Deep Cover (The Trigger Man Book 2), page 16
Pierce checked the sun’s position, still high in the clear blue sky. In an hour from now the sun would be behind him, making his position more difficult to see from the street below.
“Space elevators, ladies and gentlemen. Cables one hundred thousand kilometres long, stretching from the equator to beyond geosynchronous orbits, allowing us to transport materials into space cheaply. Gone will be the need for expensive rockets. No other material is strong enough to withstand the forces that would otherwise tear a space elevator’s cable into shreds. Only diamonds are that strong.”
Pierce opened the window and positioned himself. He counted on Ponsonby stepping out of the front entrance at some stage today, and when the man appeared, Pierce would be ready. Now all he had to do was wait, and waiting would be easy, because in sniper school he had learned to sit and wait like this for periods of up to forty-eight hours until his target appeared. Ponsonby was only hours away from appearing at most. Inside the building, Pierce would be invisible to the commuters on the streets below.
“What I’m telling you today, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, is that the future of carbon and diamonds won’t be as precious gems, but as a construction material that will revolutionise everything. And I mean everything. The tensile strength of diamond is like nothing else on this planet. With carbon, even buildings like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — the tallest building on Earth — will pale into insignificance to what we can achieve with diamonds, for it will replace steel and concrete. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my vision for Polytope. My company won’t be about gems, but the foundation of construction into the future. We won’t pull diamonds from the earth, but manufacture them as sheets, columns and beams.”
Ponsonby paused, then cleared his throat. “How will I achieve this, you ask? Well, through research and development, funded through Polytope’s largest diamond leases in the Central African Republic and marine diamond mining off the coast of Angola. There are six major producing diamond mines in the world today, in Botswana, South Africa, Angola, Canada and two mines in Russia, producing more than eighty per cent of the world’s diamond outputs. But when Polytope completes construction on our new processing technology at our Central African mines, there will then be seven major diamond mines. With the profits we make, we will invest most of it into new technologies to manufacture rather than mine construction-grade diamonds. At that point there won’t be seven major mines. There will be none. Our productive and revolutionary diamond manufacturing plant will become the sole source of reliable diamond manufacturing worldwide. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the future of diamonds. Polytope Diamonds.”
A long pause emanated from the audience.
Pierce heard Ponsonby breathing. It seemed the attendees hadn’t realised his speech had concluded ten minutes earlier than his allotted time slot.
Somebody onstage clapped, the events coordinator perhaps, so the audience followed without enthusiasm.
Ponsonby cleared his throat. “Looks like we have some time. I’ll take questions.”
The room remained silent.
“Okay, well, thank you all for coming.”
Pierce heard Ponsonby storm off the stage, swearing under his breath.
Unmoving in his sniper position, Pierce slowed his breathing and calmed his mind. His eye tracked the CTICC entrance through his scope. His plan was to shoot Ponsonby from a distance, allowing Pierce sufficient time to escape afterwards, rather than shooting him inside the conference centre, where it would be more difficult to get away, and this meant Pierce could only shoot when the CEO exited the building.
With the lecture ended, Ponsonby might step outside now. If he did, Pierce would take his shot.
32
London, United Kingdom
Rachel Zang spent her morning in a café overlooking a typical London business complex. It was all modern buildings with rendered concrete facades stained white, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. A courtyard wedged between the multi-storey offices included garden beds and arranged trees, the latter absent of leaves because it was winter. Despite the cold, the sun provided an unusual brightness for the season.
The particular business complex she watched housed the offices of the Greene Strategic Group, a consulting firm that advised governments and corporations on geopolitical risks present in various troubled countries, from North Korea and Ukraine to Venezuela and South Sudan, and every failed state in between. GSG employees operated as corporate intelligence analysts but used only open-source data. Zang mused, when the CIA disavows you, a high-paying role in a firm like GSG was preferable to the many alternatives. Zang would never be so lucky.
At lunchtime, Mackenzie Summerfield stepped from her office. She’d changed her appearance since Zang had last seen her. Gone was the dark pixie-style cut; the woman had grown out her hair and dyed it dark red. Missing too were the jeans and tight-fitting shirt, replaced by a conservative grey pants suit.
Summerfield walked to a Vietnamese roll shop and purchased an apple juice and a baguette with chicken and Asian vegetables. As she turned to leave, she spotted Zang waiting in the doorway.
“Remember me?” Zang said.
A moment passed before recognition reached Summerfield’s stare. “If this is another job offer, I’m not interested.”
“Not a job offer. Just want to walk and talk?”
Summerfield nodded and followed Zang outside. “We’re near the Thames Barrier. I can talk long enough to walk there and back.” She placed the food and drink in her handbag. “I’ll eat at my desk.”
Zang nodded, and they set off. She was a head taller than Summerfield, but then Zang was taller than most women and a good number of men. After they covered half a block and no one was in hearing distance, she said, “I take it you know who I am?” When Mackenzie said nothing, Zang said, “My name is Rachel Zang. I’m a CIA paramilitary operations officer.”
