Reilly felt vindicated.
“So play this out,” Lenczycki said. “Miklos plants a few bombs at the Diplomat. They go off. A bunch of Romanians die.”
“Along with dozens or hundreds of others,” Reilly interjected, correcting him.
“Yes, more. What happens? The Russians say ‘enough is enough’ and they sweep into Bucharest.”
Reilly allowed an okay but with a caveat. “I believe they’re coming.”
“Then start with the givens,” the retired agent said. “He’s already done his survey. He’s got a plan. And so far he’s partial to truck bombs.”
“But if he’s seen our barriers go up,” Reilly noted, “wouldn’t he adjust his strategy? Why risk a botched run? He’ll go for bombs inside the hotel.”
“Security makes it harder,” Heath replied. “Dogs and metal detectors even more difficult.”
“Harder, but not impossible,” Reilly responded. “Especially if devices are already there.”
“You could be right. When’s the first group due?” Lenczycki asked.
“Ten days,” Reilly said from memory. He thought they had better start searching.
“Okay,” Heath said. “Let’s see where these three leads take us.”
Two hours later, a call from Langley provided a strong connection for one booking.
“The Romanian dance troupe,” Heath explained. “Their artistic director, Ionela Soryn, was the longtime girlfriend of Kretsky.”
“She’s pro-Russia?”
“Big time. She’s singing her dead lover’s chorus.”
“When will she check in?” Lenczycki asked.
Reilly had the dates. “On the eighteenth for five nights.” Then another thought. “We should see if there’s been any unusual activity at the venue. Excessive photography. Impromptu tours. Circulate Miklos’ photo.”
“Good,” Heath replied.
Lenczycki stirred. “I want the room next to hers.”
“No,” Heath said without equivocation. “You’re not going.”
“Of course I am. Besides, I’m not talking to you. You’re not the one with the free rooms.”
Heath jumped in before Reilly answered. “Agent Lenczycki—”
“Former,” he replied again. “Former.”
“Former Agent Lenczycki, I appreciate your help and your contributions. But your involvement in this case will end here and now.”
Heath stood, signaling the argument was over and his word was law.
“Has your buddy always been such a dick?” Lenczycki asked Reilly. It wasn’t a joke.
“As long as I’ve known him,” Reilly said with the same tone.
“Then I guess it’s time for me to leave.”
Lenczycki rose and shook Reilly’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” Then to Heath he added, “Thanks for the trip to London.”
Without another word, Skip Lenczycki walked out of the room.
73
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Risk was an evitable part of the job. The way to mitigate risk? Outthink the opposition. Since a drunken night in Potsdam, which he never reported up, he only went operational if he could control the variables. This required painstaking advance planning, strict control of information, development of principal, secondary, and tertiary exfiltration routes, and the experience to pull the plug on the mission.
As far as he was concerned, even with the additional defensive measures at the target, he had complete confidence in his plan. The time, the date, the precise location. All were in order.
It wouldn’t be the biggest explosion. Not as big as Japan or Ukraine. But, Andre Miklos thought, it’ll be a shot heard round the world.
Long ago he learned the historical references. The shot heard round the world. The original context celebrated the first volley fired by a line of colonists the night of April 18, 1775, in Lexington, Massachusetts—the beginning of the American Revolution. It was also applied to the bullet fired by a Serbian assassin that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The launch of World War I.
Yes, the shot heard around the world. Only louder.
Reilly checked back into the Diplomat and reviewed the precautions. Donald Klugo, president of GSI, Global Security Initiatives, had arrived with five of his team. Twenty-two members of NRF, the NATO Response Force, were posted throughout the Kensington Diplomat Hotel. The CIA had dropped in a ten-person team headed by Bob Heath. Joe Lenczycki was not among them.
Most hotel guests, diplomats especially, took little notice of the various security personnel roaming the public spaces with ear pieces and ceiling CCTV cameras pointing down from corner installations. The units, visible and hidden, watched everyone, everywhere.
Other Red Hotel measures were in full force. X-ray machines scanned all suitcases and deliveries. Bomb-sniffing dogs made rounds in and around the property.
Three days after Reilly had arrived back in Brussels, one hundred and twelve guests checked out of the hotel before noon. One hundred and sixty-one arrived; twenty-one from România Experienţa de Dans, including Ionela Soryn.
When she entered an elevator, a CIA agent rode with her. When she visited the ground-floor ladies room, a female agent followed her in. When she hailed a taxi, it was driven by one of the mercenaries.
Operatives switched off at designated intervals on Soryn’s travel routes and patrolled Théâtre National before and during the first day of rehearsals.
At midnight, Heath reported back to Langley, “Day 1 Quiet.” That meant Day 2 would be all the more intense.
If Soryn was aware of being tracked by NATO forces, America’s CIA, private security, or hotel staff, she didn’t show it. The dancer went about her business. She had a light breakfast brought up to her room, spent the morning shopping along Avenue Louise, took a taxi to the theatre for a strenuous full dress rehearsal, had dinner at Bistango with the Brussels’ art committee chairman, and then a martini at the bar after.
