in the corner. File cabinets filled a wall. He tested one. It slid open easily. It was empty. Another also empty, but he could see flicks of paper left in the bottom, like forgotten snow standing its ground in shadow. The third cabinet was locked.
He shot out the lock. His hands trembled. Inside were paper files, but only a few.
A file on his stepfather. Thick, and some of the papers torn free. They were old memos written by Henry on State Department letterhead, with sticky notes attached. Most of the memos touched on the rising challenge of cheap terrorism – how radicalist groups could gut a nation on the cheap with attacks on its infrastructure. Apparently this was Henry’s favorite topic during his earliest think-tank days. Scribbled, handwritten notes clipped to the various reports validated Henry’s long-ago musings. 9/11 cost a half-million dollars, inflicted $80 billion. Bali bombings, $2 billion in damage for a $60,000 investment. The Madrid bombings, $50 billion in damage for around $12,000 in marijuana, Ecstasy, and money. The London bombings, $3 billion in damage inflicted for $18,000 in expenditures.
As though these horrors had merely been the first act of what the Night Road might unleash on America and its allies. How high could they aim with fifty million dollars at their disposal? They could create a wave of 9/11s, an endless chain of attacks and horror, stretching over months, over years. And if the enemy was already inside the borders, working together across ideologies for their common goal – how much more dangerous could they be? Luke stuffed the file back into the cabinet. He was past feeling sickened; now he only felt a steady rage at how he had been used.
Files on Eric. Lots of notes about his bank, Marolt Gold, which seemed to specialize in nice wealthy Americans and a few people of dubious integrity. The notes suggested the bank had been under Quicksilver’s eye for the past several months due to its connection to a certain Arab billionaire, who was suspected of funding terrorism. A photo of Eric and Aubrey, taken in happier times, big sunglasses hiding most of Aubrey’s face but not her happy smile. Photos of the two of them walking through Versailles – he remembered that Aubrey had particularly wanted to go there, and that a variant of versailles had been used as a password on Eric’s laptop.
Good God, he thought. How long had Quicksilver been watching Eric?
A file on Luke. The words DO NOT CONTACT were stamped in red on a photo of himself, a fairly recent one, leaving Henry’s house in Washington last Christmas.
Christmas back in his ordinary life, and his father was watching him. How many holidays had he mourned his father’s passing, felt it most acutely with the taste of egg nog and the smell of pine, and his father had been watching him? Watching him mourn, watching him live his life.
Unless it hadn’t been his father watching him.
What if it had been Jane instead? Jane’s phone was registered to this address. How did she connect to his father?
A file on his mother. The word, eliminated? and the date of her death stamped on the file.
He sank to his knees. Eliminated? The question mark made it worse. Had Henry killed her, even though he himself had nearly died in the accident? He rifled through the file but nothing announced a brutal truth – photos of her and Henry, taken under surveillance, a history of her personal life. Photos of the wrecked car.
‘Mom,’ he said and then he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. His chest ached. What truth about her had been hidden from him? Had she known his father was alive? It was inconceivable she could have kept such a secret from him. And she had gone from being married to a man Luke considered a hero to a man Luke knew was a contemptible snake, the basest traitor.
He gathered the papers. Tucked them into his knapsack, sealed it shut. The other files were on people he did not know, dozens of people whose names meant nothing to him. Except one. A file on Aubrey Perrault, with the word Lindoe alongside in parentheses. He opened it. Empty. All the papers, whatever had been here, were gone. As though Aubrey had been erased.
He heard the whisper of the door open and turned and a young woman stood there, gun in hand. Leveled at him.
‘Don’t raise your gun. Drop it.’ Her accent was British.
He obeyed. She didn’t lower her gun.
‘You’re a bit too late for the reunion,’ she said. ‘Hello, Luke Dantry.’
‘Hello, Jane.’
‘Kick the weapon over to me.’ She sounded like a teacher gently issuing an order to a preschooler.
He did. She kicked the gun under a table.
If she was surprised by his use of her name she didn’t show it. She looked as calm as if she’d just sauntered into a good restaurant to enjoy a glass of wine with friends. But she still didn’t lower the gun. Her voice sounded like ice chipping, falling onto cold steel. She flexed a smile. She might have been pretty once but a hardness cast into her face made her unattractive. ‘Well, thank God you’re safe.’
‘Yes. Thank God I’m safe,’ Luke said. ‘Because I’m the key to all this, aren’t I?’
‘Key?’
‘To your plan. Your scheme.’
‘Scheme sounds so vicious.’
‘I couldn’t figure it out at first. My stepfather thought Quicksilver was behind my kidnapping. It wasn’t them. It was you. You alone. You’re part of Quicksilver, but you were working on your own. You betrayed Quicksilver. You had Eric kill Allen Clifford to get Quicksilver’s attention, to set them off after the Night Road. You were the Quicksilver agent assigned to watch Henry, to watch me, after my mom died. And you discovered the Night Road, and that Henry was getting all this money. You started a war between the two groups. Just so you could grab the Night Road’s money and let Quicksilver take the blame for it.’
‘Very good. I watched your stepfather and a thoroughly nasty billionaire finalize a deal in a London park. That’s why I knew I could steal the money.’ She flexed that awful superior smile again. ‘One can hardly be a traitor to a private company. I prefer the term free agent.’
‘Drummond, and the rest of Quicksilver, didn’t know about the fifty million. Only you did. You kept the information from my dad and the others.’
‘A waste, really,’ she said. ‘You might be smarter than both your fathers.’
‘And I was the perfect pawn for you to use. I had a father in Quicksilver, a stepfather in the Night Road. I get involved, and both sides heat up the war. This is the secret war that Drummond referred
to. It’s not going to be fought in the open. It’s like the new CIA vs KGB.’
Her smile flickered.
Luke said, ‘And that war gives you ample smoke and fire to make a getaway, drop out of sight. You could be presumed dead or captured by the Night Road. You brought Eric to Drummond’s attention, promised him you could hide him from the wrath of the Night Road. He could trade information on the Night Road, Mouser, my stepfather, for his new life. But the fifty million was a secret between the two of you. You’ve let your own friends be murdered and captured. Just for dirty money.’
‘Money isn’t bad. Money’s joy, security, a life free from worry. Rather different from a job with Quicksilver. The benefits package, I found lacking.’ She raised the gun, ever so slightly. Better to hit him between the eyes. ‘You offered Quicksilver the accounts where the money’s been hidden for Aubrey.’
‘Yes. I have the file with the account information.’
‘I have the encryption key.’
‘Two halves of the puzzle. Held by the queen and the pawn.’
‘I despise chess,’ she said, frowning. ‘Give me the account numbers, Luke. Now.’
The martyr watched the target building. He was nervous; he had not expected to go to paradise for weeks, and now he had no time to comport his mind toward calm. People strolled past it; no one came in or out. On the other side was a Christian bookstore, with apartments above it; on the opposite side was an art supply store. Selling the tools to make godless images, he told himself. He tried not to think about the two pretty young women standing outside in the dank air, finishing their Gitanes, laughing. He smoked Gitanes, too. He tried not to look at them but their lovely faces drew his gaze like a magnet. He was weak and temptation was strong. They laughed and the smoke wreathed their faces, and he reminded himself they were devils, nothing more. Paris was a city full of devils. The virgins given in heaven would be far more desirable, flashing eyes, water-pearled thighs and smiles of rapture.
He drove past twice, looking the part of the man seeking that simplest of urban pleasures, a parking spot.
