by Tom Clancy
The surgery had been performed under full general anesthesia, of course, using nitrous oxide, just as in American hospitals, coupled with the lingering effects of the barbiturates that had been used to begin his sedation. Bellow sat by the bed in the hospital’s recovery room, watching the bio-monitors and waiting for him to awaken. It would not be an event so much as a process, probably a lengthy one.
There were police around now, both in uniform and out, watching with him. Clark and Chavez were there, too, standing and staring at the man who’d so brazenly attacked their men—and their women, Bellow reminded himself. Chavez especially had eyes like flint—hard, dark, and cold, though his face appeared placid enough. He thought he knew the senior Rainbow people pretty well. They were clearly professionals, and in the case of Clark and Chavez, people who’d lived in the black world and done some very black things, most of which he didn’t and would never know about. But Bellow knew that both men were people of order, like police officers in many ways, keepers of the rules. Maybe they broke them sometimes, but it was only to sustain them. They were romantics, just as the terrorists were, but the difference was in their choice of cause. Their purpose was to protect. Grady’s was to upset, and in the difference of mission was the difference between the men. It was that simple to them. Now, however angry they might feel at this sleeping man, they would not cause him physical harm. They’d leave his punishment to the society that Grady had so viciously attacked and whose rules they were sworn to protect, if not always uphold.
“Any time now,” Bellow said. Grady’s vital signs were all coming up. The body moved a little as his brain started to come back to wakefulness, just minor flexes here and there. It would find that some parts were not responding as they should, then focus on them to see what the limitations were, looking for pain but not finding it yet. Now the head started turning, slowly, left and right, and soon . . .
The eyelids fluttered, also slowly. Bellow consulted the list of IDs that others had drawn up and hoped that the British police and the guys from “Five” had provided him with good data.
“Sean?” he said. “Sean, are you awake?”
“Who? . . .”
“It’s me, it’s Jimmy Carr, Sean. You back with us now, Sean?”
“Where . . . am . . . I?” the voice croaked.
“University Hospital, Dublin, Sean. Dr. McCaskey just finished fixing your shoulder up. You’re in the recovery room. You’re going to be okay, Sean. But, my God, getting you here was the devil’s own work. Does it hurt, your shoulder, Sean?”
“No, no hurt now, Jimmy. How many? . . .”
“How many of us? Ten, ten of us got away. They’re off in the safe houses now, lad.”
“Good.” The eyes opened, and saw someone wearing a surgical mask and cap, but he couldn’t focus well, and the image was a blur. The room . . . yes, it was a hospital . . . the ceiling, rectangular tiles held in a metal rack . . . the lighting, fluorescent. His throat was dry and a little sore from the intubation, but it didn’t matter. He was living inside a dream, and none of this was actually happening. He was floating on a white, awkward cloud, but at least Jimmy Carr was here.
“Roddy, where’s Roddy?”
“Roddy’s dead, Sean,” Bellow answered. “Sorry, but he didn’t make it.”
“Oh, damn . . .” Grady breathed. “Not Roddy . . .”
“Sean, we need some information, we need it quickly.”
“What . . . information?”
“The chap who got us the information, we need to contact him, but we don’t know how to find him.”
“Iosef, you mean?”
Bingo, Paul Bellow thought. “Yes, Sean, Iosef, we need to get in touch with him . . .”
“The money? I have that in my wallet, lad.”
Oh, Clark thought, turning. Bill Tawney had all of Grady’s personal possessions sitting on a portable table. In the wallet, he saw, were two hundred and ten British pounds, one hundred seventy Irish pounds, and several slips of paper. On one yellow Post-it note were two numbers, six digits each, with no explanation. A Swiss or other numbered account? the spook wondered.
“How do we access it, Sean? We need to do that at once, you see, my friend.”
“Swiss Commercial Bank in Bern . . . call . . . account number and control number in . . . in my wallet.”
