“The feeling’s mutual.”
“I’m sure it is.” He was motionless, his gun still pointing directly at her head. “What have you done with Ellie Hallowes?”
Marsha’s eyes widened, but she stayed silent.
“What have you done to her?!”
Marsha shook her head, fear coursing through her body. “Until this morning, I’d never heard of Hallowes.”
“And yet you wouldn’t be here unless you or someone like you made Ellie set this up!”
The fury on Will’s face was easily recognizable, but as she stared at him she also saw absolute concern in his eyes. She’d been right about him. He was extremely loyal to Hallowes. What was the right thing to say and do? She settled on what her heart was telling her: truth and justice. “I had nothing to do with this. If you ever meet them again, Patrick and Alistair will attest to that because they’ve been assigned to my team for the duration of our manhunt. The men responsible for capturing Hallowes are Charles Sheridan and Colby Jellicoe.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Will’s eyes narrowed as he cocked his gun’s hammer. “But I need to know that Ellie’s okay.”
Marsha lowered her head.
“Head up!”
She lifted her gaze, and her voice trembled as she said, “We can’t prove it, but we know for sure that Sheridan had her killed. She was murdered in her hotel room. We’ve taken possession of her body.”
Will’s eyes were unblinking. His lack of movement and silence were more terrifying than if he’d done or said something.
In a split second, Marsha could be dead.
Murdered, for being vaguely associated with Hallowes’s killers.
But Will asked, “You still believe in the reasons you joined the FBI? Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity?”
The Bureau motto.
Marsha nodded.
“I want to hear your answer on your lips!”
“Yes, yes.”
“Good.” Will’s greenish blue eyes looked intense. “When you get home today, you’ll find a package in your mailbox. It’s from me, but don’t be alarmed — there’s nothing dangerous inside. Just make sure it’s used no later tonight than the time I’ve written on the box. And when you do, ensure that the attorney general and the directors of the FBI and CIA are standing next to you.” He took a step back. “I’m going to deliver you the most dangerous double agent who’s ever operated in the States. He’s a high-ranking CIA officer, working for the Russians. But in order for him not to be warned off, I need you to do something.” He explained his thinking. “Can you do that for me?”
Marsha’s head was spinning. Here she was, face-to-face with Public Enemy Number One, and he was asking for her help, and she was seriously considering giving it to him.
“When it’s done, you can arrest the double agent. It will be your success, your glory, and your career that goes sky high as a result.”
“I don’t care about any of those things.”
Will smiled, and this time the menace seemed diminished. “In which case, I judged you correctly.” His smile vanished. “Will you do what I ask?”
“No!”
Will was exasperated when he said, “All I need is a window of a few hours. After that you can do what you want, maybe say that you were mistaken.”
“The answer’s still no!”
Frustration coursed through him. There was only one option left to him. He told her about the link between Antaeus, Ferryman, the proposed American assassination of Cobalt, and what he suspected could happen after the bomb detonated in Afghanistan.
But he omitted telling her that Ferryman was Ed Parker.
Marsha was shocked. She knew that her career could be ruined if she agreed to do what he was asking. But sometimes you just have to go with your gut. And right now, her gut was telling her that if she didn’t do what Will wanted, U.S. national security and dominance in the world were screwed. “I’ll do it.”
“Good.”
“But I’ll need to get approval from the Bureau director. I can’t make this call on my own. It’s too big.”
“Fine, but do it fast and make sure no one else knows — in particular anyone in or associated with the CIA.”
“Okay. But I ain’t going to promise that I’ll back off from hunting you after you’re done.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Marsha frowned. “I think you knew Hallowes wasn’t going to be here today.”
Will said nothing.
“And yet, you came here anyway and shot one of the men who were after you, so you could have his team taken out by my colleagues.”
Marsha was right. Will had deliberately kept alive the Irish assassin he’d confronted the night before and had fended off the cops who showed up on the street where Marsha lived so that the assassin could escape, because he wanted to identify him today and establish who was with him.
It took a few seconds for Marsha to work this all out, then she said, “Smart.”
“Or, just plain stupid.” Anguish was on Will’s face. “I heard SCAR automatic gunfire when I was running down the avenue. To my knowledge, they’re not weapons used by the FBI or SWAT. I’m hoping you’re not going to tell me that civilians got caught in the crossfire.”
The last update she had from Duggan was that the civilian body count was twenty-two and rising. Should she tell him? Cochrane looked like he was in so much pain. “Some of my men were shot. But we’re still trying to establish whether there were any fatalities.”
Will knew she was lying. He’d thought that the assassins would only be armed with handguns and would easily have been taken down by HRT. No way would he have triggered an assault on them in a crowded place if he’d known they were packing battle weapons. “Turn around.”
She did so, wondering if his words had been a trick and if he was now going to execute her by putting a bullet in the back of her head.
In the distance she could see a tiny glimpse of the terror and panic that was still prevalent on Wisconsin Avenue.
Was this going to be the last thing she ever saw?
Death and carnage.
Twenty seconds passed.
Nothing happened to her.
She turned back.
Will Cochrane was gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
By noon the next day, Parker, code name Ferryman, would be of no further use to Antaeus. Until that time, he needed Parker’s treachery to remain undiscovered and for the information Antaeus had relayed to his asset to continue to be taken as the truth. The Americans had to believe that bombing Cobalt’s meeting in Afghanistan tomorrow was the right thing to do.
Whereas in reality it would make America’s entry into the Vietnam War look like a brilliant yet brief skirmish.
Afghanistan was nine and a half hours ahead of Washington time. Noon tomorrow in Afghanistan was two thirty A.M. in the U.S. capital. And given that it was currently eleven A.M. in D.C., that meant he only needed Ferryman to remain intact for the next fifteen and a half hours.
Only Will Cochrane could ruin everything.
But by now, he should be dead.
If he wasn’t, Antaeus would have no choice other than to tell Parker to go into hiding. It wasn’t an ideal option, because Cochrane could take his suspicions to someone else, a powerful and law-abiding official, who’d then see red flags if the asset whom Will was accusing of treachery had run away.
He entered his living room and turned on a television that had been state of the art in the 1980s but now looked like a decrepit box of junk. Still, it got the news and history channels — as well as the one that showed his favorite repeats of Only Fools and Horses and Monty Python’s Flying Circus—and that was all he needed.