Shadow Read online

  “A mistaken assumption. I know why you are in Brussels,” Saito went on. “Your presence has not gone unnoticed.”

  Marc thought about gunfire and burning buildings and his lips thinned.

  “Why are we talking?”

  “I have information you will find useful.”

  “How is this fucker even on our comms network?” muttered Lucy.

  She pulled on a fresh sweatshirt and jacket, then set about jamming everything she could into a backpack, clearly intending to vacate the building as quickly as possible.

  “Ah, Ms. Keyes is there, of course. To answer her question, it was quite simple. The Rubicon Group’s head office in Monaco maintains a public front desk. I contacted that number and made my identity known.”

  Marc almost laughed. The brass balls audacity of such an act was exactly what he would expect from the Combine’s people. They believed they were untouchable, arrogant enough to assume they could reach in and meddle with events any time they chose. The confirmation that they were connected to the Lion’s Roar and Verbeke’s activities came as no surprise at all. Instead, Marc felt a grim sense of inevitability. There was no injustice, no hatred the group did not try to take advantage of for their own ends.

  “Your associate Mr. Delancort, who is doubtless monitoring this conversation, quickly understood the value of taking me seriously.” Saito paused, and his tone shifted. “I am heartened to see you are both alive and well.”

  “You stabbed me in the belly in Mogadishu and left me to bleed out,” Lucy growled. “You double-crossed us. But that’s SOP for the Combine, right?”

  “Please,” Saito said coolly. “I calculated that an operative of your caliber would be able to survive such a wound. Clearly, I was correct. And let me remind you, Mr. Dane returned the favor.”

  “So you got away from Ramaas’s offshore rig in one piece.” Marc glared at the smartphone. “Personally, I was hoping you’d gone to the bottom after the Russians torpedoed it.”

  Two years ago, in the headlong pursuit of a rogue nuclear device, Marc and Lucy had been forced to work with Saito and his Combine mercenaries. Their attempt to neutralize the weapon had ultimately succeeded, but not before Saito had tried to take control of it for his paymasters.

  “As engaging as this is, I did not contact you in order to reminisce about our previous encounters,” said the other man. “As I said, I am here to help you. I know your technicians are in the process of trying to trace this communication, so I will be brief.” Saito read out the web address for an anonymous file transfer protocol server. “You will find data there on a man named Meddur al-Baruni, a refugee from Libya currently living in Brussels. He will be at the Vlaamsepoort tram stop in under fifteen minutes, but after that time I have no intelligence on where he will go next.”

  “Who is he?” said Marc.

  “And why should we care?” added Lucy.

  “On his own, he is a man of little consequence,” said Saito. “An innocent dupe. His only crime is to be an undocumented immigrant. The man has a family. These factors have made him of use to certain people.” Marc’s gut tightened at the mercenary’s next words. “As we speak, he is carrying an aerosol dispersion device into the middle of the city. That device is loaded with the Marburg variant bio-agent known as Shadow.”

  “Oh man,” Lucy whispered.

  Saito went on, calmly and clearly. “Mr. al-Baruni is being coerced into this act in order to preserve the lives of his wife and children. The data on the server will also give you their last known location. Act quickly. The validity of this information is time-sensitive.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Marc demanded. “What’s the catch? The Combine helped the Lion’s Roar set this whole thing up. You’re responsible for those deaths in Benghazi! And now you offer up a way to stop a second attack, like it’s no big deal? I don’t believe a bloody word of this! You’re setting us up, like you did in Somalia!”

  “It does not…” Saito began to speak, then halted, as if he was trying to find the right words. “It is necessary for Verbeke to fail today,” he said, abruptly rushing the reply.

  “So stop him yourself,” said Lucy, “if you’ve had a sudden attack of conscience?”

  “My conscience…” Saito almost rose to the bait. “Using Rubicon is more efficient.” Marc sensed something else behind Saito’s words. The man’s cool manner suddenly turned evasive, disquieted. “The information is at your disposal. I suggest you use it.”