The dogs sniffed, the X-ray machines scanned, the cameras observed and recorded. Nothing.
Directly across the street on the third floor of another art nouveau building, a man peered through binoculars for the second day. He noted everyone entering and leaving, the times they passed through the Diplomat doors, and whether they posed a threat.
He’d rented the empty office the previous day. This would be his full-time post, sleeping only from 2:00 a.m. to 6 a.m. each day and eating out of the three coolers he’d brought.
He was actually surprised the building, let alone the room he was in, hadn’t been swept by any one of agencies on duty at the hotel. Piss poor, he thought.
NATO assigned more men the next day. Twenty at the theater for opening night. Ten more at the hotel. This was in response to Ionela Soryn dedicating the performance to her former lover, Janusz Kretsky.
Heath suddenly feared that if Théâtre National was actually the target, they weren’t prepared. But the sold-out performance went off without incident.
Back at the hotel after her dancers were retired for the night, Soryn ordered a drink and settled into a couch close to the lobby front window with her business manager. This immediately sent one of Klugo’s men watching on the security cameras into an apoplectic fit.
“Jesus!” he complained over their wireless channel. “The fucking waiters were told not to put them there. Get Dancer out!”
Reilly was closest to them, but still on the other side of the lobby. He began to cross the area, pushing past the late night crowd.
Simultaneously, a FedEx truck rounded the near corner and headed toward the Kensington Diplomat. A NATO infantryman from France, briefed on the Tokyo attack, spotted the vehicle. It bore down the avenue quickly. Maybe too quickly. He squawked an emergency code and stepped out in the street, rifle raised. An officer posted at the hotel entrance responded and instantly engaged the bollards. They rose instantly, throwing off a couple standing on the barrier, and breaking the woman’s arm.
An alarm connected to the bollards blar
ed. The NATO officer aimed his assault rifle at the driver.
Inside, Reilly yelled for everyone to get down. Even those who didn’t understand English got the order.
The truck skidded to a stop. The soldier delayed firing for a tense moment. The driver, wearing a FedEx uniform, raised his hands. Police immediately closed down the streets two blocks in either direction.
NATO troops surrounded the vehicle, pulled out the driver, and dragged him twenty feet from the truck. Twenty feet wouldn’t have been far enough if the truck had been carrying explosives. It wasn’t. The dogs confirmed it was clean. It was a real FedEx vehicle with an actual driver who had been directed by his app to avoid traffic along Rue des Bouchers, the street parallel to the hotel.
“My God!” Liam Schorel exclaimed. “One broken bone. A false arrest. Likely lawsuits. A total embarrassment.”
“But we learned some important things,” Reilly proposed during the postmortem.
“Sure did,” Klugo replied. “Including getting your goddamned staff in line. You can’t afford another fuckup like this.”
“You’re right.”
“Another thing. Paint the top of those goddamned bollards so people see them,” Klugo continued.
“Got it,” Reilly said.
“By tomorrow. Bright red.”
“Done. Now I have one,” Reilly said. “We’ve got to pull the lobby seating away from the windows. It won’t help in an actual bomb blast, but it’ll be a reminder to the staff.”
The general manager was still muttering.
“Liam!” Reilly barked.
“Okay. I heard. I’ll have the house florist fill in the area with potted plants and trees.”
Alan Cannon joined them.
“What else can we do with the windows? Any blast resistant glass?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Cannon offered. “I should have thought of that after Tokyo. The Department of Homeland Security has a Science and Technology Directorate. They’ve come up with a new bombproof glass that sandwiches glass fibers in the form of a woven cloth soaked with liquid plastic. It’s then bonded with adhesive between slim sheets of glass. What’s more, it’s as strong as the glass in the Beast, the president’s limo, but far thinner.”
“Sounds good, but how long to order and install?”
“Weeks, probably.”
“Damn. And what about the brick and concrete façade?”
“There’s another option,” Klugo offered. “Quicker, possible better.”
“Oh?” Cannon said.
“It’s a fabric called Zetix.”
“A fabric?” Reilly asked. “How?”
“You’ll have to talk to the experts. But it’s apparently so strong it can resist multiple car bomb blasts without distress. In principal it absorbs, then disperses the energy. It has pores which open with an impact, allowing blast air to pass through, not solid debris. It could go over your brick and mortar on either side.”
“How do we get it?” Schorel wondered, now showing interest in the solution.
“The good news,” Klugo explained, “is that it was invented by a UK company. I bet they could send someone in the morning to evaluate and hopefully install. Just Google it. An immediate fix.”
When the postmortem concluded, Cannon pulled Reilly aside. “Well buddy, it was a damned good lesson.”
“Schorel was right. It was a complete fuckup.”
“That too. But we all learned from it and we’ll move on. And anyone thinking of taking us down now will see that we’re more prepared than expected. They’ll rethink going after Soryn.”
“You’re assuming she’s the target,” Reilly maintained. “Maybe that’s a mistake, too.”
