Chris Mooney - World Without End

"Wait. How do you know all these people?"

"It's my job to know," Bouchard said.

"The terrorist, Angel Eyes, he's very dangerous."

"Are you trying to tell me we're in " "Relax. This is just a precaution. We don't know if Angel Eyes knows about the phone call or not. We want to make sure you're protected. It's standard procedure.

Go about your life. We doubt Angel Eyes would try to take you out."

Take me out?

"I need to talk to Renee," Riley said.

"Tell her what's going on."

"And you will. Where is she staying?"

"It's the Renaissance Hotel, room number 409."

"John, I cannot stress to you the importance of keeping this matter private. This situation is very delicate. Do you understand?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." He blew a long stream of air and thought, What the fuck?

"Do you mind if I use your phone for a moment?"

"It's in the kitchen. Help yourself," Riley said, dazed.

"I know I've hit you with a lot. Give me a minute, and I'll sit back down and answer any questions you might have." Bouchard stood up and walked behind the couch.

Riley leaned back in his chair, propped his elbow on the armrest and leaned his forehead against his palm. Steve, a CIA guy? Just when you thought you knew someone, boom, you find out that one of your best friends a guy you thought you knew inside and out not only worked for the CIA, he pulled some James Bond shit and tried to stop this military suit with this cloaking technology from being stolen. And right now he was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, oblivious to the fact that he was being hunted by a goddamn terrorist with the spooky name of Angel Eyes. The CIA. Jesus. And now the CIA was going to follow him and Renee and Book? This was… it was like Riley was living a real life Tom Clancy novel, it all seemed so unreal, so Riley felt a sharp sting on his neck. He slapped at it with his left hand and when he moved his hand away he saw a small drop of blood smeared against his palm.

Riley bolted upright, turned around, and saw Raymond Bouchard standing right behind the couch, holding the fountain pen in his gloved hand like a dagger. Extended between the pen's gold nib was a two-inch needle.

He shot me up with something.

Riley's heart hammered inside his chest. What… what the hell is… what's going on?

Bouchard capped the pen and fitted it into his coat pocket and came back with a cell phone. He dialed a number and pressed it up to his ear.

"Move into position. I'll buzz you in," he said and walked to the door.

What the fuck? Just a second ago, Riley had been sitting here answering questions, and now this guy Steve's fucking boss had just injected something into his neck. What the fuck was going on?

Don't panic. If you panic, you can't think, so The phone was in the kitchen, mounted on the wall, just a few steps away.

Hurry up and go for it.

It was like shards of glass had entered his heart. John Riley clutched his chest, wanting to claw through his skin and bone. His heart was burning. He reached out to grab hold of something, lost his balance and fell backward. The back of his head hit the corner of the glass coffee table, slicing off a flap of skin. But he didn't feel the pain.

His heart had already stopped beating. He lay there on his back and stared up at the ceiling. His mind was still alive, it was still screaming at him to stand up, come on, John, you can do it.

He couldn't move.

I'm dying, he thought. Am I dying?

His mind had become eerily silent.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name… John Riley said the prayer in his mind while his imagination flashed forward to next week, seeing the look of surprise and joy on Renee Kaufmann's face when he got down on one knee and proposed to her at the Public Garden, how beautiful she would look on their wedding day, here she came walking down the aisle and later that night, they would stay at the Four Seasons. Not bad for a punk from Lynn.

Wait. What was this? It was Renee. She was here with him. She held his hand, and he listened to her voice comfort him: We'll have beautiful children. You'll be a good father and a good husband. We'll have a great life together, just you wait and see. She kept talking to him as the violent convulsions racked his body, his mouth opening and closing without sound, his arms and legs flailing like a man trying to reach out and save himself from drowning. Raymond Bouchard looked down at him with his hands in his pockets, his face calm and detached, watching him die with the patient energy of a man waiting for his train to come in and take him home.

The front door swung open and in walked a thin, wiry man wearing a blue North Face down parka, designer glasses with thick black frames. A blue Red Sox baseball cap covered his recently dyed hair. The twenty-eight-year-old Owen Lee no longer looked the part of Chris Evans, the Texan skydiver.

Twenty-eight and he looks like a boy, Raymond Bouchard thought. At that age, you were a boy, but computers were a young man's game, and these boys not only ruled the computer world, they could keep up with the overwhelming expanse of technology and all of its mind-numbing minutiae.

Lee shut the door behind him, moved into the living room and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Jesus," he said.

"I didn't know you were going to kill him."

Bouchard leaned over John Riley's body, picked up the jamming unit from the floor and turned it off.

"Does the word mittens mean anything to you?"

"No. Why?"

"According to John Riley, another person was screaming this word inside the lab."

"Randy Scott."

Bouchard nodded.

"He was the only person in the lab. As for Stephen calling Mr. Riley, it looks like it was an accident."

"This word mittens. You think it's decryption code?"

"Possible. Only Randy Scott would know, and he's dead."

"If Misha had stuck to the script, we wouldn't be in this mess," Lee said.

"He's the one who decided to fuck with the tapes at Delburn."

Bouchard didn't say anything. He didn't want to get into it with Owen.

"Any word on Stephen's condition?"

"The word came down when you were in here. Conway's awake." Lee took off his cap and rubbed back his hair.

"The security on that suit is locked tighter than a flea's ass. I can't hack my way past it. I tried. I might have a fighting chance if you gave me access to the NSA computers " "Out of the question,"

Bouchard said. He could keep them off the radar screen, but some things were simply out of the question.

"Then I hope the word mittens is the decryption code, because Dixon sure doesn't know it." Lee chewed his gum, his eyes reflective.

"Our Russian partners are getting worked up. Misha, he's a fucking loon."

"Put him out of your mind."

"Easy for you to say. You weren't there when he did his… thing with Dixon."

"Can't stomach this?" Bouchard said.

"This isn't a normal gig and you know it. Look, I explained to Misha that we didn't encrypt the software they downloaded into the suit. That Randy did it at the last second and changed the code without our knowledge. The dude stood there and looked at me as if I was something stuck to his shoes. Those eyes… It was like I was throwing rocks down into a well that had no bottom. The guy's not a good listener.

And he's not big on patience either."

"You have the drugs?"

"Right here," Lee said, tapping his jacket pocket with his gloved hand.

Raymond had investigated John Riley's background and knew of the man's battle with cocaine and alcohol, the stint at the celebrity dry-out clinic in Arizona. When John Riley's body was discovered, the autopsy would reveal the cause of death as a simple drug overdose. Case closed.

"Stage the scene," Raymond said.