Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘And you’re on the side of the bad guys,’ Luke said.

‘The good guys didn’t want me any more.’ He looked away from Luke.

‘What?’

‘This is my car.’ Henry stopped by a BMW sedan.

‘In, drive.’

Henry obeyed. When he got behind the wheel Luke put the knife along his ribs. ‘I drove for four hours with a weapon in my side. I hope you enjoy it more than I did.’

‘Luke, let me explain.’

‘You are going to take me to where my father and Aubrey are. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Whether or not I kill you when we get there depends on how well you act. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Luke.’

‘Drive.’

Henry inched out into traffic, headed toward the Pont Neuf, crossed the Seine. Luke couldn’t take his gaze off Henry. It was like seeing something human, but knowing that a devil dwelt under the skin. Hurt, anger, loathing, all tore at him. No explanation could satisfy. But he still wanted to hear one, in Henry’s words.

‘Why?’ Luke asked.

‘There are so many whys.’ A bit of the cool confidence inched back into Henry’s tone. ‘I hardly know where to start.’

‘I want to know why you’re a traitor.’

Silence for a long while. Luke stabbed him. Not deep; but he drove the knife into the cotton of the shirt and into the soft fat underneath.

‘Ahhh.’ Henry didn’t scream but it was close. A choking cry. ‘Do you want me to crash?’ Henry slapped a palm against the steering wheel in pain. ‘The police might ask why I’m bloodied and why you’re holding a knife.’

‘Did I stutter? Answer me. Why? You owe me, Henry. For years you pretended to be what you weren’t, you acted like you cared about me and my mom.’

‘I did.’

‘Why. Why. Why.’

Then the answer came, the words as flat as the blade of the knife. ‘No one listened to me.’

It was such a petty confession; a small gripe by a small man. On such a little wheel could turn betrayals of country, of family, of honor.

The confession left Luke nearly speechless. All the rage he felt toward Henry turned into a confusion. ‘Henry. I always listened to you. I trusted you.’

‘You and your mother were better to me than anyone ever was, Luke. You just don’t know.’

‘I’m listening now.’

‘The Book Club was my first think-tank. It was formed of a group of professors with international postings, recruited by the State Department. We all worked secretly for the department, doing analysis, talking with other academics in the target countries and regions we studied. We were much closer to the action than most analysts. We would conceive of new ways to acquire intelligence, to affect situations in foreign governments, and our muscle-’

‘Drummond and Clifford.’

‘Yes, they’d carry the plans out. I did some missions as well, so did your father. I did a lot of profiling of terrorists and extremists. We would write papers. But not for public release, they were policy papers. The deal was that we would never be named; we were working for State’s own version of the CIA, the one they’re not supposed to have.’

‘An illegal branch.’

‘A secret branch. None of us were formal spies, although we were trained in tradecraft; they were afraid we might get kidnapped, they wanted us to be capable of protecting ourselves. They called us thinkers and thugs. But we mostly focused on keeping our ears to the ground in a way that tapped into broad social changes that other researchers were not doing.’ He wiped at his lip. ‘We predicted the fall of the Soviet Union six years before it happened. We were ignored; just a bunch of State eggheads who were working in secret and didn’t even acknowledge our own names. We predicted the jihadists would arise after the fall of the Soviets. Guys with guns in Afghanistan would start hating America as much as they hated Russia and decide to open terrorist training camps. No one believed us.’ His voice broke. ‘I predicted 9/11, the use of jet liners as weapons, the same selection of targets, ten years before. No one believed me. No one took me seriously. Do you know what that felt like?’

Luke did not feel sympathy for him, but it was hard not to feel a sickening pity. ‘You don’t get a pass because your feelings got bruised.’

‘No. It was more than feeling hurt. I started the Book Club. But your father took it over. Every good idea I had he smothered. I brought in the other professors, gave them this one great opportunity, but it was your father they wanted to follow. They thought I was just a chalk jockey, a book reader, I wasn’t a leader, I wasn’t as smart. I had one good idea, the Book Club itself, and then I was useless.’

‘So, ignored and unloved, you had Mouser kill them and make it look like an accident.’

Henry opened his mouth, shut it, opened it. Like a fish looking for the cooling water. But with a knife in his side, he said, ‘Yes. No one was listening to us anyway. After 9/11 we were an embarrassment – can you imagine the damage if my predictions saw the light of day? The government wasn’t willing to risk it. Ever. So there was no successor formed to the Book Club.’

‘And Mouser framed an innocent man for sabotaging the plane and killed him, too. And you found Mouser where?’

Henry coughed. ‘It was my job to profile terrorists, see what we could learn from them. I met him in prison. I liked him. He wasn’t quite so extreme then. He’s gotten worse.’

‘You tried to kill my father and then you have the gall to claim you care about me? Just because you were jealous of him?’

‘You’re just like him. Just like him. I thought you were like your mother but I see you’re just like Warren.’

Luke let the silence build. He thought he might kill Henry right now, even if it wrecked the car and killed them both. ‘Did you kill my mom, too?’

Henry’s face broke with grief. ‘You know better.’

‘I don’t know anything about you.’

‘It was an accident. She was driving. You know I nearly died. It was an accident.’

‘I feel you’re leaving gaps.’

‘Then go ahead and kill me, Luke. I am telling you that I would never have hurt your mother, and you can believe me or not. Kill me if you have to.’

‘You think I won’t kill you? Do you really doubt me now?’

‘I know you are fundamentally a decent person who will not kill a man who he loved as a father,’ Henry said. ‘We can help each other escape our problems.’

‘Ah. Having betrayed your friends, your family and your country, now you’re going to betray the Night Road.’

‘Would you prefer I stay loyal to them or help you?’ Henry asked. The traffic thickened and he laid on the horn, fighting his way through a tangle of cars and buses at the Place de la Concorde.

‘Help me. How do I stop the Night Road?’

‘You can’t, there are too many of them.’

‘What is Hellfire?’

‘Hellfire is the second phase. The first wave was an audition.’

‘What?’

‘Think it through, Luke.’ Like this was an intellectual exercise. ‘An audition,’ Luke repeated. ‘Like a gang initiation, a smaller crime before you get responsibility for the bigger crime? Is that what these recent attacks are? The chlorine train in Texas, the E. coli in Tennessee, the pipeline bombing. The high school attack?’

Henry nodded.

‘Proving grounds,’ Luke said. ‘Pull them off and you get to play on a bigger stage. Which is Hellfire.’

‘Yes.’

‘The money,’ Luke said. ‘The fifty million. You get a slice of that if you qualify, more if you contribute to executing the Hellfire attack.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s it coming from? The funds had to be brought in and cleaned, Eric said. From where?’