Silent Assassin(11)

He plunged the needle into his chest. His heart raced, and he began to black out just as he heard the sound of approaching vehicles.

The cavalry had come.





CHAPTER 6


Andover, Massachusetts, the previous August





Morgan had first been contacted by Zeta Division a few years after he retired from the CIA as an assassin to pursue a normal life. A man who called himself Smith had approached him in the echoing garage under the Boston Common. Smith had extended an invitation into . . . something. Morgan hadn’t known what it was, but it was big, and it was secret. He’d understood that it was some kind of nongovernmental intelligence and Black Ops organization, and that was about it. Morgan had said no at the time, but Smith still left him with a business card. Printed on it had been a phone number and nothing else.

At that time, Morgan had sworn to himself that it was over, that he was out of the life and the business, that he was going to live like a normal person. He was going to focus on what had previously been his cover career dealing in classic cars and live a regular family life in the suburbs with his beautiful wife and his lovely daughter. But as it usually went in this game, things were not that simple.

He’d felt an itch, one that grew less manageable every day. In all his years in Black Ops, he had known there were other agencies that operated outside of the purview of the government. As an independent contractor of sorts, Morgan had escaped the tightest scrutiny of the Agency, but his actions were still tightly controlled and subject to rules upon rules. He had always thought of all the good he could do, everything he could accomplish, if he were working with an independent group, not beholden to Washington bureaucrats. And now, here it was, an invitation into that world.

He tried to ignore the business card. He kept it in a closed drawer in his home office, and did his best to convince himself that his day-to-day responsibilities as a father, husband, and car broker were enough. But the card proved a constant prickle in his brain. It kept him up at night. He would frequently take it out of the drawer just to stare at the rich creamy stock, the fine classic typeface, and those tantalizing numbers. Telling himself it was just a matter of healthy caution, he went down to Boston to look for the surveillance footage from the parking garage that day—only to find that all of the video that might have shown him something useful was mysteriously missing. Nobody seemed to be able to tell him why or how it had disappeared. And Morgan was left without a lead.

Finally, one afternoon when his wife, Jenny, who was an interior decorator, had an appointment with a client and his daughter, Alex, was out for a run, he gave in to his curiosity. He sat at his mahogany desk and lay the card out carefully—which was unnecessary, as he had, since receiving it, memorized the ten digits backward and forward—and then set the phone beside it. He took a deep breath, picked up the receiver, and dialed. He listened expectantly, but all he heard was a series of pulses, and then the line went dead.

Morgan set the receiver down. He’d known better than to think he would get a perky receptionist asking him where to direct his call, but he wondered if and how they would make contact now. He was slightly worried that the line was no longer in service, and that he had missed his window of opportunity.

That fear was put to rest the next day, during his morning run. He had dropped off Neika, his German shepherd, at the house after she’d grown too hot and tired, and had decided to keep going. As he turned onto a street perpendicular to his little cul-de-sac, a sleek black Audi pulled up next to him. The car kept pace with Morgan as he ran, and the driver’s window rolled down. Morgan’s fight-or-flight response was about to kick in when he recognized the man. Even with his large dark sunglasses, Morgan knew that precise short dark brown hair and that perfectly inexpressive face. It was a face that had played in his mind and in his dreams many times since he had first seen it. Smith.

“Why don’t you get in, Mr. Morgan?” said Smith. “I think you and I have much to talk about.”

Morgan shuffled scenarios around in his head. A spy getting into a car with a stranger could lead to someone getting killed, even in a sleepy Boston suburb. But sometimes, finding out the truth took risk. He opened the door to the passenger’s seat. The air in the car felt icy as the cold air-conditioning hit Morgan’s sweaty skin. Still, it felt great to come in from the heat, which had abated only a little from the height of the summer. His sweaty shirt clung to the leather seats as he sat down.

“Feel free to adjust the temperature to your liking, Mr. Morgan,” said Smith. He set off along the shady suburban street. “I’m afraid that’s about as much as I can do to set you at ease.”