RED Hotel

by Fuller, Ed; Grossman, Gary;

  The general manager put his drink down. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Where, Liam? Where?”

  The general manager still wasn’t getting Reilly’s point.

  “Everywhere there was relative historical relevance. The lobby, the offices, the elevators. He wanted to see it all. Even the classic design that’s carried along the stairway and into the hallways. Not usually seen in most art nouveau buildings. He was even interested in the foundation. The bones of the building.”

  “Where security, the electrical and heating plant, and storage are housed.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Reilly stood. “I want to see the security camera recordings, Liam.”

  “I don’t understand—” Schorel stammered.

  “Did you read the memorandum that said watch out for people taking photographs of the property?”

  “Well, yes, but he’s an architect—”

  “With a fake mailing address. Jesus Liam! You gave a terrorist a first class tour of my hotel!”

  The color drained out of Schorel’s face. “Oh my God, I had no idea.”

  “The security video. Now!”

  Five minutes into screening the CCTV video on the hard drive, Schorel stuck his finger at the monitor. “Stop. There!””

  The young uniformed security officer froze the image.

  Reilly asked if they could zoom in. The computer couldn’t.

  “Can you print it out?”

  The officer, already annoyed with a stranger looking over his shoulder and disrupting his day, shook his head no.

  “I’m not a technical whiz,” said Reilly, “but don’t you have a screen grab program?”

  Again no.

  Reilly removed his cell phone and took a succession of shots of varying focal lengths.

  Thinking he was able to get back to other things, the security officer pushed away from the computer.

  “Oh no. There’s more.” Reilly tapped the man’s shoulder. “I need to see video of what he’s taking pictures of. All of it.”

  “Can I ask what this is about?” the security officer asked in adequate English.

  Reilly quickly shook his head to make sure Schorel didn’t say anything.

  “We think the guy was casing the hotel in advance of a robbery,” said Reilly. “It might involve a guest. I’ll let you know if and when you can say anything. Until then, not a word. Do you understand?”

  The guard looked at Schorel for approval.

  “Whatever he says goes, Pietor,” the general manager replied.

  “Are you Interpol or something?”

  It was a fair question. Schorel had only introduced Reilly as someone who needed to view archived footage.

  “Worse than that, Pietor,” Schorel said. “He’s my boss.”

  They worked well beyond the shift change. By 1:00 a.m., Reilly had sixty-seven photographs on his cell. But rather than emailing them stateside from his iPhone, which he couldn’t trust, he went to the Kensington Diplomat business center.

  There, he disconnected the computer from the internet. Taking it offline was his first line of defense in case it had been hacked. Next, he connected the cellphone to the hotel PC via a USB cable. For the next hour he download, cropped, and uploaded the best of the photos in high-resolution jpegs to his own thumb drive. But before attaching them to a succession of emails, he had an afterthought. It was a simple one. Don’t trust this computer coming back online.

  Reilly shuddered. He deleted the photo work he’d done on the PC, handwrote a BROKEN sign and taped it to the HP monitor. For good measure, he unplugged and disconnected the hard drive, and carried it out of the business center to his room.

  Reilly fully intended to walk the half mile to the American Embassy on Boulevard du Régent. But it was after 2:00 a.m. and he was exhausted. He decided to lie down on his bed and close his eyes, thinking he’d rest only for a few minutes.

  A warm breeze blew across the bay, but Reilly couldn’t feel it. The waves washed across his feet, but he didn’t get wet. Reilly looked at the sun blaring down on the beach. He squinted and blinked. The moon appeared in its place.

  This was a familiar place. But where? he thought. Reilly turned around. He saw a mustard yellow building in the distance glistening in the moonlight. In front of it were smaller structures painted in the whitest white. He stepped forward onto the sand, yet he had no sense of walking. He was only aware of the emptiness, which now included the buildings. Mexico? Mazatlán? He blinked and tried to remember. Daylight again. Yes. Mazatlán.

