Abuse of Power (19 page)

Jack knew there were bound to be other Escalades on the road, that this could be nothing more than paranoia at work, but it looked just like the car in the video—and he had a very strong feeling there was a Brit behind the wheel. There was something about the way he was maneuvering, the slightest hesitation, as though he were consciously trying to remember which side of the road he had to be on.

They weren’t trying very hard to conceal themselves, but there was no reason they should. They didn’t know about Leon’s video, so they couldn’t know that Jack was on to them. He wasn’t sure when or where they had picked him up, but if they saw him coming out of the Arco station they had a right to be curious.

Hitting the accelerator, he quickly changed lanes, cutting in front of a Nissan Sentra and getting an angry blast of horn for his trouble. Glancing in his mirror, he saw that the Escalade hadn’t reacted. It kept a steady pace about six cars behind him.

Could he be wrong? There was one way to find out.

At the next intersection, Jack made an abrupt left turn and picked up speed, dividing his attention between the road ahead and his rearview mirror. Several seconds ticked by and no sign of the Escalade, but just as he was about to chalk this up to an overactive imagination, the car came barreling through the intersection in hot pursuit.

The driver was handling the vehicle more aggressively now, and Jack knew without a doubt that he was in trouble. Tightening his grip on the wheel, he punched the accelerator and weaved between two cars, hearing more horns in his wake.

He took a sharp right at the next intersection, and again picked up speed, blasting past several more cars. He was half a block in when he saw the Escalade again, tearing around the corner behind him.

But as he continued up the street, it suddenly occurred to him that he was making a mistake. He shouldn’t be running from these people at all. This was his chance to find out what was going on.

Sure, it could be dangerous, but part of the reason he’d gone to his apartment last night was to prepare for just such a possibility. Unless you were a theater critic or society reporter, journalism was a dangerous racket.

Zipping past several parked cars, he screeched to a halt under a pool of light at the corner, cut the engine, and snagged the trunk lever as he jumped out. He moved quickly to the rear of the car and threw open the lid, then popped the latches on the rifle case inside and took out his Remington shotgun, which was loaded with 12-gauge rounds designed to mince a deer.

It was overkill, but that was the point.

By the time he turned around, the Escalade was on top of him.

Jack perched himself on the lip of the trunk and laid the rifle across his forearm, making it clear that it wouldn’t take much for him to swing it into action.

The Escalade came to an abrupt halt about twenty yards away and sat idling for a moment. Jack squinted, trying to make out the faces behind the windshield, but the car’s headlights prevented it. Several seconds ticked by, and he kept his gaze steady, doing his best to hide the effects of the adrenaline pounding through his veins.

Then the passenger door opened, and a man of about forty climbed out. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, but Jack recognized him just the same. He closed the door then slowly moved forward and stopped in front of the Escalade’s bumper, spreading his hands to show they were empty.

“The weapon isn’t necessary, Mr. Hatfield.” His accent, not surprisingly, was decidedly British. “All we want to do is talk.”

“All I want is to stay alive,” Jack said. “And answers to a few questions. I figure I’ve got a better chance at both if I’m heavily armed.”

“Spoken like a true American.”

“Thanks,” Jack replied.

He hadn’t meant it as a compliment and Jack’s proud response caused him to start visibly, as if he weren’t so sure the “American”
wouldn’t
pull the trigger.

“So?” Jack said. “How about those answers?”

“I’m not quite certain what it is you think is going on here, but whatever it is you’re mistaken,” the man said.

“Is that why you’re following me?”

“We mean you no harm.”

Jack stifled a laugh. “I know of at least two dead people who would disagree.”

“You think that has something to do with us?”

“Not ‘think,’” Jack said.

“And who might these people be?”

Jack sighed. “Don’t waste my time, all right? I know you’re MI6 or special ops, and I know you were at Jamal Thomas’s house yesterday. So why don’t we cut through the bull. You can start by telling your name.”

“Adam Swain,” he said.

