War of Shadows Read online

  All Dan wanted was a dial tone and a connected receiver that wasn’t smeared with dog poop, and that—somewhat to his surprise and much to his relief—he did get. Morgan leaned the duffel bag in the phone booth corner as he pulled a roll of quarters from his pocket. He kept a roll of quarters in his glove compartment. Worse come to worst, they made a nifty interior-fist set of silver knuckles.

  Slipping a coin into the slot, which, thankfully, wasn’t damaged, he started poking the sticky, smeared, square buttons. He tried them all again. His wife Jenny, his daughter Alex, his partner Peter, his trusted fellow field agents Lily and Karen, the tech wiz Linc, and then his boss Diana Bloch. Nothing. He really hadn’t expected anything else. Telemarketers had made phone calls into something to be ignored, despised, or even dreaded. Even in the best of circumstances or availability, he wouldn’t connect with a phone number he didn’t recognize.

  Morgan seethed in the booth like a caged animal. He wracked his brain for anything to do other than marching into the street and screaming for the Trackhawk to come get him. In fact, he had been more than half expecting them to come blasting into the bar. He was beginning to wonder why they hadn’t when the rising noise of the outside couple’s argument reached his ears. Apparently the man was a loser and the woman was a bitch—each said so with ever increasing emphasis, probably to differentiate it from the million other times they had hurled the epithets at each other.

  Mourning his love and their hate, Morgan realized there was one person he hadn’t called. Why not? he wondered as he stabbed the memorized emergency number into the button-pad. What’ve I got to lose?

  Just before he fully remembered what he had already lost, there was a click and a voice.

  “Cobra!” Paul Kirby barked, somehow recognizing the bar’s phone booth number on his caller ID. Did the guy have that kind of photographic memory? Morgan wouldn’t put it past the bureaucrat, but whatever the man said next was almost drowned out by the couple’s suddenly escalating argument.

  “Hold on,” Dan snapped as he turned away from the bar and jammed a forefinger in his other ear.

  But Kirby hadn’t waited. “…here to my place ASAP,” the bureaucrat was hissing. “Zeta is under siege.”

  Morgan opened his mouth to demand details, but then there was a screech that made his head recoil, and the line went dead just as the man in the booth outside backhanded the woman opposite him.

  When, a few seconds later, Morgan stepped out of the phone booth with his duffel bag over his shoulder, the woman was sobbing, her head down, as her bleeding nose smeared her shot glass, while the man continued berating her nagging and uselessness. Morgan’s face was blank and cold as he stepped up and, without warning or pause, hit the man in the jaw with such pent-up power and hard-won expertise that the man was launched out of the booth as if by catapult, somersaulted backwards, and slammed to the floor on his face.

  The woman’s head popped up, bug-eyed, then whirled to look down at the man, before snapping her head back toward Dan. But he was already halfway to the front door.

  He had almost made it when he stopped to catch the woman’s arm as she tried to break the scotch bottle across the back of his head. He had been expecting it. He knew the old, well-worn story of the cop who beat up an abusive husband only to be attacked by the battered wife. Besides, with his peripheral vision he could just make out her attacking reflection in the tarnished mirror behind the bar.

  He turned to lock eyes with her—his steel, seething, nearly tragic gaze all but paralyzing her—then slowly, purposefully lowered and turned her arm until the last of the scotch poured out into a shot glass he had palmed after the punch. Precisely, expertly, he moved her arm back up so as not to spill a drop. Then, with a split-second stare into her frightened, uncomprehending, pitiful eyes, he gunned the hooch into his throat, then tossed her the glass, which, to both their surprise, she caught.

  “Thanks,” he said as he quickly exited. “I needed that.”

  Chapter 4

  Every time he went to Beacon Hill, Dan Morgan couldn’t help but think that he was stepping into a Jack the Ripper movie. The swanky neighborhood’s narrow, hilly, cobblestone streets had a way of inspiring that feeling. And the gas lamps that still dappled the most expensive areas in moody shadows certainly didn’t hurt either.

