The Darkest Day (8 page)

The property had been an internet café, until it was driven out of business by smartphones and wireless technology. There were no terminals, but the cheap desks and chairs remained. The air was dusty and stale. There was no active electricity supply, so no lights, but enough sunlight found its way through the whitewashed windows for Victor to see the client and for him to be seen in return.

‘Can I take off this ridiculous hat now?’

The client’s voice was a deep growl. His accent suggested the East Coast, maybe a native of Virginia or Maryland.

Victor nodded.

The client removed it from his head and placed it down on a desk.

Up close Victor saw scars on the client’s neck. They were old and faded but still distinct against the rest of the tanned skin. They were burns marks, protruding out from the collar of his polo shirt. He had grey eyes and the weathered skin was marked with deep crow’s feet and ice-pick scars from acne or pox decades before. He looked tough and capable; a former military man who, though long out, had not allowed himself to weaken. His posture was straight and rigid. He didn’t fidget. His hands stayed by his hips, in loose fists. There was no wedding band and no pale ring of skin where one had been removed prior to this meeting. His clothes were good quality garments, but there were no designer labels signalling significant disposable income. The Ray-Bans were the most expensive item on his person. His watch was for telling the time on a battlefield, not a display of wealth. He wore the experience of combat on his face and triumph in the set of his shoulders.

The client spent a moment examining the room. He seemed content enough to give Victor his back to do so. He then nodded to himself before facing Victor. He looked to Victor’s hands.

‘You don’t have a gun.’ He seemed more curious than surprised. ‘Do you?’

Victor said, ‘Do you think I need one?’

‘Never thought I’d fall for the old fingers-in-the-back trick. Guess I must have lost a step in my advancing years.’ The client paused. ‘I told Muir that twelve men would be more than enough to handle you.’

‘Then why did you bring only eleven?’

A sigh. ‘One got sick on the way over. Some stomach bug. Shitting and throwing up every which way. No plan’s perfect though, right? You must know that better than anyone. But, I have to say, I can’t see he would have made the difference, can you?’

‘Not really.’

The client appeared to consider this, then nodded. ‘Okay. I think we both know you’ve proved your point. It was a real nice demonstration out there. My guys dropped the ball with the march, sure. But you played it perfectly. I understand the message: you can get to me no matter what. But, as I said outside, there’s no need for any of this. We’re not enemies. We’re on the same side here.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Victor said. ‘I’m the only one who’s on my side.’

The client cocked a sardonic smile and shrugged. ‘Whatever. Muir informed me what happened in Prague. You fucked up. That was supposed to be nice and quiet and clean. That’s why I hired you. I heard you were good at this kind of thing. Muir told me you were the best.’

‘Muir should also have told you to watch your language when you’re with me.’

‘Oh, she did. She told me all about you and your little quirks. But what I’m doing is ignoring her advice. Do you honestly think I give a shit about your delicate sensibilities? I’ll talk however I want. You don’t like it, you know where the door is.’ He gestured. ‘But you’re not going to walk out of here because you don’t like my use of language, are you, son?’

‘I think you’re forgetting who’s in charge here.’

He shook his head. ‘Save the thinly veiled threats. I didn’t have to fly three thousand miles. I didn’t have to meet you. Until today, you had no idea who I was and I could have kept it that way. But I didn’t. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here as a courtesy to you and to Muir as well. Some thanks would be nice, don’t you agree?’

‘I’m overwhelmed with gratitude,’ Victor said.

The client smirked. ‘Fine. Why don’t we get down to business? I’m sure you’re as keen to get out of here as I am. I’m sure both our time is too precious to waste with this merry-go-round. Why exactly did you bring me here?’

‘To ask you one question,’ Victor said. ‘Did you send her?’

‘No,’ the client said, strong and resolute. ‘I did not send her.’

Victor watched his eyes, which remained forward and unblinking. Victor believed him.

‘So it’s about you,’ the client said. ‘Your past catching up with you. And quite a past you have, don’t you?’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Whatever. We’re done. I won’t be using you again. You’ve got too much baggage to be an effective operator. As was proved in Prague.’ He gestured to the door on the other side of Victor. ‘Excuse me.’

He didn’t move. ‘When my past catches up with me, I know about it.’

‘I don’t know what that means and I don’t care. As I said: we’re through. And I’m gone. This is a waste of my time.’

The client stepped within arm’s reach, expecting Victor to move. He remained where he was.

Victor said, ‘If she was there for me, why didn’t she try again?’ The client waited. ‘If it was my past catching up with me, why did she let me go?’

‘Muir said you escaped.’

‘Barely,’ Victor said. ‘But if she tracked me to Prague, why hadn’t she tracked me down beforehand? Why hasn’t she since?’

‘How would I know?’

‘I don’t know either.’

‘You’re not making any sense. And I’m getting bored.’

‘This won’t take much longer,’ Victor said. ‘If I were her primary objective then she could have moved on me at some other point. If she was sent by someone I’ve angered before now, then why did she wait until that exact moment to strike?’

