The Agent (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 3) Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY MARK DAWSON

  IN THE ISABELLA ROSE SERIES

  The Angel

  The Asset

  IN THE SOHO NOIR SERIES

  Gaslight

  The Black Mile

  The Imposter

  IN THE JOHN MILTON SERIES

  1000 Yards

  The Cleaner

  Saint Death

  The Driver

  Ghosts

  The Sword of God

  Salvation Row

  Headhunters

  The Ninth Step

  The Jungle

  Blackout

  IN THE BEATRIX ROSE SERIES

  In Cold Blood

  Blood Moon Rising

  Blood and Roses

  HONG KONG STORIES VOL. 1

  White Devil

  Nine Dragons

  Dragon Head

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Art of Falling Apart

  Subpoena Colada

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 Mark Dawson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477818022

  ISBN-10: 1477818022

  Cover design by Stuart Bache

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE: Washington, DC

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  PART TWO: Skopje

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  PART THREE: Mumbai

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  PART FOUR: Skopje

  Chapter Twenty-One

  PART FIVE: Tibet

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  PART SIX: Shanghai

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  PART SEVEN: Beijing

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  PART EIGHT: Boston

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  PART NINE: Skopje

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  PART TEN: Vladivostok

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  PART ELEVEN: Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  PART TWELVE: The Pacific

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  PART THIRTEEN: Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  PART FOURTEEN: Knoxville

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  PART FIFTEEN: Great Smoky Mountains

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  PART SIXTEEN: Commerce

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  PART SEVENTEEN: Epilogue

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Come on,’ Michael Pope urged. ‘We have to get out.’

  Isabella Rose carefully peeled back the edge of the dressing on Pope’s arm. ‘When I’ve finished this,’ she said.

  ‘Be quick.’

  She pulled the dressing away and inspected the wound on the underside of Pope’s right arm. He had been stabbed, the blade of a kitchen knife sliding into his triceps. It had been nineteen days since the fight in the apartment. He had been unwell on the flight from Rome to Mumbai, but it had been on the train south to Palolem that the infection had really taken hold. They had disembarked at Kankavli and Isabella had found a hospital for him. The doctors had treated him for a week and they had continued south again just as soon as he was able to travel.

  They had been in Palolem for eleven days.

  And now they were moving again.

  Pope flinched as she prodded the wound. ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘I told you,’ Isabella said as she soaked a wad of gauze in saline solution and wiped the skin with it.

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘Two white males. First one was in his forties, the second was younger. The first one had ginger hair and a sunburn; he can’t have been in the country for long.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They were driving a hired car. There was a sticker in the window.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I watched them for five minutes, Pope. They were going up and down and asking questions. Showing people photographs. They were looking for someone.’

  Pope rapped his fist against the table with the same irritation that he had evinced earlier.

  ‘Hold still,’ Isabella chided.

  She inspected the wound. It was healing. The infection had gone and the physical damage from the stabbing was slowly being repaired. It was still badly bruised, and she noticed how he winced when he moved his arm without thinking, but it was improving. She patted the area dry with a pad of tissues, applied a fresh dressing and wrapped a bandage around it to hold it in place.

  ‘Finished?’

  ‘You’re very impatient,’ she said.

  Pope took his shirt and put it on. ‘I know, and I’m sorry about that, but we need to go. We don’t have a weapon. They will. And it’ll be easy enough for them to find us if they ask the right questions.’

  They had concocted a story on the journey south: Pope would be Isabella’s father. Her real father had died over a decade ago, shot in the head while she watched. Isabella had been abducted after that, her mother fleeing before she shared the same fate as her husband. Beatrix was dead now, too. Isabella had no one. Pope was the nearest thing she had to family.

&nb
sp; He took a bag and stuffed in the things that they would need: their money, travel documents, the sheaf of papers that Isabella had printed in Palolem’s Internet cafe. There were news stories and grabs from conspiracy sites. There were emails, too. One of Pope’s contacts had confirmed that his wife and children were alive. They had been taken from the apartment not long before Pope and Isabella had been attacked.