  Reilly entered the resort from the beach. Couches, chairs, a coffee station, concierge, and check-in desk—all empty. He could hear his footsteps echo on a highly polished marble floor, again without awareness of his feet touching the ground.

  An elevator. He pressed the button. The door opened. He stepped in, turned around, and the door immediately reopened to a hotel room.

  Somewhere else. Where am I?

  Inside the room, the wide-screen TV was on, displaying a KR logo. Reilly picked up the remote on the dresser. He changed the channel. A CCTV camera appeared, showing the lobby and a man taking pictures as he walked through. He changed the channel again. Another closed-circuit camera. The same man in the basement snapping shots of the hotel boiler.

  Now another channel. The video displayed the security office with the photographer on all the monitors, each covering a different area of the hotel. Then, the man appeared full frame in the CCTV camera. He smiled directly into the camera. It was a cold, heartless smile.

  With one hand, the man removed his glasses. With the other, he stroked his stubble, which flaked off.

  Reilly knew there shouldn’t be any audio on the closed-circuit cameras, but he distinctly heard laughter. Cruel mocking laughter. Then a comment directed through the TV to him.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” the man said with a Hungarian accent.

  He stepped closer to the camera.

  “There’s nothing you can do.” He now spoke with a distinct Russian accent.

  The man was Jani Bakó. Then he suddenly became Smug in Tokyo, and with a blink of his mind’s eye, the Russian he had seen in Moscow.

  Reilly hit the power button on his remote. The screen went to black. He heard the sound of rustling sheets behind him. Reilly turned. There, in bed, was Marnie Babbitt, kicking the covers off, sexy, naked, and inviting.

  She smiled. But it wasn’t the smile he knew. It was the man’s smile, ice-cold.

  Marnie spread her legs, and he moved forward.

  “Come to bed,” she said. She opened her arms beckoning and repeating her invitation. “Come to bed.” Then, “There’s nothing you can do.”

  Reilly stopped. She said it again with Bakó’s voice in sync from the TV set.

  “No!” Reilly heard himself say.

  He ran out of the room, but instead of the hallway, he found himself back in the lobby. Now the area was a battle zone. Bodies were everywhere. Blood spilling from severed body parts. Fires still smoldered. A cacophony of wails and cries mixed with moans and last gasps.

  Reilly stumbled through the wreckage, eventually tripping over a fallen beam. He landed hard on the ground, facing the entrance. There, he saw Bakó standing and smiling.

  He turned away, discovering he was lying next to the little boy from Tokyo who was clutching his teddy bear. The boy’s eyes were open, but with no life behind them. And yet, he spoke in a whisper.

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  He said it again, this time mixed with the man’s voice and a third time with Marnie’s.

  It repeated again and again until a loud scream cut them off. It was Reilly’s own cry that awakened him from the worst nightmare of his life.

  Reilly bolted upright, shaking and covered in perspiration. He was awake, but the dream remained completely vivid. Every disturbing image. Every detail.

  It was 5:45 a.m. A shower would help cleanse him emotionally.

  Reilly shaved,
all the while seeing Bakó’s eyes peer through the fogged bathroom mirror. He had to find out if Bakó was Smug. The dream told him they were one and the same. If there was any chance in hell, Veronica Severi would confirm it.

  He dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, slipped on loafers, and grabbed a black sports coat. The thumb drive was in his pants pocket along with his passport.

  Reilly was finally out the door at 6:30 a.m. and at the embassy twenty minutes later via a circuitous route. He was certain no one had followed him.

  Talking his way in was not difficult. Convincing the CIA station chief that he had important files to email to Langley was another. It required a call to Bob Heath at home and Heath going to work. All of this took another forty-five minutes. Under the eye of the overnight desk agent, Reilly emailed the photographs on his thumb drive.

  Reilly passed on the offer of breakfast at the embassy. He had to work with Liam Schorel on accelerating the Diplomat to Red Hotel status.

