When he finished, Cannon took the opposing side. Collins lined up on the side of closing. Brodowski favored Reilly’s POV. Wilson saw public relations problems either way.
Shaw called on Lou Tiano for his opinion. “Lou, you’ve been quiet. I’m not asking for a tie-breaking vote. In the end, this will be my decision. But where do you stand?”
“I think it comes down to trust. Can we trust the defensive measures we’ve implemented? Can we trust the people we’ve empowered to evaluate the danger? Can we trust ourselves that we’re not simply going to make an economic decision that benefits us?”
The CFO sighed deeply. “A few questions for Dan and Alan.”
“Go on,” Shaw encouraged.
“Alan, have you gotten any indication that other hotels in Brussels have been subject to similar target surveillances?”
“No, Lou. I’ve talked to managers at the principal properties. They had no reports of having been cased.”
“Will our Red Hotel emergency procedures deter an attack?” Tiano asked.
“More than if we hadn’t acted. But nothing is guaranteed.”
“Have we hired our own private security force? One we can fully rely on?”
“Yes. Dan and I actually subcontracted Donald Klugo’s company. You’ll remember he was one of our committee consultants. A few of his team are visibly on the ground now. More within thirty-six hours. Given Brussels’ recent history, they don’t appear out of the ordinary. Just tougher, better trained, and better armed than our in-house security.”
“They’re mercenaries?” Wilson asked, fearful of any negative marketing blowback.
“Yes, they are,” Cannon answered.
“Thank you. Now Dan,” Tiano continued, “you believe the potential assassin … we can call him assassin?”
“Yes.”
“This assassin is the same individual behind the Tokyo bombing?”
“Yes.”
“Supported by?” Tiano pressed.
“You mean who’s behind him or where does the intelligence come from?”
“Since you bring up two points, both.”
“The American intelligence community has been conducting a serious search, which started with the ATM image recovered in Tokyo. They believe they have a credible ID on the subject. We should leave it at that. But I believe our hotel is a collateral target. The true objective? A specific person or group of persons.”
“And who does this person work for?”
Reilly cleared his voice. “Edward, Lou,” Reilly said, directing his comment to the two executives in particular, “this is not something to discuss on an open phone line.”
Chris Collins objected. “What? Why in hell would that be a problem?”
“It is,” Reilly stated.
“You mean, ‘could be,’” the attorney shot back.
“Is,” Reilly reiterated.
This ground the conversation down to an uncomfortable silence. Shaw was the first to speak. “Respecting Dan’s wishes, we should take care. Let’s simply talk in general terms.”
“What possible motive is there?” the PR executive asked.
“Publicity, June.”
“To what end?”
“I don’t know that yet,” Reilly explained, preferring not to share his own thoughts.
“Any ideas?” the president pressed.
“I’m working on it,” Reilly quietly replied. “Again, let’s table that right now.”
“Dan, you need to be straight with me.”
“Sir, trust me. Not here. Not now.”
“I get it,” Shaw said, calling an end to the dialogue. “Just assure me that you’re working for the best interests of the company.”
Shaw had asked a very pointed question. But not the question. The question he could have asked: Was Reilly also working for the best interests of someone else?
“Yes, sir. I am. And if we have the chance to prevent a greater crime from happening, one that has immense geopolitical ramifications, I recommend that we keep the doors open in Brussels and help catch the bastard who murdered 115 people in Tokyo.”
Shaw put the call on hold while he conferred with his Chicago team. Reilly in London and Cannon in Brussels were left speculating what he would decide. Five minutes later, the chief executive reactivated the line.
“There are risks on either side of the argument,” Shaw stated. “Risks to the lives of our guests and staff, risks to our stock and our financial bottom line, and risks that, if I make the wrong decision, could shake faith in the corporation.”
So far the company founder hadn’t telegraphed his decision.
“But whether we like it or not, our industry has entered a phase with no end in sight. We are in two businesses today, as Dan reminded me not long ago, hospitality and anti-terrorism. We have the same challenges as an international airline carrier transporting people by air, or the city of New York protecting New Year’s revelers at Times Square. It’s the new normal. And as far as I’m concerned, I want us to be the leader.”
Edward Jefferson Shaw then proclaimed, “We stay open. Now, Dan and Alan, make Diplomat the safest hotel in the world.”
70
LANGLEY, VA
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Heath read the briefing paper titled “The Effect of Increased NATO Presence in Eastern Europe on The Russian Federation.” It was dated and marked secret.
The assessment had been culled from field reports and those who were paid to interpret from the comfort of their Langley offices.
It began with a synthesis of news reports from AP, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Russia’s Izvestia. The key bullet points:
Pentagon rumored to increase American troops, armored vehicles, and tanks beyond even Q4 projections to deter Russian aggression.
4,200 troops annually rotated and divided among Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Total permanent US troop strength, 62,000. New equipment stockpiles to Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands.
White House avoiding comment.
The report chronicled the largest buildup since the end of the Cold War. To Heath’s thinking, it read like war footing and it played into Reilly’s beliefs.