Jack had no idea if the name was real—somehow he doubted it—but it would do for now.

“And you’re right,” Swain continued. “We
are
MI6.”

“Okay, Adam. Now what’s so important to the Home Office that you had to execute a fifteen-year-old kid?”

Swain’s eyebrows went up. “Execute? Hardly. We’re not in the child-killing business. From what I’ve been told, the poor little bastard died of an overdose.”

“Helped along by you.”

Swain smiled. “You watch too many television shows, Mr. Hatfield. All we did was talk to the boy. Nothing more. Just as we’re talking to you. If you want to blame anyone for his death, blame that frightful mother of his and that filthy sty she raised him in. It’s a wonder he survived this long.”

“He had a busted arm and a limited radius,” Jack said.

“He was also in a lot of pain,” Swain replied. “Maybe his mother wanted to ease it. Or maybe she just didn’t want to
deal
with it.”

Partly true, but Swain’s condescension rankled Jack. “What about Bob Copeland? Do we blame that on
his
mother?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“I told you not to waste my time.”

“And I don’t intend to,” Swain said. “But I don’t know anyone named Copeland.”

“You don’t watch the news?”

“BBC America, and this Mr. Copeland didn’t turn up there.”

Also possible,
Jack had to admit.

“I’m not a big fan of fiction, Mr. Hatfield. But I
did
catch that press conference two days ago, and I heard the questions you asked. If you’re as good at what you do as I’ve been told you are, then you’ve undoubtedly discovered our friend Abdal al-Fida by now.”

Jack was surprised. He had been holding al-Fida as one of his trump cards and hadn’t expected Swain to bring him up.

Swain must have seen this in his expression because he smiled again, saying, “Yes, that’s right. I have no problem admitting—off the record, of course—that Mr. al-Fida was driving that Land Rover. And I have no problem telling you that we fed a cover story to the FBI and the local police. But we had good reason for that. al-Fida is not what you seem to believe he is.”

“And what would that be?”

“A terrorist.”

Jack couldn’t stifle the laugh this time. “So he was driving around in a car full of C4 just for the hell of it?”

Swain was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Which means I have to be able to trust you, Mr. Hatfield. I need assurances that you’ll keep it to yourself.”

Jack considered his options and how little information he actually had. This Swain could be lying, of course. But if he wasn’t—

“All right,” Jack told him. “You have my promise.”

“Nothing gets written, aired, or anonymously blogged. Your word.”

“Cross my heart,” Jack said.

Swain studied him for what must have been at least thirty seconds, as if weighing whether he should continue or simply turn around and leave.

Jack waited patiently. More than anything, the man’s hesitation gave this the veneer of truth. But only the veneer. This kind of hesitation was Intelligence 101, the act of pretending to let someone in on a big secret. That was half the battle in convincing them the information was accurate.

Swain finally said, “Abdal al-Fida is an MI6 asset. For the last two years he’s been working for us as a deep cover mole, infiltrating one of the most ruthless Islamic extremist organizations in the world.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not at liberty to say more than that. But that carjacking was an unfortunate incident that essentially put him—and us—out of business for the time being.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Jack said. “Why was he driving a car full of C4?”

“He had just taken delivery of it and was headed for a rendezvous with members of his cell. If we hadn’t rushed him out of the country when we did, they would have executed him for his—let’s call it initiative.”

“You mean launching an attack on his own.”

“Just so. That particular cover story was hatched to prevent the cell from knowing that we were on to them.”

“But the whole thing about the hicks up north, the Constitutional Defense Brigade. Wouldn’t that whole thing signal the enemy that something was being covered up?
They
know who was driving that Land Rover …
I
know who was driving that Land Rover … they’d have to figure the FBI knew it, too.”

Swain smiled again. “The CDB arrests merely confirm their faith in the investigative incompetence of American law enforcement. They have, after all, been operating here with impunity for nearly two years.”

Jack considered that, and on the surface the story seemed at least semiplausible. And if he were a trained seal like so many of his colleagues, he might have taken Swain’s word for it and called it a day.

