Once Dead Read online

  Jack rose from the chair and rolled his neck, feeling it pop as his knotted muscles released. He glanced at the time displayed at the laptop’s lower right corner: 1:48 a.m. Good. Just enough time to get in a workout while a fresh pot brewed. That would leave him three hours to commit the contents of the dossiers to memory, shower, and apply the prosthetics that would allow him to evade facial recognition.

  Feeling adrenaline course through his system, he took a long, slow breath and forced his mind to a calmer place. The time for adrenaline was coming, but that time wasn’t now.

  CHAPTER 16

  Of all the jobs Levi Elias had been asked to do throughout his years at the National Security Agency, he regarded this as the most distasteful. Pamela Meridith Kromly had been the one true love of his life. The fact that she had married his best friend hadn’t changed that. Neither had the hurt from her rejection dampened his relationship with Garfield. Her death had done that.

  It wasn’t that he and Garfield Kromly didn’t maintain their lifelong bond of friendship; it was that their mutual presence spawned an unbearable vortex of pain. So he and Garfield had maintained a respectful distance that honored their grief. For him to now set up a meeting to prod his friend’s painful memories felt blasphemous. As he approached the base of the Washington monument where Garfield waited, the thought of what he was doing left Levi physically ill.

  Still, he managed a smile as he gripped Garfield’s extended hand. “Hello, Gar.”

  “Good to see you, my friend. It’s been a while.”

  “Yes. Too long.”

  Levi let his gaze linger on Garfield’s face. Despite the gray hair that showed the rapid approach of Garfield’s sixtieth birthday, his jaw still bore the hard lines of an athlete. The CIA’s top trainer of field operatives had always maintained a workout routine that left most of his recruits gasping for air, and Levi gathered that his routine hadn’t eased since Pam’s death.

  Garfield’s eyes narrowed slightly at the corners. “I take it you didn’t arrange this meeting just to discuss old times.”

  Levi nodded, the two men picking up a casual stroll toward the distant Jefferson Memorial as they talked.

  “I need to ask you about a former trainee of yours. Jack Gregory.”

  Garfield Kromly came to an abrupt halt, his jaw tightening as he turned to face Levi. “Jack’s been dead more than a year.”

  Levi met the other’s gaze, surprised at the antagonism in that stare. “So I’ve been told.”

  “Then why the sudden NSA interest?”

  “Can you keep this strictly between the two of us?”

  “That depends on the why.”

  Feeling a bit too exposed standing facing each other on the grass lawn of the National Mall, Levi inclined his head slightly and together they resumed their previous stroll. The Thursday mid-morning sun hung low in a clear blue sky, its warmth an early indication of the heat that was destined to follow.

  “You know I loved her, too.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you know I would never take advantage of our friendship. Not for agency business. Not for anything.”

  “Armistead and Hancock?”

  Levi felt a tightness grip his throat at the Killer Angels reference. “Just so.”

  “I’d still like to know why.”

  Having moved away from the tourists gathered near the base of the Washington Monument, Levi nodded. “Fair enough. We’ve picked up indications of some unusual CIA activity in Germany, the type of thing that we would expect to be kept in the loop on. We’ve linked yesterday’s bomb scare in Berlin to what appears to be a high-priority, ongoing CIA operation.”

  “If it’s sensitive enough, it’s possible that notification to sister agencies could be delayed until the DCI is certain exactly what they are on to.”

  “Maybe, but as far as we can tell, Director Rheiner hasn’t been informed about his own agency’s involvement in the Berlin incident.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  Levi understood Garfield’s doubt, but continued. “It wouldn’t be the first time the DCI’s been kept out of the loop to maintain plausible deniability.”

  Garfield’s pace slowed ever so slightly. “You’re implying that a senior CIA official is conducting an illegal operation.”

  “Like I said, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  A small grin lifted the corners of Garfield’s mouth as he glanced over at Levi. “How does a dead man play into this?”

  Levi formed his response carefully. He wasn’t lying to Garfield, but not giving him the whole story sure felt like it. “We’ve picked up a number of references to Jack the Ripper in communications intercepts.”

