“I’m concerned that they want to just catch him without firing a shot. It could still all go to hell.”
“Kyle, the Swiss guard the pope. They were Europe’s best mercenaries for hundreds of years. Trust them.”
“I do, but they don’t know Jim like we do. He will have a good plan, which is why I want you to get an armed CIA escort tonight. The assistant station chief can arrange that. Also he gives you a ride back to the hotel in a company car.”
“Yes, teacher. You know best, teacher. Anything you say, teacher.” She somehow smiled and frowned at the same time. “Tonight, I get my creds back and can start legally carrying a weapon again. I can take care of myself, Kyle. Don’t worry. I will be the one of us with a gun. C’mon.” She moved toward the door.
Swanson picked up his jacket and walked out behind her, locking the door. She waited beside the elevator, and when she turned to look at him, he was again struck by the beauty of the woman. From hair to eyes to toes, everything seemed to just fit her perfectly. He gave her a slight kiss and was scolded for risking the makeup job.
Downstairs, he led the way out of the elevator into the busy lobby, which had the look and feeling of normalcy. Two female clerks behind the front desk, a young couple talking with the woman concierge about affordable restaurants, a uniformed bellman pushing a handcart stacked with luggage. Then out the door, Kyle first, looking both ways. The front of their hotel was easy to identify, not because of its own signage, or the set of columns beside the door, but because some unhappy tagger had written YANKEE GO HOME in red paint on one of the cornerstones. Traffic was flowing smoothly, and he told the green-uniformed doorman to get a cab. Behind them, the young couple emerged, chattering in French, and waited their turn. A little Nova Taxi with its distinctive red sides and yellow top swung out of the flow and pulled to a stop.
As the hotel doorman reached for the handle, a dirty painter’s van swerved out of the traffic and slammed into the rear of the taxi, throwing it forward and knocking the doorman to the ground. Everyone automatically took a step back at the moment of grinding impact, with Kyle already changing into combat mode. He grabbed Lauren’s arm as the side door of the van opened and a huge man lumbered out. He was totally bald but for a mustache and goatee and wore a black leather jacket and biker boots. He had a knife in his right hand. “Back inside! Quick,” yelled Kyle.
The young couple behind them slammed into Lauren like a pair of charging linebackers, sweeping her away from Kyle’s grasp and pushing her in a single motion into the van, where more hands gripped her. The man with the knife lashed out at Kyle, who danced to the side, reaching for Lauren but seeing the door already closing. He could hear the van’s engine roar and her scream.
The man with the knife stood easily, dominating the space between Swanson and the vehicle, with his mouth curved down into an evil smile. When the young hotel doorman struggled to his feet, he was slashed on the arm and kicked by the thug with a hard karate-style thrust of his right foot, the leg fully extended in a practiced move. It was a moment Kyle would not let pass. The guy had been watching too much television.
Using the side kick had left the thug standing for an instant on one foot, tilting his body to the other side for balance and his attention drawn to the newest threat, the doorman. Kyle took a single step forward and delivered a powerful kick to the totally exposed groin, grabbed the knife hand itself to take it out of play, and delivered a flat-hand punch into the assailant’s throat. The big man staggered back, choking and hurting and suddenly uncertain of his strength. Kyle followed with a single, flowing right-side attack-a right cross deep into the gut, then bringing his elbow up hard into the man’s chin, which rocked the head back. Swanson’s fist was now cocked right beside his own ear, and he finished the combination with a downward hammer strike that crushed the man’s nose. The thug was staggering, so it was easy to snatch the knife from him, which Kyle did, then flipped it and slashed him across the stomach. The man grabbed for the cut as he toppled like a fat tree. Kyle moved aside to let him fall and then made two more quick cuts that severed the Achilles tendons behind both ankles. The man wasn’t going anywhere.
When the frenzy of the fight cleared, Kyle turned to the street as his breathing returned to normal. The white van was nowhere to be seen. Lauren had been professionally kidnapped, slickly taken right out of his arms. Damn it all!
47
BERN
SWITZERLAND
C OMMANDER S TEFAN G LAMER OF Einsatzgruppe TIGRIS was on his cell, looking nothing like the suave civilian that Kyle had met at the bear pit. The commander was in a black jumpsuit with the legs tucked into the tops of flat black jump boots. His Kevlar helmet, flak jacket, and submachine gun were stacked on a table. “This man Jim Hall is a monster,” he said. The icy eyes betrayed no real emotion. It was a statement of fact.
