The 9th Man

Book 1: Luke Daniels

by Steve Berry, Grant Blackwood

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

From New York Times bestselling author of the Cotton Malone series comes a thrilling, action-packed historical adventure that sends Luke Daniels on an international manhunt for the truth about the assassination of President John Kennedy.

Luke Daniels is in London, between assignments with the Magellan Billet, when he receives a frantic call from an old friend.  Jillian Stein is in trouble.  She made a mistake and now her life may be in danger.  She needs Luke’s help.  Immediately.  Racing to Belgium Luke quickly finds that she was right.  A shadow team of highly-trained operatives are there on the hunt.  Intervening, he finds himself embroiled in a war between two determined sides — one seeking the truth, the other trying to escape the past — a war that has already claimed one life and is about to claim more.   

Thomas Rowland is a Washington insider, a kingmaker, problem-solver, but also a man with a past.  For him everything turns with what happened on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.  What history has recorded is wrong.  There is more to the story, much more, and Thomas Rowland is at the center of that terrible reality.  But forces are working against him, and Rowland will do anything to keep the world from learning what actually happened on that fateful day, including killing Luke, Jillian and anyone else who might be a threat. 

In a race from Belgium, to Luxembourg, to the bayous of Louisiana and the Wyoming wilderness, to a final confrontation in the Bahamas, Luke Daniels confronts a series of shocking truths which not only rewrite history but will forever change his own life — as he comes face to face with the ninth man.   
 
 

Release date: June 27, 2023

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

Genappe, Belgium

Tuesday — March 24 — 6:12 A.M.

LUKE DANIELS HAD ONLY ALLOWED ONE MAN TO EVER GET THE BEST of him. Harold Earl “Cotton” Malone. With an uppercut out of nowhere that had dropped him to the deck of a boat. At their first meeting. On the choppy waters of the Øresund, which separated the northern Danish island of Zealand from the southern Swedish province of Scania. Ordinarily, he would have responded with a swing of his own. But not that day.


“Seems you got yourself a partner,” Malone said to him. “Me.”



“Do you have a pad and pen I could borrow so I can take notes on what I learn?”



“You always such a smart-ass?”



“You always so warm and friendly?”



“Somebody’s got to see to it that Frat Boys, like you, don’t get hurt,” Malone said.



“You don’t have to worry about me, Pappy. I can take care of myself.”



“Thought I told you not to call me that.”



“Yeah. I heard you. And I gave you one free punch. There won’t be any more freebies.”



Malone’s green eyes threw him a challenge that said it all.



Go for it.


But he’d let it go.

As introductions went, he’d had worse. Yet none had more profoundly affected his life than that one.

But enough musing.

Time to move.

He started to climb out of the rented Peugeot but stopped as Malone’s quiet, prudent voice, laced with a hint of a southern accent, whispered in his head. Slow down. You don’t know the area. Sit for a bit, get a feel for things.


Haste makes for a wasted agent.


Good thing he’d taken those mental notes.

So he sat in the seat and scanned the darkened suburban street that stretched before him. Patience went against his grain. Army Rangers weren’t sit-on-your-hands types. More direct action, and Luke had never rid himself of that bold audacity. He’d wanted to be in the military since he’d first noticed hair on his chin, and he’d accomplished that goal, skipping college, enlisting, then graduating from Ranger school. He served ten years with three tours in combat. Once out, he’d needed a job and the CIA had been his first choice. Having an uncle as the then-president of the United States should have been an asset. But he’d never once asked Danny Daniels for help.

Whatever he got, he wanted to earn.

And he found out that being recruited into the CIA’s clandestine service was a smidge trickier than filling out an application. He’d made it past the initial interview but had been washed out after the next round. Then a call came from something called the Magellan Billet. Uncle Danny had put in a good word with Stephanie Nelle, who both created and headed the Justice Department’s unsung special operations branch. But she’d been crystal-clear. No special treatment. No excuses. He had to earn his spot. Every step of the way.

And he had.

Handling assignments, as ordered.

The Billet now felt like home.

But this trip to Belgium wasn’t official business.

No, this little foray was all personal.

