David Morrell - The naked edge

"He was one of those arrogant clients who thinks his protectors are butlers and bell hops. 'Carry my bags. Phone for diner reservations. Get my shoes polished.' I told him we did only one thing, and that was to protect, but we couldn't do that if our hands were compromised and we were distracted by silly errands. I told him, if he didn't like that idea, if he was unhappy with our security, then he should hire somebody else. I checked with Gerald-" Ali indicated Brockman leaning against the wall. "-who was my superior at the time, and he said I did exactly right."

Brockman nodded.

"The client loved his vodka," Ali said. "He also loved standing in front of his hotel suite's windows at night, grinning at the lights of Rome. I kept closing the draperies. He kept opening them. I kept telling him he had to stay away from the damned windows. One evening, when he was especially drunk, he yanked the draperies open, spread his arms toward the city lights, and told me, 'You see, nobody's out there, waiting to kill me.' 'Then why in God's name did you hire us?' I asked. 'For show,' he said. He chuckled, gulped more vodka, and told me, 'I must be important, mustn't I, if I need so much protection.' He laughed again, and that's when the bullet smashed through the window."

"The glass wasn't bullet resistant?"

"It wasn't an option. He chose the hotel. Anyway, how many hotels have that kind of glass? We wouldn't have needed bullet-resistant windows if the stupid bastard had followed instructions and kept the draperies closed. The bullet caught him here." Ali touched the middle of his forehead. "Mushroomed. Blew most of his brains out the back of his head. Working with the police, we discovered that the shot came from the roof of a building two hundred yards away. It had been raining for the previous two days and nights. The shooter must have had a poncho rigged to form a low tent. We found his dry outline where he'd been lying on the otherwise wet gravel on the roof."

"Patient man."

"Or woman," Jamie said.

Cavanaugh nodded. "Nobody's more patient than you are." He stepped toward Ali. "How did Carl Duran fit into this?"

"He was part of the security outside the Russian's suite. The sound of the bullet shattering the glass was loud enough that he heard it and charged inside."

"Wasn't the door locked?"

"Of course, it was," Ali said.

"You let him in?"

"I was too busy trying to help the Russian. When I realized I couldn't, I hurried to phone for an ambulance."

"Then Carl couldn't have gotten in unless he had a key."

"It's been a long time. But, yes, obviously he must have had a key."

Brockman straightened, pushing himself off the wall. "I was in charge of the team that investigated the shooting. There were some questions: whether Ali should have been more insistent to the Russian about staying away from the draperies, for example."

"Insistent? I did everything but put him in handcuffs!"

"But on balance, we saw it as a basic case of a client jeopardizing his own security," Brockman continued. "As for Duran, he was with a member of his team outside the suite when the bullet came through the glass. Chunks of the glass were all over the room. Clearly, the bullet came from another building. Where is all this going? Why are you so interested in Duran?"

Cavanaugh explained what they'd learned.

"He knows so much about our agents, somebody in GPS needs to be passing information to him."

"Somebody in authority," Jamie told Brockman. "We think Duran's using blackmail to get that information. The only time, you, Ali, and Duran intersected was in connection with the Russian's death, so there's a strong chance that's when the trouble started."

"You think I'm involved?" Brockman said angrily.

"No. You were second-in-command when Carl was fired. If Carl had a way to blackmail you, he'd have forced you not to fire him."

"So you're blaming me?" Ali demanded.

"You had a connection with Duran, dating back to the Russian's murder," Cavanaugh pointed out.

"Meanwhile, Kim-our company drug addict-gets a free pass?"

"She helped us," Jamie said. "In fact, she risked her life for us."

"Then what do I need to do to prove I'm not the leak? Jump off a building?"

"I don't see anything you can do," Cavanaugh told him. "Until we get this crisis settled, I'm putting you on administrative leave. We're going through all your phone records to see if you've been in contact with anyone suspicious. Jamie will analyze your computer's hard drive to retrieve emails you've erased."

"Of course, in most cases, they're never fully erased," Jamie explained.

"Why the hell don't you check my bank records, too?"

"It's being done as we speak."

Ali ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. "You know what? Shove your administrative leave. Shove your damned job." He glared at Rutherford. "Am I under arrest?"

"I don't have enough proof. "

"Then why don't all of you go fuck yourselves?"

No one spoke for several seconds after Ali stormed from the office.

"If he's acting," Rutherford said, "he deserves an Academy Award."

"Yeah, but if he's innocent, I'll never be able to regain his trust," Cavanaugh added.

"Welcome to the world of running a corporation," Brockman said.

"Let's think about you and Duran," Rutherford told Cavanaugh. "You haven't been in contact for the past three years, and then suddenly he tries to kill you in Wyoming? Why?"

"I could make the link between the way our agents were killed and his obsession with knives. He tried to keep me from drawing suspicion to him."

"But why wait so long?" Jamie wondered. "If he was worried about you, he'd have needed to eliminate you at the start-before the agents were killed with sharp weapons."

Cavanaugh thought about it. "As long as I was out of the business, maybe Carl didn't consider me a threat. But then his contact alerted him that someone named Aaron Stoddard might inherit Global Protective Services. Carl knew who Aaron Stoddard was. At all costs, he had to stop me from getting involved."

"Because of the knives," Brockman said. "But the pattern still isn't clear. Not all our agents were killed with knives. And only a few of the government's agents. Why only those agents?"

Jamie suddenly headed toward the computer on Ali's desk. "Gerald's right. We've been studying all kinds of lists. But what we haven't looked at is what the agents killed with sharp weapons might have in common."

Jamie typed the codes Kim had given to her, accessing GPS's security files. She typed more keys, studied something, and pressed other keys. Immediately, the printer began processing pages.

Cavanaugh grabbed them and spread them over the desk. The group joined him.

"Nothing similar in their backgrounds," Rutherford concluded. "They were born and raised in various areas. They belonged to various elite military units: Eighty-Second Airborne, Marine Recon, Army Rangers, Special Forces, SEALs, Britain's SAS, South Africa's Reconnaissance Commando unit."

"But hardly any of them served at the same time and the same place," Jamie pointed out.

"And they hardly ever worked on the same protective assignments together," Brockman said. "Maybe we're going at this from the wrong direction."

"What do you mean?"

"If there's a common denominator, maybe it isn't where they'd been or the assignments they'd been on. Maybe it's where they were going."

"Going?" Jamie asked.

"Their next assignments." Brockman drew his finger along the pages. He stopped at one item, his features tensing. "Dear God."

Staring at where Brockman pointed, Cavanaugh felt sick. He grabbed the phone. "We'd better check with the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals, and the Diplomatic Security Service. Their agents who were killed with sharp weapons. We need to find out where they were being assigned."