The Guardian (36 page)

‘That’s a lie.’

‘It’s not. Think about it, for Christ’s sake! Who knew where and when you were meeting Hassan Mustafa on the night he was killed down in Virginia?’

‘No one,’ Saunders said. ‘Just me.’

‘No? Only you and . . .?’

Saunders blinked twice. ‘Me and Lawrence,’ he admitted.

‘And who gave you the information you needed to track down Charles Phelan?’

‘Ainsworth,’ Saunders said grudgingly. ‘But he got that information from the memory stick we took off the doctor during the raid in Alexandria.’

Toney shook his head. ‘There was some useful information on the drive, but Phelan’s name wasn’t on it. If Ainsworth gave you his name, he had to have gotten it from somewhere
else.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Am I? Did he actually show you the data from the drive? Or did he just show you some dummy report he had thrown in a file?’

Saunders didn’t answer. ‘Why would I trust you – you had me suspended from the Agency? You started all this.’

‘No. Ainsworth suspended you. And he did that so he could cut off all contact you had with anyone on the inside. Once you were on your own, the only way you could get any information was
through him. And you let him know where you were every step of the way. Did you not notice that Fasil has been able to track your every move? How do you think that was possible?’

‘Lawrence was helping me.’ Saunders was beginning to wonder, though.

‘Was he?’ Toney shook his head. ‘Did he bring in anyone to actually help you? Or was he just following your progress so he would know if you got your hands on the
Cloak?’

The ground continued to slip away from Saunders, and he reached for anything that might allow him to keep his sanity. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Ainsworth was working with
the son of Mohmar Hazara. They have been trying to get the Cloak back to the mosque in Kandahar. Hazara was killed, but Lawrence is going to finish the mission.’

‘How do you know that Ainsworth was working with Hazara?’

‘Akhtar told me.’

‘Who told you?’ Toney demanded. ‘Think carefully. Was it Hazara himself, or was it just Ainsworth?’

Saunders thought hard. ‘Hazara told us he was working with an American; someone in our intelligence branch, but he didn’t have a name. Ainsworth confirmed he was the one.’

‘So you never heard it directly from Hazara.’

‘No. He died before he had the chance to contact Ainsworth again.’

Toney shook his head as though he was looking at one of the most pathetic souls he’d ever had to deal with. ‘You really believed it, didn’t you? You trusted Ainsworth that
much.’

‘Of course I trust him. Why wouldn’t I? And for all your bullshit, you still haven’t given me any proof that Lawrence wasn’t working with Hazara. Why would I trust you
more than him?’

Toney let go of Saunders’s shirt and backed away a little bit. ‘I’m not asking you to trust me.’ He turned and walked across the room, over toward the closed door to the
bedroom. He turned the doorknob and pushed the door in.

There was a man there, visible only in silhouette, the sun streaming in behind him. Saunders squinted at the figure, trying to make out the features of the face. Then Akhtar Hazara stepped into
the living room. Saunders felt the ground give way completely underneath him, and the sensation of falling was dizzying. ‘You died,’ Jack whispered. ‘We saw it.’

‘No,’ Akhtar replied. ‘Mr Toney’s men saved me. Jack, he is the contact I have been working with. He received my message last night, and was on the way to help us when
Fasil was chasing us. I was lucky; his men were on the way to the tavern when they saw me crash on the street. I would have died, but his men engaged Fasil in a gunfight, and got me out of
there.’

‘We thought . . .’ Saunders didn’t finish the sentence.

‘I do not know Mr Ainsworth, but I do believe Mr Toney. Mr Ainsworth is the one who is working with Fasil. Will you help us?’

Saunders looked over at Cianna. She was standing there, gaping at Akhtar like he was a ghost. ‘How is it possible?’ she whispered.

Saunders slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘What have I done?’

The wind cut into Lawrence Ainsworth’s skin as he walked along the mountain trail. The trees had lost most of their leaves, and the evergreens that dominated the hillside
below grew sparse as he climbed higher, approaching the tree-line. He’d hiked these trails a thousand times since he was a boy, and he felt a connection to the past as he moved along the
mountainside – a past when the world was less complicated, and considerably less dangerous. People could say what they wanted about the Soviets, but at least they were relatively stable and
predictable. They provided a steady wind against which those in his profession could set their sails. There was a tacit understanding of what the rules were back then, and a general comprehension
that, ideology aside, both sides needed each other.

