Or tried to.

She had already knocked him unconscious with the paperweight key she had spied on a nearby table. Blood poured down his face.

She hurried to his nightstand and retrieved the phone there.

She held it in her hand and looked down at the screen. She knew it was protected not by a password but by a fingerprint scanner. She had seen him access his phone on the train once by doing this. She also reckoned that it would be sophisticated enough to recognize a living man’s print versus a dead man’s print.

That was why she had not simply killed him.

She pressed his pulsing thumb to the screen and unlocked the phone. She went into the phone’s settings and disabled the auto lock and turned on the airplane mode. Now it was both open for good and also untraceable.

She stooped down.

The blade cut cleanly across his neck. She avoided the arterial spray when it came. She had become practiced at that. Back at Bukchang she had not avoided it. She had wanted their blood literally on her hands.

She waited for a few moments, listening for sounds outside the room. She heard nothing. The walls in the ancient hotel must be very thick, she thought.

She wiped the blood off her blade, rose, and hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. After that she went through the various emails and contacts in the man’s phone.

She had been taught by captured South Koreans how to find ways into computer files, and she made ample use of this training. However, she didn’t find much. She looked at the list of most recent phone calls. He had made two more from his room in addition to the one she had seen him making. Two she recognized by the country code as calls to England.

The third was far more interesting.

850.

That was the country code for North Korea. But it was not the number for the British embassy there, which she knew well. She swiftly calculated the time difference between where she was and North Korea. It would be about 8:45 a.m. there. She turned off airplane mode and then hit the button to call this number.

The phone rang three times and then someone answered, not in Korean, but in English. The voice spoke again. She listened until it stopped, and then Chung-Cha hit the end call button.

She left the room the way she had come after quickly staging a robbery in the room. She took the phone, as well as the man’s wallet, watch, passport, and ring. She had not unpacked her bag, so it was a simple thing to leave the hotel quickly and unnoticed, especially at that time of night.

She proceeded to the train station in time to catch the next train that was rolling through. Ten minutes later she was five miles from the town where she had just committed murder. Four hours later, long before the body would be discovered, she had left that train and boarded a plane back to Turkey.

Now she needed to decide what to do.

And how to do it.

Chapter

22

JESSICA REEL PUT DOWN HER weapon, slipped off her sound mufflers, and hit the button to draw the target toward her.

Twenty shots. Nineteen in the kill zone. One two centimeters outside. She frowned. Not good enough. She had lost her focus on the fourteenth trigger pull.

She looked at Robie next to her as his target sheet sailed toward him.

All of his shots were in the kill zone. He looked at her errant shot mark.

“I know,” she said miserably.

She had easily passed the test on the firing range even by Burner Box standards. This was her first miss in over two thousand fired rounds since they’d been here.

Amanda Marks came to stand next to them.

“I think you’ve proved your marksmanship still holds,” she said.

They left the firing range and walked back to the main facility. Their days here had been long and arduous, and Robie and Reel felt both exhausted and finely tuned.

“Two possible targets,” said Reel suddenly.

Marks and Robie slowed.

Marks looked at her. “Blue Man?”

“His visit was timely,” said Robie.

“It wasn’t at my prompting,” said Marks.

“We know,” replied Reel. “It apparently was your colleague.”

“Viola? Now there’s a surprise.”

“Not if he’s feeling like a fish out of water. Word is he had a one-on-one with Tucker. And came away more than a little nervous.”

“Hence the call to Blue Man,” said Robie.

“If Viola is nervous something is off.”

“Two targets,” said Reel again. “Twin possibilities.”

They stopped walking altogether and stood in a tight circle.

“Two heads of state,” said Robie after glancing at Reel. They had talked at length about how to break this to Marks. They had finally concluded that the direct way was best.

Marks stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The target will be a head of state. And the list of possibilities is pretty short.”

The look of incredulity still in her eyes, Marks swallowed nervously and said, “Is that what Blue Man told you?”

Robie said, “Not directly. But circumstantially, the way this is stacking up, that’s the only thing it could be. And he’s in agreement with that assessment. That’s what Tucker is putting together and it’s apparently eating him alive. That and figuring out what to do with the two of us.”

“But that’s illegal. Tucker would never go out on a limb like that.”

“He would with appropriate alliances.”

“There are very few alliances that would justify that sort of mission,” said Marks sharply.

“And not all presidents are built the same,” noted Reel.

Marks stared at her for a long moment. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes, I am.”

“But that’s an im—”

“Impeachable offense,” interjected Robie. “That’s why the need to know is so tight it’s almost nonexistent.”

“So Iran or North Korea,” said Reel. “Place your bets. Our two badass enemies. The remaining two of the old axis of evil. Now that Iraq is all nice and peaceful and full of terrorists.”

Marks looked around. The area was deserted, but she still did not look comfortable discussing this. She said, “Clandestine ops like this are my whole wheelhouse as the DD. They’re mine to direct. Or not. And I know nothing about this.”

“Apparently, Tucker is the only one at CIA to know.”

Reel added, “And the president and Potter, the APNSA.”

“This is crazy,” said Marks in a low voice. “How did Blue Man find this out?”

“By doing what Blue Man does better than anyone else: working his sources and reading the tea leaves and the faces of his superiors in the organization,” said Robie. “Tucker doesn’t have the greatest poker face. And he didn’t come up in the intelligence field. He’s a politician. I’m sure Blue Man has ways to find out things at Langley that Tucker can’t even imagine.”

Reel said, “So Iran’s president or the ayatollah. Or North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Un.”

“This is absolutely insane,” said Marks firmly. “North Korea has nukes. Iran is close to having them. And they have death squads all over the world, including right here. If they’re deployed in force with chemical or biological weapons?”

“Then we retaliate. And the Russians get involved. And then the Chinese. And Israel gets attacked. And we go to bat for them,” said Robie.

“Then it’s all over,” said Reel. “As in apocalyptic over.”

Marks put a shaky hand to her face. “This can’t be happening.”

“If it is one of them, which?” said Reel.

Tags: David Baldacci Will Robie Thriller
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