A soft laugh came from low down, then the man moved and got to his feet, rattling the reeds where he’d been hiding. He wore hunting gear with a cellphone clipped to the front of his jacket. He was short and squat, with the high cheekbones of a Slav and crooked teeth, strong looking and somewhere in his forties, probably a contract man. He was grinning at his good fortune like he’d won first prize in a pig-sticking contest.
And I was the pig.
I shrugged, wondering where the second man had got to. I lifted both arms out from my body, demonstrating that I wasn’t a threat. I dropped my shoulders in a slump to signify defeat, and swore. It was the kind of thing he’d be expecting. Defeat, then submission.
He motioned for me to drop my rifle, using the business end of his AK-47. It looked clean, if a little battered around the woodwork, but these things are readily available for a song all over the world, and I figured this team, like the others, would have got their weapons from local sources. Easy come, easy go, and no trace back to the organizers of their mission.
I dropped the rifle and held my palms out, then sank to a sitting position on the ground, crossing my ankles. He lost the grin in favour of a suspicious scowl, as if this had been too easy. Then he tilted his head towards the phone on his jacket and said something short and sharp which I couldn’t hear.
It was probably something along the lines of ‘Got him’.
Shouting came from deep in the trees. I hadn’t got long. The others would be here soon and it didn’t take rocket science to know that when they arrived they wouldn’t be looking to take me away in one piece. That wasn’t their mission. All this guy had done was merely delay the inevitable.
He motioned for me to move away from the rifle, which I did, in case he suddenly recalled his orders, which were probably to shoot me on sight. I used my hands to propel myself across the grass in an awkward hopping motion, grunting and making a meal of it. When he told me to stop, I stopped.
Which was about the same moment he must have realized that each time I’d moved, my hands were closer to my body … and closer to anything I might have concealed in my waistband.
The Sig.
Then my cellphone vibrated in my pocket. Great timing. ‘Jesus – look at that!’ I stared past him at the other side of the river, my eyes wide open as if I’d seen the ghost of my long-dead grandmother.
It would have taken any man a massive effort to have avoided turning his head out of instinct. But all I needed was a fraction of movement. When he turned to look, the rifle barrel dropped away a few inches, and I rolled sideways, lifting the Sig out of my waistband. I shot him once, mid-section. When in doubt, aim for the body mass.
He fumbled with the rifle, at the same time looking down disbelievingly at the hole in his jacket, before tumbling sideways and rolling down the river bank into the water.
By the time the first ripples got halfway across the river I was scooping up the Famas and moving fast, keeping low and checking the trees for signs of the company I knew was on its way in.
I made it back to the area where I’d left the crossbow, hearing voices filtering through the marsh. It sounded a lot like the man in charge demanding an inquest and promising hell and damnation on whoever had messed up this time. That suited me; I needed all the help I could get and the more he yelled at his men the better. I located his voice somewhere ahead of me, with other voices coming closer to the spot where I’d just shot their colleague.
I ran past the hide, snatching up the crossbow on the way, then moved over to the river. There was no sign of the man with a bolt in his shoulder so I figured he was in the SUV and out of action. I slid down the bank and into the water, dragging my legs against the current and pushing up the other side.
It was awkward going with the rifle, the Sig and the crossbow, but I couldn’t afford to leave any weapons behind. I took a second to check I wasn’t about to run into trouble before ducking into a mess of brambles and bushes clumped around a large tree trunk that had seen better days.
It put me back near the ammunition dump and as close as I wanted to be. I dragged some leaves away and pulled out the canvas bag and tripwire Fabien had given me.
This wasn’t going to be sophisticated; I’d done this kind of thing before and not always using flashbangs. But these would serve a purpose. It took me five minutes and then I was ready.
I fired the Sig twice into the air, then screamed and sat back to wait for the reaction.
