The fascination British subjects had with the aristocracy never ceased to amaze Declan. He stood behind Allardyce, dressed as one of his two security guards. Clad in black from head to toe and covering his facial features with a low-drawn cap, he nodded to each of the pilots in turn. He had been very skeptical of the idea of renting a private jet to return to the United States, but accepted Allardyce's assertion that there really was no other option and that no one was looking for him in the company of a British lord.
"Rest assured, Captain," Allardyce said, as he shook the man's hand quickly and stepped onto the staircase. The crew members beamed as Allardyce and his two man detail descended the stairs and entered the black limousine that was waiting for them.
"There now," Allardyce said, as Declan closed the door behind them and he and Tom Gordon removed their caps. "That went off without a hitch."
Declan nodded. "Aye, now we just have to keep our presence quiet long enough to get Kemiss where we want him."
"That'll be the trick, I'm afraid," Gordon said. "What exactly is our plan?"
Allardyce held up a hand. "We don't want to know, Tom."
Gordon nodded as the limousine was driven out through a smaller set of doors at the rear of the hangar and onto a two lane driveway leading off the airport's property. At a rotary in front of the airport's main terminal the car turned east. Declan watched through the tinted windows as the vehicle passed twenty-four hour pharmacies, fast food restaurants and car dealerships; a view that was uniquely American.
Turning south onto the main road leading into the town of Charlottesville, the limousine's driver spoke to them over the intercom.
"We're approaching the address you provided, sir. It's a self-storage. Are you sure this is where you want to go?"
"Yes," Allardyce answered. "We'll be dropping one of my security team there and then we'll continue to the second address listed."
"Yes, sir," the driver said, as he turned onto a concrete driveway and made his way to the top of a hill where an old house sat in front of a high chain-link fence, a metal callbox situated in front of an automatic gate next to the house. Beyond the fence Declan could make out rows of metal storage buildings. He pulled the black cap he'd removed back on and lowered it over his brow as he opened the car door. "Thank you," he said over his shoulder to Allardyce.
"Just bring this villain to his knees and stop this madness."
"Where will you go from here?"
"I've always admired Thomas Jefferson and I understand he has quite a history in this area. We'll be nearby if you need us."
Declan closed the door and walked up to the callbox as the limousine reversed and began turning around. Withdrawing a piece of paper from his pocket, he punched in the sequence of numbers he'd been given and waited as the gate slid open. He walked past the rows of rectangular storage buildings to the end of the property, where he saw what he was looking for. A black Ford Explorer sat in front of the corner unit at the very end of the last row.
Opening the smaller of the units two doors, he stepped inside.
"It's about time you got here," Okan Osman announced with a crooked grin, as he ran a cloth over an AR-15 rifle. "We thought maybe you'd just decided to turn yourself in and cancel our fun."
Osman and Altair Nazari were standing at a workbench along the right hand wall of the eight hundred square foot, dimly lit unit. On the workbench in front of them was a collection of handguns and rifles, along with high capacity magazines and ammunition for them all.
"It's all here," Nazari said, as he picked up an H&K MP5 machine pistol and ran a cloth over it to remove any dust. "Do we really need all of this stuff just to take one house?"
"No," Declan answered, as he stepped up to the table and looked over the equipment. "This stuff isn't for the house. It's for what may come after the house."
Osman and Nazari looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. "I thought that this Senator Kemiss was behind the whole thing? We stop him; we stop the entire thing and shed light on those who actually killed Abe, right?"
"Aye, but unfortunately we can't rely on the Americans to take down Baktayev without first proving that Kemiss is guilty in a lengthy investigation. Once Kemiss has confessed to the operation he's set up, someone still has to make sure that Baktayev and his men don't continue on uninterrupted. They didn't need Kemiss or anyone else when they planned the attack in Beslan so they won't need him here. I'm not planning on getting in any gunfights, but we need to be prepared for anything. How far away is the house?"
"Not far," Nazari said. "We've made a couple of passes already. You can't see much from the road, but it's there. We placed three men in the forest near the house to keep a watch on it and we have two more men watching Kemiss."
"And we can trust these men?"
"Of course," Osman said. "They're Mossad, stationed here in America to collect and disperse intelligence and to connect with our worldwide network of sayanim."
"And the American government doesn't know they're here?"
"I wouldn't say that. I'm sure the Americans are aware at some level that these men likely work for Mossad, but it's just one of those things that no one talks about. The same for American agents in Israel, of which there are quite a few. What really matters is that no one knows they are currently sitting in the trees a hundred yards from the Senator's back door watching every move on the property and reporting to us."
Declan flashed a smile. He'd been happy to learn that Asher Harel had made sure that Osman and Nazari were joined by half a dozen men that Abaddon Kafni had known personally, meaning that each person they'd be working with had a personal stake in making sure the operation was a success and that David Kemiss wouldn't know what hit him.
"So, exactly how are you planning on getting this guy to talk?" Osman asked.
"Did you get the other things I asked for?"
Nazari pointed to a nylon tool bag and some other items near the door. "Fresh off the hardware store shelf."
