The Price of Time Read online

  Bobby closed the video and opened an internet browser. Sargon’s sap-happy employee looked like typical London muscle. Probably played rugby and served in uniform before turning to more lucrative, less legal pursuits.

  I leaned into the keyboard and called up a Cayman bank account containing exactly two million pounds, then looked expectantly at Bobby.

  The brute accepted a manila envelope from his boss. He set it on the table beside the laptop but then anchored it beneath his gloved fist.

  I opened a transfer window and typed while Sargon dictated instructions.

  The two million moved.

  The fist lifted.

  The bag went back over my head and I got another unwelcome surprise. A screeching sound followed by ticking.

  “When the timer dings, you’re free to go. Leaving before then would be ill advised.”

  Sargon and Bobby left through the rear door.

  I immediately removed the bag.

  The ticking emanated from an old fashioned kitchen timer. Nothing was connected. It was set for ten minutes. I knew the odds were low that Sargon had laid a trap, but for ten minutes, why risk it? I didn’t have a gun or even a camera, and catching Sargon wasn’t the mission objective anyway. I’d gone undercover to ferret out information. An identity, to be specific.

  I’d spent the past two months establishing the underworld connections necessary to place the order that ultimately led to the meeting where I exchanged two million pounds of Uncle Sam’s money for a few pieces of paper. For two months, I’d hung out with people I didn’t like in places I didn’t want to be. For two months, I’d prayed that my true identity would not somehow be sniffed out. The experience had sucked, but it was worth it. I had succeeded. I’d made America stronger and safer while putting a fat plum in my government service record.

  The higher-ups in Langley could wait ten more minutes to congratulate themselves.

  When the timer rang, I rose and exited the back door. I found myself in the alley behind an aging strip mall. I walked around front and found everything closed. No surprise given the hour. Fortunately, the biker bar across the street was still lit with neon.

  I walked in, mentioned a mugging, showed my lump, and sweet-talked the bushy-mustached bartender into letting me use the landline in his back office.

  “Barry, it’s Chase. I just met with Sargon. I need you to send a car for me. I’m at the Twisted Sister Tavern in Peckham.”

  “I saw the money move. Are we happy?”

  “We are. The source of the leak is Kaitlyn Connors. The spy is her lesbian lover.”

  I expected a sharp inhalation of breath, followed by a clever comment and a heartfelt attaboy. I got silence instead. When the CIA’s London station chief finally spoke, his tone was terse. “The car is on its way. Talk to no one before you get here.”

  5

  The Red Line

  BARRY WAS WAITING FOR ME when I arrived in the underground garage of the sail-covered twelve-story billion-dollar cube that was the new U.S. Embassy. The London CIA station chief even stepped between the two beefy Marines to open my door.

  “Welcome back.” His hand was out, but not to shake. The palm was up.

  I handed him the manila envelope we’d just bought for two million pounds.

  Langley’s senior local officer didn’t lead me upstairs to the CIA floor. He took me to the so-called walk-in room we used when outsiders showed up on the embassy doorstep claiming to have valuable information. Nobody was waiting there, but someone was certainly watching from behind the big mirror, either in person or through the hidden camera. By selecting this room, Barry was sending me a message.

  It wasn’t good.

  An open laptop on the desk displayed a familiar dictation program. It would record my voice and convert it into a transcript. An operations report.

  Barry made a point of tossing the unopened manila envelope into a burn bag before sitting down. It would come out later, of course, but again a message had been delivered. “Take me through everything that’s happened since yesterday’s report. You know the drill.”

  I did. I’d done this for a decade in espionage hotspots all over the world. And since this particular assignment hadn’t required me to bunk down with the enemy, I’d been filing reports on a daily basis.

  “This is Agent Zachary Chase, speaking from the U.S. Embassy in London. Having made contact with Ernesto Sargon, I arranged to purchase draft copies of U.S. negotiating strategies for several post-Brexit US-UK agreements. I went to the meet at an abandoned warehouse in Peckham at 2200. I arrived without bag, weapon, watch, phone, or other electronic device, as instructed. Nothing but memorized banking information. I was met by Sargon’s enforcer, whom he later identified as Bobby.

  “During the pat-down, Bobby clubbed me on the back of my head. I lost consciousness. I woke up approximately twenty minutes later in a small room.” I continued through the story without interruption while Barry watched with barely blinking eyes from across the interrogation table. I concluded, as I did daily, “End of report.”

  Barry closed the laptop, but didn’t respond immediately, or even after an appropriate pause. This convinced me that someone was speaking in his ear. The ambassador or the CIA’s deputy director for operations were my best guess, given Barry’s seniority and the sensitive nature of our discussion.

  “Sargon didn’t verbally identify the woman?” Barry finally asked.

  So that was it. They didn’t want to embarrass the ambassador. The president probably had him in mind for a higher appointment. “There was no need. The images were clear.”

  “That’s a no?”

  “It’s a no.”

  Again there was an unnatural pause. “How long between the time you regained consciousness and the time you watched the video?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “Well, that explains it, Agent Chase. Nobody will fault you for failing to see clearly so soon after suffering a traumatic brain injury.”

