The End Game

ALSO BY CATHERINE COULTER

THE FBI THRILLERS

Nemesis
(2015)

Power Play
(2014)

Bombshell
(2013)

Backfire
(2012)

Split Second
(2011)

Twice Dead: Riptide
and
Hemlock Bay
(2011)

Whiplash
(2010)

KnockOut
(2009)

TailSpin
(2008)

Double Jeopardy
(2008)
: The Target
and
The Edge

Double Take
(2007)

The Beginning
(2005)
: The Cove
and
The Maze

Point Blank
(2005)

Blowout
(2004)

Blindside
(2003)

Eleventh Hour
(2002)

Hemlock Bay
(2001)

Riptide
(2000)

The Edge
(1999)

The Target
(1998)

The Maze
(1997)

The Cove
(1996)

A BRIT IN THE FBI THRILLERS (WITH J. T. ELLISON)

The Lost Key
(2014)

The Final Cut
(2013)

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Catherine Coulter

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coulter, Catherine.

  The end game / Catherine Coulter and J. T. Ellison.

  p.      cm. — (A Brit in the FBI ; 3)

  ISBN 978-0-698-18931-7

  1. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation—Fiction.  2. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction.

  3. Intelligence officers—Fiction.  I. Ellison, J. T., author.  II. Title.

  PS3553.O843E54    2015            2015024632

  813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

J.T.—

May our upcoming adventures in Italy prove as spectacular as the wild roller coaster in
The End Game.

It's wonderful to know that our two writer brains will always find a way.

—Catherine

For Laura Benedict and Ariel Lawhon. You know why.

And for my Randy. You know why, too.

—
J.T.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, to Karen Evans, my partner in synergy, always there at my side, at my back, always supportive, helpful, always positive. Thank you.

To my sweetheart of a husband, always ready to brainstorm, to throw around ideas, to be the rock.

And to my wonderful household: Lesley DeLone, Catherine Lyons Labate, and Yngrid Bejarano. Thank you for all you do—your energy, your positiveness, your laughter, your steady hands on the rudder.

Thank you all,

Catherine Coulter

What a fun, glorious ride this collaboration has turned out to be. I have to thank Catherine first and foremost, for bringing me on board, for constant laughter and fun, and always challenging me to be the very best writer I can be. We make one helluva team, lady, and I can't wait to see what we cook up next!

And to the usual suspects: I couldn't do it without you. This means you Scott Miller, Chris Pepe, Laura Benedict, Ariel Lawhon, Sherrie Saint, Karen Evans, Amy Kerr, Jeff Abbott, and darling husband. And for my parents, for listening, and listening, and listening.

—J. T.
Ellison

PROLOGUE

United States–Mexico Border

Three Months Ago

Z
ahir Damari watched the coyote turn to face the ragged band of Hondurans on the sloping Texas side of the Rio Grande. As the last Honduran climbed up the bank, pulled up by his father, Zahir saw hope now dawning on the dirty faces, saw the relief in their tired eyes at surviving the nightmare trip. They'd made it; they were in America.

The coyote, Miguel Gonzales, eyed them with contempt—nothing new in that, he'd treated this group with unveiled scorn since the beginning of their trek eight days before. Gonzales stuck out his hand to the leader of the group, an older man, a father of two younger sons. He waggled his fingers.

“Pagenme porque ustedes son unos miserables.”

He wanted the other half of the money owed. No, the thieving scum wanted more. Gonzales had upped the payoff. Zahir saw the
Hondurans' shock, their fear, saw them talking among themselves, voices rising.

Gonzales pulled a pistol, aimed it at the group, and held out his hand again.

Zahir smiled at Miguel Gonzales, a brutal man with stained teeth and black eyes that reflected Hell. He walked up to him, his hand outstretched with bills, and as the coyote grabbed them, Zahir stepped in quickly and gently slipped his stiletto into Gonzales's filthy shirt. Gonzales didn't make a sound because Zahir's knife was always true. It slid under the breastbone, directly into the coyote's heart. Gonzales simply looked up into Zahir's face, dropped the pistol, fell on his side, and died in a mess of dry shrubs.

