A Soldier's Revenge Read online

  I opened the encyclopedia and reread the note. Tomorrow I’d get a copy of the Washington Post and scan the classifieds section. Focus on that, I told myself. The note had been written by the murderer, of that I was in no doubt. I’d know what my opponent was made of in a few hours. If he revealed his hand and implicated himself, I’d mail the Post and encyclopedia to the feds, telling them I was an innocent man who couldn’t give himself up just yet.

  I clung to the hope that it would pan out that way.

  Chapter 2

  At seven fifty-five the following morning, Painter and Kopański walked quickly across the Waldorf Astoria’s palatial lobby, focused but tired. The night had been intense and sleepless.

  Despite the early hour, the hotel was brimming, much as it would have been when the occupant of room 1944 escaped. But today, approximately forty people in the hotel weren’t guests or staff; they were journalists, some homegrown, broadsheet and tabloid, others representatives of foreign press organizations. All of them were heading to the lobby-level Empire Room, where Lieutenant Pat Brody of the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information, was about to read verbatim what Kopański and Painter had written an hour earlier.

  Kopański had wanted to stage the NYPD press briefing somewhere more public in the hotel. News coverage of the briefing needed to show the hotel in order for the crime to become real in people’s minds and for potential witnesses to unlock vital information hidden in their memories.

  Journalists agreed, though for different reasons. This was hot press material, not because there was yet another killing in New York, but because it had taken place somewhere as swanky as the Waldorf. They wanted the Q&A to be held in front of the hotel or in the lobby. Understandably, hotel management didn’t take kindly to the prospect of their hotel being advertised as the site of a brutal crime. They insisted on a discreet meeting room so the press briefing wouldn’t scare off guests.

  Brody took the podium. Journalists were in their seats in the Empire, lined up, chomping at the bit. Painter and Kopański stood at the back of the Edwardian room, eyeing its crystal chandeliers, drapes surmounted by gold swags, ceiling spot lamps, and brown carpet in the pattern of a maze.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.” Brody was in uniform; he had been on the force for twenty years.

  Murmurs from the press.

  Brody read out the detectives’ script: short sentences, written with precision by the detectives so there could be no misinterpretation.

  “The night before last, a murder took place in room 1944 of this hotel. The victim was shot twice in the back of the head with an MK23 pistol. Probably the pistol was sound suppressed, though we can’t be sure at present. The murder weapon was not left at the scene. The identity of the victim is still unknown, though we’re certain she’s not a hotel guest or member of staff. We’re running traces on her DNA and fingerprints in our national databases. We’ll know soon who she is. We have one suspect: the occupant of room 1944. An Englishman. Forty-five years old. Estimated height six feet, four inches. Athletic build, according to this hotel. Short-cropped, graying blond hair. One eye green, the other blue. We’ve got information packs for you all at the table by the door. In there are hotel scans of the suspect’s passport when he checked in and his photograph. Also a description of the clothes he was last seen wearing. You have our permission to replicate and print anything in the pack. We have an ongoing murder investigation. It’s complex. Motive is unclear. Details about victim and suspect are needed. Rest assured: the detectives in charge of the investigation have moved very fast. The city is on alert, and all East Coast police and sheriff’s departments are cooperating in the manhunt. Are there any questions?”

  The questions fired at him were all the same.

  “Who are the detectives in charge?” asked a reporter from CNN.

  Brody looked at the two cops at the back of the room. “Our best.”

  “And the suspect?” From NBC.

  Brody replied, “William Cochrane. We want to interview him. If anyone sees him, telephone the police. Don’t engage with him, talk to him, or assume he’s innocent. In fact, assume he’s extremely dangerous.”

  It was mid-morning as I walked through central Philadelphia, having checked out of my hotel sixty minutes earlier. People around me were dashing for cover from the wind and rain, and vehicles with headlights on were splashing through puddles. I was wearing jeans, boots, and a Windbreaker, and had my small backpack slung over one shoulder. I wanted to blend in, but felt as if everyone was looking at me. When operating as a spy, I’d been on the run in many overseas locations. This was different. I had no place to run to. No place of safety to reach.

  At a newsstand, I bought a copy of the Washington Post. The woman’s body in room 1944 would have been discovered the previous day, I knew. The issue was how quickly the police would make my name public. I entered a small café near the entrance to the sprawling outdoor Italian Market, ordered a coffee, and sat in the corner of the room. Also here were a young couple browsing their iPads, a street vendor who was standing by the counter and chatting up a pretty waitress, and an old woman.

  The Post on the table, I turned to the classifieds section. My eyes locked on an ad that made no sense. Its heading was honor our fallen hero. In the text below were only numbers.

  7(9), 18(47), 2(3), 91(78), 45(102), 29(271), 77(59), 1(33), 531(84), 531(85), 4(26), 1(32), 11(84), 243(301).

  I glanced at the other occupants of the café. They were all still preoccupied with their drinks and activities. I pulled out the encyclopedia and a pen. I wanted the newspaper to make sense of all this shit, even if I knew that answers could make matters infinitely worse.

