The Sixth Man Read online

  Michelle looked up at Kelly Paul. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “I didn’t expect to be here.”

  They went inside where Mrs. Burke had clearly been fussing over Michelle. She checked her bandage and brought her another cup of coffee before leaving them alone. Megan was sitting in the front parlor, a cup of tea cradled in her lap.

  “People keep dying,” Megan said in a faraway voice.

  They all looked at her but said nothing.

  Megan turned to Paul. “You’re not going to pull a knife on me again, are you?”

  “Not unless you give me reason to, no.”

  Megan shuddered and fell silent.

  “Tell us everything you remember about last night, Michelle,” said Sean.

  She did, interrupted only by questions posed by Sean or Paul.

  “So Murdock knew or had discovered the existence of the E-Program?” said Sean.

  “Well, he got cut off by the shot, but I think so. And he talked about certain people in D.C. who might have a reason to want to harm Edgar Roy.”

  “By framing him?” asked Sean.

  “Well, considering he could get the death penalty if convicted, yeah.”

  Sean looked at Megan. “What’s the status on the case?”

  “I’ve been drafting motions but I need you to look them over.”

  “Okay. Have you heard anything from the prosecutor on the case? Any notice from the court?”

  Megan shook her head. “There’s no one left at Mr. Bergin’s office. But I’ve been checking e-mail and voice messages. The case is technically in legal limbo because of Roy’s mental condition. But the court ordered periodic evaluations done on him to see if he’s mentally competent to stand trial. One of those is coming up soon.”

  Sean glanced at Paul. “How would you like to see your brother?”

  She turned to him. “When?” she said slowly.

  “How about now?”

  CHAPTER

  50

  BECAUSE HE HAD ABSOLUTELY ZERO other options, Bunting made the trek once more, going from rich, busy Manhattan, to poor, just as busy Manhattan. He looked up and saw the sign: Pizza, $1 a Slice.

  If only he were here for pepperoni and cheese. Right now he was so angry he could barely contain himself. He wanted to hit something. Or someone.

  He walked up the six flights. He was in good shape, worked out regularly at his members-only club, but for some reason he felt winded and sweaty when he reached the top.

  He knocked.

  The door opened.

  James Harkes stood there, dressed exactly as before. As Bunting was ushered in he wondered if the man’s entire wardrobe consisted of the same color suit, shirt, and tie, namely black, white, black.

  The men sat at the same small table. A little fan buzzed and oscillated on a side table. It was the only airflow in the place, other than the men’s breathing. Bunting could feel the heat rising from the pizza ovens six floors below.

  “Murdock!” began Bunting.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead, but I know you already knew that.”

  Harkes said nothing. He just sat there, large hands resting on his flat stomach.

  “He’s dead, Harkes,” Bunting said again.

  “I heard you the first time, Mr. Bunting.”

  “When we talked last night and you said you’d discovered that Murdock had stumbled onto the E-Program’s existence, I didn’t say to kill him.”

  Harkes leaned forward just a bit. “You’re assuming certain actions on my part.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I’m here to protect you, Mr. Bunting.”

  “But he’s a damned FBI agent. You had him murdered.”

  “Your words, not mine.”

  “Christ, are you really going to play semantics now?”

  “I have a few other things to take care of. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yeah, you can stop killing people. You have just made a complicated situation nearly impossible.”

  “I wouldn’t characterize it that way.”

  “Well, I would.”

  “Maxwell knows now. And King.”

  “About Edgar Roy being the Analyst?”

  “Yes,” said Harkes.

  “How could they?”

  “Outside source.”

  “Who?”

  “Kelly Paul.”

  Bunting stared at him.

  “Kelly Paul,” Harkes said again. “I know that you know her.”

  “How is she involved?”

  “She’s Edgar Roy’s half sister.” Harkes studied him. “But then you knew that.”

  “Is that where King and Maxwell went when we lost track of them?”

  “Possibly.”

  Bunting pointed a finger at Harkes. “Listen very carefully. You are not to go near Kelly Paul. Or Sean King. Or Michelle Maxwell. Do you understand me?”

  “I’m afraid you’re not grasping the seriousness of the situation.”

  “So what the hell is the plan? Kill everybody?”

  “Plans are ever evolving,” said Harkes with maddening calm.

