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He laughed. “No one thinks that; you’re making it up because you’re pissed at me. Darius didn’t want to screw me, he wanted to screw you, but you didn’t screw around with any of us, including me, even though you know as well as I do we’d be good together.”
Where had he gotten this scenario?
“You want to know what I told him? ‘Good luck, man, but know she’d yank out your eyeballs if you tried to force things.’ So, tell me, Vanessa, did Darius have the nerve to try anything with you?”
“Yes, once. I left his eyeballs intact. That’s not important, it was nothing.” Try again, try again. “Matthew, listen to me. I’ve worked hard for you and the cause, done everything you’ve ever asked, and more. Stop treating me like this. Other than Ian and Andy, I’m your only friend. Not Darius, and if you believe he gives a crap about you, you’re as crazy as Andy. He’s using you; he’s manipulating you. He has his own agenda, you’re simply too blind to see it. Or he’s blinded you too much to see it. Or he’s got you to buy into what he wants to do. And tonight? It was really your idea, Matthew? Or his?”
“Enough of your whining. COE is not about friendship or lovers. It is not about trust. We’re on a mission, and we each have our jobs to do. Get in line, Vanessa, or you’ll regret it.” More Hitler.
Now he was threating to kill her? Then, fast as lightning, he grinned, his hand once again on her knee, now caressing rather than hurting.
“Come on, babe, you’re getting all upset for no reason. You’re special, Vanessa. I’ve never said otherwise. You know I care about you. You’re a great talent, easy on the eyes, too, and you’re fun to be with, until now anyway. Be patient, okay? You’ll come around because you’ll see the payoff is worth it. Then who knows? Maybe you and I can have some time together. Maybe I’ll tell you everything you could ever want to know.”
He’d turned on a dime. He’d done it before, but never this fast, this radically. What has that monster made you? Who are you now, Matthew?
But she couldn’t let him see she was both afraid and killer angry. She said nothing more.
• • •
In another twenty minutes, in the dead of night, Matthew parked the car in the derelict lot next to the building—a car repair shop with an apartment on the second floor. It was a dump, but perfect for his uses. He looked over at Vanessa, still and silent, and got out of the car. He looked up at their darkened apartment, above the auto repair shop with its smelly bays. The whole place stank of gasoline and oil and old sandwiches and dirty men, but it was out of the way, and the owner of the shop had been more than happy to take the wad of cash Matthew had pressed into his greasy palm and shut down the business for an extended European vacation.
Matthew hoped the owner was enjoying himself, since if it came down to it, if necessary, he’d have Andy torch the building, and whoosh, no more business.
He hoped all his other men were cozied in their three different assigned motels in Brooklyn, none more than a mile away from here.
He didn’t like Vanessa’s silence. He knew she was pissed, sulking, but he also felt it was something more. This silence of hers—after a bombing, she was usually on top of the world, but not tonight. Well, things had changed. She’d get used to it. She’d come around. Then he realized that Ian, Andy, all of the men were quiet after Bayway and all the deaths. No, he realized they’d all been on edge before tonight, and he understood now it was because of Darius. He knew all Ian’s men were afraid of Darius, and they were right to be. Matthew knew there was a killing lust in Darius that ran deep, and was as automatic as a snake striking out.
No, it would be all right. They would stick to the plan, the grand plan he and Darius had devised.
But still, Matthew worried about Ian, his best friend, the one man he’d trusted for so long. He thought of those long-ago days when the two of them had traveled through Europe, guns and bombs in their backpacks, targeting those electrical grids and oil refineries that relied heavily on Middle Eastern oil. But now he’d come to see that destroying them in his perfectly executed little bombings had been petty, nearly meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and they hadn’t accomplished very much at all.
But Darius had showed him the way, the new way, and he wanted it so bad he could taste it, the final revenge for his family. Close, so close now. No looking back, only forward, ever forward. He and Darius would stop the madness once and for all, and because of them the world would change. It made him tremble to think about what he was going to do. And he felt, deep down, where it counted most, fear and pride and a sense of infallibility. What he would do was righteous.
He called Vanessa to
help him. Silently, they unloaded the car, pulled a dirty tarp over it, and placed a large rock on the hood so it blended in with the other cars on the dingy repair lot, and then went up the oily, stinking stairs to the apartment. It was the middle of the night, no one to see them.
There were blackout curtains on the windows, a good thing, because inside, the apartment pulsed with gleaming monitors and equipment that took up every available flat surface, their screens glowing blue in the night. Andy Tate, firebug and computer expert, too young to be as crazy as he was, always wired, no coffee necessary, was leaning back in a broken leather chair, his legs crossed on top of the kitchen table, alternately playing with a Zippo lighter and eating an apple.
He saw them, raised a fist, and shouted, “I am the master of the universe!”
Matthew felt his heart pound as he hurried over to him. “Does that mean you’re in?”
“Tango down, bitches. Oh, yeah, dude, I pulled down their drawers and slipped it right in. My baby has already infected all the terminals and servers, corrupted all their precious files. I have control of the master boot records. Everything’s offline and I should have all the data downloaded in another hour, two tops. They won’t know what hit them. They’ll be scrambling for days trying to track us, and we’ll be long gone, with everything we need in place.”
“Good. Good. Well done, Andy.” He turned to Vanessa. “Go shower and start packing. We leave as soon as Andy has the information downloaded.”
She gave him an emotionless look and went down the narrow hallway, fear scoring deep at Andy’s announcement. This, at least, she’d known about, but now it was reality. Andy had gotten into all the major oil companies’ computer systems. Truth be told, she hadn’t imagined he’d be able to do it. Well, she’d been dead wrong. She had to send in an alert right away that it was no longer a plan, it was done. It would happen.
She nearly ran into Ian as he came out of the bedroom, his hair still wet from his shower. He gave her a loud smacking kiss on each cheek, hugged her tight.
“We did it, Van, we did it.” His Irish accent was thick tonight, but then he frowned. “But all those men, dead. I didn’t like that at all. I mean, they weren’t those wanking Muslim gits taking over Belfast.”
“No, they weren’t,” she said. “They burned to death; innocent people shouldn’t have died. Too much death, Ian, too much, and we all swore we never wanted that.”
“It wasn’t your doing, Van, or mine, so don’t feel guilty. It was that maniac Darius, he’s the one who pushed Matthew into using one of his new coin bombs at Bayway. At least we now know what a tiny part of one of Matthew’s coins can do. Still, it was too close. I nearly didn’t make it out in time since that arse Darius put the bomb too near the room I was in. Nearly burned to death—now, what a thought that is. And I heard the screams.” He shook himself. “Hey, come help Andy and Matthew load the cases in the van.”
Say something, say something. “I’m very glad you made it, Ian. I’ll be out in a minute to help.”