  “Could be a code name.”

  “Not in this context. It sounds like he may be an operational target.”

  Garfield halted, turning to face Levi once more. “You’re saying Jack Gregory’s alive?”

  “No. I’m saying the chatter indicates that someone thinks he’s alive. It sounds like a group within CIA is going to considerable lengths to remedy that.”

  “Jack was more than one of my students. He was the best operative I’ve ever seen, and since I’ve trained almost every field agent that has come into the agency during the last thirty years, that’s saying something. It’s hard to describe him other than to say he was unique. A dynamic personality. He was quick, athletic, and highly skilled.”

  Levi studied his friend’s face. Normally expressionless, strong emotion played behind those eyes. “You were close to him?”

  “As with many of the top trainees, Pam and I had him over to the house on several occasions. But Jack was different. When he walked into a room it was like someone had just switched on the lights.”

  “Charismatic?”

  Garfield laughed. “Jack Gregory exuded a love of life that bled into everyone around him. Pam loved him. Hell, I loved him. Jack was like the son we never had. When we heard he was dead, we couldn’t accept it. I made a special trip to England to see the old nun who had watched Jack die in Calcutta. It was a waste of time. She was cloistered, lost in delusion and dementia, rocking back and forth on her bed, mumbling the same words over and over.”

  “The same words? What words?” Levi asked.

  “Dear Lord, The Ripper walks the earth. That phrase and the fact that nobody ever found his body started the rumors that Jack was still alive. But it was all nonsense. I followed up with the Indian doctor that signed Jack’s death certificate. He assured me he had made no mistake.”

  Garfield paused, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

  “Pam was already fighting cancer and the news of Jack’s death sapped her will to keep fighting. I remember what she said to me. If a young god like Jack can face his mortality, maybe I can too.”

  Garfield’s face hardened. “A part of me still wanted to believe he was alive. But when Jack didn’t show up at Pam’s funeral, I knew for certain he was dead. Dead to me anyway.”

  Despite the distress he heard in his old friend’s voice, Levi felt compelled to ask the question this had all been leading up to.

  “Okay, Gar, one last question. If Gregory is still alive, do you think it’s possible he’s gone rogue?”

  Garfield Kromly’s gray eyes locked with Levi’s, the intensity of the gaze sending a chill through his body.

  “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Levi Elias stared across the conference table at his boss. Admiral Riles’s legendary silent interludes served dual purposes. They allowed his agile mind to rip apart, reassemble, and digest the information that had just been presented and they elicited extra information the briefer hadn’t intended to reveal, an effect produced by the weight of the Admiral’s extended silence. Riles had mastered the art of keeping his eyes fixed on the presenter, as if he expected the person to continue speaking, even as he wandered through the maze of his own thoughts.

  Levi let that feeling wash over
him, settled back in his chair, and waited.

  When Admiral Riles finally spoke, his words startled Levi.

  “I want you to send Janet Price to Berlin to make contact with Gregory.”

  “Isn’t that stepping a bit outside our boundaries?”

  Riles smiled. “Let me worry about that. This whole situation smells like a setup, one initiated without the DCI’s approval. More important, I don’t like the new Big John data. The damned machine has inferred a connection between events that should have no connection.”

  “Like what?”

  “Rolf Koenig’s space launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the CIA surveillance of Jack Gregory, and some of Vladimir Roskov’s operations in Kazakhstan.”

  “That could be just because Vladimir Roskov is putting pressure on both Gregory and Koenig.”

  “Not according to Dr. Jennings. Denise tells me this is a completely different correlation, although, aside from some gibberish about patterns of node weights in Big John’s neural network, she can’t give me a causal relationship. But even though I don’t understand it, I’m not going to ignore a Big John correlation of point eight nine.”

