Dark Zone db-3

by Stephen Coonts

  Dean pushed it in. A light blinked next to the slot and the elevator began moving upward.

  “Pretty fancy place,” said Karr.

  “Maybe we should get a room,” said Dean.

  “Never sneak the bill past Rubens. We’re lucky we don’t have to stay at Motel 6.”

  The elevator stopped on a private floor, where guests who had reserved the premier-tier rooms had their own lounge and other facilities, including a spa and a concierge on twenty-four-hour duty. The latter stepped forward now, apologizing that the lounge had closed for the evening.

  “Thanks,” said Karr. “Just wanted to impress my friend. Definitely worth the extra freight.”

  The concierge grimaced momentarily but then turned to Dean and assured him that the guest services were top-notch. Karr played up the stereotypical noisy Yank routine, stepping over to the room on the right and looking around. The concierge offered to give Dean a tour; Karr answered that it wasn’t necessary and led Dean back to the elevator.

  “What was that all about?” asked Dean as they headed to the tenth floor.

  “We needed to insert the card into a reader so the Art Room could scan it,” he explained. “I was just killing time until they got everything worked out. It works like an ATM card. The whole system is computerized, which lets the staff downstairs change the locks by just punching a few keys. Fortunately, it also allows the Art Room to open doors for us. Tenth floor, room one-oh-one-one.”

  People thought of the NSA as an agency of snoopers and eavesdroppers. From what Dean had seen, it was more like the biggest club of hackers in the world.

  They found the room quickly. While Dean played lookout, Karr retrieved a small fiber-optic device and a long wire from the bottom of his belt — a telescoping video camera, equipped with a miniature fisheye lens for checking out a room that might be booby-trapped. But as small and thin as the device was, he had trouble pushing it under the door, which was fitted very closely to the threshold.

  Just as he finally got it, the Art Room warned Dean that the elevator was arriving.

  “I’ll slow them down,” said Dean, striding quickly down the corridor toward the elevator foyer. He got there as the door opened, paused a second, then turned the corner just in time to “accidentally” plow into one of the guests.

  Unfortunately, it was a nine-year-old girl, and he just barely managed to grab her before she fell. She looked at him, panic-stricken.

  “Hey, watch it!” shouted the father.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dean to the girl. He lowered himself to eye-level. “Are you OK?”

  The girl started to cry. She turned; her mother gathered her into her arms. Both parents looked at him as if he were a masher.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dean, still holding her.

  “Let go of her,” said the father. He stood perhaps five-seven to Dean’s six feet but nonetheless looked as if he wanted to fight. He had an Irish lilt to his voice.

  “It was an accident,” said Dean, letting go of the girl. “I’m sorry.”

  “Be more careful next time,” hissed the man. He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and pushed her along to the hall. Dean turned and watched them walk down the hall.

  Karr had disappeared.

  Dean ducked back in the vestibule where the elevators were, pressed the button, and waited. Two older women were in the car when it arrived; he got in, saw that the lobby button was already lit, and stood toward the back. When the elevator arrived, he walked out, then pretended to check his pocket and realize he had forgotten something. He twirled around, pulling the card key out of his pocket and playing with it as he waited for the elevator.

  He wasn’t as good an actor as Karr, he thought. But he could play a part if he had to.

  Back on the tenth floor, the hallway was empty. Dean walked slowly, hesitating when he reached the room; the door was closed. Rather than going in he started walking again.

  “Karr?”

  “He’s in the room, Charlie,” said Chafetz. “Before you go in, post a video fly in the wall sconce or something. There aren’t any video cameras in any of the hallways and we can’t see what’s going on. Tommy didn’t have a chance.”

  Dean slipped a fly — a tiny bugging device roughly the size and shape of a dime — out of his pants pocket and wedged it carefully at the top of the lighting fixture.