Rue Emile Hecq stretched about half a mile on the outskirts of Genappe. The homes along its edges less suburban and more rustic, mostly two-story, white-stucco-and-brick A-frames, topped by traditional mansard roofs. The street was narrow, bordered by cobblestoned sidewalks and small, tidy front yards, each property separated by dense waist-high hedges. A lone streetlight, glowing amber in the night’s mist, stood about a hundred feet away. Aside from his rental car there were no other parked vehicles.

He’d checked before arriving and learned online that Genappe was a town of about fifteen thousand whose only claim to fame was as the possible birthplace of a dude called Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade. It also was only a ten-minute drive from the site of the Battle of Waterloo. That’d be something to see, as he loved military history. Read every book he could on the subject. Would there be time for a visit? That would depend on what he found inside the house two doors down on the opposite side of the road.

Six hours ago he’d received a text from a former acquaintance, Jillian Greenfield Stein. Of the Pennsylvania Greenfields, she liked to say with a smile, not the Virginia ones. They’re way too snobby. Of course, she was not from money. Just a solid, middle-class upbringing in southern Pennsylvania. What she wasn’t was emotional. All business in fact. Cool calm nerves flowing through a taut, fit body. Their exchange had been electronic and brief.


I’ve made a big mistake and need your help.



What kind of mistake?



The kind I can’t take back and they may be coming for me.



Where are you?



Genappe. 18 Rue Emile Hecq.



I can be there in a few hours.



Thanks. God, what have I done, Luke?


That last comment compelled him to call her cell phone number. But all he heard was a voice-mail prompt. Two more calls achieved the same result. One thing seemed clear. She needed help. She’d done something, made a mistake, and was now worried they were coming for her.

He’d been cautious about his exchanges with her for two reasons. One, he had no way to know if Jillian was on the other end. Could be a trap. And two, no active intelligence officer ever gave away their current position haphazardly. Stay in the wind, Malone liked to say. Good advice. Thankfully, though, he’d been enjoying a little downtime in London after an assignment, before heading back to DC. So he’d managed to catch the first flight of the day from Heathrow to Brussels, where he’d rented a Peugeot for the fifteen-mile drive south to Genappe and the address Jillian had provided. Which he’d been watching for the past twenty minutes.

The porch light burned bright, but the front windows loomed dark.


God, what have I done, Luke?


“I’ve waited long enough, Pappy,” he muttered.

And he reached for the door handle.

Suddenly a vehicle turned onto the street behind him, its headlights cutting a bright swath through the darkness. Instinctively, he aborted his exit and slid low in the seat, watching as a white Transit van motored to the curb fifty feet away and stopped.

At this hour?

That could not be good.

The rear doors swung open.

Nothing was visible in the van’s darkened interior. Which made him wonder. Why no dome light? A figure emerged, swung the door partially closed, then crossed to the opposite sidewalk.

The man let out a soft whistle.

Not the casual, whistle-while-you-stroll type, more attention-getting.

After a few more paces the guy did it again.

Luke knew what was happening. He’d used the same tactic himself. Whistler was trolling for barks. A yapping dog could ruin even the best-planned operation. So draw them out beforehand. He wriggled further down and listened to the click of footsteps off the cobbles. Every few seconds came another whistle.

No dogs barked.

The footsteps halted.

The man had come to a stop at one of the tall hedgerows. A hand was lifted to the mouth. A faint burst of static disturbed the silence, then the words, “All clear.”

Another figure emerged from the back of the van, this one in a red ball cap and a matching T-shirt. Two more figures, each dressed in dark coveralls, emerged and trotted across the street in near-perfect synchronization.

Like friggin’ ninjas.

They slipped through the hedges and sprinted toward Jillian’s address, where the pair merged with the shadows along the side wall. Jillian’s frantic texts had smacked of paranoia. But she’d been spot-on.

Someone was coming for her.

And here they were.

He counted four on the street. Add a driver in the van and that made five. Clearly, they were trained and surely armed. The odds were stacked. But the hard way was like candy to a Ranger.

Whistler motioned.

At the van, Red Cap started toward the house.

Luke reached up and disabled his car’s dome light.

