The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller Read online

  But why had Markov chosen this spot? In the chess game that the two of them were playing, the only advantage this spot seemed to give Markov was that it was isolated. But, Garrett thought to himself, that was a sizable advantage, especially if you were aiming to kill someone.

  He walked deeper into the darkness, past more and more marsh grass, until the little light that had shown him the way at the beginning of Kissam Avenue was all but extinguished. He felt as if he were in the thick of the wilderness, even though he knew he was mere minutes from homes, sidewalks, and a train station. A jolt of terror ran down his back, making his legs tremble uncontrollably. He stopped walking, to try to shake the fear out of his nervous system, and then a voice, soft and low, broke the silence behind him.

  “Hello, Garrett.”

  OAKWOOD BEACH, STATEN ISLAND, JUNE 25, 8:15 P.M.

  Even though Garrett was alone and unarmed, the moment Alexis saw him her heart leapt. A man was pointing a gun at them, they were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and marsh, and help seemed a thousand miles away, but still, the sight of Garrett Reilly gave Alexis hope. And hope had been hard to come by lately.

  Her head still ached from where she’d been pistol-whipped. She was tired and hungry, the muscles in her arms and shoulders cramping because her hands were still bound behind her back. She was desperately thirsty as well, partly from the heat, but also from the fear. No one had spoken to her for hours—neither the girl nor Markov—although every once in a while she’d heard Markov answer his phone and whisper something to whoever was on the other end of the line. His voice was cold and flat and gave Alexis chills.

  Then Garrett showed up. She had so much to explain to him: how she’d had a moment of inattention, and how sorry she was for that, and how happy she was to see him. But not now. Later. Now she had to help him get them out of this situation.

  Markov pointed a gun at Garrett’s chest. “No trouble finding the place?” He sounded amused.

  Alexis could see Garrett in the faint light. He shrugged his shoulders, eyes squinting, running over the features of Markov’s face, then flashing to Alexis. She guessed that he could not see her in the darkness.

  “There was no one watching me, was there?” Garrett asked. “You used GPS only.”

  “We’ll leave that a mystery,” Markov said.

  “What do you want?”

  “You haven’t guessed yet?” Alexis thought she detected genuine surprise in Markov’s voice. But then again, he was a master of deceit. Nothing in him was genuine.

  “You want me,” Garrett said.

  Alexis could just barely make out Markov’s head bobbing up and down. “Exactly.”

  Alexis didn’t understand. What were they talking about?

  “You want a partner.”

  “Don’t sell us short. More than a partner. A team. A family.”

  Alexis could see Garrett squinting in the darkness, dawning knowledge washing over his face.

  “And why would I agree to be a team with you?”

  “Because of what we share. Backgrounds. Goals. Because there are very few people like us in this world, who have traveled similar paths. And when you find someone who is like you, then you reach out to them. You join with them.”

  Garrett appeared to think about this for a moment, then shook his head. “I find people like me to be—I don’t know—really fucking annoying.”

  Markov laughed under his breath.

  “Anyway, what do I have to gain from siding with you?” Garrett said. “I’ve got a good gig where I am now.”

  “That’s a lie and we both know it. You’re not happy. With your job, you don’t have relationships, you lock yourself in your apartment and take a laundry list of pharmaceuticals. I think you are angry at the world, at the injustice of it, angry at how you’ve been treated. How your family was treated. Losing your brother. All those powerful people, all those governments and police—all collaborating to keep you down.”

  “Nobody’s keeping me down. I do fine.”

  “Robert Andrew Wells made a hundred million dollars last year. He has an apartment the size of your entire building. He flies around the world in a corporate jet, goes to Davos, shows up on television. Does he deserve his life? What about the people out here, living in these homes? Little shacks that get washed away by the sea? Do they deserve what they have? Is that right? Is that justice?”

  “Are we really going to have this discussion? About fairness? Here? Now?”

  “Humor me.”

  “It’s capitalism,” Garrett said. “You work hard, you get paid.”

  Alexis struggled to read Garrett’s face. He didn’t sound entirely sincere. But then again, he had a gun pointed at him. The wind picked up again, whistling over the marsh grass, rattling the stalks.

  “Capitalism? That’s your rationale? That explains everything? Do you think they could shoot Robert Andrew Wells’s brother in some godforsaken shithole like Afghanistan and then lie about it? And get away with it? Would the government do that to his family? Do you think Wells would let that happen? Is that capitalism?”

  There was silence between the four of them.

  “There’s corruption everywhere,” Garrett said. Alexis thought he sounded sad. As if what Markov was saying had struck Garrett in some meaningful way. Her mind raced. That couldn’t be, could it? Was Garrett Reilly so unhappy, so alienated, that the rank blathering of a criminal con man would move him?