  Inside the room, Karr knelt in front of the fake wardrobe, which hid a large television set and a set of drawers. To the right of the drawers was a safe; the Deep Black op was using his handheld computer to listen to the tumblers on the safe. With a handkerchief on his hand, he pushed down the handle and pulled the door open; the safe was empty.

  “I figured.” Karr closed it, spun the combination, then returned the dial to the number that had been set when he began. “Check the loo, would you? The WC?”

  Dean went into the bathroom. The soap had been opened, but nothing else. A hotel bathrobe hung on the hanger behind the door; it didn’t look as if it had been used, and its pocket was empty. Dean went to the wastepaper basket, which had a wrapper and some tissues. He examined the wrapper: it was for candy, a fancy piece of glossy paper with a shiny picture, the sort of thing you put around a one-cent piece of flavored sugar so you can charge twenty cents.

  A small striped box sat at the bottom of the basket. Dean took it out and looked at it; it had the name “Hediard” on it. The word Paris was in the logo.

  “Hediard,” said Dean.

  “You talking to us, Charlie?” asked his runner.

  “There’s a box. It has an address. Twenty-one place de la Madeleine, Paris. It may have been for candy.”

  Chafetz corrected his pronunciation, then told him that Hediard was a very fancy gourmet food shop.

  “In Paris,” she added. “Oo-la-la. Treats for the sweet.”

  “Message on the phone,” said Karr out in the room, pointing to the blinking light. “Want to listen in?”

  “Take a second,” said Chafetz.

  While the Art Room worked on that, Karr opened the bureau and looked for something — anything — in the drawers. They were empty.

  “Here you go,” said Chafetz, piping the phone message in over their communications system.

  “Waterloo at eight,” said a male voice. It had a foreign accent — maybe French, maybe Italian, maybe anything; Dean couldn’t place it. There was a time stamp on the message; the call had been made fifteen minutes before 2:00 p.m., undoubtedly when the occupant was en route to the park.

  “What’s it mean?” Dean asked.

  “Waterloo train station,” said Karr. “You think that’s tonight or tomorrow?”

  “If it’s tonight, we ought to get moving.”

  “Yeah.” Karr groaned. The drawers were empty, as was the dead man’s suitcase. There were no papers or anything else that might vaguely relate to the man’s identity or mission here.

  “The room was registered to Gordon Kensworth,” said Chafetz. “We’re checking the credit card data now.”

  “Sounds British,” said Karr.

  “Maybe. The address he registered with doesn’t wash,” added the runner. “What a surprise.”

  “I found this,” said Dean, handing Karr the candy box and wrapper.

  “Sweet tooth,” said Karr. He looked at it for a minute. “So he was in Paris, or knew someone who was. Better put it back where you got it.” He looked at his watch. “We have about twenty minutes to get to the train station, which is about twenty less than we need. Leave the room key on the desk over there. They’ll add ten pounds to the poor guy’s bill if we just toss it away.”

  11

  Patrick Donohue thought he recognized the man in the hotel from the park. His first impulse — the instinct he always fought against — was anger, not surprise, and he’d felt an urge to wrestle the man in the hallway. He’d controlled it, of course, but the girl deserved the real credit. She acted completely naturally, crying out and falling back tearfully when she bumped into th
e man, the perfect cover for Donohue. He vented his anger, appearing to be just another overprotective parent, before continuing down the hall. He acted exactly as a guest would, and the credit truly belonged to the girl.

  He stopped at a door across from the entrance to the stairs. Donohue put his hand in his pocket as if looking for his card key. As soon as he was sure the hallway was clear he pushed the woman and child toward the stairwell and quickly followed.

  “Down,” he hissed.

  The prices he charged anticipated complications, and by all rights he ought to take this one in stride. And yet as they descended the first flight of stairs Donohue realized he had lost some of his equilibrium. He’d always fought to control his anger, but now it was closer to the surface. Why should he react with anger rather than surprise? Why should he react at all?