Whistler was walking faster now, hands moving. Luke saw the outline of a pistol with a sound suppressor, a big one too, roughly the size of a soda can. A rig like that was as close to silent as one could get. He kept his eyes fixed on Whistler and eased open the car door, slipping out without making a sound. He hunched over and backed up, creeping past the rear of the rental, swinging right and maneuvering behind his target. Whether the van’s driver would see him and raise the alarm was hard to say. Didn’t matter. He needed Whistler’s gun to even up the odds. He hadn’t brought his own weapon. Too many questions and lost time dealing with Customs.

He hastened his pace, trotting on flat feet, closing the gap.

Faster.

Almost there.

Now.

Whistler never saw Luke’s roundhouse hook, which landed squarely on the man’s temple, knocking him unconscious. The form toppled into the hedge and settled with only his legs visible, which Luke quickly stuffed into the foliage. Then he retrieved the gun, checked the magazine, and, after a bit of groping in the dark, found the man’s portable radio and earpiece, which he donned.

A voice was saying, calm and measured, “Preparing for entry.”

Luke took this to mean he hadn’t been spotted.

Perfect.

But that was about to change.

He eased forward along the hedge line, stopping at a waist-high brick wall, and peeked around the edge in time to see Red Cap unscrewing the front door’s lightbulb, plunging the porch into darkness. The guy then knelt before the door and began working the lock. Luke saw the other two men, the ninjas, rounding the corner of the house. Stacking up for entry. Each carried a weapon.

This party was about to get serious.

He heard a soft snick, then the front door swung open. Red Cap gave his partners a hand signal and they slid along the wall toward the entrance.

Jillian needed an alert.

He raised the sound-suppressed pistol and fired two shots through the upstairs window. As expected, the report was nearly silent, but in the relative silence of the street the shattering of glass was jarring.

The Ninjas looked up and aimed their weapons.

A light popped on in another window.

Then immediately the panes went dark.

Atta girl.

Jillian was a former marine, a night fighter, skilled in combat. Turning on the light had been impulse, but dousing it came from training. The ninjas mounted the steps to the front door. Luke raised his gun, hopped the wall, and charged. The first man vanished through the door, but the second saw Luke and turned to face him, raising his gun.

Luke shot him twice in the chest.

The body dropped backward.

He adjusted his aim to cover the door, then darted for the dead ninja, snatching up the man’s weapon and entering the house. Behind him, the van’s door opened. Luke spun. The driver was coming around the hood with a weapon ready.

Luke fired.

Twenty yards, in the dark.

And missed.

The man, though, stumbled backward for cover and disappeared behind the van. From inside the house came a trio of muffled shots, followed by the loud crack of an unsuppressed weapon, a second shot, then a woman’s voice.

“Don’t move. Drop it.”

Jillian.

Footsteps pounded on stairs.

More gunfire, the suppressed and non-suppressed reports overlapping one another.

This was turning into a full-on firefight.

He didn’t give himself a chance to consider what awaited him past the front door, and burst through, the two guns up and tracking. A short hallway stretched before him, one doorway on the left, two on the right, a staircase at the end. A shadow figure appeared on the stairs. A muzzle flashed orange. The doorjamb beside Luke’s head shattered with splinters. He ducked, rushed forward, and slipped through the first doorway as a second bullet punched the wall behind him.

Upstairs, the gunfire ceased.

“No, stay there. Behind my cover.”

Jillian’s voice again.

A lone, muffled shot pierced the darkness.

“Oh, God,” Jillian screamed. “No. No.”

He heard anguish in her voice.

What had happened?

He peeked around the corner.

The hallway and stairs were empty.

He sprinted forward, paused at the second doorway to clear it, then bounded up the stairs to the landing where the steps swung right and up to the next floor. Above, a sound-suppressed pistol opened fire with steady and paced shots. Suppression fire? Designed to keep the enemy’s head down. In this case? The enemy was Jillian.

Above, he saw a balustrade and what looked like an open, loft-style space. Sprawled motionless beside the upper railing was Ball Cap.

That left only one of the ninjas.

Luke stuck the guns around the corner and fired twice with some suppression fire of his own. Then he charged up the stairs. Silhouetted by pale light leaking in from what looked like French doors the ninja hunched, half kneeling, obviously wounded.

The guy saw him and fired twice.

