Brad Thor - Full Black

“God,” said Standing with a derisive sniff. “You see the state our planet is in and you still believe in God. You really aren’t very bright, are you?” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“I’m bright enough to realize that now that you’ve made your money and are one of the wealthiest people in the world, you’ve abandoned the ideas that got you here and have replaced them with fantasies of a classless utopia,” said the reporter as she stood up.

The billionaire was taken by surprise. “What’s going on?”

“Thank you for the wine.”

Was she leaving? “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back to my office to finish writing my article.”

“I asked you to dinner and expect you to stay for all of it,” he replied, his eyes narrowing as he took hold of her arm. “Sit down.”

“You’ve got less than two seconds to take your hand off of me, Mr. Standing. I promise you that I’ll snap your wrist before your security team even knows what has happened. I can only imagine that bones break very easily in a man of your age and take very long to heal.”

How dare she? Standing was enraged, yet he forced a smile onto his face and removed his hand from her arm. People in the crowded restaurant were watching. “Let’s not embarrass ourselves. I’m sure we can find something else to talk about.”

Sliding out of her chair, Julia Winston forced her own smile. “Good night, Mr. Standing.”

As she walked away, Standing got in the last word, uttering it loud enough for her to hear. “Bitch.”

He snapped his fingers to get the attention of his security detail and indicated that he was ready to leave. He’d be damned if he would suffer the additional embarrassment of sitting at his table and dining by himself like some lonely old man.

His waiter rushed over. “Is everything all right, Mr. Standing?”

“Everything is fine, Jeffery,” he said, a less-than-convincing smile upon his lips. “Something has come up and we won’t be able to dine with you tonight.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” Looking at the three-thousand-dollar bottle of wine, he added, “What would you like to do with the Montrachet?”

Though he would only pour it down the drain once he got home, Standing certainly wasn’t going to gift such an expensive bottle of wine to a mere waiter. “Put a cork in it and give it to Max,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder at the head of his security detail. He then stood up from the table and headed for the front of the restaurant. He had no idea that his evening was about to go from bad to worse.

As he climbed into his armored Denali, Standing’s encrypted cell phone rang.

Standing told his driver and security team to stand on the sidewalk while he sat in the Denali and took the call. He didn’t want anyone to listen to him speaking to Robert Ashford.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” said the MI5 operative.

“You seem to be in the bad-news business a lot lately, Robert,” replied Standing. “It’s starting to become a habit I don’t care for.”

And Ashford didn’t care for the rebuke, but he held his tongue. Standing had too much incriminating leverage stacked against him. He decided to get right to the point. “I’ve received word that the rabbit hutch was compromised.”

Standing had expected the conversation to be about what had happened in L.A., not about Mustafa Karami and the terror cell in Sweden. Rabbit hutch was the code name it had been given. “How was it compromised?”

“Local authorities are being very tight-lipped. They suspect a foreign intelligence agency had targeted the cell.”

Standing’s blood pressure was starting to rise. “Which intelligence agency?”

“They believe it was the French.”

“The French? How the hell would they have been involved?”

“They have some sort of evidence pointing to the DGSE’s Action Division. They seem pretty convinced it was them. The French, of course, are denying it.”

“Of course they’re denying it,” snapped Standing. “There’s no way the French could have put any of this together.”

“Well, someone did.”

Ashford was right. “Tell me what happened.”

“The hutch operated two apartments, one across the street from the other. One was where operations were handled. The other was a completely sterile safe house. All computers, cell phones, and what-have-you were kept in the operations apartment.

“Somehow the location of the apartments was uncovered. An assault team outfitted to look like the Swedish Security Service attempted to take them down.”

“Attempted? Meaning they didn’t succeed?”

“The operations apartment was rigged to explode, and when the assault team hit, it did.”

“What about the safe house apartment?” asked Standing.

“Two of the faux Swedish Security operatives were seen going into that building as well. One man from the hutch was thrown from the window and killed. There was also gunfire. According to witnesses, when the phony Security Services men exited the building, they had another man with them. He was bleeding. They had a car parked outside. They laid him on the backseat and then the three of them drove away.”

Standing’s heart suddenly stopped beating. “Was it Westminster?”

All of the terrorist network’s commanders and lieutenants had been named after locations in the United Kingdom. The head of the network, Aaazim Aleem, was Oxford, Mustafa Karami, Westminster.

“No. He was much younger,” said Ashford.

“Was he from the hutch?”

“Some said he looked Arab, some said Italian, but I think we should assume he was one of ours.”

“Okay, but why only take him?” asked Standing. “What happened to the rest of them? Where’s Westminster?”

“Including the man who had been thrown out the window, they have found seven bodies at the safe house apartment. They were all younger men in their twenties and early thirties.”

“So no sign of Westminster. What about Cardiff?” he asked, referring to Sabah.

“Based on what I have been able to glean,” replied Ashford, “they are not among the dead at the safe house, which means-”

“Either they were in the operations apartment when it blew, or they managed to escape altogether.”

“Correct.”

Standing worked to keep his anger in check. First they had gotten to Aazim and now they had tracked down Karami. He needed to think. “Could the Americans be behind this?” he asked.

“Carlton and his group? I don’t know how they could have located the hutch, but they were the ones who tracked down Oxford, so we should probably put them at the top of our list.”

“I don’t want to hear ‘probably.’ I want to hear ‘for certain.’ You have a relationship with them. Use it.”

Ashford was getting angry again. “And just what am I supposed to do? Ring them up and ask if they happened to have anything to do with hitting a terror cell in Sweden? We were lucky to have taken care of Oxford before they could turn him over. If I start asking questions about Sweden, they’re going to get suspicious.”

“Then you’d better see to it that they don’t. You’re the spook, you figure it out,” said Standing, adding, “If Westminster did manage to get away, how long until he makes contact?”

“It depends on how long it takes him to get to the alternate safe house. Once he’s in place, we’ll hear from him.”

“If you don’t hear from him in the next eight hours, cut him out of the loop and promote the next commander.”

“That would be Birmingham.”

“Fine,” replied Standing.

“And if Westminster does make contact, what do you want me to tell him?”