WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller (33 page)

10

There had been a great deal of mutual backslapping throughout Conference Room One as the confirmed kills of each and every identified terrorist had been fed back to the security council throughout the afternoon.

But the specter of the unknown bomber hovered over all of them, souring the mood considerably.

Richards watched everyone closely, pleased that nobody was eying him with any sort of suspicion. Not yet anyway; but he was sure that in the weeks and months to come, congressional hearings would thoroughly investigate his relationship with Quraishi.

He would have to move some money around, make the trail so hard to follow that the authorities would simply give up before they got to him; but he still intended to stay in Washington. If he left now, his guilt would be obvious to everyone.

He watched President Abrams talking again on the telephone, then turning to whisper something to General Olsen. What the hell were they talking about now?

He saw Olsen speak into his own telephone, issuing what looked like urgent orders, then looked back to Ellen Abrams and nodded his head.

While Richards was still trying to figure out what was going on, the doors to the conference room were opened and a squad of Marines entered at a run.

What the hell?

They were wearing masks and what looked like NBC suits; half were armed with assault rifles, the other half held restraints.

What the fuck
were they doing?

Richards watched in open-mouthed wonder as they stormed across the room, weapons up and aimed . . . at him?

And then the Marines were right there in front of him, and the men without weapons were grabbing him, pulling him out of his chair, tying up his body even as they hauled him away, speechless, from the conference room.

President Abrams observed Jeb Richards through the portal glass in the door of the basement bunker.

He was screaming at her, hands pulling
at his hair as he stormed from one end of the bunker to the other.

She had no idea what he was saying; she only hoped that Cole was wrong about him.

But the date of the last injection matched the date that Richards had been in Riyadh; and he had been there to visit Quraishi. Who else could Quraishi have injected, that would be able to wreak so much havoc on the United States?

If Jeb
had
been injected, and the spores erupted while he was in the White House, then most of the country’s senior government figures would be infected.

It certainly made sense, but Abrams didn’t want Jeb Richards to be immolated by flame throwers on a whim; she wanted to make absolutely sure, which was why she had ordered him to be quarantined in the specially converted bunker.

And once the on-site experts were properly suited up, they would enter the bunker and try and examine the man.

Abrams was of two different opinions on what she wanted the outcome to be. On the one hand, she had known Jeb for years and – despite his theatrics – she liked him; it would be
devastating if he had been injected, knowingly or unknowingly. But on the other hand, if it
was
him then the mystery would be cleared up, and their search could stop.

As she watched him pacing up and down, pausing every once in a while to scream at the window, she
decided that she felt sorry for him either way.

Richards didn’t know what the hell these people were thinking. He
knew
he hadn’t been injected with anything.

When he’d first seen the Marines coming for him, he’d thought that they must have found out about him taking payments from Quraishi to assist in suppressing information about the upcoming attacks. What had surprised him beyond credulity was the accusation that
he
was the mystery twenty-first bomber.

What the fuck were they thinking? Who the fuck did they think they were?

‘Yeah, you!’ he screamed at the porthole, only partially aware that the people outside couldn’t hear him. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? When I get out of here I’m gonna tear all of you a new asshole, you hear me?’

Tears started to well in his eyes and he collapsed onto the floor, head on his knees.

It was crazy, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

But a voice in the back of his head kept reminding him of something, of the man he’d met at the hotel the night before his meeting, the one who had taken him out to the illicit drinking rooms, the high-class brothel afterwards, and then . . . then . . . what?

Richards had to admit that he had no idea what had happened the rest of that evening. When he had woken in his hotel bed the morning after, he’d had one hell of a hangover, and had put down his patchy memory of the previous night to having a few drinks too many.

But could it have been for some other reason? Had he been drugged? Had he been taken to the laboratory and injected with the bioweapon?

Could it be true?

For the first time, Richards felt the cold fear in the pit of his stomach.

He had sat in during all those briefings about the North Korean bioweapon – what it did, how it worked.

Was it going to happen to him?

He leapt up off the floor, banging on the porthole glass; only this time, he wasn’t shouting insults.