  Whoa! Looked like the light at the end of my two-month tunnel was actually an accelerating train. “My vision was fine. My thinking was coherent. I clearly saw Kaitlyn Connors, Ambassador Connors’ wife.”

  Barry did not look happy.

  “She has an identifying mark,” I added. I was about to describe the mismatched shapes of her areolae when Barry held up a halting hand and another man chimed in.

  “We’re quite certain that you did not see Mrs. Connors.” The voice on the speaker was not that of the ambassador or the deputy director. It was the director himself. “You should amend your report accordingly.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Well, actually, sadly, I could. The agency had become increasingly political over the past decade. Either that, or I had simply gained a clearer view of the summit as I rose through the ranks. “If the leak isn’t identified, the operation is a failure. That’s two months of my life and two million pounds of taxpayers’ money down the drain.”

  “We’ll get the money back. And I can assure you that your career will not be derailed. You’ll be at the front of the line for the next suitable chief of station slot.”

  Wow! There it was in blood-red script. The demarcation line. The start of the proverbial slippery slope. Sad as the circumstance was, I was fortunate to have it presented so clearly. Usually they sucked you over to the dark side with shades of gray. This was about to get ugly. For me. “I can’t falsify a report.”

  The director had the predictable retort ready. He’d dangled the carrot, now out came the stick. “I believe loss of judgment is another sign of brain damage. We can’t have damaged agents in the field—or behind a desk for that matter.”

  “Look, Chase,” Barry said. “We’re asking you to acknowledge the possibility that you didn’t see what you think you saw, on account of your head injury.”

  I felt another brick slip from the foundation of my life. Given my economics degree from Princeton, the financial sector would have welcomed me with open arms and a wide w
allet. But instead of cashing in on my new diploma, I’d chosen to risk life and limb for a significantly smaller paycheck but a much greater cause.

  I’d been at it for ten years now, happily until today.

  The truth was, I prized adventure over money and prioritized country over self. Patriotism meant more to me than pinning a flag on my lapel. It meant living by a time-honored code of conduct and a consistent set of values. Even when inconvenient. Among people who believed and acted the same. My values hadn’t changed since graduation, but management’s attitude surely had.

  “What you do with my report is up to you. You are free to ignore any part of it that you consider questionable. And I’m certainly not going to repeat what I saw. But I’m also not going to lie about an operation on the record, even if that lie is just a lie of omission.”

  “Well, then we have a problem,” Barry said.

  6

  Trouble in Paradise

  Six months later

  San Diego, California

  DAVID HUME rested his cheek atop the casket of his oldest friend. His oldest friend. The irony inherent in that statement and this situation sent a fresh stream of tears down his cheek and onto the polished mahogany. Eric George Curtis Mark—the man with four first names, the extraordinary cellular biologist who had been his first hire and the second Eos employee to experience halted aging—was dead.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Allison D’Angelo asked while placing a tender hand upon his shoulder.

  David responded without rising. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s just that you’ve been standing here a really long time.”

  David didn’t reply.

  “I never thought we’d be here either. None of us did. The death of an Immortal is… unexpected. And Eric’s is so tragic.”

  David didn’t bother with his usual halted-aging correction. This was not the time, place, or occasion for semantic reprimands. In fact, the time might have arrived to stop altogether. Every day their aging continued to be halted made the shorthand more accurate.

  As the only MD among the four Immortal research scientists, David was the group physician. For twenty years, he had been taking tissue samples at their semiannual meetings, then testing and charting the results. Their muscles, fat, connective tissues, bone marrow, nerves, lymph nodes, kidneys, lungs, and liver cells all remained completely normal—for adolescents. They’d actually improved since beginning treatment in their mid-thirties.

  Their telomere lengths had rebounded to the point where all the Immortals enjoyed 10,000 active base pairs, versus the 5,000 that would be expected among people in their fifties. Furthermore, none had shown any sign of cancers or other abnormalities. Not once in twenty years. In other words, with 0.0000% degradation, the halt Eos placed on their aging appeared to be permanent. With sterility as the only side effect. If they continued to receive their semiannual injections, it was unlikely that they would ever suffer from cancer, neurodegeneration, or old age.

  Of course, as this funeral reminded them, the Immortals could still be killed by external causes.

  “Why did he do it?” Allison asked when David kept clinging to the coffin. “I have trouble understanding why anyone would risk their life by skydiving. But someone with an eternity to lose? It’s just beyond me. Why, Eric? Why?”

  A third voice joined their conversation. “Some of us need to risk dying in order to feel like we’re living.”

  David stood upright at the sound of Ries’s voice. Along with Allison, Ries was the other surviving member of the research team—and an avid rock climber. He was also one of those rare everybody’s-best-friend guys. Always exhibiting a smile, never voicing a cruel word.

  “I think that’s crazy talk,” Allison said, her eyes teary. “And if you intend to continue with your reckless hobby after seeing this”—she gestured to the closed casket—“then I think you need a brain scan.”

  Ries didn’t reply.

  David surely wasn’t going to step into the line of fire. He understood the adventurous impulse, but this was not the time for a left-brain parade.

