Enemy Agents (28 page)

When he poked at his foot, he could feel it, but his flesh was soft and he got jolts of pain. He flexed his toes and winced as the figurative pins and needles stabbed him. He reached for the button of the fly of his jeans and found his fingers shaking. He took a slow breath and tried again. He popped the button and pulled at the zipper. Sliding out of the wet pants took a few seconds but was relatively easy. Still crawling, the nearly-naked Hall searched the basement for clothes. Near the stairs there was a hallway, and Jack crawled along until he found the next room. Jack had assumed from the looks of the basement that this building was a house, and discovering the laundry room confirmed it. There was a pile of men’s dirty clothes on top of a washing machine, and Jack recognized a red shirt that one of the goons had worn the day before. There was a laundry chute above the pile. The chute was the sort of thing a younger Jack might have used to climb up to the top floor, but in his current state he was just glad to drag the pile of clothes down to the floor.

There were some pants in a size larger than Jack’s, all of them dirty. He pulled on a pair of black chinos that smelled like sweat and grass, then found a baggy pair of sweats to pull on top of them. One pair of socks was wet with someone’s sweat, but Jack dug through the pile until he found two dry socks for his feet, which had thawed from pale blue to a shade of deathly grey.

He pulled a t-shirt on before slipping one of Sidorov’s expensive dress shirts over his arms. He didn’t bother trying the buttons. Gripping the side of the washer, Hall pulled himself up to a vertical position that was almost standing. He kept most of his weight on the washer while he tested the strength of his right leg, then his left. Satisfied that the pain was bearable, he tried putting his full weight on his feet. He stood for a moment before his knees felt rubbery and he had to lean back to the washer again.

He took the time to study the room. There was nothing really here, just some shelves of towels and detergent. It was all too domestic to be Sidorov’s, likely some cottage or country home they had found empty near that military base where Hall had been arrested.

But the laundry room did have another window well, and it was right above the dryer. It was fairly easy to climb onto the dryer and swing his legs up, but standing on top of it long enough to get the window open was tricky. His right leg completely buckled, sending him careening to the side, where his shoulder punched into the drywall. His head screamed and he tasted vomit. He stood there with his shoulder embedded in the wall until his vision cleared, he took three quick breaths, and stood up to the window again. His uncoordinated hands made opening the window harder than it had any right to be, but after about a minute he had managed to slide the glass to the side and pull the screen off.

He turned backward, reached both arms up and out, bracing the wall, and used his upper body and back to haul himself about a third of the way out. The back of his neck touched the cool metal of the window well and the top of his ass rested on the edge of the window. He rested again, legs dangling, head pounding, until he reached out of the well, felt grass, and grabbed the metal. He pulled himself to a proper sitting position, his legs from the knees down still inside the house, the rest of him outdoors. He was indeed at an isolated house in the woods, just as he suspected. There was no sign of a neighbouring house, just woods on the three sides he could see. It was light out now. The window well in the room where he had been locked up had let some light in, so he knew that it had been dark not long ago. Even the pale morning sunlight hurt his eyes and spikes of pain shot through his head like the worst hangover Jack had ever had. Thankfully the sun was still below the trees so he was spared further pain.

Once he was out in the yard, Hall stumble-walked, leaning on the cedar siding as he made it to the northern corner of the house. The corner led to a small barbeque and picnic area, where everything was tarped over for the season. Past the picnic table there was another building, a three-car detached garage. The unpaved driveway ran from the garage and away from the house, into the woods, where it turned to the left and faded into the trees. Hall headed for the garage. There were no cars in sight. There might only have been a single vehicle, the big van they had captured Hall with, but he was betting Sidorov had something of his own to drive. Even if the henchmen had taken one, Hall was banking on there being a second vehicle.

The garage wasn’t locked. The first bay was being used as a workshop, the floor filled with a table saw and a lathe, counters of tools along two walls. The middle bay was empty, and the far end of the garage housed the black van that Hall vaguely remembered from his kidnapping. Hall searched the workbenches until he found a pair of needle-nose pliers.

He climbed into the driver’s seat, knocked plastic off the steering column with his knee and set to work hotwiring the van. Thankfully for Hall’s dimwitted legs, the van was an automatic.

Hall pulled out onto the unpaved driveway, which took a curve around some marshland before straightening and heading for the local highway. It was reasonably flat and well-maintained, surrounded by a mix of trees on either side. Just as Hall made it to the straightaway, another vehicle turned off the road and blocked the way. It was a silver SUV, and Hall saw that there were two men in the front, and probably more in the back. He stomped on the gas pedal and headed straight for them.

