Enemy Agents (16 page)

19

It had only been twelve hours since Chris Quarrel had left the meeting with CIB’s elite. After speaking to Milton, he booked a hotel in Washington and scheduled a meeting with the only suspect he had not spoken to—Jessica Swift. At the hotel, he received the news that Senator Anderson had died of a heart attack. Of course, Quarrel knew the truth. He had used the Senator’s name to arrange the morning’s meeting of elite-level killers. Someone in that room didn’t like that Quarrel (and therefore Anderson) had changed their game plan, and now Anderson was dead. Quarrel was counting on them coming for him next.

He had put his own face out there for the enemy to see. There were now a half-dozen trained killers who may or may not have a reason to kill him. And now one of them had fired the opening shot. The murder served a double purpose; it removed Anderson as an ally of Quarrel’s, and sent the message that these people can kill you and make it look like natural causes.

Having read each agent’s file, he had seen stories of undetectable poisons, “accidental” car crashes, kill shots fired from three blocks away, car bombs; murders both spectacular and mundane. Thorpe once dropped a man from a blimp over Brussels. Boswell once smothered a woman with a pillow on a transatlantic flight. It was almost reassuring that the one suspect who Quarrel had to meet with today was also with the only suspect who did not have a confirmed kill. Somehow that made Swift safer than the rest, even if the odds were better than 50-50 that she was the traitor who was helping Saleb. Safecracker, computer hacker, infiltrator, and possible leak. She was all of those. But Quarrel believed the psych report that said she would never be capable of murder.

Nevertheless, Quarrel wanted to be prepared. Alone in his hotel room after dinner, he set out to ensure his own safety. He tucked the handgun he had checked out of CIB under the pillow on the bed and waved to the hidden cameras that were planted throughout the room.

The hotel was of the standard business/economy/travelling salesman variety: a single bedroom with a desk, two chairs, and a twin bed. The desk was one long piece of furniture running the length of one wall, doubling as a stand for the 30-inch TV across from the foot of the bed. The washroom was small and right next to the door. He was on the seventh floor of a ten storey building, a height that he knew would not discourage any would-be assassins should they decide to enter via the balcony.

He checked for messages on both of his cell phones. One of the numbers had been in the information packet given to the suspects. The other was known only to Thorpe and Milton. There were no messages or missed calls on either of them. He decided to call CIA’s witness protection service, to check on the status of Maggie Reville. He couldn’t get Maggie on the line, but the agents assured him that she was in transit to a comfortable and secret location.

Finally, there was a knock at the door. Quarrel approached the door quietly. He made sure not to block the light so that his shadow would not be seen by anyone watching the crack at the floor. Leaning to the peephole, he strained to make out who it was that had come to see him.

It was Swift. Right on time.

“Come on in,” said Quarrel as he opened the door.

Swift entered cautiously, taking in the surroundings. She eyed Quarrel up and down, likely checking to see if he had any concealed weapons. She seemed, on the surface at least, to be intimidated by Quarrel. But then, with agents this talented, you could never trust the surface. Quarrel had to expect Swift to game him, to trick him, and to fool him. He had to expect these agents to be false, or else he’d wind up walking into a trap. That was all good in theory, but in the real world Quarrel was banking on allies making themselves clear. How could he bring himself to separate friend from foe if he was too busy worrying that he was being played?

“So how’s this work?” asked Swift. “Is this an interrogation, can I leave whenever . . . ?”

“I’m not sure. For the others I was putting on a front. A cover story to get close to them and see how they behave. But I never got a chance to meet you.”

“It would have been obvious if you did. The Academy has never sent me a partner or a handler. Or anyone, for that matter. They just gave me a cell phone and told me to do what Jupiter orders.”

“The Academy?”

“Where they made me.”

“Your file just calls it a CIA rehabilitation program. How about you tell me about it?”

