End Game Read Free Page B

spy, then? Is that what you’ve become? A traitor, spying for the Russians or maybe the Chinese?”
    â€œI’m not a traitor, Fanni,” Istvan said. “You have to believe me.” His heart was aching.
    She jumped to her feet, the chair falling over. “I won’t live with you. Not like this.”
    â€œI’m not a traitor.”
    â€œOf course you’re not. I know it. But if you were a spy, you would never be able to tell me where you were, what you were doing. I’d never know when you would come back to me— if you were coming back.”
    â€œI’ll always come back.”
    â€œI can’t be sure. Tell me how I can be sure!”
    â€œBecause I love you,” Istvan said.
    In the end it had been enough for her, and they’d both somehow survived his long absences until he had come out of the field to work as an analyst and mission planner in the Directorate of Operations and he’d been able to tell her he had indeed been a spy. But all that was past. He was home for good.
    He took a portable handcart from the trunk, and when he had it unfolded, he loaded four cartons of agendas, briefing books, copies of the presentation disks, and lined legal pads and pens, and took them inside, where he laid them out in the large conference room. The fit would be tight, but there was room for everyone. The main topic for review would be the threat the U.S. faced right now from cyberterrorism .
    State-sponsored cyberterrorism .
    It was something Istvan had become an expert in since he’d come home. He had a knack for it and had been a fast learner—his mentor at the end was Special Projects Director Otto Rencke, the smartest, and oddest, man he’d ever known. But a good man, with an equally odd-duck wife and a lovely child.
    He’d come to his office in the OHB’s fourth-floor science and technology operations center, where some of the gadgets and ideas that had been created and already evaluated as useful were placed in planning cycles for manufacture and then distribution to stations around the world. After he’d loaded his car, he’d driven over to the Bubble and then here.
    Time enough to go home for some breakfast, but he would have to rush to make it back before the guests began to arrive. Anyway, after the field rations he’d eaten over the years, even the cafeteria adjacent to the New Headquarters Building wasn’t half bad.
    He went outside, where he refolded the handcart and loaded it into the trunk and then got behind the wheel.
    Something smelled odd to him, slightly off. At that moment he heard a Bach organ piece and turned around in surprise as the figure of a man who he did not know rose up from the backseat, blood all over his face and lips.
    Before Istvan could react, the Cynic yanked Istvan’s head backward, breaking his neck. Before he died, he realized that the side of his neck was literally being eaten.

 
    FOUR
    Bambridge had spent only a few minutes in his office, making sure everything for the cyberconference was in place for later this morning. He was giving a short presentation at the Bubble once the PowerPoint and video had been played, emphasizing the necessity for boots on the ground in the likely spots where such acts of terrorism might originate. Like Beijing. He knew the reaction he would get, but what he had to tell them needed saying. Even Page had agreed.
    â€œYou’ll be ruffling some feathers, Marty, but maybe someone from the Hill will sit up and take notice, toss us an extra few millions to fight the good fight.”
    â€œMore like billions,” Bambridge had replied glumly. His mood, like everyone else’s in the Company, was in the toilet. Change was coming, that much was for sure, but no one was looking forward to what it would bring.
    He passed through the main gate, and at the bottom of the slight hill he turned right onto the Parkway, traffic even less at this hour than it had