  The line fell silent, and then Delancort’s voice issued out of the smartphone.

  “He has disconnected. We tracked the signal to an airborne source, somewhere over the Baltic Sea, but an exact fix was not possible.”

  “I’m pulling the data from the FTP site,” said Marc. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep it firewalled in case there’s some malware in there.”

  The data download took only a fraction of a second, and the content of the file was mostly surveillance photographs, images of a Middle Eastern man taken through a long-lens camera over a period of weeks. Some of the shots showed him going in and out of a mosque with a young boy by his side. In others, taken through the windows of a dingy apartment, the man and the boy were joined by a woman and a pre-teen girl in simple hijabs. All four of them had the cautious, beaten-down manner of survivors. There were also grainy, scanned images of documents in Dutch, rental agreements for a warehouse across the canal from the Molenbeek district.

  Once Marc was satisfied the data was clean, he forwarded it to Rubicon.

  “This makes no sense,” he said, trying to reason it through. “Why give us the means to stop this at the last second? What possible benefit could the Combine get out of that?”

  “I gave up trying to figure out the nature of their games a long time ago,” said Delancort. “They are an opaque cabal. Laws unto themselves.” He sighed. “I have to take this to the Rubicon board. We have to decide on a course of action.”

  The channel closed with a buzz of static.

  “It’s a trap,” Lucy said flatly. “They’re trying to drag us down into this mess. Pin the blame on us, or some shit like that.”

  The hands on Marc’s Cabot dive watch showed fifteen minutes to the top of the hour, and he tapped out a search on his laptop, bringing up a map application.

  “We’re not far from that tram stop,” he said. “I can get there in time to intercept this bloke.”

  “No,” Lucy said firmly. “What we do is turn that file over to the Belgian cops and let them lock down the city.”

  Marc kept talking. “The warehouse at the canal, that’ll be the harder target. More your speed than mine. It’s probably where they have the other bioprinter too.”

  Lucy grabbed his arm.

  “We are not doing this!” she snarled at him. “Goddamn you, Dane, have you been sleepwalking through everything? These assholes have been keeping us off balance since Singapore, now they’re railroading us into acting without thinking, and you’re letting them do it! You want to fuck up here like we did in Iceland?”

  “The police won’t get there in time,” Marc said, pacing out his retort. “You know that. Even if they did, they don’t know what Verbeke is capable of. We do. We saw it.” He ran out of impetus, and the last few words fell out of him. “We couldn’t save Park. We couldn’t stop the first attack. But we can try to stop this one.”

  “Saito—whoever is running him—they’re manipulating us,” she said, imploring him. “They’re counting on us to get in the thick of this, because they know what Rubicon is. They know who we are, they know what kind of people Solomon recruited for this team. Dane, anything they tell us is tainted.”

  “I know that. Of course I know.” Marc put a hand on her arm. “They’ve used everything we have against us, and this is no different. But we don’t have a choice here, do we? Inaction is action. We do nothing, and we may as well help Verbeke push the button ourselves.” He closed the laptop and grabbed his phone. “I’m going. I need you to come too. If
the guy with the device is being forced to carry it, he won’t give it up unless his family is safe, so we need to rescue them.”

  “You don’t get to make mission decisions,” she told him. “That’s my call.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he allowed. “I mean, technically you are my supervisor, and I am an employee of the Rubicon Group, Incorporated.” He picked up the Glock, checking the slide before jamming it in his belt holster. “So if you won’t help, as of now you can consider me resigned from the Special Conditions Division.” He turned and walked away. “If I’m still in one piece by the end of the day, I’ll put that in writing.”

  “You prick! Don’t make me the bad guy!” she shouted at his back. “Limey asshole! Goddamn you for making me do this!” Lucy stormed over and grabbed the sports bag containing the folding assault rifle. “I cannot believe I actually thought about screwing you.” Hauling it up over her shoulder, she marched back to his side, and that furious light was in her eyes all over again. “You won’t make it an hour without me covering your skinny white ass! Send me the warehouse address.”

