Although I’m quite pissed at Troy, our current predicament urges me to do as he says, for now anyway. Besides, I seem to be more concerned about having found Karen and what that means to my new relationship with Rachel than my anger toward Troy. So I’m off to the kitchen while Rachel secures her former boss.
I snag a bottle from the refrigerator, a cube of ice from the freezer, and return to the sofa, where I sit on the edge and rest Karen’s head on my lap. As I do this I glance over at Rachel, who is duct-taping Moron Man to the chair, though she manages to shoot me a brief you-and-I have-to-talk-soon stare. I simply shrug and give her a we-don’t-have-a-choice-but-wait look.
Twisting the cap, I tilt the bottle over Karen’s lips, wetting them. One drop ventures over that damned chocolate freckle as her lips move, then part.
I slide the ice cube over the bruise on her forehead, an action that causes her to flinch, to moan, which also makes her stir in her sleep. Keeping the ice on her forehead, I place my free hand on the side of her face, something I never thought I’d get to do again. Despite the year we’ve been apart, she looks the same. No, change that. She actually looks better, her skin a golden bronze, almost as if she had just returned from a vacation in the Caribbean, and her hair is blond and brushed straight back.
Karen opens her eyes, though not all the way, just mere slits, but staring at me without any expression, blinking, her focus slowly returning. I realize that her eyes are blue, not brown, as I remember them. She’s wearing contact lenses.
“Tom?” she mumbles. “It . . . is . . . you.”
“Hey, stranger,” I say, unable to suppress a smile. “Glad to see you rejoining the living.”
“I . . . the crash . . . what happened?”
“You slammed into that truck pretty hard,” I say.
“How . . . how did I get here?” she asks, licking her lips, swallowing, clearing her throat.
“I carried you.”
“You did?”
“It was either that or leave you at the mercy of the bad guys,” I say while staring into those eyes that I dreamed about on so many lonely nights on that beach in El Salvador.
She gives me her best attempt at a smile and says, “Thanks, Tom, you were always—” She stops and closes her eyes, cringing in obvious pain.
“Easy now. You got a pretty bad headache, huh?” I say, bringing a finger to her right temple and slowly rubbing it just as I used to do in the old days.
“A real bad one,” she replies. “You were always . . . able to tell.”
“You got a pretty nasty concussion. Looks like the car you were in had the air bags disabled. You’re lucky you were still wearing that scooter helmet.”
“Your hair,” she says. “It’s—”
“Shaved it off to change my looks. And you look great as a blonde.”
She smiles and I smile back. Damn, I really miss this woman. And as I’m thinking this I start to feel guilty. After all, less than twelve hours ago I was sucking face with Rachel Muratani.
I glance over at Rachel, who is wrapping duct tape over Morotski’s chest, before running it around the back of the chair and coming around to the front, overlapping the initial wrap, securing his chest to the chair. His arms and legs are already taped down.
“Hey, Rachel,” I say, waving her over. “Come and meet Karen Frost.”
Rachel gives her duct tape work a final check and then walks over to us.
“Karen, this is Rachel Muratani, the operative who brought me back into this wonderful business.”
I feel as if the world is standing still as the two measure each other before exchanging a brief nod. The troubles of our world momentarily fade away as my senses focus on the two ladies checking each other out.
“Hi,” says Rachel, the contempt she had shown earlier totally gone. “It’s a pleasure meeting you.”
“Hello,” replies Karen, a little curtly, though it’s hard to tell if that’s because of the way she currently feels or because by now she probably heard that I’ve spent a lot of time with Rachel.
They just stare at each other. Rachel, to her credit, decides to try again, saying, “Looks like we’re all in the same boat now.”
Karen closes her eyes and nods.
“That noggin looks very painful,” Rachel says. “We need to find you some painkillers.”
“It’s all right. I’ve been worse,” Karen replies, still showing an edge.
“Hey!” shouts Troy in his booming voice, storming into the living room hauling another body.
“Who is that?” I ask.
Troy doesn’t reply. Instead, he takes the unconscious man, whose face I can’t see, to the bedroom and drops him on the bed before calling out, “Get me some duct tape, would you?”
Rachel grabs the gray roll and goes into the bedroom, leaving Karen and me alone on the sofa.
An instant later Troy sticks his big bald head out of the room and says to us, “If you’re through socializing, we’ve got work to do.”
Karen takes my hand and I help her sit up.
“Feeling good enough?”
She nods. “Just give me a minute. Go help Troy.”
