The Executioner's Game by Gary Hardwick Page B

crinkle of paper as he did. He took off the glasses and lifted the pillow carefully. His eyes adjusted, and the pain stopped as he did.
    Under the pillow, written on a piece of plain white paper and printed with care and precision, was this message:
    Â 
    DON’T TAKE THE MISSION.

The Evidence of Nothing
    The note that had been secreted into his room was on Luther’s mind as he read through the case file on Alex Deavers. He didn’t know who had left the missive, and he wasn’t going to try to find out right now. That would just slow him down, and if he reported it to Kilmer, it might endanger his status on the mission.
    He did surmise that the note writer was an insider, someone who had training and knew how to break into a place virtually undetected. It could have been anybody from E-1, even Kilmer. Hampton was back in the United States, but he was getting ready to accompany Luther on the mission. He ruled Hampton out. Frank and Sharon Bane had both come to the X Club late and were not together, so it could have been either of them.
    These were troubling thoughts for Luther, but if the note writer had wanted to do him harm, he or she would have tried.
    Luther had gotten up early to read over the file on Deavers’s disappearance. They had him tracked fairly well until Canada, and then they’d found the wrong man on a ship. The Canadianshad good government agents, and if they’d lost Alex, it was only because he was good, not because they were deficient. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Border Police, and the Security Intelligence Review Committee all had good people and expert trackers and fully cooperated with the United States.
    If he was going to find Alex Deavers, he’d have to be resourceful. An agent leaves the evidence of nothing, he said again to himself. But that truth was relative. If nothing was left, then no one could ever find an agent. What Deavers had meant was that an agent leaves a trail of normality , a statement that things are maybe too right and good.
    Luther looked at the ship’s log information again. The Sjømannskirken , a Norwegian freighter, had left Great Britain and had an uneventful journey to a northern Canadian port in the province of Quebec, in Tête-à-la-Baleine. Once it got there, Gustav Brehimson, a man with questionable papers, had gotten off and disappeared. This was the man E-1 thought to be Alex Deavers.
    When the man calling himself Brehimson was located, it was discovered that his real name was Norske Svalbard and that he was an illegal immigrant from Norway. Alex was nowhere to be found.
    Luther checked again and again, looking for anything he might find. Then, in the captain’s supplemental log, a massive pile of paper that contained everything useless that had occurred on the voyage, there was an entry that stood out. Luther didn’t know why the entry was not listed separately as a report or put into the main log. He guessed that the captain didn’t want to bother with all the paperwork involved. On its second night, the Sjømannskirken had been aided by a ship named the Métier , aFrench vessel headed for the United States. The Métier had come upon the Sjømannskirken when she had developed engine trouble and had stopped for repairs at sea. The captain of the Sjømannskirken had logged information earlier about questionable engines in port. He allowed the other ship to assist, and then both ships had gone on their separate ways. The entry was a single paragraph.
    Luther smiled and almost laughed at the simplicity of the event.
    That was how Alex had done it.
    Alex was indeed on the Sjømannskirken as Gustav Brehimson, but he had switched ships. Alex had sabotaged the engine and jumped aboard the Baltimore-bound Métier . He’d switched his papers with Norske Svalbard and then vanished. It was a classic E-1 diversion. Alex had gotten information on the Métier’s course and planned to have the ships