The doorknob groaned as it turned slowly.
Will stood very still five meters away from the entrance. He kept his gun held high, pointing at the door. Outside his room he heard traffic, voices on the streets, distant sirens, and the overall hum of a nighttime city that was alive and energetic. Inside his room everything was different. It was quiet, and the night and the light made everything either black or white.
Thin diagonal blades of white light traversed the unlit room through the window blinds, flickered, and seemed to be cutting the room into slices. Will looked through those blades and moved one foot forward so that he was poised to shoot. The knob groaned louder, and the door moved open an inch. Yellow light from the hotel corridor was framed by the partially opened door. An icy breeze that had clearly traveled up the stairway from the streets below entered the room. Despite his having spent weeks in freezing temperatures, the air seemed colder than anything he had felt before.
The white light flickered and moved to different parts of the room. Will remained motionless, carefully controlled his breathing, and waited.
A final gust of the dreadfully cold air hit him in the face as the door swung open wide, showing the silhouette of a man before slamming shut and sending the doorway into total darkness.
Will knew that the man was now in the room.
For the briefest of moments, the city became utterly silent, the outside world seeming to pause and hold its breath.
Will said calmly, “Show yourself.”
Nothing happened. The white lights darted around the room but kept away from the door.
“Show yourself.”
Will heard a foot tread on the room’s floorboards. He heard something breathing. Something moving very slowly.
The white light flickered wildly but still did not go near the door. There was another step. And another.
The man appeared in the frenzied light.
Will’s heart pumped fast, but his mind felt focused. He pointed his gun at the man’s face, at a man who was as tall as he was, had slicked-back black hair, a smooth face, and black eyes, at the man he had seen looking down at him from the mountain outside Saranac Lake but who was now holding a handgun pointed straight at Will’s head.
The light settled and seemed resigned to providing snapshot images of the man. It showed a man wearing a tailored dark suit and an open-collared white shirt, a man who looked slender but very powerful, a man who was dressed like Will but was many years older, a man who looked totally in control of himself and all around him.
The man took another step forward and stopped. He looked straight at Will’s eyes. His gun hand was absolutely steady. His face showed no expression, no emotion.
“You know who I am?” he said.
The man’s voice was deep, polished, and barely accented.
Will did not move. “I do.”
The man nodded. “But you do not know why I am here.”
“No, but I do know that while you are here, you will try to kill me.”
“And I know that you will try to stop me from doing that and try to stop me from doing anything ever again.”
The two men were three meters away from each other. They were both very still. Their guns were at exactly the same level.
Will ran a finger over the trigger.
The man breathed in slowly through his nose before speaking again. “At every step of my journey to this room, I have felt your presence. You have exceeded my expectations. You have proved to be the most worthy opponent.” He angled his head. “You have intrigued me, gained my admiration, and shown me that you never stop.” His smile vanished, and he looked very intense. “At first you inconvenienced me. Later you slowed me down. Finally you took nearly everything away from me.” He breathed deeply. “But I never fail. I am not a man like other men.” His eyes widened and looked filled with death. “I am Megiddo.”
Time stood still.
Will kept his gun pointed at Megiddo’s forehead. He knew that if he lost any focus, the man could kill him. “Do you know what I want?”
Megiddo smiled, but his expression was very cold. “You want my secret and my life.” He shook his head slightly. “I am willing to give you one of those things.” His smile vanished. “But I will not give you both.”
“We will see.”
“We will indeed.”
Will took one step toward Megiddo. “I, too, never fail. I, too, am not like other men.”
Megiddo took one step toward Will. “I can see that, Will Cochrane.”
Will felt his stomach tighten. He gripped his gun tighter.
Megiddo bared white teeth. Light flickered over his face.
Will breathed slowly and spoke with a commanding voice. “Very few people know my real name. How are you one of them?”
Megiddo shook his head. “You will have some of my secrets, but not all of them.”
Will kept his eyes fixed on Megiddo. He would not blink. He dared not blink.