  He’d probably been mistaken about the man. Surely he was — he’d seen a few faces through his scope, generic American faces, as he waited. This was just another generic American face. Not the same one.

  He was losing his edge. He would have to retire soon, very soon.

  Donohue thought of this the whole way down the steps. He led the woman and the girl out of the stairwell and down the thickly carpeted hall to the bar, which was nearly empty. He walked to the far end and out the door, turning left and then left again onto Holbom, the main street, walking toward the tube entrance around the corner. The woman had learned not to question him and followed along silently, herding the girl with her.

  It wasn’t until he passed the tube entrance that Donohue had calmed his mind sufficiently to stop and, after making sure that they hadn’t been followed, consider the situation without emotion.

  Survival was the first priority. The man in the hall had clearly not recognized him in any way.

  Nor had they been followed. So the question was whether to go back and attempt to complete the assignment or simply walk away.

  The fee for searching the room was relatively minimal, and thus walking away was easy. But it might also sour the relationship with the Arabs. They were unpredictable about these sorts of things, easily offended on ridiculous matters.

  The search had clearly been an afterthought. Only when Donohue called to say that the job was done was there a question about computer disks that might be in the room. To Donohue, this suggested that someone had searched the body soon after the hit: very possibly one of the policemen in the park or a member of the crowd. But it also implied a certain uncharacteristic sloppiness, which concerned him. The information about the assassination had been vague, and while certainly enough to identify his victim it lacked the usual details his employer — Mussa Duoar — was known for. Mussa hadn’t supplied them himself, of course — he had had one of his many minions, an Egyptian if the accent could be trusted, do it. Donohue had only dealt with the Egyptian once before, and it was possible that he was merely prudently limiting the intelligence to what was necessary for the job. However, there was a touch of — what was it? Vagueness? Haste? This worried Donohue, for it potentially exposed him to trouble.

  He was being overly cautious. Jumpy even. Using the woman as a cover — truly unnecessary.

  What would he do next, see ghosts? The room should be searched. He shouldn’t succumb to paranoia.

  “Let’s try this again,” he told the woman. “Come.”

  * * *

  Donohue left the woman outside the door but took her daughter inside with him. He knew as soon as he opened the closet that the room was sterile. Nonetheless, he searched anyway.

  “Check the drawers there, quickly,” he told the girl.

  “Why are you wearing gloves?”

  “No questions, girl. Do what I say.”

  Nothing. An empty suitcase. He checked it carefully for secret compartments, but it was the sort of thing you picked up from a street vendor for ten pounds or so, the fabric thin and the stitching so poor it was bound to fall apart on its first trip.

  The dead man’s room, Donohue decided. He should have been told.

  Sloppiness then. Mussa’s people were slipping. He would charge double for his time.

  “Quickly, girl. Close the drawers and come with me.”

  Outside, they walked to the end of the block and turned into the tube station, descending the escalator and proceeding to the right, mingling with the sparse crowd. Donohue said nothing. The woman’s eyes hunted around as they always did. She reminded him of a pigeon, pecking and poking on the sidewalk for food.

  “You were very good this evening,” he told the girl as the train finally arrived. “Very good.”

  He took her arm gently and nudged her toward the open door. The woman went in behind them, glancing at him to see whether she should sit with him or not. He smiled and even leaned his body close to hers, as if he were relaxing.

  “We’ll get some dinner,” he told her. “Then you can go back to the hotel.”

  “The plane is early in the morning,” said the woman.

  “There’s plenty of time.”