  61

  YALTA, CRIMEAN PENINSULA

  UKRAINE

  Andre Miklos sat with his feet up on an ottoman on the third-story veranda of an Airbnb rental. He had a magnificent view of the Black Sea and was enjoying a break from his preparations. The assassin puffed lightly on a hand-rolled Cuaba Exclusivos Cuban cigar and sipped a glass of Russian Standard Vodka. He held a yellow pad with a to-do list on his lap, but hadn’t looked at it in the last twenty minutes. Only four boxes remained unchecked.

  Miklos listened to a movie that was on the living room TV. The sound was amplified through a larger five-point Bose system. The score swelled. He waved his hand through the air as if he were conducting. It was a soundtrack he knew well. As it began to crescendo he got up and went inside, continuing to conduct the rising score to the action scene in the film.

  While doing so, he studied photographs, notes, and maps he’d taped to the wall. His eyes scanned the photographs, a timeline, and a city street map with three routes highlighted in different colors.

  Miklos stood back and admired his planning, his hand still leading the orchestra. He took all but five photos down, each in time with the music. Then the schedule came down and finally the map. He stared at the remaining pictures, photographs he had shot in the guise of the Hungarian architect. They were certainly worth the three hundred euro bottle of wine. Perfect photographs of the Kensington Diplomat Hotel’s most vulnerable areas—the street-side entrance, the lobby, the basement power plant, and the elevator banks. What interested him the most, however, was another part of the hotel. Maybe the plan could be scaled down, he thought. Make it easier, more efficient, and eliminate any confusion over the actual objective.

  Miklos went to his laptop computer and ran off new photographs through a portable printer. Yes, he told himself. Better. Especially considering he already had an asset in place.

  The music shifted tempo to an adagio passage, a momentary lull that he knew would build to his favorite part. He turned to the television screen and stood for the climax of the movie, one that hadn’t been regularly scheduled on Ukrainian TV for years, but now played regularly on the Russian-held Crimean station.

  The film, a silent classic, Battleship Potemkin, included a score added in 1950 comprised of three Dmitri Shostakovich symphonies. It dramatically depicted the 1905 proletariat uprising against the Cossack army and a mutiny aboard the tsarist ship that sowed the seeds for the Russian Revolution.

  The music, one of many scores composed or inserted in the film over the years, swelled as the tsar’s troops approached the top of the Odessa Steps behind the citizens cheering the mutineers who had overthrown the tsar’s ship commander and crew. Suddenly, a woman screamed. People turned to the danger.

  Tension built. Would the Cossacks shoot? Of course, Miklos smiled. Martyrs must die to light the revolutionary fuse.

  One row of white jacketed soldiers was followed by a second. Scores of panicked citizens began running down the steps.

  The first tsarist soldier aimed and shot. Then more.

  A cripple bounded down the steps. A baby carriage rolled out of control. A student with broken glasses stared at the inevitable slaughter. Men, women, children, and the elderly died as they ran. A mother picked up her dying child and faced the Cossacks. The caption read, “Don’t shoot!” But the soldiers did.

  Stopping the inevitable? Miklos thought. There is no stopping the inevitable. I am the messenger of the inevitable.

  Miklos watched the magnificent poetic violence unfold in the 1925 Sergei Eisenstein movie, as powerful today as when it was filmed.

  Now all the Cossacks fired. The good people of Odessa fell. Necessary casualties, Miklos said to himself. Just as others must die.

  The massacre on screen would have continued had the crew of the Potemkin, moored in the Black Sea harbor, not mutinied. But they had. Heroically and for the sake of the people. Comrades.

  Now the huge cannons aboard the battleship, in the hands of the mutineers, aimed at the Cossacks massacring the citizens.

  One of the big guns discharged. The first volley of the new order.

  Then another, and another.

  The strings pulsed. The timpani pounded and the brass blared in sync with the ship’s cannon fire. The Cossacks showed no mercy for the oppressors.

  Miklos heard Nikolai Gorshkov’s voice in the trumpets and his own calling in the rhythmic beat of the drums.

