The Lost Key

Senior Analyst Bernstein was in charge of Mr. X, with him every step he took, inside him, watching and listening from the moment Mr. X had deplaned and the mission had gone live.

And gone to hell. März thought of his boss and tasted fear.

First Mr. X had killed the Order’s Messenger. Then, because he stayed at the scene so they could see what was unfolding, he’d been spotted by that ridiculous woman and her little yapping dog. All of them had followed the chase, watched the big dark-haired FBI agent finally take down Mr. X, saw him hauled to his feet and cuffed. The room was dead silent, watching, listening. Then alarms began going off and the room exploded into action.

Bernstein yelled, “What happened, what happened? Mr. X has collapsed, his visuals are down, his eyes are gone.”

“I’ve lost heart function!”

“Ears are down. Ears are down.”

“He activated his gel pack! He must have thought he was going to be taken.”

Panic rippled through the room, moving silently from man to man as they now focused on Mr. X. After a moment, the heart monitor beeped long and low, then went flatline. Mr. X’s quadrant suddenly went black with a snap, as if a switch had been flipped off.

Horrified silence. März spoke quietly, no need to raise his voice. “Mr. Bernstein, since we’ve lost Mr. X, please give me the satellite.”

Bernstein’s voice shook and he hated it, but his belly crawled with the taste of failure, and fear. “Yes, sir. Coming, sir. Online in three, two, one.”

All twenty-four quadrants flashed to a new scene, a bird’s-eye view of New York rapidly wi

“There are people hovering over the body, I can’t get a clear shot of Mr. X.”

März said, “Alter the angle.”

“I’m trying, sir. We’ll have to wait thirty seconds while the bird is repositioned.”

“Do it faster.”

The analysts were perfectly still, breath held, while Bernstein madly tapped on his keyboard, moving the low earth-orbiting satellite a hundred miles above the scene a fraction to capture the proper image.

He managed the realignment in record time. Fifteen seconds flat. He wiped his sweating hands on his lab coat, then ran the camera sight down as fast as he could, and there it was, the shot slightly moved, the main screen taken up by the faces of the two FBI agents standing over Mr. X’s body. The male FBI agent stood and moved away, forcing the growing crowd backward. The camera detail was so fine they could see the bruises starting on his jaw, hear a deep sigh from the blond agent as she stood and watched the medics work on Mr. X, who was clearly very dead.

“Why did he activate his gel pack?” März asked.

Bernstein said, “Sir, I don’t know that he did. It seems that the agent who took him down may have hit him in the jaw at precisely the perfect spot to activate the gel.”

“Show me.”

The film was rewound and played again at half speed. With a red laser pointer, Bernstein showed the agent’s elbow co

“One-in-a-million shot, sir. We couldn’t have known an exterior punch would be enough to release the poison. Or maybe Mr. X was fiddling with it, debating whether it was necessary. He didn’t want to be taken. He sacrificed himself to protect us.”

Not likely, März thought. “Show me the FBI agent who hit him. Who is he?”

“The agents at the scene were calling him Nicholas Drummond, sir.”

März said in his same calm, terrifying voice, “Well, you idiots, what are you waiting for? Give me data, right now, screen one. Who are we dealing with? I want everything you can find on Special Agent Drummond. Who he is, where he comes from, what he ate for breakfast. All of you, go.”

Five minutes passed in tense silence. The only background noise was the clatter of the keyboards. Finally, Bernstein stood, ran a hand through his thi

“Yes?”

“About the target, sir. His last words.”

“‘The key is the lock.’ Yes.”

“Not exactly, sir. We’ve replayed it several times, and we believe what he actually said is the key is in the lock.”

“In the lock. Not the lock itself?”

“That’s right, sir. I’ve prepared an audio file and sent it to your screen. I’m sure you’ll want to listen for yourself.”

“Yes, I will. Get back to your station, Bernstein. Tick-tock, people. What do we have on Drummond?”

The analyst who’d replayed the video said, “Sir, Nicholas Drummond, grandson of the eighth Baron de Vesci, currently an FBI special agent, moved to New York last month after terminating his employment with the Metropolitan Police of London. He is former Foreign Office, and his father, Harold Mycroft Drummond, is currently listed as a consultant to the British Home Office.”

“Pull his file.”

“Yes, sir, I’m accessing the Home Office files now.”

Another analyst said, “Sir, Drummond had one marriage, ended in divorce. He’s highly trained and lethal with a variety of weapons, and he’s a serious hacker.” The man swallowed. “He was a field agent for a while, mainly in Afghanistan, but like I said, he’s a serious hacker, sir, excellent, in fact, and that’s why the Foreign Office wanted him. He was responsible for the underlying code of Mackay, similar to Stuxnet, the virus used to shut down the Iranian nuclear arsenal in 2010.”

März didn’t miss the note of awe in the analyst’s tone. He said, “I thought that job was done by Mossad.”

“Apparently they used Drummond as a decoy, sir. He was the one who wrote the original program, fed it to the Israelis. They took his Mackay variables and created Stuxnet. But he left soon after, there’s no reason listed. Moved to New Scotland Yard as a homicide investigator. Drummond’s perso

Another analyst called out, “Sir, he’s the one who recovered the Koh-i-Noor diamond a few months ago. He went rogue with the female special agent, Michaela Caine. You’ll remember they recovered the stone.”

März smiled and the young man shuddered. “Went rogue, did he? Keep digging. In the meantime, I will inform Mr. Havelock of the situation we find ourselves in. He will not be well pleased by the news that both Pearce and Mr. X are dead. Bernstein, find a way to destroy any evidence of his internal surveillance capabilities before the Americans find them.”

Both März and Bernstein knew this was impossible that Mr. X’s implant would most likely be discovered in autopsy. Their only hope now was that the autopsy wouldn’t be done today, that it wouldn’t be thorough, but the chances were slim on both counts. And then the FBI would have the nanotechnology implant. And Havelock would have all their heads.

März stepped from the room, seeing the images of Mr. X ru

Since this was März’s operation, he must take responsibility. No choice. Slowly, he raised his hand and knocked on the door to Mr. Havelock’s office, and entered without waiting for a reply.

7

Dr. Manfred Havelock stared out the huge plate-glass window, looking at the Berlin spring afternoon. People crowded the sidewalks, bicycles parked in rows outside the red-umbrellaed sidewalk cafés of the Kreuzberg, so much traffic, so many people, yet there were scores of horse chestnut trees and ivy climbed up the buildings, beautiful and green, right in the heart of the city.