He knew, somewhere in a more sensible part of his brain, that another head-on collision would finish the brain damage that the first crash started. He’d either knock himself into a coma or die on impact. Still, he sped straight toward the advancing SUV, which hadn’t slowed down. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle, and soon enough they’d collide. Hall decided that the van was a little higher from the ground than the SUV, so he would at least crush the SUV’s drivers with his engine block. That might be enough. That might be worth dying over.

When the van and the SUV were close enough for Jack to recognize that the driver was one of the men who had tortured him, he made up his mind. Jack would not lose this game of chicken, even if it killed him. He let go of the steering wheel and tried to go limp, hoping the airbag wouldn’t kill him when it went off.

Then suddenly a man in the back seat of the SUV leaped around the driver’s seat and grabbed the steering wheel, jerking the SUV off the road. Jack’s van punched through the very edge of the SUV’s rear bumper as he passed it, and the SUV struck a thick old oak tree with a sound like the tree had been split by lightning.

Jack let out a yelp of surprise and elation and grabbed the wheel again as he pulled to a stop. He reversed the van back past the SUV to see if there were survivors. As soon as the van pulled to a stop next to the crumpled wreck of the SUV, the rear passenger-side door opened and someone stumbled out, hiding behind the SUV, and then ran off into the woods. In his condition, Jack would never be able to catch him, so he let the guy run off.

The two in the front, the guards who had stacked the ice under Jack’s legs, were crushed by the impact. Through the shattered windshield, Jack could see them both, slumped over and bloody. That left one more—the guy who had grabbed for the wheel. Jack had to assume the guy was in pretty bad shape after the crash, so he took the risk of climbing out of the van and walking over to the SUV. He tried the back driver’s-side door and found it jammed shut, but with a strong yank it pulled open.

A bloody man, hands bound together by plastic cuffs, was laid out on the floor between the front and back seats. The man muttered something that sounded like gibberish.

“What you say?” shouted Jack.

“I said he’s getting away!” came the response. The guy on the floor rolled over, and Jack was stunned to see Chris Quarrel, who had a bleeding wound somewhere above his left ear but seemed OK otherwise. “Jack?” said Quarrel, who was just as confused.

“Kid?”

“Stop that guy! He’s the one who set off the bomb in my office. He’s getting away.” Quarrel tried to sit up, but just winced and lay back down. Quarrel let out a shuddering sob. “Hershey! He’s gone.”

33

Jessica Swift left Khalid Saleb in a van parked around the corner, which was farther away than she would have liked. They were back in Zurich, where there isn’t a lot of space to park on the roads, so Saleb was a good hundred metres away from Swift as she strolled in her best false-confidence walk into the Douxieme Banque Suisse. For this job to work, she’d have to go in alone. It was the same sort of job she had done before—stealing from a bank—but this was an entirely new way of doing it. She had broken into banks before, of course, but never during operating hours. Never with an appointment.

It was the same bank she had planned to break into before she was called to Quarrel’s briefing, which was only days ago but seemed so much longer. While she had been in America, Saleb had done his best to lay low, since he didn’t have any contacts or friends in Zurich to call up to help plan a break-in. None that he remembered, anyway. The job of actually planning the break-in was all on Swift, but now that she was back, she had no time. They needed to identify Jupiter, but with the threat of some kind of giant microwave beam hanging over her head, she had to get into that safe deposit box immediately.

This led Swift and Saleb to abandon the late-night break-in in favour of the gambit they were about to play. She was dressed stylishly, in a form-fitting but not immodest skirted suit. Her hair hung loose, slightly curled and styled. She wore lipstick, and wondered how many years it had been since she’d even owned a tube of lipstick before today. She had spent the last day and a half practicing the signature of Mrs. Roux, the probably-fictional woman whose probably-fictional husband had opened a very real safe deposit box here.

Mr. Roux was also the owner of the original box, where she first stole the truth about Saleb, and Swift’s hopes were pinned to the idea that there would be another cache of secrets here, in Box 222. If this panned out, the new information could be compared to what they knew of their small pool of suspects, and they would find Jupiter.

Jupiter had been complicit in setting up Saleb for his wife’s murder, and had been covering his or her tracks ever since. It was a safe bet that the same traitor who had two fellow agents framed and shot in France was also behind the new threat that had taken Crowe’s life in that parking garage. She even wondered if the marksman who had put a bullet in Saleb’s brain was the same person who had put one through Matthew Crowe’s head, but they would likely never prove that. Whatever was going on went back much farther than the few months ago when Jessica Jordan had died in France, but it was all connected. This mole was a poison inside the CIB, and Swift had to believe that whatever was inside that box would be the antidote.