It came good and fast. The boss man was in the area to my rear and the other two were somewhere deep in the trees. Three on the move with two down made five. I hoped that was all they had and that someone I hadn’t seen yet had got cute and was waiting to ambush me.
The boss man came charging through the undergrowth behind me like a tornado, breathing heavily and clearly pissed, ready for a fight to make up for his losses. I waited until he was close enough before pulling the length of tripwire by my right hand. There was metallic ping of the pin coming out and I counted to three before ducking my head and covering my ears.
The blast came good and loud, shaking whatever else in the way of wildlife that hadn’t already moved out to scatter far and wide. Even with my eyes closed I caught a sense of the flash that came with it lighting up the gloom among the trees like an exploding movie studio arc lamp.
If the running man had heard the warning ping he hadn’t paid it much attention, but the blast would have certainly been enough to deafen him. The following eyeball-searing flash of light would have made him think the sky had fallen in.
He kept on running but he was moving on a dry tank. His eyes would have been hurting like hell and his balance shot to ribbons. He also wouldn’t have been able to hear a thing, so the fact that I was standing up as he came close simply didn’t register.
I shot him once centre-frame, then stepped forward and kicked the AK out of his hand. I bent and ripped his cellphone off his shirt front and frisked him, retrieving a Makarov nine-millimetre pistol. All three items went into the river.
Then I got away from there.
There was a lot of shouting, none of it controlled, and I heard the man I’d just shot yelling into the air. I guessed he was telling his friends not to come in shooting, which was very wise of him.
Seconds later they did just the opposite, running in from two different sectors. They took a quick look at their boss, then ducked down, scanning the trees. It was too little too late but their lack of combat discipline was just what I needed.
I reached down and grabbed the second tripwire, then lay flat on the ground and pulled.
Two seconds later the flashbang erupted, sending both men into a spin. But it was nothing compared with the explosion that followed from the ammunition dump as something went up, sending a huge gout of earth, mud, foliage and debris into the air and peppering the trees all around with a deadly spread of shrapnel.
I waited for the count of ten before venturing out. I had the Famas ready but there was no need. The two men were on the ground. One was dead, his chest covered in blood, the other was wounded but out of it, breathing in short gasps, his eyes devoid of expression.
I gathered up my gear as quickly as I could and tossed it all in the nearest pond, where it sank without trace in the mud. Then I ran back to the van and drove to the gate heading north and let myself out.
Time to go home.
FORTY-SIX
On arrival at the FBI office, Bill Warner greeted Callahan and Andrews. He shook hands warmly with them before leading them to a small room set up with an open computer screen on the wall. He was trying to look casual but wore the air of a man on a cloud.
‘It’s been a while.’ The FBI man grinned and waved at them to sit. ‘And here we are again with a familiar name. I never was completely sure about Desayeva.’
Callahan nodded. ‘Same here. What have you got?’
‘You hit us on a good day.’ Warner turned to the monitor. ‘After what Andrews here found out we had a team running over Ledho
ffen’s and Dalkin’s financial records and phone accounts. Ledhoffen has a business account at another bank which shows an input of two cash transfers totalling eighty thousand dollars.’
Callahan whistled. ‘Do you know where from?’
‘We do, sort of. One was for fifty grand from an offshore account – but that’s all we do know. It’s a dead end so far and I don’t hold out much hope of going further. My guess is the source is Russian. But the remaining thirty grand came from her favourite cousin, one Bradley Dalkin.’
Callahan was surprised. ‘That’s clumsy.’ Moving too much money around was a risky business, with banks liable to report unusual amounts; some getting nervous at anything more than ten thousand dollars. Maybe Dalkin and cousin Carly were getting carried away with themselves.
Warner agreed. ‘They’re amateurs, that’s why. I asked around the industry but not all banks worry too much about the numbers. We also took a long, hard look at the phone accounts for Ledhoffen and Desayeva. I figured there might be a connection we could follow along that line to see if the money might have Desayeva’s fingerprints on it. I figured it was a long shot and it was. No fingerprints … at least not there.’
