Severance Package (21 page)

And at two in the morning, David had risen from his bed and eaten six Snickers bars he’d stashed in the freezer.

This had been in early June.

Since then, his binges had come at unexpected times—along with his sex binges. Always with hookers or strippers, in his car or the champagne rooms of allegedly upscale sex clubs. David had to call his bank to ask that his ATM max withdrawal be raised from seven hundred dollars to a thousand dollars. He never knew when the urge would overwhelm him, and somehow, seven hundred dollars just didn’t go far enough in the champagne rooms.

Nobody at work suspected; his employees didn’t usually make the rounds at suburban delis, chain restaurants, or brick-oven pizza parlors—or downtown strip joints or fetish clubs.

You couldn’t tell by looking at David, either. His frame was
still finely muscled and compact—essentially the same as the day he entered freshman year at Penn. His metabolism, always efficient, had shifted into overdrive to accommodate the influx of calories.

His penis was raw, but even that seemed to heal quickly.

David began to suspect he was losing his mind.

It had been known to happen in this kind of business.

By late July David decided to purge himself of the hunger. It was stress-related, he’d decided, and he needed to detox his body and mind. After a few quiet inquiries, he settled on an ayurvedic spa in southern India, where a radical panchakarma treatment might be what he needed to shake the cravings. He’d booked the flights and the package and told Amy Felton to take care of things; he had suddenly been called away. It was monsoon season in India. Tourists avoided areas like south India this time of year, but for David’s purposes it was perfect. The harsh conditions were what he needed. As well as dinners of rice gruel. Intense early morning yoga sessions. Forced vomiting. Leeches. Pummeling. Herb steam baths. And finally, shirodhara, in which warm oil was poured over your forehead in a slow, steady, and potentially maddening stream. It was the panchakarma version of Chinese water torture, and it was exquisitely painful.

Fourteen days later—the required minimum stay—David emerged from the resort trembling but hopeful.

On his way home, he made a pit stop in Austin, and ate five pulled-pork sandwiches along with fries and enough frosty pints of Shiner Bock to require an extra night’s stay in an airport hotel to sleep off his drunkenness. In the morning, he consumed four egg-and-bacon breakfasts, with croissants and extra-strong coffee.

His hunger was bottomless. Hopeless.

A few days later, he’d received instructions.

And then he understood.

Somehow, his body had anticipated all of this. His labor of
five years, building Murphy, Knox, needed to be destroyed. And he, along with it.

So it made sense. His body was merely trying to experience every last sensory detail it could before his eyelids closed a final time, and the heavy black curtain covered his face, and the data bank that was his brain flickered into nothingness.

Whether or not Nichole Wise cared if he lived or died, there was something more important. He didn’t care either, beyond finishing this final operation.

And the longer David kept them here, on this floor, the more likely that would be.

His need for one last success was as sharp as the hunger.

Ania’s palms and soles still burned and ached from racing down to the sixteenth floor of the north fire tower. But that was nothing compared with the pain of the return trip to thirty-six.

The events of the past thirty minutes had taken their toll on her body, already weakened from the soft years of living as “Molly Lewis.” She’d tried to maintain her core strength, and she had, to a large degree, thanks to regular visits to the franchise gym closest to their home. Paul had been very supportive, renewing her membership every year for Christmas, even though he’d allowed his own waistline and chin to lie fallow. In bed, he constantly complimented her body—its compactness, its suppleness. Paul would suggest positions, and she’d agree to them, just for the exercise. The trick was having him hold steady. Often, it was over before her heart rate even peaked. But this meager regimen was no match for the long hours in front of the plasma television, or the constant barrage of carbs and sugar and fat that were the main ingredients of the meals Paul preferred. Pizza. Chinese take-out. His beloved Polish potato salad.

As a result, her battle with Nichole Wise—not so much a
battle as a chance to flex muscles she hadn’t used in a long while—left her more winded than she would have expected.

And the abuse she’d taken in the past ten minutes—hurtling her body down endless sets of concrete staircases, hoisting two male bodies on her shoulders, snapping a neck, enduring a beating with a lead sap—had weakened her severely.

Ania, what has become of you?

Ania, potential Olympic gold medal winner?

Ania, whose body was both the source of her greatest pain and the key to her escape?

But walking up the south fire tower stairs with the corpse of Ethan Goins over her right shoulder, endless staircase after endless staircase, every weakness pronounced itself.

She’d made her way across the elevator bank to the south tower—away from the sarin. But it didn’t make the flights up any easier.

Perhaps the worst thing about it was how Ethan’s head rocked from side to side, like a bowling ball in a sack slung over your shoulder. Gravity pulled it one way. Then another. Then an entirely different way. It was unpredictable.

Ania took comfort in what would happen once she reached the thirty-sixth floor. If those watching had been satisfied with her performance on the landing, then there was not much left to accomplish.

She needed only to release the belt buckle holding Amy Felton in place, and drag her back into her office. She suspected she’d be dead from fright. If not, another neck snap, and she could finally join her beloved Ethan.

David was in the conference room, paralyzed, awaiting final interrogations. There were three questions she needed to ask, and then she could end his life, too.

And then it would be time to collect Jamie.

Most likely, he’d passed out, and was still in the empty office
where she’d left him. If he’d wandered away, he’d find nothing but horrors. Either way, she would find him somewhere on thirty-six, docile, awaiting rescue.
Her
rescue. Repairs to his hand would need to be made, but that wouldn’t take long. Ania had made clean, precise cuts down the lengths of his fingers. When they’d healed, she’d kiss the scars. Her lips would be the first sensations he’d feel. She’d encourage him to write again. Write what he wanted. Not press releases.