“I remember. I believe the CIA considered you for a position in Gao, Mali.”
“That never happened.”
“I know. It was me who assessed you. I advised you lacked the required experience.”
Zang could have taken that as a slight against her character, but chose not to.
Mackenzie turned to Zang and forced a smile. “I hear you did well regardless of my opinion.”
“At the risk of failing a Bechdel-Wallace test, I’m here to talk about Mark Pierce.”
Summerfield stopped dead, recovered, then kept walking. “Of course you are.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Oh yeah. What am I supposed to think?”
“I was with Pierce. Three days ago.”
Summerfield’s eyes were like ice as she locked stares with Zang. “Walsh sent you, didn’t he? Bet he didn’t bother telling you his mind games no longer work on me?”
“He didn’t send me.” Zang tucked a strand of her dark hair behind an ear. “I’m not here under false pretences, Summerfield. Can we talk, please? There are things you need to hear about Pierce, and things I need to hear from you, to understand what kind of man he really is.”
“Really is?” Summerfield snorted. “I’m sure Walsh briefed you. Pierce and I were co-conspirators. We stole eleven million dollars from the CIA. That was until Pierce disappeared with the money and sold me out to the CIA. Is he still off enjoying the spoils while I’m left facing charges of treason?”
“And yet you are here. Free, in England.”
They reached the end of the road and the boardwalk facing the Thames River. Ahead was the Thames Barrier, a series of ten ring-sector gates similar in architectural appearance to the Sydney Opera House’s “sails” but much smaller. The gates featured rotating cylinders that prevented London from flooding during high tides and storm surges moving up from the North Sea. A walkway led out to the first three barriers, but they were closed to public access. Summerfield leaned against a railing and looked west towards the Millennium Dome, an architectural wonder that reminded Zang of some monstrous-sized World War Two sea mine.
“Walsh couldn’t make anything stick,” Summerfield said. “And his superiors knew I was innocent. Weeks of intense interrogation proved that.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you? You’d be the first person who was.”
Zang leaned against the railing and touched her index fingers and thumbs together, forming a diamond shape between her hands, and stared down through it to the pavement. “What I’m about to tell you, I shouldn’t.”
“Is that what you expect in return, that I too divulge information I shouldn’t, about Pierce?”
Zang took a deep breath, then exhaled, noticing the steam of her breath. Despite the sunshine, a chill permeated the air. “I work for Walsh, I won’t lie about that, but I do so in a convoluted way. My superior reassigned me to his team shortly after the Trigger Man went rogue, for reasons I won’t go into, but are pertinent to this conversation. Is that good enough information regarding my situation for now?”
Summerfield took a moment before nodding. “Why don’t you tell me about Mark first?”
“Very well. In the last seven months, we’ve tracked Pierce across North Africa, Europe, and Asia. He used that eleven million to purchase nuclear materials and other associated materials, which we suspect he’ll use to build a dirty bomb. Pierce left a high body count wherever he travelled and didn’t seem to care who got hurt so long as he got what he wanted. Civilians and children included.”
Summerfield growled. “But you don’t believe any of it, do you, Zang? Not now, after you’ve met him?”
Zang nodded. “I was with the kill team tracking Pierce in Kazakhstan. We were ready to make our move when Kazakh criminals ambushed us, who knew exactly where to find us and how to exploit weaknesses in our defences. They murdered my colleagues, but took me prisoner. They stripped me… I think…” She struggled to express the terror she had almost faced.
Summerfield nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Anyway.” Zang cleared her throat and refocused on why she was here. “I believed Pierce had masterminded the hit. But then he killed the Kazakhs. Executed them. Four armed and dangerous men. Pierce terrified me in that moment just by how efficiently he’d dispatched those men from a suboptimal starting position.”
“I’ve seen your file, Zang. I didn’t mean what I said before. I was just angry when I saw you, and you were an easy target to unleash my frustrations upon. You are as competent and as efficient as Pierce. Don’t underestimate yourself.”
Zang looked away. “Regardless, when Pierce found me, I convinced him I was a prostitute.”
“Did he believe you?”
Zang shrugged. “He was suspicious, but he didn’t kill me like I expected him to. I kept thinking, if the Kazakh criminals were his co-conspirators, he would have known I was lying from the onset. He…”
“Seemed concerned for your well-being?”
Zang nodded, relieved that Summerfield drew the same conclusions she had. “Yes. He didn’t force himself upon me, and I don’t believe the Kazakhs had while I was unconscious, but I’ll never know…” She wiped tears from her eyes, then shook her head and stood taller. “Police pursued us across the country. Again, Pierce overpowered them, but didn’t kill them when it would have been easier for him to do so. He did clinically eliminate a team of Kazakh soldiers connected to who he claimed were the real buyers of illegal nuclear material. Then, during the few nights we spent together, he experienced intense nightmares.”
Summerfield frowned. “How did that happen?”
