by Matthew Dunn
“I cannot remember the last time I visited a church,” Will admitted.
“That matters not. What matters is that you are here now.” The priest touched Will’s shoulder. “Would you like me to make you a hot drink?”
Will rubbed his hands again and felt their coldness being replaced by pain as his circulation coursed through them. He nodded. “That would be very kind, provided that it’s not inappropriate?”
The priest chuckled. “You have made a journey that others could not or would not make. The very least you deserve is something to warm you through.” Then he walked away toward a dark recess.
Will wondered why he had made this journey. He tried to understand his thoughts. He tried to understand why being in this lonely, sacred place was so important to him. He recalled his own words:
I do my work. That’s all that matters to me.
And he recalled Alistair’s riposte:
I don’t believe you.
He closed his eyes and felt the vastness of the silence around him. It held him for a moment, and it seemed to Will that it did not want to let go. He opened his eyes and breathed loudly.
The priest came to him again and sat by the oil lamp. He gave Will a mug of hot tea, which Will gratefully gulped down.
Will gripped the mug between his freezing hands and said, “Sometimes it seems impossible to get rid of the coldness.”
The priest nodded slowly while keeping his gaze on Will. “I can see that this is not normally a place you would come to. I can see that you are trying to find something which has been lost, perhaps something inside you.” He gently placed a hand on Will’s forearm. “If you would like me to, I can help you with that quest.”
Will looked down and shook his head slightly. “I don’t know.”
The priest squeezed Will’s forearm. “You are safe here. You have nothing to fear.”
Will looked at the man’s hand and then his face. “I fear myself,” he said quietly.
“And yet you have come here, on tonight of all nights.” The priest exuded a kindness that Will had not seen for a very long time.
“I came here to face one of my demons.”
“Then you have conquered some of your inner fear.” The priest removed his hand from Will’s arm. “But perhaps you would prefer that I left you alone.”
Will glanced around the church. “I did not know if this place would be open.” He looked at the priest. “And I certainly did not expect to find someone else here.”
The priest nodded sympathetically. “You need to be alone.”
Will shook his head. “It’s okay. It would be nice if you have time to stay with me a little longer.” He frowned. “But this must be a lonely place to do your work. Do you have help?”
“I like the solitude,” the priest replied. “I have no need for support. But I have every need to give support.”
Will looked again at the figure of Mary. “Maybe I was hoping that you would be here.”
“Maybe.”
Will turned slowly back to face the priest. He felt no surprise when he saw that the man was now holding a CZ 99 pistol, which was pointed directly at Will’s head. He’d known that the man had retrieved his weapon when he went to make the mug of tea. He’d known that the cleric had simply been waiting for the right moment to withdraw the pistol. He’d known that no amount of self-projected humility or anguish could disguise the fact that a man like Will would never be in a place like this unless bad things were within it.
Will smiled a little. “I came here to face a demon.”
The priest nodded and narrowed his eyes. “Who sent you?”
Will glanced at the altar and muttered, “I answer to no one.” He looked back at the priest.
A bead of sweat was trickling down one side of the man’s face. “What do you want?”
Will smiled fully. “Your life.”
Anger flashed in the priest’s eyes before he grinned. “I’m sorry that I am going to have to disappoint you.”
Will’s face grew cold. “Did you expect to go unpunished? Did you expect that your crimes of two decades ago would be forgotten?”
The man sneered. “You know nothing about me.”
Will stared at him. “I know that you were once a captain in a Bosnian Serb paramilitary unit called the Panthers and that you led your men on killing sprees that involved rape and mutilation of your victims before you murdered them. You personally slaughtered hundreds of women and children and threw them into unmarked mass graves. You cut unborn babies out of living wombs and then strangled them with your bare hands. You degraded their good in favor of your evil.” He gestured at the church. “Hiding in a place like this was meaningless. Its fortified walls and sacred grounds could never protect a man like you from a man like me. But for all your abhorrent crimes, I am here to prosecute you for one crime and one crime alone.”
The priest sniggered. “Too bad, because I am the one holding the gun.”
Will nodded. “True.”
The man pressed the barrel against Will’s head. “Which crime?”
“You and four of your men raped an honorable woman a few kilometers outside Sarajevo while it was besieged by your compatriots.”
“A single rape?” The man sniggered again. “There are too many to remember.”
“A Muslim woman. You took her coat because you knew that in doing so she would likely freeze to death. The four men with you later died in the war, but that does not matter to me, because it was you who gave them their instructions.”
The priest frowned thoughtfully, then brightened. “Yes, now I remember. A peasant, a woman asleep in the woods. We woke her and brutalized her.” He laughed loudly, and the noise filled the church. “You represent that woman?”
“I represent the need for justice.”
The man leaned close to Will and pressed the gun harder against him. “Then it is a shame that justice could not find a better representative.”
“So it seems.”