  “Why would Paul be working to harm her brother? That’s preposterous.”

  “You’re assuming that Paul is still working for us. She’s been off the grid for a while. She could be freelancing for our enemies.”

  “I don’t believe that. Kelly Paul is as patriotic as anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “That is a dangerous perspective for someone in your position to have.”

  “What perspective?” snapped Bunting.

  “That someone can’t be corrupted.”

  “I can’t be. I would never do anything to harm my country.”

  “That’s a nice speech. But if the right inducement came along even you could be turned.”

  “Never.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “If anybody else ends up dead, it’s over for you, Harkes. You have my word.”

  “You have a good day, Mr. Bunting.”

  Harkes opened the door, and Bunting stormed through it.

  CHAPTER

  51

  TWO HOURS LATER Bunting was seated in a comfy leather chair on the company jet as it taxied toward takeoff. It was a Gulfstream G550. It could fly from London to Singapore on a single tank of gas. It had an office, a bed, TVs, Wi-Fi, state-of-the-art avionics, a full bar, seating for fourteen, two pilots, and two flight attendants. It could hit nearly 600 miles an hour and fly at a max ceiling of 51,000 feet. It had cost Bunting’s company, BIC, over $50 million new, and millions more per year in maintenance and operating costs.

  The flight from New York to Dulles, Virginia, would take less than half an hour in the air. He sat back as the G550 executed its climb out over the friendly if crowded Manhattan skies, banked smoothly south, and headed to D.C. Before Bunting could even settle into work, the pilot announced their descent into Dulles. Twenty minutes later they were on the ground. They taxied to a private part of the airport, and the retractable steps housed on the G550 came down. He stepped off and into the waiting limo, which sped away as soon as his rear end hit the seat.

  It really was the only way to travel, even if it did cost $50 million and change. But right now he wasn’t thinking about his lofty and privileged ability to move around. He was thinking about the possibility of losing everything he’d worked for. His meeting with Harkes had troubled him greatly. He really felt things slipping out of control.

  Once they left the airport Bunting ran into the world of the peasant commuter and got bogged down in traffic on the toll road. It took him far longer to go six miles by car than it had over two hundred miles through the air. But he finally made it.

  The building he entered seemed ordinary. Passersby would not give it a second look. It was not the office building that Sean had followed Avery to. That was located several miles from here. This place was the most important facility in Bunting’s empire. This was where
the Wall was located. He entered the building and sped through interior security portals, before taking an elevator down and then walking along a corridor.

  It had taken him years, millions of dollars, and many an anxious moment before he had convinced the American security community to move into the twenty-first century and embrace his vision for what intelligence collection and analysis could actually become. When it had finally happened, the floodgates had opened and billions of dollars of government money had flowed into his coffers. It was the greatest triumph of his life. And what many took for granted was the fact that aside from the money, the E-Program worked. It had foreseen and stopped countless terrorist attacks on American soil and against US interests overseas. It had allowed CIA, DHS, DIA, Geospatial, NSA, and a host of the lesser-known intelligence agencies to rack up success after success. The FBI, armed with leads provided by the E-Program, had set up and sprung sting upon sting, bagging criminals and terrorists, and gathering valuable intelligence used to stop future heinous acts.

  The Wall was the focal point. The Wall was Bunting’s masterstroke. While teams of traditional analysts so enmeshed in the trees that they had no comprehension a forest even existed, had no reasonable chance to successfully ferret out the true threat, one person, the right person sitting in a chair and taking up the challenge of the Wall, had led them to the promised land. The Wall would give up its well-hidden secrets to just the right person. And the rewards were immense, and also immediate.

  The program had worked well for years. And then the snag had come. The information that required analysis had bested the most superior minds he could find. The E-Program had finally shown a chink in the armor. Opponents like Ellen Foster at DHS and Mason Quantrell in the private sector had started circling like the vultures they were.

  And then Bunting had found Edgar Roy. Even against the high benchmarks of the E-Program Roy had stood out. Time and again he had picked up on things that even powerful supercomputers together with a hundred thousand toiling and lesser analysts had missed. Bunting was convinced that if Edgar Roy had been staring at the Wall prior to September 11, 2001, that day would have simply been like any other, and utterly forgettable.

