by J. B. Turner
He turned to the man. “Not a word.”
The man nodded, fear in his eyes.
Reznick held Luntz’s arm as they climbed the stone steps and through the hotel doors. The night desk guy looked very young, but was clean-shaven and sported a maroon waistcoat and matching tie.
“Good evening,” the kid said. “You guys booked a room?”
Reznick forced a smile. “Sorry we’re so late. We got delayed with a connecting flight. My name’s Withers and this is my brother. We’ve booked a room.”
The kid smiled back. “Not a problem.” He checked the computer in front of him, going down a list of names with a pencil. “OK, Room 787.” He handed over the swipe card. “You guys in town for a convention or something?”
“Yeah, something like that,” he said.
“Any luggage?”
“Got lost at the airport, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you want me to try and contact your airline?”
“Don’t worry; we’ve already been on to them. Should arrive later today. But thanks anyway. Appreciate your help.”
The night desk guy smiled. “Anytime.”
Reznick looked at the kid’s badge, which read, “Steve Murphy, Night Desk”. He was clean-cut, polite and doing a thankless job for what probably amounted to minimum wage. He looked sixteen, if that. The kid reminded Reznick of himself when he was that age. Having to work shitty jobs on weekends and vacation time to help his dad make ends meet. “Hey Steve, tell me, have you got a room nearby which is free?”
The kid shrugged and checked the register. “Room 788 is vacant. Across the hall. You want to change rooms?”
“No, I’d like to book room 788 as well, if that’s OK. I’m a light sleeper and my brother the opposite. And it’ll be the only way I get some shut-eye.”
The night desk guy grinned. “No problem, Mr Withers. We’ve already got your card details, so that’s all been taken care of. Will you be requiring a wake-up call?”
“No, I think I’ll have a lie in. Long flight.”
“Enjoy your stay,” he said, and handed over the other swipe card. “Coffee machine and cable on demand in both rooms. So we’ve got you down for staying one night.”
Reznick smiled and nodded. He took Luntz by the arm and they rode the elevator to the 7th floor in silence. It was a long walk down the carpeted corridor. He swiped the card for Room 788 and went inside. He sat Luntz down on the bed.
“Why the room change?” Luntz asked.
“Never you mind.”
The truth was he didn’t like the set-up. Not one bit. This didn’t happen. So why this time? And how long until the handover?
The questions were stacking up as he paced the warm room while the man he should have killed sat with his head in his hands. He needed to think this through without having to babysit this guy.
Reznick reached inside his back pocket and produced what looked like a nasal spray and calmly sprayed the highly concentrated sleeping drug into Luntz’s left ear.
The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and Reznick had to stop him collapsing onto the floor. He picked him up and placed him on the bed. The drugs would knock him out for at least four hours, leaving Reznick without that worry ahead of the handover.
The minutes dragged.
Reznick checked his watch repeatedly as he paced the room. He made himself a black coffee. Then another. The more he thought of the sequences of events, the more it didn’t make any sense.
Maddox wouldn’t have fucked up so badly. His preparations were meticulous. Which posed the question, was it people higher up the chain that had fucked up? But to compound matters, a dead Fed.
Shit.
He ran through the events in his head one more time. The encrypted message and accompanying document were received in the usual way prior to an assassination. The target was Tom Powell. He had the right room. He had followed instructions. But something had gone seriously wrong and someone had to take responsibility for this.
The best solution was, as Maddox said, for Luntz to be taken off his hands so Reznick could disappear back into the shadows. Maddox always made the right call at the right time. He’d lost count of the number of times that Maddox had got Reznick or one of the contractors out of a jam when an operation became problematic. But as of now, Reznick was in the middle of a fucked-up operation and needed to get out of Washington.
He switched off the lights and sat in the dark, unable to relax. He checked the luminous dial of his watch. It showed 3.33am.
What was keeping the handover team so long? It was more than an hour since he’d called Maddox and still no sign of them. He wondered if Maddox had tried to contact him with an update to the plans. But since he’d ditched the microphone and earpiece, he had no way of being contacted.
He gulped down some of the cheap coffee and looked out of the window towards an apartment with lights on, curtains drawn. Shadows moved inside. He tried to open the bedroom window to let in some air but it wasn’t budging.
Damn.
Upstairs, the sound of a TV, the vibration carrying through the ceiling. Down below, a strained woman’s voice. Outside, the drone of an air con unit.
The waiting continued.
He made his third coffee.
The sound of the drugged man’s deep breathing reminded Reznick of his own father lying in a drunken stupor in a crummy Washington hotel room, all those years ago. His mind flashed a picture of his father lying face down on the bed at the end of the day, exhausted and drunk, his best suit still on, the room stinking of booze. His father hated his job at the sardine-packing factory in Rockland, hated his life and was haunted with the memories of the war. It was plain for all to see. The moment his father, a man he revered, stood to attention in front of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and saluted the names of his fallen or missing comrades, there was a terrible pain in his eyes. It was as though he was reliving the horrors again. His father had never spoken of what he’d witnessed or what he’d done. He didn’t have to. The war had left him hollow. The scars etched on his craggy face and burned into his shattered mind. Some part of his father had died in Vietnam, left behind like the young comrades who had given their lives in the jungles of a foreign country.
