Bourne and Kenna crossed to the greenway on the Hudson at Laight Street. The river was agitated in the wind and had a salty ocean smell. Lights glowed on the Jersey side of the water, and the brightness of One World Trade Center dominated the skyline directly ahead of them. A few late-night bicyclists and joggers passed them on the trail. Bourne kept his leather jacket hung over his right arm, covering the Sig that was in his hand. His eyes moved constantly, watching the shadows.
“So who are you?” Kenna asked.
She hadn’t said much since they’d left the club together. She’d avoided talking to her friends, who obviously suspected that she was on her way to a one-night stand. Her blue leather coat was buttoned to her neck, and she kept her arms tightly nestled together. She bowed her head and looked down at the sidewalk as they walked.
“You’re not a fed,” she went on. “If you were, I’d already be under arrest.”
“Who I am doesn’t matter. What matters to me is finding Lennon.”
Kenna shook her head. “I don’t know who that is.”
“You can do better than that. I was watching you in Iceland, Kenna. That man scared you. That tells me you know who he is and what he does.”
“Not necessarily. I’m scared of you, but I don’t know who you are.”
“Drop the little-girl innocence. I’m not buying it. Lennon kills people. You were terrified he was going to kill you.”
Her blue eyes flashed with a momentary defiance. “What about you? Do you kill people, too?”
He shifted his jacket and let her see the gun. “Yes.”
Kenna paled. Her makeup had run where she’d been crying. She veered to the railing at the water, and her knees buckled. He thought she might throw up. “Fuck all of this,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it’s gone this far. I never wanted any of this. Just shoot me if you want. You’re going to do it anyway.”
“I told you, I’m not going to hurt you. But I need your help.”
“And I told you, I don’t know anything! That’s deliberate. Don’t you get it? They want me in the dark, so that when someone like you comes along, I don’t have anything to give you. You called the man Lennon. That means nothing to me. Was I afraid of him? Yes. One look at that smile of his, and I was practically peeing myself. Believe me, I don’t need to be a fucking spy to know what a killer looks like. But I don’t know anything about him, or what he did, or how to find him.”
Bourne sighed. He realized that Kenna wasn’t lying. Underneath the games they’d forced her to play, she was still an amateur. They’d taken a sweet girl and manipulated her into being a courier.
“How did it start?” he asked.
“Why do you care? What difference does it make?”
“Because the more I know about what they did to you, the better chance I have of finding a connection to Lennon.”
Kenna shrugged. “It was my fault. I fucked up.”
“How?”
“I started at the Forster Group fresh out of grad school five years ago. Master’s in journalism from Columbia. Darrell recruited me himself. He said they were looking for activist communicators, people who wanted to make a difference. That was me. I mean, working in New York right out of school, with a job at one of the top agencies in the country? I thought I was pretty hot shit.”
“What happened?”
“Darrell sent me on a pro bono assignment to Minnesota. We were representing Native groups and environmental activists trying to stop a pipeline. I asked him about tactics, and he said not to waste his time talking to him about specific plans. My job was to stop the pipeline. He told me to get it done.”
“And did you?”
“No. We lost. But a couple of the protesters who were really on the fringe wanted to stage a false flag incident. Create an accident that could be blamed on the construction company, and use that to halt the project. I was young and stupid, and Darrell said my job was to do whatever was necessary to stop the pipeline. So I helped them. They wanted to make it look like a propane explosion breached the line. Except it went wrong. They blew themselves up instead. Man and a woman, both dead.”
“What happened to you?”
Kenna laughed sourly. “Nothing. My role in it never came out. I mean, I figured I was done. Prison for twenty years. Instead, I walked away free as a bird. Two people dead, and me, I got a bonus for getting the protests covered on 60 Minutes. Darrell said I had a great future at the agency.”
Bourne held up his hand to stop her. He heard something from the trees near the greenway. His finger slid onto the trigger of his Sig. He took a few steps away from the water, watching for movement in the shadows. Nothing caught his eye, and yet the sound recurred, a stifled whimper, like a dog being restrained.
He returned to the river, where Kenna breathed loudly and nervously. Her pretty nose had begun to run. “What is it?”
“Maybe nothing. I’m not sure.”
“Sometimes I feel like people watch me,” she said. “Is that paranoid?”
Jason wanted to laugh. This girl was paying off professional killers, and she wondered if she was crazy to think people were spying on her. “No, it’s not paranoid. But go on. Quickly. What happened next?”
“Two years ago, they reached out to me.”
“ ‘They’?”
She shrugged. “Whoever they are. I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
“I was living in a cheap apartment in Newark. I came home and found somebody had broken in. They left an envelope for me. Documents, photos, screenshots of texts and emails between me and the pipeline protesters. It was everything the police needed to arrest me for murder. And there was a number for me to call. Believe me, I called.”
Bourne shook his head. “A deal with the devil.”
