by Brad Taylor
Sweet as can be, Jennifer said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. As the financial person for GRS, I can’t justify renting a room that’s not being used.”
I waved my hand, cutting the conversation short and saying, “Where are Shoshana and Aaron, anyway? All they had to do was check out the delivery vehicle.”
“Don’t know. Maybe they ran into an issue. It is an armored car service, after all.”
Aaron and Shoshana had tracked Simon all over town, where he did nothing of interest. He eventually ended up at a concert in the Slovak Radio Building, a monstrous inverted pyramid from the old Soviet days that now hosted symphony orchestras. They’d stayed there, eyes on Simon, until we’d called with our information, which caused a change of mission.
I’d begun following Mikhail as soon as he’d passed. Jennifer fell in behind, picking up Knuckles on the way, and we’d begun a loose track.
He’d driven down the winding roads, taking lefts and rights, and making me wonder if he was running a surveillance detection route. It was hard to tell, because the roads themselves were really just narrow lanes, and he could plausibly be using his knowledge of shortcuts to get down the hillside. Which is exactly what a good surveillance detection route would look like. Forget about all that Hollywood stuff of running red lights or sharp U-turns; a good route looked normal, where the target could pick you out without you even realizing he’d done it.
If he were running one here, he would be checking to see if any cars stuck with him over time and distance. As I had no idea one way or the other, I’d chosen discretion, and backed off after two turns, letting Jennifer pick up the follow.
I’d paralleled on a side street, keeping track with Jennifer’s calls, and Mikhail had finally entered a four-lane main thoroughfare, with a tram for public transportation in the center. Jennifer pulled off him and I intercepted, still having no idea if he was practicing tradecraft or just driving. He hit the Danube and went right, returning to the spaghetti streets. Jennifer and I flip-flopped back and forth, trying to remain inconspicuous, until he rolled up to a large outdoor promenade, making a sharp right and disappearing into an underground garage.
Trouble. If he were smart, he’d just sit and watch for a few minutes, tagging everyone who entered. On the other hand, if we waited until we were sure he wasn’t watching anymore, we’d lose him as he exited on foot.
I quickly glanced around, seeing no parking whatsoever on the surface. Which stood to reason, since they’d built a damn underground garage.
Jennifer came on. “Pike, Knuckles is working his tablet. That garage is a hundred meters from the US Embassy.”
She said it like it was a threat, but that, I was sure, was a coincidence. I said, “Not worried about it. Can Knuckles see foot exits from the garage on the map?”
Knuckles came on. “Yeah, I can. The entrance ramp is new construction. Apparently, the US government made them move the entire entrance to the garage after 9/11. It used to be directly in front of the embassy. Now, all exits near the embassy are blocked. There’s only the main auto entrance where you are, and a foot exit on the other side of the promenade.”
I glanced across, seeing restaurants and outdoor cafés with people out enjoying the sunshine. “Koko, stage up behind me, but don’t enter the garage. Knuckles, go foxtrot and get eyes on that exit. If you see our target, give me a call. We’ll park and meet you. Keep him in sight, but don’t get too close. He might recognize you from the memorial.”
I heard “Roger all,” then saw Jennifer come up behind me in the small circle. I watched Knuckles exit and walk across the promenade, sticking close to a woman pushing a pram. I figured we had about fifteen minutes before someone hassled us to park.
He got in position and Jennifer came through my radio. “You know why this park is famous?”
Knuckles said, “I know someone who’s going to tell us.”
“Yes. You could use the history. This is where the Velvet Revolution began in the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia. Prague got all the news, but the same thing happened here. In fact, the first demonstration was right here, led by students in 1989. In just fifteen days, the communist government of Czechoslovakia ceased to exist.”
I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Jennifer staring at me through the windshield, an impish grin on her face, always proud to teach us knuckle draggers a thing or two about how small events can have big impacts. I winked at her in the mirror, and the grin turned into a smile.
I was blessed with her as a partner—both professionally and personally—and it was a miracle she put up with my BS. Then again, Jennifer recognized that all my bluster was just that: BS. She knew where I stood with her.
At least, I thought she did. I remembered what Shoshana had said to me, and wondered if I should work harder to show Jennifer how much she meant to me. I mean, surely she could figure that out on her own. I didn’t have to put it on a whiteboard or anything, did I?
Knuckles interrupted my juvenile, eighth-grade thoughts, saying, “Got him. He’s moving west, just strolling. You’re free to park.”
I put the car in drive and rolled down into the garage, finding the first place I could. I watched Jennifer park behind me and waited on her. She reached me and we began speed-walking up the staircase that led to the exit Knuckles was watching. I said, “You think you’re good for this?”
“Yeah. I think we’re both good. Knuckles is the risk. He was in the memorial, so there’s a chance he’ll be burned.”
We reached the top and I said, “Let’s get him out of play. Ready to go on a date?”
She said, “Yeah, like that’ll happen anytime soon.”
What’s that mean?
35
She slid her hand into mine before I could respond, completely focused on the mission, her comment just slipping out like a person bitching about their dog tearing up the lawn. Aggravating, but something that must be endured. She said, “Your camera ready to go?”