The report continued with the potential negatives. Big ones. Important ones.
Creates exposure for NATO nations on the eastern flank.
Fear the commitment could come too late.
Moscow will view the strategy as a visible and dangerous escalation and a threat.
Russia will cite a violation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act that stated the alliance would not position substantial, permanent combat forces at Russia’s eastern frontier.
It may motivate Russia to act first.
Underscoring the assessment about the Russian Federation was on record criticism from the Russian ambassador to NATO.
“NATO is moving its territory closer to Russia. It is using this territory to project military power in the direction of Russia.” The ambassador had concluded his statement adding a counter threat: “Russia is not moving.”
The report went on to outline moves and countermoves played out at the expense of NATO’s smaller border countries, which resembled disposable pawns in a larger game of chess.
Heath requested and received approval to share the report with Dan Reilly. He also had more to discuss with Reilly. A name to put on the face of Smug.
71
POTSDAM, THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
DECEMBER, 1989
The angle was bad, but it wouldn’t get any better.
“Fucking freezing out here.”
“A little longer. Keep your eyes on your side.”
The two men were doing double surveillance. One had binoculars on the drab three-story building from across the street. The second was tasked with watching a building to their right. Both targets were dangerous: the local KGB headquarters and the nearer Stasi outpost.
“They’re shouting,” the first man w
hispered. CIA agent Joe Lenczycki adjusted his focus. “Spitting mad over something. Hasn’t slowed them.”
They watched as the subjects threw file after file into the burn oven. The open window provided ventilation and allowed Lenczycki to see better. The two men, with holsters over their left shoulders, worked fast.
“Damn.”
“What?” asked Taylor Roberts, the second agent.
“Wish I had the camera.” A 35mm with a long lens would have helped, but it also would have drawn attention. Attention meant questions. Questions meant problems. So they had crossed the border without it.
Most Stasi agents were doing everything they could to disappear between the cracks in the pavement after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet some still patrolled the streets of Potsdam hoping to take down a few more enemies of the state. A last shot for Communism.
The two CIA agents had been stopped twice during their stay. Each time they acted appropriately nervous as their identities as college professors on holiday from Australia would suggest. It was a solid cover backed up in Melbourne thanks to cooperation from ASIS, the Australian Security Intelligence Service. And while their binoculars might be considered suspicious, Lenczycki and Roberts also had rehearsal tickets at the Neues Palais for La forza del destino, a Giuseppe Verdi opera, which explained away the gear.
Now safely observing from the roof, Lenczycki sharpened the focus on his binoculars. Through the glass, his subjects looked particularly cold. No, he thought. Cruel.
He made mental notes. Number One was perhaps five-to ten-years senior to Number Two. That suggested he was in charge, in addition to the way he strutted around the room. Number Two merely nodded and obeyed, but it was clear he was upset. He added files to the fire with increasing vehemence.
The CIA had limited eyes in Potsdam and other GDR cities, and scant intelligence on the KGB operatives and infrastructure. Lenczycki and Taylor’s assignment, according to Director William H. Webster, was to gather everything they could before the goons got out of Dodge.
Given the age of One and Two, they could still have thirty or more years ahead of them in whatever would replace the KGB.
Damn, he thought again. Wish I had that camera. A moment later, “Whoa,” Lenczycki whispered. “They’re putting their jackets on. We’re rolling.”
Lenczycki tucked his binoculars under his jacket inside his belt, near his Taurus 850B2UL .38 special revolver.
They watched the two men turn off the office lights, but the glow of the burning papers backlit their exit. Outside, they split up.
“Shit,” Lenczycki said. “You take the guy heading toward the river. I’ll stay with the one to the left.”
They raced down the old fire escape on the side of the red brick building that had been their perch. “Meet back at Alpha at midnight.”
Roberts followed his man, but lost him after only four blocks, a combination of Taylor Roberts’ inexperience and the realization of KGB station chief Nikolai Gorshkov that he was being followed.
Not so for the younger Russian agent. He remained unaware that he had a shadow.
The KGB agent wandered around the streets, occasionally bumping hard into drunken revelers who were dulling the pain of the Soviet years with cheap Russian vodka.
“Bewegen sie assholes!” he shouted. “Move!”
On the second encounter he knocked a man down. The third time he slammed an old man against a street light. The KGB agent was clearly furious, and Lenczycki feared it would get worse.
The agent entered a dive bar. In order to stay invisible, Lenczycki inserted himself into a barhopping group. Five steps in, they were back-slapping good friends. He pretended to listen to someone too wasted to realize Lenczycki had only a few German words in his vocabulary.
Lenczycki sat down with him and continued to nod politely and laugh. Meanwhile, he watched the KGB agent across the room down four vodkas in the time he pretended to have one. The alcohol appeared to do little to sublimate the Russian’s growing anger. He was belligerent with his waitress and when the bartender told him that his uniform certainly wouldn’t buy him any favors, he abruptly stood, ready to take him on. But two bouncers intervened and began to guide the stumbling Russian out.
