"Correct on both." Seibel nodded again. "Caff, I'm here to congratulate you on your retirement. Job well done for 40 years."
"I-"
"Great job. You've earned it." Seibel reached into his sports coat and pulled an envelope to hand to Broley. "Your resignation letter. Just needs a signature."
Broley took the envelope and shook his head. "I'm not ready."
"Sure you are. More than ready." Seibel reached into his pants pocket and pulled out another item. "I know you are supposed to get a gold watch when you retire. This one is not new, but I think you'll want to keep it."
Seibel held out the watch to Broley.
The old auditor looked at it and then visibly swayed. He stuck out his hand to the wall to steady himself. After a few seconds, he reach out and took the watch from Seibel.
The watch belonged to his late wife, Brenda. She died in a small plane crash eight years ago.
Broley's eyes watered and his head shook back and forth ever so slightly. "How?"
The smile left Seibel's face.
"How did you get this? She had this on when she died." Broley's breath was weak. "She-"
Geoffrey Seibel is not nice. Never was. He didn't get as far, as high, as important as he was by being nice. He was mean. Is mean. Some would say evil.
"She gave this to me earlier this week and asked me to give it to you."
Thunderbolt. Sledgehammer. Freight train.
Broley fell against the wall. "How?"
Seibel walked past him to the door, opened it and stepped out. "Most people live their life without knowing the truth Caff. You get to live the rest of yours in retirement. And better yet, you get to know that almost everything you knew was a lie. Imagine going to your grave never knowing that."
Seibel closed the door and was gone.
After 30 seconds, or maybe it was hours, Broley pushed off the wall and locked the deadbolt on the door. What good would that do to keep the Devil out?
Looking at himself in the small mirror on the wall that his wife hung there 30 years ago, he repeated himself. "I'm done."
The next morning he handed his signed retirement letter to the CIA's Inspector General and accepted his thanks and congratulations. He never read the letter. Just signed it.
Chapter 43
He held up a hand from the 3 a.m. hallway shadows. "Wait." He whispered.
Something wasn't right. Something beyond the unwelcoming reception he expected at the end of the hall.
"Step back. Back onto the stairs." He motioned for Abbie to take several steps backward to the stairwell they just came up.
"What is it?" She replied from the top stair. It creaked under her weight.
"Boulder." Preacher spoke into the microphone next to his mouth. Boulder was Fuchs' operation radio code name.
"Go." Fuchs' comforting voice at the other end.
"Detail change in the last 45 seconds?"
"Two pedestrians on the street. No vehicle movement. Light went off on fourth floor. No movement on three."
"Lights are out on every level. Wasn't like this yesterday." Preacher replied.
"No. All were on." Fuchs confirmed.
"Back down to one. Slowly. Be ready. Center body mass." He moved toward Abbie.
"What is happening?"
"I expected a trap. But something else is going on." He came across the landing to join Abbie in the stairwell. He heard it. Steps above, coming down. Just one set of rubber sole shoes, not a team. Not good.
"A trap?"
"Move." He grabbed Abbie under her right arm and hurried her down the stairs.
"Hey..."
His mouth was next to her ear as they hurried down the last flight of stairs, down a short hall and outside. "Mistake to bring you here. Thought I'd show you how to handle a multi-threat trap, but that's not what this is. When we get out the door, duck down, stay down behind the bushes and don't move. If anyone other than me approaches you, put three in the chest and then one in the head when they are on the ground. You've got two spare clips to rinse and repeat."
"Wait, where are you going?" She asked as they got out the door.
"Lure them away." He pointed to the bushes. "Get down. Stay down."
Preacher sprinted forward on the sidewalk and then veered right where he ducked behind a tree. He made sure he was protected from the building he just exited and the one across the way. Something about it he didn't like. He brought up the silenced Sig Sauer 9mm and rested it against the tree trunk. Nine seconds later, a figure came out the door he and Abbie exited moments earlier.
