Abuse of Power (29 page)

The other people in the room were an eclectic mix of ethnicities and nationalities, all deeply focused on their tasks. A woman with short-cropped red hair, a spray of freckles, and startling blue eyes glanced up, offering Sara a relieved smile as she got out of her chair and pulled her into a hug.

“Thank the Lord,” she said in a heavy Irish accent. “Brendan told us you called and I’ve been praying ever since.”

Now others turned, greeting Sara with a smile or a quick hello before giving Jack a slow, suspicious stare. Sara introduced him to the group, rattling off names to fit the faces, but all he got from them were a few grudging nods. He felt like the new kid at school that everyone was curious about but no one wanted to commit to.

A man with a graying beard and horn-rimmed glasses—Alain, if Jack remembered correctly—looked up from his station and called across the room.

“Sara, your intel on Abdal was excellent. I was able to get into the home secretary’s internal network and I think I may have found something of value.”

“What?” she asked.

He tossed a small object to her and she looked down at it in her palm—a USB data key. “Encrypted e-mails from one of Zuabi’s moles, sent over the last week.”

“Encrypted? That’s unusual.”

“Oui,”
Alain said. “This is why they caught my attention. And even more unusual is that the e-mails were sent to an employee of an American firm called Allied Harbor Associates.”

“Which is?”

“They handle port operations in our country,” Jack told her. “They took over the contract after the Dubai controversy a few years ago.”

The redhead frowned. “Dubai controversy?”

“Yeah. I blew the lid on it when I had my TV show back in the States.” He saw the blank stares. “That’s what I used to do—hosted a talk show that held the powers that be accountable.

“The contract was originally handled by a British firm called P & O, but when they sold all their assets to Dubai Ports World, concern about port security in our country became a political football. Most people thought handing control to a UAE-based company was extremely risky, if not outright idiotic. Including me.”

Sara nodded. “So Allied took over.”

“Right,” Jack said. The others were listening as well. This seemed to be earning him points. “The political pressure forced DP to sell all their U.S. assets to a company called American International. They, in turn, quietly sold it to Allied.”

Anyone who was paying attention knew that port security in the U.S. was a joke, even after the SAFE Port Act was passed by Congress. There were far too many shipping containers moving in and out of the country, and no workable method of keeping track of them all.

“And who owns Allied?” Sara asked.

“That’s where it gets interesting,” Jack said. “The majority stockholder is an old friend of mine. A naturalized citizen named Lawrence Soren. Originally from Austria. The guy’s a billionaire and a propagandist extraordinaire, and has definite Marxist leanings.”

“And he’s a
friend
of yours?”

“I was being facetious. The guy destroyed my career.” He gestured to the USB key. “I’ll be curious to see what’s in those e-mails. They could be confirmation that Zuabi’s moles aren’t limited to the British government. Soren may have a traitor in his midst, which wouldn’t surprise me. His extremism has made him enemies.”

“It will take some time to find out what is in them,” Alain told him. “As I said, they are encrypted, and it may be hours before I break the—”

A harsh voice cut him off. “What’s going on here? Who
is
this man?”

They turned to find a brutish-looking German with a crew cut standing in the doorway, frowning at Jack.

Jack held out a hand, about to introduce himself, but the guy ignored him. “Did anyone sweep them?”

“Relax, Reinhardt,” Alain said.

“Relax? That’s how errors are made.” The man came into the room now, looking like an angry bulldog. “How many times do I have to tell you, we sweep everyone. No exceptions.” He scooped a security wand from a nearby table then gestured to Jack and Sara. “Against the wall.”

Sara gave Jack a look that said,
What can you do?
But considering the number of people they’d lost over the last two years, Jack couldn’t blame the guy. He moved to the wall, placed his palms against it, and spread his legs.

Reinhardt flicked a switch on the wand and started with Jack’s shoes, slowly moving up the inside of each leg, the torso, the neck and shoulders, then up each arm.

When he waved it over Jack’s right wrist—over his Hamilton Gilbert—the wand began to beep. Loudly.