I do, walking into the room and freezing.
Lying in bed, his ankles and wrists already secured to the bedposts, is none other than Rem Vlachko.
“Finish taping him up and leave him here,” says Troy to Rachel, before approaching me. “I hit him pretty hard. He’ll be out for a couple of hours.”
“You—you caught Vlachko? How did you—?” I start to say, my mind still trying to digest the fact that Troy has really captured Rem Vlachko.
“Thanks for pointing out the obvious, Tommy,” Troy interrupts, before adding, “Now, give me a hand, would you?” He holds a brown case, which he takes with him to the living room, setting it down next to Ken Morotski.
As I’m standing there totally stupefied that my old mentor has actually bagged Vlachko, the legend, the monster—just like that—Troy is busy snapping the latches of the case and fishing through its contents.
Turning to Karen, Troy says, “We need to remove his implants before someone blasts him. If you’re through resting, please fetch me another Coke. Same drill as before.”
“What about Vlachko?” I say, stretching a thumb toward the bedroom. “Doesn’t he also have—”
“Nope. I checked him. He’s clean. No implants. But Kenny here is loaded.”
No further explanation is needed as he hands me a tool that’s obviously made to remove nanolenses.
Karen heads for the kitchen while I’m still trying to catch up with current events, working on Morotski’s eyes. Troy digs for oil in the bastard’s left ear.
I peel off the right lens and drop it in the glass of Coke Karen has just poured. Rachel stands beside me looking on with interest. I’d give my left nut to know what’s going through her mind, and my other to get inside Karen’s head.
Troy is filmed with sweat as he focuses on the right ear while I work on Morotski’s left eye, also removing the lens. Then Troy switches instruments and works on the guy’s mouth while I hold the jaws open.
Troy stands and heads for the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bottle of Evian.
“What about the wrist implant?” asks Rachel.
“In a moment,” replies Troy, opening the bottle and taking a sip before wiping off his bald head with the sleeve of his shirt. “I want to wait until he can see again.”
“Why?” asks Rachel.
“The pain is going to wake him up,” I reply. “We want him to see us the moment he does come around to maximize the shock prior to the start of our interrogation.”
“Glad to see that some of the things I’ve taught you did stick.”
“Well, before I nominate you for teacher of the year you need to explain to this humble student why you fucked him a year ago in Singapore.”
Troy nods. “All in good time, Tommy. All in good time.”
“How did you capture Vlachko?” I ask.
“You know better than to ask me that, Tommy. A good magician never reveals his best tricks.”
“Always keep them guessing, huh, Troy?”
He smiles while patting me on the shoulder. “Can I count on you to play good-cop-bad-cop with me on him?”
I stare down at the unconscious Morotski before replying, “Only if I get to do the slapping.”
Exactly fifteen minutes later, Troy seals Morotski’s mouth with a strip of duct tape to keep him from screaming, before he produces a scalpel and making a shallow incision about two inches long on top of Morotski’s right wrist, which bleeds green before scorching the skin.
“Hey, Tommy, wanna bet he cracks like a dry twig in the middle of a Texas summer?”
I ignore him while staring at my own two wrists, remembering just how painful that is. But the memory actually makes me feel damned good as Morotski stirs in his sleep, the pain obviously waking him up, just as Troy had predicted it would.
“Hey, lamebrain,” Troy says, standing in front of the man who’d replaced him at the CIA.
Karen and Rachel flank me while we stand to the side, letting Troy kick off this show.
Morotski blinks, then looks about him, finally zeroing in on us, obviously confused. He tries to move and can’t, then starts to moan, his eyes finally landing on Troy’s large frame.
My former boss takes a knee, his goatee widening as he grins. “Hey, bud, how have you been?”
More moans.
Troy makes a face while placing a hand around his own ear and says, “What? I can’t hear you, man. You’re going to have to speak a little louder.”
The moans intensify, turning into grunts.
Troy reaches for Morotski’s face and pulls the duct tape in a single motion, ripping it off his face, along with chunks of skin and lips.
“Aghh . . . son of a bitch!”
Joining the show, I lean forward and slap Morotski hard on the back of the head.
“Watch your tone with the man, moron!” I add.
“All of you are going to be sorry for—”
Whack!
“Hey, motherfucker, you can’t do that to—”
Whack!
Morotski gets the message and shuts up, his eyes mere slices of glinting anger gravitating between Troy and me, then to Rachel and Karen, both of whom burn him right back with their stares.
“I’m glad we now understand each other,” Troy says.
