Dan had nothing more to do for now. He thought about heading back to the hotel but, instead, lowered himself into the fold-up sun lounger he’d positioned near the window and let his thoughts drift, soaking up the immediate silence, the indistinct sounds of traffic in the wider city somewhere beyond.
When his phone rang, he checked his watch, surprised to see that forty minutes had elapsed, time in which he’d thought of almost nothing. It was Hugo Beck, probably pretending to be interested in how things were going, but actually calling with a new job. Dan didn’t mind that, and would rather keep busy than not.
He answered and Hugo said, “How’s it going? Any problems?”
“None at all. Charlie and Benoit fly in this afternoon. We’ll pick up the target in the morning.”
“Great, great. They should have come to you a year ago. But you know . . .”
He fell into silence and Dan said, “What’s the job, Hugo?”
“I’m not calling about a job. In fact, I’m not sure you should take anything else on for a little while.” That was out of character enough to get Dan’s attention, but before he could even ask what Hugo was talking about, he went on, “What do these names have in common—Mike Naismith, Paul Gardener, Rich Woodward, Karl Wittman?”
Dan had worked with them all, and considered a couple of them friends, including Mike Naismith who’d been killed a few weeks before in a hit-and-run in Baltimore, but he couldn’t see any obvious link beyond that. Even so, he didn’t like the sound of this. Hugo liked to talk in riddles at the best of times, but there was something in his tone now that suggested this was more serious than a guessing game.
“I don’t know, Hugo, why don’t you tell me?”
“How about the fact they’re all dead?”
“What are you talking about?” Dan laughed a little, dismissively. Yes, people got killed in their line of work, but casualties had dropped off since the spikes of Iraq and Afghanistan. People got killed, but not in those numbers. And besides, he’d spoken to Karl a couple of weeks ago. “Hugo, Mike’s dead, but the others—”
“I’m telling you they’re all dead. Naismith you know about. Paul Gardener was killed last week—someone broke into his house in Durban, Paul disturbed them, got killed in the struggle. Rich Woodward was last week too—he was in Athens to meet a potential client, killed in a street robbery. So far, it’s only coincidences, no?”
Uneasy, almost not wanting to hear it, Dan said, “What about Karl?”
“Exactly. Coincidences can take time to produce, but it looks like whoever it is, they’re speeding things up. Karl was found day before yesterday on a building site in Munich. Executed, hands behind the back, shot in the head. The official story is a gangland feud, but . . .”
Dan didn’t respond at first. He and Karl had talked after Mike’s death. Karl had been pretty cut up about it, and it seemed unreal that he was dead too, that his grief had been wasted.
It was obvious that Hugo thought the deaths were linked, and it was hard not to share that view, so when Dan finally spoke, he said only, “Who do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. Worst case? CIA—a cleanup operation.”
“It’s more than two years since any of us worked for them.”
But they’d all done their fair share before that, carrying out the kind of work the agency couldn’t or didn’t want to do for itself. It had all dried up at around the same time that some of it had become public but, until now, Dan had never expected it to come back at them like this.
Hugo said, “What’s two years to the CIA? But look, we don’t know it is them. I’ll see what I can find out and let you know.”
“Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow, once we’re done.” He thought about it, then added, “Who else could it be, if not Langley?”
“Dan, if those four deaths are connected . . . I don’t think it could be anyone else.”
“Okay. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
“Good. And good work on Martinez.”
Dan ended the call and sat for a moment or two. In theory, his life had always had its risks, but this was the first time he could remember that there had seemed a tangible threat. If it turned out to be the CIA, and they were set on wiping out a lot of the people who’d contracted for them, he wasn’t sure what he could do about it—he certainly doubted it would be enough to lie low in Thailand for a few months.
His instinct was still to fight, no matter who it was on the other side, and he had advantages—a few of these other guys had settled into some sort of domestic routine and that had probably made them easier to pick off. Dan knew he’d be harder to trace, and that for the time being, they probably wouldn’t think to come looking for him here.