As usual, he was taking things straight out of the Moscow Rules. Like:
He was going to miss the Moscow Rules. Where some men had a moral compass, David had this loose set of guidelines, developed by CIA operatives at the Moscow station inside the U.S. Embassy during the Cold War. They were good for tradecraft. They were also good for life, in general:
David wished he’d hired one last escort before he holed up here for the night. He could really use a blow job. It would help mellow him out.
But his final assignment beckoned.
Walking toward the parking garage elevator, David had carried two plastic bags, lined with sturdy brown paper bags, along with his black briefcase. That was all he needed.
He should also have hit some drive-through. He was
Maybe he could sneak out for something later.
Maybe even a warm mouth. Some tasty little piece of Fish-town skank.
As the Moscow Rules said:
Upstairs in his office, which was not quite as air-conditioned as he would have liked—the building cut back on the AC at night—David knelt in front of the mini-fridge. He unloaded the contents of his bags: three sixty-four-ounce containers of Tropicana Pure Premium Homestyle orange juice, four bottles of Veuve Clicquot. You always wanted more champagne to orange juice; nobody overloaded a mimosa with OJ.
The cookies were already here. He’d purchased them at CVS the day before. He had the urge to open a bag and take a few, but he resisted. He needed them for tomorrow.
Inside his oversized Kevlar-reinforced briefcase were the elevator codes and schematics to the phone system.
The customer service line at Verizon.
The twin packages, the assemblies, the triggers.
All set.
Wait.
Except for one thing: the fax transmission he had to destroy.
It was redundant, actually; David knew who was on that list. As if he could forget. Or miss a name.
Those names would be burned on his brain forever. However long “forever” would be.
Not long.
“Nothing fancy; just kill them.”
The last set of instructions he’d ever hear or obey.
David scanned the list one more time:
He had to kill them all.
MEETING
Jamie couldn’t read the labels on the bottles, but they looked French and expensive. The tops on two of the bottles had been popped and removed, but nobody had poured a glass yet. The cookies also remained untouched.
That is, until David reached forward and grabbed a Milano, then everybody decided having a cookie was a great idea.
Jamie had his eyes on the Chessmen, but held back. He wasn’t about to fight the Clique for a cookie. Let them pick over the bags. Chessmen were the least popular. He’d be able to grab a few when the feeding frenzy was over.
“Looks like everybody’s here …,” David said, scanning faces, then frowning. “Except Ethan. Anybody seen Ethan?”
“His bag’s at his desk, and his computer’s on,” said Molly, who’d taken her usual position: the right hand of the devil.
“Did he make it home last night?”
“He did,” Amy Felton said, and then winced, as if regretting having opened her mouth.
“Should I look for him?” Molly said.
David shook his head. There were droplets of moisture on his brow. “No, no. We can start without him.”
“Are you …”
“I am.”
Some boss/assistant drama going on there, Jamie decided.
He hated how David treated Molly.
She had been here only six months, and already working for David had utterly demoralized her. Jamie assumed that was because she was a genuine human being—not one of the Clique.
Out of all his coworkers, Molly was the only one he spent any significant time with. Jamie had once read a story in some magazine about “office spouses”—surrogate partners in the workplace with whom you shared your life. It wasn’t about infidelity. Jamie read that piece and decided that the closest thing he had to an office spouse was Molly. What made it easy was that Molly, like Jamie, was married. And they were united in their thinking that David Murphy was a serious tool.
“Tool?” Molly had asked, trying to fight a goofy smile that threatened to wash over her entire face.
“Yeah, tool,” Jamie had said. “Never heard that expression before?”
She giggled. “Not in Illinois I didn’t.”
“Stick with me, country girl,” Jamie said. “I’ll teach you all about the big bad city.”
Molly, come to think of it, was the one who’d organized the shower for Jamie. She was the only one who saw him as more than just the media relations guy.
The cookie grab ended. Jamie took the opportunity to snag three Chessmen. He stacked them on a square white paper napkin. The cookie on top: a pawn.
“First of all,” David said, “I want to thank everyone for coming up here on a Saturday morning. A
Stuart chuckled. No one else did. Stuart was a brownnosing ass.
But David was right. Outside, the haze blanketed downtown Philadelphia, making it difficult to see any detail outside of a two-block radius.
David paused to snap a Milano in half with his teeth. He chewed slowly. Brushed crumbs from his place at the table. The man enjoyed taking his time almost as much as he enjoyed Pepperidge Farm cookies.
“I know this kind of meeting runs counter to protocol. But we’ve come up against a new challenge. I’ve been tasked with accepting that challenge, and this is why I’ve brought you all in this morning.”
Already, David was being his good ol’ obscure self. Protocol? Challenge? Did anyone really talk like that? Did
