The Ties That Bind

“No, Kate,” he said, “I’m a realist. I can’t afford to be anything else. If I start thinking like an optimist, a lot of people are going to die. Our agents need to be human, too. So do we for that matter.”

“There’s a difference between being a hopeless optimist and having hope,” Kate said, her voice soft. “I’d like to believe that a big part of what Room 59 does is finding that difference.”

“Maybe it is,” Denny said. “But in the meantime we have a job to do, and sometimes that means that we have to use people in some not-so-nice ways, even our own agents. Especially when it means they’re better agents for it in the long run.”

“We all get used,” Kate said. “That comes with the territory. But that doesn’t mean we always have to do the same to our own people.”

“Kate,” Denny said, “unless I miss my guess, by the time he lands in Anchorage, Jason will have already figured out that he may have to die in order to achieve some level of success on this mission.”

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Garrett Dylan for his contribution to this work.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Most days, Denny Talbot, the head of Room 59 for the United States, enjoyed his job.

Throughout his careers in naval intelligence and the SEALs, the corporate world, politics and espionage, he’d learned the skills necessary to manipulate events and people with a calm precision that many others found disconcerting. And he’d learned to enjoy the games required by his position in an international espionage organization: the push and pull of compromise that got things done, the cloak-and-dagger efforts required to kill those who needed killing or remove a threat to the world. In this job, Denny knew he made a difference, helped make the world a better place. Each mission was both professional and personal, because it often meant the difference between a safe world and a world gone mad. And so most days, he enjoyed it.

Today, however, was not one of those days.

Part of his frustration was that he was supposed to be taking a few days off—and instead of being outside, riding his Tennessee walkers and enjoying the fresh air, he was inside. Working. And the work was on the far, distant side of the universe from enjoyable or fun.

An amplified scream of pain brought Denny’s thoughts back to what had interrupted his time off. Most of the time, he lived and worked in New York, but he liked to escape to his small ranch outside of Nashville for his downtime. Most of his life had been filled with the noises of cities or combat or meetings in small offices filled with intense people. His ranch was quiet, secluded and—barring an emergency situation—private. But when you worked for Room 59, downtime didn’t always equate to time off. The organization was too large and too involved in the shadowy underside of the world for any of its leaders to truly take time off. What they did was too important to ever let the events shaping the post-9/11 world stray too far from their minds.

Created after the horrific events of that fateful day, Room 59 represented an effort by most of the major countries of the world to stop threats before they happened, and to do so in a way that couldn’t be traced back to any one specific nation. The countries involved poured millions into the project through shadow corporations that no longer existed, and the organization itself reported to the independent International Intelligence Agency. Yet, as large a joint venture as Room 59 was, its members were invisible to the outside world. Very few people in even the highest levels of government knew who they were. Everything they did—from daily operations to assassination missions to intelligence gathering—was done behind walls of encryption and secrecy. Meetings were held in virtual-reality conference rooms, where people were represented by electronic avatars that might, or might not, represent their true appearance.

Room 59 had important work to do, and discovery by the media or an opposing interest might mean the end of the organization itself.

Denny was seated in a secure office, hidden inside his ranch house. His eyes were covered with a pair of highly advanced glasses that connected to his computer and launched his avatar into the virtual world of Room 59. In that world, his avatar was seated at his desk, too. He tried to make his virtual office very similar to the one he used in the real world. It was comforting to him and seemed to put visitors at ease, as well. People who were comfortable, Denny knew, were more likely to let their guard down.

Floating directly in front of him was a video recording. In the virtual world, no monitor was needed—images, videos, recordings and other data could simply be pulled from icon files and launched into view. The video was poor quality, but clear enough to be seen. The audio track was a little too good for Denny’s taste.