  Levi couldn’t argue with that, but he didn’t like being forced to take the type of action that involved calling upon Janet’s special skills without a thorough operational understanding of the battlefield. And, in his mind, that was exactly what Berlin had become, a battlefield where highly-trained foot soldiers from a variety of organizations, some criminal and some government sponsored, moved like pawns on a chessboard. Worse, he had no idea what underlying agendas drove the key players, or even who the key players were.

  From what he’d learned from Garfield Kromly, Jack Gregory had been a uniquely qualified CIA asset. Now, someone high up at Langley had discovered Gregory was still alive and was desperately trying to correct that. But why kill Gregory? A couple of answers sprang to mind. Either the CIA had taken a hand in the original Calcutta attack on Gregory or he had subsequently stumbled onto something that threatened an ongoing CIA operation, or both. But that raised more questions. Riles must be thinking the same thing to consider sending Janet Price.

  “Given recent circumstances, Gregory may not be in the mood for contact.”

  “Janet can make that call. Gregory’s a dangerous man in a bad situation, one that’s probably going to get a lot worse. I want to know who is setting him up and why? Don’t worry. Janet can handle The Ripper.”

  Levi looked down at his steepled fingers. Perhaps Riles was right. The NSA had enticed Janet Price away from the CIA. She’d been the first woman to ever complete the Army’s Ranger School and although it had been as a part of an unofficial CIA training class, she’d endured those nine weeks of starvation, sleep deprivation, and pressure-packed hell, succeeding where most of her classmates had failed.

  At the CIA, Janet Price had broken Jack Gregory’s thousand-meter marksmanship record. A dark-haired beauty who moved like a professional dancer, Janet could take a man’s breath with a single glance. She could take his life with even less effort. She was the NSA’s hidden treasure, an asset so valuable that Jonny Riles only assigned her to the highest-priority missions. But here and now, because The Ripper had returned from the dead, Riles was launching that asset into a German maelstrom on a hunch. The thought sent a cold shiver up Levi’s spine.

  Realizing that he’d remained silent even longer than Riles, Levi raised his eyes to meet his boss’s gaze.

  “Janet’s in Cartagena. I’ll have her on an agency jet to Berlin, tonight.”

  “You’ll personally handle her briefing?”

  “I’ll assemble the mission briefing. It’ll be waiting when she gets off the plane tomorrow, available for download when she settles in to her hotel.”

  Admiral Riles smiled. “That works.”

  Levi rose and walked back to his office, his thoughts on what his boss had ordered him to do. Riles never went off half-cocked. Based on the limited facts available, the Admiral had concluded that Jack Gregory had stumbled upon something that involved the CIA, Rolf Koenig, the Russian Mafia, and possibly the BfV, something all of those actors wanted desperately to keep secret.

  And as he picked up his phone to make the required call, Levi realized he wanted answers just as badly as Admiral Riles did.

  CHAPTER 18

  Darkness filled the underground parking garage, a thick blanket that Jack’s red LED penlight only managed to nudge back as he moved silently past the tightly parked Volkswagens, Citroëns, Audis, and BMWs. Having spent the last six hours watching the entrance, he had noted that no car had entered or left since 1:27 a.m. That was two hours ago.

  The apartment complex above his head housed Kendra Armonis, a twenty-four-year-old exotic dancer from Lithuania, Carlo Veniti’s current girlfriend. The dark-headed Italian hit man looked like a mixed martial arts heavyweight fighter. Six-foot-four, lean and hard muscled, Carlo enjoyed a reputation for killing people with his bare hands, preferring to take his time when the job offered that opportunity.

  Carlo was a ladies’ man, moving from relationship to relationship every few months. Those relationships quickly became so abusive that most of his women were too scared to run away and all refused to press charges or testify against him. With his peculiar tastes and skill set, it came as no surprise to Jack that Vladimir Roskov relied upon Carlo for high-priority eliminations. It was why he’d been the assassination team leader inside the Berlin train station.

  Jack knew the type, a knowledge that stoked his inner fire. But soon, Kendra Armonis would find herself free to move on with her life. Except for Roskov, there weren’t likely to be many mourners at Veniti’s funeral.

