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It was too much. “Shut up, Andy! The bullet only grazed your leg, went right through, didn’t bust it up. I put an antibiotic on it and taped it. I even gave you the last of the pain meds. So stop your infernal whining. I’ve got to think through how we’re going to deal with Yorktown.”
Still Andy moaned, like he were dying. “We shouldn’t have gone back to the apartment, Matthew. It was a huge mistake.”
“Yeah, like it’s my fault you forgot the bag of memory sticks with the counter-codes. And all we got for our efforts was your leg shot through by that agent’s bullet.”
“I didn’t think we should go back, I told you that. I mean, who cares if we can’t stop anything now? You’re planning on following through on that deal you made with Darius, right?”
“It was insurance,” Matthew said, as he pulled in behind a big eighteen-wheeler. “The counter-codes were my bargaining chips with the Feds if everything suddenly went into the crapper. I told you that. Stop whining.”
Andy moaned again, kept ragging on him, blaming him, not letting up.
Matthew said very politely, never taking his eyes off the road, “If you don’t shut up, Andy, I’m going to shoot you, kill you dead. You deserve it for being so stupid.”
Shocked silence, but it didn’t last. “You rattled me, man. I mean, you killed Ian and Vanessa and then you ordered us out of there.” He added, in a sulky little boy’s voice, “You used my own gasoline mixture but you didn’t even let me torch the place.”
Matthew remembered thinking if he’d given Andy the gasoline can he’d lose it and burn down the neighborhood. It had been a stupid decision on his part to go back. In all that wet rubble, how had he ever expected Andy to find the memory sticks? Still, there was a possibility. It was rotten luck that had those FBI agents come waltzing out of that old lady’s Laundromat. No one could have foreseen that. Bad luck, mistakes. He knew he couldn’t afford any more.
It hit him again like a fist to the gut. Ian was dead, by h
is hand. He blocked out Andy’s moans, and saw in his mind that first time he’d met Ian, his oldest friend, his only friend, really, after his family had been murdered by those terrorists in 2005. He saw himself again in that little bar near the Ponte Vecchio. He’d felt lost and alone, so filled with rage and impotence he’d wanted to kill himself. And then this beefy Irishman had swaggered in and started a monologue about the football on the bar TV he was looking at, but not watching, he was too miserable. He remembered it was Manchester versus Italy.
“You rooting for our Manchester boys, not those Italian pussies, right?” Matthew didn’t give a crap, but he checked the score, saw Manchester was losing, said, “I am, sadly.”
“Well, glory hallelujah, a man with a brain, and the good Lord behold, he’s a bleeding American to boot.”
The Irishman was a man somewhere in his thirties with sandy brown hair sticking out in all directions, a sunburned nose ready to peel, and wearing a Manchester United jersey.
COE—Celebrants of Earth, the name had been Ian’s brainstorm, he’d believed it sounded highfalutin and righteous, and all of it had started by sharing a pint in an Italian pub with a blue-eyed fanatic Irishman who’d shared Matthew’s hate of radical Islam, whipped him up since his own hatred ran deep as well.
Seven years and a lifetime later, it had ended in a stinking apartment in Brooklyn. It still seemed like a mad dream—Ian dead, burned up, Matthew the one who’d killed him. And Vanessa, lying dead not two feet from him.
No, he would have no guilt, no regrets; he’d done what he had to do. They betrayed him, they deserved death. So why didn’t he feel cleansed, whole again, since he’d meted out the proper justice, done the only thing he could? He felt nothing. All he knew was he was alone again, except for bleeding, whining, crazy Andy next to him, and Darius, and only God knew where Darius was. All Matthew knew was what Darius had told him—he was getting the final pieces together for his part in their big score.
Of course Darius wasn’t his real name. Matthew had no idea who he really was, but like Ian, he’d looked at the vast amounts of cash Darius had brought to him and listened for hours to him speak fluently in his upper-class British accent about how the world had to change, and how Matthew would be the one to do it. He’d given Matthew renewed focus, given him greater purpose, showed him a wider vision of the world, and he’d demonstrated with Bayway what it would take for Matthew to truly make himself the world’s savior, how he could truly avenge his murdered family and rid the world of the vermin that threatened to take it over.
He thought about his family, dead, too, a decade now, not enough of them to bury after the bombs blew them apart.
Ian and Vanessa, their bodies burned beyond recognition. What he was doing, buying into Darius’s plans—was it worth it? He thought of the codes Darius had helped them buy from that German hacker, the codes that were in his control, the codes he couldn’t now undo because of the memory sticks lying sodden in the ruins of the burned apartment.
Screw insurance. It was his final big act. He was ready. “Yes,” he said aloud, “I’m ready, more than ready. No going back now.”
Andy turned at his voice. “Going back? Why would we do that?”
Matthew laughed.
38
KNIGHT TO E2 CHECK
Washington, D.C.
Carl Grace climbed into his car in the hospital parking lot, pressed his forehead to the steering wheel, and cried. Nessa could die, and for what? It would mean he’d let down his brother and not kept her safe. Who would have ever believed Vanessa would want to follow in her father’s footsteps so literally, getting herself shot while undercover? And now she might die, just as her father had died.
Nothing was worth her life, nothing. Certainly not those stupid gold-coin bombs Matthew Spenser has created. He should have pulled the plug, pulled her out, but he hadn’t. His boss, Temp, had been adamant that Vanessa stay active in COE until she could get her hands on the bombs. Now she could die and all he knew was Spenser had disappeared and there was an assassination coming. Who?
And it was his text that had broken her cover. He’d never forgive himself if she died because he’d decided to screw Temp and he was trying to warn her to leave.
He swiped at the tears, straightened, and looked blindly around him at the staff pouring out of the hospital. Shift change. No, Nessa couldn’t die, she couldn’t. He simply couldn’t imagine what he would do if he lost her. She’d been going above and beyond the call of duty for two years now, working undercover in Europe, then the UK with the IRA, now infiltrating that mad group, Celebrants of Earth—COE. He hadn’t slept decently for weeks, constantly worried about her, and the stress was beginning to take its toll.