  Tonight was no exception, and Dan could add the genre of murder mystery to the cloying atmosphere. He didn’t know who to expect first: Sherlock Holmes, a slasher killer with mask and machete, or death itself, complete with cowl and scythe, pointing a boney forefinger at him while intoning “you …don’t …belong …here!”

  But even this part of the city, like the rest of it, was effectively locked down or shut in. It seemed people were riveted to their local news sources to see if anybody was going to take credit for the building bombing. But be they twenty-four-hour news channels or online feeds, both were dealing with it the way they now always did: with exaggeration, speculation, and endless repetition that bordered on hysteria, designed to upset, agitate, and, most importantly, keep you watching.

  Welcome to the Hyper Bowl, Morgan thought sarcastically as he studied the seemingly quiet area. He wondered if the cops had made the connection to the suburban house explosion yet. Probably not, but one thing was for sure: if the news media got a hold of it, it would soon be blown up—all puns intended—into the “Boston Bombing Blitzkrieg! Will you be next?!” Things are bad enough without the leeches making it worse.

  Morgan kicked those thoughts out of his head to make room for something far more important: survival and revenge. Whoever was doing this was targeting Zeta. With the main sources of communication down, he didn’t know if every field agent’s residence had been attacked, or just his. In any case, from his vantage point, Paul Kirby’s abode looked none the worse for wear.

  The last time he had seen it was on a personal reconnaissance at the very start of his tenure with Zeta, just to know what was what and where was where. He had learned the hard way never to take anyone’s words as gospel. He wanted to trust people, but when one of his favorite commanders had used his belief against him—almost setting off a coastal apocalypse, to boot—trust and Dan Morgan were now warily circling each other and not on speaking terms.

  But even before all that, Morgan had tracked down his main fellow agents’ residences, just in case, and just to see if he could do it without them spotting him. Actually, he never had found Diana Bloch’s place, but that somehow made him feel better about following her orders. If she could hide from him, she must know what she was doing. Not Paul Kirby, however. He was the easiest to find. In fact, he not only didn’t keep his place of residence secret, but actually seemed proud to let anyone know where he rested his sorry butt.

  Another pang cut Morgan’s heart and mind as he unavoidably remembered his wife Jenny helping their then-eight-year-old daughter Alex with her history and geography homework.

  “Beacon Hill is named for the warning light that was built at the highest point in central Boston. The beacon was used to warn the citizens of an invasion.”

  Morgan frowned. Ironic, considering what he was now planning to do.

  “It’s around a sixth of a square mile along the Charles River front, with the Charles River Esplanade to the west and the Boston Common Public Garden to the north.”

  Coincidentally, the bar Cheers was based on nestled just a few hundred yards away, on Beacon Street across from the Gardens. Morgan wished he had time to get another shot of scotch there, though not in the same way he had in Eastie’s Bar Where Nobody Knew Your Name.

  Morgan gave a silent snort. The racial makeup of Beacon Hill turned Eastie on its head as well. Here Africans and Hispanics might get a double take from a good percentage of the Caucasians that had been swelling here for generations in their Federal-style row houses, alongside the likes of super-lawyer Daniel Webster and super-thinker Henry David Thoreau.

&nb
sp; Just think, Morgan remembered from his overhearing the end of Alex’s lesson. All this was once a cow path.

  Once more Morgan let his rage overpower his sadness. That lesson was over. Now it’s time for some history they never teach you in Boston Public Schools, he thought. Or private ones, for that matter. Because once he had found his peers’ places, he had set about figuring out how to get in without tripping, or raising, any alarms.

  The only one he couldn’t figure out was Peter Conley’s Cougar Ranch. Lily, Lincoln, and Karen’s weren’t easy, but they weren’t impossible. But the best, most inspired infiltration he’d devised, if he did think so himself, was for the priggish Paul.

