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BY THE TIME I CAUGHT up with Regg, he was no longer in Finland. I was halfway there when a new set of coordinates were routed to my navigation system. I checked the authenticity and found that they were from Dark Sparrow. So I made the course correction toward Norway instead.
I touched down outside of Oslo, at the closest Dark Sparrow headquarters. From there, I took a car into the city and dropped it off about three blocks from my target. I was well equipped with surveillance gear and weapons. It felt marvelous to be back in the saddle again.
For so long, Clark and I had been running, making do with whatever clothing and gear we could find on our way. To have my hands on some real, authentic government equipment again was remarkable.
Rain fell as the clock ticked toward midnight. I had an earpiece in with a Dark Sparrow operative guiding me along the way. I didn’t know the man, but I reasoned that he couldn’t possibly be worse than Regg. At least he wouldn’t be trying to kill me or frame me. At least, that’s what I hoped.
“Take a left,” the man in my ear said.
I reached the next corner and did as I was told. It had been a while since I’d been in Oslo, and never in that particular neighborhood. I was flying blind and relying on Dark Sparrow’s intel to guide me. I walked up on a high rise building that looked like a set of apartments.
“Around the back is a service entrance,” my technician said.
I snuck through the alley to the back of the building and found the door he was talking about. It was locked. Going down on one knee, I pulled out my lockpicks. Making quick work of the low-tech device, I gained entrance. I was past the point of plausible deniability at that point. Anyone who saw me would know I didn’t belong.
I wore dark clothes, but nothing completely black. As long as I didn’t look like a burglar in direct light, I would be safer. I could blend into the shadows just as easily in blue and gray. Before the technician guided me to the right staircase, I could hear shouting down below. It was obviously some kind of party or gathering, and that was likely where I would find my target.
I eased my way down two flights of stairs to a sub-basement, following the noise. At the bottom, I was faced with a burly guard, who looked like he had just stepped out of the ring with a major prize fighter.
“Password?” he grumbled.
“Password?” I repeated, hoping that my contact would know the answer.
“Sunrise,” the technician whispered.
“Sunrise,” I repeated in English.
The bodyguard stood aside, allowing me entrance. I pressed ahead, pretending like I was on the guest list. I had no idea what I would be walking into, but I could tell from the raised voices that it was pretty rowdy.
Inside, the ceiling was low. The air smelled like mold and sweat. There was no furniture and nothing but a cement floor stretching away into the distance. A small crowd was gathered in the basement, euros in every fist. I heard a scuffle, and when people on the front lines drew back, I caught a glimpse of two fighters in a painted ring.
They were each bare-chested, one of the guys wearing bandages on his hands. Blood streaked both faces, and there were bruises evident from fights a long time ago. One guy was massive, but the other was cut, so it looked like they were evenly matched.
I scanned the arena, searching for my prey. If he wasn’t there, I could wait for him. It wasn’t a difficult scene to blend into. As long as I didn’t call attention to myself, I could move past the spectators to get a better view.
There weren’t any women, and most of the men looked like they had served time. I wasn’t shocked that Regg would have found his way to this rat hole. He was just the kind of guy who would put money on an illegal fight. Even back when we were friends, I knew his tendencies ran toward violence.
Pretending to pay attention to the fight, I circled the ring. It was drawn on the cement in white paint, providing almost no separation between the fighters and the crowd. A cheer went up when one of the opponents landed a punch. And there was an answering boo from the opposite side of the room.
I caught sight of him in one corner, talking secretively to a shorter man. He had his hand out, asking for payment. It looked like a separate transaction that didn’t have anything to do with the fight. Not that I cared.
After all the time I’d spent running from the government, accused of crimes I didn’t commit, I had found him. I narrowed my eyes and closed in on him before he could react. He looked up at the last minute, so focused on his shakedown of the other person that he didn’t see me at first.
By the time I reached him, it was too late. I shoved my gun in his rib cage and grabbed him by the collar. “Hello, Regg. Long time, no see.”
He choked on his reaction. Apparently, I was the last person he’d expected to find that night. Before he could say anything or draw attention to us, I pushed him out the far door into the opposite stairwell.
There was another guard on that side, but he couldn’t see the gun. I muttered something unintelligible, pretending to be drunk. The guard frowned but didn’t react, allowing us to slide by and mount the stairs in peace.
“Theo,” Regg said, regaining control of his voice.
“Not now,” I growled, shoving him up ahead of me.
“Hey, man, I meant to contact you,” Regg tried, apparently mistaking me for some other gangster that he was involved with.