“What is your mission?” Megiddo asked.
“I should ask you the same question.”
“You will in a moment.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “My mission is to stop you from killing others.”
Megiddo snapped, “What else?”
Will raised his own voice. “That is the mission, and that is what I will do.”
“What you want to do is determined by many factors, and not just because you fear that others will be killed by my hand.”
For the briefest of moments, Will wondered whether he should end this now and send a bullet into Megiddo’s skull.
Megiddo stared at him. “Lower your weapon, Mr. Cochrane. I will do the same. Our intentions toward each other are in danger of killing words that need to be spoken.”
Will remained still.
So did Megiddo. “I could have killed you in Sarajevo. I could have killed you on the mountain. I could have killed you on the street in the village of Saranac Lake. But I chose not to for a reason. Instead I chose to come here to talk to you. Only after that is done will I pull my trigger. So let us lower our weapons together and not fear each other for a few important moments.”
Will stared at Megiddo and wondered if the other man was trying to trick him. He decided that he was not. “Together.”
Megiddo nodded.
They kept their guns still for a moment, each staring at the other’s weapon. Then they simultaneously made the tiniest of movements until the handguns were moving down at the same pace and were by their sides.
But they kept their guns firm in their grips. Will knew that when the guns were raised again, one of them would be dead. He recalled Laith’s words.
The man was so fucking fast, so damned deadly.
Megiddo nodded. “Why else is your mission so important to you?”
Light moved again and exposed different aspects of Megiddo’s face. It showed a handsome man with features that suggested immense intelligence but also deadly intent, knowledge, coldness, experience, death, and some other things that Will could not yet define. It was a face of contradictions and hidden depths.
Will exhaled slowly. “Saving lives is what matters to me.”
“For a man like you, I am sure it is all you have to explain your existence.”
“A man like me does not need to explain his existence to a man like you.”
Megiddo shook his head. “True. But you are also a man who is now driven by vengeance . . . a vengeance that must be fulfilled, a vengeance that requires my death.”
Will felt his heart miss a beat. “Then you will know why I demand vengeance.”
“I do.”
Anger raged through his body. “Why did you kill my father?”
Megiddo looked at Will’s gun before looking at his face. “One of the two reasons I am here is to answer that question. But before I do so, I should ask you whether you have ever killed fathers. I’m sure you have. I know you have.”
Will shook his head and muttered through clenched teeth, “If they were bad men, yes. But I’ve never savaged a man in the way you savaged my father.”
Megiddo smiled.
Will fought every urge in his body to kill the man before him.
Both men stood still.
Will breathed deeply. “Why is your mission important to you? Why do you wish to commit a massacre?”
Megiddo smiled. “The massacre is not important to me. It will merely be the result of what is important to me.” His eyes darted toward the window and New York City before looking quickly back at Will. “I hold the rank of general in the IRGC Qods Force. I have been the strategist behind every major Iranian terrorist attack during the last few years. Those attacks have been deemed by others within Iran to be an important means to further the country’s ambitions in the Middle East and beyond.” His eyes narrowed. “But more important than the ambitions of others, the attacks have increased my power and influence within my country. This massacre will cement my power. It is going to be my masterpiece.”
Will thought for a moment. “But a masterpiece needs a master artist who is seen and recognized by others. Aside from a tiny number of Iranian leaders, nobody will know that you are the mastermind behind your attack.”
For a mere instant, Megiddo’s face filled with anger.
Will made ready to sweep his gun upward.
But then Megiddo’s anger receded. “You are right. And that is the other reason I am here. I have chosen to make you my audience, to tell you what I am going to do.” He flashed a brief smile. “It matters not to me, because you are too late to stop me, and in any case I am going to kill you.”
Will kept still.