“Kenny, Kenny,” I say. “I guess you never learned your lesson in Madras, buddy. You just ain’t cut out for field operations.”
“Now, Kenny,” Troy pitches in, “what shall we talk about?”
Morotski shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” Troy asks.
“It’s over. It’s done. It no longer matters what I know or don’t know.”
“Why don’t you leave that up to us?” I say.
“You don’t understand who these people are, Tom,” he says, his voice trembling a bit. Either he is pretending to be afraid or Troy was right in guessing that the man would cave quickly, even before the real interrogation started.
Morotski tries to talk, but he has a piece of flesh dangling over his lip from the way Troy ripped the duct tape. Blood trickles down his chin and neck.
I reach down and tear it off.
“Aghh, fuck!” Morotski shouts, his face twisting in pain. “You’re going to burn for that, Tom.”
I grin at my former colleague.
“Karen,” says Troy, “why don’t you get me the first-aid kit that’s in the bathroom on this floor, please.”
She nods and disappears into the bedroom, returning a moment later with a white case, which she opens and lets Troy fish through.
Armed with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and gauze, Troy says, “All right, Kenny. Start talking. Who else is in on this at the CIA?”
Morotski just stares back.
Troy soaks the gauze and presses it over the man’s mouth and chin while I hold his head steady.
Groans fill the room. Morotski tries to twist, to turn, to free himself from the restraints, his blue eyes bulging, his face contorted in the pain he can’t scream, his hands tight fists of agonizing pain.
We back off after thirty seconds, leaving him breathing in short gasps, bloody lips and chin trembling.
“Bast—bastards . . . you’re a bunch of—”
Whack!
Breathing deeply, taking the pain, Ken Morotski stares back at us, his eyes filmed with tears, though it’s hard to tell if they’re from anger, fear, or pain.
Probably all of the above.
As Morotski catches his breath, Troy nods to Karen while looking toward the wall unit in between the panoramic windows overlooking the Sacré-Coeur.
She steps over to it and throws a switch while pointing at the upper-left corner of the room, where I spot a tiny camera aimed at Morotski.
It’s show time.
“You are all doomed,” Morotski finally says. “Hartmann is already in power. Germany is his to govern, and none of you can do a damned thing about it.”
I frown inwardly, refusing to believe that this moron has been in charge of Counterterrorism for the past year. The idiot is spilling his guts before we have even started asking questions.
“From the top, Kenny,” says Troy. “You’re going to tell us everything, and you had better not bullshit us, because after you’re through talking, we’re going to use this.” Troy taps a black case, which he then opens for Morotski and the rest of us to see.
Chemicals.
The words come to me before I know it, and I find myself saying, “The drugs will make you tell the truth, moron. If you lie to us now we’ll find out later, and when you’re under, and after we’re through extracting the truth, we’re going to OD your ass, turn you into an eggplant.”
“Eggplant, Kenny,” says Troy. “A fucking eggplant.”
Morotski is breathing so heavily now that I think he’s going to hyperventilate.
“You don’t understand,” he finally says, totally breaking down now, lowering his gaze to the hardwood floor. “They know everything about me, everything about the personal life of every last person in their operation. They know where I live, where my wife shops, where my kids go to school. They even know where my parents live in a condo in Florida. They will kill them. Oh, sweet Jesus. They will kill them all!”
Troy glances in my direction and raises a brow before running a hand over his bald head, apparently contemplating his next move.
Karen decides to step in and says, “We can offer protection, Ken. You help us and we’ll take your family into protective custody.”
Morotski slowly lifts his head, eyes glistening with a mix of terror and dark amusement. “The Witness Protection Program? Might as well kill me now. At least my family will be spared.”
“Not if we get to Hartmann and his goons first,” says Rachel, standing next to Karen. “We can do it if you help us.”
“That’s right, Kenny,” says Troy. “We know far more about your operation than you think.”
“What can you possibly know?” asks Morotski. “You vanished a year ago.”
“That’s right,” says Troy. “I vanished at the request of Donald Bane.”
What?
Did I just hear him say that he vanished a year ago at the request of DCI Bane?
I stare at Rachel, who just stares back, equally confused. Karen also appears confused, but all of us know better than to say a thing. We follow Troy’s lead, pretending to be in the know of whatever he’s trying to pull.
Morotski, looking as puzzled as I feel, finally says, “You’re in cahoots with Bane?”
Troy smiles. “Didn’t see that one coming, huh, sport?”
Morotski is obviously perplexed. “What . . . what about the others, your old team?”