On the ground floor, I found a public bathroom and pushed him inside. Locking the door behind me, I turned on him with a vengeance.
“I bet you never expected to see me alive,” I taunted.
“Hey, I don’t think you understand,” he tried, his brain slowly catching up to the fact that I meant business. “It wasn’t like that. I was betrayed by the same people who betrayed you.”
“Save it,” I snapped. “I’m only interested in one thing.”
“What’s that?” he wanted to know, playing like he was willing to make concessions.
“Where is New Dawn’s headquarters?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he lied.
I hit him on the head with the gun, sending him spinning into the wall. He righted himself, putting his hands up to defend himself.
“I’m going to put this in words you can understand,” I said slowly. “If you don’t tell me where I can find New Dawn, you’re never getting out of this bathroom alive.”
“I can’t tell you.” Regg changed tactics, now trying to appeal to my merciful side. “They’ll kill me.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I reminded him. “Your choice: die now or die later.”
“That’s not fair,” Regg complained.
“What’s not fair is you trying to kill me and then framing me for murder,” I replied.
“They’re fighting for a world without borders,” Regg said, trying to convince me to betray humanity.
I shook my head, not wanting this to go any further. I had a certain familiarity with torture, as did every spy, but what I didn’t have was time. I pulled a silencer out of my pocket and screwed it onto the end of my gun. Regg watched me do it in horror, realizing what was about to happen. That act alone loosened his jaw, and he began spilling all the secrets that Ashcroft and others were trying to keep hidden.
“It’s on a remote island in the Norwegian Sea,” he blubbered. “I have the coordinates right here.” He fumbled into his jacket and produced a phone.
“Slide it over,” I instructed.
He lowered himself to the ground, his hand shaking. Pushing the phone across the floor, he only made it halfway. It stopped in the middle near the drain and sat there. Regg got stupid and attempted to use it as a distraction. He darted toward a stall, but I fired off a shot that hit the wall beside him, halting him in his tracks.
“Why did you kill all those agents?” I demanded. Now that he was willing to talk, I wanted all my questions answered.
“Ashcroft ordered it,” Regg said desperately.
“Why?” I snapped.
“Because they outlived their usefulness,” Regg replied.
“And what was in their shoulders?” I requested, eager to know the answer before making quick work of my enemy.
“Implants,” he offered.
“Trackers?” I asked.
“Not trackers,” he corrected. “Digital keys.”
“Explain,” I commanded.
“Ashcroft is positioning weapons around the world, creating a network. When he’s ready, they will all be deployed simultaneously,” Regg spilled his guts, giving me all the details in the hopes that I would be persuaded to spare his life. “Each of the agents had a separate key. But Clark has the master. He needs her if he’s going to detonate them all.”
“If each agent had a separate key, why did you kill them?” I questioned, trying to put all the pieces together into a coherent whole.
“If an agent plays along, and is on the right side of history, we let them live. But if they don’t, we just take the key back and do away with the host,” Regg replied, giving me a sinister little smile that did nothing for his cause.
“But Clark hasn’t seen Ashcroft for years,” I argued.
“How long do you think he’s been planning this?” Regg gasped. “He’s been at this for more than two decades. The dude is crazy.”
“He may be crazy, but at least he’s not a traitor,” I concluded. “He never pretended to be anything else.”
“You don’t know him,” Regg said, shaking a finger at him.
“And I don’t intend to,” I replied.
“Take me with you,” Regg requested. He could see my intentions clear as day and wanted to forestall the inevitable. “I could be a valuable source of information.”
“I don’t think so,” I cut him off. “You made a fatal mistake when you tried to kill me and Clark.”
“I was just following orders,” he complained.
“They were the wrong orders to follow,” I answered, firing two quick shots directly into his brain.
I was done with the conversation. I was done with Regg and all his fanaticism. He’d picked his team and made his bed, and I wasn’t going to encourage that kind of behavior. I knew all along that I wasn’t going to bring him back alive. I would make up some excuse for George and Lukas, telling them that my hand had been forced. It would be days before they realized what happened, and by then it would be too late.
I had the location of the New Dawn fortress, and an insight into Ashcroft’s plan. It was time to return to Clark and let her know what I’d found out. I hoped that we would be able to extract the key from her shoulder and get her out from under Ashcroft’s thumb.
As long as we had the key, we still had the upper hand. It was that fact, along with my love for Clark, that kept me going. I retrieved the phone from where it lay on the ground, pressed Regg’s thumb print to the home button to unlock the device, and scrolled until I found what I needed. Then I put the phone in my pocket and walked out the door.
