Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘Mouser. Snow. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I ain’t never met anyone from Night Road face to face.’

‘You understand the plan as presented?’ Mouser said. ‘And you understand I’m in charge.’

‘It’s not rocket science,’ Sweet Bird said. ‘Let’s go get it done.’

They left, in two cars. Mouser drove. Snow said, ‘Did you tell that guy you want Luke Dantry dead if he’s there?’

‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘You and I will handle it. I don’t trust anyone else.’

‘He’s Night Road, he’s okay.’

‘Nobody’s okay. I thought Henry was. He’s distracted by his affection for his stepson. It’s become a problem. If Luke’s at this building – he stops being a problem for us.’

‘You don’t know about the fifty million dollars,’ Luke said. ‘You have to be kidding.’

Drummond measured his expression, looking for a sign of bluff. ‘No, I don’t.’ His head tilted slightly, as though listening to the soft hiss of the air conditioner. He flicked his glance at the kitchen corner, for the barest of moments. If Luke had not been watching him so closely for his reaction, he wouldn’t have noticed. Luke glanced at the corner as well. He saw a pinpoint hole in the ceiling. A camera, maybe.

He had the sudden sense they were being watched. Maybe his imagination. But the past few days had taught him to trust his instincts.

‘A man as desperate as Eric would have mentioned every asset to win his safety.’ Luke put his gaze back on Drummond’s face. ‘He wouldn’t forget to mention fifty million.’

‘Offering us information on the Night Road would have won him ample protection. He didn’t have to mention money.’ For the first time Drummond looked shaken. ‘We were working on IDing him from the airport garage video and the speeding ticket video. He contacted me.’

‘Wait – how did Eric know how to find you?’

‘That was a mystery. But he knew Quicksilver was more than a risk company. He wanted protection and he gave me enough info on Night Road for me to know it was legit. I hadn’t even met him face to face yet.’

Luke realized Drummond had no reason to lie. ‘Then Eric was going to keep the money for himself. You pick his brain, you hide him away where the Night Road can’t kill him, and then he vanishes, with fifty million stashed away and waiting for him, and neither the Night Road nor Quicksilver gets the cash. You’re too busy waging war against each other to care what he does.’ It was a simple but brilliant plan.

‘Where is this money?’ Drummond said.

‘I thought you said it didn’t matter.’

‘Money is lifeblood for terrorism. Where is it, Luke? We’ve got to secure that money before the Night Road uses it.’

‘Tell me who Quicksilver is and I’ll give you the fifty million.’

Drummond paused, as though holding in his anger, and then Luke saw it: a minuscule earpiece in Drummond’s ear. ‘Okay,’ Drummond said. ‘You give me the location of the money and I’ll answer your questions.’

‘I go first.’ Luke watched the corner of the kitchen where Drummond had seemed to pause. ‘Are we being watched? Or listened to?’

‘Does it matter?’ Which to Luke meant yes.

He took a deep breath and then asked again: ‘I want to know what the connection is between you and my stepfather and my dad. Why do you have a Saint Michael medal like mine?’

Drummond tented fingers under his chin, frowned.

‘That connection is the key to why I was targeted. You’re on one side of this fight, Henry on another, and you’re both part of my father’s past.’

Drummond was silent for ten long seconds. ‘Seeing you brings back a lot of memories. I carried you once on my shoulders. I remember when you were a small kid, I saw you a few times at your parents’ house. There were three of us at the beginning. Me. Your stepfather. And your father.’

The words unnerved Luke. His father had led an entirely secret life, and the foundation of what Luke had always believed about his dad seemed to shift under his feet. A wave of dizziness hit him and passed. ‘The beginning, you said. Beginning of this Book Club?’

‘Book Club was a joke name, because it was mostly professors and writers, but it stuck. The State Department recruited your stepdad, then your dad. And your father found several others, including me. To work with a secret group, unofficial, to approach and solve the world’s problems in new and fresh ways. What do you do if there’s a foreign leader who becomes an enemy? You can’t assassinate him, that’s always a temporary solution. But maybe, the Book Club would say, we find an unsuspected way to erode the guy’s power among his base. Perhaps involving subtle economic changes that hurt his biggest backers, or political pressure that he doesn’t see as coming from the West. It’s more effective than assassination. But it takes imagination, and then some muscle and well-applied arm-twisting to make the situation happen. That’s just an example. The professors were the thinkers; me and Clifford, and sometimes the professors, carried out the missions. We had a few successes. Sometimes subtlety is greater than force.’ He gestured at the photos. ‘We had a few failures. Subtlety doesn’t always work.’

‘I’m having trouble picturing this.’ Luke shook his head. ‘My dad was a history professor. Tweed jackets, and obscure books crammed in every space, and chalk dusting his fingers. Now you say he was some sort of counter-terrorist?’

‘One of the best. You don’t realize how good they were.’

Luke sat back down. It felt like the air had vanished from the room. ‘That’s why he had so many visiting professorships. Europe, Asia, Africa. It wasn’t about being a teacher, or research. It was about… spying.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did my mother know?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t lie. Did she know?’

‘No,’ Drummond said after a moment. ‘Most of us weren’t married. Only your dad was. He kept it from her. Orders.’

Orders. His father had been an operative for a secret group. How many secrets had been hidden behind Warren Dantry’s smile? Tears pricked Luke’s eyes and he blinked them back. ‘And my stepfather?’

‘The same.’

He glanced around the room, trying to see where the other cameras might be. It was strange how claustrophobic you could feel in a room full of windows.

‘Yes. But of course, when your father and everyone on the plane died, the Book Club died. He’d wanted to start a new group in the weeks before; the Book Club had problems. Your father and your stepfather disagreed fairly often. Henry wanted to lobby for more money, more attention inside State; your dad wanted to keep a low profile, just get the work done.’

‘And Quicksilver is the heir apparent to the Book Club.’

Drummond rubbed his face. ‘Yes, we started Quicksilver. Your father died before he could see it take shape. Quicksilver grew out of our earlier work, a new way to fight the bad guys, to stop terrorism before it starts, to bring new strategies to the problem.’

A new way. He wondered where the money came from, for this building, for the security, for the private jet, for all the resources that Quicksilver had. ‘Are you still part of the State Department?’

He gave a jagged laugh, shook his head. ‘We started Quicksilver, and in a wonderful symmetry, you helped start the Night Road.’ Sweat was on Drummond’s face, as though the silent listeners would be measuring him, watching him.

The phone began to ring, a soft, repetitive warble. Drummond didn’t move.

‘I’m not going to answer it,’ Drummond said. ‘Because I’m going to tell you why I want to keep you safe. Your father saved me once, and I’m repaying the karma best way I can. I’m going to get you out of the way of a war.’