The Ultimatum--An International Spy Thriller Read online

  He nodded. “Five minutes in and out. Just give me the account numbers and log-in information.”

  “All righty, then.” Bianca felt the familiar quickening that she always experienced going into a job. She thought it must be equivalent to that of a soldier getting ready to go into battle. Her muscles tensed, her pulse sped up, her mind homed in on the objective to the exclusion of everything else. “You mind if I sit there for a minute? It’ll be easier than me telling you what to write.”

  Doc pushed his chair back and stood up. Edging around him, Bianca sat down, hit Reply and typed, The fee is quadruple your offer. Four million US, half up front to the bank account following and half when the job is complete.

  “Whoa,” Doc said, reading over her shoulder. Bianca hit Send.

  “Go big or go home,” she said and waited. As she had expected, the ping announcing the arrival of an incoming email didn’t take long.

  It was one word: Agreed.

  Send two million US to this account. She typed in the sixteen-digit number to the Swiss account, along with the other necessary information. When receipt is verified, I’ll be in touch.

  “Hard-core.” Doc’s tone was admiring.

  “Never let them think you’re running scared,” she said.

  That sounded so much like something her father would have said that she would have felt all sentimental if she’d had the time. She didn’t. This was going down now. She scribbled the log-in information, routing and account number on a Post-it pad next to the computer and added identifying information for the Caymans account that the funds would be transferred into. At that point she hesitated, as it occurred to her that giving all that information to Doc meant that she was opening herself up to being majorly ripped off. Just because of the way she’d lived her life, she felt a wary disinclination to reveal so much. Then she remembered Bahrain, and how much Doc already knew, and how loyal he’d been—and how much he had to lose. And she thought, I’m going to trust him. Unless and until he gives me a reason not to.

  “This is where it’s coming in, this is where it needs to end up.” She tapped each set of numbers in turn, then stood up and said, “Let me know when the money hits that account. And when you’re finished, destroy that piece of paper.”

  “You got it.”

  Doc sat back down behind the computer and started pecking away at the keys.

  Nerves on edge, Bianca returned to her office and resumed going through the file Doc had given her. Four-year-old girls apparently had amazingly eventful lives—who knew?

  This one had saved her diabetic granny by calling 911, that one had gotten trapped in a revolving door and had required the entire population of tiny Glendale, Oregon, to free her, and a third, along with her eight-year-old sister, had opened a lemonade stand to help Save the Whales.

  Bianca flipped that page over and found herself looking down at a picture of a slender, petite young woman with long black hair who was sitting alone at a picnic table biting into an enormous sandwich beneath a banner that proclaimed World’s Biggest Fish Fry. The picture’s background appeared to be some kind of local carnival.

  The headline read Death of Local Family Ruled Murder-Suicide.

  Bianca’s breathing suspended as she read the accompanying story.

  Ozaukee County coroner Tamara Biggar has ruled murder-suicide in the deaths of a local family whose bodies were found in the burned-out ruins of 2420 Lake Road last Tuesday. Sean McAlister, 40, shot and killed his wife, Sarah, 26, and their daughter, Elizabeth, 4, before setting his house on fire and turning the gun on himself. Motive is unknown at this time. The McAlisters had lived in the area for approximately six months. Funeral arrangements are pending.

  The caption beneath the picture identified the subject as Sarah McAlister.

  Bianca looked closer. The woman was wearing jeans and a green tee with writing on it that, due to the position of her arms, was impossible to read. She was in the act of chomping into the sandwich—not an elegant pose—but it was easy to see that she was pretty, with big dark eyes and a faintly Asian cast to her features.

  A woman with long black hair. Elizabeth—Beth—McAlister. A fire.

  Could it be? At the very least, it was quite a coincidence.

  There’s no such thing as coincidence. Her father had said that so many times she’d gotten tired of hearing it.

  Without consciously deciding to do it, Bianca touched the picture, her index finger making barely there contact with the woman’s face.

  Sarah—the name didn’t ring a bell. Just like Ann, the name her father had said was her mother’s, never rang a bell.

  Issa. The name whispered through her mind like a breeze from a just-opened door. Then, Mommy.

  Bianca went all light-headed. Her hand fell away from the picture. She had to push back from her desk, drop her head into her lap and close her eyes.

  Breathe, she ordered herself.

  As she sucked in a series of deep, regular inhalations, it almost seemed as if she could smell the faint scent of vanilla.

  What the hell?

  Battling the dizziness that gripped her, she grabbed for logic with both figurative hands.

  The story in the newspaper didn’t match the facts as she knew them. If she was Beth McAlister, then obviously she hadn’t died. And her father hadn’t died then, either. He hadn’t committed suicide, and he hadn’t shot her mother and—

  A dark, enclosed space. The smell of bleach. A man’s voice calling “Beth” in a way that made her sick with fear. The boom of a shotgun being fired—

  Oh, God, she remembered.