  Isabella looked around the simple hut that had been their home for the last eleven days. It was basic, but they had made it more than comfortable enough to serve their purposes. They only really used it to sleep and cook, spending most of their time outside. The door opened directly on to the beach, a glorious stretch of sand that curved away in both directions in the shape of a broad sickle. The hut was three miles from town, and Isabella had made it her morning routine to run there and back. The sea was clear and warm, and Isabella finished her exercise by swimming to the uninhabited island that lay three hundred yards out from the beach.

  Pope went outside and checked that they were not being observed. He led the way along the path. Isabella had left the scooter on the coast road, above the steps that led down to the beach. Pope put a hand on her shoulder and ascended first, waiting at the top to check again before getting on to the vehicle and sliding forward so that there was space for her behind him.

  ‘Ready?’ he said.

  Pope started the engine. Isabella glanced back to the beach and saw the ospreys and kites drifting on the thermals above the water. She had known that she and Pope would have to move on eventually, if only to try to draw together the scraps of evidence that might give a clue as to where his family had been taken, but it was peaceful here and she would have liked to stay for longer. However, Pope had warned her that the people looking for them would be relentless, as had been proved.

  She put her arms around his waist and held on.

  PART ONE:

  Washington, DC

  Chapter One

  Senator Jack Coogan opened his mail and looked at the message he had received yesterday afternoon at 5.43 p.m. It sat there, in its own private folder, a single line of text displayed in the preview pane with a paper clip icon next to it denoting an attachment. The email had been sent to his private account.

  LINUS GOSLING

  To: Jack Coogan

  Senator,

  Be at the Greene Turtle tomorrow at 2200. Let’s talk about Katie.

  Coogan had never heard of Linus Gosling. He had been drilled on the importance of not opening attachments sent from accounts that he didn’t recognise, but those final four words had hit him like a sledgehammer. He had stared at the email for five minutes, his finger hovering over the zipped file, before he had succumbed and opened it.

  It wasn’t a virus.

  It was much worse than that.

  The attachment contained photographs and pictures of scanned documents. The photographs were of the intern that he had once been seeing. It had been so long ago – and there were so many women with whom Coogan had had relationships – that he’d almost forgotten about her. Her name was Katie, and, as he recalled, she’d been fun until he’d lost interest.

  The photos of her face showed bruises around her eyes, a purple contusion on her right cheekbone and blood around her nostrils. The ones of her body showed bruises down her ribs and on her arms and nasty welts on her back. There was a written statement from the girl, where she described in detail what Coogan had done. It was the same statement that she had sent to him with the threatening note a week after he had broken up with her. She said she wanted paying or else she would take everything to the police department’s sexual assault unit.

  Coogan was a young and ambitious senator from Massachusetts. He had enjoyed a stratospheric rise through the party. He was beloved in Boston. He had a big place in Hyannis Port, just like the one Teddy Kennedy had owned. The girl could have taken it all away from him. Paying her off was not an option. Coogan couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t shake him down again.

  Plan B.

  She had brought it on herself.

  Coogan had an old army friend from his time in the 1st Cavalry Division who’d got himself into debt with the East Cleveland dealers who serviced his meth habit. Coogan had paid the man fifty grand in return for shutting her mouth.

  Katie had been found dead in her apartment, suffocated while she slept. The police investigated, but there was no connection between her and her killer, and he had been careful enough to leave no evidence behind.

  The case went cold.

  That should have been the end of it.

  But it wasn’t.

  Another email had arrived ten minutes after the first.

  LINUS GOSLING

  To: Jack Coogan

  Senator,

  In case you doubt my bona fides.

  This one had an attachment, too.

  A video file.

  Coogan’s friend talked to the camera and laid out what the senator had asked him to do and how he had gone about doing it.

  Coogan opened the emails again and again. It was like a scab that he couldn’t resist picking. It was as if opening them might exorcise them and turn the clock back, make it all how it was before.

  It didn’t.

  He thought about ignoring the invitation.

  He knew that he couldn’t.

  Chapter Two

  The Greene Turtle was a dive right by the Verizon Center. The Caps had been at home tonight, so it was busy with fans looking for a drink to drown their sorrows after they had gone down 3–2 to the Hurricanes. Highlights of the game played on screens above the bar, soundtracked by jeers and boos as Jeff Skinner slapped home the winning goal.