"Grand. Make sure all of this is in the vehicle and ready to go by nightfall. I've got some calls to make," Declan said, as he walked towards the door and opened it. "If this guy wants to threaten innocent children, let's see how he likes it when someone threatens his."
Chapter Sixty-Eight
6:42 p.m. Eastern Time – Sunday
Van Deman Industrial Park
Dundalk, Maryland
"You can't just keep me here!" Sharpuddin shouted. "Albek! He's going to kill me! You can't just keep me here!"
The door to the grubby bathroom opened a few inches and a vertical shaft of light came from the room beyond. A shadow passed in front of it as a bearded face appeared. "Quiet, boy." The door closed again returning the room to complete darkness.
Sharpuddin pulled against his restraints, but his wrists were too bruised from previous attempts to keep pressure on them for long. He gave up, wincing. He didn't know what time it was, or even what day. The only people he had seen in what seemed like days were the men who came in to use the toilet that stood next to him, many of them turning towards him as they urinated. He'd attempted to leave the building as soon as Abu Tabak and his chief deputy had gone, but had only found what he had already suspected, that they had no intention of letting him leave.
"Albek! Help me! He's going to ki—"
The door to the bathroom opened wide with a bang and Sharpuddin squinted as bright light flooded in. "Shut up boy!" he heard someone say, as a hand was placed around his throat, forcing his head back against the porcelain sink he was chained to.
"Easy, Anzor," a voice said from outside of the bathroom. Sharpuddin opened his eyes and blinked as Abu Tabak wandered into the doorway, casually holding a serrated bowie knife.
"Don't kill me, Abu! Don't kill me, General! I'm not going to cause any trouble. I swear!" Sharpuddin was pleading for his life, even though he didn't think it would do much good. He had watched Tabak kill several times during their days in Chechnya. On one occasion, Tabak had even taken
the time to decapitate slain Russian soldiers so that he could place the men's heads near their own crotches as a final insult and as a warning to those who would discover the grisly scene. At the time, Sharpuddin had cheered the deed; the soldiers were foreigners trying to dominate Chechen land. But looking back, he wished he had done differently. He wished he hadn't been there at all.
"Vakha is already dead. Let me go. Let me bury him with honor. Put his body in the trunk of his car and I will take him home. By the time anyone discovers I was here, your plans will be completed. I won't get in the way. I swear."
"We should kill this traitorous dog!" Anzor said, spitting at Sharpuddin as he stood alongside Baktayev.
"No," Baktayev said. "I have other plans for him." He bent down and placed the serrated edge of the bowie knife at Sharpuddin's throat. "You're going to bring news to the world of the brave servants of Allah who are about to lay down their lives in service to our God and our country." He turned his head to look over his shoulder and called, "Albek?"
The thick-bearded man who had been keeping watch over Sharpuddin appeared in the doorway.
"Make sure everything is in the vans and ready to go. We're leaving, now."
"Yes, General," Albek said, as he turned and moved hurriedly into the workshop outside the grungy bathroom that had become Sharpuddin's prison.
"We cannot rely on this dog to tell anyone anything! He will lie with his forked American-loving tongue!" Kasparov protested.
Baktayev smiled as he smelled the air. The sound of engines starting came from the workshop, the smell of exhaust fumes filling the cramped building. He looked up at Kasparov. "Well, I wasn't going to fork it, and who said anything about him speaking?"
Sharpuddin's eyes went wide and his feet scrabbled against the concrete floor as if there was somewhere he could escape to. "No, Abu—No—anything but that! Please! Anything but that!"
Chapter Sixty-Nine
7:53 p.m. Eastern Time – Sunday
Graemont Lane
Charlottesville, Virginia
David Kemiss turned off Reas Ford Road onto Graemont Lane, the gravel drive his home shared with three others, though they were spread widely apart. The headlights of his navy blue Cadillac illuminated the thick pine forest on the side of the road as he steered the vehicle around the street's turns and into the cul-de-sac his driveway ran off. As soon as the brick columns that marked his driveway came into view he heard his cell phone ring and brought the vehicle to a stop as he reached for the device.
"Dammit," he breathed, as it rang for a third time and he struggled to remove it from the pocket of his coat, which was draped over the passenger seat. "Kemiss?" he said abruptly as he flipped open the phone and brought it to his ear. Hopefully this was the call he'd been waiting for.
"Sir, it's Allan Ayers."
Kemiss sighed loudly. The caller wasn't who he'd hoped. He was waiting to hear from Lukas Kreft, who was supposed to be helping him eliminate a potential witness. It had taken nearly twenty-four hours for Kreft to get men in place who could do the job and when they had finally arrived at Lane Simard's residence, they'd found only the man's hired nanny. In a last ditch effort, Kemiss himself had placed a call to Simard to learn the man's location. By now Simard should have been dead for twenty-four hours, but still no word had come from Kreft.
"I think I've found them, sir," Ayers said, after several seconds of silence from Kemiss.
"You think? I'm not interested in what you think you've found."
Ayers was silent for a moment, only the sound of his breathing coming over the line.
"Well, get on with it!" Kemiss ordered.
