He glanced out at the bodies and wished he hadn’t finished the men so quickly. Wished he could go to work on them again.
He looked back at Hamilton. “Please,” the man was still saying. “Please, help me.”
Manus considered. What would the director want? Probably for the man to die. Why else have him kidnapped in the first place, if not to have him killed, ostensibly at the hands of some jihadists?
And the truth was, it would be a mercy. The man was fucked up, fucked up in a way Manus knew he might never recover from. Step into the van, pull the door closed to muffle the sound, a single quick shot to the back of the head. End the man’s pain, end his horror.
“Please,” the man said again, and tears spilled from his puffed-shut eyes. “I want to go home. I just want to go home.”
Manus looked around again. The area was still quiet.
Just do it, he thought. Make it quick. He won’t feel anything.
He started to step into the van, then hesitated.
He realized he didn’t want to kill the man.
He tried to persuade himself again it would be a mercy. He couldn’t. Instead, it felt like an extension of the cruelty he had already delivered the man into.
Fuck.
This was taking too long. He had to focus on what he had come for. Hamilton wasn’t his problem.
He walked over to the bodies and found a mobile phone in the pants pocket of each. He removed the batteries, tossed them all into the trunk of his car, retrieved the SIG, popped in a full magazine, charged it, and placed it on the passenger seat. He glanced at himself in the visor mirror, and was unsurprised to see a fair amount of blood splatter on his face. He walked around to the trunk, grabbed a wet towel he had placed there for this very eventuality, and cleaned off. There was some blood spray on the car, as well. He wiped it down, threw the towel inside, and closed the trunk.
He paused for a moment, watching the van, wishing he had never looked inside it. Then he thought, Well, maybe you didn’t.
There was something to that. Because even if Hamilton made it out of here, who would he tell? Manus doubted the man could even see through those blackened eyes. The fact that he’d begged, Please help me, rather than, say, Please don’t hurt me, suggested he didn’t recognize Manus as his abductor. And even if he could see, what would he describe? Manus had been wearing his light disguise of beard, glasses, and hat the first time, and he was wearing it now. He supposed Hamilton might have picked up on the strangeness of Manus’s voice and on his deafness the first time, but this time Manus had said nothing.
Besides, the man was badly fucked up, that was clear. He would probably die here, alone, weak, helpless in the van.
Just kill him, then. You’d be doing him a favor.
Maybe. Yeah, maybe that was right. But it didn’t feel right.
Or… you could just take off the handcuffs. After that, it’s up to him.
That felt a little better. Because if Hamilton were smart enough to figure out that one of the dead Turks would have the keys to the van, and that they probably had money he could take, too, and if he were tough enough to drive himself out of here, and resourceful enough to find a place to recover, then didn’t he deserve a chance? And if he wanted to lie down and die, then that was what he deserved, instead. Either way, it would be on him.
Manus went to the bodies and dug around in their pockets until he found a handcuff key. He got back in the van and stepped behind Hamilton. The man began to struggle feebly — a reflex, Manus knew, from the things he’d endured. Manus also knew the man wouldn’t listen to words, no matter how reassuring. So he simply pushed him down firmly, put a knee in his back, and removed the cuffs. He wiped them with the tail of his shirt and let them drop to the floor of the van. He looked around. There were some work clothes in back — a dirty tee shirt and coveralls. That was good. The clothes the Turks were wearing were soaked in blood, and Hamilton wouldn’t make it far in that dress without getting a lot of attention. Assuming he could make it at all.
He stepped out of the van, took one last look around, got in his car, and drove off. When he was safely away, he’d get rid of the towel and bleach down the Berserker. But first, distance.
He drove and considered. He was sorry for what the Turks had done to Hamilton. He was glad he’d killed them, and hoped the man would find some solace in the sight of their broken bodies.
He wondered what he should tell the director, and decided he would tell him nothing. After all, was he even sure the director would want Hamilton dead? The director was smart, and playing at a level Manus probably couldn’t really understand. Maybe there were other plans for Hamilton. Maybe there were other factors Manus wasn’t aware of. What had they taught him in the CIA course? “You don’t know, you don’t go.” Well, the maxim certainly applied here.
All right. He had killed the men and taken their phones and left, and that was all. That’s all he had been sent to do, so it made sense. A van? Yes, there had been a van, but he had never looked inside it. Why would he?
And probably there would be nothing to tell, anyway. Hamilton would die in the van, or the director would find him again and he would die that way. That Manus had encountered him again would, in the end, make no difference. And wasn’t that the same as if Manus hadn’t encountered him again?
He put Hamilton out of his mind — because there was no Hamilton — and thought of the phones in the trunk, instead. The director would be happy. Then he thought of the woman and her son. He wondered if the director had someone watching them while Manus was away. The thought made him uneasy, though he didn’t know why.
CHAPTER
20
Thomas Delgado emerged from the Washington, DC Metro at Farragut West and headed south on Seventeenth Street NW, the area a kaleidoscope of streetlamps and office windows and car headlights. The worst of rush hour was past, but there were still plenty of cabs jockeying for position as they trolled for evening fares; office workers heading off for a bite with their cronies or a drink by themselves; Metro buses hissing and squealing as they absorbed and disgorged the nightly worker-bee effluent. More pedestrians would have been a plus, but daylight would have made for clearer footage on surveillance cameras. This was the right compromise.
He turned left on H Street, pulling the wheeled carry-on bag behind him, just another cubicle denizen returning to the office after arriving at Washington National or Union Station, still casually dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, comfortable travel attire. A pair of nonprescription horn-rimmed glasses fit the overall office geek vibe, and though his Orioles cap might have been a little out of keeping, well, who in DC would begrudge a fan for flying the team’s colors? The main thing was to look enough like a local not to be noticed, while obscuring the features enough not to be recognized. The glasses and cap weren’t much, but in the low light, he was confident they would do.
He passed Lafayette Square, where a few lonely protestors stood facing the White House, holding vigil amid the buzz of insects in the trees and the surrounding sounds of traffic. Stop the war, stop the fracking, stop killing black men, stop, stop, stop. Perennial shit. He wondered why these losers bothered, why they didn’t just give up and get a life.