  14

  Beth. She was Beth, small and terrified, hidden by her mother in a cabinet that smelled of bleach. A shotgun went off, and a man—a bad man—came searching for her, Beth, calling her name in a way that made her skin crawl even now. A huge explosion a hundred times louder than the boom of the shotgun sent the cabinet with her in it catapulting skyward. She must have blacked out, or been knocked unconscious, because her next memory was of lying facedown on a slippery, cold carpet of evergreen needles. She remembered being in pain, her arm and side aching, how much it hurt to breathe. She remembered the strong smell of pine—and the horrible burning smell that was even stronger. Her father—Richard, although that wasn’t his name—crouched beside her, his hand on the side of her neck as, she realized now, he felt for a pulse. It was dark, night, but there was this weird orange light and scary shadows leaping everywhere. Looking past her father, she saw the burning wreck of what had been their house and started to cry. He picked her up and carried her to a car. A strange car, not theirs. They drove away, the two of them.

  Without her mother. She didn’t remember saying a word, asking about her mother, anything, and she didn’t remember her father talking, either.

  What she did remember was lying in the back seat of that car crying from pain and fear and the horror of knowing that her mother was dead. She’d known that, without question, but she didn’t remember how.

  She did remember the car stopping after what seemed like hours and her father carrying her inside a long, low metal building that was so cold her teeth chattered. She remembered lying on a table and a man—a doctor, she thought—giving her a shot.

  Then nothing. Nothing for a long time. Her next memories belonged to Bianca St. Ives.

  All that came back to her in a flash, as though a lightning bolt had suddenly illuminated a dark and hidden part of her brain. The memories unspooled with a vividness that left her shaken. Still bent over with her head resting on her lap, Bianca tried to make sense of them, to reconcile them with what she knew about herself and her father and their life.

  She battled the dizziness, the pain and shock of uncovering this terrible part of her life that she’d somehow totally forgotten, by forcing herself to focus and homing in on
what she knew to be true.

  Because most of what had been reported in the story in the paper wasn’t.

  The names—Sean, Sarah and Beth McAlister—were almost certainly fiction. Probably another of her father’s cover identities extended to cloak the three of them. Her father hadn’t shot her mother. He hadn’t set the house on fire. He hadn’t even been there when any of that had happened.

  Another man, a stranger, had murdered her mother, had tried to murder her. That man had caused the house to explode.

  Her father must have used the explosion and fire to fake his own death and hers, to make it appear that they had perished along with her mother. He had taken her away with him and forged new identities for them both.

  That was how Bianca St. Ives had come to exist.

  Why? That was the question that screamed through Bianca’s mind. Why would anyone commit such a horrible crime? Who would commit such a horrible crime?

  And if her father had faked his death and hers twenty-two years ago, was he somehow faking his death now?

  Her breathing steadied and her pounding heart—she only just then realized that her breathing was ragged and her heart was pounding—slowed as she realized that it all came back to a question she’d already started asking: Who, exactly, was Richard St. Ives?

  A rap on her doorframe had her shooting upright in her chair.

  She’d left the door open. Doc stood in the aperture frowning at her. Their eyes met. Doc looked surprised and concerned, and she—well, she didn’t want to think what she looked like.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she replied, maybe a little brusquely, then pulled herself together and said, “Something I should know?”

  “Yeah.” He jerked his head back toward his office. Obvious message: come with me.

  She instantly got it and got, too, that he was being careful not to say too much where he could be overheard. Evie was at her desk complaining over the phone about the nondelivery of some supplies she’d ordered, from the snatches of one-sided conversation Bianca could hear. Of course, if they could hear Evie, Evie could hear them, too.

  Standing up—God, that was a mistake, her knees felt wobbly; she had to brace herself for a moment with a hand on her desk—she said, “I’ll be right there.”

  He was watching her closely. Probably seeing her with her head on her lap had freaked him out.

  Never show weakness: it was another of the rules. One she had just blown to hell.

  “I’ll be right there,” she repeated.

  He still looked uneasy, but to her relief he nodded and left.

  Bianca took a few seconds to compose herself. The newly recovered memories were both painful and precious, but right now they had no place in her thoughts. Prioritizing had always been one of her strengths, and she prioritized now. Number-one problem: bad guys threatening to expose Richard. Everything else could be dealt with later.

  Still, she couldn’t quite let finding her mother go. Finding her, remembering her and the truth of what had happened to her, was such a big deal, so momentous, that she knew she needed to take some time to absorb it and process the emotions and everything else that went along with it.

  But not now.

  Grabbing her cell phone, Bianca took a photo of the news article with its accompanying picture for no more reason than she just wanted to have it, then slid her phone in her pocket, picked up the article and headed out the door.

  “Excuse me one minute,” Evie said into the office phone as Bianca appeared. Pushing the hold button, she grinned at Bianca from her seat behind her desk. “Leona Tilley called. They’re ready to sign a contract. And she’s recommending to the Board of Realtors that we provide security for all Savannah area open houses. Somebody’s supposed to call tomorrow to set up an appointment to talk to us about it.”

  “That’s great.” Bianca summoned a smile and a thumbs-up as she followed Doc into his office. Evie apparently noticed nothing amiss, because Bianca heard her resume her castigation of whoever was on the other end of her phone call as she closed Doc’s door.

  He was already standing behind his desk. She looked a question at him.