He was shouting for help; and he was shouting for mercy.

The NBC personnel had arrived and were preparing to enter the chamber, and Abrams was about to return to the conference room when she saw it.

At first Richards stopped shouting, stopped
moving
; and then his face went bright red, as if he was holding his breath.

His eyes bulged in their puffy sockets, and
Abrams saw the NBC leader bar the way for the rest of his team. ‘No,’ she heard him say through his mask, ‘not now. It’s too late. We stay outside.’

And then Abrams watched the most horrific thing she had seen in her entire life, as the rest of Richards’ skin reddened and he started to scream, eyes threatening to pop straight out of his head, teeth crumbling and falling from his mouth.

And then the skin split, the flesh itself sloughing away from the man’s bones as the virus ate away at him from the inside.

And as the flesh dropped to the floor in pieces and clumps, Abrams saw the spores released from inside his body; like pollen floating in the air, there seemed to be millions
of particles spreading through the bunker like a plague of insects, until she could barely see him.

But then his skeletal fingers appeared at the porthole, scraping down the glass and leaving a trail of blood and loose skin, and Abrams could swear she could hear his screams now, even
through the armor plating.

And then the plague lifted slightly and she saw his ruined face; skinless, fleshless,
unrecognizable.

The spores covered him again, and he was gone.

‘You were right,’ Cole heard the voice of President Abrams announce, thousands of miles away.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘We got him into the bunker just in time,’ she breathed, obviously still shaken. ‘He . . . He’s gone.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Cole said, and meant it. Traitor or not, it was no way to go.

But, he reasoned, better him than the whole of the National Security Council
.

‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Abrams said next. ‘This is the third time you’
ve saved my life.’

‘It’s becoming something of a habit,’ Cole agreed.

‘But thank you. I mean it.’ She breathed out slowly once more. ‘If that virus had hit when he was with us, I can’t imagine what would have happened. The Lion might still have won.’

‘But he didn’t,’ Cole said. ‘Not this time.’

‘No,’ Abrams replied in a more positive tone. ‘Now, is there anything I can do for
you?
’

Cole paused as he heard noise coming from above; shouted orders, booted feet. The Saudi authorities had found him.

Seconds later, the door was kicked open and a squad of armed men rushed in, a captain at the front, his pistol up and aimed squarely at Cole’s head.

‘Yes,’ Cole said into the telephone, ‘I think you might be able to do something for me.’

He held out the receiver to the captain.

‘It’s the President of the United States of America,’ Cole said to the man.
‘For you.’

EPILOGUE

Chang Wubei greeted the Defense Minister with a sigh. ‘So it is over,’ he said.

‘For now,’ Kang Xing
agreed. ‘For now.’ He regarded the young man closely though his hooded eyes. Chang Wubei was one of the People’s Republic of China’s four Vice Premiers, and a man some thought might one day rise to the top post, supplanting Tsang Feng as president to become the nation’s Paramount Leader.

Kang
was one of those who believed that this would happen; was in fact doing everything in his power to
make
it happen. But not for Chang’s sake, and not because he thought Chang would make a good leader; it was because the man was easily led, and Kang was the one who would be doing the leading.

But Chang liked to thin
k that he was in charge, and Kang was happy to play along.

‘What happened?’ Chang demanded. ‘I still do not understand why we helped the Americans.’

‘We
had
to,’ Kang explained patiently, as if to a child. ‘When the weapon was stolen and the Korean RGB’s plan was dead in the water, what profit was there in it for us? We could have used the unification of Korea in various ways, but a terrorist attack on America? It would have changed the status quo too much; far too much. And so – with the knowledge we had regarding Camp Fourteen – we were able to salvage something from the situation by helping our American allies.’ He shrugged. ‘We could not foresee the hijacking of the Fu Yu Shan.’

Chang nodded his head in thought. ‘Is it true that General U was executed?’

Kang nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘My sources tell me that U Chun-su was killed by firing squad for his ‘repeated failures’. The North Koreans also believe that Major Ho Sang-ok was killed in the blast that destroyed Camp Fourteen.’