The human, dressed in black, suddenly stepped to the left and ducked to a knee.
"Boulder, can you see any better than me?" He depressed the button on his waist and whispered.
"No. Too dark. Only one subject so far."
"That's what I don't like. Should be more."
The black figure suddenly stood up and took three steps across the outside porch of the building, directly toward where Abbie lay behind the bushes.
"Damn. He's got a spotter. They made her location."
"Holy shit, you don't think?" Fuchs whispered.
"Could be."
No time. Preacher leaned to the right to give his position away. "Hey." He whispered loudly.
The figure in black stopped and pivoted in his direction. Preacher dropped to a knee with the Sig up. With his back to the tree trunk, he aimed and squeezed off five shots. Three of the five found their target - center body mass.
But the guy didn't drop.
Body armor.
"Denver, aim for head only. He's got bulletproof armor." Denver was Abbie's radio code name for the operation.
"Got it." Abbie whispered a reply over the radio. The guy in black was only 10 feet away from her but obscured by the bushes she was hidden behind.
The mysterious person in black brought up a weapon and fired. Preacher was already on his belly. He focused on the barrel blasts and sent six more rounds at the target. Several hit.
Preacher rolled to the right. Any second now. "Be ready for the spotter." He spoke into the microphone.
"Ready." Fuchs replied. Fuchs was always ready.
The shots came from an automatic rifle. Of the 14 or 15 shots fired, several were very close. One grazed Preacher's right shoulder. The shooter was positioned in the top outside stairwell of a building directly across from the one Preacher and Abbie were inside a minute ago. A wide courtyard separated the two buildings. The think trunk of the maple tree provided just enough protection for Preacher.
He continued his roll. Fuchs didn't have a great angle from his rooftop position above, but before the shooter finished firing, he let loose a dozen rounds at the railing the gun barrel poked through. His shots stopped the stairwell shooter from firing. No telling if he was hit from the barrage.
Preacher was up, on his feet and flying along the bushes planted next to the apartment building. He heard what he wanted behind. Footsteps coming after him.
Should have known something was wrong 15 minutes ago when they cased the building one last time before entering. No songs played in his head then or now. That's red alert stuff. He shot up to join Lance at 500 feet to survey the surroundings. He memorized all the streets the day before, but this nighttime view gave him the best options for leading his tracker away from Abbie and into a trap of his own.
"Just the one dude following me?"
"Yes."
"Denver?"
"I'm safe." Abbie answered over the radio.
"Boulder, keep that spotter pinned down."
Just then, Fuchs fired off a few more shots. Abbie decided to get up from her hidey hole behind the bushes and take off on foot the other direction around the other end of the apartment building.
"Denver's up. She headed around the other side of the target building. Gave her cover. Moving."
"Got it. Denver, asked you to stay put." Into the radio.
"No way. Circling around other end of the building." Abbie was already around the north end
of the building.
He shook his head as he ducked around the corner of another apartment building and headed south on the sidewalk beside Rue Pelleport. Nobody out at 3:11 a.m. He heard the footsteps come around the corner 11 seconds after him. He shot left, across the cobblestone street, where he cut between parked cars and continued on the sidewalk, crouched below the cars.
The figure chasing him came out into the middle of the street, his shoes sounding different on the cobblestone instead of concrete. Preacher spotted the Villa Pelleport alleyway he wanted to use, so he stopped, dropped and rolled out into the street where he lay prone with the silenced Sig aimed at his follower. A streetlight a little ways down the road gave away Preacher's position. The chaser stopped and dove left just as Preacher loosed four rounds. Sounded like one of them struck its intended target.
These shots had to be hurting like hell, regardless of body armor.
Preacher used the time it took for the dive and roll by the other guy as an opportunity to roll back to his feet and burst across the street diagonally to the tight little alley leading back into a gathering of houses and apartment buildings. Halfway down the alley, he felt the cell phone in his pocket vibrate. Without breaking his pace, he put the Sig in his right hand and reached into his jacket to pull out the Motorola mobile phone he purchased yesterday from a street vendor. Only one person knew the number.
