Ghosts of War by George Mann Page B

spy a chance to find a weapon.” He rubbed a hand over his chin, thoughtfully. “My guess is the call had already connected and the dead man didn't want the person on the other end hearing anything of what was going on. Either that or he was worried the spy would call out some code word or something, immediately alerting the person at the other end.”
    Donovan frowned. “But still…if they heard the shots after the call had already connected, surely they'd want to know what was going on? Especially if they couldn't raise the spy again afterward.”
    The Ghost shrugged. “You've got me there.” He crossed to where Donovan was standing in the doorway. “Anything else of note?”
    “Oh yes,” Donovan said with a smile. “It's like your place. A veritable armory back there.”
    He led the Ghost into the back room, stepping carefully over the corpse in the hallway. It was like walking into the incident room of a police investigation. The walls were plastered with photographs, maps, notes, schematics. Half of these had been torn off, some of them left where they fell, others clearly missing. The windows had been blacked out with thick paint, and there was nothing but an overturned chair and a small table by way of functional furniture. Folders and files had been flung all over the floor, a spray of multicolored paperwork, and three large, wooden chests lay open in the middle of the room.
    The Ghost approached the chests with interest. They were full of weapons. One appeared to contain knives and blades of all possible shapes and sizes, another handguns and pistols, the third explosives, grenades, and what looked like a portable rocket launcher. He turned to Donovan. “Someone clearly left in a hurry. And if the contents of these chests are anything to go by, he's armed to the teeth.”
    Donovan nodded gravely. “I had the same thought. If these are the weapons he chose to leave behind…”
    The Ghost turned to study the wall. There was a large, scale map of Manhattan, upon which a series of locations had been marked out in thick, black ink. They all appeared to be residential properties. Beside each of these the spy had pinned photographs of well-known politicians, businessmen, and public servants. The Ghost stepped forward and tapped one of these photographs with his gloved fingertip. “Senator Isambard Banks,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Donovan.
    “Indeed. But have you seen what's even more interesting?” Donovan came to join him, pointing to one of the photographs attached to a residence on the Upper East Side, right by Central Park.
    “Commissioner Montague,” the Ghost said in surprise. “You think these are the people involved in whatever this spy got himself mixed up in? One of the ‘circles' he'd infiltrated?”
    Donovan shook his head. “I don't know. Perhaps. Maybe they're targets. They're all high-profile public figures. If he was here to cause trouble and sow seeds of terror, these are the people he'd hit. With that arsenal…perhaps he was here to assassinate one of them. Maybe more?”
    “Perhaps,” the Ghost replied, noncommittally. He didn't want to press the point with Donovan, not yet, but it seemed far too much of a coincidence to him that two of the people implicated by this web of conspiracy were the very same people who had—rather irregularly—charged Donovan with finding the spy.
    The Ghost continued to examine the wall. There was a patch of bare plaster where something had very obviously been removed in a hurry, torn from its place so that little shreds of paper still clung to the pins. Beside that was the schematic of an enormous airship, a blueprint for its construction. It was one of the huge transatlantic vessels that regularly ferried passengers—or at least those of them fortunate enough to be able to afford it—back and forth between Europe and America. It was weeks faster than steamship and, the Ghost was led to be believe, significantly more