She had no idea what “Helena Roux” looked like, or if anyone at this bank would know either. As she rode the escalator to the second floor, she ran through escape routes in her mind. The box had been rented only a few months previously, and it was very likely that the same person who had met “Mrs. Roux” back then was also going to be here today. All it would take is one employee with a good memory for faces and Swift would have to get back to the van as quickly as possible.

At the desk, she introduced herself as Helena Roux and waited for someone to come and greet her. Roux was a French name, and she spoke it much better than she spoke German, so that was what she went with. The bank associate replied in French and asked her to wait.

A chubby young man in his late twenties came out from behind a frosted glass door and greeted her, also in French. Swift’s French was strong, but her accent was a bit rusty. She went with it anyway, shaking his hand.

“What can I help you with today?” asked the man, who called himself Michel.

“I would like to drop something off in my safe deposit box.”

“Very good,” said Michel, “follow me through.”

He led her through the glass door, into the interior of the bank. The tellers were out front, but behind the glass there was a wide open room with small offices honeycombing off the sides. There were two large vault doors on the wall in front of her, to the left and the right. Michel led her to the left. In front of the open vault there were two uniformed guards, both in good shape, and there were two more at the other vault. Swift gave them a friendly nod and sized them up. They had guns, but she doubted they would shoot her for having a questionable signature.

Michel stepped around a short counter where a computer faced him but was angled so that she could not see the screen. A security checkpoint.

“I liked your husband very much, Mrs. Roux.” He smiled, clicking his mouse
.
Dam
n
, Swift tensed and fought the urge to run. If Michel knew the Mister, then he likely would have met the Missus. He was likely clicking some security command to bring in more guards. She smiled at him.

“He is very busy,” she said.

“He didn’t say how he makes his living.”

Swift forced herself to keep talking
.
Do. Not. Panic.You can do this
.
“The beauty of a Swiss bank,” she said in English, “is that you don’t have to.”

Michel reached under the counter. Swift kept her breathing steady, but her eyes flicked to one of the guards. She hoped she wasn’t betraying the lie. He brought his hand back up, holding a small touch-screen keypad. He laid it on the counter, spinning it to face her. He offered her a stylus.

“We scanned the signature card your husband brought in. Please sign in the box and the computer will verify.” That was a relief. If Mr. Roux had to bring in a card, it meant Mrs. Roux had never been here to sign it in person. Swift could actually pass herself off as Mrs. Roux and nobody would know any better. At least, as long as Mrs. Roux hadn’t made any visits to this box in the past four months.

She held the stylus to the screen. “I don’t usually sign computer screens,” she said, sounding nervous.

“Don’t worry. The computer knows that you can’t have identical signatures each time, and I do a visual match.”

She touched the screen and dragged the point. The signature on file had been large and ornate. Huge, cursive H and R, carefully printed O U X. The last line of the X cut back under the other letters, underlining the signature. Swift repeated the motion she had practiced for hours.

Michel looked to the screen and gave a slight nod. “And now the PIN.”

The touch screen changed to a number keypad. Swift typed six digits and the enter key. Another wait. The guards looked her over, but that might have been because of the form-flattering clothes. Or because they knew she was a fraud.

Michel pulled the pin-pad and stylus away. “Mrs. Roux,” he smiled his well-practiced smile again, “you have your key?”

“Of course.” She did not have a key.

Michel led her past the guards, through the vault door. Inside there was a small space before a door made of steel bars. Michel fished a key ring from his inside pocket and opened the door.

Inside that door was a room lined with safe deposit boxes of various sizes. “Box 222,” she said, wondering if he would expect her to know where it was. Michel pointed to a box about knee-high from the floor.

“Your key?” He held out his hand.

“I’ll be holding onto it. Thank you very much, Michel. I can manage from here.”

Michel’s shoulders seemed to stiffen beneath his suit jacket. “It is customary to escort you to a private room.”

“No need. I only need privacy long enough to grab something and drop something off.” Michel nodded,his smile fading. “Privacy
,
Miche
l
.” She said his name with a hint of anger. The young banker nodded and went back outside the steel bars.

Swift reached into her purse and rattled a keychain, before pulling her hand out, holding lock-picks the way one might handle keys. With Michel standing only a few feet away, she crouched to the box, slipped in the picks as discretely as possible, and tried to look as if she was turning the key with both hands when in fact she was fooling around for the tumblers.