A soft moan from the sleeping man lying sprawled on the bed snapped Reznick out of his reverie. The waiting dragged on and on.
Eventually, just after 5am, the sound of padded footsteps in the corridor outside.
Finally, they were here.
He peered through the peephole. A well-dressed white couple that looked like Mormons were walking down the corridor. They stopped outside Room 787, directly opposite.
Strange. Maddox said it was an in-house job. So who the fuck was this?
Reznick moved closer to the door and softly pressed his left eye up to the glass, eyelashes brushing off the metal surround. He held his breath and stood statue still. Into view came a second man. He was stocky and wore a dark suit and forensic gloves.
This was no pick-up.
The three of them said nothing, not even looking at each other. The woman stepped forward and knocked four times on door 787 as the two men stood hidden either side of the door, guns now drawn.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
She waited a second before she knocked again. A few moments elapsed. Then the stocky man swiped a plastic room card through the door’s locking system and the three of them went inside, shutting the door quietly.
Reznick stepped back from the spyglass and let out a long, slow breath. He felt trapped in the suffocating room. His mind raced. Who were they? The more he thought of the situation the more it didn’t make sense.
Eventually, more than five minutes later, they all emerged stony faced. The stocky guy remained outside Room 787, but the couple walked towards the elevator.
Shit.
Reznick knew the couple had gone to speak to the guy at the desk. He figured he had only four, maybe five minutes, tops, before the couple returned.
The stocky man stared straight at Room 788’s peephole for a few moments. The room he was in with Luntz.
He wondered if the man had seen him. Impossible. Then the man turned away and faced Room 787.
Fuck it.
Reznick stepped away from the door and slowly pulled his 9mm Beretta from his waistband. Then he padded like a tomcat across the room and got his Trident 9 suppressor from his “delivery” bag. He slowly screwed the silencer into the gun. Then he carefully clicked off the spring-loaded safety lever with his thumb.
He was glad he had already racked the slide of his gun, knowing the sound would alert the man.
Reznick walked silently back to the door and stared back through the peephole. The stocky man had walked five yards down the hall. But then, slow as you like, he turned and walked back until he was standing stock still outside Reznick’s door.
He held his breath as the man moved closer until his face became distorted, as if through a fish eye lens. He seemed to be paying far too much attention to the door Reznick was standing behind.
Suddenly, behind Reznick, Luntz let out a loud moan in his sleep.
Reznick winced at the sound. The man outside stopped chewing his gum and stared long and hard at the door.
Reznick did not move.
The man began to chew his gum again, eyes unblinking. Then he leaned forward and pressed his left eye up against the glass.
Reznick raised the suppressor to the peephole, turned his face away and squeezed the trigger. It made a muffled ‘phutt’ sound. A small jaggy hole – less than an inch in diameter – had been blown out of the chipboard door.
The adrenaline flowed. He opened the door wide enough to drag the man’s body into the room. The bullet had torn into the man’s left eye. Blood oozed down his cheek from the gaping wound.
Reznick bent down and pulled the man in by the feet and laid him on the bedroom floor before he could bleed out onto the corridor’s carpet. He checked outside the door and quickly picked up the wood and glass splinters lying in the corridor before closing it.
Then he pulled Luntz off the bed and replaced him with the huge stranger. Reznick felt sweat beading his forehead. He rifled in the dead man’s pockets and found an iPhone, but no ID or wallet. He quickly went to the bathroom, picked up the hotel toothpaste and twisted off the cap. Then he went back to the door and wedged it into the small hole so at a quick glance from the outside it appeared intact.
Reznick grabbed his bag, picked up Luntz and slung him over his shoulder. He weighed around ten stone. Comparatively light compared to the stocky guy. He cracked the door. All clear.
He edged into the corridor, closed the door quietly, turned left down the corridor to a fire exit sign, and down a stairwell.
He reached into his pocket and switched on the anti-jamming device that would nullify the hotel’s door alarms, before leaving through a basement emergency exit.
Reznick emerged with Luntz at the rear of the building. He walked nearly half a block until he came to a narrow side street where he saw a Mercedes parked up. He used a new fob that deactivated the car locking system, the immobiliser, and the alarm system and opened the door. He laid Luntz on the ground for a few moments. He checked underneath the car and felt a magnetic box attached to the under side of the car.
Reznick pulled it out, prizing it open with a knife and found the spare set of keys. He opened the car’s back door and lifted a sleeping Luntz into a seat, before strapping him in. He climbed into the driver’s seat and checked inside the glove compartment. Nothing.
Reznick pulled away slowly, not wanting to attract attention, and punched in Maddox’s secure number on the dead man’s cellphone.
“I’m on the move,” he said. “The delivery has been compromised. Someone or something has left us wide open. I repeat we have been compromised.”
Maddox stayed quiet for a few moments. “Is the target safe?”