  My guess was that the numbers in the ad were page numbers, with the number in parentheses referring to a word on the page. I set to work, heart racing yet mind focused. Within two minutes, I knew my instinct about the code was probably correct. On page 7 in the encyclopedia, the ninth word was “I’ve.” I continued cross-referring the numbers in the ad with pages and words in the book.

  The code was simple, but without the old encyclopedia in hand as the key to match the code, it would be impossible to break. And its creator was very clever, because there was no mention of me, nor anything else incriminating.

  He was taunting me.

  With the header in place, the ad read:

  Honor Our Fallen Hero. I’ve waited. Now you have my cold dish. More tomorrow.

  The message was clear.

  Honor our fallen hero. Was this a reference to me? Did he see me as a onetime hero who was now on the run because of him? And if so, how did he know I was once a hero?

  I’ve waited. Now you have my cold dish. This was about revenge. And, like all revenge, best served cold.

  Tomorrow there would be another message in the Post.

  Someone had set me up for murder. But why and who?

  I looked up. The iPad couple was separated. Girl still at the table, her device open on a Fox News headline. And my face on the screen. Her guy on his cell in the street, looking anxiously at his girlfriend while talking rapid inaudible words, clearly calling for help. So it was out there. I was now a hunted man and I had to get out of there—fast.

  I left cash on the table for my drink and exited the café. The moment I’d seen the dead woman in the bathtub, I knew that the media would be all over the story because of the venue. And the publicity on news networks and their online portals wouldn’t end today. Tomorrow the print newspapers would be running their headlines, keeping the story alive.

  I passed the young man on the phone, not too close but near enough to catch his reaction and to hear his voice. The man was a rabbit in headlights when he saw me looking directly at him. There was no doubt about what was going on here.

  I walked away from him, keeping a steady pace down Ninth, dodging shoppers idling under the awnings of cafés and restaurants, cheese sellers, bakeries, and butchers. A group of European tourists were being led in the
center of the street by an American guide holding a stick in the air and looking miserable in the wet weather. They stopped by a fishmonger. I attached myself to the rear of the group, turned to look back up the street, and saw two cops on foot walking diagonally from one side of the street to the other. They were a hundred yards away, hands on holsters and radio mics.

  The tourist group moved on, me with them, hoping that the guide was going to announce that they were done with the market and needed to now walk quickly to another part of Philadelphia. Instead, the guide instructed everyone to take an hour’s break to browse and shop. Quickly, I moved to the head of the group before it dispersed, putting tourists between me and the cops. I walked fast, praying to God that the cops didn’t spot me and order me to freeze.

  If that happened, South Ninth Street would become chaos.

  I reached the end of the market and stopped, lifting an orange from a display and sniffing it while looking back down the street. The cops were visible, now two hundred yards away and stationary while one of them was speaking on his radio. A false alarm, I hoped they were telling their base. But the sound of police sirens told me that was not how it was being perceived. NYPD had moved faster than I’d expected, getting the media involved so quickly. I had to assume that the murder investigators would take today’s sighting as a genuine lead.

  I needed to get the hell out of Philly.

  Chapter 3

  Thyme Painter and Joe Kopański entered the Manhattan Midtown North Precinct’s interview room and sat opposite Marty Fleet from the U.S. Attorney General’s office and a guy in his fifties called Phil.

  Fleet was a thirty-six-year-old lawyer, good-looking, with expensive clothes, dentistry that made his permanent smile gleam, hair coifed in the style of a 1920s golf pro, and the ready charm prevalent among those who don’t need to worry about grubby matters such as job security, bills, and bad genes. A Yale graduate, he was on the fast track to one day potentially become the “AG,” as Fleet referred to his boss. But despite appearances, he wasn’t a country-club WASP. His parents were blue-collar workers. They’d killed each other in a drunken argument when he was sixteen. His older sister had to look after him. Ten years later, she’d suffered a terrible climbing accident, leaving her wheelchair bound and brain damaged. Fleet had looked after his sister ever since.

  There was more to Fleet than met the eye, but he could still be ruthless and Machiavellian. The detectives had to be careful around him.

  “I saw this guy Will Cochrane on the news this morning.” Fleet’s smile almost drew the detectives’ attention away from his flickering eyes, which were mentally undressing them. “I decided the AG’s office should be aware if New York’s finest know which side’s up on this.”

  “Meaning?” Painter held his gaze.

  “Meaning, tell me what you think you know.”

  “We’re detectives, meaning it’s foolish to start an investigation thinking you know what’s happened.” Kopański wanted to cut the crap. “Who’s Phil, and why are you both here?”

  Phil said nothing.

  And Fleet didn’t fully answer. “Phil’s an associate, and we’re here to get some nuts-and-bolts data on the Waldorf murder.”

  “Why?” Painter was trying to get the measure of the man in the room who was silent. He was portly, balding on top, wearing a suit, with half-rim glasses on a chain resting on his chest, and was watching the detectives intently. “Is there something about our case we should know about? Victim, suspect, circumstances? If there is, you’d better spit it out.”