‘Go on,’ the client said.

‘Maybe I’m not her primary objective. Maybe I was only a target because of who I was after.’

‘You’re saying she was there to protect the prince.’

‘I’m saying that makes more sense.

‘Okay,’ the client said. ‘I’m listening.’

‘She’s five feet nine inches tall, right-handed, one hundred and fourteen pounds, early thirties, dark hair, olive skin, brown eyes, Middle Eastern, probably Persian heritage but with the calcium-rich bones of a Westerner. My guess is she is American. Maybe her family emigrated during the Iranian revolution. My guess is she’s one of yours. She can work the field as well as I can. She knew my approach and I only knew she was on to me a second before I would have been killed. Who is she?’

The client exhaled and shook his head. ‘I… I can’t be sure on that description alone.’

‘Maybe you can’t be sure, but you have a good idea. We don’t have to guess though. Here —’ Victor took a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. ‘Take a look at her face.’

The client took the paper from Victor’s hand and held it under a shaft of light for a better look. His expression changed straight away but he went on studying the drawing Victor had sketched of his attacker for a long time. When his gaze returned to Victor, he looked sad.

‘Shit,’ the client said. ‘She is one of mine.’

‘I mean,’ the client was quick to clarify, ‘she used to be one of my people.’

‘Who are you?’ Victor asked.

The client handed the image back. ‘My name’s Jim Halleck.’

He held out his hand. It was strong and worn and coarse. Victor looked at the hand suspended between them and kept his own near his hips.

Halleck let his hand fall back to his thigh. ‘No reason why we can’t be friendly.’

‘There’s every reason.’

‘Whatever. Muir said you keep your name to yourself. She refers to you as Tesseract.’

‘It’s a code name I can’t seem to shake.’

‘Better than no name. Guess I’ll do the same as Muir and call you Mr Tesseract.’

‘I’d prefer you didn’t.’

Halleck shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re not exactly leaving me a lot of choice, are you?’

‘What are you, CIA?’

‘Not exactly. I’m as much CIA as you are. Affiliated, but not officially. I run my own task force. A small, elite crew. We’re independent, but connected with all the usual suspects. We work with the Pentagon, DIA, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, FBI, and foreign intelligence services as well as with the CIA.’

‘The Activity?’

Halleck shrugged a hand, dismissive. ‘That’s an out-of-date label. The Activity doesn’t exist any longer. At least, not how it used to be. Now, it’s branched and split off into many different unacknowledged black-ops units. Some of the originals are still around, somewhere.’

‘And you control one of these offshoots?’ Victor asked.

Halleck nodded and scratched the back of his neck.

Victor said, ‘Tell me about her.’

Halleck said, ‘She went rogue three years ago during an op in Yemen. At the time we thought she had simply gone AWOL. It happens. People cut and run from the intelligence community like they do from the army. Not often, but there you go. Then she turned up, twelve months after she vanished, as a freelance shooter. We’ve tried tracking her, of course. But obviously she knows a lot about how we work and how to stay off the radar. Recently, she’s been hitting targets close to home: CIA assets and agents in the Middle East and Europe. She goes by the handle Raven.’

‘What’s her real name?’

‘Constance Stone. You were right, what you said. She grew up in the US but her father is Indian, of Persian descent. She was originally CIA, a star of the Special Activities Division. A career operative, straight out of college. No military background, not that you’d know. I worked with her and saw her talents were being wasted. I offered her a job with my unit and trained her up and she became my best operator.’

‘Why did she go rogue?’

Halleck shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Why does anyone move from the public sector to the private? It pays better.’ He looked back at Victor from over one shoulder. ‘Isn’t that your story too?’

‘I’ll keep my story to myself, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘I already know your story.’

Victor said, ‘Keep telling yourself that.’

Halleck turned round and leaned back against a wall. He rolled his shoulders to loosen some tension. He’d been standing up for a long time.

Victor said, ‘Why would she be protecting Al-Waleed?’

‘You’re suggesting it isn’t merely a coincidence?’

Victor remained silent.

‘Al-Waleed has been on our list of problems for a long time. As far back as when Raven worked for me.’

Victor was shaking his head before Halleck had finished. ‘No, she hasn’t been sitting idle for three years waiting for you to make a move on him. She knew when and where the kill was going to take place. So her intel is up to date.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘If it were impossible we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. She’d found out somehow that the prince was a target and I was the shooter. Either you have a leak or she still has access to your data.’

‘Shit,’ Halleck said. ‘But why? Why would she protect him?’

‘Because she’s freelance. Because, like you said, the private sector pays better. If she knows who you plan to assassinate, she can make a pretty penny helping to prevent that happening. If someone was going to kill you, how much would you pay to make sure they failed?’

Halleck looked away.

Victor said, ‘Have you lost any people recently?’

‘Killed? No.’

‘Or captured unexpectedly while spying?’

Halleck exhaled. His lips were tight.

‘She’s selling your people out. She’s sabotaging your operations. Why?’