‘And?’
‘We think Ledhoffen got careless or maybe too clever for her own good. Checking her phone we found a single text message from her to Desayeva in the last twenty-four hours. I figured you might have an idea what it means.’ He touched the keys and the screen showed three words.
Callahan’s brain fizzed. He recognized them immediately. They were the three-word code location for Portman in the marshland near Beauvais in France.
There it was: the direct link they were after. Carly Ledhoffen had sent Valentina Desayeva, aka Agent Seraphim, Portman’s precise location. And if that followed the same path as previously, the Russians would jump on it. He checked his watch. He hadn’t heard from Portman, which wasn’t good.
‘Can I use your phone?’ he asked. ‘It’s important.’
Warner nodded. ‘I thought it might be. Go ahead.’
Callahan dialled Portman’s number. It rang. And rang. He cut the connection. Portman either hadn’t got his phone with him or wasn’t in a position to take the call. Neither was potentially great news but he had to believe Portman had the situation under control.
‘Problem?’ Warner asked.
‘I’m not sure. I hope not.’
Warner looked concerned. ‘I know what those words mean, by the way. It’s a locator reference, right? Ledhoffen was telling the Russians where your man is located.’
Callahan felt guilty for assuming Warner wouldn’t realize the significance of the words. ‘That’s right.’ He was about to thank Warner for his work when the FBI man said, ‘We found something else.’
‘Christ,’ said Callahan. ‘Better than this?’
‘Potentially. We figured there had to have been other calls to Ledhoffen or Desayeva which we hadn’t picked up first time round. When we did another trawl we hit on a series of brief calls made to Desayeva’s landline. Each originated from five different public pay phones here in DC. They were single calls lasting no more than a minute or so.’ He smiled like a magician about to produce a rabbit. ‘The kind of calls confirming information with no idle chit-chat … or maybe complaining at being cut out of a deal. All five phones are located less than three blocks from Bradley Dalkin’s apartment in Rockville.’
‘Shazam,’ exclaimed David Andrews softly, and blushed when the two older men looked at him. ‘Sorry.’
‘Shazam’s good,’ Callahan said, and looked at Warner. ‘What do you mean cut out?’
‘First of all it’s hard to prove it was Dalkin calling unless we can pull up CCTV footage of him at those five locations. If we can tie in the time of the calls and his presence, then yes, shazam’s a great word. We’ll lean on him a little harder to find out why he was calling.’
Callahan looked at him. ‘You’re already talking to him?’
‘Sorry – didn’t I tell you? My bad. We decided to bring him in for a little heart-to-heart – a little preliminary dust-up. He’s scared shitless, to use common parlance, or what my young partner, Agent Cahill, calls a weasel scumbag. He’s already intimated that it might have been him finding your man’s code name – Watchman, I believe? – from some papers in his possession, although he hasn’t yet coughed to passing it on.’ When Callahan nodded he continued, ‘And he might have contacted Ledhoffen to tap her for a loan.’
‘A loan?’
‘Yes. He did it a while back. It seems she refused and told him she was nearly broke, too, so no go. That’s when we think he came up with the idea of selling the information about Watchman to a third party.’
‘Desayeva.’
‘Her. And that’s where he got all bitter and twisted because he let slip to us that when he mentioned her name to Ledhoffen, she told him she knew Desayeva very well. Eventually Ledhoffen began dealing with Desayeva direct and cut her country cousin out. That might explain the different payments exchanged, where Dalkin got forty-five grand and Ledhoffen nearly double that. She arranged her own sweet deal with probably more to come – and I’m guessing Dalkin knows that.’ Warner smiled. ‘Spies, huh? It seems you can’t even trust your own family not to screw you these days.’