“Good, thank you, Sean . . . and Iosef, what’s the rest of his name . . . how do we get in touch with him, Sean? Please, we need to do that right away, Sean.” Bellow’s false Irish accent wasn’t good enough to pass muster with a drunk, but Grady’s current condition was far beyond anything alcohol could do to the human mind.
“Don’t . . . know. He contacts us, remember. Iosef Andreyevich contacts me through Robert . . . through the network . . . never gave me a way to contact him.”
“His last name, Sean, what is it, you never told me.”
“Serov, Iosef Andreyevich Serov . . . Russian . . . KGB chap . . . Bekaa Valley . . . years ago.”
“Well, he gave us good information on this Rainbow mob, didn’t he, Sean?”
“How many did we . . . how many . . . ?”
“Ten, Sean, we killed ten of them, and we got away, but you were shot on the escape in your Jaguar, remember? But we hurt them, Sean, we hurt them badly,” Bellow assured him.
“Good . . . good . . . hurt them . . . kill them . . . kill them all,” Grady whispered from his gurney.
“Not quite, asshole,” Chavez observed quietly, from a few feet away.
“Did we get the two women? . . . Jimmy, did we get them?”
“Oh, yes, Sean, I shot them myself. Now, Sean, this Russian chap. I need to know more about him.”
“Iosef ? Good man, KGB, got the money and the drugs for us. Lots of money . . . six million . . . six . . . and the cocaine,” Grady added for the TV Minicam that sat on a tripod next to the bed. “Got it for us, at Shannon, remember? Flew in on the little jet, the money and the drugs from America . . . well, think it was America . . . must have been . . . the way he talks now, American accent like the television, funny thing for a Russian, Jimmy . . .”
“Iosef Andreyevich Serov?”
The figure on the bed tried to nod. “That’s how they do names, Jimmy. Joseph, son of Andrew.”
“What does he look like, Sean?”
“Tall as me . . . brown hair, eyes . . . round face, speaks many languages . . . Bekaa Valley . . . nineteen eighty-six . . . good man, helped us a lot . . .”
“How we doing, Bill?” Clark whispered to Tawney.
“Well, none of this can be used in court, but—”
“Fuck the courts, Bill! How good is this? Does it match with anything?”
“The name Serov doesn’t ring a bell, but I can check with our files. We can run these numbers down, and there will be a paper trail of some sort, but”—he checked his watch—“it will have to wait until tomorrow.”
Clark nodded. “Hell of an interrogation method.”
“Never seen this before. Yes, it is.”
Just then Grady’s eyes opened more. He saw the others around the bed, and his face twisted into a question. “Who are you?” he asked groggily, finding a strange face in this dream.
“My name is Clark, John Clark, Sean.”
The eyes went wide for a second. “But you’re . . .”
“That’s right, pal. That’s who I am. And thanks for spilling your guts. We got all of you, Sean. All fifteen dead or captured. I hope you like it here in England, boy. You’re going to be here a long, long time. Why don’t you go back to sleep now, lad?” he asked with grossly overdone courtesy. I’ve killed better men than you, punk, he thought, behind a supposedly impassive mien that in fact proclaimed his feelings.
Dr. Bellow pocketed his tape recorder and his notes. It rarely failed. The twilight state following general anesthesia made any mind vulnerable to suggestion. That was why people with high security clearances never went to the hospital without someone from their parent agencies nearby. In
this case he’d had ten minutes or so to dive deep inside and come back out with information. It could never be used in a court of law, but then, Rainbow wasn’t composed of cops.
“Malloy got him, eh?” Clark asked on his way to the door.
“Actually it was Sergeant Nance,” Chavez answered.
“We have to get him something nice for this job,” Rainbox Six observed. “We owe him for this. We got a name now, Domingo. A Russian name.”
“Not a good one, it’s gotta be a cover name.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, John, don’t you recognize it? Serov, former chairman of KGB, back in the ’60s, I think, fired a long time ago because he screwed something up.”