  Jack had spotted Carlo’s license plate on the black Audi A8 as it entered the garage just after midnight. Seeing that same plate appear in his red flashlight beam, Jack stopped. Turning in a slow circle, he examined the surrounding spaces from floor to ceiling. Insulated boiler pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, reducing its height from six-and-a-half feet to a level that just allowed Jack’s six-foot frame to pass beneath without stooping. The same wouldn’t apply to Carlo when he made his way from Kendra’s bed back to his car.

  As Jack started to walk behind the car, he stopped. The scent of danger hung on the air, an invisible aura that thrilled him. But his innate sense of what was about to happen had become so amped up it was a distraction and, right now, he couldn’t afford to be pulled off target just to investigate a feeling. Moving forward once again, Jack shined the penlight’s red beam through the driver’s side window, directly into Carlo Veniti’s grinning face.

  The door swung open with such force that it lifted him off his feet, launching his body onto the hood of the adjacent car, sending his flashlight flying. In the instant before it shattered on the concrete floor, as if in slow motion, Jack saw Carlo rise up, backlit by the Audi’s interior lighting.

  Jack felt Carlo’s left hand close around his ankle, felt his body dragged across the hood as he pulled his SAS survival knife from its right ankle sheath. Instead of fighting the pull, Jack used Carlo’s hold as an anchor to launch his body into his attacker, thrusting the black blade at the Italian’s throat.

  Recognizing his danger, Carlo thrust out his right hand to ward off the blow, but only succeeded in impaling his palm all the way to the hilt. With a grunt of pain, Carlo closed his injured hand, locking the blade in place, preventing Jack from pulling the knife free. He lunged backward, maintaining his grip on Jack’s ankle as both men tumbled to the concrete floor. Jack locked himself to the hit man’s body so that the two rolled across the floor as one.

  Carlo hammered his forehead into Jack’s, the head butt dislodging Jack’s hold on the bigger man and sending a trickle of blood flowing from his eyebrow into his left eye. The big man attempted to wrap his thick left arm around Jack’s neck, but Jack caught his thumb and twisted hard, the resultant crack and accompanying release of pressure providing him the opening to launch his elbow into the underside of Carlo’s jaw.<
br />
  Carlo twisted, seeking to roll Jack face down, a move Jack countered with an arm bar. Shifting his weight onto his right arm, Jack used the additional leverage to twist his knife, heard a bone snap within Carlo’s palm, and felt the slick surge of hot blood. Reversing his previous opposition to Carlo’s attempt to roll him over, Jack threw his weight into the movement.

  Unable to stop their combined angular momentum, Carlo was thrown face down on the concrete as Jack whipped his feet under the big man’s outstretched arms, locking both heels behind Carlo’s neck in a leg full nelson. With a growl of desperation, Carlo struggled to break the hold, the muscles in his neck and arms cording like guitar strings. Attempting an alligator roll, he whipped Jack’s body into the concrete floor but failed to dislodge his hold.

  Jack leaned into it, using his entire core to strengthen the pressure his legs applied to Carlo’s neck. For a long moment, Carlo intensified his resistance. Then, with a crack that echoed through the concrete space, Carlo’s thick neck twisted and his body went limp. Giving Carlo’s neck one last turn, Jack felt it flop unnaturally to the side. He released his leg lock and kicked the bigger man’s body away.

  Panting, as much from adrenaline overload as from exertion, Jack climbed back to his feet. The light shining from the open car door illuminated the scene, casting Jack’s shadow across Carlo’s body and onto the Volkswagen Jetta parked in the space opposite. Stepping across the corpse, Jack pulled his knife from Carlo’s palm and wiped the blade on his white shirt. Jack tossed Carlo’s wallet, cell phone, and pistol onto the Audi’s passenger seat, then clicked the key fob button that opened the trunk latch.

  Walking back to where Carlo’s remains lay sprawled on the concrete, Jack grabbed his ankles and dragged him to the Audi. Jack heaved the corpse into the trunk, took a minute to arrange the body, then shut the lid with a solid thunk.