In a movement that was quicker than any man’s trigger finger, Will grabbed the priest’s gun hand and twisted his arm to lock the muscles. With his other hand, he seized the back of the priest’s head and punched it down at the oil lamp. Glass from the lamp’s flame shield shattered and splintered into the man’s face and exposed the lamp’s flame to his head. Will stood and yanked the head with tremendous force, so that the priest flew from the pew to the church’s central aisle. Then Will walked up to his writhing body and punched him very hard on the side of the face.
He looked down at the man. “I know why I came here. While demons still exist, I have to take a stand against their evil. And I have been given the ultimate power to stop creatures like you.”
He withdrew his handgun and pointed it at the man’s head. “I did not lie to you. I came here for your life.”
He pulled the trigger.
Part III
Thirty-Two
“There they are.” Roger grabbed Will’s forearm, looking down from their vantage point high in an upper balcony inside Zagreb Cathedral. “One’s walking down the central aisle, and the other two are taking positions in the rear of the cathedral.”
Will looked at the large floor area beneath him. There were seated men and women in prayer, groups of tourists, as well as Lana, two members of the Iranian surveillance team, and the three new men whom Roger had identified.
“The fourth member of their team is outside.” Roger’s voice was so hushed that Will could barely hear him.
Saying nothing, Will focused his gaze on Lana. She’d done as he had previously instructed her and positioned herself toward the center of the cathedral floor. While he couldn’t see it from his perch, Will knew that she would be carrying a tourist guide and occasionally referring to it between her observations of the cathedral surroundings. He looked back at the three men, the two Iranians, and then again at Lana. He saw her turn and walk toward the exit. She would now be heading for the Preradoviceva flower market.
�
�Let’s see what happens,” Roger was saying. “One of the Iranians moves in behind Lana, the other stays where he is, but what are our new friends going to do?”
Will watched the three men and saw one remain motionless while the other two moved deeper into the cathedral, in the opposite direction from where Lana was going.
“Okay.” The CIA paramilitary man continued his narration of the scene unfolding below. “They’re allowing the fourth member of their team to get onto Lana when she’s outside. Their new position also suggests they’re fully aware of the Iranian team around her.”
“But can we tell if the Iranians are aware of these other men?” Will kept his own voice very quiet.
“It depends. If the Iranian and the other three men stay here for more than ten minutes, we can be confident that both teams know about the other and that the Iranian is sending them a message to stay put. But if the Iranian leaves in under that time, it tells us nothing. He could be oblivious to the other men, or he could want the other men to think that the Iranians haven’t spotted them.”
Will and Roger just watched, saying nothing for the next five minutes. Finally Will saw the last Iranian surveillance man walk slowly toward the exit and leave the cathedral. A minute later one of the three men also left, and after a further three minutes the remaining two men followed him.
Roger turned to face him. “We have a very serious situation.”
Will ran his fingers through his hair and thought for a moment. Roger had summoned him to this place after the CIA team leader had spotted not only the fact that the Iranian surveillance team had acquired new members to bolster its head count back up to seven but, more important, that another team of four unknown persons had positioned themselves around Lana this morning. Will knew that his operational use of Lana was now in dire jeopardy.
Roger pulled out his cell phone to read a new message. “I sent Ben to check up on them. They’re French.”
Will frowned. “DGSE?”
Roger nodded once and said, “They must be.”
The Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure was France’s equivalent of the CIA and MI6, and it was the only French covert organization authorized by its government to conduct overseas surveillance and other intelligence activities.
“But how the hell did they get onto Lana?” Will’s mind was working rapidly.
“We don’t have the time to be certain,” Roger replied, “but I’d say it started with the discovery of the Iranian surveillance team. We know they’re staying at the Hotel Dubrovnik, so maybe the local DGSE representative in Zagreb has recruited one of the hotel’s reception staff. That person alerts the DGSE man that seven Iranians have just checked into the hotel. The DGSE person wants to find out more about them, so he has his hotel spy look in their rooms. Maybe the hotel gets lucky and finds covert photographs of Lana, but assuming that the Iranian team is better than that, certainly the spy should be able to find bus or train tickets, store or restaurant receipts. That data would show patterns, and those patterns would tell where the Iranian group goes. So our DGSE person looks for the most frequented location and then just waits there. He or she will also choose the location because of visibility and because it is a bottleneck, meaning high levels of exposure for the group. It may not happen on the first day or the second, but odds are the Iranians will come through that place eventually. The DGSE person observes their formation and behavior. He or she establishes with certainty that they’re a surveillance team. If I were in that situation, I’d be able to positively identify which person was the team’s target, so let’s assume that’s what happened.”
“But how would the DGSE person then be able to put a name to the Iranian’s target without following her and thereby risking being compromised to the Iranians?”