Clark nodded. It wouldn’t be the name on the guy’s real passport, and that was too bad, but it was a name, and names could be tracked. They walked out of the hospital into the cool British evening. John’s car was waiting, with Corporal Mole looking rather pleased with himself. He’d get a nice ribbon for the day’s work and probably a very nice letter from this American pseudo-general. John and Ding got in, and the car drove to the base stockade, where the others were being kept for the time being, because the local jail wasn’t secure enough. Inside, they were guided to an interrogation room. Timothy O’Neil was waiting there, handcuffed to a chair.
“Hello,” John said. “My name is Clark. This is Domingo Chavez.”
The prisoner just stared at them.
“You were sent here to murder our wives,” John went on. That didn’t make him so much as blink either. “But you fucked it all up. There were fifteen of you. There are six now. The rest won’t be doing much of anything. You know, people like you make me ashamed to be Irish. Jesus, kid, you’re not even an effective criminal. By the way, Clark is just my working name. Before that, it was John Kelly, and my wife’s maiden name was O’Toole. So, now you IRA pukes are killing Irish-Catholic Americans, eh? It’s not going to look good in the papers, punk.”
“Not to mention selling coke, all that coke the Russian brought in,” Chavez added.
“Drugs? We don’t—”
“Sure you do. Sean Grady just told us everything, sang like a fucking canary. We have the number of the Swiss bank account, and this Russian guy—”
“Serov,” Chavez added helpfully, “Iosef Andreyevich Serov, Sean’s old pal from the Bekaa Valley.”
“I have nothing to say.” Which was more than O’Neil had planned to say. Sean Grady talked. Sean? That was not possible—but where else could they have gotten that information? Was the world totally mad?
“ ’Mano,” Ding continued, “that was my wife you wanted to kill, and she’s got my baby in her belly. You think you’re going to be around much longer? John, this guy ever going to get out of prison?”
“Not anytime soon, Domingo.”
“Well, Timmy, let me tell you something. Where I come from, you mess with a man’s lady, there’s a price that has to be paid. And it ain’t no little price. And where I come from, you never, ever mess with a man’s kids. The price for that’s even worse, you little fuck. Little fuck?” Chavez wondered. “No, I think we can fix that, John. I can fix him so he ain’t never gonna fuck anything.” From the scabbard on his belt, Ding extracted a Marine-type K-Bar fighting knife. The blade was black except for the gleaming quarter-inch edge.
“Not sure that’s a good idea, Ding,” Clark objected weakly.
“Why not? Feels pretty good to me right now, man.” Chavez got out of his chair and walked up to O’Neil. Then he lowered his knife hand to the chair. “Ain’t hard to do, man, just flick, and we can start your sex-change operation. I ain’t a doc, you understand, but I know the first part of the procedure, y’know?” Ding bent down to press his nose against O’Neil’s. “Man, you don’t ever, EVER mess with a Latino’s lady! Do you hear me?”
Timothy O’Neil had had a bad enough day to this point. He looked in the eyes of this Spanish man, heard the accent, and knew that this was not an Englishman, not even an American of the type he thought he knew.
“I’ve done this before, man. Mainly I kill with guns, but I’ve taken bastards down with a knife once or twice. It’s funny how they squirm—but I ain’t gonna kill you, boy. I’m just gonna make you a girl.” The knife moved tight up against the crotch of the man cuffed to the chair.
“Back it off, Domingo!” Clark ordered.
“Fuck you, John! That’s my wife he wanted to hurt, man. Well, I’m gonna fix this little fuck so he never hurts no more girls, ’mano.” Chavez turned to look at the prisoner again. “I’m gonna watch your eyes when I cut it all off, Timmy. I want to see your face when you start to turn into a girl.”
O’Neil blinked, as he looked deep into the dark, Spanish eyes. He saw the rage there, hot and passionate—but as bad as that was, so was the reason for it. He and his mates had planned to kidnap and maybe kill a pregnant woman, and there was shame in that, and for that reason there was justice in the fury before his face.
“It wasn’t like that!” O’Neil gasped. “We didn’t—we didn’t—”
“Didn’t have the chance to rape her, eh? Well, ain’t that a big fuckin’ deal?” Chavez observed.