"The information is nearly a sure bet. I've tracked down all the properties in Ireland that are or ever have been owned by McGuire & Lyons Industries or any of their executives. There's an old manor house in an out of the way place called Mullaghmore, just over the border from Northern Ireland."
"And you're positive that they're there?"
"I entered all of the properties into the ToRuS program, so I'm as positive as I can be without actually seeing them."
"What the hell is Torus?"
"The ToRuS program is—"
"The shorthand version."
"It tracks the usage of utilities such as water and electricity. It's designed to tell when there's been a rise in usage, which normally means the presence of guests. In this particular property that's very significant because as near as I can tell the place has been vacant for quite some time."
"And it's your working theory that Fintan Maguire has taken Declan McIver and his wife to this house?"
"The program has found a large spike in utility usage at the property, so yes, that's what I'm thinking."
Kemiss smiled and breathed out a short laugh. Declan McIver seemed to have nine lives, but sooner or later he'd run out, and by Kemiss's reckoning, it was about that time. No matter how good he was, the man couldn't dodge every bullet that was fired at him indefinitely and his friends had to be running out of places to hide him. "Send me the information on the property. I'll make sure there's no way they can get out of there this time."
He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. This cat and mouse game was getting tiring. While he enjoyed rising to a challenge, this kind of stuff had never been his forte. His idea of a challenge was racing a rowboat on the Potomac or now, in his later years, a spirited game of racquetball, not facilitating teams of assassins. That kind of stuff was for someone far below his pay grade. Hopefully the men Kreft had found to take care of Lane Simard had been successful and were up for another job in Ireland. Only this time, if Kemiss had anything to say about it, there'd be a lot more men involved. Taking out a simpering bureaucrat like Simard was one thing, but taking out Declan McIver would be far more difficult if the events of the last week were any indication of what to expect.
Kemiss took his foot off the brake and allowed the Cadillac to move forward onto the drive. Hitting the accelerator as the driveway ahead of him began to incline towards his house, he swore to himself as he noticed all the lights in the three story mansion were off. Wasn't anyone home? They'd better be. He hadn't wasted all of this time driving just to find an empty house. He turned towards the home's garage and pushed the button on his overhead console to open the garage door. The door shifted and raised a few inches before returning to the closed position.
"Now what the hell?" he said, raising his voice though no one else was in the car to hear. "Can't even leave the garage door unlocked when you know I'm coming home?"
The frustration he constantly felt with his wife was mutual, he was sure. Theirs had become a marriage of convenience and had ceased to have anything to do with love a long time ago. At times he wasn't sure if it had ever had anything to do with love, but he guessed at some point they had at least liked each other enough to have had two children together. Now it was all about mutual benefits. He was the Senator with the beautiful stay-at-home wife and well-mannered children and she got to play rich socialite in venues around the country, and sometimes around the world.
He slammed the Cadillac into park and pushed open the door as he grabbed his coat and took his keys from the ignition. Walking around the house to the front porch, he inserted the key into the door and pushed it open. Just as it had appeared from the driveway below, the house was completely dark.
"Hello?" he called, as he stepped inside and pushed the door closed with his foot. The house was big, but not big enough for the sound of his voice to echo, though he imagined it doing so in the obviously empty first floor. "You know, I don't ask for much but a little respect would be great. If you're not going to be here you could at least call and let me know. It's not like I had any work that I could be doing or anything."
He set down his coat and keys on the oak table in the foyer and turned on a lamp. He knew that the regularly scheduled family night they had been observing for years really got on his wife's nerves and that she would rather be elsewhere. So would he, but t
heir two boys loved it and, aside from using it as a political check mark during election years, that was why he insisted that the tradition be kept alive. The boys were the only good thing that had come of their union, in his mind, and they were still too young to realize that their parents' relationship had disintegrated. Maybe that time had come and his wife, who spent more time with the kids than he did, had realized it and finally found the excuse she needed to end their weekly pow-wow.
"Well, screw you, too," he said, as he started towards the stairs that would lead him to his third floor study. He could still do all of the work he needed to do from home, but he preferred the distractions that came with the Washington D.C. lifestyle. As he placed a foot on the first step, he looked into the darkened living room beside the stairs and stopped. Rolling his eyes and letting out an audible sigh, he said, "Don't tell me. It's time for one of our talks, right? Jesus Christ, Mary Ellen. How many times do we have to go over the same stuff? You'd better want a divorce this time."
He stepped off the stairway and down into the sunken living room where the figure of his wife was seated on their leather sofa. "You know, you could at least answer me. You could at least tell me the boys are asleep before I go cussing through the house." He stepped further into the living room and as he did, a glint of light caught his eye. He narrowed his eyes and looked closer at the shadowy figure sitting on the couch.
"Oh!" he said, as he stumbled back, realizing the woman's mouth was duct taped and her hands and feet were bound. He turned quickly towards the doorway. As he stepped back up into the foyer with a hand out for his car keys on the table, he felt something cold press against the back of his head from inside the living room. Raising his hands and turning around slowly, he saw the barrel of a suppressed handgun.
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