The Lost Key (A Brit in the FBI 2)

Mike got in his face. “You assaulted a federal agent with your Taser, you idiot, and that means no one’s going to play with you anymore. Tell me your name, now. Tell us why you murdered Mr. Pearce. What were you arguing about with him?”

Mr. Olympic bared his teeth, meant to be a grin, but wasn’t.

Mike said, “No wallet, no ID, but you’ll be in the system. We’ll know who you are within the hour, so you might as well tell us now.”

“Come on, mate, don’t be daft. Who are you?”

The man opened his mouth, but no words came out. They saw a look of horror in his eyes, then panic, sharp, cold panic—Mr. Olympic’s eyes rolled back in his head. He seized, a bubbling white froth spewed out of his mouth, then he slumped against Nicholas.

Mike screamed into the walkie, “We need a medic, right now.” Nicholas let him slide down to the sidewalk. Mike felt for his pulse, started a CPR checklist, but Nicholas pulled her back.

“Let me go, we need him alive.”

“It’s too late,” he said. They looked at the man’s face, gone blue now, dark eyes staring blankly up at them. A few more muscle twitches and he stopped moving.

Bystanders were in a circle around them, excited and horrified, knowing death when they saw it. The NYPD officer who’d nearly hit Nicholas rushed to hel

p. He saw the man lying on the sidewalk. “What happened? I didn’t think I hit you. What happened to him?”

“No, you didn’t hit me, it’s something else,” Nicholas said, and turned to Mike. “Stay with him.” He stood, raised his creds high, told the crowd he was FBI and they needed to move back, this was now a crime scene and there was nothing to see, it was all over. He heard Mike say to the officer, “I don’t know what happened. We were chasing him—he killed a man on Wall Street, but he went down; why, I don’t know. We were trying to help.”

Special Agent Ben Houston pulled up in a Crown Vic beside him, hopped out of the car. He took one look at the dead man and said, “What happened to him? What’d you do to him?”

Nicholas said to Ben, aware the crowd was pressing in again, “I didn’t do anything to him. I’d finally managed to bring him down. He started seizing and foaming at the mouth. Whatever happened, Mr. Olympic did it to himself.”

“Mr. Olympic? You mean, like he had cyanide in his tooth?”

“Maybe, not necessarily cyanide, but a bloody fast poison of sorts in his mouth.” He frowned at the blue face. “But why would he kill himself? What the devil is going on here?”

No answer to that. Mike said to Ben, “We need an ID on this guy, pronto. Nicholas is right, something’s not kosher here, and it’s possible the Devil does have something to do with it.”

Nicholas said, “I wonder why he stayed around.” He looked down at Mr. Olympic. “Why?”

6

Berlin, Germany

4:00 p.m.

The mission was shot to hell. März watched, tense, unable to do anything. He knew every single individual in this huge room was even more frightened of failure than he was and that was because, simply, they were scared to death of him. They were right to be; he was lethal and soulless and took pleasure in his work. No one dared to look at him standing quietly in the back of the large windowless room, watching, always watching. The nerve center, the workers called it, all of them focused on the single massive monitoring screen on the wall, covered in twenty blue and green quadrants. Fifteen analysts worked multiple computer angles. They were responsible for monitoring each agent’s heart rate, his breathing, his visuals, his audio. They saw everything the agent saw, heard what he said, heard what those around him said. It never ceased to amaze März, this invasion of another’s mind, but all the analysts were used to being inside a live human being and participating from afar.

Senior Analyst Bernstein was in charge of Mr. X, with him every step he took, inside him, watching and listening from the moment Mr. X had deplaned and the mission had gone live.

And gone to hell. März thought of his boss and tasted fear.

First Mr. X had killed the Order’s Messenger. Then, because he stayed at the scene so they could see what was unfolding, he’d been spotted by that ridiculous woman and her little yapping dog. All of them had followed the chase, watched the big dark-haired FBI agent finally take down Mr. X, saw him hauled to his feet and cuffed. The room was dead silent, watching, listening. Then alarms began going off and the room exploded into action.

Bernstein yelled, “What happened, what happened? Mr. X has collapsed, his visuals are down, his eyes are gone.”

“I’ve lost heart function!”

“Ears are down. Ears are down.”

“He activated his gel pack! He must have thought he was going to be taken.”

Panic rippled through the room, moving silently from man to man as they now focused on Mr. X. After a moment, the heart monitor beeped long and low, then went flatline. Mr. X’s quadrant suddenly went black with a snap, as if a switch had been flipped off.

Horrified silence. März spoke quietly, no need to raise his voice. “Mr. Bernstein, since we’ve lost Mr. X, please give me the satellite.”