weren’t military, not even coverts. It wasn’t just their lack of uniform; the perfunctory executions, then their casual attitude around the corpses, smoking and joking, and the way they heaved them into the SUV as if it was something they did every day. And what bothered Kovic most wasthat they were inside China. Who where they? And who had sent them?
And what was supposed to be the outcome: lure Americans into a trap on one side of the border and then have them killed on the other? None of it made sense. If he had been cleared to hire his own team locally, would it have ended differently? Maybe not – but it wouldn’t make international news. In the hierarchy of news events, American deaths ranked a lot higher than Chinese or Korean.
‘Hey,’ he called out to the sewage men. ‘I got to get moving!’
One of them left the group round the hole and moved towards the cab with a studied lack of urgency.
How was this going to play for Cutler? Kovic knew he better be prepared to navigate all the swift and lethal currents of Agency ass covering that would be going on. One thing he was damned if he was going to do was have this hung round his neck. It was the Chief ’s show, his plan, and the corrupted intel on which the whole fateful mission was based had come from his own sources.
The thought flashed through Kovic’s head that maybe today was the day to bail, tell Cutler where to stick the damn job. For sure, that would be an end to all the lies with Louise. But he knew it was impossible. No one left the Agency voluntarily. And even if you went, you didn’t actually leave . Anyone who did was guaranteed to be a source of suspicion in perpetuity. There was another problem; he didn’t do the future. That was the place where no matter how much analysing, modelling, war-gaming, and downright worst case scenario imagining you did, stuff happened. Not only stuff you had overlooked, stuff you couldn’t have dreamed of in the nightmares lurking in the deepest recesses of your own twisted subconscious: Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Iran hostages, Bin Laden, the Boston Marathon. Maybe it was another sign of his enduring immaturity, that he had developed a taste for living in the moment and couldn’t give it up, not for Louise or anybody. Or maybe it was just a natural fear of the future.
The shots played themselves over and over, without warning, the pictures in slow motion. The straight arm rising to aim, the shot, the move to the next man lying half frozen and exhausted in the snow.
The guy in the sewage truck turned the ignition, it almost fired then stalled. When he tried again the starter was in its death throes. Kovic sighed, lit a cigarette, then called Wu.
10
‘Agent K! How are you?’
‘Stranded. Where are you?’
‘Look up.’
He looked and saw the BMW X6’s lights flash as it advanced with a low metallic beat from its profligate eight cylinders. That detail was one of many Kovic had managed to absorb from Wu’s exhaustive enumerations of his prized machine’s attributes. He had had it wrapped in matt black with tinted side and rear lights. Wu called it the stealth look – surely a contradiction in terms, Kovic thought, more like ‘Hey, look at me. I’m a drug dealing gangsta!’
Growing up in Detroit had given him a deep distaste for the automobile. Its giant plants had lured his grandparents to America and enslaved them and their children, only to spit them out a few decades later into a half-deserted wasteland. But Kovic hadn’t burdened Wu with all that as he fawned over his precious toy. Foolishly, he had even conceded a mild admiration for German machinery, which Wu had fatally misread as an invitation to kill him with detail. Sure, the five on-board cameras that gave an almost complete view of what was happening ahead, behind and even above could be handy for surveillance – if the car hadn’t been so damned conspicuous.
Grinning, Wu opened the passenger door
And what was supposed to be the outcome: lure Americans into a trap on one side of the border and then have them killed on the other? None of it made sense. If he had been cleared to hire his own team locally, would it have ended differently? Maybe not – but it wouldn’t make international news. In the hierarchy of news events, American deaths ranked a lot higher than Chinese or Korean.
‘Hey,’ he called out to the sewage men. ‘I got to get moving!’
One of them left the group round the hole and moved towards the cab with a studied lack of urgency.
How was this going to play for Cutler? Kovic knew he better be prepared to navigate all the swift and lethal currents of Agency ass covering that would be going on. One thing he was damned if he was going to do was have this hung round his neck. It was the Chief ’s show, his plan, and the corrupted intel on which the whole fateful mission was based had come from his own sources.
The thought flashed through Kovic’s head that maybe today was the day to bail, tell Cutler where to stick the damn job. For sure, that would be an end to all the lies with Louise. But he knew it was impossible. No one left the Agency voluntarily. And even if you went, you didn’t actually leave . Anyone who did was guaranteed to be a source of suspicion in perpetuity. There was another problem; he didn’t do the future. That was the place where no matter how much analysing, modelling, war-gaming, and downright worst case scenario imagining you did, stuff happened. Not only stuff you had overlooked, stuff you couldn’t have dreamed of in the nightmares lurking in the deepest recesses of your own twisted subconscious: Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Iran hostages, Bin Laden, the Boston Marathon. Maybe it was another sign of his enduring immaturity, that he had developed a taste for living in the moment and couldn’t give it up, not for Louise or anybody. Or maybe it was just a natural fear of the future.
The shots played themselves over and over, without warning, the pictures in slow motion. The straight arm rising to aim, the shot, the move to the next man lying half frozen and exhausted in the snow.
The guy in the sewage truck turned the ignition, it almost fired then stalled. When he tried again the starter was in its death throes. Kovic sighed, lit a cigarette, then called Wu.
10
‘Agent K! How are you?’
‘Stranded. Where are you?’
‘Look up.’
He looked and saw the BMW X6’s lights flash as it advanced with a low metallic beat from its profligate eight cylinders. That detail was one of many Kovic had managed to absorb from Wu’s exhaustive enumerations of his prized machine’s attributes. He had had it wrapped in matt black with tinted side and rear lights. Wu called it the stealth look – surely a contradiction in terms, Kovic thought, more like ‘Hey, look at me. I’m a drug dealing gangsta!’
Growing up in Detroit had given him a deep distaste for the automobile. Its giant plants had lured his grandparents to America and enslaved them and their children, only to spit them out a few decades later into a half-deserted wasteland. But Kovic hadn’t burdened Wu with all that as he fawned over his precious toy. Foolishly, he had even conceded a mild admiration for German machinery, which Wu had fatally misread as an invitation to kill him with detail. Sure, the five on-board cameras that gave an almost complete view of what was happening ahead, behind and even above could be handy for surveillance – if the car hadn’t been so damned conspicuous.
Grinning, Wu opened the passenger door
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