Quarrel sat in one of the chairs. He had placed both the desk chair and puffy lounge chair, into the small clearing between the bed and the balcony door. He sat in the one by the windows, so his back was to the glass, reminding himself that the curtains were closed and any would-be snipers couldn’t see him. Swift surprised him by ignoring the desk chair and opting to sit on the edge of the bed. He wondered if she could tell there was a gun under the pillow.

#

Jessica Swift noticed her interrogator’s eyes flinch toward the head of the bed, then pull back to face her. Why would he care about that? Then she got it. Gun under one of the pillows. Whoever this Quarrel was, he was either completely paranoid or trying to play mind games. He would have read her file and seen her record. He would be aware of her problem with violence and fear of being around death. And here he was making a show of his firearm. Her shoulders sagged towards a point between her feet as her fingers intertwined between her knees. She didn’t like to think about her past. It always brought back the image of burned bodies in black bags.

“I never killed anyone. I never even hurt anyone. I just stole some things. In this country people get ten years for murder sometimes, you know? But I got twenty-five for theft, no parole at all for the first twenty years. So when they came and told me I could change my fate if I wanted to . .
.
‘Serve My Country . . . ’ ”

“You ever think the charges were trumped up just so they could pressure you to work for them?”

“Of course they were.” When she said it, Swift wasn’t angry. It was just a sad fact of life that she had long since accepted.

Quarrel nodded. “Some would see that as a good reason to strike back against the people that forced you into this life.”

“Some people. You mean yourself.
You
would say that. Not
Some People
.”

“OK,” said Quarrel. “I might say that you must have a real grudge against the U.S. intelligence world for taking your life away.”

“You don’t get it. I’m not angry. I didn’t have a life for them to steal. When the Academy came along, I took a real shine to it. I wanted to help. And for a good while there, I couldn’t wait for the next mission Jupiter sent my way.”

“But not anymore?”

“No.” She studied his face. Quarrel was too young for his job. He was a stranger and he was obviously in over his head. Even if she could trust him with the things she knew, he would almost certainly blab them to the wrong person. She couldn’t risk it.

“What changed?” he insisted.

“Ask again after you spend five years in the field, Mr. Quarrel.”

Quarrel stood up. “You could at least make something up. Tell me that it’s too much or tell me what Jupiter’s terrible sin made you do. Lie to me, for god’s sake. Don’t just come in and dodge questions.”

Swift sighed. She didn’t want to come, and now that she was here it was clear that Quarrel was too inexperienced to fill the shoes of a senior agent. “I’m done here, Mr. Quarrel. You’re welcome to have me followed.”

“Sam Boswell should handle that for me, I’d think.”

“Meaning what?” she felt herself getting red.

“There are maybe three people in the world who are capable of learning where Saleb was held, and then breaking him out. One was in New York and the other was sitting next to you this morning. Pretty narrow suspect pool.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Quarrel. You think the information on Saleb was kept that quiet? That kind of facility would have guards who rotate in and out. The guards would have friends and families who would know their hours and have an idea of where they worked. They would have food deliveries and someone would have to pay the bills. There would be dozens of people who know about a place like that and hundreds who they might talk to.”

“Your defence against breaking into a safe house is that you know a lot about stealing information on safe houses? Not the best rhetorical strategy.”

She was getting angry now. She stood up too, face-to-face with Quarrel.

“As I understand it, your whole deal is to find out how that Crowe guy got killed. Look at my file. I wouldn’t have taken that job, because I can’t stand the sight of blood. Bombing a building full of people? Stealing nuclear components? Isn’t it getting kind of insane to think I’d have anything to do with that kind of violence?” She was breathing hard, her passion a little too obvious, her defence a little too vehement. She felt that she had tipped her cards, and Quarrel knew everything. Like she’d be arrested for assisting Saleb at any second. She needed to leave.

Quarrel didn’t stop her from heading for the door, but just as she was turning the knob, he called out.

