The Shadow Agent Read online

  The man who had once been everything.

  Standing at the foot of his bed, she understood that it was time now—long past time—to end that degradation, and with it, her debt.

  Turning off the lights, she pulled up a chair and sat, then injected him with a lethal dose of fentanyl and waited.

  The cottage had been a place of refuge in her childhood, a destination for her and her father, who had also been devoted to the man who was now, finally, drawing his last breaths.

  As his labored breathing grew more and more ragged, she knew that she would never again be required to make the journey to Bariloche and face the memories that the dark and cold rooms of this cottage evoked.

  And as she observed his final, tortured exhalation, she knew, too, the immediate actions that were required of her now that Ernst Schmidt was at last dead.

  The peacefulness that settled in the room was oddly discomforting.

  The sounds of his struggling lungs silenced for good, there was nothing for her to hear but her own breathing.

  She stood by his bed and said her goodbye.

  First, she thanked him for all he’d done to make her what she was now, and then she apologized for the trouble she had been in her youth—the sullen child, the willful adolescent, the risk-taking adult.

  Drugs, men, women, living beyond her means—everything she had done to herself then had been a source of pain for him, though she had sensed that he’d understood her rage.

  He had, in fact, done everything in his power to cultivate it.

  With her apology spoken, she left him and packed up her few things.

  Of all his possessions, the only item she wanted for her own was kept in his small windowless office, hidden behind a false wall.

  Passing through the secret door, she took one last look at his cherished belongings—mementos of the man he had been.

  Black-and-white framed photographs, still clear after seven-plus decades without exposure to sunlight, showed Ernst Schmidt in his Hitler Youth uniform.

  In some, he was posing alone; in others, he was among older SS officers.

  A handsome teenage boy back then, he was tall and athletic and smiling, no hint yet of facial hair.

  It was in the photographs of him taken during the final months of the war that he more resembled the man she’d known.

  Older by a few years, he was at that time a veteran member of the Werwolf, the Nazi guerrilla outfit tasked with behind-the-lines skirmishes during the Allied invasion of Europe.

  A year later, during those last, desperate months of the Third Reich, he had shifted exclusively to reprisal killings.

  By then he had a beard and an animal’s fierceness in his eyes, both of which seemed at odds with his still-young face, and he had participated in a campaign of atrocities—summary executions by firing squad, public hangings of town officials in village squares, burnings of countless homes and farms.

  Tactics meant to instill terror in the towns that had been liberated by the Allies as they moved to encircle Berlin.

  He’d first learned to hunt men as a Werwolf, and it was this skill that had caught the attention of the man who would later become his lifelong employer.

  The same man for whom she worked.

  The memento she wanted had nothing to do with her grandfather’s politics, which she cared little about.

  Profit was her cause, pleasure her religion.

  The item hung on the wall above his desk, along with his collection of medals and ribbons. A strange place for a wedding photo, perhaps—or not, considering that in it he was wearing the uniform of which he had been so very proud, even at the end.

  His bride—the grandmother she’d never met—was a beautiful woman. As a child, she would often sneak into this sanctum just to stare at that radiant face and compare it with her own.

  Despite having the same curled blonde hair and prized Aryan features—blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, broad face—she had always felt that she did not compare and never would.

  In moments of happiness—flirting with men to lure them either to their deaths or, briefly, into her bed—her smile did not live up to that of the woman grasping the arm of the uniformed man.

  She was as drawn to that photo now as she had been as a child. Taking it from the wall as a reminder of the only brightness in her childhood, she turned her attention to the last detail that needed tending before she was free to leave.

  The gasoline required was stored in gallon-size containers in the small shed behind the cottage.

  Six gallons total, more than enough to do the job.

  Carrying them two at a time into the cottage, she proceeded to spread the accelerant in every room—the greatest concentration of it in his hidden office, the next greatest around his deathbed.

  Then she stood at the front door and took one final look around.

  She was alone in the world at last—no family, her only human contact reduced to business associates and those necessary in her fervent pursuit of pleasure.

  She had waited a long time for this day, for the moment when there would no longer be anyone close enough to judge her, no one to ask anything of her, no one to whom she owed anything or any part of herself.

  She lit a match, tossed it toward the center of the room, turned, and ran.

  By the time she was in her car and driving away, the cottage was engulfed in flames that reached fifty feet into the clear morning air before diminishing into twisting ribbons of black smoke.

  She reached Montreal by the following evening, and shortly after ten the next morning, the FedEx package arrived.

  The cell phone it contained, once she had powered the device up, received a single message summoning her to meet her employer in New York City.

  Having been away from her beloved apartment for three weeks, she regretted that it would be necessary to seal the place up again, especially since what she found most enjoyable about where she lived was the breeze that came in off the Saint Lawrence River and the way it caused the long white curtains hanging at her open windows to swell and flutter like happy ghosts.

