid kit in the glove compartment.”
Morgan took out the kit and applied some gauze to his nose. “Do you have a lock on Hodges?” he asked.
“Here, take a look for yourself.” Conley handed him a device that didn’t look much different than a latest-generation cell phone. It showed two dots moving on a digital map. “He’s about a mile to the north. It shouldn’t take us long to catch up. Think you can navigate with that leaky nose of yours?”
Morgan nodded and poked gingerly at it, checking for damage. At least it didn’t feel broken. “Yeah, I got this. You’re going to want to take the next left.” Morgan unbuttoned his Hawaiian shirt, took it off, and put on a fresh black T-shirt he had brought along.