‘For the money, like we’ve established.’

‘What did you do to her?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘She’s coming after your unit any way she can. Maybe she’s cashing in at the same time, but if she’s as good at staying under the radar as you’ve suggested, then bringing herself out into the open like this is incredibly risky. She’s not going to do that unless she has a very good reason. So, I’ll ask you again: what did you do to her?’

Halleck swallowed. ‘Not to her, her boyfriend.’

‘Continue.’

‘She had a romantic relationship with one of my men. He was on her team in Yemen. They were going after a terrorist cell…’ He paused, and looked at the ceiling. ‘But the intel was bad. She narrowly escaped. Her lover wasn’t so lucky.’

‘She blames you?’

‘My sources were reliable, but no one is one hundred per cent, are they? It was bad luck. She didn’t see it that way. Like I said before, she went AWOL.’

‘And now she’s back for revenge.’

‘That’s your conclusion, not mine. But if you’re right, she has lists of our deepest agents and blackest of black operations. She’s already got one of my men locked up for life in a Shanghai prison and sabotaged the Prague job. Who knows what she’s going to do next?’

Victor paused for a moment because he heard footsteps in the alleyway outside and pictured Halleck’s men, but ignored the sound when he also heard children laughing.

‘How did she know I was to be Al-Waleed’s assassin? I shouldn’t be on any list.’

‘The CIA is a spy agency second and a bureaucracy first. Everyone is on a list. We have lists of lists.’

‘Why haven’t I been told about this threat before?’

‘Because until you identified her, we didn’t know who she was and who she was after. In case you failed to notice, she’s good. I trained her, after all.’

‘Which is more likely: a leak, or Raven still having access to your files?’

‘A leak. I don’t believe any of my guys would, but even if Raven was any kind of hacker, there is no way she’d know her way around our system now. A lot changes in three years.’

‘Find the leak.’

‘Oh, I plan to. And I’ll deal with it, don’t you worry about that.’

‘I never worry. When you find out who is doing this, pass me their details.’

‘Hold on there, friend,’ Halleck said with raised palms. ‘If someone is selling us out to Raven, then they’ll get what’s coming to them. But through the courts. I’m not handing them over to a cold-blooded killer. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Victor said. ‘But I don’t plan to kill them. I only want to use them to get to Raven. In the meantime I want her file. I want every sliver of intel you have on her.’

‘Why?’

‘I would think that was obvious.’

‘You’re going after her?’

Victor nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Even though you don’t think she was targeting you directly?’

‘That’s my judgement based on limited evidence. It’s going to take a lot more to convince me. If I’m a target, I want to know about it and I want to know why and most importantly, I want to eliminate that threat on my terms. I have enough people to look out for without adding Raven too.’

‘If you go after her, then even if you’re not a target, you will end up as one.’

‘I have to act like I am anyway. Making it a reality doesn’t make a lot of difference.’

‘Okay,’ the client said with a nod. ‘I’ll have Muir pass on Raven’s particulars.’

‘No. I deal with you directly. I don’t want an intermediary.’

‘What do you have against Muir?’

‘Nothing. But I have plenty against information being shared beyond those who need to know.’

‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that arrangement. I went to Muir in the first place. I know her. She should stay in the loop.’

‘I don’t care what you think. You sent me to kill a target and now I have one of your former assets after me. You owe me. So we do things my way.’

Halleck considered this. ‘Doesn’t sound like I have a lot of choice.’

‘That’s because you don’t.’

‘And what if Muir feels like I’m stepping on her toes if we cut her out?’

‘She’s a grown-up. She’s a professional. She’ll get over it. I’m sure her psych screening didn’t highlight any irrational tendency towards jealousy.’

‘Okay then. You’ll deal with me and me alone.’

‘I have a question about Raven,’ Victor said. ‘Before she went rogue, did she have any assignments in the Dominican Republic?’

‘Yes, maybe three years ago now. One of her last jobs before she went dark. Why?’

‘Did she work alone or with local assets or any former agency people out there?’

‘Yeah, a local asset. Why?’

‘Anyone she might have connected to; any reason for her to go back?’

‘She hasn’t been back there since. We know that.’

‘Who was the asset?’

‘Jean Claude Marte. He’s a fixer. Passports. You know the sort of thing. He’s in real deep with the cartels down there. Does all their documents. You probably know a dozen such guys.’

‘Two dozen,’ Victor said. ‘What’s his cover?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean: Marte doesn’t own a shop called Forgers R US. I mean: what’s his day job? What kind of business does he run that’s legitimate?’

Halleck thought about this, eyes going up and to the left, accessing memories that hadn’t needed recalling for maybe three years. He said, ‘If I remember correctly, he was a tobacconist.’

Victor opened the door. ‘Email me everything you have on Raven by midnight tonight. I’ll do the rest.’

‘You know,’ Halleck called after him, ‘this whole not explaining yourself thing is really quite annoying.’

‘I know,’ Victor said. ‘But that’s half the fun.’