  The fact that it was an early-autumn breeze, her favorite, only deepened her sense of regret.

  But the place would be here when she was done, and there were more than enough days of fall weather ahead.

  And anyway, maybe what she really needed to do was work.

  Two hours after receiving the directive, she had closed up her apartment, packed, and was en route to meet with the Benefactor.

  Depending on how long Customs questioned her at the border, it should take roughly seven hours for her to reach New York.

  A long drive during which she would have plenty of time to think about, among other things, what she had just done.

  He called her what her grandfather had called her—Esa.

  She addressed him by his title, the way everyone did—the Benefactor.

  She knew, however, who the Benefactor really was.

  Pascal Henkel, born in Munich in 1950.

  She knew, too, what even fewer did—the story of his origin.

  Henkel had been in his early twenties when she first met him more than forty years ago. Her grandfather had seen in that young man something that he believed this failing world needed. And the young man had seen in her grandfather a man whom he could make good use of.

  In the years that followed, Henkel had been one of the handful of visitors to make the arduous journey to the isolated cottage.

  A pilgrimage, of sorts, for the dark-souled.

  Henkel had not only made that trek but also repeated it often.

  He would never stay for more than a few days at a time, but he and her grandfather would barely sleep during those visits, spending their time drinking buttered Kaffee and talking.

  She’d sometimes listen to her grandfather retell his war stories, which, once the Kaffee was replaced with schnapps, would lead to lectures on the history of terrorism and the virtues of asymmetric warfare.

 
His hatred for Jews did not prevent him from acknowledging the brilliance of their victory in the Six-Day War.

  He despised Communists, yet that did not stop him from recognizing the significance of the defeat of the United States in Vietnam.

  Nor did his contempt for Muslims blind him to the importance of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.

  In all coming wars, he had predicted, the powerful would inevitably lose to the insurgent.

  The days of fronts and armies and occupations were waning, and the reign of terrorism—death by a thousand cuts—was upon us.

  Those lessons weren’t lost on Esa, either, and so she had chosen her profession with that understanding in mind.

  Really, though, what other profession could she have chosen, having grown up as she had in the home of a former Werwolf who had been visited almost exclusively by the kind of men who were drawn to such a person?

  She remembered every one of the young Henkel’s visits, remembered being fascinated by the handsome young man—the elite but disillusioned soldier—sitting at her grandfather’s breakfast table.

  Though she and Henkel had barely interacted, speaking for the most part only when she brought meals to the table, he had always been kind to her.

  And when Henkel rose to his position of power and became known as the Benefactor, he had repaid his debt to her grandfather by first employing him and then, once she was grown, Esa.

  In his later years, however, her grandfather had warned her never to fully trust the man he’d helped create.

  The monster the world very much needed.

  He’d skin you alive if doing so suited his needs, the old man would say. And he’d look you dead in the eyes as he did it.

  Esa kept that in mind, always.

  It was past midnight, and the East River State Park was empty.

  The Benefactor was standing with his longtime bodyguard, Karl.

  Both men were well dressed—dark overcoats, tailored suits beneath, Italian leather shoes. But that was where their similarities ended.

  In his midsixties now, the Benefactor had gray hair and the kind of clean-shaven, taut face that indicated wealth and pampering. Tall and athletically built, his menace came more from the power he wielded than from the physical strength he clearly still possessed.

  Once a soldier, always a soldier.

  Karl, on the other hand, was a brute somewhere in his thirties, stoic, and always staring, his weightlifter’s build and the violence it promised a constant, overt threat.

  He seemed to stand with a slight forward lean, as if anticipating the order to pounce, eager to do the work for which he was made.

  Usually Karl remained several feet behind the Benefactor, but tonight he was a few steps ahead, placing himself between his protectee and the woman his protectee had beckoned.

  Esa noticed two other men standing fifty feet back—far enough to be out of earshot, but close enough to cross the distance in a matter of seconds.

  These men were dressed in jeans and leather jackets—a plainclothes protection detail, and likely not the only such detail in the vicinity.

  Their presence, along with Karl’s unusual placement, told Esa that something had changed.

  “I was sorry to hear about your grandfather,” the Benefactor said.

  “News travels fast.”

  “It does, as it should when it’s as important as the passing of a great man. He had a vision. You and I both owe him a great deal.”

  Esa nodded, glanced at the bodyguards before looking back at the Benefactor. “What’s the job?”

  The Benefactor paused. “A deep-cover operative we need terminated is about to be drawn out into the open. I will not lie to you, Esa. Everyone we have sent to take him out so far has been killed, the Algerian included. Since our most recent effort, however, this person has become even more dangerous. Whatever resources you require will be provided. Your budget is unlimited, but your time is not. Our window of opportunity is narrow, and it is unlikely we will get another chance like this anytime soon, so you must not fail.”

