Page 135 of The Atlas Maneuver

Her body started to jerk, blood and froth foaming from her mouth. The man bent down and grabbed her hair.

“Closing loose ends,” he said.

Then he shoved the muzzle of the gun into her belly and fired.

She felt the bullet enter.

Then nothing after that.

CHAPTER 77

LUXEMBOURGCITY

11:00A.M.

COTTON STOOD BEFORE THE APARTMENT DOOR.

He’d stayed at the compound in Morocco until the wee hours of the morning. The death toll had been extensive. All eighty-four people inside the tent died. Most during the explosion, the rest in the hour or so after. No one made it to a hospital. Among the dead was the entire governing board of the Bank of St. George, including Catherine Gledhill. In addition to Suzy, as Aiko had told him there, another bank employee, Lana Greenwell, had also perished. Then there’d been the envoys from all of the nations and the president of El Salvador.

Gone.

The Moroccan government had been informed of the attack and the DST had come to the scene. It had taken direct White House intervention to smooth over the C-4 incident in Marrakesh. Luckily, none of their people had been seriously hurt and, as Stephanie Nelle told him,They’re big boys and will get over it.

They’d managed to keep the media at bay. The isolation of the compound helped. The story would finally be released in about another hour. Terrorism would be floated, but far more questions than answers would be presented. And he assumed that’s the way it would remain.

Particularly considering the truth.

He’d contacted Cassiopeia and learned what happened in Geneva and the discovery of a massive cache of World War II gold, all of it part of the Black Eagle Trust. ATOP SECRETlabel had been slapped on the gold by both the American and Swiss governments. Derrick Koger had assured him that not a bar would ever see the light of day. And now, with the decimation of the entire leadership of the Bank of St. George, keeping that secret had become a thousand percent easier.

Which also helped with Aiko Ejima. She knew nothing about the gold being found and seemed satisfied that the Atlas Maneuver was effectively rendered moot with all of the deaths in Morocco. So they’d said their goodbyes and she flew back to Switzerland.

“It was a pleasure working with you,” she said to him.

“I know things did not work out as you planned.”

“They seemed to have worked out for the best. Perhaps it was time for all this to be put to rest.”

And he agreed.

The culprits who’d triggered the explosion, along with the dead men found in Marrakesh, were second-rate mercenaries who’d obviously been well financed and supported. All that C-4 had to have come from somewhere. And the bomb itself had been supercharged by the addition of pure oxygen being fed though the tent’s air-conditioning system, amplifying the effects a hundredfold.

That took expertise to both know and make happen.

The real van from Voyagez & Amusez-vous, along with four bodies, was found abandoned outside of Marrakesh. He doubted anything would ever be traced back to the CIA. Too many layers. Too many middlemen. That trail would stop long short of Langley. But there was no question it had all been part of Neverlight. What started at the end of World War II had ended in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

There’d been nothing left for him to do so he’d left, taking an early flight out to Rome, then on to Luxembourg. Why had he come? Hard to say. But every instinct he possessed told him thathe had to see this through. Suzy had been trying to tell him something, but she died before completing the message.

Fix it, please, you have to fix it.

She’d started to sayAtlas Maneuver, but could not finish, so he’d asked, What do you want me to fix?

All of it, everything.

And there’d been something else.

Right before she died.

I need to tell you—