  The irony was just too good. Dan couldn’t get in through the wrought-iron fences, the bulletproof windows, the laser eyes, the video lenses, or even the quadruple locks. But he could get in where these lords of industry were their most pathetic: below their belts. Sure, they wanted to keep out the riff-raff, the needy, the dangerous. But there was one person they didn’t want to keep out.

  Their mistresses.

  The rich always thought money could protect them from anything but, as usual, it turned out that their wealth was their weakness.

  They had put in the secret tunnels and entrances themselves, so their paramours could come, or so they could go to them. The real beauty of it was that secrecy was utmost. Dan was certain that Kirby didn’t even know that a previous occupant had covertly installed an escape hatch, along with an underground hallway to and from it.

  Dan turned from where he had nearly scraped his car behind a dumpster nestled in an alley at the juncture of Cedar Lane Way and Mount Vernon Street. He had to lean against the brick wall, almost gasping as he remembered that Jenny had taught him this as well. Later, after Alex’s homework, upstairs in the marital bedroom, it was Jenny who had filled him in on the comings and goings of the Louisburg Square society strumpets.

  That woman of mine, Morgan thought miserably. Quite the reader. And homemaker, and wife, and mother, and companion, and partner…!

  Morgan had to forcibly crush these thoughts from his mind. Mourning, and memory, he thought, can wait until I feel the spines of my wife’s killers snapping under my fingers…

  He concentrated instead on putting into practice the research he had supplemented his wife’s stories with. Even after all these years, there was a cunningly designed series of loose bricks that had to be manipulated exactly: one in, one left, one right, then right again, down, up, up, and left. That opened a space just large enough for a dainty finger to wrap a stone ring. Morgan’s muscular pinky barely made it, but his strength compensated for the grip. A panel in a recessed corner of the alley, far away from prying pedestrians’ eyes, popped open as reward.

  Morgan rolled his own eyes, trying to forget how long it took him to trial-and-error this entrance all those years ago. He thought he’d never squeeze through the opening, but thanked the busts and bustles of those nineteenth century women for making just enough room for the muscular likes of him.

  He was certain that once upon a time there had been kerosene lamps or some such to light their way, but those were long gone. Thankfully, along with his pistols, knife, and cosh, he always carried a small all-in-one pocket tool, which included a pinprick-sized but powerful flashlight, along with a screwdriver, saw, file, hammer head, can opener, bottle opener, corkscrew, tweezer, and toothpick.

  The hallway was relatively long, crossing beneath two back-to-back brownstones, but it was straight. Morgan could practically feel the cobblestones over his head, as well as the ultra-exclusive, fenced-in oval Louisburg Square park that he would never have been allowed in otherwise. But he left that behind in order to infiltrate one of the townhouses.

  Not surprisingly, there was no great puzzle awaiting on the other side of the hallway tunnel. Once the great unwashed were kept out, the master should not have to unduly wait for his well-instructed mistress. Morgan pressed a rectangular panel on the middle left of a plain partition, and an entrance popped open.

  Morgan was not surprised that he emerged in the townhouse cellar. The romantic rendezvous may have been desired by the lord and master of the house, but it was still important to let the visiting woman remember her lowly status that only her physical beauty belied. Fine with him, Morgan concluded. Popping up in the parlor might have been a rude surprise for all concerned.

  Morgan took a breath and got his bearings. He almost laughed, remembering all the movies he had seen when a hero started calling out for their yet unseen contact. That’s a great way to get killed. So Morgan moved, as silently as his boots and bulk allowed, to the cellar stairs. He thumbed off his tool light and made his way up to what he remembered was the kitchen door.

  He stopped at the obstruction and listened, even though he knew that the insulation and sound-proofing were the best that money could buy. He grimaced, wondering where Kirby got the scratch to afford this. Zeta was far from minimum wage, but it’s not like he could afford a mansion.

  The problem with me, he thought, is that I disliked the guy so much I didn’t even bother to find out. Morgan almost shrugged. Well, if we survive the next few minutes, he thought, maybe I’ll ask him.

