Hanley refused to intervene. The director wanted the move, and Hanley was playing ball to curry favor for his own reasons.
Immediately, however, Wheeler found out more about those reasons. It became clear in just weeks that Hanley was setting up his own off-book operations, all with the director’s tacit blessing. Wheeler was constantly getting calls from Hanley asking for aircraft, safe houses, offshore dummy corps, and the like, always with a wink and a nod to check it out with the director if he had any doubts. It seemed clear enough early on to the new assistant deputy director of Support that Hanley had moved Wheeler over to Support to have his own inside man there who could make things happen without any red tape.
Wheeler did as his old friend and superior asked, but inside he fumed.
Meanwhile his asshole boss, the former congressional staffer and lazy prick Lucas Renfro, treated him less like a second-in-command and more like a petty underling. Wheeler thought seriously about the private sector, but every time he got the feeling it was time to leave the Agency, his anger at what he saw as his mistreatment by his superiors left him with a desire for vengeance.
He knew things, he knew a lot of things, and the one place he knew he could pass information to others with little fear of being caught was in the sub rosa realm. Matt Hanley, like his predecessor, was going full tilt now on secret ops. Wheeler didn’t know details of the programs themselves, but as a Support executive he was privy to transportation needs, safe house security, and other elements of these off-book initiatives, and passing this intel off to parties who would pay handsomely for it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
His first sale was to Chinese intelligence, letting them know that a CIA aircraft would be landing in Hong Kong as part of a code-word operation. The Chicoms paid handsomely for this, so Wheeler then sold info to Iran, as well.
After a potential deal with Russian intelligence fell through, Mr. Black appeared from nowhere, told Wheeler everything he wanted and how much he would pay for it, and Wheeler obliged.
And now he was racing for his freedom through London, hoping like hell he could make it into the Peruvian embassy, from where he’d be snuck out, delivered to some out-of-the-way airport, and flown to Russia, or Peru, or . . . at this point just anywhere where no agency in the Five Eyes could lay hands on him.
It was all such a fucking mess.
He looked up from his shaking hands as they turned onto Sloane Street. He’d checked the map himself on the plane the night before, and he knew the Peruvian embassy was just up ahead on the left. He tried to look out the front windshield to see it, but instead he saw an oncoming gray four-door, its driver-side door open, veer out of its lane and into the lane right in front of the racing van.
* * *
• • •
The Russian driver stomped on his brakes, but the sedan slammed grille first into the van at speed, sending the van’s driver forward, his head pounding the steering wheel and rendering him unconscious.
The front seat passenger had not been belted in, and his face hit the windshield, squirting blood from his nose across the inside of the glass.
In the back of the van Wheeler was thrown forward but his restraints sent him banging back into his headrest, simultaneously both saving and dazing him.
But the remaining two Russians were unscathed. Seat belts were unfastened, guns came out of jackets, the sliding door was opened, and the first man leapt out onto the two-laned street in a cloud of smoke and steam from the damaged engines of both vehicles.
While one of the Bratva men trained his weapon on the gray vehicle that was crumpled into the front of the van, the second man reached back in, unfastened Marty Wheeler’s seat belt, and pulled him out by the collar.
* * *
• • •
Zack Hightower climbed to his hands and knees, just twenty-five yards up the road from where the crash happened. He’d taken a shortcut through a parking lot to get there first and floored it, then angled his Kia at the approaching van. He opened his door and rolled out onto the street, banging virtually his entire body into the asphalt as his momentum carried him forward.
He was still rolling forward as his vehicle