Blackout (Sam Archer 3) (7 page)

As he took a seat behind his desk, his assistant knocked on the door and entered. He’d left it open knowing she would.

She was a few years older than he was, a woman called Lynn, who was also from Virginia, not far from his hometown, Staunton. She’d been his assistant for almost three years, and they had a good working relationship, sharing a pleasant degree of mutual respect. She didn't take shit from anyone, no matter what their rank or position, an attitude that had definitely not helped her career. However, she and her boss had developed a good rapport. He always made a point to treat her with respect and courtesy and he knew that she appreciated it and subsequently did the same for him.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she said.

‘Morning, Lynn. How are you?’

'Very well, sir. Yourself?'

'Good, thanks
.'

He watched the screen as a report came up, a black headline on a yellow banner, rolling onto the screen.
Breaking News: Political candidate Charlie Adams commits suicide on South Bank early this morning
. The CIA agent read the headline and a light-bulb faintly
flickered at the back of his mind, like one turned on in a dusty cellar or basement in a house that had been abandoned for years, given a spark of electricity but struggling for full power.

Charlie Adams.

That name rang a bell.

It was familiar yet distant, tantalisingly out of reach.

Where had he heard it before?

‘Charlie Adams,’ he said to himself, out loud, watching the screen. He looked over at his assistant. ‘You heard that name before, Lynn?’

‘Only on the occasional news report, sir,' she said. 'Apparently he was a pretty big deal in British politics. People were comparing him to President Obama. Real up-and-comer.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Put a revolver in his mouth and ate a bullet.’

The man behind the desk frowned, thinking.

‘OK. Anything for me this morning?’

‘Nothing pressing, sir. But don't forget, you have a twelve o'clock with the Syrian ambassador. It's at a private conference room across town. I've arranged transport so you won't have to drive.’

‘That's right. OK. Thanks, Lynn.’

She nodded to her boss and left, shutting the door behind her.

After she was gone and he was alone, the CIA agent continued to watch the screen, wracking his brains for any further recollection of that name.
Charlie Adams
, he thought, repeating the name to himself over and over in his head, trying to stir up some recollection. It felt significant somehow, like he should have remembered who the guy was.

Charlie Adams
.

Where do I know you from, man?

Across London, another man was watching that same news report.

He was sitting in the dark, and he was alone. Across the wide room to his right, a series of weapons were lined up neatly against the wall. There were six Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles with a stack of spare magazines, each one fully loaded, taped back-to-back in pairs for ease of reloading once the top one was empty. Alongside them were four MP5 SD3s, silenced sub-machine guns, and a stack of spare clips loaded with 9 millimetre Parabellum bullets. There was also a bazooka with spare ammunition in a black equipment case. And finally a Russian Dragunov sniper rifle, unloaded, which used the same ammunition as the Kalashnikovs.

The weapons had all been bought down at the Docklands illegally three days ago, cash in hand, sufficient threats made to the men who had sold them, warning them in explicit detail what would happen if they ever said a word about the transactions to another soul. Syringes and tourniquets would be used, and a power saw. The message was received loud and clear. No one would ever know about the trade. The serial numbers on all the weapons had already been removed with acid, rendering them pretty much untraceable, and the man in the room had stripped apart, cleaned, oiled and reassembled each weapon, wearing gloves to avoid leaving any fingerprints.

The figure was
sitting
in front of a desk with a series of televisions on the desktop in front of him, one tuned to BBC World, the other to the CNN Breaking Newsroom. The sound on both screens was off, but the footage was what mattered.

On the left, the BBC channel, the screen was still showing the
Breaking News
banner headline of the politician's suicide. To the right, CNN, a
Breaking News
report had just come in of a man found strangled in a parking lot in a Washington DC suburb. On the table beside the screens, there was a list of names on a pad of A4 paper, eleven in all, one beneath the other, written neatly in a line down the left margin of the page.

Charlie Adams
was near the top.

The man reached forward and took a pen in his large hand. He drew a line through the two words.

Adams was gone.

He moved his finger down the list slowly and drew a line through another name, the doorman strangled outside the strip-club in DC. The large man had received a phone call from JFK International Airport earlier confirming the death of the bodyguard in the New York City apartment, but he was still waiting for the television to report it before he put his pen through a name. Not that he didn’t trust his man, but he’d learned long ago that a man wasn’t dead until you saw his corpse. He was living proof of that. He wanted to see a body-bag on a gurney on the television before he drew a line through anything. His two men were already in the air, on their way across the Atlantic from the American East
Coast, using the best counterfeit passports and identification money could buy. Passing through security and immigration would not be a problem. They would be here in the room beside him within the next eight hours.

In the darkness, the big man lifted the pen off the page and looked down at the list. With one of them killed in Iraq years ago by a truck-bomb, that was three confirmed down. Three for three. One hundred per cent success. The perfect start.

Which left eight to go.

He flicked his gaze to the next name on the list. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a mobile phone and pushed
Redial
, lifting it to his ear. The call was answered before the second ring.

‘Sir?
’ a voice said, down the line.

‘Are you in position?’ the man asked quietly, in a foreign language. Hi
s voice was deep and low
.

‘Yes, sir. We're here.’