Luke dropped flat on the stairs, rolled right against the wall, then rose to his knees. As soon as his muzzle cleared the stair treads, he opened fire. The ninja dragged one leg behind him and shuffled toward the glass doors, which he opened. One of Luke’s rounds caught the man in the back and he stumbled out onto a balcony where he pitched face-first over the railing. Luke was there a few seconds later and looked down. The ninja was crawling across the grass, dragging his grotesquely twisted legs behind him.

“Stop,” Luke called out.

The ninja kept going.

He fired a shot just ahead of the man, who halted at the warning, tilting his head back and gazing up.

Two suppressed shots popped.

The ninja’s body jerked, then collapsed to the grass motionless. A lone figure—the driver, he guessed—stood near the van, pistol aimed, after taking out his own. The man slipped into the van, powered the engine, and drove off. It took two precious seconds for Luke to register what he’d seen and get his mind back in the game. Problem solved. Still—

He stepped back through the open glass door and called, “Jillian.”

No answer.

“It’s Luke. Talk to me. They’re all dead. It’s just you and me.”

In the distance he caught the warble of police sirens.

He checked to make sure Ball Cap was in fact dead then fled the loft, which was divided by a half wall into a reading nook beside the balcony door and a bedroom. Near the foot of the bed he found a large bloodstain and drag marks that led him to a closed door.

One more time. “Jillian, it’s Luke. You in there?”

He placed himself to the left of the jamb, turned the knob, and shoved open the door. “Don’t shoot, I’m coming in.”

Through the door he found himself in a small bathroom.

On the tile floor lay an elderly man, dressed in pajamas, with a bullet hole through his head. Behind the body, white lace curtains billowed in an open window.

Jillian was gone.

2

Starlings Island, Chesapeake Bay

12:30 A.M.

THOMAS HENRY ROWLAND STOOD, HANDS CLASPED BEHIND HIS BACK, and gazed out through the massive hurricane-proof windows that dominated the study’s northwest wall. Wind and rain clawed at the glass, but the dimly lit room was silent save for the faint strains of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, spilling through ceiling speakers. He loved classical music, especially Wagner, whom he considered larger than life. For anyone else the opulent study, the grand bank of windows, the bronze bust of Friedrich Nietzsche resting on a lighted plinth, would all be affectation. But if anyone embodied Nietzsche’s Übermensch, it was without question him. He lived by his own rules, his own morality, and maintained it with an iron, largely invisible, hand that only his enemies knew existed.

All part of being a professional fixer.

A man who could absolutely get things done.

Across the room stood Ateng Persik. Forty-two years old. Formerly a major in the Indonesian Army’s elite KOPASSUS Red Beret Corps. A brutal lot. Their human rights violations were legendary, so bad that most foreign governments, including the United States, had stopped working with them. But for him they made for excellent employees. No consciences or morality to worry about. Six were currently on the payroll. For over a decade Persik, and the other five, had been his go-to team for excising the most difficult of problems.

Like the one in Belgium.

He and Persik had been waiting on a report, which had finally come a few minutes ago.

Persik ended the call and returned the phone to his suit jacket pocket. “The situation is contained. The primary is dead. The woman escaped.”

Without turning from the darkened windows he said, “Explain.”

“Someone ambushed the team. A man with obvious skill and training. He disrupted everything.”

“Who just happened to be there?”

“Apparently so. He simply appeared and interjected himself. Four men are dead. The fifth, their driver, one of my team, managed to escape. It was him I was speaking with. Prior to leaving he heard on the comms that the primary was dead, the woman gone. The driver shot one of ours who’d been injured and another who was found unconscious in the hedges. So there are no loose ends.”

“Quite industrious of him.”

“As I said, he was one of mine and knew the parameters.”

“No way to trace anything to your team?”

“None at all. I hired them freelance through intermediaries. My people are standing by, there, on the ground.”

He wanted to know, “Will the police find anything of use at the scene?”

“None of the men carried identification. The weapons, clothing, and communications equipment are untraceable. Their fingerprints, faces, and DNA might appear in a criminal database, but nothing leads here. The van was stolen from a long-term parking garage in Nivelles.”