  “Thanks,” Marc began, but she shoved her way past him, and set off down the stairs at a run.

  * * *

  Saito had rules for many aspects of his life. They helped him to maintain what the Americans called “compartmentalization,” the sectioning of his self into elements that could operate without conflict.

  In one part of himself, he was a man who maimed and killed, a man who served the whims of a vicious elite. In another, he was a soldier with a duty. And in another, he was bound by obligation and the fear of what even the smallest disobedience might bring.

  One of his rules was never to drink alcohol during an active assignment, but he did nothing to stop himself as he crossed the cabin of the Gulfstream G550 jet, and poured a measure of fine single malt whiskey from the aircraft’s compact bar.

  Further down the private plane’s luxurious cabin, the man called Lau was sleeping in a reclining chair. His hands held a light blanket over his body, bunched up and pulled close. Despite his expensive suit, pricey haircut, and recent dental and medical work-overs, the man still looked like a prisoner. He slept afraid, something that Saito could understand.

  But Saito had trained himself too well to ever reveal so much of his inner truth, even in the deepest slumber. In Japan, there were accepted social-cultural concepts known as tatemae and honne. The former meant “façade,” and it was defined as the face that one would show to the world, the proper behaviors and actions that one would be expected to exhibit; the latter meant the “true sound” of one’s spirit, the inner thoughts and impulses that could rarely, if ever, be shared. Often, tatemae and honne would be in direct opposition, but that could never be revealed. To do so would be to irrevocably shame oneself.

  Saito savored the whiskey, balancing on the razor’s edge between the needs of his duty and the conflict against it. He knew full well the devil’s bargain he had struck when he became an enforcer for the Combine. His only recourse was to silence his doubts, leave them behind.

  The door to the Gulfstream’s well-appointed bathroom slid open and Glovkonin stepped out, brushing a speck of talcum powder from the tailored cotton shirt he was wearing. Saito hid the glass in the bar, concealing his indiscretion, but not before the Russian noticed. The other man eyed Lau’s sleeping form, then walked over to get a drink of his own.

  “Is it done?”

  Glovkonin found the same malt that Saito had sampled and poured some for himself.

  Saito nodded. “There was resistance,” he admitted. “But I was able to speak with Dane and the woman. I made the situation clear to them.”

  The Russian made a low, affirmative noise in the back of his throat.

  “We may need to provide additional impetus, if they move too slowly.”

  “I do not believe that will be required.”

  Glovkonin raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “You’ve met the Englishman.”

  “Briefly,” came the dismissive answer. “He struck me as an insolent sort.”

  “True,” agreed Saito. “But he has a code. Even against his own best interests, he will follow it.”

  As the words left his mouth, Saito realized that he could just as easily have been describing himself.

  Did Glovkonin see that too? He smiled thinly.

  “The details are open to interpretation. The only variable that cannot change is Rubicon. Their hands must be on this.” He walked away. “There are contingencies I can employ, of course, but it will be so much better if it comes from the African’s little band of vigilantes.”

  Saito said nothing, holding back the questions that clamored for an answer.

  The Russian sipped his drink, bending to look out through the oval window in the fuselage at the clouds passing beneath them.

  “I have never believed in loyalty,” he said, plucking the statement from the air outside. “What is it, really? It is too ephemeral to be the basis for a working relationship. But avarice? Fear? Those are solid. Men can be directed, trusted, relied upon, if you control those factors.” He turned back to Saito. “I rely on you because I have control over what you fear.”

  Saito became very still, willing his face, his tatemae, to be as stone. He betrayed no sign of his honne, his inner truth.

  “You look at what I tell you to do and you are conflicted,” continued Glovkonin. “You and I work toward the Combine’s goals, but here am I, undoing what they have put into motion. Sabotaging Verbeke’s attack.” He smiled and went on, as if narrating the moment. “What must I do? Saito asks himself…”

  “I follow your orders,” the mercenary said stiffly. “Without question.”