The entire room went quiet, heads turning in reaction to the sound. Without missing a beat, Reinhardt produced a gun and pressed it against Jack’s head.

“The watch,” he demanded. “Take it off.”

Sara just stood there looking stunned and Jack was flabbergasted.

With horror, he thought:

Swain. While I was out, he had my watch. Has he been tracking us all this time?

“Take it off!” the bulldog roared.

But before Jack could comply a radio squawked nearby. Brendan Lapworth’s frantic voice came over the airwaves—

“Shut her down! We’re under attack!”

As one, all eyes shifted to the computer screen showing the infrared security cameras as a team of black-suited commandos spilled from a van then crashed through the chain-link gate—

—and shot Ethan and Brendan down in cold blood.

27

Chaos.

That was the only word to describe it.

The room erupted in shouts and scrambling bodies. Alain quickly moved from computer to computer to shut them down, as people hurried toward windows and doors. Reinhardt’s expression was pure fury. He slammed Jack across the back of the head with his gun, then stepped back and was about to pull the trigger when Sara shouted.

“No!”

She smashed into their leader, knocking him against the white board. He went down with a crash and she grabbed Jack’s arm, pulling him toward the doorway.

“Run!”

Jack’s head was throbbing as they flew through the hallway, shouts echoing around them. The commandos were inside the building and storming up the stairs, firing indiscriminately at any movement they saw.

A bullet gouged plaster above Jack’s head and Sara steered him through a doorway into another apartment, pulling him into the bathroom.

She pointed toward the ceiling. “Up there. Open it!”

Gunfire echoed in the hall as Jack jumped onto the toilet, unlatched a square hatch above it—an air vent—and threw it open. The space was just big enough for him to fit through.

“Go!” she said.

Jack hoisted himself up and through to a slanted slate rooftop. He turned and reached back inside and Sara got onto the toilet and grabbed hold of his hands. He pulled her up, paused just long enough to drop his beloved watch through the opening, then quickly closed the hatch.

Down in the street, several more vans and French police cars screeched to a stop in front of the building, uniformed officers piling out, weapons at the ready. Whatever lie they had been told—undoubtedly by MI6—they had swallowed it whole.

The rooftops of Paris were like no place else on earth. For as far as Jack could see in the moonlight there were no flat surfaces, just a maze of slants and protrusions, gullies and pipes and television antennas—
visual
disorder but beautiful, as if the city had been designed by a mad genius.

Sara got to her feet and started across the slanted roof, gesturing for Jack to follow. But that was easier said than done. She seemed to have a path mapped out, grabbing onto landmarks along the way—a pipe here, a chimney there, the occasional satellite dish—and Jack could only stumble along after her, his head throbbing, trying his best not to slip and fall.

When they were halfway across, the hatch popped open behind them and they heard a shout, the voice familiar—

“Sara! Sara!”

Coming to a stop, they turned and saw Alain climbing from the hatch as he called to her.

“I had to wipe all the computers,” he said. “The key—tell me you still have the key!”

She patted her pocket. “Yes, yes. Now hurry!”

Alain started forward as a shot rang out behind him. His spine split in a burst of blood, the impact pitching him onto the slanted rooftop. He threw his hands out, scrambling for purchase—more twitching reflex than anything, Jack knew—but then his face went blank and his body flopped and rolled, tumbling over the side of the building into the darkness below.

Sara screamed, moonlit tears filling her eyes—genuine tears—as one of the commandos hoisted himself through the hatch.

Jack put his hands on her shoulders and gently nudged her forward.

“Go!
Go!
”

Sara didn’t need further prompting. She turned and continued toward the edge of the rooftop, picking up speed. Jack did his best to keep up with her.

The adjoining building was only four stories high, but Sara didn’t let that slow her down. She leaped onto it without hesitation, grabbing a fat ventilation pipe as she landed. Jack followed, his shoes slipping from under him as he hit the second rooftop. He fell onto his side and nearly went tumbling, but managed to grab Sara’s extended hand, got hold of the pipe, and steadied himself.

