“Walker’s gone.” The speaker was FBI Special Agent Fiona Somerville. Tough, professional, no-nonsense, a rising super-star in the Bureau. Bobbed blonde hair, short and compact, eyes alert and probing. The listener was her boss, Bill McCorkell. A veteran of national security, he headed a secret unit within the UN that looked into global hot spots no one else would touch. He was late sixties and in demand on think tanks and foreign-policy groups, but rather than the allure of prestige and good money, he’d decided to head up this new outfit at the UN. Officially they were called Special Rapporteurs, which was a cover. What he ran was an intelligence company known simply as Room 360, named after its office number in the United Nations office in Vienna, and its members were on loan from the world’s best intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. Several investigations were ongoing, and each month he briefed the permanent members of the Security Council on what they were up to. Zodiac was their current top priority.
Fiona Somerville was the lead on the Zodiac case, now that her colleague, FBI Special Agent Andrew Hutchinson, was on medical leave to recuperate from injuries suffered in the line of duty. She had good reason to keep track of her freelance colleague Jed Walker.
“He was at LAX, picked up his ticket, never arrived in Anchorage,” Somerville said. “And I checked with the airline—he didn’t board.”
“So, he’s still in LA?”
“Maybe.” She handed over her iPad. It showed a still image of Walker being apprehended by TSA staff.
“That’s from LAX, half an hour before he was due to board,” she said.
McCorkell looked at the shot. Two uniformed TSA officers had Walker by each arm and were escorting him. To where?
“There’s no footage of him leaving,” Somerville said. “They escorted him down a hallway that led to staff areas and the tarmac. Then they took him down to the tarmac. Then they disappeared.”
“How can that be?”
“Inside help. He was made to disappear. The cameras outside terminal six were down, for five minutes. That was their window.”
McCorkell looked back to the image. To Walker’s face.
“He doesn’t seem concerned,” he said.
“He wouldn’t,” Somerville said. “He’s trained not to.”
“Right.”
“I spoke to the head of TSA there. Showed them this shot.”
“And?”
“Those guys aren’t his,” she said. “He’s triple-checking, but they’re not showing up as TSA from any place.”
“Best guess?”
“Could be anyone.”
“What’s your gut say?”
“Okay, best case, they’re working for Walker’s father. Some kind of ex-specialists that he got to do a snatch and grab or escort.”
“Sounds plausible . . .” McCorkell thought about the ramifications. About Zodiac. About what was coming next. He knew David Walker was involved in Zodiac’s originating. And maybe more. Likely more. McCorkell didn’t like unknowns, and didn’t trust what he didn’t know for certain was legit. And Zodiac, with David Walker’s faked death, was on the nose. And what didn’t add up was on McCorkell’s problem list until he knew better. “What’s your worst case for Jed?”
“Worst case is that they’re not from David—that Walker was intercepted at LAX and has been taken by the next terror cell.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Well, maybe no. I hope not. It’ll be David. He’s deceived us on this.”
“You think he may have sold us out on what was next?” Somerville asked, reading her boss. “Why?”
McCorkell nodded. “Think, no; of course he did. There was nothing happening in Alaska. He got that tip to us because he knew Walker would move there, fast. And we’d move assets.”
“Want me to get Hutchinson in?”
“No, not yet, let him recuperate or we’re going to burn him out.”
Somerville nodded. McCorkell could tell that she was thinking about her fellow FBI agent, a good operator he’d met more than ten years ago and had been working alongside almost constantly since. Hutchinson was starting to show the signs of falling apart; after sustaining serious injuries in the New York Stock Exchange bombing, the event that had put Zodiac in motion, he’d gone straight onto the net terror cell before being sidelined by McCorkell. This will be a marathon, not a sprint, McCorkell told his troops in their tri-weekly briefings. Keep sharp. Keep fresh. Reach out if you need help. Hutchinson had pulled rank, being McCorkell’s 2IC, and powered through to work on the St. Louis situation—but it had proved too much. The fact was, Hutchinson would be a good mind to have around, even at the office, but McCorkell had seen many staffers burn out too fast and too soon by pushing the envelope.
“Sir—the television,” Zoe Ledoyen said, entering the room and pointing to one of the three blank screens on McCorkell’s wall in the New York office. She had worked for fifteen-years for the French intelligence agency Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure, and via a past op that had impressed him, was now that country’s liaison with McCorkell’s UN outfit. She switched on the television, which immediately showed an image of a man wearing an orange jumpsuit.
“What channel is this?” McCorkell asked, reaching for a remote to turn up the volume.
Zoe said, “All of them.”
•
“Where am I?” Walker looked at his father, his gaze steady.
David said, “Mexico.”
“Where, specifically?”
“A house. In Rosarito.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to talk.”