With the exception of the news inquiries, the next morning was quiet. So was the afternoon. The evening dance recital went without incident. There were no problems at night, principally because Ionela Soryn’s business manager rudely checked her out of the Kensington Diplomat Hotel and into the Sofitel a block away.
The next morning Reilly flew to Chicago for a quick turnaround.
74
CHICAGO, IL
KENSINGTON ROYAL HEADQUARTERS
“You don’t seemed relieved,” Shaw said.
“I’m not. A terrorist needs an audience,” Reilly explained. “For all sorts of reasons. Psychological, coercive, recruitment, and political. Radical fundamentalists aim for the first three. They can go anywhere and get the headlines they want. They’re willing to kill themselves in the process. But this isn’t the case for someone with a true political goal or the people behind the plot. More than anything, they absolutely want to live on. That’s who we’re dealing with, sir. We may have taken away one opportunity, but we didn’t remove their political act.”
“You’re speculating.”
“I’m deadly serious,” Reilly sharply countered. “They’re still out there.”
“Who’s out there, Daniel?”
This was the most difficult question of all, but it deserved an answer. A carefully worded answer.
“Russians.”
“Now wait!” Shaw saw the immediate political ramifications.
“It’s an idea based on—”
“One hell of an idea, especially since I’ve decided to move on the Moscow management deal.”
This was news to Reilly. He didn’t hide his surprise.
“We need more time. There are a lot of moving parts,” Reilly said, not going into any of them.
“We’re not there yet, but we will be in another few weeks,” Shaw said. “But this complicates things.”
In more ways than you can imagine, Reilly thought.
“You really believe this,” Shaw stated more than asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“And that they will come back?” He was referring to the Russians Reilly suggested were terrorists.
Reilly answered instantly. “I’m afraid they never left.”
BRUSSELS
Prostitution was a legally sanctioned business in Belgium. Monika, no more her name than the pseudonym Miklos provided, billed out at 500 euros per hour. The night, including all that she would perform plus tip, was 2,000. Miklos paid in cash.
As far as Miklos was concerned, everything was going according to plan. In fact, better than planned. The NATO guard and other assembled security forces had pulled out from the hotel. Something Monika wouldn’t let him do. Not for the money she was making.
The bell at the floral shop door jangled.
“Madame Ketz, as always, you look so beautiful,” Liam Schorel said as he kissed the grand dame on both cheeks.
The old woman dressed for another era smiled warmly. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Schorel.”
“I trust you’re well today.”
“Better whenever I get to say hello to you,” she said flirtatiously. “Now let me make your day better.”
The octogenarian pinned a rose on his suit jacket collar.
“Thank you, madame. You raise my spirits. Now I need your help.”
“My pleasure. How may I assist?”
“As only you can do. With a flourish. We need to put a row of large potted plants inside the lobby. You know, to bring some green to the area.” Schorel didn’t explain the real reason. “What do you have handy?”
CHICAGO
“And if I say it’s time for you to move on, that Brussels is safe?” Shaw asked.
“Then I’d have to respond, ‘You have the wrong guy in the job,’” Reilly replied.
Shaw laughed. “Well, we both know that’s not true.”
Reilly grinned.
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Dan,” the company chief said. “A bunch I suspect, and a whole lot I admire. So if I put all three together, I have a man on my payroll who I damn well better listen to and let do his job.”
“Thank you, sir,” Reilly replied.
“Any idea what you’re going to do?”
“I’m working on it.”
After leavin
g KR’s corporate offices, Reilly stopped at the Midwest Superior Pistol and Gun Range.
“Any experience?” the heavily tattooed owner asked. He couldn’t tell by looking at his customer.
“Some. Awhile back,” Reilly replied.
“Military?”
“Something like that.” Reilly figured that would end the grilling.
The proprietor pursed his lips. “Okay, man. What’s your poison?”
Reilly had done homework online and recited what he knew the range had.
“A Gen 2 Glock 19 and a Sig Sauer P229 Elite.”
“Okay. You know what you’re doing?”
“I do.”
“Credit card?”
“Cash.”
The owner liked cash.
Reilly took out five $100 bills. “I’ll be here for a while.”
BRUSSELS
Madame Ketz thought the potted tree in the cooler would work in the lobby, but it was too big for her to move. She called for two house workmen to load it on a dolly. They were just about out the door when Frederik, Johanna Ketz’s assistant, returned from a break.
“Stop!” he demanded. “What are you doing?”
“Moving this into the lobby with some others,” Ketz explained good-naturedly.
“No, no, no. You can’t.”
The two men looked to the florist for a decision. Frederik stepped between them.
“This stays in the refrigerator.”
“Frederik, I want it in the lobby,” she said over his shoulder. “We’re getting more delivered and this one—”
“No, Madame Ketz,” he continued. “This is a special order for a guest. Remember?”
“No, I don’t. And it’s been too long,” she said. “We’ll simply get another.”
“No!”
Frederik realized he sounded too harsh. “I’m sorry, Madame Ketz. The man was quite insistent when I took the call. He was specific about the type of plant he wanted in his suite when he arrived and agreed to an extra hold charge.”
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