by Gregg Loomis
Ching snorted, sending smoke gushing from his nose. “Fools like that are useful. But what really motivates the men who do the work, the ones who you say will ultimately kill this man Peters?”
Wan looked at him blankly.
“Money!” Ching bellowed. “Political idealist or not, cash gets faster results than slogans or agendas.” He stood. “Tend to it.”
“Of course, comrade,” Wan said, thanking whatever gods existed that the meeting was at an end.
26
Calle Luna 23
San Juan
At the Same Time
Although the hour was not late, especially by local standards, the number of cars with tinted windows drew attention in this otherwise quiet neighborhood. The vehicles each came to a stop in front of the house. Car doors opened and men got out of the backseats. None of these men was Latino. Instead, they looked norteamericano or, perhaps, European. Each carried a small bag or suitcase as though they had just arrived from the airport. As each passenger climbed out of an automobile, he hurried, head down, inside the house as though fearful of being seen.
The few locals who had not tired of speculating as to the meaning of these events had varying opinions as to their significance. Señora Valequez, age eighty-six, was certain she was witnessing one of the drug deals featured almost nightly on the TV news and wanted to call the police. Juanita, her married daughter with whom she lived, cautioned that those who interfered in such business frequently met with violent ends. Señor Hermez, from next door, noted that, from what he could see, the men were not members of any local gang he recognized. He was certain there was a plan afoot to move the Guantánamo Bay detainees to Puerto Rico. After all, didn’t the Anglos send much of what they did not want to Puerto Rico since the US territory had no say in national politics?
As the last of the cars disgorged its single passenger and pulled away, equally wild guesses faded along with curiosity.
Inside Number 23, a dozen men were gathered, an assemblage somewhat larger than the downstairs room could comfortably accommodate. The men were all middle-aged and large. They looked hard. Many had scars, noses that had not been set properly after being broken, or gaps where teeth should have been. None of them had mustaches, beards, long hair, or any other tonsorial or grooming feature that might attract undue attention. A polyglot series of conversations was going on at once, the principal languages being Russian or English, although several other Slavic dialects were represented.
The man who called himself Pedro descended from the stairs and the voices died like a CD being turned off in mid-recording. He edged his way through the already tightly packed crowd, making his way to a table on which a laptop computer had been attached to a projector. Acknowledging greetings with a simple nod of the head, he went to the back wall and pulled down a screen, then turned to face the assembly.
He raised his voice and began in English, “May I have your attention!”
The request was unnecessary. The only sound was the straining of the air-conditioning unit in a losing battle with the increase of heat generated by so many bodies in such a small space.
A man’s face flashed on the screen, its grainy quality suggesting the photo had been taken at a distance. It was replaced by another view of the same person.
“This is the man,” Pedro said. “You will want to study his face so as to remember it.”
A hand went up somewhere in the back. “What else do we know about him?”
“He has been professionally trained. He succeeded in killing the man we sent to Iceland.”
A murmur of concern circled the room. “Professionally trained by who, military? Intelligence?”
Pedro held up his hands for silence. “It does not matter. What is important is that he be taken care of quickly. He poses a serious threat.”
Pedro knew these men cared little for his cause. They were veteran Spetsnaz, Russia’s equivalent of Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force. The breakup of the Soviet Union had sown chaos among the armed forces. Equipment left unrepaired, payments late or not whole, and scarcity of rations and supplies all brought disillusionment with the military. Some of the elite forces were assigned civilian duties, such as fighting an increasingly violent criminal element and protecting the country’s leaders against attempts to dismantle the government by assassination. Many of the special forces quit in disgust at working under police bureaucrats. There were jobs providing private security for Russia’s newest elite, the capitalist businessman. Some worked as mercenaries, finding lucrative employment training troops in African civil wars. Others simply hired out their weapons and abilities, never asking why their new masters were in need of both.
Money, not causes like GrünWelt, interested such men.
“We will pay five hundred thousand dollars to the team who rids us of this man,” Pedro announced.
The offer was greeted by cheers and whistles.
“I have killed presidents of countries for less!”
“This man must be very hard to kill indeed.”
“How will we claim the prize as the killer, bring you his head?”
“His balls would be easier!”
“You alone would know the difference between one man’s balls and another’s.”
Only the last question drew a response. “Each of you will be assigned to a team, just as you were in the Army. Each team will be assigned to a specific geographic site where we know this man is likely to be… .”
The plan was similar to the way Spetsnaz had operated its programs of assassination of enemy political leaders in the past.
“I want to be assigned to wherever his woman is! There he surely will be, sooner or later,” a man in front said.
The comment brought jeers and hoots.
“You do not even know if he has a woman,” someone remarked.
“Such men always have women, frequently several.”
Pedro let the increasingly ribald comments continue for a few moments before signaling for quiet again.