“All of them are still alive and well, and they will be joining me soon . . . except for the Peruvian twins, whom you bastards killed at my safe house on the Rue de Ponthieu yesterday.”
Morotski opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Then, “But . . . but Bane . . . he has been acting on our advice, on our . . . damn, he never once gave out even a hint of wariness. We never suspected . . .”
That’s a real CIA officer for you, asshole, I think.
“Who is we, Ken?” Rachel asks, grabbing his face and turning it toward her. She looks very pissed. “How many people in my investigative team were in on this? And how about Leyman?”
Morotski’s eyes shift in my direction, his bleeding lips hesitating.
“It’s no use resisting,” Rachel says, letting go of his face. “It’s time to come clean.”
Closing his eyes, Morotski says, “Leyman. He is the main guy.”
“Who else?” asks Rachel, who has apparently decided to temporarily take over the interrogation not just to my delight but also to Troy’s and Karen’s.
Morotski spills out seven more names, and I recognize one in addition to Leyman: Wayne Larson, the CIA liaison at United States Nanotechnology.
Rachel jots down the names on a napkin and then says, “I know these men. Except for Larson, they were all aboard that yacht in El Salvador, Tom.”
Rachel and I exchange a glance. It sure sounds like Morotski is telling the truth, but Troy slowly shakes his head, apparently not yet convinced.
“You had better be telling me the truth, Kenny,” Troy says, “for your family’s sake. See, I will contact Bane within the hour and get the CIA to pull your family into custody. If your list of names is accurate and complete, then those officers dispatched to protect your family will be real operatives, who will do their jobs. But if you’re holding out on us, if you left one or more names off that list, then word of your family’s whereabouts is likely to reach those moles, who will then convey their information to your old pals at CyberWerke. Are we clear?”
Morotski slowly nods. “Crystal. The list is complete as far as the Agency is concerned. I can’t vouch for any CyberWerke moles inside the FBI.”
“We’re taking care of the Bureau through a separate investigation,” says Karen.
We are?
“Back to CyberWerke,” says Troy, refocusing the discussion. “Tell us everything you know. Everything.”
Morotski starts, his voice trembling at times, the enormous stress apparent. He takes over twenty minutes to tell his tale, the sequence of events that led to Leyman’s initial recruiting, followed by Morotski’s, and then the rest of their inner circle’s. By the time Director Martin Jacobs had begun to get suspicious, Leyman and his gang had been at it for nearly six months, entrenching themselves deeper than an Alabama tick, slowly sucking blood—intelligence—out of the Agency and conveying it to CyberWerke.
And that, of course, was just the intelligence they got from the CIA. I’m sure that CyberWerke penetrated other intelligence services around the world, collecting the kind of information that allowed the German conglomerate to get the upper hand on the competition, to learn where the political climate was right to strike, to learn where the next revolutions were expected to take place, to learn which foreign corporations were under investigation for financing terrorist groups. And Rolf Hartmann, through his shadowy partner, Christoff Deppe—and the foot soldiers from his head of security, Hans Goering—used the intelligence to position CyberWerke globally, to expand its operations, to seemingly appear to always be a step ahead of the pack.
“They are everywhere,” Morotski says. “Everywhere. Their resources are vast, way beyond what little they let us see. They have weapons, tons and tons of weapons, and they also have the armies to use them to fight against anyone who dares stand in their way.”
“Armies?” Troy asks. “What armies?”
“Those of the countries they own, countries where CyberWerke had stepped in and built factories, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals. While the rest of the world, the United States included, tried to forget about so many lesser nations of the world, CyberWerke went in, using their seemingly endless source of cash, and revived them, brought them back from the brink of famine, of political and military havoc, giving them once more a purpose, a reason to exist, to live. In return, Hartmann got their loyalty.”
I was about to ask what sort of weapons they possessed when I remember that CyberWerke’s weapons division makes everything from submarines to fighter jets. Over the past ten years, CyberWerke has absorbed just about every non-American weapons manufacturer, including those in Russia, France, Italy, and Great Britain.
As Morotski went through the list of countries that were likely to step up in defense of Rolf Hartman’s Germany should America try to attack him, Troy locks eyes with me, the message loud and clear. This is one of those battles that couldn’t be fought—much less won—openly. CyberWerke had certainly thought through everything.
But if there was one thing that I learned after so many years of clandestine operations, it’s that every giant had a weakness, and it was up to us to find where, just where, the Achilles’ heel of CyberWerke was.