The small lock inside the box was easy enough to pick for a practiced hand, and Swift had it open in a couple seconds. She slid the box out of its slot in the wall and opened the lid. There was a stack of papers inside, and she calmly packed them into her large purse. She knew that she should leave, that she should get out before she was caught, but the curiosity was too strong. This was probably the evidence of what really happened to Saleb and his wife, and “Jupiter” had tried very hard to have it destroyed. She pulled a few pages out of the folder and looked through it.

It was a printout of an email conversation with Jessica Jordan. It provided an excuse for Jordan to stay in Paris and meet with a contact on a night when Saleb had orders to be in Lyon. This was the set-up that had gotten Jordan killed.

The emails came from someone Jordan was working with to bring down the mole.

They came from Samantha Boswell.

#

Getting out of the bank offered no sense of relief. Walking as fast as she dared, Swift was sweating from the thought that Boswell was Jupiter. Boswell, the most lethal marksman in the world, the woman who never fired a shot that didn’t hit its target, was the one hunting her down. Suddenly, Swift realized that even crossing the ocean wasn’t enough protection from someone like Boswell. There was nowhere you could hide from an agent that deadly. All Swift wanted now was to get to a safe place, read through Box 222’s paperwork, and see if she could get Boswell arrested.

She made it back to the van, which was painted to look like it came from a foundation repair company, and knocked three times on the back door. Before entering the bank, she had worked out a safe-code with Saleb. If everything was fine, Saleb would knock four times in response, then slide open the side door. If something was wrong, he would do anything else.

After a second of delay, the person inside the van unlocked the back door. Without hesitation, Swift grabbed the back corner of the van, put a foot on the bumper, and launched herself onto the van’s roof. She guided herself down onto the roof with her arms, so that when her knees settled onto the metal roof there was no sound whatsoever. She set the bulky purse aside, and waited to see what would happen.

A second later, the back door opened, and a female police officer climbed out. The blonde-headed cop had a pistol drawn, which was pointed back inside the van, likely to keep Saleb in line. What was she doing there? How had anyone known to come to this van, and why was she inside? Swift decided she didn’t care. All that mattered was securing the files, and getting Saleb out of danger. Her heart was pounding at the thought of having to fight someone. It was one thing to fire a laser or a tranquilizer at a dangerous assassin, but this cop was just doing her job, protecting people. Swift felt nauseous thinking about the possibility of hurting someone who didn’t deserve it.

Finally, she made her mind that she could disarm the officer without doing any real damage. Feeling sick to her stomach, she threw herself off the roof. Wrapping her legs around the cop’s arm as she fell, she flipped the female officer hard onto the road, twisting the gun out of the officer’s hand. As she sprang to her feet, Swift tossed the gun into the road, across the tram tracks and safely out of reach. Behind her, Saleb shouted from inside the van. “She’s not a cop!”

As the woman in the police uniform climbed to her feet, Swift had to look past the blonde wig to see that the cop was actually Sam Boswell. Boswell dusted herself off, cracked her knuckles, and settled into a martial arts stance. She had a bloody lip and some road rash on her temple that was slowly oozing blood down her cheek.

“We both know you won’t kill me, not that you even could,” she said to Swift. Inside the van, Saleb rustled around in the equipment before climbing out to stand next to Swift. He had a handgun, which he cocked and aimed at Boswell.

“She won’t kill you,” Saleb said, “but me? I’m very dangerous.”

Swift pulled the purse from the van’s roof and pulled out one of the many pages. “It was you. You’re the one who wanted these boxes destroyed because they prove you’re the traitor.”

“What?” Boswell sounded genuinely confused.

“You sent me to destroy the files about Khalid. You were the one who set him up.”

Saleb aimed the gun for Boswell’s face. “You killed my wife?”

Boswell kept her hands raised, realizing she was screwed. Saleb was screaming. It seemed that even though Saleb couldn’t remember his wife, he could still feel the hurt from her death. He screamed again and again, repeating the question, “Did you kill my wife?”

Boswell shook her head. “Listen—”

Swift shook the papers. “You and your accomplice set up Khalid and his wife to be apart so you could kill them, but your accomplice kept evidence to blackmail you so you tried to make me destroy it. You’re the mole.”

Boswell only looked at Saleb, deliberately ignoring Swift. “I wasn’t the one trying to destroy the evidence. I was the one saving it. That was my safe deposit box in there. And I didn’t kill your wife.”