He held up a glass jar with a number of folded slips of paper in it. “These pieces of paper have numbers on them. Each number corresponds to a number on an envelope. Each envelope contains a location. The paper will be drawn from the jar by each team’s leader as soon as I read off the names of the members of each team. You are not to discuss your location with anyone not on your team. That way, if one group should fall into the hands of local law enforcement, they will know nothing. Do you understand me?”
There was general nodding of heads and affirmative words until one man, perhaps slightly older than the others, asked, “Only one team will get the money. The multiple number of teams makes the odds against that being any one team. If I wish to gamble, I will do so in a casino.”
There was grumbling agreement.
“I have thought of that. Each team will consist of four men, four teams. The leader of each team will receive one hundred thousand dollars in whatever currency he wishes when he leaves here tonight. That money may be divided however the team desires. That should at least pay your expenses.”
There was a wave of indistinct voices with a tone of approval.
Pedro picked up the jar, holding it in both hands as he offered it to a man whose left eyelid drooped under a scar running from his left eyebrow to the right part of his chin. “Anatoly, you pick first.”
An hour later, only the four team leaders remained in the house. The increase in the efficiency of the air-conditioning was noticeable. The four men lounged in canvas chairs, tossing back shots of vodka.
Anatoly was studying the slip of paper he had drawn. “This is strange. Why would my target be at this place?”
Pedro made an exaggerated gesture of putting a finger to his lips. “We are not to discuss the various locations.”
Anatoly wouldn’t quit. “I’m not discussing any specific location. I’m just saying this one is peculiar. Some of the men in my team may question if they are being given a fair chance at the bounty you have o
ffered.”
Rather than quarrel, Pedro got clumsily to his feet to peer over the other man’s shoulder. “This is the location of the organization that sent the little man to Iceland in the first place. Had they not done so, the Americans would never have sent our friend Peters there. If the target knows who first was in touch with Karloff, he will go there.”
Anatoly drained his glass of the clear liquid at a gulp. “‘If’ is a word we do not like in our business.”
Pedro collapsed into his chair. “You are not being paid to like it, but to act on it.”
27
King’s Cross Station
Central London
13:40 Local Time
Two Days Later
Jason was being followed.
He had confirmed the tail at the St. Pancras tube station as soon as he had stepped off the last of a series of trains he had taken from Gatwick. He had chosen a randomly circuitous route with the sole purpose of identifying anyone shadowing him. It had only been at St. Pancras he had been certain. There he had recognized a man of indeterminate age he had seen on a leg of the trip away from the station on the light-blue Victoria Line. The scar across his face was as unique as a fingerprint.
He had not seen the man on the Piccadilly Line but he had reappeared right here where the London Tube shared a station with the UK East Coast Mainline, rail service north. His absence on part of the meandering route told Jason the job was being conducted by two or more people, people experienced in observation techniques. He recalled the procedure from Delta Force’s covert surveillance training: one person to keep the subject in view while using some means to communicate with one or more confederates to pick the trail when the present one dropped off. The point was to reduce the chances of the subject recognizing a single tail.
Exactly where these people had picked him up initially was uncertain. Most likely, it had been at the airport. Passenger manifests of airlines were insecure enough to almost be in the public domain and the carriers cared about as much about their passengers’ privacy as they did about their comfort. If not Gatwick, keeping an eye on rental-car companies or one of several tube stations would work as well. No matter. The time of the horse’s departure from the barn really didn’t make much difference. The object of the exercise now was to terminate the unwanted attention.
As if to confirm what he already knew, Jason watched the man speak into a cell phone, no doubt alerting one or more that he, Jason, was headed for the GNER, the high-speed rail service.
Jason sighed heavily. So far this had been less than a pleasant trip and Scar Face and his as-yet-unseen pals weren’t likely to improve things.
It had started the day before yesterday when he arrived at Dulles International. Even in first class, the days of luxurious and pleasant air travel had gone the way of age and weight restrictions on female cabin crew.
First class could not shield the passenger from the precooked cuisine microwaved out of the possibility of flavor, glop that hardly appealed to the taste. Why the airline didn’t simply have McDonald’s or some other fast food operator cater meals and thereby reach at least the bottom rung of mediocrity, Jason could not understand.
At least he had not had to wait to use the tiny restroom minutes before landing. A quick shave with the safety razor included in his first-class packet made him feel much better, as if it scraped away the grime of travel. A crisp white shirt replaced the rumpled knit polo. Neatly rolled khakis replaced jeans that looked as though he had slept in them, as indeed he had tried unsuccessfully to do.
Generally, he felt much better.
Until he had to contend with Scar Face & Co.
Pausing to lean on his wheeled board bag, Jason looked around the modernistic station. It was well lit by banks of lights over the track, giving the illusion of a skylight. Perhaps thirty or forty passengers milled about along the single platform before climbing aboard cars behind the slant-nosed GNER Voyager that would make the 254 miles to Durham in slightly over three hours before continuing on to Edinburgh and Glasgow. To Jason’s left, a young man in jeans coaxed the haunting sounds of the erhu, the Chinese violin, from his odd-looking, two-stringed instrument. An occasional passerby dropped a coin into the musician’s cup. To Jason’s right, passengers were entering onto the platform from the stairs from above, many carrying plastic bags bearing the logo of the station’s eight restaurants and food servers. Some had packages from the several shops.
