“Yes, I still plan to find him, but it could be more dangerous than I thought. So I might have to deal with the other side of things first. And no matter what my plans are, these people, they’ll be looking for me.”
“But they’re not looking for me, and we’re using my credit cards, not yours, so how can they find you?”
“That’s all true, and as long as I keep moving, it might stay true. But they’ll be doing everything they can to find me, and if they don’t catch up with me in Lisbon, they’ll catch up with me in Madrid or the next place. That’s why it’s dangerous for you.”
As if she’d heard nothing of his warnings, she beamed at the mention of Lisbon. “You’re going to Lisbon? I can take you there! I’ve never been before and it’s not too far.”
“Mia, I can’t allow you to do that. You heard what I said. I think it’s time for you to go back to Croatia.”
She shook her head, simply, as though wanting him to see that he was mistaken.
“I want to stay. My father said I never have to do anything a man tells me. I am my own woman, and I can do what I like. It’s a good motto.”
“It is, but I really don’t think you understand the danger. You might be killed if you stay with me.”
“No, I won’t. I have faith. I can drive you to Lisbon, but not until morning. I want to visit the cathedral.”
He nodded. She was happy. Maybe he’d stumbled into her path at a truly dangerous moment in her own life, after the loss of her father, when she might easily have slipped back into self-destructive ways, but Wes had accidentally given her a purpose, an extra motivation for keeping her promise to the late General. Nor could he deny that she provided him with a cover of sorts.
“Okay.” He still had reservations about this, but he was grateful too, that he had found a way of not being alone, that he would keep her as a talisman for the time being. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Where will we go in Lisbon?”
“We need to visit Patrice’s friend.”
“The black man.”
“That’s right.” “Is his friend black, too?”
“I don’t know.”
She laughed a little. He had no idea what she was laughing at, but he smiled back at her and sipped his coffee.
Twenty-One
It was early evening by the time they got back to the hotel. Mia went to the cathedral and Wes headed up to his room. He took the envelope that he’d been given in Granada and emptied the contents out onto the bed.
There was the Renfe receipt for two hundred euros, the one for which he’d found no corresponding ticket. Wes didn’t like how many conclusions he was drawing, but it was hard not to imagine her traveling by train from Seville to some place unknown on that ticket—what else could it have been for?
What he struggled to imagine was Rachel leaving her son with the friend she’d entrusted him to, knowing she might never see him again. She’d been a shrewd operator in her career, tough-minded, cynical, able to detach herself from the emotion of often-grim situations, but with her own son, she would have surely been devastated.
He found it easier to believe it had been a miscalculation on her part—that she’d known she was in danger, enough to want Ethan somewhere safe, but that she’d honestly believed the threat could be averted and it would be only a temporary separation.
Wes picked up a handful of the postcards, from the cities before Madrid—Barcelona, Salamanca, Toledo—as well as the two that followed her stay in the capital. Some just had random notes written on the back, others were more like small journal entries, and yet Wes saw nothing about Ethan. He understood that, though. It was common in their line of work, being open and relaxed about everything except the things that really mattered.
He noticed a scrap of paper on which she’d written GB’s: 1632. He guessed that was the entry code for Grace’s apartment building in Madrid, so Rachel would have been able to come and go while Grace was at work. Grace would have some answers for him, whether she knew it not, whether she wanted to share them or not, but there was nothing else about her here.
There was also nothing among the various pieces of debris from her last days to hint at the reason for the planned visit to Málaga. That was hardly surprising in a way, because she’d been killed before getting there, but he was intrigued enough by her scheduled brief stop in the city to be certain it was important.
Struck by a thought, he stuffed the postcards and receipts back into the envelope and made his way down to the hotel’s small business center. He brought up Google News on the computer and searched for everything he could find on Málaga.
Spotting nothing relevant, he searched again, this time on “CIA” and “Spain,” then the more colorful combination of “spy” and “Spain,” and then as he scrolled through the results, he spotted a headline and couldn’t understand why it hadn’t appeared on his first search.
Russian Spy’s Málaga Death Most Likely Natural Causes
He opened the story. There was a picture Wes never would have recognized, because it looked nothing like the way the man had looked in person. But the name was there too, that of ex-GRU Colonel Konstantin Grishko, who’d died a week ago of a suspected heart attack. He’d been living in Málaga for two years since leaving the GRU—Grishko had only been in his late fifties, so Wes guessed this was yet another person who’d had an early retirement pressed upon him.
Some people had always been skittish about how closely Wes’s gray team had worked with Grishko in the Middle East. And relations between Russia and the West had become steadily more toxic in the three years since, to the extent that Sam could have used Wes’s dealing with Grishko to tarnish Wes’s reputation even further.
