2013. Security services from States, Europe, and Russia conduct independent and joint operations to try to locate and capture Cobalt. But Russian-American cooperation still tense. Americans suspect Russians are withholding information.
2014. Pakistani ISI tells America that it has captured and interrogated a Taliban fighter, and he’s confessed that he’d been contacted by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who said that a financier called Cobalt was making arrangements to travel to the Afghan-Pakistan border to meet the Taliban leadership, and that he was to be given safe passage.
Antaeus moved his pen underneath the last paragraph and wrote two sentences.
MI6 officer tries to buy off major opium plantation in Afghanistan as part of ongoing operation to rid country of drugs. Plantation owner refuses, says Cobalt has made far better offer and will be taking possession of crop soon.
Antaeus capped his pen, rolled an ink blotter over his latest entry, and closed the notebook. In approximately two weeks’ time, Project Ferryman would know the exact location and time that Cobalt was going to be in Afghanistan to secretly meet senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders. Ferryman had already told the CIA about this meeting, that it was going to be heavily guarded by upward of three hundred combat-experienced jihadists, and that Russian intelligence had decided it was too risky to infiltrate the country and attack the meeting. The Americans, on the other hand, had decided that the scale of the defenses precluded a SEAL or Delta assault to kill Cobalt, but that didn’t matter because they’d use an unmanned predator drone to drop a bunker-destroying bomb on the location. And a minute after they’d done so, they’d go public to the world’s media with the success story.
The Ferryman intel had prompted the premiers of Western countries hunting Cobalt to agree that all existing efforts to find him should cease, for fear that if they continued they could drive him further underground and prompt him not to travel to Afghanistan. All they needed to do now was wait for Ferryman to obtain the final piece of the jigsaw that would pin down Cobalt. Then America would blow Cobalt to pieces.
Ferryman had to remain untouched for that to happen.
Antaeus looked at his chalkboard containing the names of the major parties who were wittingly or unwittingly involved in the Ferryman project. His eyes settled on the name Will Cochrane. The MI6 officer was the biggest threat to Ferryman and could not be allowed to get closer to the truth.
Antaeus smiled.
Because the truth was that the Americans didn’t know that dropping their bomb would cause a catastrophe.
TWENTY
Will didn’t turn around when he heard the vehicle behind him draw nearer. Instead, he continued walking along the slush-filled edge of the road, his hands in his jacket pockets and his collar pulled up to give him some protection from the driving rain. The vehicle sounded like a car or an SUV, but he couldn’t be sure because the wind was loud and hitting his ears from different directions, and he was dog tired and not thinking straight. He hoped the vehicle didn’t contain a woman or child — no driver of either would stop for a stranger — and that wherever it was headed, it would be driving through a place where he could be dropped off and rent a room for the night.
The vehicle’s engine grew louder.
Please slow down, drive alongside me, lower your window, and look concerned.
Please.
The vehicle was close now, changed into a lower gear, and was slowing for sure.
He kept walking, his feet aching from fatigue, boots full of water after he’d witnessed Ulana’s plane sink into the icy strait.
The vehicle was right behind him.
He carried on.
So did the vehicle. But it remained behind him, matching his speed.
Jeez, it would be ironic if the person behind him turned out to be precisely what he hoped he didn’t look like: a prowling serial killer.
It turned out that the vehicle was something even less welcome. Blue lights flashed over the ground around him, followed by a short burst of siren and a man’s voice on a microphone saying, “Police. Stop where you are. Turn around.”
Will’s heart and mind were racing. The broken-down-car story wouldn’t work with the cops. They’d drive him back there with the intention of radioing for a tow truck. He turned, keeping his hands in his pockets, because only soldiers, special operatives, and experienced criminals would automatically put their arms out if someone had a gun trained on them from a distance.
There were two cops, both standing behind the cruiser’s open doors, hands on their holstered pistols, one of them holding a mic close to his mouth. “Hands where we can see them.”
Will put his hands up and flat in front of his chest, as if he were about to play patty-cake and had never confronted someone with a gun before. “I’m glad you guys are here.” The words were spoken in an East Coast American accent. Before she’d been murdered, his English mother had frequently told the adolescent Will that he sounded just like his CIA father. Not that Will had copied his father’s accent. He’d been incarcerated in Tehran when Will was five years old. But like his father, Will had grown up in Virginia.
“You in trouble?”
Will smiled. “You could say that. Woman trouble.” He nodded toward the road behind the cops. “About five miles that way, my girlfriend kicked me out of our van. We had a bit of a… disagreement.”
“You on vacation?”
“Yeah. Well, that was the idea.”
“Where you headed?”
Will shrugged. “Anywhere that’ll give me a bed for the night. Debby gets like this sometimes. Never lasts more than a day. I’ll text her, she’ll probably pick me up in the morning.” His smile broadened. “All I said to her was that her driving was crappy.”
The policeman near him tried to suppress a laugh. “Bet you regret saying that now.”
“Yep. I wondered if it was Debby behind me. Not guys with guns.”
“Seems it’s not your day. You tried calling her?”
“Several times. Goes straight to voice mail. She’ll turn it back on when she calms down.”
“Dumb move getting out of the vehicle this time of year. You can die out here.”
“I realize that now, but staying in the vehicle might have been just as dangerous. Debby’s got a crazy temper.”
The cop with the mic asked, “She going to be okay?”
Will nodded. “The van’s got a full tank plus spare gas, and lots of food. We’ve done plenty of touring before. Debby knows what she’s doing.”
“Vehicle registration number?”
“No idea. It’s a rental car, and Debs sorted all the paperwork out in New York.”
“You take the Maine — New Brunswick route in?”
“Yeah. Crossed at Vanceboro eleven days ago.”
“Okay, lower your hands. We’ll need to see some ID.”
“Sure. You able to drop me off someplace?”
The cop glanced at his colleague, who nodded. “We’re heading back to Truro. That do you?”
“If Truro’s got a diner and a motel, it’ll do me just fine.”
“Center of town’s got Holiday Inn, Willow Bend, Best Western, and Glengarry hotels. You have options. Identification, please.”
Will pulled out the American passport Ulana had given him. “I got other ID, but it’s in the van.”
The nearest policeman stepped up to Will, took the passport from him, and leaned over the ID so that his upper body shielded it from rain as he flicked through the pages.
As the cop opened the page containing the photo, Will mentally rehearsed what he’d do if the officer reached for his gun because he realized that the man in the photo wasn’t him or because he suddenly recalled seeing a nonbearded shot of Will Cochrane in a newspaper after the Senator Jellicoe hearing.