  This was the story of the revolution that overthrew the hated tsars in the twentieth century. This would be the story of Russia’s renewal in the twenty-first century.

  Andre Miklos was the great cannon on the Potemkin. The tsar was NATO.

  Miklos placed five new photographs on the wall. “Yes,” he said aloud, admiring his planning. “Yes.”

  The film’s score built to a final emotionally charged climax. He imagined the soundtrack playing against the destruction he would soon create and the spark it would ignite.

  “Yes,” he said one more time.

  62

  BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

  “Hi buddy, sorry about the sleep deprivation,” Reilly apologized to Heath.

  “Comes with the territory,” Heath answered. “So does bad news.”

  This threw Reilly. “Not a match?”

  “Oh, Veronica got a match all right. That’s the bad news. The very bad news. The good news would have been if you had nothing to worry about. But she came back with a reliability factor of 100 percent. No equivocation.”

  Reilly exhaled deeply into the phone.

  “We’ll work with you. Whatever you need,” the CIA agent said, recognizing his friend’s apprehension.

  “The first thing is figuring out when,” Reilly said.

  “Any ideas?”

  “Perhaps. How do you spell NATO?”

  Reilly was waiting for Schorel when he came into work.

  “Liam, do you have a NATO schedule covering the rest of the summer through the fall?”

  “Ah, good morning. Yes, a general one.”

  “Get it, please.”

  The hotel GM produced a document showing upcoming NATO conferences. There was the military committee conference in August, ministers of defense meetings in September, and ministers of foreign affairs meetings in October.

  “And bookings for these events.”

  “Usually a lot. We’re on the approved list.”

  “Check.”

  Schorel had to dig into reservations to see who had already booked with NATO discount codes. He came back after an hour with the names of 394 guests over the three conference dates.

  Reilly examined the portfolio, but nothing jumped out at him.

  “Do you still have avails?”

  “Yes, and there are always changes and additions.”

  “Do you know who these people are?”

  “Officials and their staffs, if they’re using the discounts. Beyond that, no.”

  “Damn,” Reilly said. He thought about the dead Romanian folk singer again and the Ukrainian separa
tists in Kiev. “I’ll take these, but it may be too narrow. What about all the bookings right through the end of the year?”

  “Thousands. Tens of thousands, Dan. They’ll be on your registration portal, too.”

  Reilly wrapped up with Schorel and immediately called Heath on his cell. The CIA operative reminded Reilly they couldn’t assume the Diplomat was the only target or even the best one in Brussels. Proscribed practice would suggest Smug had cased other locations as well.

  “True, but he spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort here,” Reilly said. “In my estimation, we’re at the top of the list.”

  Heath listened to his friend’s concern and vowed to circle around to all of his sources.

  Reilly’s next call was to Spike Boyce in Chicago.

  “Spike, I need you to press F7 or whatever the hell you do to output all the reservations for the Kensington Diplomat in Brussels from now through the end of the year. Flag any that look hinky to you.”

  “Hinky? If you’re asking me to profile by name?” The IT executive voiced a definite exception.

  “No, I’m not. Hinky in terms of obvious targets. People or groups that might make especially big headlines if something happened.”

  “Oh input our guest list into a crystal ball, that’s all you need?” Boyce asked sarcastically.

  Reilly had no appetite for humor.

  Boyce realized his faux pas. “When do you need it and in what format?”

  “Immediately and on an Excel spreadsheet with names and addresses.”

  “You kicking it up somewhere? Is that kosher? Because if you are …”

  “Spike, we ended our conversation one sentence earlier.”

  Reilly studied the list Schorel provided. Ministers, aides, and their plus-ones, all credentialed by a diplomatic billing code. None of the names meant anything to him. He cross-checked their nationalities against the twenty-eight members of the NATO alliance. No outliers from other nations using NATO discounts, he concluded.

  Of course, he didn’t think an answer would come that easily. He hoped Boyce would have more.