Now all that was gone, and the United States sat rudderless in the water, assaulted from all sides by unpredictable gales that blew and died faster than anyone could predict. It could not go on
this way, Ainsworth knew. The country could not survive it.

The tiny schoolhouse was up ahead now, in a clearing near the top of the mountain. He looked down at the wooden box cradled under his arm. He hadn’t looked inside of it; hadn’t
touched the sacred relic within. He cared little for such superstitions. His was a mission grounded in the cold hard facts of the real world.

The door opened and Fasil stepped out. His gun was in his hand, gripped sure, pointed at the ground. His one remaining bodyguard came out and stood next to him. Sirus Stillwell was there as
well, and as he exited and separated from the other two, he walked over and stood next to Ainsworth, facing Fasil.

‘You have the Cloak,’ Fasil said, nodding at the box under Ainsworth’s arm.

‘I do.’ Ainsworth stepped forward and held the box out. Fasil took it and set it on a stump near the front of the tiny building. Slowly he unlatched the top and opened it just enough
to see inside. Then he closed the box back up and re-latched it, turned and handed it to his man.

He looked back at Ainsworth. ‘The plane is still ready to get us back to my country?’

Ainsworth nodded. ‘It will be at the airstrip at nine to take you to Canada. From there, I have a jet waiting. You will leave this evening. I will come to get you. If I’m not here by
nine o’clock, it means something has gone wrong, and you need to get moving.’

Fasil nodded. ‘Good.’

Ainsworth looked at Sirus. ‘You need to come with me.’

‘Yes sir,’ Sirus responded with a half-hearted salute. He looked at Fasil with distain, clearly glad to be rid of him.

As Ainsworth turned and headed back down the trail, Sirus followed him. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Ainsworth said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’

They were only twenty feet down the path when Fasil called after them. ‘Perhaps we shall meet again, Mr Ainsworth!’

Ainsworth turned and looked at him, the hatred clear in his eyes. ‘If we ever meet again,’ he said, ‘I will kill you.’

Fasil laughed derisively. ‘I have no doubt!’ he called.

Ainsworth walked away. As he followed the path down from the mountain peak, it seemed as though the wind had never blown so cold.

Saunders could hear Toney pacing as Jack stared out the window onto the narrow street in South Boston. ‘Did he say anything specific about how he was getting the Cloak
out of the country?’ Toney was asking.

Jack didn’t respond.

‘He said he had arranged for a plane,’ Cianna answered.

‘Did he say out of what airport?’ Toney asked.

‘No,’ Cianna said. ‘Not unless he told Jack.’

Saunders could feel the eyes on him as he stood there, motionless. He shook his head without turning around. It felt as though his entire world had collapsed. Nothing made sense anymore.

‘Call down to Langley, and have them run a check to see whether Ainsworth used any of our people to arrange a flight,’ Toney ordered one of his men. ‘It’s a long shot,
but it’s worth a try. In all likelihood he’s got someone to freelance. No records. The question is, where would he fly out of?’

Saunders turned and looked at them. ‘It won’t be an airport.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know him.’

‘All evidence to the contrary.’

Saunders winced. ‘Fair enough,’ he conceded. ‘At an airport there will be too many questions, and too many flight records. He’ll fly out of an area that’s fairly
rural, to draw less attention.’

‘Any specific thoughts?’ Toney demanded. ‘Anything that might actually be helpful?’ Saunders shook his head again. The two men stared at each other for a few moments,
until Saunders averted his eyes. It was his fault that Ainsworth had the Cloak, and there was no way to deny it.

Cianna’s phone rang, startling everyone in the room. They all looked at her. ‘It must be Milo,’ she said. ‘He’s the only one who would call me.’ She crossed
the room and glanced at the receiver as she picked it up. ‘Blocked number,’ she commented. She pressed the button and held the handset up to her ear. ‘Milo?’ she said. Her
face darkened, and she looked at Saunders in confusion. ‘How did you . . .?’ she said into the phone. ‘Okay.’ She held the phone out to Saunders. ‘It’s for
you,’ she said.