I checked a pouch inside my knapsack, glad to be back on the mission, and said, “Yep, tablet’s ready to record.”
We broke the plane of the door and I called Knuckles. “Give us a lock-on.”
“Headed into the pedestrian area. Go right from the exit, cross the promenade, and take your first left. He’s walking straight up the street, like he’s got a destination.”
“Street name?”
“Rybarska Brana. Or something like that.”
“Got it. Headed that way.”
We walked down a narrow brick road with shops left and right, the buildings fronting the lane three stories tall. A really quaint area of town full of local craftsmen and cafés, every so often it had metal sculptures of men going about their day, the most famous being a worker made of brass climbing out of a manhole cover. The lane was spotlessly clean, and possibly older than anything in our own country. It could have been a Disneyland set, if the actors at Disneyland were actually making a living instead of pretending.
We walked up the street hand in hand, just a couple out enjoying the weather. Within two minutes, Knuckles came on. “He just went into a pub called the Dubliner. Straight up the street on the left side. If you’re on the road, you got about a hundred meters, maybe less. You’ll pass a square on the right, and then it’s just ahead. I’m off.”
I said, “Roger all. Keep eyes on the front. We got it.”
We walked past the square, a church on the other side, then a couple of different pubs before seeing a green awning proclaiming an authentic Irish bar. Had to be it. I saw Knuckles on a bench down the way and said, “This it?”
He said, “Yep. He’s been in for about a minute.”
“Got it. Keep your position. He leaves, and we’re staying. Don’t follow unless I call. Just track a direction.”
“Roger all. You look cute holding hands, by the way. Takes the edge off your Cro-
Magnon ass.”
Jennifer opened the door and I said, “Thanks, hippie. Sometimes I can pull off the date mission.”
Jennifer smirked and said, “No, you can’t. But I’d rather pretend with you than him.”
She said it off the radio, but my microphone picked it up. Knuckles said, “What was that? What did she say? She’s got to be kidding after the Caymans.”
I didn’t respond, searching inside for our target. The pub was crowded even this early in the day, but I found him with his back against the wall, by himself, staring at us. No doubt, we were burned for any other surveillance today, but we were good to go here, for this one shot. Jennifer caught his glare and kissed me on the cheek, diffusing the situation.
The bar was stacked with a rack of local men, no Eurotrash among them. They saw us approach, but recognized immediately that we weren’t from there. Something I’d seen the world over. Locals could smell strangers like they were farting propane. Even so, they were friendly.
There was only one stool available, which I gave to Jennifer. She sat and ordered a couple of rum and Cokes—getting a look of confusion at first—and I waited for the bartender to leave. Wasn’t my fault he rarely served pirates. When it was clear, I leaned into Jennifer’s ear as if I were whispering. Which, I suppose I was. “How in the hell are we going to get a facial of that guy from here?”
She laughed like I was a witty guy and said, “Corner of the bar behind you. Two stools with the patrons leaving. We should move. I take one side, you take the other. We’ll have crossing fields of fire for the camera.”
She then pointed in an exaggerated way. I turned and looked, seeing the bar take a right-angle right next to where the servers picked up drinks, the two people standing to leave. She was right. I nodded and we moved, studiously ignoring Mikhail.
We sat down almost across from each other and I said, “You got Mikhail. I’ll get whoever shows.”
She said, “Yep,” and surreptitiously manipulated the camera in her blouse, focusing on him. She pulled out the tablet like she was checking her mail, and we waited.
But not for long.
An older gentleman arrived, wearing a tie and a tweed coat, with a trimmed goatee that made him look more like a merchant than a gangster. He shook Mikhail’s hand and sat across from him, his back to the door and his face looking straight at me. I glanced at Jennifer and she nodded. I reached into my backpack and hit record. Jennifer did the same, as if she were surfing the web.
The two men spoke for about twenty minutes, then shook hands and left. We made no attempt to follow, knowing we’d risked it all on this meeting. If Mikhail saw us on the street again today, he’d know he was under surveillance. We’d need to wait a few days to let the heat state die down before we could be used against him again. That didn’t mean I couldn’t employ Knuckles on the new man.
I called him, giving a description and telling him to ignore Mikhail and pick up the new guy. He did so, and we let the computer’s algorithm do its work. When it was done, I held my breath, hoping Mikhail was speaking Yiddish instead of one of the other five languages he knew.
Jennifer’s tablet cleared before mine, and she said, “It’s coming in clean.”
Two seconds later, my tablet began playing, and whole words scrolled across the bottom of the video instead of gobbledygook, causing me to smile. When both were complete, we had just about everything we needed for the transfer.
It took a little back-and-forth, as each tablet only had one side of the conversation, but it was easy enough to decipher: The elderly gentleman was a diamond wholesaler, and the transfer was happening at his shop tomorrow morning. An armored car would pull up, the gold—and presumably the Torah—would be loaded, then the armored transport would deliver the goods to a waiting eighteen-wheeler out of town, on the highway to Austria. Which meant we had to hit the diamond place tonight.