In Europe, he’d be free to write whatever he liked.

She hoped he’d get along with her mother.

Nichole decided to start with the fingers. Maybe he was paralyzed for real; maybe he wouldn’t feel a thing. But she’d make him tell her what was going on. Whoops, David, there goes your ring finger. And most of the pinkie. Want to try for a thumb? After a while, he had to start caring.

And start telling her how to bring this floor out of lockdown.

“God, what are you doing?”

Jamie, the drone. Watching her hold the gun to David’s hand, placing the barrel at the spot where the index finger met palm.

Jamie, cradling his own hand protectively.

“You can’t do that,” he said.

“You want to get out of here, don’t you?” Nichole asked. “I need him to start giving me answers.”

She pulled the trigger.

Almost at the same time Jamie said, “No!”

David appreciated the concern from Jamie; he really did. But there was no need. He was more or less numb from the neck down.

As a result, his body was vaguely aware of the loss. A finger was nothing to take lightly. Especially his index finger—one of the more useful digits of the human hand. But it wasn’t as if David could move his hand anyway. He told his body this, and his body shrugged and said, Hey, it’s your body.

David gritted his teeth and pretended to be in some kind of pain. He even winced. Showmanship to the end.

What did the Moscow Rules say?

Use misdirection, illusion, deception.

“It’s your thumb next,” he heard her say.

Sure, that would be natural.

Maybe she planned on doing all ten fingers, which would be wonderful. The more time Nichole spent torturing him, the less time she had to make it off this floor. That was the only thing he cared about now; everybody staying on the floor until the explosives did their job.

“Two seconds to decide, David.”

His glanced at his hand, and saw Nichole had a gun pointed at the base of his thumb this time. She was bringing out the big hurt early. It was best to start with a small finger, because when you feel how bad it hurts to lose, say, a pinkie, the pain of losing a thumb or index finger seems unfathomable.

But hey, it was her show.

David was finished being her mentor.

Meanwhile, Jamie looked sick to his stomach.

“Jamie,” he said, “if there’s still champagne and orange juice on the table, I suggest you mix yourself a drink.”

David would rather see Jamie fall asleep than burn up alive. Or worse—try to leap from the windo—

BLAM!

Ah.

The thumb.

Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy finally figured out how to tap into the building’s security cameras. There was nothing of interest in the north fire tower. He found what he wanted in the south tower.

Girlfriend.

Dragging the corpse of Ethan Goins up one flight of concrete stairs after another, which had to be a real pain in the ass. But McCoy knew—and Girlfriend knew—that leaving his body in the fire tower wouldn’t work. It needed to be on the thirty-sixth floor. Burned up with the rest of the bodies. That was the operation.

He also knew Girlfriend must be bitterly disappointed—she’d had other plans for Mr. Goins.

She must be a little worried. Her audition, so far, was more than a little shaky.

And she had started out so strong.

The arrangement had been simple: Execute Murphy, then demonstrate her skills on those present. One by one, over the course of an hour or so. Nothing terribly fancy, but demonstrating her varied abilities, knowing she was being observed on the network of fiber-optic cameras covering the office.

If Girlfriend’s demonstration was impressive enough, she would receive the tools to escape the floor. Everything above thirty would burn. She would be extracted from the city, and given her reward: a promotion.

The pay hike wasn’t enough to retire to a life of coconuts and limes and backrubs on some tropical island, but it was enough to change your perspective on life. Many people coveted leadership positions within CI-6, even though the agency had no official name or structure. Faith in CI-6 leadership was much like
the nation’s faith in the American dollar: powered by sheer will and absolutely nothing tangible like a congressional mandate. (Hah!) Still, the power and resources available to leadership were astounding.

For Girlfriend, ascending the ranks had more practical appeal. A promotion meant she could choose her location. In this case, Europe. She desperately longed to return to the continent. McCoy had enjoyed reading her screeds about the state of the American city, particularly Philadelphia, encoded in their communications over the past few months.
They murder the young here,
she once wrote.
But most people care more about the sports teams.

It also meant she could afford to take her mother out of the assisted-living hellhole in Poland and put her somewhere to die with dignity. Maybe even prolong her life by a few months, or as much as a year.

Girlfriend wasn’t about the coconuts and backrubs.

Or was she?

That was the puzzling thing about the events of the morning. It had gotten off to a rocky start, with one of David’s younger reports … who was it … ah, Stuart McCrane, actually drinking the poisoned mimosa with little to no prompting. Stuart must have been a Boy Scout or an altar boy.

Then there was Ethan Goins, who had failed to report to the conference room on time.

In her defense, Girlfriend had tried to salvage the situation at the last minute:

Should I look for him?

No, no. We can start without him.

Are you …

I am.

Once Stuart was dead, it was too late to search for Ethan. The operation had begun.

This had radically altered Girlfriend’s operational plan. She’d been saving Stuart and Ethan for later. In fact, she’d ranked the direct reports, from hardest to kill to easiest:

1. Murphy
   

2. Felton
   

3. Goins
   

4. Wise
   

5. Kurtwood
   

6. McCrane
   

7. DeBroux
   

Murphy had been the real worry. Miss your opportunity with this guy and watch out. Girlfriend would have spent the rest of the morning running throughout the office, ducking and hiding, fighting for her life. And, most likely, would have lost.

McCoy should know.