She sat upright, looking at him with concern. “Where are you going?”
“I need to make a call. I took a cell phone along with the money, so I can discard it once I’m done. I won’t be long.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure of anything anymore. But I need to make this call. I know what I’m doing, don’t worry.”
Julie nodded reluctantly. “Don’t be long, okay?”
Jericho flashed a smile. “Just stay here, don’t use the phone, and don’t open the door for anyone besides me. Understand?”
Julie nodded again.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, reassuringly.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He took the keycard from her and left the room, pausing outside long enough to hear her lock the door behind him, before walking back down the corridor and taking the elevator to the ground floor. He headed across the lobby and outside, where he stood on the sidewalk and took in a deep breath, tasting the stale air of Los Angeles.
He navigated the sea of pedestrians with a grace not befitting a man his size, walking for two blocks before stopping in the doorway of a store that had closed for the day. He took out the stolen cell phone and dialed a number from memory.
“Birchwood Savings and Loans, how may I direct your call?” asked a professional, direct female voice after a couple of rings.
“I’m calling to check my balance,” answered Jericho. “My account number is three, three, two, three, alpha, nine.”
“One moment please while I retrieve your account information.”
There was silence on the line for a few moments, and then a click as the call was transferred. Jericho could hear the faintest of sounds on the line, but remained quiet.
“Can I help you?” asked a male voice, deep and weary.
Jericho hesitated, unable to shake the doubts implanted in his mind by Josh Winters.
“Hello?” said the voice, persistent.
He took a deep breath and tried to speak, but his words caught in his throat, trapped inside a grip of uncertainty.
“Jericho… is that you?”
“Yes,” he said, eventually.
“Jesus, Jericho! What the hell happened to you? You’ve been dark for over a week.”
The voice belonged to Julius Jones, a thirty-plus year veteran CIA analyst, and the coordinator of the D.E.A.D. unit. Jericho’s minimal obligations to the agency involved a weekly update to Jones on the progress of any missions. The last time they spoke was nine days ago, on an airstrip in Colombia.
Jericho decided to play it safe. “I… don’t remember much,” he explained. “What happened back in Colombia? Did we retrieve the laptop?”
He was met with silence, and he knew Jones would be putting a tracer on the call.
“You need to come in for a full de-brief,” Jones said after a few moments. “Where are you?”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he replied. “Just tell me what happened, Julius.”
His tone changed in an instant. “You compromised the goddamn mission is what happened! Why didn’t you do as you were ordered?”
“Because it wasn’t the right fucking call!” hissed Jericho, rapidly losing his patience. “The mission was the laptop, and we were never going to find it with Adrian Hell dead. End of story. I was in charge of the unit, and I made the decision to—”
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” said Jones abruptly. “I’ve always been comfortable giving you the freedom to run that unit as you saw fit, and you’ve never let me down. But when the CIA director gives you an order, it’s non-negotiable! Christ… I thought you were smarter than that.”
Jericho went quiet, thinking about what he’d been told by GlobaTech. He stepped out of the doorway, pacing slowly back and forth across the width of the sidewalk, ignoring the frustrations of people trying to get by.
“Why did the director feel he had to step in?” he asked finally. “Why was he so keen to terminate the target when there was no real cause to?”
His question was met with silence.
“What was on the laptop?” he persisted, curious to see if Jones would inadvertently confirm what GlobaTech had told him.
Jones sighed heavily. “Okay… look, it was out of my hands, how it went down. I don’t know what information the laptop contained. Director Matthews gave the order, and he was under no obligation to justify it. Jericho, if you come in now, voluntarily, I can help fix this. You have to trust me, alright?”
“Trust you? Answer my goddamn question, Julius. You can’t honestly sit there and expect me to believe you had no idea why Director Matthews wanted Adrian Hell dead?”
“I don’t know, alright? Not officially…” he sighed again. “It’s been a crazy few days, Jericho, and now isn’t the time to be asking those types of questions. I can’t talk over an unsecure line, but if you come in…”
“I’m not coming in. I was shot and left for dead by someone I trusted, who was carrying out an order from your office.”
“I know how it looks, but you know how this works. You know the world we live in.”
“I did… but from what I’ve seen, the world’s changed a little since I woke up.”
“Woke up? What exactly happened to you? How did you survive?”
Jericho hesitated, but saw no harm in telling the truth, even if he didn’t tell his old superior all of it.
“I’ve no idea how I got back from Colombia,” he said. “But I was in a coma for over a week. I woke up earlier today at a GlobaTech facility.”
“Wait… GlobaTech? What have you said to them?”
Jericho quickly picked up on the change in Jones’ voice; the concern and borderline panic in his tone. Again, Josh’s de-brief played through his mind, and the way the conversation had gone so far, he was starting to question his own instincts.
“What do you mean, Julius? What could I have said to them?”
The line went quiet. Jericho shook his head to himself in disbelief. In his experience, silence usually preceded guilt.
“Julius, I swear to God, if I find out you had anything to do with anything that’s happened, there won’t be anywhere you can hide from me.”
“We go way back, you and I,” said Jones after a few moments of tense silence. “I brought you in, helped train you… don’t make this any worse for yourself. Come in, we’ll talk…”
“We’re done talking. I’m gone, you understand me? I’m out.”
“You’re out?” Jones laughed, clearly exaggerating it to make a point. “People like me and you, we don’t get out, Jericho. If you go down this path, there’s no going back. Do you understand? If you do this, I can’t help you.”
Jericho felt a burst of anger inside, and he clenched his jaw tight to suppress it. He took some deep breaths as he stood in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing people to walk around him.
“I don’t need your help, you sonofabitch! You just better hope I don’t see you again.”
He clicked the phone off and dropped it on the floor, stamping down hard on it as he walked quickly back toward the hotel.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA, USA
April 20th, 2017
Julius Jones sat behind his desk, staring at the phone in his hand as it emitted a low, uninterrupted beep. His dark, unblinking eyes were wide; the calm, executive demeanor he’d portrayed during his conversation with Jericho Stone had left him, and only concern remained.
The door to his office burst open and Steve, a junior analyst who reported to Jones, rushed in wearing a headset and comms unit. Jones looked up, meeting the man’s gaze.