  Morgan opened the door just enough to peer through, in case anybody was waiting. No one was. Even though his eyes had adjusted to the dark, there was recessed night lighting in the well-appointed, renovated, open kitchen, enough that he could see the room was spotlessly clean, and devoid of human presence—or maybe even human touch.

  When Morgan slid in, his back against the side of a black matte industrial refrigerator, his Walther PPK, complete with silencer, had somehow appeared seemingly magically in his hand, held low to his side. He remained there, waiting, letting his senses take in everything they could. He still got nothing. If he’d had a million dollars to wager he would’ve bet that he was alone.

  But, unlike, apparently, Paul Kirby, he didn’t have a million dollars. He did have one thing he valued more—his own life—and he bet that by snaking out from the side to the front of the refrigerator. From that vantage point he could see across the cutting-edge open concept apartment from the kitchen to the dining area to the living room—all devoid of anything resembling human flesh.

  Morgan did not relax. His eyes took in every surface, every piece of furniture, every houseware, every rug, every fixture. Not a single personal item anywhere: no photos, no memorabilia, no collectibles, no painting, not even a diploma. It was as if Dan had stepped into a museum diorama labeled “Disinfected Dwelling of Early 21st-Century Middle Manager Executive.”

  Morgan kept moving. He felt like a shark, for good and ill. While the fish was a killing machine, it also had to keep moving or die. Dan felt the same, only he wasn’t in any rush. He would keep moving until something changed. With one more step, it did.

  It was not a shock, or even a surprise. If he could think of any word that came close to describing it, that word would be “curious.” It was as if a benign, even comforting, rainbow was in the very corner of his eye.

  Dan Morgan turned his head toward the curiosity. It was in a small. rectangular, stand-up mirror in the upper right-hand corner of a writing desk by a small front window. As Morgan stepped closer he automatically decided that the window was one-way and bulletproof. He knew that kind of security measure when he saw it. But he had never seen anything like the little mirror before.

  Correction: yes he had. Years ago, at The Museum of Science, planetarium, and Omnimax theater along the Charles River Dam. This had been even before the massive renovation that had started in 2013. He had gone as a volunteer chaperone with his daughter’s eighth grade class. And there, among the Butterfly Garden, Discovery Center, Animal Care Center, and Rock Garden was an exhibit they called The Light House.

  In it, showcased as if it were the end-all and be-all of scientific achievement had been a hologram—a tiny hologram of what looked like a little
rainbow man saying hello. And now, in the mirror, was Paul Kirby’s face—moving but silent.

  Dan Morgan stepped closer. It was Paul Kirby’s face all right, existing within Morgan’s own reflection in the mirror, and it was saying something over and over again. As far as Morgan could tell, it was on some sort of loop.

  Dan moved his hand in front of the mirror, but the hologram did not refract on his fingers. Dan hazarded a glance back over his shoulder to see if he could spot a projector of some sort. He couldn’t. He looked at his feet to see if he had interrupted a laser trip-wire. He hadn’t. He looked back at Kirby’s little rainbowed face, and recognized the silent words the man was mouthing.

  “Destroy all comms, go underground, wait for reassignment. Destroy all comms, go underground, wait for reassignment. Destroy all comms, go underground, wait for reassignment…”

  He—it—was mouthing the ZORM Ultra Protocol.

  Morgan wanted to curse Kirby and all the ancestors who’d made him. Trust the bureaucrat to get him all the way out here, only to be useless.

  “I got my reassignment already, butt-wipe,” Dan growled so quietly even he hardly heard it. But now, he could also hardly hear something else. It was a tiny, distant splitting sound, like a strand of human hair being pulled apart.

  Dan Morgan’s head snapped up just in time to see, right between his eyes, a pinhead-sized hairline fracture in the one-way, bulletproof glass of the window in front of him.

  Chapter 5

  All hell broke loose. Quietly.

  Morgan jerked his head to the left, out of the direct path of whatever it was that was somehow cracking the bulletproof glass. Something thin sizzled by his right cheek and grazed the bottom of his right earlobe.