“No, no, not rape—never, nobody in the unit ever did that, we’re not—”
“You’re fucking scum, Timmy—but soon you’re just gonna be scum, ’cuz ain’t no more fuckin’ in your future.” The knife moved a little. “This is gonna be fun, John. Like the guy we did in Libya two years ago, remember?”
“Jesus, Ding, I still have nightmares about that one,” Clark acknowledged, looking away. “I’m telling you, Domingo, don’t do it!”
“Fuck you, John.” His free hand reached to loosen O’Neil’s belt, then the button at the top of his slacks. Then he reached inside. “Well, shit, ain’t much to cut off. Hardly any dick here at all.”
“O’Neil, if you have anything to tell us, better say it now. I can’t control this kid. I’ve seen him like this before and—”
“Too much talk, John. Shit, Grady spilled his guts anyway. What does this one know that we need? I’m gonna cut it all off and feed it to one of the guard dogs. They like fresh meat.”
“Domingo, we are civilized people and we don’t—”
“Civilized? My ass, John, he wanted to kill my wife and my baby!”
O’Neil’s eyes popped again. “No, no, we never intended to—”
“Sure, asshole,” Chavez taunted. “You had those fucking guns ’cuz you wanted to win their hearts and minds, right? Woman-killer, baby-killer.” Chavez spat.
“I didn’t kill anybody, didn’t even fire my rifle. I—”
“Great, so you’re incompetent. You think you deserve to have a dick just ’cuz you’re fucking incompetent?”
“Who’s this Russian guy?” Clark asked.
“Sean’s friend, Serov, Iosef Serov. He got the money and the drugs—”
“Drugs? Christ, John, they’re fucking druggies, too!”
“Where’s the money?” John persisted.
“Swiss bank, numbered account. Iosef set it up, six million dollars—and—and, Sean asked him to bring us ten kilos of cocaine to sell for the money, we need the money to continue operations.”
“Where are the drugs, Tim?” Clark demanded next.
“Farm—farmhouse.” O’Neil gave them a town and road description that went into Chavez’s pocketed tape-recorder.
“This Serov guy, what’s he look like?” And he got that, too.
Chavez backed off and let his visible temper subside. Then he smiled. “Okay, John, let’s talk to the others. Thanks, Timmy. You can keep your dick, ’mano.”
It was late afternoon over Canada’s Quebec province. The sun reflected off the hundreds of lakes, some of them still covered with ice. Popov had been sleepless for the entire flight, the only wakeful passenger in first class. Again and again his mind went over the same data. If the British had captured Grady, then they had his primary cover name, which was in his travel documents. Well, h
e’d dispose of them that very day. They had a physical description, but he looked not the least bit remarkable. Grady had the number of the Swiss account that Dmitriy had set up, but he’d already transferred the funds to another account, one not traceable to him. It was theoretically possible that the opposition could pursue the information Grady was sure to give them—Popov had no illusions about that—perhaps even secure a set of fingerprints from . . . no, that was too unlikely to be considered a danger, and no Western intelligence service would have anything to cross-match. No Western service even knew anything about him—if they had, he would have been arrested long before.
So, what did that leave? A name that would soon evaporate, a description that fitted a million other men, and a bank account number for a defunct account. In short, very little. He did need to check out, though, very quickly, the procedures by which Swiss banks transferred funds, and whether that process was protected by the anonymity laws that protected the accounts themselves. Even that—the Swiss were not paragons of integrity, were they? No, there would be an arrangement between the banks and the police. There had to be, even if the only purpose was to enable the Swiss police to lie effectively to other national police forces. But the second account was truly a shadow one. He’d set it up through an attorney who didn’t have the ability to betray him, because they’d only met over the telephone. So, there was no path from the information Grady had to where he was now, and that was good. He’d have to think very carefully about ever accessing the 5.7 million dollars in the second account, but there might well be a way to do it. Through another attorney, perhaps, in Liechtenstein, where banking laws were even stricter than in Switzerland? He’d have to look into it. An American attorney could guide him in the necessary procedures, also under total anonymity.