“Yeah. I have no idea who I talked to. Some man with a smooth voice. He sounded a lot older. He said I had a choice. Say yes, and I’d have plenty of money, and they’d buy me a nice condo in the city, and all I would have to do is make anonymous deliveries for them from time to time. Say no, and I’d be spending the next few years of my life in a federal prison. I didn’t have to think about it. I said yes.”
“How does it work?” Bourne asked.
Kenna opened her purse and produced a gold key about two inches long. “You know those Pop’n Drop stores around the city? They’re like PO boxes for documents and packages. Open twenty-four/seven. They gave me this key. Every few days, I get a phone call, a wrong number, spam call, whatever. The caller gives me a code for which location to visit. The box number is always the same. One fifty-six. That box matches my key. As soon as I get the call, I go to the store, open the box, and there’s an envelope waiting for me, plus a location and time. I go to the rendezvous, and somebody meets me. I give them the envelope, no questions asked. That’s all I do.”
“Is it the same person who meets you?”
“No. Never. They’re always different.”
“Have you ever opened the envelopes?”
“They’re sealed. If I open it, they’ll know. They made it clear that if I ever opened an envelope, that was the end of the arrangement and the end of me. I was pretty sure they weren’t talking about prison at that point. They’d kill me.”
“And you make these deliveries regularly?”
“Yes. Several times a month.”
Bourne processed the strategy in his head. It was a standard cutout arrangement, using a go-between who had no knowledge of the sender or the recipient. If Kenna was discovered by anyone, she couldn’t expose any part of the operation. On the other hand, the volume of deliveries didn’t sound like it originated with Lennon. His involvement appeared to be the exception rather than the rule. That meant this scheme was likely being run by whoever had hired Lennon.
Hired him to kill, which was what Lennon did. But kill who?
“What about Iceland?” Bourne asked. “Was that a typical drop?”
Kenna shook her head. “No! I’ve never had to do anything like that before. That’s why I was so scared. I got the daypack, plus first-class airline tickets to Reykjavík and hotel and rental car reservations. There was a note explaining exactly what I had to do. The first time I laid eyes on this Lennon was when I met him at the lava fields. Don’t you see? I can’t help you!”
“Just keep talking. Do you have any idea who’s behind this?”
The girl pushed up the sleeve of her coat. “The only thing I know about them is that they made me get this.”
In the glow of the city lights, Bourne saw a small tattoo on the girl’s inner arm, done in purple ink. He recognized the Eye of Providence from the top of the pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar bill. But the triangle was upside down, the long base at the top.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Have you ever seen anyone else with it?”
Kenna shook her head. “No.”
Bourne felt frustrated; the people behind this operation had covered their tracks well. “What about the drops? The materials they give you? Have you ever seen the person who places the envelopes in the boxes for you?”
She flushed and didn’t answer immediately.
“Don’t hold out on me, Kenna.”
The girl chewed her lip nervously. “Yes, once. I got there, and the box was empty. Then as I was leaving, a bicycle messenger showed up. He went to my box, and he saw me watching him. We both knew the score. He was as scared as I was, like he thought he was fucked because he was late.”
“Had you ever seen him before?”
“No. I don’t even know what he actually looked like. I avoided looking too closely, you know? He had a helmet, bicycle shorts, sunglasses, the usual nightmare. Maybe a beard, but I’m not even sure about that. The thing is—”
Bourne gave her a cold stare. “The thing is?”
“He made a mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“He left something extra in the box. An envelope for somebody else, not me. It was sort of stuck to the back of my envelope, and he was in a hurry and didn’t notice. I didn’t open the box until he was gone, so I couldn’t give it back to him.”
“Who was the other envelope for?”
“I don’t remember,” Kenna replied. “When I got home, I burned it. I didn’t even open it. I didn’t want anyone to know I had it. It looked innocent enough, but I wasn’t taking any chances.”
“Do you remember anything about it?”
She nodded. “It came from a travel agency in the Bowery called Wolf Man Travel. Their logo has a wolf man on it, so it caught my eye. But for all I know, the travel agency has nothing to do with the people behind this. The messenger probably picked up deliveries from lots of different places.”
Bourne frowned.
Was the travel agency part of the network? Maybe yes, maybe no. Wolf Man Travel. But he had other priorities to check out first. He thought about Darrell Forster and the Forster Group and the client project roster he’d found for them online: 4Bear. A Russian software developer with ties to Putin, who had launched Lennon’s career as an assassin.
Always follow the money.
Treadstone.
“Tell me about Darrell Forster.”
Kenna’s brow creased. “Why?”
Bourne wanted to shake the naivete out of this girl. “Because the odds are, he’s the one who set you up.”
“What? Darrell? No, that’s crazy.”
“Kenna, he recruited you himself. He sent you on that assignment in Minnesota. You think all of that happened by accident? He was looking to recruit a pawn for whatever operation he’s running, and you fit the bill. An eager, idealistic young Columbia grad. He runs it all at arm’s length, but he’s been playing you since the beginning.”