  As the three stood in silence beside their fallen friend, David noted that the other clique was similarly huddled across the chapel. Aria, Lisa, Pierce, Felix, and Camilla. The five-to-four majority the MBAs historically held over the PhDs had just increased by one.

  There wasn’t significant tension or even an active rivalry between the corporate coteries, but like tended to attract like—and repel unlike. That was unfortunate. After twenty years, David’s group of four had already been feeling too small. Three was going to feel utterly insufficient, like a triangle where a circle ought to be. Perhaps Eric’s passing would serve to unite the remaining eight.

  “I know this isn’t the best time to bring this up,” Allison said. “But I’m going to be scaling back my hours.”

  David felt a tremor run from his tonsils to his toes, causing him to cough. If anything, he’d expected Eric’s death to generate the opposite effect. To compel Allison to accomplish more. But he knew his mindset skewed far from the mean.

  Among the Eos employees, only he had not altered his research routine after becoming a billionaire Immortal. He’d just switched projects and started anew with the same passion that had driven him before. This time he wanted to replicate the disease-fighting and prevention effects of Eos with a compound that did not halt aging. He wanted to improve life without extending it, thereby preventing suffering without disrupting the natural balance.

  Eric and Ries had quickly figured out that Immortals still lived one day at a time, and that money couldn’t buy the unbeatable feeling of flow they got from rewarding work. Both had joined him in the lab, part-time. Allison had also returned within a year, also for just two or three days a week. Now she was going to work part-time of part-time?

  David couldn’t complain. Quarter-time still beat what the MBAs were doing. As far as he could tell, they had all settled into lives of pure leisure. How much tennis and golf could a person play? How many cruises could he take? How many fancy dinners could he eat? David struggled to understand. He loved vacations as much as the next guy, but largely for the contrast. If you didn’t have black to make the most of the white, everything was gray.

  “Why scale back? What’s come up?”

  “Nothing has come up, and that’s the problem. We’ve gotten nowhere in twenty years. I find the constant failure depressing, and there are other things I’d like to do.”

  Lisa interrupted before David could inquire about other things. She put a hand on each of their arms. “At least it was quick and painless. The timing is tragic, but he didn’t suffer.”

  It was true. When your parachute snarled up, there was no time to worry. You spent your last seconds attempting to untangle the spaghetti. Eric had died trying. One second he was tugging parachute cords, the next he wasn’t anything.

  David did not want to discuss the details of his friend’s death, so he changed the subject. “Lisa, could I get you to move up the semiannual meeting to tomorrow? That way we won’t have to come back in a week.”

  The former CEO frowned. “I’d love to accommodate you, David, but I’m afraid we need to keep the current calendar. As you’ll recall, we’re going to be joined by a special guest.”

  7

  The Hook

  FOXY’S FAMOUS CHEESEBURGERS were calling Lars as the Sirens had Ulysses, and fate was not on his side. The bastards in the booths on both sides had ordered and received the house specialty, complete with curly fries that still steamed a salty fragrance. And just to rub it in, one had added a milkshake, the other a root beer float.

  Having delivered her cargo, the waitress turned her attention to Lars, order pad in hand. “What will you have?”

  Lars closed his eyes and pictured himself in the Sexy Stranger role for which he’d just auditioned. “I’ll take the garden salad. No croutons. No dressing.”

  “And to drink?” Her tone made it clear she knew what was coming.r />
  “Just a slice of lemon for my water, please.”

  She walked away without further acknowledgment. Here in Hollywood, wannabe actors were known to be bad tippers, and Lars had just painted a big black A on his forehead.

  No sooner had she walked away, ponytail bobbing, than a man slid onto the cracked red vinyl seat across from Lars. He clearly wasn’t a bum begging for cash or a dealer looking to hook, but beyond that Lars couldn’t read him. Judging by the custom-tailored suit and precisely knotted tie, the man might be an investment banker. His face, by contrast, was straight off the cover of Soldier of Fortune. Chiseled cheekbones and strawberry-blond hair cut short on top and tight on the sides. Then there were his eyes. Pale blue and sparkling with both intensity and intelligence. “Mind if I join you?”

  Lars gave a quick glance around the diner to confirm that it was half empty. The request wasn’t the result of overcrowding. And Lars was absolutely certain he hadn’t met this man before. Even accounting for some Hollywood magic, which could radically alter hair and eyes, the cheekbones were too distinctive to forget.

  Lars responded with a throwaway line he often used to push peddlers off balance. “I suppose that depends on whether you’re selling or buying?”

  The intruder shocked Lars again with his answer. “Buying. Definitely buying.”

  The downside to his witticism struck Lars for the first time as he processed the unexpected reply.

  The man read his mind. “Not that kind of buying, Lars.”

  “You know my name?”

  “I know a lot more than that. It’s my job to know.” He held out a hand. “Tom Bronco, talent scout.”

  Lars already had an agent—albeit not a great one. In fact, Monty had yet to score Lars a significant role, and lately he was taking his time returning calls. If Tom Bronco was real—if he was from WME or CAA or UTA—this could be the break Lars had waited a decade for.