The Hondurans were frozen in place, too terrified and shocked to move. Zahir leaned down, pulled out his stiletto, cleaned it on Miguel's filthy jeans. He calmly went through Miguel's pockets, pulled out a big wad of bills, handed them to the young woman closest to him, and smiled.

“Buena suerte”—
good luck—and he gave them a salute and walked away, toward El Paso, only three miles to the north.

The day was brutally hot, but he didn't mind since he'd been raised in the worst desert heat imaginable.

In his shirt pocket was a small notebook filled with information and strategy from Hezbollah's top enforcer, Hasan Hadawi, the Hammer, about a brilliant young scientist named Matthew Spenser, and how Zahir could use him to help him cut off two heads of the hydra. It made Zahir's heart speed up to think about the actual doing of it, the awesome pleasure that would course through him when he'd succeeded.

Zahir knew most of the intel and strategy was from Hadawi's Iranian master, Colonel Vahid Rahbar, openly committed to the obliteration of anyone who wasn't a Shia, which would leave a small world population indeed.

Zahir knew Spenser and his small group were hiding near Lake Tahoe. Spenser, according to the Hammer, had gone off the rails years before when his family had been killed in London's terrorist subway bombing in 2005. Now he led a small group called Celebrants of Earth, or COE, their goal to eliminate oil imports from the Middle East, but no murder, no casualties.
The idiot ideologues.
Until recently, Zahir knew the group had operated in Britain and Europe, blowing up only mid-sized oil refineries, small crap. But now they were here, in America, their message to the media after each bombing always the same:

No more oil from terrorist countries or you will pay the price.

Both the Colonel and the Hammer believed Spenser was an unsophisticated anti-Muslim zealot, and ripe for manipulation. Over the Hammer's favorite gin and countless French Gauloises, he'd told Zahir to become Matthew Spenser's best friend, his mentor, a man he would come to trust implicitly, a man he would follow. “You will gently mold and manipulate this fool's penny-ante goals until they become your glorious ones”—that is, until Spenser became a murderer. Zahir knew it would be a challenge, but one he would win. He knew he wasn't as smart as Spenser in science, but he was years beyond Spenser in strategy, planning, execution, and sheer balls. But unlike the bare-fisted Hammer, Zahir was never
guilty of underestimating an opponent, or reducing him to faults and weaknesses and strengths. He knew when to use a hammer, when to use a simple lie.

It was over the Hammer's fourth gin that he'd told Zahir with a snicker that Spenser might have a possible weakness—a woman named Vanessa, a beauty, late twenties, red hair, milk-white skin, and blue eyes, and the Hammer showed him a photo of her. She hardly fit the image of a wacko bomber, but the Hammer assured him she'd been building bombs with an Irish IRA git named Ian McGuire and his faction. Both groups hated what they saw as radical Islam's encroachment into their world, and according to the Hammer, this common cause united them.

With another snicker, he told Zahir the woman and Spenser were probably lovers and his grin split his mouth wide enough to see the gold filling in his back molar. He suggested Zahir seduce Vanessa away from Spenser, but Zahir couldn't figure out what that would gain him, certainly not Spenser's trust and friendship. He would see.

But it was Iranian colonel Vahid Rahbar who'd told him his most important goal: to steal Spenser's amazing invention, a bomb that looked like a gold fifty-cent piece, no larger, and, according to their sources, would be undetectable. Nearly perfected, they'd heard, and the minute it was perfected, he wanted it. The colonel had rubbed his hands together. “You, my friend, will light the fuse that will begin the war, then we will explode their cities, kill millions, and none of them will even know how it was done. Our casualties—it is nothing compared to what we will gain. When it is all over, we will rule the world.” Unspoken was
Shia will arise from the ashes and control the earth's destiny.

Zahir didn't really care if Shia ran the world or if Buddha took over. His specialty would always be in demand.

Zahir whistled as he got into another stolen car, lifted from a side street in Reno. He would steal another car in a place named Incline Village, drive into the Sierras, and find Spenser.

He wondered which head of the hydra he'd manipulate Spenser into killing—the president or the vice president.

The game was about to
begin.