Megiddo took a small step toward Will. “There is a children’s concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in this city. There will be four thousand attendees and performers, and most of them, naturally, will be children. The concert is sponsored by a wealthy Middle Eastern foundation and is intended to promote peace, learning, and intercultural compassion within the Gulf and Levant regions. The concert will start at eight this evening. My bombs will destroy the child performers and everyone else in the building at nine P.M.”
Will felt his stomach tighten. “That is an indiscriminate atrocity.”
Megiddo chuckled softly. “Not indiscriminate.” His face hardened. “Certain women, Mr. Cochrane, are the real targets. There are to be guests of honor at the event. The wives of the Emirati, Syrian, Saudi, Egyptian, American, and British premiers attending Camp David. And the wife of the Iranian president.” Megiddo smiled. “Her husband is not allowed into this country, but she has been invited as a gesture of goodwill.”
“The premiers’ wives?” Will felt incredulous.
Megiddo had no expression. “I will destroy the place in the same way I would have destroyed the German government”—he shrugged nonchalantly—“had that not merely been a ruse intended to throw you off my scent. A ruse you uncovered.”
Will silently cursed as he remembered the devices that the German GSG 9 assault squad had found in the attic of the house in Berlin’s Onlauer Street, bombs that contained combined thermite cutting agents and explosives so that they could propel fire through any material, including concrete and steel, and destroy everything around them.
Megiddo looked at him intently. “I managed to get employment passes for the opera house so that my bombers could pose as cleaners within the building. They planted their tiny numerous bombs over the course of several days. The building will have been swept today by antiterrorist police with their equipment and sniffer dogs, but they will not have found the bombs. They are too well hidden, away from scent, sight, or special detectors.”
Will shook his head. “You plan to burn everyone in the Metropolitan Opera House to death? Why?”
“No doubt you find it utterly abhorrent that I am prepared to kill four thousand people, most of them children, as well as the wives of the premiers. But that is not my endgame, my masterpiece. No, my masterpiece will be of a far more epic scale.”
Will waited.
“The collective attendance of the premiers’ wives is unprecedented and has been organized amid grave concerns from their husbands that should anything happen to the women, the results could be catastrophic. But the American security services have given the Arab leaders an assurance that nothing will happen to their wives in this country.” Megiddo chuckled. “It was a very cavalier and foolish assurance.”
Will felt a sudden sickness as a realization struck him. “The Arab and Persian populations of the premiers’ countries would blame the West for any attack on the women.”
“They would indeed.” He nodded. “I live in a part of the world that is deeply conspiratorial. The fact that the First Lady and the wife of the British premier were killed in an assault would not matter to most people from my world. They would see that as simply a devious means to cover the West’s hand in the attack.”
“But you’re also going to kill the wife of the Iranian president. How can you allow that to happen?”
Megiddo leaned forward. “She needs to be sacrificed. No fingers must be pointed at Iran. The president of my country knows nothing about the attack. I have ensured that.” He was enjoying himself. “The concerns expressed to the United States by the Arab premiers were simple and blunt: Should anything happen to their wives, then the populations of their country would blame the United States. The Arab premiers and their administrations would try to calm their countrymen and tell them that the United States was not behind the attack, but their people would not believe them, would think they were weak and puppets of the West. And they would rise up fueled by anger and hatred toward them and the United States.”
“There would be revolutions, regime changes, armies mobilized.” Will shook his head. “Chaos and war.”
“Not total chaos,” Megiddo corrected him. “Iran would remain strong and would be the only nation whose leadership blamed the West for the attack. But the Arab nations would tear themselves apart before transforming themselves into new regimes that were steadfast allies of my country. Iran’s former Arab enemies will unite with us against the United States and its supporters. They will engage in total war against the West. It will be genocide, and hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will be killed in the battles that will follow.”
Will gritted his teeth but spoke calmly. “Nuclear weapons would be deployed to stop this from happening.”