But Jack wasn’t in this for the fish. And Swain’s version of events left too many questions unanswered—not the least of which was, if the driver of the Land Rover was merely making a supply run, why had those explosives been fully wired for detonation?

Abdal al-Fida wasn’t headed to a rendezvous, and that fact alone was enough to put Swain’s story in the “doubtful” category.

How stupid did this guy think he was? It was time to play his second trump card.

Tightening his grip on the Remington, Jack said, “So tell me something.”

“Haven’t I already told you enough?”

“Yeah, well, I’m hoping for something that resembles the truth, this time.” He paused. “What does any of this have to do with Operation Roadshow?”

There was a shift in Swain’s gaze, a nearly imperceptible widening of the eyes that told Jack he’d struck a nerve, just as he expected he would. And Jack couldn’t help but enjoy the surge of satisfaction he got from catching the man off guard. Not just because he had surprised Mr. “Swain,” but because it validated the impression that this guy was not truly a big boy.

The smugness that had permeated the entire conversation abruptly disappeared. Swain’s expression went flat, and his next words were clipped and passionless, as if he were prepping for a kill.

“Tread carefully, Mr. Hatfield. This line of inquiry will get you nothing except, perhaps, an early grave.”

Start throwing stones and see who throws one back.

Jack’s palms were sweating. He shifted the Remington in his hands to reassert his grip. “Is that what you told Bob Copeland?”

“I should warn you,” Swain said, “that at this very moment there’s a sniper crouched in the back of our truck pointing an extremely accurate weapon at your head.” He gestured to Jack’s shotgun. “All it takes is my signal and before you can squeeze off a single shot your brains will be splattered all over the boot of your car.”

Jack’s throat tightened. Was this a bluff? A shooter would have to aim a little high to account for the downward deflection of the bullet caused by the Escalade’s windshield, but a basic armor-piercing round would certainly do the trick.

Bye-bye Jack Hatfield.

“So why am I still standing?” he said.

“Two reasons,” Swain told him. “First, we have no real desire to clean up another mess in a less than optimal location. Not here, not now. And second, as sad as this may be, you don’t really pose all that much of a threat to us.”

“Meaning what?”

“Despite what my own prime minister might think, you have no credibility, Mr. Hatfield. I think that was proven by the derision at that press conference. No one took you seriously then, and there’s no reason they would now.”

“Yet here we stand,” Jack said.

“Because I want you to understand the gravity of the situation in which you’ve found yourself. Trust me, if you continue to pursue this line of inquiry we
will
consider you a genuine problem and react accordingly. Is that understood?”

Jack stared at the Escalade’s windshield and considered calling Swain’s bluff. But he decided not to push his luck. The man was right about one thing: not here, not now.

“Understood,” Jack said tersely.

Swain smiled again, but there was no humor in it. “Excellent. I’m glad we could come to this agreement.”

Then he turned, went back to the Escalade and climbed in. A moment later, the SUV shot backward, quickly turned around in an empty space, and disappeared up the street.

It was only then that Jack realized he was trembling.

Returning the Remington to its case, he closed the trunk, then climbed back behind the wheel.

Contrary to what he’d told Swain, he had no intention whatsoever of adhering to their so-called agreement. And he knew Swain wouldn’t, either. When the time and environment were right, those men would strike again and Jack could only assume that he’d be the victim of a sudden heart attack or a tragic accident.

Worst of all, he still knew nothing about Operation Roadshow. And with Bob Copeland dead, there was little chance of him learning anything more.

He halfway considered calling the one man who had stuck by him during the
Truth Tellers
debacle—Senator Harold Wickham—but if Wickham were to start digging like Copeland had, who was to say he wouldn’t wind up suffering the same fate? Jack couldn’t have that on his conscience.

As he started the engine, he pulled his cell phone out and hit speed dial. A moment later, Tony Antiniori answered.

“I was getting worried,” his friend said. “Where the hell
are
you?”