“Not like that.” Then Zang couldn’t speak and found herself not detesting the man, but imagined being intimate with Pierce for a moment. She put the thought out of her mind. “I never felt under threat that way from him. But as I was saying, during his sleep, he often had nightmares of intense torture. Later, when I pressed him, he mentioned his incarceration in an African paramilitary camp, but wasn’t any more specific than that. But there was one name he blurted in his sleep that concerned me more than anything else he’d said so far.”
“What name was that?”
“Idris Walsh. Pierce believed Walsh was his torturer.”
Summerfield nodded and hugged her suit close against the chill. She wiped tears from her eyes.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Summerfield shook her head. “I always knew… Mark was innocent. I was stupid because I let everyone around me convince me he wasn’t.”
“Others? You mean Idris Walsh?”
The disgraced former CIA analyst nodded. “Him and his network of colleagues. A boys’ club, all seeking power in the upper ranks of the CIA. You know the type.”
Zang nodded and reflected on how those same men considered Aaron Stone to be a better operative than she was. “I guess that’s why I’m here, Mackenzie, to understand. Does any of what I said sound like the real Mark Pierce? Who he was before you thought he betrayed you? Because he was nothing like the man Walsh made me believe he was when he sent me to kill him.”
Summerfield was about to answer when a gunshot sounded loud in Zang’s ears.
A crimson stain suddenly blossomed on Summerfield’s shoulder.
33
Zang spun around and immediately identified the approaching assailant. A man, four metres from them, standing near the fence overlooking the Thames, approached with speed. Tight jeans and black boots laced to his ankles revealed his thin frame, yet his face remained hidden by a hooded jacket. His right hand held a smoking .38 revolver. The man fired again. Zang ducked, knowing she was already too late to avoid a bullet, but the shooter had missed. Then the shooter rushed towards them.
Without conscious thought, Zang’s training took over, and she too rushed the assailant. Her hand shot up, blocking his firing arm, which sent another bullet into the sky. Her opposite fist sped through the shortest distance and struck the assailant in the throat. He staggered back, stumbled against the railing.
Zang threw her body against him, lifted him around the waist and flipped him over the wooden guard.
He somersaulted, fell a dozen feet before he hit the frigid Thames water.
She watched him go under, then saw his head bob to the surface. He was struggling to breathe from the throat punch, and the current took him away. If he didn’t get out of the flowing river soon, he’d freeze to death.
Zang didn’t care. She scooped up the fallen .38 and pocketed it.
Behind her, Summerfield had struggled to her feet, a bloody hand gripping her right shoulder where the bullet had struck.
“Are you okay?” Two young joggers rushed to their aid. “We saw it all! We’ll call the police and an ambulance!” One of them hurriedly went for his smartphone.
Zang reached into her pocket and activated a jamming device she’d brought with her, rendering the cell phone useless.
“No reception! Even triple nine.”
Ignoring the runner, Zang moved next to Summerfield and held her steady. “How bad?”
The wounded woman gritted her teeth. The colour had drained from her face, and her pupils were dilated. “I think it’s through and through.”
“Can you clench your fist?”
Summerfield did so, tensing against the pain.
“Spread your fingers?”
She did so.
Zang tore off her scarf and used it to press down on the entry wound. She looked to the two joggers. They held each other, staring at their phones and not at her.
Zang said, “I’ll drive her to the hospital. My car’s just there.”
“We’ll come with you?”
“No!” Zang said. “The police will be here soon, with the sound of the gunshot, so someone else will have already reported it. Tell them what you saw. Newham University Hospital is not far. Tell the police to interview us there.” Zang didn’t wait for a response as she led Mackenzie to her nearby car. After determining that the bullet had gone through the flesh, neither shattering bones nor rupturing major arteries, Zang tied a tourniquet around the wound and laid Mackenzie across the back seat. Then she drove.
After close to twenty minutes of frantic driving, they were on the A13 and headed east.
“You’re… not taking me to the hospital?” Summerfield panted.
Through the rear-view mirror, Zang saw the sweat covering Summerfield’s face. “That was a rushed hit. Someone targeted one or both of us.”
“I… guessed.”
“The only person I know who could have guessed we were about to meet has to be my boss — and your former boss — Idris Walsh. If he can orchestrate a hit in London, he won’t fail a second time in a hospital. Do you have an off-the-books doctor we can use?”
Summerfield nodded. Her breathing became both faster and shallower.
Zang glanced back and saw the blood running down her arm. The wound was worse than Zang had initially assessed. “Don’t you pass out on me, Summerfield. The doctor’s address, please?”
Summerfield recited a location in Brentwood, a London suburb to the northeast of their current position. A half-hour drive. Zang used her encrypted cell phone to direct her rather than the car’s satellite navigation system, in case the two joggers had memorised her plate number and reported it to the police.
“Call them, Summerfield! Make sure this doctor is ready for us.”
The wounded woman nodded, keyed the number into her phone, then dropped it as she slipped into unconsciousness.
Zang pulled off the freeway, drove into a narrow street with no visible surveillance cameras, and parked. Then she checked on the wounded woman. Though unconscious, she was still breathing. Blood wasn’t gushing from the wound, so Rachel knew she wouldn’t die soon.