Jason’s attention centered on one of them, a man who could have been Scar Face’s twin in size and bearing. He wore a pair of sunglasses although the light was far from harsh. The slight turns of the man’s shaved head allowed Jason to size up the scene in front of him. An almost imperceptible nod directed Jason’s gaze to where Scar Face himself rested a foot against a bench as he pretended to tie a shoe.
Jason was between the two men, and the new arrival was between him and the exit. He regretted he had not taken the time to use a contact in the City to acquire the weapon he could not have carried aboard the airline.
Jason’s first impulse was to board the train and barricade himself into his first-class compartment. An instant’s thought revealed the impracticality of the idea: in the narrow confines of a British rail car there would be little room to maneuver, particularly if he had to face two or more opponents.
Scar Face, finished with his shoe, was moving toward Jason, his gait idle as he pretended to study the adverts posted on the station’s walls: shows opening off Piccadilly Circus, English taught in ten days, the newest chain of fish-and-chips shops. Without moving his head, Jason darted his eyes in the other direction. He was not surprised to see Skin Head moving in his direction too.
Both men held their right arms rigidly at their sides. Jason had little doubt each man had a knife up his long sleeve that would drop into a hand with a swing of the arm.
The move was familiar enough. Jason had seen it in a dozen training films somehow stolen from the Russian Spetsnaz Vympel, those übercommandos whose specialty was silent death behind enemy lines. Their trademark was proficiency with the combat knife, eight inches of balanced steel bearing a slight similarity to the American Bowie knife in that not only was the cutting edge razor sharp, but the first two inches behind the point were also honed to perfection, giving the weapon the ability to stab or slash in either direction. The Soviet-equipped groups also carried a clasp knife and a “fling” knife, a blade balanced for throwing.
The memory was less than comforting.
Jason searched the platform. Ah, yeah. There, in the middle, helping an elderly lady with her bags, a uniformed policeman.
The automatic weapon slung across his chest indicated he was with the Transportation Division of the Metropolitan Police, one of the few British police who routinely carried firearms, commonly seen in tube and rail stations since the bomb attacks of July 7, 2005. Now he stood, one hand behind his back, as he watched passengers move back and forth; the other held what looked like the oversized 1980s version of a cellular phone.
OK, now what?
Assuming Jason could get to the cop, what was he going to do, point out the two men as possible assailants?
With as much indifference as he could muster, Jason sauntered along the platform, a passenger looking for the car whose number matched that on his ticket. His bag’s wheels hummed soothingly across the smooth concrete.
Unarmed, Jason stood a slim chance against one man with a blade, none against two. His daily workouts had kept him in physical shape and he remembered his military training well. But two professional assassins? It was the stuff of James Bond movies. Unless he had the advantage of surprise.
Surprise.
There was another part of his long-ago, if well-recalled, Delta Force preparation he was calling upon, those situations where trainees were placed in near impossible situations, forced to rely on their wits and whatever was at hand.
Scar Face and Skin Head were closing the gap, their eyes flicking between Jason and the cop. S
o far, neither man seemed particularly concerned. They came to a halt as Jason reached the officer.
Jason recalled an article he had read about the tube. Luckily for the tranquility of its passengers, cell phones rarely worked in the underground system. Since the bomb attacks, however, this seeming benefit had become a hazard: What happened if there was another emergency? The problem had been solved in January 2009, when TETRA technology had established emergency cellular phone contact between special handheld sets issued to police and others working in the network.
Jason held up a copy of the multicolored diagram of the system. “Excuse me, Officer, but could you tell me how I get to Victoria Station?”
Conditioned to questions from tourists unable to read the simplest of maps, the cop reached for the sheet of paper Jason was proffering with one hand.
Jason instantly snatched the bulky cell phone from the astonished policeman and depressed what he hoped was the Speak button. “Bomb!” he yelled. “Bomb!” He had read that the phones had locator devices but now was not the time to verify reports. “At King’s Cross Station!” he added.
The cop was trying to grab back the gadget as pandemonium broke loose. One woman’s corgi had slipped its leash and was tearing at ankles. Baggage was deserted where it had fallen. People were shoving one another to get to the exit, a tide that swept both Scar Face and Skin Head along with it. Jason broke free of the officer’s grasp and hurled the bulky phone against the nearest wall, where it shattered. There would be no countermanding this report.
Having failed to retrieve his phone, the officer grabbed Jason by the collar. “You’ll be coming with—”
With both hands, Jason swung his roll-aboard, catching the surprised policeman’s knees, which buckled like a felled oak. The instant he let go of Jason to try to prevent a fall, Jason was off, running with dozens of panicked passengers.
The exit was jammed, not only by those trying to get out, but also by uniforms from the adjacent tube stations trying to get in.