More importantly, Grishko had known about someone working for Omar Shadid against the joint interests of both Russia and the US, facilitating the movement of arms and fighters across the Iraqi and Turkish borders into Syria. He’d even hinted more than once that his own intelligence pointed directly to Wes’s Baghdad office. He’d probably only held back from naming names to spare Wes’s blushes.
So was Grishko also the reason they’d decided to eliminate Rachel? Sam Garvey’s guard would have gone up the minute she’d started looking into Wes’s case, but if she’d then lined up a meet with Grishko, that would have raised the risk to a whole new level, maybe to the point of doing anything to ensure that meeting never took place.
Sam Garvey had been the rogue element in their operations and now he was running his own gray team, here in Spain or somewhere else in Europe. He’d killed Rachel, he’d killed Grishko, and he would keep trying to kill Wes, because it was the only option—the truth was dangerous for Sam Garvey, so he had no choice but to kill anyone who threatened to expose it.
Wes searched the news stories on the attack in Granada, seeing them in a different light now. There were pictures of some of the victims, and of the scene. He’d seen the pictures of these people before, but he hadn’t cared about them then. He probably wasn’t alone in that—even among the people who’d been moved at the time, how many would remember these names and faces a few weeks on?
He looked at the broad grin of Garrett Fitzpatrick, a college student from Syracuse, his face full of life and possibility. Wes wanted to see something of his younger self in that face, but he struggled even to remember the person he’d been before all of this.
There, too, was Stephanie Breut, and next to her a picture of her four-year-old son, Oscar, with dark eyes and a mop of dark hair, a dimpled smile. His little body had ended up near Rachel, Wes knew that much—a brief confusion ensuing about whether he might be Ethan.
Wes could find no picture of Rachel, though she was mentioned, of course. She was described as a systems analyst with the State Department, on sabbatical and touring Spain at the time of her death.
It was a shame there was no photograph, because he couldn’t quite picture her anymore. He had been able to—he was sure of that—until very recently, and he co
uld recall elements of her face and body but still couldn’t picture her, whole, real, as she had once been to him.
What he could remember was her voice, the way she’d spoken, the way she’d explained things, always calm and measured. I know you feel like killing Sam Garvey, that’s what she would have said to him right now, but you have to focus, J, you have to focus on keeping Ethan safe. She would have offered a wry smile then, apparently accepting Wes for who he was, and added, Ethan comes first, but after that, it’s your game.
Of course, Wes wished he could have spoken to her too, to say sorry, to say she never should have tried to clear his name, if that’s what she’d been doing. And he’d have reassured her. He was determined to find Ethan. He was Wes’s son and Wes would find out where he was and raise him to be the boy she would have wanted. But he’d still deal with Sam first, because as Rachel had learned to her cost, none of them would be safe until Wes did that.
Twenty-Two
The next day was forecast to be hot, and there was already a threatening warmth in the air when they got into the car to leave early in the morning. Mia handed him something as he fastened his seatbelt. It was Patrice’s bible.
“You left it on the back seat. I chose something for you.”
“Thanks. I’ll . . . take a look.”
She smiled, and for a moment he thought she might be waiting for him to open the bible right now—but, satisfied, she turned her attention to the street in front of them, started the car, and pulled away.
She drove with her usual slightly unnerving confidence through the tight streets of the old town, and then, once they were heading out through the suburbs, Wes opened the bible on the page where she’d placed the bookmark.
It was Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, which Wes immediately recognized, having probably heard it at several funerals over the years—To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die . . .
It was a beautiful passage, but he couldn’t help but think it had probably been used at the funerals of some of the victims from Granada, providing false comfort to their friends and families. Maybe it had even been read at Rachel’s service.
Then he noticed that Patrice had underlined a small passage in the previous chapter, and his eye was automatically drawn to it.
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.
That was a truth Wes could relate to, and understand.
He thought of Patrice’s group therapy sessions, and saw how Dr. Leclerc would never be likely to offer any greater guidance than Patrice had found for himself within this book. Every underlined section of text seemed like a staging post on Patrice’s path to peace and redemption, and a tantalizing glimpse into the life he’d lived.
Mia’s selection was no less interesting. He wondered if she feared for his soul. For that matter, he wondered if Patrice had feared for his spiritual wellbeing, too. They had no need to worry on that account, but it was touching that they did so all the same.
He thought she might question him on the passage she’d selected, but she never mentioned it again. Her mind had apparently moved on and she was fixed now on the road as they drove toward the Portuguese border through a sun-scorched landscape, with fields of grow tunnels looking deceptively like shimmering bodies of water in the distance.
They stopped in a rest area near Faro, then continued toward Lisbon through scrubby and cluttered country threaded with power lines. It was only now that they were getting close to Patrice’s contact that Wes started to think about what he would need—it wasn’t much, mainly ammunition for the guns he already had, a lock-picking kit if the guy carried that kind of equipment, good-quality handcuffs.
As the thought occurred to him, he said, “You realize, I might have to kill some people.”