‘But he wasn’t?’ Chang asked in surprise.

‘No, he wasn’t,’ Kang said, aiming to impress the young man with his knowledge. ‘The Americans have him.’

Worry clouded Chang’s features. ‘Will he tell them about us?’

‘Ho doesn’t
know
anything about us,’ Kang said confidently. ‘I brought the plan to them carefully, through agents. Ho knows nothing that could harm us.’

‘Does President Kim know that it was an American attack on the camp?’

‘He knows that it is only the Americans who could have done it, but he has no proof; and without proof, he can do nothing.’

‘Shall we provide him with proof?’ Chang asked.

Kang shook his head in response. This was exactly why Chang needed guiding; he had yet to learn how things worked, how long-term strategy should be used.

‘No,’
Kang said, ‘remember the plan. We must think long-term if we are to achieve the Chinese supremacy we both dream of, and which that idiot Tsang Feng is too weak to attempt. We will use this knowledge when it suits us to do so, yes?’

Chang nodded his head, and
Kang could see that the man barely had a clue as to what he meant.

But that suited Kang
just fine; he had more than enough plans for the both of them.

Cole looked across the café at the man sitting in the corner, sure it was him.

He was in the
Fifth Arrondissement of Paris, the so-called Arab Quarter which was home to many of the French capital’s vast Arab population.

Beyond the Middle East itself, France had one of the highest concentrations of Arabic people
in the world, and was a perfect place for an Arabic terrorist mastermind to lose himself, if all avenues had been closed to him back home.

Which, in the case of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, they had been.

It had taken months of effort by the CIA and the NSA, but their staff had literally worked round the clock to locate Quraishi, who had become overnight the most wanted man in the world.

There had been false lead after false lead, but eventually a customer at this café had thought he’d recognized another regular from the e-fit pictures that were shown almost daily on the news channels, showing how Quraishi might look with various disguises, or even with plastic surgery. It had been the one with the grey hair and long beard that had matched.

The customer had gone to the local gendarmerie, who had reported the sighting – along with hundreds of others, none of which were expected to bear fruit – to the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence.

After a week of waiting for authorization, a surveillance team had started shadowing the old man from the café; and although they found nothing suspicious, they
had
found him similar enough to the modified pictures to report the finding to the American CIA.

A CIA team had then received permission to run its own surveillance, and soon discovered that the old man was careful to leave no fingerprints anywhere they could be taken from, and performed a great deal more counter-surveillance than most retired Arabic men who had nothing to hide.

And it was then that James Dorrell notified President Abrams to tell her what they had found, and ask for further instructions.

And President Abrams had turned the information over to the commander of America’s newest first-strike paramilitary intelligence agency, known internally only as Force One.

As well as getting Cole out of Saudi Arabia in a hurry, President Abrams had also listened to something else that he wanted – to get back into full-time work with the American government, as head of his own agency; a spearhead against the ongoing war on terror.

And its first mission was going to be dealing with The Lion of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Abrams had agreed to Cole’s request, which is what led to him sitting in the window seat of the homely little café, looking over his menu at the old man in the corner – a man who had wanted to kill millions of people, who had wanted to wipe America off the face of the earth.

Cole adjusted his weight in his chair, thinking of how the previous months had changed him. Gone was the self-loathing of his Thailand incarnation; gone too were doubts, the insecurities, the fears that had plagued him throughout that last mission.

He had come out the other side a different person, resolved to the fact that his family was gone, and they were never coming back; he had reacquired his calling in life, and had made the decision to follow that calling as passionately, as furiously, as professionally and as courageously as he could.

He had healed physically over the past few months as well, his ear fully rebuilt and his arm almost as good as it was before. There were jokes that he’d had more surgery than most movie stars and models, and Cole had laughed along, because the jokes were true.

But now, after months of waiting, he had his target in his sights.

He moved, gesturing for a waitress, sure to move himself into the old man’s field of view; watched as the man tried to conceal his recognition, the spark of fear that passed through
his eyes. Continued to watch as the old man got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled through the café, past the counter and towards the rest rooms at the rear.

