“Where did it originate?”
“We don’t know.”
“Who was in charge of the prisoners?”
“We don’t—”
“Right. You don’t know much, do you?”
“Hey, genius, we’re a covert operation,” Book snapped. “You know what that means? It means we don’t keep a lot of paperwork around.”
Bell nodded. “He’s got a point.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Zach said. “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. I never get tired of people telling me how important their job is as an excuse for screwing it up.”
Candle and Book looked ready to explode, but Bell beat them to it. “You done with your little spasm of moral outrage? Because we don’t have time for you to prove how spotless your conscience is. We need to focus on how our system got infiltrated by the Company. We need to figure out how they got in.”
“Yeah,” Zach said. “You’re right.”
That sucked a little anger out of her sails. “Your turn,” she said. “That’s what we’ve got. You tell us how you and Cade ended up in Africa.”
“Not much to tell. This is what we do.” He repeated the same line they’d given Graves about the tracks. They all looked dubious, but Zach was a good liar. And turnabout is fair play: they were all keeping secrets from one another.
Bell sat down and took charge in the same smooth motion. “So if we’re all up to speed, let’s get to work,” she said. “Book: I want you to talk to your Pentagon contacts. See if you can find anything with your buddies in black ops. Candle: check the A/A records. Maybe there’s something in there we overlooked. We’re behind already, and Graves is going to expect results as soon as he hits the ground.”
They moved toward the cubicles in the office like they were heading onto a battlefield. Zach paused.
“I need to make a quick call,” he said.
Bell’s lips pursed in a little moue of irritation. “Knock yourself out.”
Zach looked over his shoulder at Hewitt and Reynolds.
“It’s private.”
That caught Candle’s attention. “What, you need to check in with your boyfriend?” Book provided a one-man laugh track.
A grown-up would have let that slide by. But in many ways, Zach had to admit, he was not a grown-up. “No,” he said. “Your mom. She worries if I don’t show up on time.”
“Hey, fuck you.”
“Sparkling comeback.”
“Boys, boys,
boys
,” Bell said, a warning tone in her voice. Candle sat down and looked pointedly away from Zach.
“Go wherever you want,” Bell said. “We’re not your babysitters.”
But she called after him as he headed toward the front door.
“Is it your girlfriend?” Bell asked.
Zach stopped. “What?”
Bell looked a little sheepish. “It’s none of my business.”
“Uh, no,” Zach said. “Definitely not my girlfriend. I mean, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
She didn’t say anything else. But Zach thought she might have smiled.
ZACH WANDERED OUTSIDE the office complex. Satisfied that he was far enough away from the building, he brought out his phone.
It was the only high-tech gadget he’d been given, but it was undeniably cool. Android? Nexus One? Toys. Convenience-store specials compared to his phone. GPS, satellite capability, universal computer access, camera, even a built-in flashlight. If James Bond carried an iPhone, this would be it.
It also had a special function to defeat electronic surveillance. A tap on the touch screen and he set up a kind of dead zone around himself that baffled any attempt to listen in with bugs or microphones. It would even blur his image on a security camera.
He activated the safeguard, then dialed a number. He wondered if she was awake.
She answered on the second ring. “Well?”
“He’s in the air now. You’ll be able to trace him with the homing device I gave you. The tracker is in a briefcase with him.”
“He doesn’t know, does he?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’d never approve of this.”
“What would you do if I told him?” Her voice was mocking.
Zach didn’t hesitate: “I’d order him to kill you.”
Silence. Then: “You don’t want to threaten me, Zachary.”
He checked his watch. He didn’t have time for this. “It’s not a threat. You know this is the only way it works. Don’t screw with a good deal.”
More silence. He could almost see her pouting. “Don’t take me for granted, Zachary.”
“Believe me, I don’t,” he said. “You need to get moving. You’ve got to catch up with him.”
The mocking tone came back into her voice. “Whatever you say, boss. You’re so commanding and forceful.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “Just do as you’re told, Tania.”
ZACH ENDED THE CALL and walked back into the building. He didn’t notice the shadows moving in the doorway just over his shoulder. If anyone had been watching, they might have seen it as a trick of the light, as if part of the darkness peeled away from the wall. For a moment, the shadow of a man in a trench coat and old-fashioned fedora stood there.
But there was no one around to cast that shadow. And no one to see it.
A second later, it was gone.
SEVEN
IN THE COMPANY OF SHADOWS (2001, Drama/Super-natural)—Kevin Costner stars as Robert Westlake, a veteran CIA agent ordered to find any possible witnesses to the years of atrocities he’s seen or committed in his long career. Each one of his targets has a piece of the answers to the big mysteries—the real killers of JFK, for example—and Westlake silences them to make sure no one can ever put all the puzzles together. But at the same time, someone is stalking Westlake. He sees figures in the shadows, hears voices where there are none, and keeps getting strange messages. Eventually, Westlake discovers that the Company doesn’t let go, not even at death. Described as
Bourne
Identity
meets
The Sixth Sense
, this movie was withdrawn by the distributor after appearing in a few test markets and never released in theaters. No records of the production can be found in any Internet databases, all materials for the promotional campaign were destroyed, and cast and crew deny they were ever involved. The official reason given was that after 9/11, audiences didn’t want to see anything that put America in a bad light. However, the extreme paranoia about the production has led some to believe the real CIA found something in the script a little too close to reality. No prints survive, but a few bootleg copies are rumored to exist on DVD.