As they walked back to the exit, Warner observed, ‘I guess it’s not going to be a bundle of laughs in Langley or the State Department when Ledhoffen and Desayeva’s names go public.’
‘Serves them right,’ Callahan muttered, referring to the State Department. He was remembering that, among others, Walter Broderick had been one of the Russian’s main champions for using her as a source. It would have been quite a career-booster for a man on the State Department ladder to have an inside source on all things Russian.
But this bit of news, when it hit the headlines, was going to hit him right where it hurt.
FORTY-SEVEN
Moscow
Two vans stopped outside Building No 3 on the corner of Grizodubovoy Street in the Khoroshyovsky Administrative District of Moscow. Two women and four men got out, each dressed in plain overalls, rubber gloves and carrying boxes of equipment. The woman in the lead ripped away a No Entry sticker across the lock and used a key to unlock the door, standing to one side while the others filed inside.
The last man in carried a stepladder and a plastic folding barrier. He stopped to place the barrier across the doorway to deter visitors, and as an additional measure strung a police tape across the door.
Inside, the team moved across the foyer, deactivating the security system and working their way quickly through the floors, checking for signs of use. Most of the rooms were empty and showed a thin layer of undisturbed dust and the kind of chilled feel denoting a lack of any human presence. Only on the fourth floor was there any furniture, this confined to two of the offices and a meeting room – the so-called ‘dead room’.
The team sprayed and thoroughly cleaned down every item, every desktop and drawer inside and out. They removed the telephones, three computer terminals and towers, including leads and drives. The first woman in directed a man to check all the door frames and windows and give the glass and sills a careful wipe, and instructed the man with the stepladder to remove a set of recording equipment and a camera from inside the air vent panel in the ceiling of the meeting room. Another man was directed to the washroom at the end of the corridor where he sprayed every surface and wiped them down with strong bleach.
Job done, they retreated, closing the doors and wiping down the outer frames. One woman went down in the lift, cleaning the call buttons and every surface that might have been touched, while her colleagues saw to the handrails down the stairwell.
Reaching the ground floor they removed the police tape and plastic barrier before locking the door and climbing back in their vehicles and driving away.
When they were gone, so was every trace of the group that had been operating from Building No 3.
FORTY-EIGHT
I w
as in Paris. At least, I thought I was – I was feeling a little hazy, dragged from a deep sleep by my phone ringing and unsure of my surroundings. I snatched up the phone and checked the screen. No caller ID.
‘What kind of trouble have you started over there?’ Callahan demanded with no lead-in. He didn’t sound pissed, just loud, like his blood was on fire.
‘Wait one,’ I croaked, and swung my legs off the bed. I’d called Lindsay on my way in from Beauvais to let her know I was safe and would check in with her later after crashing out. The rest I couldn’t recall, but that’s what the aftermath of combat can do to you.
‘What do you mean?’ I played dumb while I woke up fully and drank some water. Dehydration had set in and I hadn’t drunk enough to ward it off completely.
‘We’re getting reports of criminal gangs waging war on each other on the outskirts of Paris. Tell me that’s not your doing?’
I gave him the facts, stripping away any emotion because that was all he needed. He didn’t interrupt me but I could hear him humming at various points, although whether it was acknowledgement or approval wasn’t clear.
When I ran dry he said, ‘I’ll get someone to take a look at local police and coroners’ reports. How’s Lindsay?’
‘She’s fine. Enjoying the sights of Paris on Langley’s dollar as far as I know.’
‘Good to hear.’ He hesitated. ‘Is she holding up after the fireworks?’
‘She is. But you might want to get a friendly psych to have a talk with her when she gets back.’
‘Will do. How close to it did she get?’
‘Close enough.’ I wasn’t about to tell him that she’d actually shot a man dead because Lindsay didn’t know and wouldn’t want to have that on her record in Langley. Some things are best not publicized if they don’t need to be.
‘OK. Listen, we’ve got the leaker.’ He gave a long pause.
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