  Coogan wasn’t watching the game. He was sitting on a stool at the bar, turned around so that he could face the room.

  He looked at his watch: a minute after ten.

  He only noticed the man as he sat down next to him. He had come from the direction of the men’s room and was dressed scruffily in a military jacket, ripped jeans and with a frayed cap pulled down low on his head.

  ‘Good evening, Senator.’

  Coogan stared at the man. He was unshaven and his thick, black-framed glasses were held together by a twist of duct tape. The cap looked as if it was an eighties original; Coogan recognised the logo of Atari on the front.

  ‘No pleasantries,’ Coogan snapped. ‘Let’s not pretend this is something it isn’t. You’re blackmailing me.’

  The man held his hands apart and gave a shrug. ‘True enough. But we had to get your attention. Would you have come tonight if you had a choice?’

  ‘Of course not. I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘There’s a group of us. I’m just the representative. We’re all very keen to work with you. I’d much rather we cooperated out of a mutual love for our country, but you shouldn’t be in any doubt: if you don’t cooperate, we’ll ruin you.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘Get the evidence?’ The man waved his hand dismissively. ‘Simple enough. Katie put everything into Dropbox before you had her killed. And your friend just can’t help himself where money is concerned. He’s got into trouble again. We bought the debt from the man he owed. Moved him out of Cleveland in case you had any ideas that you might be able to shut him up, too. You won’t be able to find him now.’

  ‘I’ll deny it,’ Coogan said.

  The man’s eyes glittered darkly in the shadow cast by the peak of his cap. ‘Good luck with that.’

  Coogan found that he was clenching the sides of his stool. ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Money? We don’t want money. Couldn’t be further from the truth.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  The man leaned forward. ‘I’ve got good news for you, Senator. You are to be appointed as the new chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Forces Committee.’

  ‘What? Bullshit.’

  ‘I know, crazy, isn’t it? A man like you. But it’s goin
g down. Gonna happen tomorrow.’

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Because Senator Lennox is going to step down. He’s going to say that he’s unwell. That’s not the real reason, of course. He’s been schtupping a junior lobbyist. He used taxpayer money to take her on trips, including an official visit to India and paying for her as a member of “staff”, when in fact everyone knows she was no such thing. He knows what would happen if we put that information out there. We could really fuck him up. He decided to do the right thing. Get out with what’s left of his honour still intact.’

  The man caught the eye of the bartender and ordered a rum and Coke. Coogan sat on the stool next to him. He felt the pounding of the blood thundering around his head and the heat in his cheeks. He wanted to be anywhere else but here, although he knew that he had to stay; he was trapped.

  The bartender delivered the drink and the man took a sip.

  He rested the glass on the bar and looked at the scratched digital watch on his wrist. ‘Ten past ten. The senator is going to call you within twenty minutes to explain that he is stepping down. And he’s going to tell you that he’s arranged for the Democratic caucus to recommend you as his replacement.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘I know, Senator Coogan, you’d rather be out on your boat than doing the work that you’ve been elected to do, but you’re going to take this very seriously from now on.’

  He tried to see the man’s face under the shadow of his cap. ‘What? What do you want?’

  ‘Senator Lennox has been abusing his position. He’s been in the pay of the industry that he agreed to oversee. He’s been keeping the focus off areas of defence funding that we believe require close forensic oversight. Spending on research that we think the American public deserves to know about. All we want is to provoke a debate. That’s your job. That’s how you’re going to help us.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The military’s black budget this year is nearly sixty billion dollars. Your committee is responsible for the allocation of four billion dollars to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Some of that money is funnelled to classified projects.’

  ‘That’s public knowledge.’

  ‘Yes, but this isn’t.’ The man reached into the inside pocket of his scruffy jacket and took out a folded piece of paper. He left it on the bar. ‘There’s a company headquartered in Delaware. Daedalus Genetics. They say they’re developing genetic therapies to fight a host of diseases: cancer, AIDS, cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cardiovascular disease and arthritis. Very laudable. And some of it is true. But it’s not all they do. Look at the paper, Senator.’