‘The package will arrive soon,' the man said, checking a watch on his wrist, still talking in the foreign tongue. 'You know what to do. Kill whoever you have to if they get in the way. But make sure you shoot him in the head. No mistakes.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Without another word, the man ended the call. At the same moment, the CNN screen popped up with a new headline, appearing on the banner under the male newsreader's face. It joined the other report of the man found strangled on the looping news-feed, the reports streaming along the bottom of the screen one after the other, vice-versa.

Breaking News: Man found shot dead in New York City apartment.

The screen flicked to a gathering of news-vans and an ambulance outside a Manhattan building, the time still early in the morning there, the sun just starting to come up in the distance. He saw the doors open and a black body bag wheeled out on the trolley, moving down the steps and headed towards the open doors at the rear of the ambulance. The big man’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction. He picked up the pen and drew a line through the dead man's name. Four down.

Seven to go.

FIVE

Inside his office in the U.S Embassy, the CIA agent was still trying to place Charlie Adams when his assistant came in bearing coffee on a tray. He didn’t react as she placed the cup and saucer on the desk in front of him, the tapping of fingers on computer keyboards audible from the tech area next door. Normally affable, she noticed he seemed distracted and took her time placing a small jug of milk and sweeteners by the cup of coffee on the desk, waiting for him to turn and talk to her. He didn’t.

‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’ she asked instead, subtly trying to get his attention.

‘No, thank you,’ he said vaguely, looking at the screen, his mind elsewhere.

Turning, she glanced at the television he was glued to across the room, seeing the report of the politician's suicide.

‘A real shame,’ she said. ‘I saw him on the news last week. Seemed like a good man.’

Her boss looked over at her.

‘What was his background?’

‘He used to be a soldier in the British Army. All the papers here loved him. You can see why,’ she said, nodding at a photograph of him in a suit waving to a crowd that had come up on the screen. 'I wouldn't mind going home to that every night.'

The CIA agent switched his attention
back
to the screen, scanning the photo, as his assistant turned to leave.

And all of a sudden, the light-bulb flashed on.

He sat up straight.

‘Hang on, Lynn,’ he said, as she walked to the door.

He grabbed a pen and scribbled three names on a small pad, then tore off the uppermost sheet, walked around his desk quickly and passed it to her.

‘Do me a favour and run these three names through the system. Check every database you can. Military, NSA, FBI, police, DMV, medical and prison records. Anything and everything you can access.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, taking the paper.

‘Don’t let anyone know you’re doing this. Not a soul. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir. Is something wrong?’

He didn't reply. He’d shifted his attention to the television instead.

His secretary paused for a moment, then realised she wasn’t going to get an answer. She nodded, pulling the door closed, and headed off to her private workstation to start searching the names he’d given her. Alone, the CIA agent saw the studio shot change to one of Adams in combat fatigues, smiling up at the camera in some dusty courtyard somewhere in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Is something wrong,
Lynn had asked.

'I hope not,' the man whispered, staring at the photograph of the soldier.

The shape of Grosvenor Square and the space on the western side of the U.S Embassy meant the area facing the building was a popular area for public protest. Pretty much every day of the year a group of people from some organisation or another would be out there, claiming civil rights or protesting against political injustice, chanting and waving painted signs, generally wanting to kick up a fuss and let their voice echo around Mayfair. The armed US marines stationed on the outside of the building were used to this, ready and alert for any trouble, but despite being repetitive and occasionally aggravating to those within the building, the protestors were normally pretty harmless.

Walking through the Square, a small man in a purple delivery uniform stepped past them as they chanted and walked straight towards the Embassy. He worked for FedEx, and had a box-shaped express package under his arm. It was addressed to the London CIA office. He moved to the left and joined the queue of people waiting to
go
through the security hut, and when it was his turn he nodded to the security guards within, passing the package through the x-ray machine. The guard behind the machine looked at the monitor, but all
he could see
inside the box was a white blurry rectangle, aka stacks of paper. The usual.

It took the delivery man two attempts to get through the metal detector, forgetting a small set of keys in his pocket the first time. But once he’d walked through without a bleep from the machine and
had been
patted down and covered with the metal-detector wand, he put the keys back in his pocket, scooped up the package and walked up the path towards the entrance, pulling open the main door and approaching the woman behind the front desk.

‘Delivery,’ he said. ‘CIA Office.’

She was busy talking to someone from the visa queue, but she looked towards him and nodded. He pushed the brown package on the counter towards her and slid an electronic pad on the top, stifling a yawn. She
propelled herself
over on her swivel chair, taking the plastic pen and quickly signed the screen, then returned her attention to the lady enquiring about her visa.

‘Cheers,’ the FedEx guy said, turning and
walking
back out through the doors. He walked down the path and across the Square, heading back to his truck, and disappeared out of sight.

Back in the building, the woman finished dealing with the woman from the visa line, then turned and looked at the package. It wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular, just The Office. She scooped up her phone and pushed 4 on the internal line, lifting it to her ear, connecting to the tech team next door.

‘Delivery,’ she said, putting the phone back down.

A minute later, a young male analyst appeared and taking the package, turned and headed back towards the offices, looking at the address as he walked. It wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular so he had the right to open it. The guards on the second x-ray let him pass back in straight away, pushing a button so he didn't have to bother with the face and retina scan.