  Markov stepped closer to Garrett. “Agreed. The world is unfair. And no one will make it fairer except people like you and me. No one. We have the means. We have the skills. We can take down the rich, the powerful, force governments and armies to confess what they have done. We can damage them, embarrass them, humiliate their leaders. Change the way they treat their citizens. That’s not some pipe dream, Garrett. It’s a reachable goal. A real battle to join. You don’t just have to lash out irrationally at anyone who looks at you wrong. Get into senseless fights, self-destruct. You can focus that rage. Focus your anger and get something done. Wouldn’t that feel good? To know that you were doing something meaningful with your life?”

  “I do plenty with my life,” Garrett said, but Alexis heard no conviction in his words.

  Markov let out a low laugh. “I’ve done my job—I’ve shocked the system. I could have done more, but you stopped me, and that’s the way the game is played. Fair enough. But just think for a second, Garrett, if you and I had been on the same team. We could have brought Vanderbilt Frink to its knees. And then we could have destroyed, one by one, the entire banking system. We could have raided their accounts, started bank runs, shut down the trading markets. The two of us, working together, could have watched the entire island of Manhattan burn itself to a cinder. That would have been a sight. Don’t tell me you don’t have destruction in your soul.”

  “So we destroy everything. Then what? I don’t want to live in that world.”

  “When the time is right, we rebuild. A system that we help create, that we have a stake in.” Markov’s words drifted off into the night.

  “You think you’re a revolutionary,” Garrett said. “That’s what this is about?”

  “Revolutionary is an old-fashioned term. I am a catalyst for change. The status quo would crumble eventually, whether I was there or not. That’s the nature of capitalism, as you put it. I just make things happen faster.” Markov waved his gun in the air. “I’m not alone, Garrett. Snowden was just the beginning. WikiLeaks? Anonymous? A drop in the bucket. There are many more, ready to join us. All over the planet.”

  “Then why do you need me?”

  “You know the answer. But I’ll say it out loud if you are feeling the need to hear it spoken.” Again, Markov moved closer to Garrett, ten feet away at most. “Because very few people can do what you do. Can see beneath the noise, through the chaos, and pick out the patterns. And t
hen manipulate the chaos to suit your needs. You change the data flow so that it works for you, not against you. That is a special talent.”

  Alexis watched as Garrett didn’t respond. He seemed to be looking down now, as if Markov’s compliments had made him uneasy.

  “You are good. But not perfect. You have your flaws, problematic moments. You make mistakes,” Markov said. “I could help you with those. Share secrets, make you stronger. Lend you a helping hand when you are down. That would be useful, wouldn’t it? Someone to turn to in dark times, someone who understands your frustration. Your anger . . .” Garrett kept his head down as Markov continued. “We can live anywhere. Here, Russia, a beach house in Thailand, an apartment in Caracas. I have them all. We move around, we make deals with like-minded governments, and then we betray them when it suits our purposes. We are invisible, untraceable—ghosts.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much of a life.” Garrett’s words were halfway between a question and a statement of fact.

  “Do you think the authorities will let you have real power? Do you think they trust you? Garrett Reilly from Long Beach, California? Son of a janitor and a Mexican immigrant?”

  Markov fell silent and Alexis could hear a train in the distance and the honk of a car horn.

  “Don’t fool yourself.” Markov’s words had a sudden rush of intensity, as if he were spitting them out in a rage. “There is a wall between you and them, and that wall will never be broken down, no matter how badly you want it. The people who hold real power—Wells and his helicopter, Levinson and his billions—have no interest in giving you—or me, or anyone like us—true agency in this world. You are their pawn, and in your heart you know it.”

  Markov fell silent, and Alexis had to admit that even she was spellbound by his diatribe. Listening to his words she thought, He’s not wrong. Not entirely. Alexis had always felt that nagging seed of class doubt in the back of her mind. She came from a long line of American patriots, but they were middle class and always had been. No Truffant had ever achieved real wealth or held true power, and she knew it. She suspected her father had known it as well, a secret limitation buried in his life expectations. He never gave voice to that doubt, but he had been an army staff sergeant until the end of his days. But what if he had given voice to it? What if he had fought against the unfairness? Would she have turned out a different person?

  “The Russians won’t let you play with their money forever,” Garrett said.

  “We’ve been siphoning off Vanderbilt Frink trading accounts for the last two months. Dollar by dollar. They have no idea,” Markov said with apparent glee. “We’ve actually got quite a bit of money. And more every minute. And I have the next job already lined up. Six months of election fraud for the Myanmar ruling party. Easy money. Nice beaches.”

  Markov stepped away from Garrett again, then held his pistol out so everyone could see it. He aimed at Garrett. “So now, a decision. Tell me whether you want to join with me.”

  “That’s it? I just tell you I want in and we’re good?”

  “No,” Markov answered, and Alexis’s heart shuddered. That one word had a coldness, a bottomlessness, that made her afraid to her core. She thought, for a moment, of pushing away from the young woman who was holding her, of sprinting into the marsh grass and trying to lose them in the night. She started to move, but the young woman gripped her hard, jamming the gun into her side.

  “Don’t,” the woman hissed, barely audible. “Don’t even fucking try.”

  “What then?” Garrett asked.

