The attempt had happened in a nice Italian restaurant four blocks from here; one where red wine was served in carafes and the atmosphere was full of the sound of opera, laughter, and the aroma of garlic.
Abram and I had been sitting opposite each other, eating a starter of barley mushroom risotto while discussing the recent reshuffle within the Kremlin. The meal had been going well, but then Abram — maybe mimicking young Michael Corleone in The Godfather—had pulled out a gun and tried to shoot me in the head. It had been wrong on many levels, not least because I’d been really hungry and looking forward to a main course of meatballs enriched with lemon peel.
I’d swiped the gun away from his hand; he’d slapped me in the face, then the throat. All perfect moves, though under the circumstances it must have looked to other diners like we’d been a gay couple who’d finally had enough of each other. Abram had turned and bolted out of the restaurant while withdrawing a knife; I’d upended the table, pulled out my gun, and pursued. This was, the witnesses must have thought, a tiff that had turned really nasty.
Chasing Abram was problematic, because he was clever and swift. I’d screamed at people to get down while I’d run through the rain-sodden metropolitan night and tried to get a line of sight on him. His use of D.C.’s sewage systems was obviously a preplanned escape route should things go wrong, and it was only because I’d been running fast that I’d managed to catch a glimpse of him disappearing under a manhole cover, like a rabid polecat entering a rabbit warren.
I’d always known that Abram’s nasty. In my line of work I’d mixed with people like that a lot, and in fairness to Abram he’s not the worst person I’d partnered with to attempt to screw the East in favor of satiating the West. Until this evening, I’d ranked Abram as a seven out of ten bad guy. But Abram’s stock had just gone up, and as I waded through crap I tried to decide whether he was an eight, nine, or ten out of ten.
Maybe these were superfluous thoughts, because a man who will slit your throat is a man who will slit your throat, and his ranking won’t make the experience better or worse. But I thought about it anyway, as it helped me ignore the heat within the labyrinth of tunnels and the noise in my ears from the drumbeat of my heart.
Part of me hoped Abram would keep running and use his knowledge of one of the oldest sewage systems in the States to his advantage. I knew nothing about the maze I was in, and every step I took furthered the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to find my way out of here. Trouble was, getting out of the sewer was the least of my problems, because Abram wanted me dead and I couldn’t think of a more perfect venue in which he could enact his crime.
I reached a junction in the tunnel where I needed to make a decision to turn left or right. Standing still, I listened, trying to ignore the thump of my heartbeat, the rank odor, and the scurrying and splashing of vermin. A louder noise came from my left; whoosh, whoosh, whoosh; maybe a man kicking his leg through ankle-deep water. That made sense, because Abram didn’t want me to make the wrong turn. He needed me to hear and follow him until I reached a place of his choosing so he could surprise me.
I made no attempt to be quiet as I moved down a tunnel that was narrower than the previous one and clearly wasn’t flushed as frequently, because the smell was making me gag. My handgun at eye level, I waded onward, imagining my MI6 controller declaring to the chief of British Intelligence, “Will Cochrane died in shit.”
I didn’t want to die in shit. I didn’t want to die at all. I had things to do, such as mastering the Chaconne Baroque lute recital, completing my thesis on loose-leaf Chinese teas, going to the river Itchen for the first time and casting a fly line, and trying to find a woman who’d have me. These and other things were important, and it pissed me off that multiple times each year I found myself in situations where I’d put all of my aspirations in jeopardy.
The wall lights — bare bulbs that were throwing off a dull, yellow glow — were fewer now, some flickering. Large chunks of the tunnel were in complete darkness. Most likely, Abram had concealed himself in the shadows, waiting to attack. Although he was twelve years older than me and had left the military over a decade ago, he was fit and strong, and in his spare time he kept up the crazy Russian special forces tests to try to be immune to pain. As I moved into one of the chunks of darkness, I decided that if he managed to disarm me, I wasn’t sure which of us would better the other.
The slash of Abram’s knife across my forearm, which made me drop my pistol, meant I was about to find out.
Instinctively, I twisted my body a split second before I saw the tiniest glint of steel thrust into the space where I’d been standing. I grabbed his knife-wielding arm and twisted it hard. He punched his knee into my ribs. But I kept the lock on despite the agony in my body, yanked back his wrist, saw the knife drop out of his hand, twisted his arm further so that he was completely off balance, and dragged him with me so that he had no choice but to fall to the ground. I maintained my grip on his limb as I placed my foot on his throat and forced his head underwater.
I had to use all of my strength to hold him there; his legs were thrashing and his free arm was punching my foot and trying to wrench it free from his throat. It felt like ten minutes but was actually nearer two when Abram stopped moving. I kept his head under for another minute in case he was trying to trick me into releasing my hold on him. But after that, I reached down and pulled his head out.
No doubt about it; he was dead.
Chapter 3
Officially there are eight directors who report to the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Although most of them are not publicly named, their job title and rank are available for all to see on the Agency’s website. But I knew a secret that’s only privy to a handful of senior CIA officers, the president of the U.S., my London-based MI6 controller, and the prime minister of Britain: there’s a ninth director in the Agency. His name’s Patrick, and he and my MI6 controller head up the joint task force that I work for. Barely anyone in Western intelligence knows about it.
I was standing in an empty room within the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, and I was facing Patrick. He’s a tall, sinewy, ex-army officer type, twenty years my senior, and was normally immaculately dressed, his expression composed. But today I was somewhat perturbed to see that he had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his rattlesnake face on — a term I use when his eyes go mean.
I had hoped today would be routine: filling in paperwork, telling the truth about Abram’s assault on me in the restaurant, lying that he’d escaped, and not telling the truth that I’d left his body to the rats. After all, it was only a few hours ago that I’d managed to find a way out of the sewer and had caused everyone in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel to stare at me with mouths wide open as I’d walked toward the elevators while covered in crap. And even when I’d gotten to my room, it had taken three showers and two baths before I’d been satisfied that I was clean enough to hit the sack. I was tired and needed today to be a boring one.
But here was Patrick. With that look.
“What’s up, old boy?” I asked in my best hammed-up British accent, fully cognizant it would severely antagonize the rattlesnake.
“Aside from the fact that your presence in D.C. was supposed to be discreet — no assassination attempts on you, no guns drawn, zero civilians screaming as they see you running through the streets, pretty much nothing out of the ordinary until you get on a plane and head back to the UK?”