Megiddo shook his head. “Only Israel will deploy nuclear weapons. The former Soviet Union and Asian and European countries will strengthen their borders, and fight terrible battles there. But as long as the Middle East is contained by those countries, they will not risk deploying their nuclear weapons in case we have the capability to do the same. And America will not deploy nuclear weapons for fear of our striking back at its European NATO allies. But Israel will certainly send missiles into Syria and Egypt, missiles that will kill thousands of people. That will result in the destruction of Israel. It will be defeated by the sheer weight of Arab and Persian armies as they sweep through the country. The other battles will then stop, and although many will have lost their lives, the loss will have been worth it for the result—the result that will be an all-powerful Middle East. A superpower whose leadership resides in the Iranian capital of Tehran.”
“And no doubt you will be part of that leadership,” Will concluded.
Megiddo smiled. “My intention is to be at the very pinnacle of that leadership, to be president of a superpower.”
Will gripped his gun hard. “Where is Lana? Is she alive?”
“For now she is alive. But she will soon die with the children and the premiers’ wives. She is tied up in the basement of the Metropolitan Opera House.” He watched for Will’s reaction. “I want her to burn alive. I want her to scream in agony as flames destroy her pretty face. I want her to suffer for thinking that she could deliver a man like me to a man like you.”
Will felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He swallowed fast to fight back an overwhelming need to be sick. He breathed slowly to try to calm his body and mind. He knew that he had to remain in control. He knew that everything relied on his staying in charge of his emotions. “You said that the other reason for your being here was to tell me why you murdered my father.”
“Murdered?” Megiddo frowned. “I did not murder him. I executed him.”
“Whatever words you use, my father was killed by your hand.”
Megiddo nodded. “He was. I killed him because he killed my father.”
“What do you mean?”
Megiddo shrugged. “Your father was part of a small CIA contingent, based in Tehran, during the lead-up to the Iranian revolution in 1979. The CIA supported the shah and had no desire to see the revolutionaries succeed in overthrowing him. They worked closely with the shah’s inner circle to protect him and to feed intelligence to the shah’s regime to help him try to thwart his opponents. In the course of their work, the CIA men discovered that there was a high-ranking traitor within the shah’s inner circle. That traitor was my father. The CIA men exposed my father, and he was brutally killed by the shah’s SAVAK intelligence organization.” Megiddo’s eyes took on a faraway look. “When I found out what had happened, I constructed a plan to seek my revenge on the CIA men who had caused the death of my father. I posed as a revolutionary defector, approached the American embassy, discovered that there were only two CIA men still operating in Tehran, discovered that one of them was the more senior of the two, decided that it had to be that man who had uncovered my father’s secret work, told them that I wanted to get out of Iran while I still could and that in return would tell them everything about the revolutionaries’ intentions for a newly built Iran.
“The two American men and an MI6 officer took me in a car toward Bandar-e ’Abbās,” he continued. “I thought that’s where they would go, and in any case I had ensured that roadblocks were set up on Iran’s main roads to its borders and coastline. The younger CIA man and the MI6 man escaped, but your father was captured by soldiers from the Bandar-e ’Abbās roadblock. He was kept in captivity for years, and I later visited him in Evin Prison and spoke to him.” He smiled. “Despite what I did to him, he never admitted that his information had caused the death of my father. He was a very brave man and would not say anything about his work.” And then the smile was once again gone. “But that bravery was not enough to stop me from hating him and ending his life.” He nodded at Will and spoke quietly. “He did, however, inadvertently betray one important piece of information about himself. He called out the name of his son at the end. He called your name as I tore out his stomach.”
Will gritted his teeth.
Megiddo’s eyes seemed even blacker. “The shah’s SAVAK did not just brutally kill my father. They also killed my mother, my sisters, and my brothers.” He nodded slowly. “You can therefore imagine my delight when I discovered that the MI6 man pursuing me over the last few weeks was none other than the son of the CIA man whose information had caused the death of my entire family.”
Will fought to control his breathing. “There was no way he could have known that his information would have resulted in the death of your family.”