‘Who?’

She shook her head and handed him the phone. He held it up to his ear. ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

‘Detective Morrell,’ a gravelly voice responded.

‘Who?’

‘Nick O’Callaghan’s brother. We met last night, remember?’

Saunders’s heart felt like it had exploded in his chest, and he wondered whether there would be an end to his screw-ups. The notion that he had allowed the cop to track him down this
easily was pathetic. ‘How did you find me?’

‘Not too hard to look up the girl’s number. I tried her friend Milo’s place, first, but no one answered. I figured I’d take a chance that you’d gone back to her
apartment. It was the only other place I knew about, so I played the odds.’

Fair enough, Saunders thought. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want answers.’

‘I can’t give them to you.’

‘I think you can.’ There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. Then Morrell continued. ‘Why didn’t you kill me, last night? You killed my
brother.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Saunders said. ‘I told you that last night, and it was the truth.’

‘Then the people you were working with did,’ Morrell growled. ‘So you knew about it. The rest is semantics.’

‘No, I didn’t know anything about your brother’s death. I had nothing to do with that.’

‘Right, you told me. That was the man with the teardrop birthmark.’

‘That’s right.’ Saunders could hear the cop breathing hard into the phone. ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Saunders said.

If it wasn’t for the breathing, Saunders would have assumed that the connection had been broken. Everyone in the room was staring at him quizzically. He waved them off. Finally Morrell
spoke again. ‘Who was the man you gave the box to?’

Saunders’s heart stopped. He said nothing for a moment, as he tried to gather his thoughts. ‘How do you know I gave the box to someone?’

‘I was there at Castle Island,’ Morrell said. ‘I saw you.’

Saunders felt as though he’d stuck his hand in an electrical outlet. His entire body tensed. ‘You followed me,’ he said slowly.

‘I did.’

‘Where are you now?’ Saunders held his breath as he waited for the answer.

‘You told me to follow the box, and it would lead me to my brother’s killer,’ Morrell said at last. ‘Now, tell me what’s going on.’

They were headed north on Interstate 93, through the mountains of New Hampshire, toward the village of Glencliff, set in the heart of the Green Mountain Range. It was an area
unconquered by mankind, where towers of granite carved by glaciers more than a million years before jutted up from the ground like living things reaching for the heavens. The populace, much like
the land itself, had resisted domination since its split from Massachusetts in 1679. The state motto,
Live Free Or Die
, was a credo most residents held close to their heart.

One of Toney’s men was driving the conspicuous black suburban, a vehicle that was difficult to mistake for anything other than what it was. He was pushing the giant car to its limit; at
one point Saunders glanced at the speedometer and saw that they were travelling at more than 110 mph, weaving in and out of the sparse traffic.

There were six of them in the car. Toney’s other man was riding shotgun; Toney and Saunders were in the second-row captain’s chairs; Akhtar and Cianna sat on the bench that was the
last row of seats. Saunders stared out the window at the passing landscape, cataloguing all the mistakes he’d made. It was a daunting task.

‘Morrell was following me and Cianna this morning,’ Saunders said. ‘When we handed the Cloak over to Lawrence, he followed the box. Lawrence took it up to his family compound
in New Hampshire.’

‘Why did he call you?’ Toney asked.

‘Because I could have killed him last night, and I didn’t. He also believed me when I said that I wanted to kill the man who murdered his brother. But then Fasil showed up at
Lawrence’s house, and it looked like they were working together. He wanted answers, and he figured he didn’t have to tell me where he was unless he was satisfied with what I
said.’

‘And he was,’ Toney noted.

‘Apparently. He said he would watch the house and wait for us. It’s up at the next exit, and then a half-hour out into the mountains,’ Saunders said. ‘Down Route
25.’

‘You’ve been there?’

Saunders nodded.

‘What’s the house like?’ Toney asked.

‘It’s big and old,’ Saunders replied. ‘Two floors, several bedrooms. There’s a large living room and a study on the first floor, along with the kitchen. A two-sided
fireplace separates the living room and the kitchen, so when there’s a fire going, it warms both rooms.’

Toney asked, ‘Why so much space?’