  “How reliable is your intelligence?”

  “We have operatives on the inside at many levels. This comes from a source high up. Your target will likely have a security detail, so you’ll need to assemble a team. You may staff it as you see fit, but I suggest you keep it small. A four-man fire team should be sufficient.”

  Esa nodded. “How much time do I have to prepare?”

  “We won’t know the exact timetable till morning, but the target should be departing for a meeting at some point the following evening. All this is contingent, of course, on his taking the bait, but I have every confidence that he will.” The Benefactor paused. “An associate with a shared interest in this matter wants a representative of his inserted into your team. I apologize for this, but it is unavoidable. The good news is you have worked with him before.”

  “Who is he?”

  “An American named Walker.”

  Esa nodded. In the fraternity of assassins, having killed someone together was as close to a bond of trust as could be found.

  “Yes, I know him,” she said.

  “A hotel room has been booked for you, and a complete dossier on the target and his known associates is waiting there. The specific details of the operation—times, location, route, size of his security—will be forwarded to you as they become available.”

  “May I ask who the subject is?”

  When the Benefactor did not offer an answer, it was yet another indication that something had changed.

  Esa took another look at the men on the periphery.

  She recognized a war footing when she saw one. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Your target is not someone to be underestimated. I can’t stress that too strongly. And neither are those with whom he associates. A Tier 1 security detail will no doubt be assigned to him, but it’s those he calls friends who should be your real concern. Two kinds of people are drawn to this business: those seeking to profit and those driven by ideology. I have always found the latter to be more dangerous. Your grandfather was the latter, I am the latter. Our target and his friends seem to be that as well.”

  The Benefactor watched her before continuing. “Kill him, Esa, and anyone who gets in your way. What we do—our continued success, everything we’ve striven for these past three decades—is dependent on the elimination of this threat. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” Esa said.

  The Benefactor extended a gloved hand. “Good luck.”

  Esa took his hand, matching his powerful grip as best as she could.

  The boutique hotel was located on the Lower East Side.

  Esa arrived at two in the morning; picked up the key that had been left for her at the front desk; rode the small, cage-like elevator to the fifth floor; and let herself into the room that overlooked Orchard Street.

  Using a burner phone to send and receive a series of coded texts, she worked to find the two men she hoped would fill out her team.

  It took time, but the men who topped her list—the McQueen twins—were available and could arrive in New York by dawn.

  The twins were handsome, Irish by birth but raised and educated in Paris. Esa had first worked with them four years ago when together, they had comprised one-half of a six-man team sent to kill a journalist in Johannesburg.

  She and the McQueen twins had celebrated their success with too much grappa, and in the morning she’d awakened in a hotel bed with both men.

  In the years that followed, they had worked together twice more, ending both collaborations with a similar celebration, each encounter leaving her fantasizing about the next time.

  She’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she was hoping for a variation of that routine.

  With the team set, she sat at the desk and opened the dossier, which contained psychological write-ups of the target and his compatriots, as well as numerous after-action reports that the target had written following various op
erations.

  She was interested in the reports concerning the Algerian.

  If he had screwed up in some way, she was determined not to repeat his errors.

  But what she wanted to see before diving in to her reading were the photographs.

  The first one she came across was of a young man in his navy uniform.

  Barely more than twenty years old, he had dark hair, a handsome enough face, and eyes that stared intently—not unlike Karl’s eyes, she noted.

  The next photograph was clearly a surveillance photograph of that same man, though older this time—midthirties, she estimated.

  The man was standing at the edge of a body of water, and a woman was facing him, the two in an intense discussion.

  It was night, and in the background a well-kept yard sloped upward to the back porch of a large home, its windows lit.

  Beneath that photo two names were printed in bold letters:

  SEXTON, TOM.

  QUIRK, STELLA.

  Beneath that, LOCATION: THE CAHILL ESTATE, SHELTER ISLAND, NEW YORK.

  Esa noticed right away that Quirk appeared to be significantly older than Sexton, maybe in her midforties.

  It crossed Esa’s mind that this particular fact may have figured heavily into the Benefactor’s decision to select her for this mission.

  Preferences were weaknesses, and she’d made a career out of exploiting the weaknesses of men.

  There was always the chance that the job would come down to her and her subject face-to-face, and should that prove to be the case, any resemblance to the woman he loved could give her the edge.

  Quirk’s hair was thick and curled, like her own.

  Achieving the exact shade of black wouldn’t be a problem.

  The next photo showed two women seated together on the porch that had been in the background of the photograph of Sexton and Quirk.

  One was blonde and professional-looking, in her thirties; the other was younger, tattooed, and edgy.

  They were alone, holding hands.

  GRUNN, SARAH.