  He entered the room, far below the basement level of the facility. He nodded to people who worked there. They nodded back and then quickly looked away, perhaps sensing his nervous detachment. Even though Foster had made it clear that his last chance had passed, Bunting had arranged one more attempt to salvage the program. Results so far had not been good.

  He entered the control room and nodded at Avery, who sat, as he usually did, in front of the computer banks that operated not only the Wall but also the feedback from the Analyst. There were three in the room today to check the goings-on at the Wall: two women and a man, all longtime analysts at BIC.

  As Bunting settled into his seat and opened his electronic tablet he noted that two of them were perfectly capable E-Fives and the other a top-level E-Four. Indeed, the E-Fives had been the best he had seen until Edgar Roy had entered his life and sent the possibilities quite into the stratosphere.

  But now things had changed. As Avery had correctly pointed out previously, the information flow grew exponentially, outpacing the abilities of minds that a year ago could have handled it. Roy could handle it. But he didn’t have Edgar Roy anymore.

  Bunting looked through the glass. The three Es were doing their best, but he could see that the throughput on the Wall data had been throttled back sixty percent. At this rate the conclusions reached would be worthless before the folks even memorialized their findings and sent their reports on up the chain. It simply wasn’t going to cut it.

  He let this exercise go on for another five minutes and then looked despondently at Avery and flicked a finger across his neck.

  Avery immediately spoke into the headset he wore. “Thank you all. We will be shutting the Wall down in five, four, three, two, one.”

  He hit some keys and the screen became dark.

  Bunting nearly fell into a chair and sat there staring at the floor. Foster was right. It was over. He was over. They’d probably kill him. And Roy next.

  A man opened the control room door. “Mr. Bunting?”

  He looked up.

  “Secretary Foster wants to see you ASAP.”

  Oh, God.

  CHAPTER

  52

  SEAN THOUGHT IT would be a problem getting into Cutter’s Rock, especially after the murder of Carla Dukes. However, her absence seemed to have lessened the hurdles necessary for them to see the prisoner, even with Kelly Paul in tow.

  Thus, the mighty gates had opened, the guards did their search, and very soon after that they were waiting in the visitor’s room for Edgar Roy.

  Megan stood by the glass wall, Michelle beside her. Sean was watching the door. Kelly Paul paced, her gaze on the floor. Sean thought he knew what she was thinking. And she was probably right. Roy might react to seeing her and blow his cover of insanity.

  The door opened and in came Edgar Roy. He was dressed the same, looked the same, smelled the same. He towered over the guards and over Sean and Michelle. Towered most of all over the petite Megan.

  Sean heard it first, a long, low whistle that sounded like some tune Sean couldn’t place at the moment. He turned to find its source. Kelly Paul was against the wall, her face turned away from her brother. Sean whipped back around to Roy. The whistle had come right when Roy had been looking down, so his eyes could not be seen. Sean thought he noted the slightest flinch in Roy’s shoulder. They seated him behind the glass, locked him down to the floor ring. The guards slammed the door shut on the way out. Roy sat there, legs splayed out, face to the ceiling. Eyes fixed on that damn spot. As always.

  Except for that flinch, thought Sean.

  The whistled tune came again. Once again Sean turned. This time so did Michelle.

  Kelly Paul was now facing her brother.

  “Hello, Eddie, it’s good to see you,” she said, her voice calm, her smile genuine.

  She walked toward him, curved around the glass wall, and stood in front of him. She did not bend down. In fact she seemed to be standing as tall as she could. Her hands came up to her chest.

  Sean’s gaze flitted around the room and then, behind him, he saw it and wondered why he hadn’t before. A slight imperfection in the wall, up high. The camera lens was pointed right at the wall of glass, the chair. The prisoner. But now Paul was blocking its view of her brother.

  Sean moved forward, skirted the glass wall, and came around to stand facing Paul. Now he understood why she had stood as tall as possible. The message she was holding was aligned perfectly with her brother’s angle of sight. She had written it in large block letters with a pencil.

  I KNOW. E. BUNTING. FRAMED. SUSPICIONS?

  Roy made no visible reaction to this, but as Sean glanced down at him, he could see that his eyes had finally come to life and that the tiniest fraction of a smile tugged at his lips as his image was safely shielded from the camera by his sister’s bulk.

  The zombie, it seemed, had just arisen.