Another shot cracked, the bullet ricocheting wildly. Pulling himself upright, Jack got back to his feet and hurried after Sara as she yanked open the roof-access door of the building and disappeared inside. A moment later they were on the stairs, spiraling quickly toward the ground floor. When they reached it, breathing heavily, Sara cautiously opened a squeaking door into a narrow, cobblestone alleyway. She looked, then exited. As Jack followed her outside, she stopped and turned, her eyes still full of tears.

“Give me that bloody watch,” she said, still trying to catch her breath.

“I left it in the bathroom so they couldn’t track us,” he said.

She looked at him suspiciously.

“They were shooting at me, too!” he reminded her.

“Alain was one of my dearest friends,” she said.

“I’m truly sorry,” Jack told her. “But I didn’t set you up, if that’s what you’re thinking. You think I want to see another 9/11? I was
had,
Sara, just like your agents who died in the bathroom, in the alley. Like you were when they killed Abdal. It happens.”

She looked at him with angry eyes but didn’t seem to have a response. She gestured toward the roof. “They’ll be across soon. There’s a garage around the corner, where Brendan left the van. Let’s hope they haven’t found it.”

She turned and hurried through the alley.

Jack followed her, unable to fathom how any religion, any philosophy, any political goal, was worth what this had already cost.

And it was still just the opening salvo.

*   *   *

They were blasting through the streets of Paris in the Citroën, Sara behind the wheel. She’d found the key in a small magnetic box under the rear bumper, and so far the journey had been uneventful, no sign of anyone in pursuit.

Sara was angry and heartbroken, but had that slightly shell-shocked look that Jack had gotten so used to seeing during his days in Iraq.

“They’re dead,” she said. “Probably every last one of them. All because of that bloody watch. All because I brought you there.”

“Believe me, Sara, I didn’t know about the tracker. How could I? You think they strapped me in that chair for the fun of it? You must have heard my screams.”

“I was out. I didn’t hear
anything
.”

“Then you’ll just have to trust me.”

“Why should I?”

“The same reason I trusted you, even when you were lying,” he said.

She suddenly crushed the brake, pulling to the side of the road. “Get out of the car!”

“Sara, you’ve got to look past this.”

“Out!”

It killed him to see her in such pain. He sat there a moment, just staring at her, wanting her to change her mind, but she didn’t say another word. Angrily, he opened his door and got out.

She hit the gas even before he had closed the door, blasting down the street on squealing tires, as Jack watched in dismay. But as she approached the intersection she abruptly stopped, the van’s brake lights glowing in the darkness. The horn let out a short, angry blast and then she just sat there, the engine idling.

Jack jogged unsteadily to the van, still not quite having found his land legs after their across-the-rooftop run. He opened the passenger door to find her just sitting there, her eyes clouded, trying her best to keep from crying. One death can produce an anesthetic reaction that allows someone to function through a short period of mourning. But multiple deaths are like a landslide:
it
controls
you.
The hardened façade she usually presented was starting to crack and it took everything she had to hold back.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It will
be
okay if we don’t give up.”

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“I know,” he said.

“It’s what you said. Every time one of us falls I feel it all over again. The loss, the self-doubt, the questioning, wondering what I might have done to foresee this, to
prevent
it.”

“You’re not a professional. Neither am I. We’re making this up as we go along. Those guys.” He indicated the enemy with a backward jerk of his head. “They have years of training, limitless resources, and vastly superior numbers. It’s amazing you’ve gotten this far.”

His words seemed to cut through the grief and remind her why they were here. She wiped her eyes. The gesture was transformative: he saw the old Sara return.

He didn’t want to intrude on her sorrow but he knew they couldn’t stay here much longer. They needed to get rid of the van. The alert would have gone out and the police would be searching for them. Terrorists on the run, that’s the story MI6 likely fed them. Dangerous extremists who needed to be shot dead on sight.

Still, he sat there saying nothing, suddenly aware that despite knowing her for less than twenty-four hours he’d never felt this way about a woman. Not about Rachel or any of the one-nighters he picked up since the divorce.