Matthew Dunn - Spycatcher

The two men silently exited their vehicle and walked briskly along the residential street before splitting up. Will began jogging until he reached the end of the block. He stopped, checked his watch, and waited, looking around. All the houses near him were in darkness. He checked his watch again and when satisfied that he’d been there for one minute, he walked past six houses before turning off the street and sprinting down an alley. Roger was waiting for him at the end of the route.

“I’ve opened the back door. It’s quiet.” Roger nodded toward the house to their right.

“There’s no movement around the front of the house,” Will responded. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

Both men took out their handguns and small flashlights and walked into the house’s rear garden.

Will carefully turned the handle of the back door, partially opening it, and waited, listening. He could hear nothing. He crouched low and pushed the door fully open. When he entered the house, Roger followed him.

He immediately knew that everything was wrong. The kitchen around them looked lived in, had children’s drawings stuck to walls, had a small cage for a pet on the floor, had a breakfast table set for four people. He walked through to a small lounge and saw cartoon DVDs scattered in one corner of the room, a newspaper folded open to its crossword page, two empty coffee mugs, and two cans of Coke. He moved upstairs. A bathroom with door open was at the top of the stairs, and to both sides of it were two rooms with closed doors. The whole house was just too small and contained things that should not have been here.

Will nodded at Roger and silently turned the handle of the first door. He eased the door open and stepped into the room. A double bed was positioned in the center, a man and woman asleep within it. Will walked up to the bed, pointing his gun at the adults. He stood over them, observing them for a moment, before turning and exiting the room. He opened the door to the other room and walked in. It was a children’s room and had bunk beds on one side of the room. Everywhere else was messy with toys, comics, and other child paraphernalia. He walked to the lower bed. A boy lay sleeping there, his blond hair covering his pillow. He looked at the upper bed and used the muzzle of his gun to slightly lift the head of the duvet. Another boy lay sleeping underneath. He moved the duvet so that it was no longer resting over the child’s head and so that the child could breathe more easily.

Will looked at Roger, shaking his head. He walked quickly out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house. He walked until he and Roger were standing by their vehicle.

He looked back down the street toward the house. “I came here knowing that the place Megiddo used to house his men and imprison Lana for a few days would almost certainly have been cleaned and polished to remove all traces of them. I came here anyway with the tiniest of hopes that Megiddo might have slipped up and left us a clue to track him down.” He looked at Roger. “But I did not come here expecting to find a small family house that has clearly never been rented out to a large group of extremely dangerous men. And I most certainly”-he felt the anger and emotional confusion within him-“did not come here with the expectation that Lana had lied to me about this address.”

Roger drew his lips into a thin line. “What does it mean?”

Will shook his head. He wondered whether Lana had also lied to him about her mother’s treatment in Paris. He even briefly wondered whether she’d lied to him about her desire for him to come join her at her hotel. He exhaled slowly. He knew that she had not lied to him about those things. She had too much respect and love for her mother to leave her in a potentially vulnerable situation, and she had only ever told him the truth about her emotions and feelings toward him. And she had also always been honest with him that her hatred for Megiddo would continue while the man remained unpunished. He surveyed their surroundings before returning his attention to Roger. “It means Lana has done something utterly stupid. It means that she deliberately withheld the details of the real address she was taken to. There’s only one reason she would do that. She wants to go after him alone. She wants to take her own revenge against him.”

He looked up at the empty sky. “But if she tries to do so, Megiddo will kill her.”

Ten minutes later Roger was speeding across Long Island with Will seated next to him.

Will pulled out his cell phone. He called Laith and listened to what the CIA man had to say.

“I was just about to call you. She left her Washington hotel three hours ago. I’ve followed her in a car to New York. I thought she was going into midtown, but ten minutes ago she turned north and is heading away from New York City. I’ve no idea where she’s going. Do you want me to stop her?”

Will thought for a moment. He cursed Lana’s desire for revenge. But he also knew that as reckless and foolhardy as her actions were, she was now offering them some hope. He said, “No. I think she’s heading for our man. Do nothing yet, but it’s imperative that you stay close to her and keep her safe.”

He called Ben, and it was obvious that he had woken the man. “You and Julian need to get on the road right now. Head north. Bring whatever weapons and equipment you can lay your hands on. We’ll need enough for a major assault. Laith is mobile and following Lana in a northerly direction out of New York. I’ll link communications among us all so that we can coordinate our routes.”

Then he called Patrick. “Stay by your phone and reject all calls unless they’re from me or one of my team.” He gave a quick update, then said, “This is our last opportunity to catch him. And I’m taking that opportunity.”

He reached down into the vehicle’s cup holder, grabbed Roger’s cell phone and hands-free device, and punched in the numbers to set the handset on conference call with all members of the CIA team. He fitted an earpiece over Roger’s ear. The man nodded and drove faster.

Fifteen minutes later Roger muttered to Will, “Ben and Julian are in a vehicle. Laith’s giving them directions, but they’re going to have to drive like a bat out of hell given that they’re still in Washington.”

“Get their license-plate number.”

Roger did so and relayed the information to Will.

Will called Patrick and gave him the details of Ben and Julian’s vehicle as well as details of his own vehicle. “I’ve no idea how you are going to do so, but make sure every cop in this part of your country knows that their career or life will be over if they try to stop our cars for traffic violations.”

Within forty minutes they were traveling on the New York State Thruway. Will watched their surroundings change from city to suburbia to wooded land. He tried to relax, but his mind and body were tense and alive again. The failure he’d felt during the last twelve hours had been replaced with a reinvigorated sense of purpose, focus, and strength. But the anger he’d felt at Lana’s stupidity remained within him-as did his overwhelming concern for her safety.

He gave up trying to relax and instead tried to think clearly, to muster all his mental strength in order to piece together the preceding events and make sense of them. He thought about what had happened in Boston, what had happened in the hotel room in Washington, D.C., the failure he’d felt despite establishing that Camp David was Megiddo’s target, and he thought about what was happening now. More than anything, he thought about what was happening now. Thoughts, questions, and suppositions raced chaotically through his mind, and he discarded most of them. Some he did not. He wondered why one of Megiddo’s men would have been so careless to mention the Camp David assault to Lana. He wondered why Megiddo and his men were still in New York State, given that Megiddo must know that his assault on Camp David would now be easily repelled. He frowned as more thoughts seemed to come together, thoughts that stood out from the others, thoughts that then rammed his body to attention and forced him to grab his cell phone, punch numbers rapidly into it, and wait impatiently while he listened to it ring on the other end.