Yes,
Cole thought as he stood,
it’s him
.

Quraishi had no idea how they had found him; only that he had been found, and he needed to escape.

Now.

He couldn’t believe how badly things had gone during the past few months; previously friendly countries had closed their doors to him, other organizations wanted nothing to do with him.

On the one hand, they seemed to think that his plan had perhaps been
too
extreme, just too much; and on the other, they realized that anyone associating with him would bring down the full might of the American military on their heads, and they could certainly do without
that
.

Quraishi pushed through into the small service corridor, heading for the rear fire exit; knowing that the place would be surrounded, yet knowing he had to risk it nevertheless. What other options did he have?

He reached into his robes, turning from his old-man shuffle to a steady run as he passed through the door, and pulled out a Beretta 9mm pistol.

In one smooth motion, he also activated the explosive vest he wore underneath his robes.

Whatever might happen, he was sure that they would never take him alive.

Jake Navarone was waiting outside when the old man kicked open the fire door and raced into the dirty back alley.

After reaching the emergency RV back in North Korea, Navarone and his SEALs had been subjected to one hell of a ride back to China, the choppers keeping so low that they often seemed to actually be
below
the tree line; but they had made it home safely, and within three days Navarone had been back eating shrimp gumbo with his family in Tampa.

He had been awarded the Navy Cross for his actions at Camp 14, but he knew it wasn’t decorations he wanted; it was the opportunity to take the fight to the enemy.

The agent called Mark Cole, the infamous ‘Asset’, had apparently learned about Navarone through his old friend Ike Treyborne; and when he had been approached by the man for a place on the Force One team, Navarone had jumped at the chance.

And now here he was, face to face with the man responsible for it all – Abd al-Aziz Quraishi.

Navarone saw the pistol, but also something else; the man’s other hand was lost deep in the sleeve of his robe, but he was holding something there, like a button . . .

Cole’s bullet found its mark, hitting Quraishi in the spine, immediately shutting down his nervous system and making him unable to activate the vest he had been wearing under his robes.

Cole had noticed it when he had got up to walk, the hard bulk barely concealed under the billowing robes.

He nodded across the alley to Navarone, who nodded back, moving in towards the writhing, pain-wracked body of Quraishi.

‘Damn you!’ Quraishi said as he squirmed on the floor. ‘Damn you!’ He screamed in pain, unable to squeeze either the trigger or the button. He kept on trying, but it was useless; no signals were being sent. ‘You won’t take me in!’ he cried. ‘You won’t! You won’t!’

Cole and Navarone watched the man as he writhed on the floor, blood spilling from the wound in his back onto the dirty concrete of the alley, and raised their handguns.

‘Who said we wanted to take you in?’ Cole asked. ‘I shot you in the back so you couldn’t kill yourself.’ He smiled. ‘I didn’t want you to have the satisfaction.’

‘But . . .’ Quraishi gasped.

‘But nothing,’ Cole said, cutting him off. ‘This is how Force One deals with terrorists’

He nodded at Navarone, and both men emptied their magazines into the collapsed form of Quraishi, the once-feared Lion of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Yes,
Cole thought with satisfaction; because with terrorists, there could be no other way.

Seeing the man on Rue Monge had shaken Aoki Yamaguchi to the core.

He
was supposed to be dead.

And yet she knew that his body had never been found – or at least never confirmed. The house in the Austrian hamlet of Kreith had been incinerated, and there had been such a glut of dead bodies and charred remains that it had been impossible to identify any one particular individual.

Yamaguchi had travelled there herself, had stood over the supposed grave of Mark Cole – or Mark Kowalski, as he had also been known according to her own extensive research into the man – and had shed a tear.

It had been her aim in life to meet the man.

Confront
the man.

But the carnage that had greeted her in Kreith had robbed her of that purpose, and the tears had been ones of regret.

But now she knew he was still alive; and Yamaguchi vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let Mark Cole slip through her fingers so easily again.