Page 5 of The 9th Man

No answer.

“It’s Luke. Talk to me. They’re all dead. It’s just you and me.”

In the distance he caught the warble of police sirens.

He checked to make sure Ball Cap was in fact dead then fled the loft, which was divided by a half wall into a reading nook beside the balcony door and a bedroom. Near the foot of the bed he found a large bloodstain and drag marks that led him to a closed door.

One more time. “Jillian, it’s Luke. You in there?”

He placed himself to the left of the jamb, turned the knob, and shoved open the door. “Don’t shoot, I’m coming in.”

Through the door he found himself in a small bathroom.

On the tile floor lay an elderly man, dressed in pajamas, with a bullet hole through his head. Behind the body, white lace curtains billowed in an open window.

Jillian was gone.

2

Starlings Island, Chesapeake Bay

12:30A.M.

THOMAS HENRY ROWLAND STOOD, HANDS CLASPED BEHIND HIS BACK,and gazed out through the massive hurricane-proof windows that dominated the study’s northwest wall. Wind and rain clawed at the glass, but the dimly lit room was silent save for the faint strains of Wagner’sGötterdämmerung, spilling through ceiling speakers. He loved classical music, especially Wagner, whom he considered larger than life. For anyone else the opulent study, the grand bank of windows, the bronze bust of Friedrich Nietzsche resting on a lighted plinth, would all be affectation. But if anyone embodied Nietzsche’s Übermensch, it was without question him. He lived by his own rules, his own morality, and maintained it with an iron, largely invisible, hand that only his enemies knew existed.

All part of being a professional fixer.

A man who could absolutely get things done.

Across the room stood Ateng Persik. Forty-two years old. Formerly a major in the Indonesian Army’s elite KOPASSUS Red Beret Corps. A brutal lot. Their human rights violations were legendary, so bad that most foreign governments, including the United States, had stopped working with them. But for him they made for excellent employees. No consciences or morality to worry about. Six were currently on the payroll. For over a decade Persik, and the other five, had been his go-to team for excising the most difficult of problems.

Like the one in Belgium.

He and Persik had been waiting on a report, which had finally come a few minutes ago.

Persik ended the call and returned the phone to his suit jacket pocket. “The situation is contained. The primary is dead. The woman escaped.”

Without turning from the darkened windows he said, “Explain.”

“Someone ambushed the team. A man with obvious skill and training. He disrupted everything.”

“Who just happened to be there?”

“Apparently so. He simply appeared and interjected himself. Four men are dead. The fifth, their driver, one of my team, managed to escape. It was him I was speaking with. Prior to leaving he heard on the comms that the primary was dead, the woman gone. The driver shot one of ours who’d been injured and another who was found unconscious in the hedges. So there are no loose ends.”

“Quite industrious of him.”

“As I said, he was one of mine and knew the parameters.”

“No way to trace anything to your team?”

“None at all. I hired them freelance through intermediaries. My people are standing by, there, on the ground.”

He wanted to know, “Will the police find anything of use at the scene?”

“None of the men carried identification. The weapons, clothing, and communications equipment are untraceable. Their fingerprints, faces, and DNA might appear in a criminal database, but nothing leads here. The van was stolen from a long-term parking garage in Nivelles.”

He liked what he was hearing. Persik was meticulous, never taking anything for granted. Which was good, since luck was a fairy tale for the feebleminded. Unfortunately, the carnage in Belgium had been necessary. “And the woman? What’s your plan for Jillian Stein?”

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