“Again, receipts. The Iranian team is holed up in the Hotel Dubrovnik. So how come they’ve got so many of their receipts for mineral water purchased from the Regent Esplanade’s 1925 Lounge? The DGSE person can’t shortcut this process and just go straight there rather than spotting team and target on the street, because a single person in such a small bar, unlike a rotating team, would risk compromise.” Roger seemed certain. “But with a face for the target and without the Iranians around, there are then any number of options. Maybe there’s an on-site Regent concierge to talk to or a loose-lipped after-hours bartender. The DGSE person shows a photograph taken covertly from a bag camera during his street surveillance. Or if not, he just asks about an Arab-looking woman-there’ll be very few in Zagreb compared to Sarajevo, and certainly very few in the Regent. Then it’s not that difficult to put a name to a room, no matter how strict the hotel is about its security procedures.”
“And then they discover that woman in question is a resident of France.”
Roger folded his arms. “And the French intelligence officer therefore decides to put a four-man DGSE surveillance team onto both her and the Iranians to find out what’s going on.”
Will looked around the cathedral and then back at Roger. He felt his heart rate increase. “We’ve got to pray that the DGSE team is still hidden from the Iranians, but we have to stop them before they’re spotted, or else the Iranians may panic and attack Lana. If that happens, everything will be ruined.” He felt his stomach tighten into knots. “Everything.”
“What do you have in mind?”
Will checked his watch. “She doesn’t know it yet, but in three hours’ time Lana needs to be boarding a plane to take her out of here.”
“Where do you want her to go?”
“Anywhere. . Anywhere outside the Balkans, but not too far. I need her to be in Sarajevo tomorrow evening, because the day after that she’s meeting Megiddo.”
Roger checked his own watch and said, “There’s a five-forty P.M. Croatia Airlines flight to Prague. Will that do?”
Will nodded. “She’ll be on that flight. So will Laith, Ben, Julian, and no doubt certain members of the Iranian and French teams.”
Roger said, “If I’m correct in my assessment of what you plan to do, then Laith, Ben, and Julian won’t be enough for the job.”
“I know. I can’t be on the same flight as your men, because the Iranians will recognize me. And I can’t have you with them either, because it would be foolhardy to put all four of you on the same flight. You and I will get the next available flight out after your men’s flight, and then we’ll join them when we arrive in the Czech Republic.”
Roger reached for his cell phone. Will, too, pulled out his phone to call Lana and tell her to pack her bags.
The Iranians could spot the DGSE team at any moment. And Will was going to do something very drastic to stop that from happening.
Thirty-Three
It was the first time that Will had seen the four-man CIA team together. They sat with him in a room within the small Savic Hotel in Prague’s Old Town. Smoke from Laith’s cigarette lingered over them and mingled with the steam from the mugs of coffee each man held. It was nearly 1:00 A.M., but all the Americans looked edgy and energetic.
“Why are we not on Lana?” Laith’s voice sounded hostile.
“Will and I are taking a risk leaving her alone right now, but we have vital reasons for doing so.” Roger spoke slowly, glancing at Will before returning his gaze to his men. “Which hotel is she in?”
“She’s in the Clarion.” Ben took a swig of his coffee and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s about one kilometer away from here on the other side of the Old Town.”
“And the DGSE team?” Roger again.
“All four of them have arrived.” Laith blew smoke while speaking. “Like us, they’ve taken one room to use as their base. They’re staying in the Hotel Josef.”
“What’s their drill?”
Laith smiled a little. “Last time we looked, all four of them were watching Lana’s hotel. But that was before you called us here, so right now I’ve no idea.”
“Do they have weapons?”
Julian shook his head
. “Very unlikely. No time to get any, plus why would they feel the need to arm themselves?”
Roger nodded. “All right. How do they look?”
“Highly professional.” Laith extinguished his cigarette. “Their movements are slick, they barely talk to each other, meaning they don’t have to, and they’re using creative surveillance maneuvers.”
“Do they look like they could handle themselves in a confrontation?”
Ben frowned. “They look and move like Special Forces. They’ll be able to take care of themselves if the Iranians do spot and assault them.”
Roger wordlessly ceded the floor to Will.
Will breathed in and spoke. “In one hour’s time, Lana will leave her hotel to take a walk through the Old Town. This will come as a surprise to her Iranian and French watchers, but I doubt they’ll view it as suspicious, as Prague is at its most beautiful at night, when its streets and alleys are empty. I think all four of the DGSE men will be on her, because this is their first night of observing her. Unlike the Iranian team, they’ve not yet had the chance to define a pattern of her behavior that could allow them to decide whether they can scale back coverage of her at particular points of the day. But the Iranians will most likely have only one or two people on her, as they’re far more familiar with Lana’s movements and they know that she’s never before left her hotel after midnight. Nevertheless, when they see her taking her walk, they’ll alert at least two of their colleagues to join them, and within thirty minutes of that alert they’ll number three or four men.” Will looked at each of the men in turn as he spoke. “That thirty-minute gap is crucial, because during that time we’re going to kill the DGSE team.”
The CIA men were silent for a while, and Will wondered who would speak first.
Roger looked at his men. “Do any of you have a problem with this task?”
Julian looked directly at Will. “As long as we’re authorized to do this, I’ve got no problem. But how are we going to do it without being seen by the one or two Iranian specialists?”