James Patterson
Fear No Evil
Chapter 1
Washington, DC
Late June
Matthew Butler cocked his head to one side, considering the big-boned blonde in front of him. She was handcuffed and shackled to a heavy oak chair bolted into the concrete floor beneath bright fluorescent lights.
If the woman was anxious about her predicament, she wasn’t showing it in the least. She was as chill as the yoga outfit she wore. No sweat on her pale brow. Beneath her warm-up hoodie, her chest rose and fell calmly, each breath measured. Her shoulders were relaxed. Even her eyes looked soft.
Butler adjusted the strap of his shoulder holster.
“I know they’ve trained you for this sort of thing,” he said in a voice with the slightest of Western twangs. “But your training won’t work against me, Catherine. It never does.”
A fit, balding man with a hawkish nose, Butler had workman’s hands and wore black jeans, Nike running shoes, and a dark blue polo shirt. He crossed his thick forearms when she smiled back at him with brilliant white teeth.
“Whoever you are, you are going to be destroyed for what you’re doing,” Catherine Hingham said. “When they find out—”
Butler cut her off. “You know, in my many years as a professional, Catherine, I have come to rather enjoy the delicate process of breaking into hearts and minds. They are very much interlinked, you know — hearts and minds — and I have found that one is almost always the key to the other.”
“Langley will annihilate you,” Hingham said, studying Butler as if she wanted to remember every line in his face.
“Your operators won’t help you today,” Butler said, gesturing at a pile of blank paper and a pen on the table before her. “Tell me the truth and we can all move on with our lives.”
“I’ll say it again: You have no jurisdiction over me.”
Butler chuckled, gestured around the room. “Oh, but in here, I do.”
“I want to see a lawyer, then.”
“I’m sure,” he said, sobering. “But we’re talking about a serious threat to our national security, Catherine. A few rules of engagement can and will be broken in order to thwart that threat.”
“I am not a national security threat,” she said evenly. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, with the highest clearances, in support of my country’s freedoms. Your freedoms as well.”
“That’s what makes your traitorous actions so hard to understand, Catherine.”
Her face reddened and she shifted in her chair. “I am no traitor.”
Butler took a step toward her. “The hell you’re not. We know about the Maldives.”
Hingham blinked, furrowed her brow. “The Maldives? Like, the islands in the Indian Ocean?”
“The same.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never been to the Maldives. I’ve never even been to India.”
“No?”
“Never. You can talk to my case officers about it.”
“I plan to at some point,” Butler said, taking another step toward her. He reached down to touch the back of her left hand before letting his finger trail across her wedding band and modest engagement ring. “Does he know? Your husband?”
“That I work for the CIA?” she said. “Yes. But he has zero idea what I actually do. Those are the rules. We play by them.”
Butler sighed as he gently took hold of her left pinkie with his leathery hand, thumb on top.
“Do you know the surest way to sever the connection between the body and mind, and therefore the heart?”
“No,” she said.
“Pain,” Butler said. He gripped her little finger tight and levered his thumb sharply downward until he heard a bone snap.
Chapter 2
Catherine Hingham screamed in agony, fighting against her restraints, then yelled at him, “You cannot do this! This is the United States of America and I’m a sworn officer of the Central—”
Butler broke her ring finger, then waited for her to stop screaming and crying.
“You have eight fingers left, Catherine,” Butler said calmly. “I will break them all and if you still do not tell me what I want to know, I will have your five-year-old daughter brought here and I will begin breaking her tiny fingers one by one until you confess.”
The CIA officer stared at him in disgust and horror. “Emily has cerebral palsy.”
“I know.”
“You wouldn’t. It’s... monstrous.”
“It is,” he said and sighed again. “And yet, because there is so much at stake, Catherine, I will break your little girl’s fingers. But only if you make it necessary.”
The CIA officer continued to stare at him for several moments. He gazed back at her evenly until her lower lip trembled and she hung her head.
“The costs,” Hingham whispered hoarsely. “You have no idea what a child like Em...” She could not go on and broke down sobbing.
“The heart wins again,” Butler said. He pushed the pile of blank pages in front of her. “Start writing. The Maldives. The numbered accounts. Their connections. All of it.”
After a few moments, Catherine Hingham calmed enough to raise her head. “I need witness protection.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Butler said and held out the pen to her. “Now write.”
The CIA officer reached out with both handcuffed hands shaking. She took the pen. “Please,” she said. “My family doesn’t deserve what will happen if—”
“Write,” he said firmly. “And I’ll see what I can do.”
The CIA officer reluctantly began to scribble names, addresses, account numbers, and more. When she’d moved to a second page, Butler had seen enough to be satisfied.
He walked behind the CIA officer and nodded to a small camera mounted high in the corner of the room.
A gravelly male voice came through the tiny earbud Butler wore in his left ear. “Mmmm. Well done. When you have what we need, end the interview and file your report, please.”
Butler nodded again before moving in front of Catherine Hingham. She set her pen down and pushed the pages across the table at him.
“That’s it,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Everything I know.”
“Unlikely,” Butler said, using the nail of his index finger to lift up the first sheet so he could scan the information she’d provided on page two. “But this looks useful enough for now. It will give us leverage. Was that so hard, Catherine?”
She relaxed a little and said, “Okay, then, I’ve given you what you wanted. Now I need a doctor to fix my hand. I need witness protection.”
With his fingernail, Butler scooted the confession pages to the far right of the table. “You’re a smart woman, Catherine. Well educated. Yale, if I remember. You should know your history better. We don’t protect traitors in the United States of America. From Benedict Arnold on, they’ve all had to pay the price. And now, so will you.”
The CIA officer looked confused and then terrified when Butler took a step back and drew a stubby pistol with a sound suppressor from his shoulder holster.
“No, please, my kids are—” she managed before he took aim and shot her between the eyes.
Chapter 3
From the time we’d met as ten-year-olds, John Sampson, my best friend and long-term DC Metro Police partner, had been stoic, quiet, observant. Since his wife, Billie, had died, he’d become even more reserved and was now given to long bouts of brooding silence. I knew he was still wrestling with grief.
But that late-June morning, Big John was acting as wound up as a kid about to hit the front gates of Disney World as he bopped around my front room, where we’d laid out all our gear for a trip we’d been talking about taking for years.