“In Lisbon?” She sounded unfazed, as if he’d merely said that he might need to go shopping or do some other mundane activity.
“No, not in Lisbon. It’s probably the last place they’d look for me. And I might not have to kill anyone, but it’s possible, in Madrid or . . . Well, I just think it’s best that you know.”
“Soldiers have to kill people sometimes, just like the people you killed in the forest.”
“That’s true.” He thought she might say something else, but she seemed remarkably relaxed when it came to the subject of what soldiers might need to do. “Why did your family stop talking to you, your aunts and uncles and cousins?”
“They didn’t stop talking. I am the daughter of General Nikola Pavić.”
“But you said you weren’t close, not since something happened, but you didn’t say what?”
Her eyes remained fixed on the road, and for a little while he thought he might have hit a raw nerve and she wouldn’t answer, but it seemed she’d simply been thinking through her response.
“My father was a hero. Many people in Croatia consider him this way. Without people like my father, our country might not exist. But the war was not easy, and people outside, they wanted to put him on trial. I persuaded him it was also heroic to go to court, also important for the future of our country. He said he would go to the court, but only if I made a promise to him, that I would eat, and . . .” Almost subconsciously, she removed her hands from the wheel one at a time and pulled her sleeves down over her wrists.
“So that’s why your family weren’t happy with you?”
“We weren’t very close anyway, because of the things they said.”
“What kind of things?”
“Cruel things, but we mustn’t blame them—they’re not very intelligent people. I’m different. My father said I mustn’t care about being different, and that I should have sympathy for all the poor people who aren’t different at all, who are all just the same as each other.”
Wes smiled, wishing he had taken the time to befriend the late General Pavić.
“Your father was a very wise man.”
“Yes.” Then a moment later, she said, “Have you killed women and children?”
Two of the people in the helicopter that Wes brought down were women, but he guessed Mia was talking about a different kind of crime. More importantly, he guessed she was once again talking about her own father and what might have appeared on his charge sheet.
“The first time I ever killed someone there was a little girl.”
“Tell me.”
Her curiosity so rarely manifested itself in a way that he recognized that he was thrown now. She wasn’t being polite, he knew that much. He was also conscious that he was about to tell Mia something from his past that he’d never even shared with Rachel, in part because she would never have asked, in part because he’d never wanted her to know too much about that side of his life.
“It was in Georgia, in the Caucasus, my first overseas posting. The target was a politician, but a crooked one, in bed with the Russian mafia, secretly helping Moscow undermine his own government. My government decided the only way to guarantee democracy in Georgia was to get rid of him—not quite as simple as you’d imagine. He’d spend every weekend in the country, then head back to the city on Monday morning, and the only weak spot in his security was on that journey between those two houses, so that’s where we hit him. We planted a bomb on a rural road—the car was armored but we were confident the bomb would be big enough. I was still pretty junior, so I was the trigger guy, positioned on a hillside up above.”
“On your own? On a hill?”
“Sure.” She laughed a little, though he wasn’t sure what had amused her. “Actually it was beautiful, quite desolate, but beautiful. Anyway, there were other people watching the house, and I got word that it wasn’t just him and his driver in the car that morning. For some reason his twelve-year-old daughter was with him. No one was sure what to do, whether to go ahead with it. They were still debating it, but by this time I cou
ld actually see the car approaching. Someone told me to stand down, to call off the attack, but I knew we wouldn’t get another chance like this. So I ignored them. The car was blown maybe thirty feet into the air, landed on its roof in a field. I could see through my binoculars that the politician was dead, and I guessed the driver was. But the girl, she screamed for ten minutes. I remember being amazed that she could keep screaming like that. I left once she went quiet. They were all dead before anyone else reached the wreckage, I know that much. That was the only time I killed a child.”
“Did you get into trouble?”
“I got promoted.” Wes laughed, amused by the memory of something that seemed to sum up all that followed, even to the point of becoming an unwitting scapegoat and getting sent to prison. “The mission was considered a success. It wasn’t pretty, and I wish the girl hadn’t been in the car, but I knew it had to be done, and I guess I was proved right.”
“That’s why they promoted you. Sometimes a leader has to make difficult decisions.”
“That’s true.”
“And they don’t always know what their soldiers are doing.”
“That’s also true.” The parallels were uncanny. Yes, she was talking about her father, but in retrospect it seemed Wes really hadn’t known what the members of his own team were doing, and certainly not that they’d been conspiring to get rid of him.
Wes had known about Omar Shadid, but had never considered him important in the maelstrom of everything that was going on in the region—a former Saddam loyalist turned criminal warlord with global ambitions. He’d even approached Wes once, but Wes hadn’t been interested. So Shadid had apparently gone to the next person down the chain—the all-too-corruptible Sam Garvey—and in failing to see that danger, Wes had sealed his own fate, and maybe Rachel’s too.
The Names of the Dead Page 10