  They took the metro two stops to Oxford Circus. Donohue knew of a good restaurant there, run by a Frenchman who’d found it easier to overcharge the English for food than his fellow Parisians. Donohue ordered a bottle of one of the house wines; the woman required no encouragement to drink and kept at it after the waiter brought another bottle. Her daughter seemed to sink farther in her seat as the meal progressed. She picked at the salmon he’d ordered for her and didn’t eat her vegetables. Donohue found himself sympathizing with the girl. The trip had none of the allure for her that it did for her mother, whose head was easily turned by fancy talk and the appearance of luxury. She had no story she could share with her friends upon her return home. Nine-year-olds, even those from the poor sections of Dublin, were not particularly impressed by fancy hotels or flying first-class or walking in a park. The mother hadn’t even taken her to Buckingham Palace as he suggested in the morning; she’d had a massage at the hotel instead, leaving the girl to sit on the nearby chair and read a magazine.

  Donohue’s mother had been similarly distracted and self-absorbed, and watching the child stare blankly at her plate reminded him of many similar dinners he had had, albeit at home and with much plainer fare on the plate.

  Sympathy was not one of Donohue’s stronger character traits, and it did not last long. The woman began babbling about how beautiful London was, and his disdain for her quickly crowded out everything else.

  “It is beautiful,” he said. This section of the restaurant was empty and no one was close enough to hear. “We’ll get a chance to do more touring tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? I thought we were going home.”

  “I think we should stay another few days.” He put his hand on hers. “Why not? You don’t have any commitments, do you?”

  Her face flushed as she shook her head.

  He paid for dinner in cash, choosing a moment to leave when there was no one between them and the front of the restaurant. He left 20 percent of the bill as a tip — slightly on the generous side, but not so much that it would cause him to stand out particularly. He made it seem to the woman that he had just had an impulse to stroll around a bit before leading her back to the hotel, meandering over to Blackfriars Bridge and crossing. At this hour the bridge was not heavily traveled and they saw no one else on the walkway. A gang of teenagers crowded near the bank as they reached the far side of the Thames, but that worked to his advantage; he nudged the woman’s elbow to steer her to the right, making a point of gazing in their direction and frowning.

  “They won’t bother us,” said the woman as they turned down the steps and onto the darkened path. “We’re just tourists.”

  A foolish thing to have as your last words alive, he thought, taking the silenced pistol from his pocket.

  Donohue shot the woman in the side of the head once, then turned to the girl. Her eyes gaped at him as he fired, but he had seen such expressions before.

  Two more shots for each, insurance.

&
nbsp; He dropped the pistol from the Millennium Bridge at midspan and continued up to Victoria Street, where he caught the underground and began making his way to Paddington and from there to the airport.

  12

  Dean stepped onto the long escalator at the foot of the tube station, relieved to be out of the tunnel. Something about the depth of the thing bothered him. He didn’t have a phobia and he didn’t feel as if the walls were crushing in — but he did feel uncomfortable. The London subways may have saved thousands during Nazi bombing in World War II, but the long trip downward made Dean feel like he was in a mausoleum.

  “To the right, and smile,” said Karr, just behind him. “We’re on camera.”

  Surveillance cameras were placed throughout the station. They were used first of all by the local police authorities to help cut down on crime, pickpockets especially. But they were also routinely used by the intelligence agencies; Waterloo was the British terminus of the Chunnel, and an access point to the Continent for “those of dubious purpose,” as the MI5 briefing paper Dean had seen put it. The cameras were not a secret, though there were a number that were rather inconspicuously placed and moved around every few months. Professional spies and terrorists could be assumed to make note of where the cameras were and avoid them as much as possible.

  Which naturally led Karr to suggest they check all of the “shadows”—areas where the video cameras couldn’t quite reach. Guided by the Art Room, they walked through the shop area on the concourse outside the platforms to the commuter trains. They split up and took opposite sides of the terminal. Dean got the half on the right and found a spot near the escalator down to the Eurostar entrance where someone could linger without being seen. He worked out in his mind how a meet might go down—“Gordon Kensworth” would come in, having checked his message, be trailed along and then contacted as he passed the newspaper stand at the center.

  Or perhaps he would have told Dean and Karr to call the hotel, check the voice-mail message, and they would be contacted.