"Yes." He answered while hoofing it to a short wall and jumping up onto and over it.
"You just turned down that alley, right?" Abbie was running.
"Back off. Get clear." He replied.
"No way. I'm on his tail. He's turning onto the alley now.
"This is what I do. I was literally made for this. You need to get away from here. We don't know who that is on me. Don't know his or her skills."
She was just a few seconds from reaching the alley. "It's a man. Run's like a man, no doubt."
"Got it. Ok, stay where you are on Rue Pelleport. I'm going to circle these buildings and bring him back to you. There's an alley a hundred feet south going east. Be there. Stay down low. Aim for his head. Phone on silent."
"Hey, why didn't you just use the radio?" He asked.
"Thought maybe you'd be pissed at me for leaving my position."
"I am. But we'll discuss later."
Preacher hung up and put the phone back in his pocket, jumped another short wall and ran across a kids' playground between buildings. He stopped at the corner of a build and watched his tracker come down the alley into the open area. He edged over the short wall and stayed low to make a difficult target.
"Boulder, what are the chances this is who we think it is tracking me? Guys have got to be old by now." He whispered into the microphone.
"Don't knock the old guys." Fuchs whispered back.
"Anything from yours?"
"He's moving. I hear him going down the stairs. I'm coming down balconies on his tail." Fuchs was easing himself over balcony railings and swinging down to the next floor. He had two more to go. Guy never ever stops. "Police are on their way. I'd say four minutes out by the sirens."
Funky French police sirens wailed in the distance. Undoubtedly some nosy neighbors upset by a little 3 in the morning automatic gunfire.
Preacher dropped to a knee and waited until his follower was out in the open, moving across the children's playground, before he fired off five more silenced rounds. An audible gasp and moan followed this volley. This guy didn't have every inch of his body protected. One of those five bullets found purchase in flesh.
The ghost in black dropped to a prone position and fired a dozen rounds back at Preacher's position. But he was already around the corner. Instead of racing on, Preacher waited and listened.
He heard whispering. Couldn't make out the language. Sounded Eastern European. Not Russian, but not to far off. His tracker got back to his feet.
Preacher did the same and headed around the south end of the apartment building, back toward Rue Pelleport. He was between high hedges. Lights came on in several of the units in the apartment building to his left. A dozen bullets fired from a rifle in this tight environment were louder than all heck. Surely more calls to the police up in those units.
He came out of the hedgerows and onto a sidewalk that led to a very narrow walkway between another apartment building and the wall of an underground parking structure. The walkway dead-ended at an eight-foot wall next to the sidewalk on Rue Pelleport. The gate was likely locked. In the pitch dark, Preacher accelerated, stuck the silenced gun in his belt and jumped up to take two steps up the wall to a corner where two walls met. He grasped the top of the wall, pivoted over and dropped to the other side. He bumped a motorcycle parked there and had to grab it and pull hard to keep it from falling over and making a hell of a racket.
He ducked down beside the motorcycle but it only hid so much. A streetlight was right overhead. He released the clip in his Sig and replaced it with a full magazine.
"Aspen." Abbie spoke his code name over the radio. Her indignation at his choice of names came through in her voice.
"Go." He smiled and whispered.
"The second guy is running down Pelleport right now. He'll reach my position in 10 seconds."
"Hold." Preacher shot out onto the sidewalk on his gut to look back north on the street. He saw the figure running toward him. He spotted Abbie ducked in a doorway diagonally across the street.
He depressed the radio button, "Boulder, are you on the street yet?"
"No, just coming to the fence now. Be over in 10."
"Denver, I'm 80 feet south of you across the street."
"See you."
"Stay where you are, behind that corner. When he gets to the mouth of the alley across the street, shoot to kill."