  Markov nodded in the darkness, and Alexis could see the silhouette of his head tilt in her direction. “She needs to go. And you need to make it happen.”

  “I’m not going to kill her,” Garrett said.

  “Of course not. We will.”

  Alexis caught her breath and closed her eyes.

  “But you have to give the order,” Markov said.

  OAKWOOD BEACH, STATEN ISLAND, JUNE 25, 8:32 P.M.

  To Garrett, everything Ilya Markov said made sense. That didn’t make what he said right. But then again, the concept of rightness had never held much weight with Garrett; morality was a human construct, not an unalterable law of nature. Good and evil were words imbued with meaning by culture, not God. The universe didn’t give a shit about right and wrong.

  Could he and Markov really be a team? Traveling the world, attacking the system, breaking down the walls that separated him from power? Garrett did not believe in the system, nor did he have any faith in the people who kept the system running. He wondered lately if subversion was his true calling—if chipping away at the power structure was what he did best. He was an outsider, a second-class citizen from birth, and no one was going to change that except Garrett himself. Markov’s idea of revolution was crazy—the ranting of a sociopath—and yet . . .

  Rage burned in Garrett’s heart as strongly as any other emotion. Markov had been exactly right about that. They were, in their own odd way, a match for each other. They were almost brothers. Almost.

  “I tell you to kill her?” Garrett said, as the hot wind coming off the bay snapped him out of his reverie and back to the present.

  “That’s it. You say the words. Then you and I go off together.”

  “Where? We’re on Staten Island. There’s no place to run.”

  “I have a boat waiting. A fishing boat, loaded with fuel, captained by a young Bahamian. Just offshore. There’s a Zodiac beached on the rocks. Down the path. We can reach the Bahamas in a week. Then fly to Venezuela. Prep the Myanmar job, rig the election. I even had a passport made up, with your picture on it.”

  Garrett marveled at Markov’s preparation. Garrett had been right, thinking to himself in Battery Park, that he was marching off to confront some strange destiny, and that he had to do it alone. Was this his destiny? Was Markov his destiny?

  “You’re lonely,” Garrett said. “That’s why you’re doing this.”

  Markov smiled. “Yes. I am. Absolutely. Very lonely. I always have been. And so have you.”

  Garrett felt a spontaneous ache in his heart. He was lonely. Terribly lonely, with few friends, distant family, and no real prospects for a lasting love relationship.

  “You shoot her right here, in front of me?” Garrett tried to keep the tremor out of his voice.

  “You want to see it happen?”

  “No.”

  “Uni will take her into the grass. So no one finds the body for weeks.”

  “How do I know you won’t shoot me as well?”

  Markov laughed. “I might. But then again, I could have shot you ten minutes ago. But I don’t want to particularly. I like you, Garrett. I wouldn’t have gone to these lengths if I didn’t want this to work.”

  Garrett could see Markov smiling in the dim light. “I have one more thing to tell you. Perhaps this will help you make up your mind. Your friend here, Captain Truffant, no longer works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

  Garrett looked from Markov to Alexis. “What do you mean?”

  “She is no more a defense analyst for DIA than I am a bond trader. She works for Homeland Security. She didn’t tell you because she wanted you to keep on my trail.”

  Garrett struggled with this information. It made no sense, yet it made perfect sense. It explained her interest in a case that had nothing to do with her job description. He looked to Alexis, mouth sagging slightly open. “Is that true?”

  “He’s lying,” Alexis said.

  “She has doubled up agency work for the last six months,” Markov said. “I have the e-mails. I can show them to you if you’d like. It’s all spelled out very clearly.”

  Garrett stepped toward Alexis. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “What does it matter? Who cares what agency I’m working for?” Alexis spit out the words. “He’s a con man and a terrorist and he’s lying to you
about everything else, and you can’t listen to him, Garrett. He is tricking you. He has an alternative reason for everything. If you leave with him now, you won’t make it twenty-four hours before he shoots you and dumps your body in the ocean.”

  “Why?” Garrett asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Garrett could see her face contort in the night, her mouth cracking at the edges. She let out a short sob, then seemed to swallow back her tears. “Why do you need to know any of it?”

  “Because I used to love you.”

  Alexis hung her head. She whispered, “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “I think it does. So do you.”

  She had no answer, and Garrett wasn’t surprised. Alexis had always been ambitious, and working for another agency dovetailed with his understanding of her career—that it was stalled out at DIA, that she needed new avenues for advancement.

  “Well?” Markov asked. “Your decision?”

  Garrett stood motionless and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart.

  He thought he might be able to take Markov right there, grab at his gun hand and shove him to the ground, hit him hard, again and again, and take the pistol away before the girl shot Alexis, but it didn’t seem likely. He wasn’t a cop; he wasn’t Agent Chaudry. He was a computer geek. His best chance of survival, as he calculated it, was to trust in his instincts. To trust in the thing that Markov needed from him: an ability to see the world as it was, not as you wanted to see it. To see what was invisible to everyone else. Because that, in the end, was the one thing that Garrett could do, the thing that made him special.