Walker leaned forward, his elbows now on his knees, weight shifted. He could spring up, but even though he felt his mind running at close to a hundred percent his body was lagging, the drugs lingering. More than that, he’d been in a still, seated position for what must have been at least two hours. He moved his feet forward. They felt heavy. The sense of pins and needles ran up his calves and through his quads and hamstrings. Not good. They were seventy percent, maybe. Seventy percent reaction time for Walker would be about the same as a regular guy, but it wouldn’t be enough, not for here, not for now. He glanced behind at the two guys who had previously been in TSA uniforms and were now dressed in casual short-sleeved shorts and khaki pants. One still held a taser in his hand.
Walker said, “So, talk.”
“How are you feeling?” David asked.
“Why are we here?” Walked looked to his father. “We’re close to the border, but not in the US.”
David Walker replied, “You know that I have to be careful.”
Walker stared at him. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“Because in America you’re a dead man.” Walker watched for a reaction. None come. Back home, his father was listed as deceased, two years back. He’d gone into the woodwork and Walker was still trying to figure out why. It had everything to do with an operation labeled Zodiac. But he could not be sure what function David Walker’s “death” was serving—to help him avoid US authorities, or whoever had instigated Zodiac? Was he part of the problem, or part of the solution? Was there a difference?
“Why did you do it like this?” Walker said, motioning to the guys behind his father.
“Because we had to talk.”
“You said that.”
“I needed to talk to you, face to face.”
Silence hung in the air.
“So,” Walker said, “There’s this thing called FaceTime. Or Skype. Why like this? Needles and hoods and weapons and all?”
“One can’t be too wary with technology.”
“A phone call wouldn’t have killed you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You could have met me in Alaska.”
“No.”
“No?”
“That would be a waste of time.”
“But you had time to drug me and fly me here—what time is it?”
“Just after ten am. And you needed to hear this from me, and it had to be in person, and this was the nearest solution to meet both those needs.” David bent to his side, picked up a water bottle and gave it to his son. “And here, in Mexico, you’re closer to your objective.”
“Closer?” Walker held the bottle, which was cool and wet to the touch, and thought of Alaska. “Why don’t you tell your guys here to relax?”
“I can’t take chances.”
“You think I’d kill you?”
“You’ve had that look in your eye before.”
“My point exactly. You’re still here.”
“Jed, listen to me. I can’t ever go back to the US. Not with what I know. Not until all of this is over. And until you know what I know. I need to take every precaution.”
“What do you know?”
“I know what’s coming next.”
“And how exactly is that?”
“Patterns.”
“Ahh. And they pointed to Alaska, right? And yet here we are, detouring south of the border, in the completely wrong direction to where I need to be headed.”
David Walker shook his head. “And how do you know that you needed to get to Alaska?”
“You told us Alaska was next,” Walker said. “You told McCorkell that’s where the next Zodiac attack would occur.”
David Walker nodded, said, “And I had to tell him that.”
Walker paused, said, “A misdirection. Why?”
“Inconsequential. After you hear what I have to say, you need to get back to southern California.”
Walker watched his father for a moment, his anger building. “Your tip-off to head to Alaska was, what, a ruse?”
“Ruse, misdirection, whatever you want to call it. We had to get your UN colleagues, and whoever is watching them, out of the picture—”
“Why?”
“Or they’d shut you out of this before you even began.”
“We had to?”
“Me, and you.”
“You think we’re a team now?”
“Aren’t we?” David leaned forward. No more than two feet between father and son. “Who got you into this?”
Walker remained silent.
“Look, Jed, to get near this next Zodiac terror cell? You have to go dark. I’m talking completely off the grid. That’s no comms—no emails, no calls—and don’t let them make you,” David Walker said. “You have to work alone and become a ghost, or you’ll never get close enough to stop it in time. And what’s happening? It’s already begun. We’re on the clock and there’s less than thirty-six hours until the main event. Drink your water.”
Walker looked at the bottle a moment, as though taking it would be like sealing the alliance. But there was little option but to hear his father out and move in a new direction. He knew that David Walker was telling the truth, at least about being the one to filter information to Walker. But the trust and faith he’d had in his father his whole life had eroded over the past two years. The man he’d known growing up, a professor of international studies and senior policy adviser to every administration since Nixon, had become . . . What? A traitor? A liar? A manipulator—that was for certain. But why? That’s where he had to start. The why.
Walker drank the water, then said, “So, what is it? What’s in southern California?”
“What do you know about the Internet?”
Walker looked at him briefly. “Something to do with computers, isn’t it? Like, FaceTime and Skype and a whole other bunch of stuff you seem to know nothing about.”
David matched his son’s stare. “It makes the world go around. Without it there would be chaos.”
“Without it?”
David nodded.
“Right,” Walker said. “And your point?”
“It’s about to be switched off.”