  “You don’t see it now, but I am moving toward the betterment of all of us, including the Combine,” said the Russian. “I am doing what others are reluctant to do.” His glass empty, he put it back on the bar and met Saito’s eyes. His gray, lupine gaze bored into the other man. “I do not need to appeal to your loyalty, your sense of duty, or some abstract code to have you keep your silence. You know what can be done. You know what can be taken from you, yes?” Glovkonin did not wait for him to answer. “Do what you do well,” he went on. “And perhaps one day your obligation will finally be fulfilled.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The black taxi deposited Marc at the intersection of Rue Antoine Dansaert and Boulevard de Nieuport, and he tossed the driver a fold of euros without waiting for any change, bolting from the back seat and out across two lanes of mid-morning traffic.

  Narrowly avoiding a glancing hit from a passing car, he ignored the ensuing chorus of horns, and ran along the line of the canal. The tram route paralleled the boulevard and the waterway southward for almost a kilometer, but up from where the taxi had halted, the Vlaamsepoort stop was clearly visible. A handful of commuters and other locals sat or stood around open rain shelters, marking time before the next tram’s arrival. Marc had to force himself to slow to an unhurried walk, trying to give the impression that he was some guy who didn’t want to miss his ride, and not a man desperately searching the faces in front of him for Meddur al-Baruni.

  He knew that somewhere further up the canal, Lucy was on her way to the warehouse that was mentioned in Saito’s data-dump. Like Marc, she feared they were both walking into an ambush. He wouldn’t put it past the Combine to lay a trap for the two of them, or run some game that would place the pair directly in harm’s way.

  That thought gave him pause. Marc had forced Lucy into this, and if something happened to her, the responsibility would be his.

  But I can’t do this alone, he told himself, dwelling briefly on the grim possibility. The Combine like their schemes and gambits, they like playing chess with the lives of real people. I need her to even the odds.

  But this felt different from the previous encounters Marc had had with the agents of those shadowy power brokers. This particular game was authored by the Lion’s Roar, with the Combine feeding money an
d opportunity to the ultra-right-wingers and their divisive, murderous ambitions. It was how the Combine always operated, one step removed from the dangers they unleashed on the world.

  As he walked up the line of the platform, Marc saw the front page of that day’s edition of De Standaard in the hands of a waiting commuter. He couldn’t read the Dutch headline, but the images beneath it were from the tragedy in Benghazi, and it hardened his resolve.

  A digital indicator board signaled that the next southbound tram was three minutes away. Marc pulled back his cuff to look at his watch. It was almost the top of the hour. Had he missed the man he was searching for? On the drive across town, he’d committed the target’s face to memory, but now, as he swept his gaze over the people around him, the unsettling sense of something wrong crawled into his gut, threatening to become full-blown fear.

  He was surrounded on both sides of the canal by four- and five-story buildings with countless windows, any one of which could hide a Lion’s Roar gunman. Marc instinctively parsed his surroundings for escape routes, and his hand slipped under his jacket, to where his pistol was holstered.

  Then a group of teenagers wandered away and revealed a man behind them, sitting alone on one of the shelter’s benches. In a different city, in a different nation, the man was what intelligence analysts would call a “military-age male.” Middle Eastern in appearance, dressed in shabby workman’s jeans and a dark gray hoodie, he had a black nylon backpack cinched high and tight on his back. The man stared blankly at the weeds poking up around the tracks, his worried gaze turned inward.

  Just as Saito had promised, Meddur al-Baruni was waiting for the tram. He didn’t look like a killer.

  Marc pretended to study a route map, watching the man from the corner of his eye. Now he had a line on his target, he was wary about closing in too fast. And then there was the possibility that the man might have Verbeke’s watchers trailing him. None of the other people on the platform looked like the Lion’s Roar type, but that wasn’t a guarantee.