In the child’s game, she would be circling both Bunker and me, but Sveta isn’t stupid. She remains behind Bunker and keeps her distance from me. I’d hit Bunker, not her, if I threw the Phillips-head. If I charged, she’d squeeze off several rounds into me before I even took a second step. And then she’d kill Bunker before my body hit the floor.
I look at Bunker and the only thing I see in his eyes is him pleading with me to get us out of this thing. My last thought is going to be how I broke the few promises I’ve ever made to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to my first and last true friend. “I wish I hadn’t gotten you mixed up in this.”
Just as Sveta is at her third duck, Katie falls through the ceiling and onto the psycho’s back.
Sveta is thrown off-balance, and before she can figure out what just happened, Katie has the girl on the ground, her arm around Sveta’s neck in a death grip. It takes a second to hit me that I’m not going to die today, or at least not in this moment, before I realize Sveta just might.
“Whoa, Katie. We need her alive.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Sveta says as best she can with Katie’s forearm crushing her windpipe.
“Don’t get it twisted. I’ll make you talk,” I tell her.
But my first priority is freeing Bunker, and when I do, before I can even remove his gag, he hugs me like I haven’t been hugged since my parents died. Out of all the foster homes I ever lived in—even where the parents cared something about me—and in all the group homes, and even the makeshift families on the street who adopted me when I was homeless, no one hugged me like this. So I hug him back. But only for a second because Katie is watching, and this isn’t something operatives do unless it’s part of a con. And even if she wasn’t looking, I’m more messed up than Bunker knows, and that much … trust … from a person is more than I can handle in a single dose.
Or maybe Bunker does know, because he gives me a quick back-pat and steps way back from me.
“We got her,” he says after removing his gag.
“Hate to admit it, but I think she got her. I guess I’m back to owing you one, Katie.”
“No. I mean we have her. See,” Bunker says, pulling his walkie-phone out of his pocket, “I recorded the whole thing. Before I let her get the best of me, I switched on the recorder. She’s going down.”
“Are you serious? That is outstanding, Bunker. You make one helluva partner.”
Bunker is cheesing so hard, you wouldn’t think the guy had been holding back tears just a couple of minutes ago.
“I take it Koval isn’t here, then?” Katie asks.
“No. I was going to ask her about—”
But before I can, Katie sticks her with a needle.
Sveta laughs feebly before she says, “Doesn’t matter. You’re too late.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, but Sveta’s out cold.
“Why’d you do that, Katie?”
“Koval isn’t here; she wasn’t going to reveal anything about him or my asset, so we have no use for her.”
“Yeah, about that. You’d best start talking, MI6.”
“Oh, wait, are you serious?” Bunker interrupts. “Katie’s a British spy? That is so—”
Katie looks like she wants to lay me out. “I cannot believe you just blew my cover.”
“I’m going to tell him a bunch of other stuff about you if you don’t start speaking truth. Right now.”
Katie grabs my arm and pulls me away from Bunker. “Not in front of him.”
“That’s cool. Go ahead, take a minute. I’ll just hang out here in this chair I almost died in. I don’t need to know your spy secrets. You’d probably have to kill me if you told me, right?” Bunker laughs at his own joke, probably trying to work himself down from the case of nerves that comes with almost being killed.
“Who are you here to protect?” I ask once we’re out of earshot of Bunker, but Katie doesn’t answer. “If you’re really on the right side of this thing, you need to trust me. You have to tell me or I can’t help you.”
“Who said I needed your help? I think you’re misremembering the events of the last hour. As I recall you were tied to a chair, about to be tortured.”
“Nothing like almost dying together to build trust.”
“I was never in danger of dying.”
“Have you forgotten Koval?”
“I would have gotten out of that. You didn’t give me the chance.”
She takes a seat on a workbench and goes quiet again as she starts looking through her bag, pulling out stuff in search of something that must be buried at the bottom. When she pulls out the pencil case, I reflexively take a defensive stance.
“Oh my God, Peter. I’m not going to sedate you. I’m just taking inventory. And if you could just be quiet for a moment while I think this out, that would be dandy.”
It isn’t like we have all the time in the world; but the day has been a shocker for both of us, so I give her a few minutes to think. It gives me a chance to reassess, too, starting from the beginning.
The hostiles have only breached one classroom, as far as I know. Since it was my chem class, no one can blame me for thinking they were after me, even if the hacker, Marchuk, and Katie want to act like I think I’m all that.
So if they didn’t drop through my chem lab ceiling for me, who were they after? Just about every student at Carlisle could be a target if the hostiles were looking to kidnap and ransom for money. Marchuk needs to fund his terrorist activities. Maybe he figured he could kill two birds with one stone—or one Peter Smith with one bullet, in this case—ransom a rich kid and kill me, too. If that’s what he wanted, the gold-mine heiress who sits in the front row of my class would be the perfect target.
But Katie said the asset is a “him.” And I’m pretty sure she isn’t here to kidnap and ransom a rich kid if she’s really who she says she is. While the whole monarchy thing must be crazy expensive for them to keep going, surely the British government isn’t that desperate for money. And the asset is someone Katie alleges I made “nicey-nicey” with, which definitely rules out Duncan, despite the fact that he’s mad rich. I mentally scan my chem classroom.
Of course—how did I miss it?
We all arrived at Carlisle this semester—Katie, me, and the hacker, though she played the role of a freshman, which removed her from my suspect list. That means the target is also a new arrival, an American who’d affected a mild English accent because he’d spent the last three years there. The kid whose father is working on encryption codes to secure our nuclear defense system. How could I not have seen it when he’d been sitting right next to me for the last eight weeks? To my credit, it had been one of my earlier theories.
“Marchuk wasn’t here for me. Or … at least not only for me. He’s here for Joel Easter. And so are you.”
I know I’m right the second Katie closes her pencil box, throws it into her bag, and stands to leave. I block her way, which I know by now is probably a bad idea, but I take my chances.
“Are you going to let me by or will I have to hurt you?” Katie asks.
“Just wait a second, will you? Our missions are clearly linked. How is yours tied to Marchuk?”
“I’d never heard of Marchuk until today. My people picked up some chatter about a most-wanted arms dealer landing at Denver International yesterday.”
“That must have been the chatter Sveta wanted both of our countries to hear—Berg’s irrefutable proof.”
“We didn’t have any details—name, photo, anything—so standard protocol was for all operatives in the area to go on high alert.”
“All operatives? How many MI6 are in Denver, anyway?”
“I suspect far fewer than the number of CIA that are currently in, oh, Manchester, let’s say. Knowing all your friend’s secrets strengthens the bond. Speaking of which, you still haven’t told me everything about this hacker.”
“She’s helping Marchuk—well, Koval—go after Joel. I guess you know about the work Joel’s dad is doing.”
“Of course. He was doing it for us before your country lured him away. I can assure you that it will be bad for both our countries—pretty much the whole world—if Koval gets hold of that encryption technology.”
“Whoever gets that information might be able to access our weapons systems—”