He liked what he was hearing. Persik was meticulous, never taking anything for granted. Which was good, since luck was a fairy tale for the feebleminded. Unfortunately, the carnage in Belgium had been necessary. “And the woman? What’s your plan for Jillian Stein?”

“We’re working on that.”

He needed to know. “Be more precise.”

“She’s not listed on the home’s deed and she apparently has no ties to Genappe, but the Belgian authorities will connect her to the incident since her personal belongings are there. They’ll determine she was a visitor in her grandfather’s home and want to speak with her.”

“Was any search made of the house?”

“No. Not possible. The local police are now there. We should assume the DGJ will be dispatched,” Persik said, referring to the Belgian equivalent of the FBI. “Murders are rare for Belgium.”

Rowland turned from the windows and tossed Persik a dead stare. “What’s your point?”

The Indonesian shook his head. “No point. Just sharing information.”

“You sound like you don’t agree with what we did.”

“I simply wonder about the risks.”

“No need to trouble yourself with worry. What is the situation on the ground?”

“We are on the trail. I have local assets, men I’ve used before, who will find Ms. Stein, and we will search the house again.”

“After the police?”

“That is unavoidable.”

“Let us hope there is nothing there for them to find.”

“I realize you want the rifle. I will get it for you.”

“What do we know about this white knight that showed up?”

“Nothing at the moment, but I will remedy that.”

“How?”

“I will handle it, like always.”

“You do that.”

He motioned that Persik should leave and his acolyte exited the study. He stayed at the window, watching the silent pulses of lightning as the storm swept northwest toward Washington, DC. Pocomoke Sound loomed invisible in the dark. There weren’t many privately owned islands in Chesapeake Bay. Most of them were far out, without utilities, making construction difficult and expensive. Of the few near the mainland, only a handful were buildable. Starlings Island was one of those. Only about ninety acres of high land, most of the residents part-timers, enjoying unparalleled views of the bay in one direction and thousands of acres of pristine marsh in the other. Not him, though. This was his full-time home.

His refuge.

He pressed his fingertips to the window and closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of the thunder rippling through the glass.

The eye of the storm.

Like him.

Chaos may rage all around, but his reputation was that of the unperturbed center of the hurricane. Only there could clear thinking prevail. But that ability had not matured overnight, nor had it been easily attained. And all because of one mistake.

A slight rap on the door broke the silence.

With a barely perceptible hiss the study’s double doors opened and Jack Talley entered. Where Persik handled all of the covert off-the-books matters, Talley was the official head of security, a public face, out front, known to many. A former army captain, special forces, highly trained. He caught Talley’s reflection as the man halted in the middle of the room and stood in silence, as if facing a general. Talley was tall, lean, with a broad nose, thin lips, and close-cropped black hair. Maybe fifty years old, Rowland had never really asked. The only blemish on the otherwise spit-and-polished façade? A limp in his right leg from a wound received in wartime, which had ended Talley’s military career.

“How many of your core team do you trust without reservation?” he asked Talley, still gazing out the window.

“All of them.”

He turned and faced his man. “Don’t be obtuse.”

“I wasn’t trying to be. I meant it. There are seven that I’d stake my life on—and have many times in Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan. We’ve been up to our knees in problems more times than I can count. They are the best.”

“Families? Children?”

“Two of the men have those. The others are unattached.”

Perfect. “Leave the two behind. Attachments are a weakness. Take your five and shadow Persik. He’s headed for Belgium.”

“I have a family.”

“Yes, you do. But you’re in charge and that makes you different.”

A nod signaled understanding.

Talley had always been a man of few words.

“I’ll advise you as things progress,” he said. “But concentrate on Persik. Watch him. Until I say otherwise, if he blows his nose I want to know where he tossed the tissues. Be prepared to act, on my command.”

“You have a particular concern with him?”

He realized that his request might raise some radar. After all, he’d never shown this level of distrust before. “I have a concern that he’s not doing his job. That, I cannot tolerate.”

Though he could not speak it, with this particular situation, if it wasn’t handled properly, there could be dire consequences.

He pointed. “Can you handle that?”

Talley nodded, then turned and headed for the door.

“Jack,” he said.

Talley stopped, turned, and faced him.

“Do this and there will be a larger-than-usual bonus this month that can help with those attachments of yours.”