Lenczycki dropped enough East German marks to cover his drink and those of his drunken companion. Then he left the bar ahead of his subject and turned right, hoping the man would do the same and pass him. If not, he’d double back.
With a 25 percent chance of choosing the correct side of the street and direction, the CIA agent played the odds and won.
The KGB agent staggered past him. Lenczycki hung back, feigning his own drunkenness. Four block later, the Russian eyed a couple in their early twenties loudly celebrating.
“Freiheit!” they shouted over and over. Freedom. Then they sang a two-line song that they delivered in English. “Fuck Russia! Fuck Russia! Fuck Russia!” followed by a chorus of “Freiheit.”
Lenczycki worried whether this would push the KGB agent over the edge.
A friend joined them in song. Then another celebrant.
“Fuck Russia! Fuck Russia! Fuck Russia! Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit!”
The singing got louder in volume and spirit.
The Russian stopped ten feet from the group and faced the drunken young revelers.
Even in the dark from thirty feet, Lenczycki could see the agent reach under his jacket with his right hand. He knew what was there.
What happened next occurred quickly. The KGB agent stepped forward. He pulled out his Makarov PM 9mm pistol and yelled in German, “Verräter! Verräter! Traitor! Traitor!”
“Fuck you!” The young woman was the first to respond and the first to be shot between the eyes at short range. Another bullet dispatched her lover, who would never know Freiheit.
Drunk one moment, now with adrenaline pumping, the agent realized what he had done. He also spotted the man down the street running toward him.
Seven rounds were left in his pistol. Two shots went wide, but they made Lenczycki duck behind a lamppost. That cost the CIA agent time and allowed the Russian to commandeer a car at gunpoint and escape.
Lenczycki went to the victims. They had been murdered for celebrating. Murdered for demonstrating their joy in front of a uniformed KGB agent drunk with power.
There was nothing for the CIA agent to do except to get away himself. For the rest of his years in the agency he searched for the assassin. But he never found him, and Skip Lenczycki finally retired.
72
LONDON, ENGLAND
PRESENT DAY
The next day Heath met Reilly at a designated London clothing and tailor shop on Bond Street, which led to a CIA safe house next door. It was right out of a Cold War novel for so many reasons, the name of the street being just one.
Without talking, Heath led him through the store, into the tailoring area, and to a door that opened to an apartment. Once inside he said, “Sorry for the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but your worries are on my mind.”
“Thanks,” Reilly responded. “What’s up?”
“A good deal.”
Heath summarized the report he’d read at Langley.
When he finished, Reilly smiled. “So I’m not so crazy?”
“No,” Heath acknowledged, “you’re not. But there’s more. It goes back to Potsdam at the end of the Cold War”
“Oh?”
Heath backed into the account, starting with 30-year-old agency files, which led him to Port Elizabeth and a man with an intriguing story.
“He’s a retired agent. Comfortable and happy, but with unfinished business hanging over him. He had a brush with your Mr. Smug in Germany in late 1989. For years he tried to track him down. He was unsuccessful. Smug was as elusive as they get. He vanished, but there were hints of his presence in highly suspect places.”
“Like?” Reilly interrupted.
“Targeted assassinations and acts of terrorism around the globe.”
“How do you know?”
A man stepped out from another room in the apartment.
“He doesn’t. I do.”
Reilly spun around. A weathered, tanned, and muscular man in a polo shirt and tan pants came closer.
“You’re the agent?”
“Retired,” Skip Lenczycki replied, “the one with unfinished business.”
Heath introduced the two. They shook hands, and Lenczycki sat opposite Reilly.
“Heard some good things about you,” Lenczycki said.
“Thank you. Feeling a bit out of my comfort zone, though.”
“You are when it comes to Andre Miklos.”
“Who?” Reilly asked.
“Andre Miklos. The man you’re looking for.”
Reilly felt all the muscles in his body relax. At last he had a name. Now he settled in and listened to Lenczycki’s story.
The agent-turned-sailor saved his most striking comments for last.
“Andre Miklos is death. He lives for it. And as best as I’ve been able to surmise, when he’s not listening to the devil inside him, he’s listening to only one other person.”
“Who?” Reilly asked.
“His superior in the KGB then and today, the president of the Russian Federation. Nikolai Gorshkov.”
Lenczycki explained his history with Miklos.
Next it was Reilly’s turn to share what he had garnered. He focused on Spike Boyce’s IT search. “We discovered some bookings. Look at these.”
Reilly removed a printout from his jacket pocket and handed it to Heath. As he read, Reilly went into more detail.
“A Romanian delegation has booked the Diplomat for an EU meeting on climate control. A Romanian minister of defense is coming in a week later, and a Romanian dance troupe will be performing at Théâtre National. That’s at the end of the month. We’re going to have to drill down further. If the singer killed in Tokyo was a Romanian dissident, then we should look into the politics of these guests as well.”
Heath excused himself to phone Langley. Ten minutes later he came back into the room with a troubled look.
“There’s increased chatter over the NATO maneuvers in Romania. The White House is seriously looking at it. So are the Russians. And yes, Dan, that singer Kretsky now has analysts wondering if you could be right.”
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