Silent Assassin(22)

And now it was her turn to pass it on to him.

“You can make a long, long list of people who you can blame for the way things turned out,” she said, “and so completely disregard any part that you had in this fiasco.”

“Any part I had?” he snorted incredulously.

“So are you going to tell me it wasn’t your fault?” she said, in a cruelly mocking voice. “Am I the night manager at a 7-Eleven? Because I thought we were supposed to be the elite of the elite. Best of the best. I thought we were the ones who did what needed to be done, and offered no excuses.”

Morgan grinded his teeth, but he said nothing. Even if there was nothing he could have done differently, the shame of failure still itched and stung. But she was right. If he was good, it was because he never pushed off responsibility for anything onto anyone else. It was because he did what he had to do to get the job done.

“So are you the best, Cobra?” she pressed.

“Goddamn right I am,” he said resolutely, still slightly peeved.

“So act like it.”

Morgan had to admit that, even though she was a pain in the ass, Bloch was a good leader. She didn’t coddle, and never spared anyone’s feelings. What she did was push her team as far as they would go. It made her a bitch sometimes, but in the end, he was thankful for it. And she always held up her end.

“So what are we going to do next?” he asked.

She sighed, softening, a slight crack in her hard demeanor. “I was hoping for your expert opinion on that question.” She sat down in her chair. The chewing-out was officially over, and it was time to talk shop.

He furrowed his brow, leaning forward in his chair. “We have no solid leads right now,” he said. “When you don’t know where the fish are, you cast the widest net possible. Coordinate with the other cells, see what they have.” His phrasing of the suggestion was a kind of gambit. The hope was that she might let something slip by. He knew there must be other groups like Zeta Division, autonomous, with similar assets, coordinated under the umbrella of the shadowy organization that financed them, the voice from above. Morgan had never managed to confirm it, and it was designed that way. No one person in the lower hierarchy had even a glimpse of the big picture or of most of the members at their level. The irony of being with a peacekeeping organization that coordinated like a terrorist group was not lost on Morgan.

“What if we’ve already looked at this from every possible angle?” Bloch said. There was no anxiety in her voice, just cold questioning.

“There’s no such thing,” said Morgan vehemently. He had noticed the hesitation that had crept into her voice. “You know that. Nobody covers all their tracks. Not even the world’s greatest criminal mind. There’s always something someone overlooked. So you keep searching for the angle you missed, and you don’t stop looking until you find it.”

“What if there isn’t?” She unfrosted the glass around them with a touch to a remote control hanging on the wall and stared at the dormant war room down below.

“There is,” he insisted. “There always is.”

“You’re right,” she said, and all the doubt in her voice and demeanor suddenly dried up like a drop of sweat on scorching asphalt. “We keep pushing until we find our way to whoever is behind this. And in the meantime, all we can hope for is that our next lead isn’t a mushroom cloud.”





CHAPTER 11


Berlin, December 30





Novokoff kept the motor running on his Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan, with one hand on the wheel, and another on the grip of a semiautomatic with a scratched-out serial number. He was waiting for a man he had seen only once before, and was mildly concerned that he would have to shoot him. The American.

He was on the shoulder of a country road outside Berlin. Novokoff’s own choice—he never accepted a meeting if he couldn’t pick the location. This place was good—just off the highway, but hidden from the view of passing cars, and leading only to an old abandoned farmhouse. He was ready to speed off if he had to. But the curiosity about this meeting gnawed away inside him.

The car itself was used, but it drove like new and there was no smell. He always bought them used, because it left less of a paper trail. He had a man, of course (or rather, one in every country) who took care of things for him. He had another man who would take the car later, strip it for parts, and eliminate all trace evidence by burning the interior. He could buy cheaper burner cars. But what was he, a barbarian? So it was a costly habit. But it kept him alive, and kept him free. It had worked for him so far.