Anger flashed across Megiddo’s face. “He was an intelligence officer working alongside a brutal, corrupt, and desperate regime. He would have known exactly what actions could have been taken based upon his information about my father.”
Will shouted, “He was doing his job! Working alongside one abhorrent regime and witnessing the rise of an even worse one. He would not have enjoyed the decisions he had to make. But he was there to make decisions and was no doubt under orders to do anything he could to slow down the shah’s collapse until the Arab neighbors of Iran could complete their preparations to protect themselves from the new Iranian regime.”
Megiddo spat, “Justify your father’s actions in any way you see fit. It makes no difference to me, because he still caused the slaughter of my family.”
Will flexed his muscles and felt the weight of the gun. He frowned as he recalled Patrick telling him that his father had entered Iran for the first time three weeks before his capture. He asked quietly, “When was your father killed?”
Megiddo’s eyes glared at him. “Two months before we captured your father.”
Anger raged through Will. He imagined plunging a knife into Megiddo’s stomach. He imagined doing to the man what the man had done to his father; imagined taking him apart piece by piece. He shouted, “My father was not in Iran when your father’s secret work was exposed to the shah! He was not the CIA officer whose intelligence caused your father to be killed. He arrived in Iran only twenty-one days before you captured him. You murdered him for no reason!”
Megiddo frowned and stood very still. “You are lying to me in a futile attempt to justify your father’s actions.”
Will lowered his voice. “If I were, I would also be lying to myself.”
Megiddo considered this. Then he asked quietly, “Do you know the identity of the other CIA man who took me in the car to Bandar-e ’Abbās?”
Will nodded. “I do, and you’ll never learn his name.”
Megiddo smiled, but the look was very bitter. He seemed to think for a long time. “Well, that matters not now. Even though it would have been perfect if I could have taken revenge against my father’s murderer by killing his family, just as he killed mine.” He seemed to be tasting his own anger. “It would have been perfect.” He breathed deeply, and the anger seemed to go. “But it appears that my presence here has been pointless.”
Will frowned. “You may not be facing the son of your father’s killer. But you came here for another reason as well. You came here to make me the audience for your masterpiece.”
Megiddo looked hesitant. “Yes . . . yes, that as well.” He looked away for a brief moment and shook his head. “Everything changed for me when I lost my father.”
“As it did for me.”
The two men locked gazes.
Then Megiddo’s expression steeled, and he spoke in a deep, harsh voice. “And so here we both are, men who excel at things because we have nothing in our lives to give us peace, men who are very alike.”
Will steeled his own gaze. “You wish to kill millions of people and cause mayhem and the destruction of borders to gain power and control over the Middle East. We are not alike. You are a monster. And I am here to kill you.”
“And I you.”
The room was silent and dark.
Will knew that no more words would be spoken. He knew that now was the time to finally settle matters with Megiddo. He studied Megiddo’s eyes and saw how cold they looked, he heard the man’s breathing slow down, he felt his presence and his strength. He knew that the man was watching him just as closely, looking for any indication that Will would raise his gun just as Will was looking for such signs from him. Will used his breath to steady his body and prepare to move his gun with absolute speed and accuracy. He decided to take three more breaths of air before holding his breath to shoot. He desperately wanted to see any signal from Megiddo that would tell him the man was going to move first—a flicker of his eyes, a change of expression, an adjustment of his stance, anything. But Megiddo was motionless. Will breathed. He saw Megiddo do the same. Will took another lungful of air. So did Megiddo. Will took his third breath. Megiddo stopped breathing.
Will knew that was the sign. Megiddo was about to raise his gun and shoot him.
For one second nothing happened.
In the next second everything began and ended.
Megiddo moved his gun with lightning speed. Will moved his arm upward, pulled his trigger, and dropped his body slightly lower. He heard his gunshot and Megiddo’s gunshot simultaneously. He felt a rush of air over his head. He saw Megiddo’s mouth open slightly and knew that Megiddo had missed his target.
He watched his bullet strike Megiddo in the center of his head.