—Tucker Layne-Baker,
The Day the Clown Cried and Other Movies from Hollywood’s Vaults
G
raves leaned his seat back and put his feet up. He was on his second Scotch.
“You don’t seem particularly worried,” Cade said. “About what?”
Cade’s mouth twitched. “The infiltration of your company. The existence of things like me. The threat to the nation and the human race.”
Graves took another long sip of his drink and smacked his lips. “Taking those in order, I’m going to deal with the problem in my company when we find it. I’m confident in my abilities, so I have no need to worry about that. I’ve known about things like you for a long, long time, and I’ve made my peace with it. Likewise, there’s always a threat to the future of the human race. I’ve made my peace with that, too. No reason to let any of that destroy the little moments of joy in life.”
Cade didn’t say anything at first. He decided to ask the most obvious question: “Who are you?”
Graves smiled. “I don’t imagine many people ever have you at a disadvantage, Mr. Cade. Let’s just say I’m a troubleshooter. I’ve been doing it for a long time. The government cannot fulfill all its duties—too many weak sisters worried about bad headlines on Al-Jazeera and what the rest of the world might think. So the private sector has stepped up. I still do my job, but now I make considerably more money. That’s the way the system works. And it’s what makes our country great.”
“Is it?”
Graves laughed. “Don’t pretend to be naïve, Cade. How do you think it’s possible for a stoned college dropout behind the counter at Starbucks to live in more luxury than any Roman emperor? You think he works harder than the wetback who picked the beans for his vanilla latte? Hell, no. But he goes home to Internet porn and cable TV and more calories in a single meal than that bean-picker sees all week. Other countries struggle. We consume. America is the biggest, fattest kid at the party, gobbling all the candy. But someone has to break the piñata.”
“Is that you?”
“I’m proud to do my part.”
“Kidnapping people and delivering them to be tortured,” Cade said.
“And what would you do with them? Terrorists. Traitors. Murderers. How would you handle them?”
Cade showed his teeth.
“I would kill them all,” Cade said, his voice flat. “I would burn their cities until the desert fused to glass. I would tear the wombs from their mothers. I would poison their babies and dismember their children. And then I would drown the men in the blood of their families.”
Graves stared back at him for a moment.
“But then, I’m not human,” Cade said. “I don’t need an excuse to act like a monster.”
Graves nodded and chuckled, acknowledging the point scored. “Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Don’t blaspheme. Not in my presence.”
Graves looked at him, as if to gauge his seriousness, and laughed again. “Sorry, Cade. I’m not a religious man and I’m not scared of you. I’ll take the name of the Lord in vain whenever I goddamn please.”
Cade’s eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch. “You don’t believe?”
Graves cranked his seat back. “If they get you praying, they’ve already got you on your knees. I’m not looking for God to save me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Cade said.
Graves snorted. “I’ve got my own exit strategy.”
Silence again.
“I get the feeling you don’t like me, Mr. Cade.”
Cade said nothing.
“You don’t get to judge me,” Graves said. “I told you: I know about you. I know the things you’ve done. With all the blood on your hands, you expect me to believe you never once licked your fingers?”
Cade looked at him carefully. “You’re certain we haven’t met?” he asked.
“I’m sure you’d remember,” Graves said. He put in a pair of earbuds and closed his eyes. Conversation over.
THE QUIET SUITED CADE. He needed a few moments to think.
He looked at the dark wood paneling of the ceiling and thought about the Shadow Company.
Before his encounter with Holt, he didn’t know the Company existed. They’d been around at least as long as he had. That much was obvious. But Cade, like most of his kind, focused on the immediate threat. An enemy willing to wait, to plan over the long term, would be as hidden from him as an animal that could blend completely into the foliage in the background. Conspiracies didn’t matter to him until they matured into a frontal assault. He was arrogant enough—and capable enough—to believe he could defeat anything that came at him directly. Until someone or something forced him to consider it, he didn’t waste the time or energy. He focused on the present.
Still, looking back, he began to see a pattern emerge. What he had dismissed in the past as mere incompetence or random outbreaks of human greed, viciousness or malice began to connect with each other. Taken separately, they were simply incidents in his long and strange life.
But together, they pointed to an opponent he didn’t even realize was on the other side of the board, watching him, making moves, countering him in some places and ignoring him in others. Above all, this opponent’s moves were designed to keep itself a secret.
Cade realized he’d been closest to the Shadow Company when it tried to remove any hint of its existence. At those moments, it broke from cover. And revealed itself more openly than any of the evidence ever could. In hindsight, the pattern was almost painfully obvious. You simply had to know where to look, and it stood out against the landscape, never to be fully hidden again.
Enid, Oklahoma, 1903
T
he January wind knocked against the wooden frame of the Grand Avenue Hotel like an insistent hand on a door. The old man limped down the hall to his room. The cold hurt his leg. The break had never healed properly.
He sighed heavily as he sat down in the armchair in the corner. The bottle was already there on the table, waiting for him. Like many drunks, he had his rituals, followed with precision to keep him from stumbling too far from the supply of his booze.