The conversation among the three took nine seconds. The running figure approached the alley. A streetlight lit him up for just a second and a half. That was all Preacher needed.
But it was Lance hanging in the Paris night who spoke, "Son of a bi-"
Krachov. Friggin' Krachov brothers.
From his position 120-feet away, Preacher fired eight shots as this Krachov slowed to round the corner to the alley. A couple of bullets hit the target, but it looked like more body armor at work. The guy bounced against the wall, dropped to knee and was about to fire his automatic rifle at Preacher lying there on the sidewalk under a streetlight.
Abbie didn't stay where Preacher told her to keep hidden in the doorway. She was up on her feet and moving directly at the Krachov brother on his knee. By the time he spotted her with his peripherals, she was in the middle of the narrow cobblestone street just 23-feet from him.
Brain cognition sent a message to nerves firing down his arms to hands to fingers. He started to move his aim toward her. But her brain cognition and nerves firing were a split-second ahead of his. She stopped there 23-feet from him and fired four shots center mass. Even with a kevlar vest stopping the slugs, the successive blows sent him backward. He landed on his back, spun around and came back up with his gun aimed where Abbie had been a two seconds earlier.
But she moved. By the time Krachov spotted her now just 10 feet away on the sidewalk, he did not have the bandwidth in his nervous system superhighway to swing the gun toward her. As Preacher suggested a couple of minutes earlier, she put three more rounds through this Krachov's forehead. The rounds exited out the back of his skull in an exploding mess that painted the stucco wall Jackson Pollock-style.
Preacher raced up beside Abbie
"Status." Fuchs came over the radio.
"One Krachov down." Preacher replied.
"Damn. Which one?"
"The spotter. Denver's work."
"The tracker?" Fuchs was all business.
"He'll be here in 30 and will be a little upset when he finds his brother."
"Plan?" Fuchs was always extremely efficient with his word choice.
"Change. Go east on Belleville to Telegraph and come south. We'll take the alley over and lead the
other Krachov that way." Preacher tapped Abbie on the upper arm and started across the street. She peeled her eyes away from her human remains artwork and followed.
They reached the mouth of the alley leading over to the next block just as the other Krachov came over the wall at the spot Preacher scaled it 37 seconds earlier. Took the older man a bit more time and effort to scale the wall. Preacher dropped to a knee and fired off five more shots. A couple hit the parked motorcycle. The shots did force their tracker to drop back behind the wall. By the time the other Krachov shot out into the open to cross the street with gun blazing, Preacher and Abbie were a dozen steps down the alley leading away.
They didn't see the other Krachov slow down halfway across the street as he spotted his brother 60 feet away with his brains splattered on the wall behind his lifeless body.
Anton Krachov, the older brother of the infamous manhunter duo, shook his head at the sight of his dead brother Yandel. If he mourned, it was for a whole half a second while he raced across Rue Pelleport into the alley after his targets. He spotted Preacher and Abbie at the other end of the alley as they turned north onto Rue de Telegraphe.
Twenty-one seconds later, Krachov reached Telegraphe Street and eased around the corner. He had his automatic rifle up and aimed, ready to kill.
It was Lance floating up at 80-feet who first wondered if Krachov knew he was a dead man. A second question he posed to Preacher pondered whether the remaining Krachov brother even cared if he died.
"That you next to the wall by the gate to the cemetery?" Fuchs whispered.
"Oui. You?"
"One hundred twenty-feet north; other side of street; moving south. Denver?"
"Look up." Abbie replied.
Fuchs did so and saw a figure up on top of the structure Preacher stood next to. He had hoisted her up the wall where she grabbed the rod iron slats and pulled herself up to climb onto the concrete roof of the building bordering the Cemetiere de Belleville behind the wall.
"He's coming our way. I want him alive for a few more minutes." Preacher let go of the radio button. "Monsieur Krachov, why do you chase us?" Preacher called out in the night.
No answer from Krachov moving in the shadows across the street.
The Perfect Teacher Page 20