“I’m not… not Ferryman. Gregori Shonin is that man.”
“He doesn’t exist, and you know that! As far as the Agency was concerned, Ferryman was the link to Antaeus. What it didn’t know was that in truth, you were that link.”
All trace of resignation was gone from Ed’s expression and was replaced by what looked to be genuine confusion. “No, no. This can’t be right. I thought you’d come here because you’d discovered that—”
“Enough, Ed!” Catherine was standing in the entrance, pointing a handgun at Will. “Keep your mouth shut!”
But Ed spun around to face her. “What is he talking about? Shonin doesn’t exist?”
The questions made Will’s mind race. As he kept his eyes on Catherine and his gun trained on Ed, he stated, “Catherine Parker is Ferryman.”
Catherine laughed. “I don’t have to say anything. Looks to me like we’ve caught ourselves America’s Most Wanted.”
Ed stood and looked imploringly at her. “What’s going on?”
Catherine’s expression was venomous, but she stayed silent.
Things were starting to make sense to Will. “It appears, Mr. Parker, that you didn’t recruit Shonin. Your wife did, while you were both posted to Prague in 2005. I’m guessing she told you back then that Shonin would only work for her, but that didn’t matter because you could pretend to the Agency that it was you who were running Shonin.”
Ed took a step closer to Catherine, and Will let him do so. “We knew the Agency would never let Catherine run someone so important, since she’s not a trained case officer. But we also knew the wonders it would do to my career if there was some way we could keep Shonin on board. I thought you’d discovered this and that’s why you came for me tonight. Catherine, what does he mean when he says Shonin doesn’t exist?”
She remained quiet, a hostile look on her face.
So Will answered for her. “Antaeus was pretending to be Shonin. Catherine knew that from the outset, or he told her sometime thereafter when he had his hooks into her. Either way, he recruited her rather than the other way around. Your wife’s been working for Antaeus all along. She’s a Russian spy.”
Catherine placed her finger on the trigger to shoot Will, but as she did so Ed rushed at her, screaming, “Spy?”
There was no doubt it was an accident.
She didn’t mean for it to happen.
As she pulled the trigger, Ed moved in front of her, staring into her eyes with an expression of shock on his face.
Too late, she realized he was in her line of fire.
And too late, Ed lowered his gaze and saw what was happening.
Urgently, she released her finger, but the trigger was by now too far back.
Her gun fired.
She screamed and dropped her gun as Ed fell to the floor.
Tears poured out of her as she cradled her husband. “What have I done?” She looked up and didn’t care that Will had his gun on her. “Oh. Dear God, no! What have I done?” Catherine rocked back and forth while holding her dead husband.
Will rushed forward and grabbed her gun. “There’s no time for this!”
Catherine looked at her husband with tear-filled, bloodshot eyes.
“In two hours, Cobalt’s not going to be at the Afghanistan meeting. Someone else is. Who?”
Catherine looked around, desperation and misery written across her face.
“It’s all over for you now. Time’s running out!”
Catherine used the back of her sleeve to rub tears away. “The Russian deputy prime minister and the head of the United Nations. It’s a top-secret meeting. They’re trying to negotiate with the Taliban to ensure free movement of international aid into Afghanistan.”
Will nodded. “Antaeus knew about this meeting and told you to tell the Agency that Cobalt was the person going there. But Antaeus only recently found out the exact day, time, and location of the meeting.”
“Two days ago.”
“How could you do this?”
Catherine started slapping her forehead, her face screwed up. “In 2005, Antaeus discovered that I’d been unfaithful to Ed. He used that against me, seduced me. We had a brief affair.”
“And after that ended, he told you who he was and you went along with that because it gave the Parkers a chance to make it big time in the Agency.”
“That was the main reason. I told Antaeus that I wanted to get my marriage back on track, and he told me that was a good thing but we’d need all the help we could get.” She lifted her head. “Another reason was that Antaeus gave me something that Ed couldn’t.”
“A child.”
“Crystal.”
“Did Ed know?”
“He didn’t know, and Antaeus didn’t know. As far as Ed was concerned, Crystal was his. Anyway, a few months later Antaeus got married and had a child of his own. It wouldn’t have served anyone’s interests for me to share the truth. To this day, Antaeus doesn’t know he’s Crystal’s father.”
Will placed his finger over the trigger. “When the bomb drops, big time in the Agency comes to an end. You must have known that, so why agree to pass on false intelligence about Cobalt’s presence in Afghanistan?”
Catherine held her husband’s hand while smoothing her thumb over his skin and staring at him with glazed eyes. When she spoke, her voice sounded distant. “Antaeus’s strategy about reputation building. He had to make Project Ferryman an irresistible and fundamental truth to the CIA so that when Ferryman said Cobalt was in Afghanistan, the United States wouldn’t hesitate to act.”
“Colby Jellicoe, Charles Sheridan, and your husband all had their careers accelerated on intelligence fed to you by Antaeus. Good intelligence.”
Catherine’s voice was dead, her tears still streaming. “It was good intelligence — genuine Russian operations that Antaeus was willing to sell out to make Project Ferryman the Agency’s most credible and vital mission.”
Will opened his jacket and turned the radio set that was attached to his belt off Transmit and onto Transmit and Receive. Loudly, he asked, “You getting all of this?”
Out of the speaker, Marsha’s voice responded. “All of it. And the attorney general and heads of the Agency and Bureau did too. They’re witnesses, and we’ve recorded everything that’s been said. We’re calling off the drone strike right now.”
Will felt total relief. “I’ll keep Mrs. Parker here. Come and get her.” He switched the radio back onto transmit.
Catherine looked perturbed. “Prison, not death? Right now, I’d prefer the latter.”
“Not tonight. One thing that’s always interested me about Cobalt is that a lot of the intelligence pertaining to him has been Russian information that we’ve intercepted or learned about from Russian sources. I’ve got a hunch you might know something about this.”
Catherine was silent.
“Speak!”
Catherine looked at him, no terror in her eyes, instead a look that suggested her mind was disassociated from her body. “Antaeus used me to feed intelligence about Cobalt into the CIA. I’m not stupid; I thought something was odd about it all. One day I confronted him about it, told him I thought he had big lies up his sleeve. He didn’t grace me with an answer.”
“Of course not.”
“So, when he instructed me to pass on the intel about Cobalt’s location in Afghanistan, I told him no.”
“Because you suspected something was wrong with that intelligence.”
“It sounded to me like a setup. I quickly decided that Ferryman had always been about this. I’ve always worked for Antaeus because of what it could give my family. But I’ve never hated my country. On the contrary.”
Will lowered his gun because Catherine was no longer a threat. “You knew that if America dropped its bomb, the backlash from the international community would be severe. At best, America would be kicked out of the UN Security Council, made to abandon every overseas U.S. military base, and have its balls cut off to the extent that its days of being a superpower were forever dead. At worst, Russia, its allies, and countries that were previously not its allies, would go to war with the States.”