room was still dark, and he wondered what had wakened him. Then he heard his cell phone ring.
He looked at the clock on the nightstand. It read 5:30 a.m.
He reached for his phone, read the unrecognizable number, then flipped it open and put it to his ear. “Merrick here.”
“Did I wake you? Or are you having another sleepless night imagining your hands around my neck? Do you ever sleep these days, old buddy?”
The voice from the past jackknifed Merrick straight up in bed. “Cyrus.”
“Back from the dead. Oh, that’s right, I never died.”
“How did you get my number?”
“The same way I survived Prague. I never give up. You lit a fire inside me that day you left me in that minefield drowning in my own blood. Betrayal can be powerful motivation.”
A few weeks ago Merrick had learned the identity of the Chameleon. Cyrus Krizova was alive. One of their own agents had become a terrorist, and for the past twenty years—while everyone thought he was dead—Cyrus had been targeting the Onyxx Agency, and Merrick.
There had been no betrayal in Prague. Only pure agony when he’d been forced to leave a comrade behind, but now Cyrus was the enemy.
Merrick snapped, “You son of a bitch, I’m going to kill you.”
“You should have done it twenty years ago. If you had, you wouldn’t be sleeping alone tonight. You are sleeping alone, right? Of course you are. If you want a man dead, there’s only one way to make sure. Put a bullet through his heart, and two in his head. That shouldn’t have been too hard. I wasn’t going to run off. An animal caught in a trap is treated better than I was. And let’s face it, you were the best exterminator in our outfit.”
“We’re trained to kill the enemy, not our own.”
“You were chickenshit, is that it?”
“I had a job to do, and I did it the best way I knew how. It was a damn hard decision to make.”
“As I recall you had help making it. Paavo Creon swayed you to leave me, but it was your choice. You were in command. I think it went something like, we can carry out only one man. Cyrus will die before nightfall. He’s six-four. Weighs two-twenty. Briggs is forty pounds lighter.”
Merrick was transported back twenty years, his memory as clear as if it were yesterday—the carnage, the blood, the smell of death all around him. His team had been on their feet one minute and the next they were scattered like broken toys in a playground.
Leave him, Adolf. You have to think about the men who can survive.
Every man in the outfit had been hit. The skin on his own back had been peeled like an onion, and he could see his guts coming through a hole in his side the size of his fist. One man had died on impact. Peter Briggs had shrapnel in both legs—later he would lose them—but he was still lucid, his eyes wide and his voice full of fear, begging not to be left behind.
But Cyrus…he hadn’t made a sound. No, he wasn’t dead, but he was headed for the grave. There was no doubt.
Hell, his face was almost gone.
Yes, he should have ended Cyrus’s suffering with a bullet. He’d tried. He’d pulled his gun, aimed, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Not on his comrade. Not his best friend. So he’d saved the others, and filed a false report about who had died on impact.
“Reminiscing?”
“If you wanted revenge, why not just come after me?”
“That was the plan. But first I had to put myself back together. Starting with a new face.”
“So you cloned Paavo Creon.”
“An ingenious idea, don’t you think? Of course I wanted revenge on him for his part in leaving me in Prague, but that would come later. It took a number of plastic surgeries, but eventually I became his twin. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized he had a double and it was me.”
“What happened the night of the fire at Paavo’s home?” Merrick asked.
“Paavo arrived home unexpected. I’ll never forget the look on Muriel’s face when she saw both of us. That’s when she realized she’d betrayed her husband with me. The fire wasn’t planned but it was the perfect way to get rid of her and take Paavo prisoner. I never intended to take the little girl, but Evka had her father’s instincts for survival. I rewarded her for that by making her my daughter. She never knew I was the double until your agent interfered a few years ago. By the way, how is she doing?”
“She’s waiting for the day I call her and tell her I’ve killed you and avenged her parents. And for myself. Why did you have to kill Johanna?”
“She was your most cherished possession. What you loved most. You destroyed my life, so I destroyed yours.”
“You had Fiora.”
“She remarried a year after the Prague incident. I couldn’t allow someone with so many flaws to raise my children.”
“You killed her?”
“She was the past and I needed to concentrate on the future. I needed more surgeries, money to make that possible. While I was in the hospital I began to think about your flawless, beautiful wife. Remember that picture you used to carry with you? Her image became my lifeline, and that’s when I realized she was the perfect revenge between us.”
“You’re dead, Cyrus. I’m going to kill you.”
“You’re going to have to find me first. So far you’ve failed miserably, just like you failed to protect your wife.”
“You’re insane.”
“What I am is somewhere out of your reach, and right now you’re wondering where that is.”
“I’m coming, Cyrus. It doesn’t matter whose face you stole, or what island in Greece you’re hiding on, I’ll find you, and when I do I’ll put a bullet in your heart and two in your head.”
“That’s the spirit. I was hoping you’d still feel that way. I have unmeasurable patience, and it seems you’ve acquired a lengthy amount yourself. I wouldn’t want you to give up too soon.”
“I’ll never give up.”
“Good. The game is far from over. That’s why I called.”
“What have you done now?”
“I’ve been in touch with a friend of ours.”
“No friend of yours is a friend of mine.”
“I suppose he would agree with you. Nonetheless, Holic Reznik sends you his regards.”
“The assassin is behind bars at Clume. Your sidekick is never going to see the light of day.”
“Behind bars the last time you checked. When was that?”
No, Merrick thought, it wasn’t possible. Holic was in solitary confinement in the highest security prison in the U.S., surrounded by a twenty-four-hour guard.
“Semtex makes a helluva hole in brick and steel if you know how to pack the load. As you know, I’m an expert when it comes to blowing things up. Still living out of a suitcase?”
Merrick was on his feet now, but before he could say anything more the phone went dead. Quickly he punched in his superior’s phone number. “Harry?”
“Merrick. Hell, I was just about to call you. There’s been an explosion at Clume.”
Merrick closed his eyes, listened to Harry’s account of what they believed happened. It was the perfect time to set Harry straight—he was talking terrorist attack. The perfect time to tell him about the phone call he’d had with Cyrus. What would he say