“I never asked you about those jobs. I asked about Saleb. And you didn’t offer an alibi.” She ignored him and opened the door, and as she stepped through, he continued, “I find it interesting that Saleb’s escape was the only time in this whole mess where the traitor made sure not to hurt anybody.”

The door shut behind her and she bolted to the stairs.

20

In the room next door to Chris Quarrel, William Thorpe was watching several camera angles displayed on his laptop. There were four cameras hidden in Quarrel’s room, and Thorpe was watching through all of them. He was Quarrel’s back-up plan, his protector. Quarrel’s meeting with the suspects had done one thing: it made Quarrel into a piece of cheese, and this hotel into a mouse trap. With several loaded guns spread out on top of the bed, William Thorpe was ready to trigger the trap.

Thorpe was so busy watching the cameras in Quarrel’s room that he didn’t see four small capsules slide along the floor inside his own room. Someone, armed with a very small air-powered gun, had just forced the tiny, penny-sized pucks under the door, sliding them across the room. All at once, these tiny devices exploded, and the bright white light they created blinded Thorpe long enough for someone to get the door open and get inside. Thorpe had his pistol in hand and ready to fire as soon as it happened, but he couldn’t see a thing and the attacker was silent as a ghost.

A second later, his vision fading back in, Thorpe detected a shape coming at him, and turned the gun at the presence, but then a cool, noxious wind sprayed his face and he knew he’d been gassed. He stopped breathing, rolled to his left, and fired. The pistol had a suppressor on it, so his shot was a quie
t
thwi
p
that made a small hole in the closet door.

“Now, now, Willy. Is that any way to treat an old friend?” He knew the voice even if he couldn’t make out her face. The girl from New York, Mercier’s assassin. Quarrel’s bomber. The one they set this whole trap for, but she had seen their play and countered it. She jabbed a syringe into his neck.

Fatale came into focus for a moment, before Thorpe’s hand went so numb the gun fell away. She smiled and was viciously beautiful. She was having fun. She whispered to him, “My hotel was nicer.”

#

Quarrel was wondering what to make of Jessica Swift’s dramatic exit when the floor of his hotel room lit up with blinding flashes. Someone, somehow, had set of a series of flashbangs. He dove to the bed, hand reaching for the gun concealed under the pillow, but he landed diagonally across the bed, and by the time he had his bearings the gun was gone. He opened bleary eyes to the sight of his old colleague, the girl he’d had such a crush on, aiming his pistol at his face.

“Hey Chris,” she said.

“Erica?”

“It’s Fatale. Just Fatale. And you knew that. After all, you did invite me.”

He found himself, somehow, smiling. “I mentioned you to a roomful of trusted American agents. That’s not an invitation.”

“You ought to remember all those training courses, Chris. I beat you at every strategy game. So stop playing.”

Quarrel’s plan had worked. She took the bait. It was unfortunate that she got his gun, but Quarrel was sure that Thorpe could take her down—and keep her alive for questioning—even if she was armed.

“Mr. Thorpe won’t be joining us, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said with a grin. Quarrel’s smile faded as he realized that she really was better at this game. He had set her up to walk into a trap, and now he was alone with a killer and she had every advantage.

“Did you get orders to kill me?” he asked. She eased into the armchair, still aiming Quarrel’s gun at him, and crossed her legs. She was dressed in black spandex from her neck to her black leather boots. Her hands were covered in small black gloves, her hair in a loose ponytail. Fatale was an entirely different person from the modest girl-next-door good looks of Erica Gibbons.

“Of course. You’re causing problems.”

“Finishing what you started at CSIS-2?” He sat up on the bed, but she waved the gun at him.

“Keep your feet on the bed, legs stretched out.” He laid back, leaning on the wall. She continued, “Would you believe I didn’t know about the bomb? No, you probably won’t. Either way, you have to die this time.”

“Who gives the orders? Mercier? Or do they come direct from your mole?”