  He said, “Money’s where you wanted it. I ricocheted it around the world like I was knocking down points in a pinball game. The route’s untraceable.”

  “Good job. You da man.”

  “Walk in the park.”

  “You destroy that piece of paper?”

  “Ate it.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Tore it up and put the pieces in the shredder, which is practically the same thing.” He seemed to hesitate before saying, “You sure you’re okay? You don’t look so hot.”

  “Thanks.” Her response was dry.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” She almost said, I must have had some bad fish for lunch. But she didn’t. Instead of lying, instead of dissembling, she decided to go with the truth, or at least a portion of it. Some of the story was just too personal to reveal. “I came across this in the file you gave me.” Walking toward him, she held out the article. “I think I recognize her. Only, not as Sarah McAlister. I’m almost certain that’s not her real name. I knew her as Issa.” Merely saying the name out loud made her chest tighten, Bianca discovered as Doc took the paper and glanced down at it. “I want you to run a trace on her, find out everything you can about her. She was...connected to my father, if that helps.”

  “It might. I’ll run her through some databases and see what turns up.”

  “I knew there was a reason I didn’t leave you behind in Bahrain.”

  “You just wanted somebody whose pretzels you could eat while they were sleeping on the flight home.”

  Bianca smiled. “That, too.” For the moment she’d done all she could to uncover the circumstances behind her mother’s death. It was time to concentrate on the job at hand. She came around Doc’s desk. “Now that the initial payment’s been made, I need to get back in touch. See what kind of bang our friends are wanting for their megabucks.”

  “Here you go.” Doc gestured at the computer as she joined him. The emails were on the screen.

  Bianca sank into his chair, frowned at the screen, hit Reply and typed, Initial payment received. Send job details.

  It took a few minutes, but then an email arrived with a file attached.

  The message accompanying it read, You have seventy-two hours. Contact us when it’s done.

  * * *

  Across the pond, it was a few minutes after 9:00 p.m.

  “We have something.” Durand’s voice was full of satisfaction as he strode into the conference room where Rogan waited. A young man carrying a laptop scurried after him. They were in London, because the latest intelligence they had on Traveler had led them to believe he might be in London. They were still following that lead, but they’d been scouring the city for six days without any luck. To be more precise, they were in the Vauxhall section of London, in the MI6 Building, a postmodern fortress on the bank of the River Thames that was popularly known as Legoland by those who served in Her Majesty’s clandestine services. Having formerly been one of that number, Rogan preferred to call it the clown factory. Although not in the hearing of Timothy Cowles-Parker, the senior MI6 officer who’d been sent by “C,” as the head of MI6 was known, to sit in on the after-hours, hastily called meeting. The office they were using was also provided courtesy of “C.” The courtesy being extended to Durand rather than Rogan, who, having left his post as an intelligence officer several years previously to go the freelance route, was still in the agency’s black books.

  Durand continued. “He’s made a mistake at last. Connard. I knew he would.”

  “Are you saying that Traveler accepted the job?” Cowles-Parker’s tone expressed disapproval of the other man’s bad lang
uage. He was around sixty, with a florid, jowly face and a body to match. His black business suit almost exactly matched the color of the sky outside the window. The view was only slightly enlivened by the fog-obscured lights of the adjacent Vauxhall Bridge.

  “That is exactly what I am saying.” Durand motioned to the young man, who immediately set the laptop on the conference table in the middle of the room. The table was wood veneer with metal legs and six cheap folding chairs. Cowles-Parker occupied one and Rogan sat in another. It was uncomfortable, but then Rogan wouldn’t be in it long. “He wants four million US. Half up front, half on completion. The initial payment has already been made, and shifted out of the account it was sent to.”

  “He’s alive, then.” The flat voice belonged to Kemp, the CIA agent, who was in the room via a tablet computer and some secure version of FaceTime, the connection having been set up by an assistant in anticipation of Durand’s arrival. In Washington, DC, where Kemp was, the time was a little after 5:00 p.m. The man was in a suit and tie, probably still at the office.

  “Look at this.” Durand gestured at the laptop, which was now on and positioned in front of Cowles-Parker. Rogan stood up and moved around behind Cowles-Parker to get a look. From the tablet, Kemp complained, “I can’t see squat,” so Durand obligingly read the message aloud.

  “‘The fee is quadruple your offer. Four million US, half up front to the bank account following and half when the job is complete.’ As I said, we paid the stipulated half.”

  “How do we know that’s Thayer?” Kemp asked.

  “Who else could it be? It is his private account. Highly encrypted. So far, our people have found it impossible to hack or trace. Used exclusively by select clients to solicit his services. We were able to lean on one of those clients who is currently in custody to provide that contact information.”

  “So you set up a phony theft to lure him out?” Kemp said. The bare bones of the operation had already been described to him. “I’m surprised he bit.”

  Durand said, “Let us say, we added a sweetener. Also, it is not a fake theft. Traveler has too much experience and too much of an ear to the ground for us to think it wise to attempt that. No, the theft is real enough. Fortunately, the nature of what was stolen is such that the intelligence community was immediately made aware of what had happened. It provided us with the perfect opportunity.”