Free The Swan and the Jackal by J. A. Redmerski Page A

level position in their outfit. N-Not as a killer, of course,”—he smiles squeamishly—“I’m useless in the field. Never killed anyone in my life—w-well, once, but it was an accident.”
    “Two minutes,” I remind him.
    He nods and goes on:
    “I met with Callahan twice and gave him two flash drives. Bogus information. Nothing on those drives is real. False names. False locations. Hell, I even made up details of a mission that never happened.”
    “Why would you do that?” I ask.
    As much as I need to deal with Cassia, I equally need to deal with this. It is my job, after all, and I could never bring myself to give Victor Faust less than one hundred percent of my effort.
    “Because I looked into Callahan,” Woodard says. “I know my way around computers and information. I have backdoor access to FBI, CIA, Interpol—shit, I can get information on anyone from any database. But Callahan, he wasn’t in any databases. None. I took his fingerprints from the business card he gave me. I ran him against everything for two weeks. Nothing.”
    “Well, that’s not entirely unusual,” I point out. “Given his profession.”
    Woodard stands from the chair, so deep in thought that he probably doesn’t even notice. I let him. Dorian does, too, but keeps his gun at the ready down at his side. Woodard begins to pace, stopping every few seconds to look back at us, gesturing his hands intensely as he explains.
    “Come on,” he says as if we should know better, “there’s always some kind of record, even if it’s hidden on a Girl Scouts application. No one is a ghost. Not like this guy.”
    “So then he’s using a fake name and his prints have never been recorded,” Dorian says, getting as impatient as I was moments ago. “So fucking what. That doesn’t prove anything other than he’s good if there’s no record of him.”
    Woodard smiles chillingly. “Not if he’s a Boss.”
    That gets our attention.
    Dorian and I look at each other briefly.
    “Do you have any proof?” I ask.
    “No,” Woodard says. “But think about it, the ones at the top of the food chain, they’re the most protected. They have no ties to anyone other than their right-hand men and their gatekeepers. They trust no one and they kill at the first sign of betrayal or suspicion. It’s why the bosses are harder to find.” Woodard points at me, still smiling darkly. “Have you ever seen Vonnegut?” he asks and it surprises me that he knows anything about my former employer, or that he was my employer at all.
    “No,” I answer. “Not face-to-face.”
    A grin spreads across Woodard’s heavily cracked lips.
    “Do you even know his first name?”
    I don’t answer, but I imagine the confused look on my face does that for me.
    “That’s what I thought,” Woodard says.
    He’s feeling much more confident now about this whole situation. I, on the other hand, have surpassed the feeling of anxiousness about getting back to Cassia in time, and am now more concerned about the things Woodard is telling us.
    Dorian shoves the barrel of his gun into Woodard’s chest and forces him back into the chair.
    “What the fuck are you trying to pull?” Dorian demands. “Marion Callahan has been reporting your stubby ass up the chain of command. Our boss knows what you did. If Callahan was the leader of another organization, why would he be messing with you at all? Why not just go to the source and take out our boss if he’s such a ghost?”
    “Because Callahan can’t get to our boss,” I say, pulling Dorian by the shoulder to move him away from Woodard. “He’s trying to get in the old fashioned way, by working his way up that chain of command, gaining trust by pretending to weed out traitors.”
    “OK, but since when do bosses go out in the field and get their hands dirty like that?” Dorian brings up a good point. “Why risk himself by putting himself out there? Why not just get one of his men to do it?”
    “Because the best place to