She smiled and waved around the room with her left hand. “I know the room’s filled with cameras and bugs. Why would I tell you anything like that?”

“Last request?” he said sheepishly.

“Sorry. If you’d requested something else, maybe . . . ” she crossed her legs on the other side, slowly, “then maybe I could have obliged. But telling all my secrets isn’t part of the plan.”

“So just kill me then. Kill me like you killed the rest.”

“Actually,” she said, almost purring “I have questions fo
r
yo
u
.”

“Which is?”

“Why was there no funeral for Hershey? Is he alive too? Where are they keeping him?”

Quarrel was stunned. He hadn’t kept up with the memorial services, but one thing he knew for sure was that Hershey was dead. He had been standing so close to the bomb that he would have been turned into pink vapour. And what the hell did she care, anyway? She was the one who killed him.

He was about to tell her that, when something behind her caught his eye. The curtains were still closed, but a space behind the curtains got darker; there seemed to be something blocking the streetlights. Something moving on the balcony. Thorpe!

Realizing that there was still a faint hope to survive, and maybe to even take Fatale alive, he decided to taunt her, to draw out the answer. Maybe he could get her distracted.

“Why, it wasn’t enough to kill everything he ever loved, you want to rub it in his face, too?”

She sneered. “What do you know? I loved the guy.”

“He was someone you screwed on the side while you planned to kill him the whole time. You don’t bomb people you love.”

“Did you see him at CSIS or not?” she said, aiming the gun at his head.

“He’s dead. Before I got out of the building he was just taking a smoke break. He was standing about three feet from your friendly fertilizer truck. If they didn’t bury him it’s because there was nothing left to bury. Thanks to you.”

Amazingly, she seemed hurt by his anger. She lost the angry sneer and looked distressed. She shifted awkwardly in her seat, and for just a moment, the gun was pointed away from Quarrel. That’s when the curtains burst open and Jessica Swift jumped out, holding in her hand something that looked like a laser pointer. But it was much more than that, and when she aimed it at Fatale, the assassin’s hand was sliced open and she dropped the gun. Jumping to her feet, Fatale was shocked to see the other woman in the room.

“Who the fu—” she didn’t get the words out before Chris Quarrel jumped from the bed, wrapping his arms around her. Fatale turned his momentum against him, dropping her shoulder and judo-flipping him into Swift. They both tumbled to the floor by the sliding balcony doors while Fatale ran for the other door.

She was pulling the heavy door open and about to make it into the hallway when Quarrel smashed into her from behind, the force of the impact throwing them against the door and pushing it shut. He heard her gasp when his shoulder hit her and knew she was at least a little bit winded. He grabbed her right arm and pinned it behind her back, and realized he didn’t have anything to bind her with.

Suddenly Swift shouted from behind him, “Knife!” and Quarrel pulled back just in time to feel a blade across his thigh, cutting through the cotton and drawing blood as it scratched his skin. Fatale kicked at him, stomping on his ankle, and he fell to the side. He hit the wall awkwardly, bracing himself to avoid falling, and then her right arm was free again. She turned on him, switching the knife to her good hand, and Quarrel let well-practiced self-defence moves take over as he grabbed her forearm and attempted to strip the knife from her hand. She fought him at first, but after a few seconds he got her wrist to buckle backwards and she dropped the knife rather than suffer a broken wrist.

Still nervous, (in fact he was terrified) Quarrel called to Swift. “Help Me!”

But Swift was still near the sliding doors, crouched and watching the fight, her face a mask of nervous tension. Quarrel couldn’t understand why she wasn’t helping him now, after having just saved his life.

The woman, who looked so little like the Erica he knew, turned up the intensity now. Without her weapon there was no easy, elegant way to hurt Quarrel and escape, so she went for brute violence. She broke his grasp, her arms flying outward for a second, before coming at him in a ferocious flurry of kicks, punches, even scratches. He blocked what he could and counter-punched her hard in the ribs twice, but pinned in the corner between the wall and the door, Quarrel felt like he was being mauled. She drove a knee hard into his testicles and he felt himself sink lower to the ground, but stayed on his feet. That’s when she followed up with a hard elbow to the jaw, and Quarrel started to fade.

