all a man can do. You smoke, Jonas. Please have a cigarette.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Be my guest.”
Campbell watched as the other man produced a cigarette and torched the end with a flame from his lighter. Barrins made a show of turning his head to the left, blowing the smoke from the corner of his mouth so it didn’t stray close to his companion. Campbell suppressed a smile. The little kiss-ass was always so eager to please, so reluctant to make waves with Campbell or his father before him.
“I thought you didn’t like smoke,” Barrins said.
“I can make an exception, for a friend,” Campbell stated. “Especially one so close to the end.”
Barrins raised a fist to his mouth and coughed, expelling tendrils of white smoke from his mouth and nostrils. He raised his eyes at Campbell, even as he tried to clear his throat and lungs. “Sir?” he managed to choke out.
Campbell leaned back in his chair and pinned the other man with his gaze, letting an uncomfortable pause hang between them for several seconds before replying. “Please, Jonas,” he said. “We both know my father’s death was no accident.”
“Of course not, sir. He was assassinated—”
Without thinking Campbell swept an arm across his desktop, clearing it of its contents. The sudden movement caused Barrins to start.
“I told you not to speak of him,” Campbell shouted. “Or his death.”
“Of course,” Barrins said, a tremor audible in his voice.
Campbell watched as Barrins ground out his cigarette and settled his forearm on the armrest, bringing his fingertips closer to the pistol’s butt. Before it all was over, Campbell knew he’d make a play for his gun. It didn’t matter. He had the bastard dead to rights. He could’ve killed him before, but he wanted to drag it out. Toy with the little troll before taking him out.
“You’ve been with us how long now, Jonas? Ten years?”
“Twelve. I’ve been with you twelve years. I joined shortly before—” he caught himself, nearly choking on the words “—I mean, before the change,” he said, referring to the elder Campbell’s death.
Campbell leaned back in his chair, not letting his eyes drift from Barrins’s.
“The President asked that we bring you aboard, as a personal favor to him. From my father’s standpoint, that was good enough. My father trusted the Man. He trusted you. Implicitly, I might add. I trusted you, too, after he died. It was the way I honored his memory.”
“Thank—”
Campbell silenced him with a gesture. “Let me finish. What my father created, what his father created before him, is vital to national security. The Cadre is the only thing that stands between anarchy and the government’s continued operation, should the country suffer a decapitating strike.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. Many in Washington consider us a cold war relic. They believe I’ve overstepped my bounds, selling arms to raise money and assassinating those I deem a threat to national security. The President wants to pull the plug on the entire operation. Do you know why this operation has succeeded since 1954?”
“Because—”
“Because of loyalty. Unlike other covert programs, we’ve built in a certain level of loyalty—security, if you will—by keeping this a multigenerational project. Most of the men and women working for the Cadre are third or fourth generation. They’ve been raised from their youth, trained in warfare, politics, medicine, agriculture, to step in and take over the country should something happen.
“We’re what the media likes to call a ‘shadow government.’ And we maintained security by keeping to ourselves, never bringing aboard outsiders. We often went into the real world, worked at companies, fought in wars, lived in regular society, but we always came back. This system always worked. We remained a secret to all but a handful of legislators and administration officials.”
Barrins squirmed in his chair. Sweat glistened on his forehead.
“Where are you going with all this?” he blurted, his voice taut.
Campbell smiled. “Where? Where, indeed? As you know, I file reports with the President. I let him know where things are. I don’t tell him about the illegal weapons sales. I don’t tell him when I kill a high-ranking Chinese or North Korean official. Yet he knows these things and it puzzles me. So much so, in fact, that I had to sit back and think. I had to ask myself, ‘Who had the most to gain from betraying me?’”
Barrins’s piggish eyes began darting right, left, looking everywhere but at Campbell.
“After that, I took it a step further. My father was assassinated, I believe, by the very government we serve. And if that same government infiltrated the Cadre with a rogue agent, what might that person do. Kill me, perhaps?”
“Surely you don’t think…” Barrins protested.
“I don’t think,” Campbell said. “I know.”
He mashed a button under his desk with a boot-clad toe.
The door behind Barrins opened and a man entered the room.
His hand dwarfed the SIG-Sauer P220 he carried. Barrins clawed for his weapon. He emitted a small whimper as he realized he’d never complete the move.
The bigger man’s handgun cracked twice, the bullets drilling through the seat’s backrest and into Barrins. His body seized up and he gagged. Blood frothed at his lips as they worked soundlessly.
“You see, Barrins,” Campbell continued, as though the words still registered with the dying man. “I looked at two things, ability and motive. You had access to the most critical intelligence. I fed you some of it as a test. The rest you stole with good, old-fashioned tradecraft, particularly hacking into our most secure servers and drilling your subordinates for information. Your motive? Well, you’re a kiss-ass, a weak-willed kiss-ass and you couldn’t help but please the President. I’m sure money changed hands, too. But I think that was secondary.”
Barrins shifted around in his chair. Struggling fingers grasped his Beretta’s grip. The SIG-Sauer cracked once more and a bullet cored into Barrins, shattering his spine before exiting his stomach and lodging itself into Campbell’s armored desk.
Campbell shook his head, made a clucking noise with his tongue. “Poor, misguided bastard,” he said. “He just didn’t understand who he was fucking with.” With a gesture, he beckoned the shooter to step from the shadows and enter the library. “Ellis?”
The big man took a couple more steps into the room, holstering the side arm as he did.
“Sir?”
“Let the others know. This betrayal changes nothing. Nothing. Soon it will be a different world. I don’t care what it takes to create it, we will have a different world. Let everyone know that.”
“Gladly,” Ellis White said.
Mexico