“I appreciate that. Consider it done.”

3

Charleroi, Belgium

7:20 A.M.

LUKE WHEELED THE PEUGEOT INTO A PARKING SPOT BEHIND THE Hotel De La Basse Sambre, allowed the tires to bump the curb, then shut off the ignition. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, then sat back. What had he managed to get himself into this time? One minute he was asleep in a London hotel room, the next he’d taken fire and eliminated the shooters.

Back in Genappe, as soon as he’d realized Jillian had disappeared into the night, he’d done the smart thing and wiped down the three guns, dropped them on the bathroom floor, then left the house as fast as his feet could carry him. Outside, he found the guy he’d coldcocked into the bushes with a hole in his head. That made two killed by their own. To the police any explanation he might have offered would have been pointless. He was a foreigner who, within minutes of arriving in their sleepy town, was found standing in a house full of dead people.

Oh, and by the way, I’m also an American intelligence operative.

Yeah, right.

That dog definitely wouldn’t hunt.

Even if he managed to talk his way out of murder charges, whatever trouble was chasing Jillian might have caught up to her by then. Better to, as Malone would say, make like the wind and disappear. He wasn’t even half a mile down Rue Emile Hecq when he heard the police cars screeching to a stop. By the time he reached Highway N5 the sirens were so loud it sounded like the mother of all carnivals had dropped from the sky and landed squarely in Genappe. In his rearview mirror blue lights pulsed in rhythm over the treetops.

Twenty minutes later he’d made it to the outskirts of Charleroi, an industrial city of two hundred thousand south of Genappe. Hard to know if any witnesses had jotted down his license plate. It was possible. But not likely. The houses back on Rue Emile Hecq were widely spread and screened by hedges so unless the shooting had prompted a neighbor to come outside and walk down the street, he was in the clear. True, taking the chance that he’d been seen was a big roll of the dice. But hell, wasn’t everything? The army, combat, the Magellan Billet, the dozens of impossible scrapes he’d survived? So far the dice had been good to him. Of course, the older he got the more careful he’d become with his bets. Not circumspect, mind you, but clearly leaning that way.

Next step?

Find Jillian before the bad guys did.

First, though, he needed to become a little ghostly. True, his Magellan Billet–issued smartphone was state-of-the-art, operating off an isolated government server that was not subject to public access or scrutiny. Its incoming and outgoing transmissions were scrambled by a highly sophisticated program created especially for the Billet. And it was untrackable. About as private and secure as one could be on the open airways. One of the rules of Stephanie Nelle, his boss at the Magellan Billet, required that all field officers keep one on them at all times.

But this was not official business.

A quick Google search told him Belgium accommodated four primary cell phone carriers—Base, Orange, Proximus, and Telenet—all of which had retail stores in Charleroi. He noted the ones closest to him and their hours, then checked his watch. He had almost three hours to kill. Might as well get his head down while he could.

So he climbed out of the car and headed for the hotel lobby.

  

He found sleep elusive, so he stared at the ceiling. A whole mess of questions with no answers rifled through his brain. First, what could’ve spooked Jillian so badly that she left? The woman was no shrinking violet. In the history of the U.S. Marine Corps she was one of a handful of females who’d not only bested the grueling Infantry Officer Course, but gone on to serve as an 0302 platoon commander. Add to that three tours in Iraq and you had yourself a genuine American soldier. If Basra, al Kut, and al Anbar hadn’t shaken her, what the hell had? Next, the dead man on Jillian’s bathroom floor? Who was he? A hole to the head signaled execution. That meant personal. And what he’d heard her cry out. No, stay there. Behind my cover. Followed by a single shot. Then, Oh, God. No. No. That had sounded personal too. Third, what was Jillian doing in Genappe, Belgium, of all places? Not exactly a tourist hot spot. And then there was—

He stopped himself.

His thoughts were running wild.

Which is never good, Malone would say.

But there was something else gnawing at him.

This one was close to him.

Though he and Jillian had only been involved briefly, there was a not-so-small part of him that’d always wondered if she was the one who got away. She was a smart, sassy, brave woman who didn’t mind using her femininity when necessary. He’d enjoyed their . . .