Then he inhaled the nose-curling smell of burning hair and Fatale screamed, turning toward Swift. For just an instant, the beam of that cutting laser touched his bicep and Quarrel was jolted out of his haze. Fatale had turned her head and shoulders to face Swift, while dodging the cutting beam, and she was wide open.

Quarrel threw a hard right cross to her chin, and Fatale crumpled to the floor, knocked out cold.

Quarrel rolled her face-down and moved her arms behind her back. He looked around for something to tie her up with but couldn’t see anything. He turned to Swift, his eyes wide, hoping for help. Swift was still holding the laser pointer in front of herself, but her face was frozen in tension, her mouth hanging open.

“Little help?” he shouted.

Swift snapped out of her daze, shook her head, and started to laugh. It was a rough, racking exhale that hardly made a sound, but shook her body as it escaped. Finally, her mouth curled into a grin.

“Did you see that?” she asked, amazed.

“Yeah I was the one she was murdering over here. Can you help me before she wakes up?”

Swift seemed confused. “No, I mean . . . ” she didn’t finish the thought. As if a fog was finally lifting off Swift’s brain, she snapped back to reality and into action. Tearing a lamp off the desk, she ripped the cord out of the wall socket before jerking it from the base of the lamp, and took over from Quarrel, tying the wire around Fatale’s wrists.

“Bring me a big towel for her ankles,” she said.

Quarrel nodded and followed the order. As Swift was working on wrapping the towel around Fatale, she told Quarrel to go next door. “Your friend over there needs some help.”

Entering Thorpe’s room, Quarrel found the older spy passed out on the floor, handcuffed but alive. Opening the adjoining door to get back to his own room, Quarrel found Fatale squirming against her binds at the foot of the bed. Swift was gone.

#

Quarrel put in a call to CIB to arrange a transport for Fatale. She would be kept in a holding cell in Harry Milton’s underground headquarters. However, before the team arrived, Thorpe and Quarrel had ten minutes alone with her. They tossed her onto the bed and stood on either side, taking turns asking questions.

“Why did you blow up my office?” Quarrel demanded, pacing back and forth.

“You mea
n
ou
r
office. I worked there too,” she said.

“Who killed the man in the Russian Embassy in London?” asked Thorpe.

“There’s an embassy in London?”

“What’s the plan for the stolen computer?” Thorpe asked, his voice rising.

“I don’t own a computer. Just a smartphone.” Her taunts were getting to Thorpe, and Quarrel was getting worried.

“You said you didn’t blow up the office. So who did?”

She smiled again. “Now that’s the question, isn’t it? I’d sure like to know.”

Quarrel stepped closer. “You think it was Hershey? Was he another fake like you?”

She repeated, “I’m just wondering why nobody seemed to mourn him.”

Quarrel had a hunch, and decided to test her reaction. “You saw me scanning that book, you left, and then the bomb came in. That was it, wasn’t it? You couldn’t let us crack that book cipher.”

She didn’t try to deny it, instead she nodded. That could be a lie, accepting whatever premise her captors offered up. But it played into what Quarrel wanted to hear, and he wearily continued down that line of questioning.

“How did it work? Calling in the bomb?”

“I told you. I didn’t. I was asked to look out for a Jekyll and Hyde with a yellow cover. When I saw it, I texted my contact. He wrote back with the ‘get out’ signal, so I left. I thought it meant my job was over. Honestly, I thought they were playing you. I assumed the book was a lie they planted for you, and they wanted to be sure you believed it. But then they blew everything up. Ever
y
on
e
u
p.
” She was looking down, into the pattern on the comforter.