Sam, an assassin? No.
“Ah. That was his cover, then. Being a liaison officer allowed him to move around easily. Kill wherever he was needed.” Pilgrim turned to him. “This is why I wasn’t going to be offered a job with the rest of the Cellar. He knew I’d recognize him.”
Ben turned off the engine.
“He wanted people to think that the Dragon was dead; that was his execution I was supposed to hear in the next room. He walked away from his cover in the CIA to set up his company. Maybe with the CIA’s help. Maybe on his own.”
“Oh, Christ.” Ben felt his stomach sink. His mouth went dry. “Sam’s first big contract with Hector Global was in Indonesia. With the foreign ministry, consulting work to their security service. Because there had been an attempted assassination against a prominent government family…”
“Holy Jesus, Ben. He played both sides. As the Dragon, he set up the attack on Gumalar that the CIA wanted done. He must have even killed his own informants, put their hands in that bag-if he was vanishing as the Dragon, he didn’t want any locals who could name him or ID him. The Indonesian intel guys in the park were there because he told them I would be there, doing a job on their own soil. Then he switched sides, told the Indonesians he could get the CIA to back off if they gave him a security contract. He launched his company with the blood of innocent people… He profits from ruining a perfect CIA operation. He makes it look like he’s lost his cover and even his buddies at the CIA buy it; they stay in bed with him. Maybe he paid them off. He profits from protecting people who were funding terrorists.” Pilgrim shook his head. “He destroyed my life…”
Ben reached for Pilgrim, touched his shoulder. Pilgrim flinched, pressed his fist against his mouth.
“I told them the Dragon was alive; they told me I’d killed him with that shot before I ran. They covered for him and sold me out. Jesus.” He sank to the floor, cupping his head in his hands. “I’m going to kill him.”
“No wonder you preferred not to have a partner all these years,” Ben said. “What was your family told?”
“I looked up the news accounts later… They were fed a story that I was smuggling drugs on the side. I’m sure they were told that I died in the jailbreak Teach staged.”
“I’m sorry, Pilgrim.” He thought of the drawings of the girl, her imagined transition from toddler to teen, Pilgrim’s only connection to his daughter.
“So he gets you out of the way and uses my name.” Ben was quiet. “That means…” He stopped.
“Finish the sentence, Ben. It means the Lynch brothers worked for him. It means the gunmen were in Hector’s pocket, too, and he sent the gunmen into the Homeland office to kill us all. Including his own people. Just like back in Indonesia.”
Ben’s temples began a slow drumbeat pound. “You understand this goes against everything I’ve ever known about this man. He puts loyalty and country ahead of all. He kept me going when Emily died.. he was there for me…”
“You understand he spent years living a double life. Fooling you, or anyone else, is going to be easy for him. He pulled the double frame on us. It’s no coincidence Barker gave me your identity. Hector knows I’m a threat to his takeover of the Cellar. You’re somehow a threat to him, too.”
“No.”
“Those dates you showed me. You said Emily died two years ago. Same time McKeen gets bought by a mystery company. She was an accountant. Maybe she found money being used she wasn’t supposed to know about.”
“Now you’re reaching too far. Sam adored Emily.” He thought of Emily, laughing on the phone with Sam, in the minutes before the bullet ended her life. No.
“Get it through your head. You don’t truly know this guy. He’s a trained killer, Ben, and the most manipulative bastard I’ve ever known. Jackie is driving a car registered to a company he once had dealings with. He’s connected.”
Ben was silent for a long minute, thinking of Sam’s insistence on not meeting him in a public place, of the soft, bored click of the abacus while Ben had begged Sam for help. “Okay,” he finally said.
“We’re going to his house,” Pilgrim said. “Force him to tell us where Teach is.”
“No, we’re not. That’s suicide right now. His house will be a fortress. It’s also exactly what he would expect,” Ben said. “We’re going to beat him by doing what he doesn’t expect.”
29
Five past midnight, a quiet Saturday. Jackie sat and drank the shot of vodka neat. The alcohol stung the cuts in his lip but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and let them water, then blinked.
He’d escaped from the delivery van, easing out at the first stop when the deliveryman busied himself loading an oven onto the dolly. Jackie had crawled out of the truck, unseen. He spotted a busy thoroughfare a block away, which saved the trucker’s life-Jackie didn’t need to kill him to get away, and disposing of a full furniture truck would have been a hassle. Jackie walked a quarter mile, until he reached a gas station and called Hector to come pick him up.
Hector wasn’t happy that Ben was free and Jackie had lost a car. Jackie didn’t care.
He peered out the window, bored, restless, ready to hurt someone. Hector had well over a dozen security personnel-as arrogant as the British Army had been, he thought, in the Belfast of his youth-wandering the property. The men made Jackie feel safer, but their presence was a pain; he and Teach had to be kept out of sight. Hector did not want to explain to his squad of respectable former policemen and ex-military why a woman was being held against her will. No one was allowed in the main house but Hector.
Jackie downed a second shot of vodka. He got up and went downstairs to the conference room. Teach and Hector sat at the table, scribbling on a chart drawn on a plain map of the United States and Europe. It showed names connected by colored lines, notes penciled in, and Hector had taped pictures to some of the names.
“That the whole Cellar, then?” Jackie asked. “All your little spies?”
They both looked up at him.
“I have ears,” Jackie said.
“If only you were as good at the rest of your job,” Hector said. To Teach, he pointed at six names. “These six, they’ll do fine. Call them, tell them to get to New Orleans by this afternoon, come to your safe house there tonight”-he tapped an address written on a notepad-“and await further orders.”
“You said you wanted to kill people in New Orleans,” Jackie said.
“The Cellar’s going to continue its good work, Jackie. I’ve found a cell of young Arabs in New Orleans who have all snuck into the country under false ID. They’re terrorists planning to launch an attack here. You and me and our friends in the Cellar are going to kill them.”
Jackie laughed. “I’m surprised by the altruism. I don’t figure you do nothing without getting paid for it.” He smirked at Teach, who had been mostly silent, speaking only to answer questions.
“Believe me that when I say killing this group of guys is the right thing for our country.” He pushed the phone toward Teach. “Make the calls.”
He listened while she did, following his orders to the letter. She hung up.
“Very good, Teach.”
“If you know of a terrorist cell, why not simply call Homeland and tell them, let them take the risk of taking the cell down? You’d be a hero,” Teach said.
“I don’t need acclaim to be a good citizen.” He stood. “Jackie, put Teach back in her room.” He walked down to his office, closed the door. The day had not gone perfectly-nothing had since Nicky Lynch, damn him to a thousand hells, missed his shot-but the situation was salvageable. He was going to win.
He checked his messages. One from his assistant, saying an Agent Vochek with Homeland was very eager to speak with him. He deleted the message.
An array of photos stood on his walls: Hector shaking the hand of the President of the United States, posing with his contractors in the Green Zone, touring a mountain stronghold in Afghanistan. Now he would truly make his business grow again.