Scardino just nodded, unsure what any of this meant.
Gracie said, “You complete these tasks, and Marigold will be considered a great success. You both will be rewarded, and our collective interests will be furthered.” She smiled. Neither of the Americans had ever seen her smile even once, and now she had done it twice in less than a minute. “We are so close, gentlemen. Let’s get this done.”
J.W., beaming with newfound exuberance, said, “Mike and I will get it done.”
The meeting ended moments later, and Gracie jogged off into the fog with her team.
A minute after this, James Westwood ran through the dark and thefog, a verve in him he hadn’t felt in thirty years. He had been ready to wait two years to become a United States senator; he was ready to wait over six to run for president of the United States, but the Chinese were offering to repay him for his hard work by shaving several years off his wait.
For a sixty-year-old man, this was significant.
Scardino ran alongside him. “When you get to the Senate, I hope you’ll remember fondly your friends at Gauntlet.”
J.W. laughed. “Tell you what. You get Masquerade up to New Hampshire to begin looking into how to do it, make it look like an accident, and Gauntlet will have my vote for any contract it wants.”
Scardino said, “Will do. And regarding the still unsanctioned op she mentioned, I’ll go ahead and put together a team of my most experienced Gauntlet men, guys who won’t have a problem with a targeted killing. Who do you suppose the Chinese will send us after?”
J.W. said, “Somebody with some security, it would seem.”
It was quiet between the two men, only the slapping of their feet on the unpaved trail. Then Scardino said, “Any way we can pick up the pace, boss? I’ve got a shit-ton of work to do.”
J.W. smiled, then sped up considerably, and the younger man struggled to catch up.
—
Matthew Hanley hung up his phone; the fury he felt right now threatened to get the best of him, so he took some calming breaths there in his office, then he called his principals team in.
Travers and Hightower were on their way to Charlottesville, and Gentry was likely on his way to Europe, so it was just Conductor, Gumdrop, and Bricklayer who converged in his office, but at the last moment, he decided to conference in Angela Lacy. Even though she was a CIA employee and not a Ghost Town spook, Hanley wanted her to hear his take on the matter.
When it was all set up, he said, “I just talked to Trey Watkins. Angela? Do you know what I’m about to say?”
“I have no idea,” the woman on the speakerphone replied.
“Well, Watkins has reassigned Jim Pace. Taken him off the investigation into the murders, the involvement of Gauntlet.”
Angela spoke first. The shock in her tone couldn’t have been more authentic. “I…I talked to Jim an hour ago. He didn’t seem to know anything about—”
“Thisjusthappened. I demanded to know why, and he refused to answer me directly over the phone. He told me we are to stand down, effective immediately. To delete any files, destroy any papers, any information or images relating to the work we’ve been doing this past week.
“We’ve been ordered to continue day-to-day operations, training, et cetera, but we are also no longer involved with finding the culprits behind hiring the assassins and conducting the killings.”
“Has someone gotten to Watkins?” Gumdrop was the one asking. “Is he tainted by this, somehow?”
Hanley said, “I don’t know. Pace had his suspicions about Watkins since Night Train’s daughter in Witness Protection and Six’s father were ID’d by the opposition. He said there couldn’t have been more than three or four people in the intelligence community who could have accessed both those pieces of information as quickly as it was apparently accessed.”
Gumdrop said, “But if Watkins was one of the bad guys in all this, why did he have us out here targeting the killers?”
Hanley wiped his face with a hand. “I don’t know. Maybe someone got to him. Maybe something changed. I asked him to explain himself, but he said he didn’t want to say anything else over the phone.”
“So,” Conductor said, “you are going to talk in person?”
Hanley nodded. “He said I could go up to D.C. later in the week for a meeting. Not today. Not tomorrow. He said he’d let me know.”
“Damn,” Arnold said softly.
Hanley shook his head, still in disbelief. “When I have a face-to-face with Watkins, hopefully I’ll get some answers. In the meantime, I was ordered not to reach out to Pace.” Hanley looked to the phone now. “Angela, what do you think? Could Trey be one of them?”
There was a long pause on the other end. Hanley said, “Angela? Did I lose you?”
