Matthew Dunn - Slingshot

“Why. . why didn’t he tell me?”

“Because he’s not allowed to. The Service uses him on very specific projects. There are only a few people in MI6 who know he’s an officer.” She wondered if she should stop talking. “They singled him out and put him on a very tough training course. Only him. Despite the odds against it, he passed, and for the last eight years he’s been deployed almost continuously.” She hesitated. “The other reason I suspect he didn’t tell you is because you wouldn’t let him do so.”

The hostility was back in Sarah’s face. “No. All the good you did for him after he left the Legion was undone. They made him become the person he didn’t want to be. Probably much worse.”

Betty said more to herself, “I don’t think so.” She frowned. “No. . I don’t think so, at all.” She looked at Sarah. “There’s no doubt he’s exceptionally good at what he does. He’s driven by guilt that he couldn’t save your mother, and has been trying to make up for that by putting himself at great risk to protect others. But he knows there’s another world out there. During the two weeks we spent with him, we gave him the tools to live within that world.”

“Maybe, but he still chooses to do what he does.”

Betty nodded. “He won’t quit while there’s a job to be done. But he’s working hard to have a different side to his life. You can’t see that because you’ve made no effort to get to know him during the last few years.”

“Of course not! He’s a dangerous man.”

“Not to you. You’re the only family he has left.”

“I saw what he’s capable of.”

Betty was silent.

Fresh tears ran down Sarah’s face. “The gang of criminals came in; they bound my mother with tape, some of it over her mouth; one of them threw me to the floor and put a boot on my head; then Will came in the room. He was. . was only a boy.”

“He was seventeen.”

Sarah shook her head. “Only a boy, to me. They sent him out of the room to fetch cash. My mother died. He came back in holding a knife. I looked at him, he looked at me. The boy was gone. And he killed them.”

“How do you think that made him feel?”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen such explosive violence come from someone. Probably it made him realize how good he was at it.”

“That’s not what I meant. How do you think it made him feel, seeing you look at him with an expression that suggested you no longer knew him?”

Sarah didn’t respond.

“He’s been living with that ever since.” Betty sighed. “And he’s been trying to get you to understand that the boy you once knew is still inside him.” Her tone became stern. “But you made a judgment about him, wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t reply to his letters, wouldn’t do anything that could unbalance your perfect self-centered world. And as a result, he’s felt totally disconnected from people around him because he’s believed that if you can’t see the good in him, then others must feel the same.”

“He brings danger into people’s lives!”

“No, he doesn’t!”

A split second after Betty had uttered the words, a high-velocity round smashed through a window and struck the wall inches from Sarah’s head.

Sarah screamed.

Betty shouted, “Get down!”

Alfie burst into the room, his handgun held high. “Direction of shot?”

Betty crouched by the kitchen table. “West, from one of the mountains.”

Alfie moved to Sarah, put a hand on the back of her head, and pushed her roughly to the ground. “Stay down.”

James called out in a terrified voice, “What’s happening?”

“Get behind cover and stay there until I tell you to move!” Alfie stared at the broken window, waiting.

Nothing happened.

They stayed like this for twenty minutes, Sarah sobbing, Betty and Alfie motionless as they gripped their guns.

Alfie narrowed his eyes. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

The sniper got onto one knee on the mountainside and started stripping down his weapon. The man next to him continued staring through his binoculars toward the house. A third man was on his cell phone confirming to Kurt Schreiber that they had sufficiently unsettled the property’s occupants to get them to move locations.

Just as Mr. Schreiber had wanted.

Because he couldn’t allow Sarah’s guardians to become too familiar with their surroundings and therefore further refine their security protocols.

They watched Alfie sprint to the car, start the engine, and stand next to the vehicle while training his handgun toward the darkness ahead. Betty rushed toward the vehicle, gripping Sarah and James. Five seconds later the car was speeding off down the track.

That didn’t matter.

The rest of the surveillance team were all waiting in vehicles, ready to tail them to their next location.

And Mr. Schreiber had promised his men that if he gave the order to kill their target, it would happen there.

Kurt Schreiber glanced at Simon Rubner. “You’ve performed impeccably. After tonight, take a couple of weeks off.”

“What about your other projects?”

“They’re all in hand.”

Rubner sighed. “I’m not going to say no. I could do with a rest.”

“You’re not going to say anything, and you’ll do what you’re told.” Schreiber checked his watch. “Report back to me in fourteen days. I’ll put you in charge of the Budapest initiative. It’s time the prime minister knew who he was dealing with, and I want you to personally hand him the photographs while giving him a strongly worded verbal message.”

“Certainly, Mr. Schreiber.” He smiled, though he felt uneasy. “Good luck. . tonight.”

“Luck?” Schreiber laughed.

The old man opened the car door and stepped onto a cobbled street in the Bavarian capital of Munich. It was late evening, and a fine drizzle was descending over the dimly lit old town. Wearing a thick overcoat, suit, dark felt fedora hat, and rimless glasses, and carrying a stick to aide his journey, he walked into the Karlsplatz-a large square next to the Karlstor, which between the fourteenth century and 1791 was one of the main gates in the city wall. Now, its fountain had been transformed into a beautifully illuminated ice skating rink; adults and children were laughing and calling out to each other as they glided over it. Leaving the square, he walked alongside various streets, some that had remained unchanged since well before Adolf Hitler’s creation of the Nazi Party in the city and others that had been rebuilt after the allies crippled Munich with bombs. When Schreiber was in the Stasi, the city had been part of West Germany-enemy territory. But he’d spent more time in places like this than he had in East Berlin, and knew every inch of the city.

He stopped opposite Michaelskirche, the sixteenth-century Jesuit church that was the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps. It was shut for the night. Over its closed doors was a gleaming bronze sculpture of Archangel Michael fighting a demon in human form.

His heart beat fast as he approached the entrance.

The plaza around him was deserted of people.

This was the moment.

He stood within twelve feet of the magnificent church’s entrance and looked at the shadows within it. “Schreiber, looking for Kronos.”

In the doorway, he saw a man’s large boots.

“Colonel Schreiber. I arranged this meeting.”

The man said nothing.

“You got my message. I’m here, as arranged.”

Silence.

“Speak! I have little time.”

Kronos stepped forward.

The church’s lights shone down over his face. “I could have killed you ten times since exiting the Israeli’s car and coming here. I’ll speak when I wish to and your time is of no relevance to me. Where are the others?”