  “Nuts-and-bolts data,” the lawyer repeated.

  “You’ve read the news. The public statement was prepared by us. That’s the data.”

  Fleet sighed. “Come on, Thyme, Joe. We’ve done this too many times to put up barriers. There’s a reason we’re here, and I’ll come to that, but I just want inside track.”

  Kopański didn’t buy Fleet’s we’re-in-this-together tactic. “Prints taken from documents William Cochrane signed when he checked into the Waldorf, and from elsewhere in his hotel room, exactly match those all over the crime scene. Ditto DNA we got from a leftover sandwich he dumped in his room’s trash and from the neck of a bottle of mineral water. We don’t know who the woman is. We’re running her autopsy results through local and national databases, plus we’re hoping her family or friends get in touch with us.”

  Painter added, “Nothing on motive, though that will become clearer when we’ve ID’d the victim and find out who this guy Cochrane is. I’ve put a call in to Scotland Yard. Their Met Police is investigating. Nothing back from them yet. What I can say is . . .” Painter frowned. “The crime scene is odd.”

  Fleet said, “Odd?”

  “Odd because the killing was clinical and absolute. Two bullets in the back of the head to be sure of death. A professional killing. And yet, the scene was sloppy. A pro wouldn’t have left so many traces, unless . . .”

  “Unless?”

  It was Kopański who finished the sentence. “Unless he didn’t care. The victim may have been a casual encounter, a colleague, a lover. Doesn’t matter. What does is that Cochrane’s mind broke in that room. Gun’s pulled out, he holds her down in the bathtub, she struggles but ain’t going anywhere, double tap in the back of the skull, job done.”

  Painter added, “And then he realizes what’s just happened. Instinct’s done its bit; now it’s time to face the music.”

  Kopański. “But if he gives himself up, that’s him in a box for the rest of his life.”

  “Too much time to dwell on the demons.”

  “Impossible to clean up the hotel room, but he doesn’t worry about covering his tracks.”

  “He didn’t know it was going to be today, but he suspected a day like this was going to happen sometime soon.”

  “It was his way out. Escape from whatever shitty life he’s had.”

  “So he just leaves, thankful the nightmares in his brain are soon going to finally be over.”

  Fleet asked, “You think he’s going to take his own life?”

  Both detectives nodded while Kopański asked, “What has any of this has got to do with the attorney general’s office?”

  Fleet pointed at the man next to him. “Philip Knox. Central Intelligence Agency.”

  The detectives said nothing as Knox placed his spectacles on the tip of his nose. “Cochrane’s ex-MI6. MI6 is Britain’s spy agency, equivalent to the CIA. He was their lead field operative for fifteen years.”

  “How do you know this?” Kopański didn’t like Knox one bit.

  The senior Agency man replied, “For the last five years Cochrane was a joint asset with us.”

  “Doing what?”

  “That’s confidential, Detective Painter.” Knox smiled. “I can tell you he was the West’s prime operative used for our most complex and risky operations. The Brits put him through a twelve-month highly classified training and assessment program—only him. All previous applicants had failed the course or died on it. Somehow, he passed. He’s a very resourceful man. Joined the French Foreign Legion straight from school. Served as a paratrooper before passing selection into special forces. Was handpicked to do deniable black ops work for French Intelligence.”

  “Black ops?”

  “Assassinations.” Knox continued. “After five years in the army, he went to Cambridge University and gained a double first-class degree. Then he was approached by MI6. Other than what I’ve just told you, we restrict this conversation to matters pertinent to your investigation. Ask me relevant questions. I’ll answer what I can.”

  The detectives took it in turn to pose their questions.

  “Is he still MI6-CIA?”

  “No, he retired a year ago after his cover was blown by one of our own.”

  “Firearms trained?”

  “To the highest standard.”

  “A killer?”

  “Define.”

  “Does he enjoy killing?”

  “He hates it. Or, at lea
st, he did. But he’s exceptionally good at it.”

  “How far did you push him?”

  Knox paused before answering the question. “His CIA and MI6 controllers are dead. They’d be able to answer your question with accuracy.”

  “But you’ll have some idea. Was he driven too hard?”

  “With his blessing. He wanted to get the job done.”

  “No matter what?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Skills involve disappearing?”

  “The very best skills, but this will be a test for Cochrane. Even operatives as capable as him can’t survive for long if there’s no purpose and they’re unloved.”

  “Unloved?”

  “Being out of service and wanted for murder.”

  “You think he’s snapped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Knox answered, “Because he’s no longer serving the greater good. All the bad stuff we made him do will be catching up with him.”

  Painter asked, “What resources does he have? Fake ID? Local assets who can help him? Exit routes out of the country? Anything that will hinder our investigation?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “We fucked him on that because he’s no longer one of ours. He’s alone. Very alone.”

  “And that’s how you treat your former employees, is it?”

  Knox smiled.

  Painter: “Any idea why he was in New York?”