I called Knuckles and found out the man had walked straight back to his office. It was literally around the block, on a street called Venturska. We linked up with Knuckles and determined in sixty seconds that a hit here was out of the question. The diamond wholesaler was off the street, through a tunnel in a building that led into a courtyard like a mini-Paris-type thing. And it was definitely wired for defense, with cameras and alarms all over the place. To make matters worse, the entire area we were in was restricted to pedestrians. The only vehicles allowed in had special permits. We could probably get away with bringing a car, but the risks of getting pulled over far outweighed the usefulness. To make matters worse, some of the narrow roads had ornate wrought-iron poles set into the cobblestones, blocking entrances. We’d be trying to escape from a veritable bear trap, with very few ways in and out, and even if we did, the vehicle would be on a thousand different surveillance cameras, which meant compromise after the fact.
That left the armored car itself. The very thing that hampered us from using a vehicle actually enhanced our ability to interdict one. It would have the special permits, but would also have to follow the rules of the city, using only those narrow lanes that weren’t blocked. In effect, it would be canalized, and we could be waiting. Which is what caused Aaron and Shoshana’s change of mission off Simon. I called them and redirected their effort to the armored car business, getting all the information we could on the vehicle to plan an assault.
We’d completed a recce of the area, determining where the armored car would have to go, along with assault options, and had come back to the hotel with the waning light of the sun flickering off the Danube. I figured it would have taken us twice as long to do our side of the mission versus the one I’d given the Israelis, but apparently, that wasn’t so. Jennifer and I had been waiting for damn near thirty minutes, long enough for Knuckles to return to his room for a shower and for Jennifer to order some finger foods.
36
Jennifer popped another peanut and looked at her phone. She said, “Text from Shoshana. They’re on the way back. They got a complete dump, and she ended with something for you.”
“What?”
“She says, ‘Tell Pike we emplaced some more Shoshana magic.’”
Knuckles said, “What does that mean?”
I said, “How the hell would I know? She’s crazy. I just hope Aaron sent that other translation back to the Mossad.”
Knuckles said, “You mentioned that before. Why? We got the transfer information.”
“That conversation with Mikhail and Simon was in Yiddish. We got the translation, and it was strange. They weren’t talking about gold. They were talking about geopolitical stuff.”
I pointed at the TV, tuned to the BBC and discussing the ongoing tensions growing between East and West, the screen showing stock footage of US Marines disembarking from a light armored vehicle. “Mikhail and Simon were talking about what’s going on in Ukraine. I don’t know, I just got a feeling here. It’s important. Much, much more important than this damn Torah.”
Jennifer started to give a smart-aleck reply, then saw the look on my face. One she’d seen before, when the Taskforce hadn’t cooperated with what I wanted, and I’d been proven right in the end. She nodded and said, “He’ll send it, if you ask.”
As if on cue, her phone vibrated. She texted a message back while saying, “They’re here. On the way up.”
I said, “About damn time.”
Three minutes later Aaron came through the door, Shoshana behind him, dressed in the clothes she’d purchased with Jennifer in Wroclaw. She looked almost normal. Aaron said, “How are we allowed to use this place? I didn’t think the lounge was included with the rooms.”
I said, “Jennifer did it. We’re paying.”
Jennifer cut in, saying, “No, that’s not true. We needed a place to plan, and I’m canceling Pike’s room. He’s moving in with me. All in all, it saves you guys money.”
Shoshana looked suspicious. She said, “Pike sleeps in you
r room so we can use this one? He is willing to sacrifice that way? Why?”
I said, “I’m not ‘sacrificing,’ because I’m not sleeping in her room. Jennifer’s trying to get a first-class upgrade. That’s all. Talk to her about this.”
Jennifer slitted her eyes at me, and I started to backpedal. Shoshana, having no idea about anything between man and woman, said, “Wait, she sleeps in your room now, right? But you won’t sleep in her room? Is this how your relationship works? You feel insulted by her demands, but it’s okay if you do the same?”
I felt like my head was going to explode. “No, damn it. It’s just stupid. I shouldn’t have to move rooms. . . . Jesus. Forget about the rooms. Let’s talk about the mission.”
I saw Jennifer glowering, but pressed ahead. “We’ve got a pretty good plan of attack tomorrow, with a way to isolate the car, but we need your intelligence to see if it’s even worth it. What did you find?”
We talked for the next few minutes, comparing notes. Knuckles asked specific questions about the car itself, which would be the hardest thing to penetrate. Cracking an armored car was analogous to cracking a safe, with each having a unique vulnerability, and we needed to know for sure that we were leveraging the right one. Armored cars were made precisely to prevent penetration, and standing on the street after stopping the vehicle, with our asses in the wind, wasn’t the time to figure out that our plan had no chance of success.
In the end, Knuckles was satisfied we could crack it—and he was the expert on that sort of thing, having done an actual armored car heist in Bulgaria for a Taskforce operation that was dicey, to say the least. He’d assaulted in the street much like we were going to do here, and this car had the same vulnerability that he’d leveraged before.
His assault was a violent encounter that had looked random, with heads getting smacked and people screaming, but that was all just show for the cover. It had been executed with a precision few men could achieve, least of all a random criminal element, and all that had been predicated on Knuckles’s research into the target.