Her eyes widened, and she looked genuinely stunned. The idea that her boss was the mystery man behind the extortion had never occurred to her. “I can’t believe that Darrell—”
“Believe it. Now tell me about him.”
“He’s a great man,” Kenna protested. “No way he’d be involved in anything illegal. He was a Times reporter for years. I studied some of his journalism exposés at Columbia. The reason his agency is so successful is because of his reputation for integrity, for lack of bias. That new fact-finding institute? The one started by the Varak Foundation? Darrell is the chair. How often can you get the tech companies, the media companies, and the politicians to agree on anything? But they all said Darrell was the perfect choice.”
Bourne was focused on Forster, but the other name that Kenna had given him suddenly made him pause. Darrell Forster’s agency represented the Varak Foundation. He’d seen it on the client roster, too, but he’d glossed over it when he spotted 4Bear and made the connection to Putin.
Varak!
A billionaire investor who’d become one of the richest men on the planet. He’d established a charitable foundation that had more financial assets than most countries. There were only a handful of individuals who had the resources to hire someone like Lennon, but Varak was definitely one of them.
Varak, whose up-from-nothing personal story was legendary. He’d begun his online investment career thirty years earlier out of a barn on his parents’ farm . . . in rural Iceland.
“I need to talk to Forster,” Bourne said.
“Well, he’s in town, but his schedule is always booked up weeks in advance.”
“He’ll see me. Talk to him tomorrow, and tell him I approached you. Say my name is Payton Griggs, and I told you I was an investigator working for the Senate Republicans. I was looking to get information out of you about the agency’s representation of 4Bear. You’ll look like a good soldier for telling him. Trust me, he’ll put me on his calendar when I call.”
Kenna hesitated. “Okay.”
“If you see me in the office, look at me like you hate my guts.”
“Trust me, that won’t be hard.”
Bourne ignored the girl’s spark of defiance. Then he spun around, gun in hand, because he heard another noise from the shadows. It was the sharp yelp of a small dog, like a terrier or schnauzer. He wandered from the water, and now he saw the silhouette of a man hurrying away from the park, crossing at the light toward the city.
A man with a dog.
He’d seen a man with a miniature schnauzer outside the Tribeca club. Was it the same man? Were they being followed? It was too dark to be sure. A late-night dog walker in the city was common enough.
And yet.
Bourne heard Kenna coming up behind him. He turned around and surprised her by taking her chin between his fingers and squeezing hard. The girl’s eyes widened with a new wave of fear, but he couldn’t help that. He needed her to stay scared. Fear was the only thing that would keep her functioning, and she was right to be afraid. The bill for her sins was coming due.
“Listen carefully,” he told her. “I’m going to give you a cell phone number. Memorize it, don’t write it down. The next time you get a call about making a drop, call that number immediately. I’ll follow you, and then I’ll follow whoever is there to meet you. If you want to stay alive, don’t tell anyone. Remember, I’ll be watching you, Kenna.”
The woman in the stolen F-150 climbed down from behind the wheel of the truck to the street. She examined the houses in the quiet Friendship Heights neighborhood to make sure that no one had heard the thud of the collision or the brief cry of the victim. It was late, and no lights came on in any of the windows. The street was empty of traffic.
She walked behind the truck to where the twenty-year-old girl named Iris lay half on the pavement, half on the grass near the curb. She’d hit her at full speed, and the impact had tossed her like a doll, so she assumed the girl would be dead. But you could never be sure. A pro always checked before leaving the scene.
The woman squatted over her. The girl’s eyes were closed, and blood pooled darkly in the green grass under her head. Ribbons of it smeared her buzzed black hair, and her round glasses lay broken in the street a few feet away. With a gloved hand, the woman checked for a pulse and found none.
Mission complete.
She walked back to the pickup truck. As she did, her phone began ringing. It was the second of her burner phones. His phone.
“Yoko,” Lennon said when she answered.
“The job here is done,” she told him. She spoke English, but her Catalan roots were in her voice.
“Excellent work, as always.”
She reviewed the neighborhood one last time for witnesses, then got back behind the wheel of the truck and drove away at a calm speed. She put the call on speaker, enjoying the sound of Lennon’s voice. It always excited her to hear that honey smoothness, and she felt arousal between her legs. Maybe tonight he’d come to her. She never knew when he would arrive. She always left the lights off in her hotel room in case he showed up in the middle of the night for sex.
But it was not to be. Not tonight.
“I have a new assignment for you,” Lennon went on.
“Of course.”
“You need to get to New York right away.”
“Okay, I’ll take the train in the morning,” Yoko replied. “Will that be fast enough? Or should I drive there tonight?”
“Tomorrow is fine. Then await instructions.”
“I will. What’s going on?”
“Cain is back,” Lennon told her, drawing out the name like it was fine wine on his lips. “He’s still on the hunt. We need to act before he gets any closer.”