“Yes, he’s safe. I got a visual on a crew of three. Two men and one woman. One of the guys is down. I’m calling from his cell.”
“Jesus.”
“Do you want to download the data from the phone?”
“We’re already doing it.”
Reznick pulled out the anti-jamming device and switched it on so no one could track the GPS on the phone. “So, what happened to the two guys you sent?”
A long sigh. “They’ve been taken out. The whole thing’s fucked up. Head to the safe house.”
Then the line went dead.
FOUR
The Gulfstream jet was cruising at forty thousand feet as it entered American airspace on the Eastern Seaboard. FBI Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein, in charge of the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch was the only member of her team awake. She looked around the cabin. The rest were getting some shuteye after the long flight home from Dubai.
Meyerstein speed-read the first email of the day on her Blackberry from the Director wanting a progress report into an ongoing investigation into public corruption involving a Californian Senator, Lionel Timpson. She’d have to reply by the end of the day. Something else for her in-tray. She put down her phone on top of a pile of intelligence briefing papers in the adjacent empty seat. Then she reclined and stared out of the window at the white strobe light on the wing tip.
Her mind hadn’t shut off after the cyber-security conference.
Waves of tiredness swept over her. She tried to remember the last time she had had a proper vacation and realised it had been over two years. She was killing herself, but she didn’t know any other way. This was the job she had craved for so long, after all. Her father, a top Chicago attorney, thought she was mad for embarking on a career with the FBI when she could have sailed into corporate law, with a high six figure salary. She was currently earning $157,000 with $20,000 extra in bonuses, for reaching her targets. A great salary. She had a lovely house in Bethesda, Washington DC, round the corner from Fox pundit John Bolton; she sent her kids to private school and was pretty happy with her lot. But she knew, deep down, her father would much rather she’d have entered the rarefied atmosphere at a top city law firm.
Maybe he was right. Her privileged upbringing in the upscale North Shore suburb of Winnetka, an elite private education at the city’s Latin School, and then Harvard Law School, had led to numerous offers from law firms from New York to Los Angeles. But instead of following in the footsteps of her three brothers, she had embarked on a fast-track career with the FBI after attending a lecture by an inspirational woman, a Dartmouth graduate, who headed up the Boston field office. She found she loved Quantico. And she loved the Bureau. It became her life.
Meyerstein had eclipsed that woman. She was now the highest-ranking female within the FBI structure, which she was very proud of. But it had come at a steep price.
She stared at her wedding-ring-finger. The white band where her gold ring used to be, her finger slightly indented from wearing it for more than a decade. The only sign of her old life. The only visible sign she had once been happily married; before her husband James, a Professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, had left her for one of his students, a French girl he was mentoring.
She should have seen the signs. Goddamnit, how could she have been so blind?
The ringing of the secure phone on her armrest snapped her out of her reverie. A couple of her team around her stirred.
“Martha, sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a problem like you wouldn’t believe.” It was Roy Stamper, who headed up the Criminal Investigative Division that she was responsible for.
Meyerstein closed her eyes and sighed. “What kind of problem?”
“How long till you touchdown?”
“Half an hour. What’s going on?”
“Violent crime unit got a call from the Washington field office a few minutes ago. Luntz is missing.”
“He’s what?”
“We think he’s been kidnapped.”
“Wasn’t someone watchin
g over him?”
Stamper sighed. “Yeah, Special Agent Connelly. He’s dead.”
Meyerstein felt her insides go cold.
“He’s been strangled.”
Meyerstein remembered a fresh-faced young special agent at a briefing just over a fortnight ago. “The rookie from Seattle?”
“Right.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Shit.”
“Washington field office has a team over at the St Regis, as we speak.”
“So what are the indications as to whom or what is behind this?”
“Too early to say. But I’ve spoken to Stevie.” Stamper was referring to Stephen Combe, the Special Agent in charge of the Washington field office. “He said it had the hallmarks of a professional job. But we’ve also got what appears to be a separate hit on a guy at the Clarence Suites, nearby. We think they might be linked.”
Meyerstein listened in stunned silence as Stamper gave a summary of what had happened. When Stamper had finished talking, she gulped down the last of the cold coffee still left in her cup.
“The guy at the Clarence Suites was shot through the eye from behind a door.”
“What are the police saying to this?”
“They aren’t happy and are asking a lot of questions.”
“We need to button this up. This is on a need to know basis. Who’s the lead detective on the scene?”
“Maartens. I’ve spoken to him already and we’re getting full cooperation.”
“OK, we need to stand up SIOC for this.” Meyerstein was referring to the Strategic Information and Operations Center on the fifth floor at FBI HQ. It was the global watch and communications center providing round-the-clock information on emerging criminal and terrorist threats to the US. “But first I want everyone in the briefing room in two hours.”
“Leave it with me.”
The massive office of FBI Director, Bill O’Donoghue, overlooked Pennsylvania Avenue on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building. It was located in a secure wing, three doors down from Meyerstein’s own office, sealed off behind electronic doors with security cameras; a keypad code was required, which only the most senior FBI agents had access to.