“You can help us,” said Robie quietly. “You know what we need.”

“I highly doubt that I can help you or myself.”

“Going to claim that you know nothing about this?”

“Not at all. It’s just that dead men don’t make capable witnesses.”

“Come again?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“A name would do.”

“No, the message is much simpler.” He smiled and said, “Goodbye, Robie.”

The two men stared directly at each other.

“Robie!”

Robie turned and saw Reel on the other side of the street.

She shouted, “Robie! Johnson isn’t there. He’s not there.”

Robie looked over at the line of men on their knees in the street. He glanced down the faces one by one.

Dick Johnson wasn’tthere.

Robie started to move, but knew he was already too late.

The shot hit Kent full in the face and blew out the back of his head, taking a large chunk of his brain with it.

Robie had looked back at Kent a second before the round hit.

There had been no fear in the man’s features. Just resignation.

CHAPTER

78

ROBIE AND VANCE WERE SITTING in the lobby of the local police station. The fire had been put out and the event had been moved to another location. At first it seemed likely to be canceled. But after the FBI promised to help with security for the event, the participants had changed their minds and agreed to go forward.

The hit team was being held in cells under the eye of both Canadian special agents and the FBI. The joint mission had come together quickly. The FBI was taken seriously by everyone in the world. It also didn’t hurt that the Canadians were such close allies. And the last thing they wanted was a slaughter of foreign leaders on their soil.

Sam Kent’s body was lying on a freezer bed inside a mobile forensics unit.

Dick Johnson had so far eluded capture.

“Who was the woman who called out to you?” asked Vance.

Reel had disappeared into the crowd after warning Robie about Johnson.

“Someone who was working with me on this to stop it. I can fill you in on her later.”

“Okay. So they were planning to take out all these leaders at one time?”

“Seems like it.”

“Would’ve created a global nightmare.”

“Probably their plan.”

“How did you guys get keyed in on this?”

“Chatter, bits and pieces here and there that we followed up on.”

“Always thought having this summit here was kind of weird. I mean, the G8 was having a conference on terrorism in Ireland at the same time. Did you know that?”

“Read about it in the papers,” Robie said vaguely.

“I’m glad you called us in, don’t get me wrong. But why wouldn’t you have your own team in place for this? I mean, we’re not in the U.S. The CIA can operate legally here.”

“Not sure the Canadians see it that way. Some hard feelings between us over some past agency actions. We felt the FBI would be the right element to call in to provide the backup once we nailed down the target.” None of this was true, but it was also the only explanation Robie could think of.

“I guess the important thing is it didn’t happen, right?”

“That’s the way I look at it.”

“But the guy who was killed? We identified him. He’s a federal judge. How does that figure into this?”

“Not sure yet. I think it’ll take some time to dig through all of it. If I had to guess—and that’s all it would be—he might have been paid off. And maybe he wasn’t always a judge.”

“Right. He seemed to know who you were,” said Vance suspiciously.

“Just the way it worked out,” said Robie, not meeting her eye.

“So this was what you were working on that you had to go off the grid?”

Robie nodded.

“And I’m assuming that this is somehow tied to Jim Gelder’s and Doug Jacobs’s deaths?”

“And Howard Decker’s.”

“Decker’s? How does he figure into this?”

“I’m not sure, Vance. It’s still pretty muddled.”

She looked put off. “Don’t think that I’m accepting all your answers at face value. I know you too well. You talk the bullshit really well, but at the end of the day, that’s still all it is.”

“I’m telling you all I know.”

“You mean you’re telling me all you can.” She studied him closely and then apparently decided to change direction. “Robie, the men we’ve arrested. They . . . they look like . . .”

“There’s a lot of freelance talent out there. And we trained a ton of it.”

“So mercenaries?” she said.

“Probably so.”

“Now we just have to find out who hired them.”

“We might never know.”

“No, we’ll get there. I’m thinking that Gelder and Jacobs might have stumbled onto something. The other side found out and killed them. Maybe something with Decker too.” She snapped her fingers. “He’s head of the Intelligence Committee. There’s the connection right there.”

“You might be right.”

“We’ll see. Like you said, these things tend to get muddled.”

Yes, they do, thought Robie.

“When are you heading back?” asked Vance.

“Got a few things to clear up here and then I’ll be reporting in. I’m sure our agencies will be burning up secure lines hashing this one out. Sometimes the truth complicates things.”

“I don’t think so. Not here. Good guys officially kicked the crap out of the bad guys. They can’t put any spin on that one. And the U.S. just scored some serious points with the Middle East. We just saved their collective ass. And I’ve seen a list of the attendees. There are some on there who are no fans of ours.”

“No, they’re not. But maybe they will be now.” He rose. “I better get going.”

“You see, Robie, sometimes communication is a very good thing.”

Robie had not gone ten steps down the sidewalk when the voice in his ear said, “On your three.”

He looked over to where Reel was staring at him from the far corner. He hurried over and they walked down an alley.

“Kent is dead,” he said.

“That was easy to see. Most of his brain was on the street.”

“Johnson is nowhere to be seen.”

“He was the fail-safe. Kent knew everything. The other guys just had their piece. They won’t be able to lead us anywhere. Firewalled out of the loop. Kent was the key, and Johnson was tasked to keep back and take him out if things went wrong.”

“Agreed.”

Reel’s voice turned harsh. “But why didn’t you tell me about the FBI?”

“Did you need to know?”

“I thought we were a team on this.”

“I thought that if you knew the FBI was going to swarm in you might have done things differently.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning you’re a wanted person.”

“What did you tell them about me, by the way?”

“That we were tasked to stop this by the agency.”

“And Gelder and Jacobs?”

“They believe they were killed by the people behind the planned hit here. I told them I thought they were on the right track with that theory.”

“I doubt that Vance is going to stop there. She doesn’t seem the type to take anybody’s word in place of an investigation and her own conclusion.”

“She’s not. What I did back there was just a stopgap. Just to give us some time.”

“Okay.”

“But it can’t end there, Jessica.”

She looked over her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about nothing except that ever since I started on this.”

“There are ways,” Robie began.

“There are no ways, Robie, not for this. It has one possible outcome and it’s not a good one for me. But you’ll be okay. In fact, if I were you I’d go back to Vance right now and just tell her the truth. The more you try to cover for me the worse it will be for you when the truth does comes out.”