people saw what he projected, not the lean, fit Louisiana boy who knew his way around the woods. To coin a pun, the knife was his edge.
The dry chill of air-conditioning matched the blank neutrality of the decor as they stopped at the reception desk. A short conversation later and an orderly appeared with a clipboard. Marc checked his watch as they were directed down a corridor and into a room. He’d cut one meeting, and put a second on hold. If it was Jim Corcoran who had been brought in, he would clear his schedule for the afternoon.
Corcoran had been with Marc in the FBI. Marc had headhunted him when he’d made the move to National Intelligence to head the task force that had been assigned to take down two key criminal organizations: the Chavez cartel, headed by Alex Lopez, and a secretive political cabal formed decades ago by ex-SS officers.
Apart from the fact that Corcoran was a damned good agent and a friend, he was a crucial link in Marc’s team. He had been personally responsible for tracking down and indicting over two hundred members of Lopez’s network and shutting the cartel down along most of the Eastern Seaboard. Among the arrests had been officials in a raft of government departments, but he had bagged a couple of bigger fish—notably, two federal agents.
The door to the morgue swung closed behind him. The cold pungent smell, laced with chemical, made his jaw clench. He had known Corcoran for more than ten years. He had been invited to dinner at Jim’s house and had attended his wedding and his daughter’s christening. Losing Jim wouldn’t just be a blow to his team; it would hurt.
The room was congested with morgue personnel and D.C.’s finest: two uniforms and a detective, who introduced himself as Dan Herschel.
Marc moved smoothly through the formalities. The two uniforms had gotten to the scene first, then Herschel had taken the case. But Marc’s attention was on the two bodies residing on narrow metal tables, both encased in body bags.
The medical examiner, a slim fiftysomething woman with taut features and tired eyes , unzipped the PVC far enough that Marc could view the first face.
Shit. Fuck.
Corcoran.
The second body was that of a woman who had gotten caught in the crossfire. PVC peeled open over pale skin, dark hair and delicate cheekbones.
Sara.
Time seemed to slow, stop. Blood pounded through his veins in quick, hard strokes.
The panic was irrational. It wasn’t Sara Fischer. She was safely locked into her life in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had seen her just weeks ago at her father’s funeral. This woman was younger, in her early twenties, and her hair was black, not dark brown, but for long seconds those facts failed to make any difference.
A phone beeped, the sound harsh and discordant. The M.E. backed off a few steps to take the call, and Marc focused on Detective Herschel reciting facts with flat precision as he read from notes.
Corcoran had walked to a café to get lunch. The woman had been entering as Corcoran was leaving and had simply gotten in the way. The gunman had shot her first, then hit Corcoran, one to the chest, a second shot to the head. The hit had been very fast, very precise. Hampered by a paper bag and a foam cup, Corcoran hadn’t had time to reach for his gun.
Marc dragged his gaze from the dead woman’s face. With every second that passed she looked less and less like Sara. “Witnesses?”
“The café owner saw what happened, but only from inside the building. We’re working on tracing some of the regular customers who were eating at the tables outside.”
“Any description of the shooter?”
“Male, medium height, dark hair that’s graying at the temples. No facial details because he was wearing a mask.”
Lopez. Was it possible? “Security tape footage?”
Herschel had backed off a step. “Yes, sir, from two angles. A bank across the road and a traffic camera.”
“I’ll need to see both, now. And talk to the café owner.”
The quick tap of heels was followed by the muted swish of the doors swinging open. Jennifer Corcoran, accompanied by a uniformed policewoman, stepped into the morgue. Her face was white, her eyes stark and already red rimmed and swollen from crying.
When she saw Marc, her mouth trembled. He reached her in two strides and held her tight, while Bridges cleared the room. The M.E. stepped back but didn’t leave, her face apologetic. Marc didn’t labor the point. As private as this moment was, there were formalities to be completed; she had to stay.
Two hours later, Marc stepped into his office, dropped his briefcase on his desk and jerked at the knot of his tie.
Both tapes and the café owner’s recollection had been inconclusive. The tapes had been blurred by distance and obscured by traffic and passersby. The mask the shooter had been wearing had successfully blanked out his features. Aside from the fact that he was approximately five-ten, dark-haired and no longer young, they had nothing.
Bridges’s jaw was grim as he strolled over to the coffee machine in the corner of his office. “So, what now?”
Marc shrugged out of his jacket and peeled off the shoulder rig. A raft of paperwork, a press release, sat on his desk: damage control. “I’m pulling my people off the team.”
Two agents dead within a fortnight wasn’t enough to establish that Lopez was systematically killing men Marc had handpicked. A third killing would cement the pattern, but damned if he would risk losing anyone else.
The first, Powdrell, had been an experienced field agent. Corcoran had been a step up into the executive ranks. The disparity in rank aside, both of the men had been ex-FBI, headhunted by Marc. He had known them personally, and they had both chosen to move from the Bureau to National Intelligence on the strength of that personal loyalty. Maybe it was just a coincidence that “his” people were being targeted, but Marc didn’t think so.
Lopez was cold and methodical. Aside from the seemingly random killing of his own bodyguard at age twelve in Colombia, to Bayard’s knowledge, Lopez hadn’t made one move without good reason. In light of his consistent methodology, he was certain that first killing hadn’t been carried out in a psychotic fit of rage, either. At age twelve, Lopez—then known as Alejandro Chavez—had been experimenting with execution.
The unprovoked killing had set off a chain of events that still reverberated. In order to extract Alex from prison, his father, Marco Chavez, had literally held the country to ransom, machine-gunning three villages then manipulating a pardon for Alex with the donation of a hospital. Following the wave of hatred for the Chavez cartel, and the death threats that had followed Alex’s release, Marco had been forced to remove his son from the country. Courtesy of the power and influence of the Nazi cabal, which had strong links with Marco, Alex had started a new life in the States under the name Lopez.
Once in the States, protected and bankrolled by the cabal, Alex had thrived, heading up the American branch of the Chavez cartel and expanding into the international terrorism market. Until that point the relationship between the cartel and the Nazi cabal had been stable and mutually beneficial. In 1984, however, with the theft of billions of dollars from Lopez’s main operating account, the balance of power had shifted.
In order to avert his own possible execution for