Glamer, CIA Assistant Chief of Station Mark Brand, and a ranking team of civilian detectives had interviewed Swanson for hours in a private room at the canton police headquarters, prying for details of the attack. Kyle had tried every trick in the book to increase the memories of those moments, draining his thoughts into words. Colors, smells, invisible hunches, anything that might help. There was not much.
“The fellow you took down has been identified as nothing more than a contract hit man paid to kill you. Ignorant beyond what he was told and did not know who hired him. The van was abandoned a kilometer away from the hotel. It had been stolen, and the forensic people are going through it for evidence.” One of the detectives was drinking coffee, the sort of beefy, seen-it-all investigator who is found in almost any city in the world. He didn’t know about terrorism, but kidnapping was a serious crime. With every passing hour, the chances of solving it became less and less.
Mark Brand was almost an invisible man, average in every external way, which was why he was the chief administrator in the CIA office in Switzerland. The country had been the safe haven where spies came to meet for hundreds of years, and the goal here was to conduct intelligence work without rocking the neutral boat. He might as well not have been in the room at all.
“You people are going to continue to sit on the sidelines while one of your agents has been abducted by another one of your agents.” Swanson felt like spitting on the American.
“Technically, neither of them works for the Central Intelligence Agency. Ms. Carson had not yet been reinstated to duty, and Mr. Hall left some time ago. Also, our hands are bound due to an issue that I cannot discuss here.” Brand’s movements, even with his fingers, were precise and birdlike, and Kyle considered him to be a born pencil-pusher.
Swanson shook his head slowly. “You mean the deal you made with Hall to leave each other alone. You think that’s a secret?”
Brand shrugged. “The danger to a single agent must be weighted against potential damage.”
“So why don’t you just get the fuck out of here and let us work? Go back to your desk before your suit gets dirty.”
“I was instructed to help the Swiss police in any way possible.” Brand did not seem perturbed, and Kyle knew the CIA man was really in the room to hobble anything that might bring harm to the Agency.
Commander Glamer looked at the detectives, and they spoke in a rapid German dialect. One looked over at Mark Brand and snorted in derision. “All kidnappings have a reason, Gunny Swanson. Most of them involve a ransom, and that requires the kidnappers to make contact. Agent Carson has no family here, so the contact will come either to you or to Mr. Brand. Is that right?”
Swanson took out his wallet and extracted a single U.S. dollar. “That’s the reason,” he said. “Hall is after the cash in the bank. He will want to make a trade. If we keep watching the money, he will turn up. He is playing for millions of dollars.” Kyle fought to keep his thoughts on an even keel, worried about how long the routine logic of a law enforcement situation would apply to Jim Hall. Kyle had come to the conclusion that there would be a killing at the end of the road, and either Jim or Kyl
e would lie dead. Lauren was a pawn in the game.
The commander stood before a map taped to a cardboard backing propped on a tripod. He pointed to the business district of Bern, then used a fingertip to trace the perimeter where his men were already in positions. Police throughout the city were on alert, and more federal agents had been dispatched to support them. “He cannot possibly hope to get away. Our borders are sealed tight all around the country, and we have the area around the bank saturated. We are missing something.”
The room lapsed into thoughtful silence, and when a cell tone started to chime, all four of them reached for their own phones. It was the phone in Kyle’s pocket that was chirping, and he jumped to his feet when he saw the incoming number on the small screen. Lauren!
He pressed the TALK button and heard the hard voice of Jim Hall on the other end say, “Hello, buddy-boy.”
* * *
T HE INSTRUCTIONS WERE AS precise as they were absurd, and Hall delivered it all with rapid-fire intensity. “Your number was on the phone in her purse. Listen up and don’t even think about negotiating. You want to see the bitch alive again, this is what you and your cop friends are going to do.”
There was a wave of steps to his plan. Each would have to be completed before the next could be initiated. First, he had something for the police, he said. His team had planted half a dozen small bombs throughout the city, and the detonators were attached to timing devices. As proof, he gave the location of the first one as being in the ancient clock tower in the middle of the old city. “Tell them that now, Kyle, and I will call you back in ten minutes. They need to know that I am serious.” He hung up.
Stefan Glamer and the two detectives went into action as soon as Kyle gave them the information. A terrorist attack against Switzerland, the most neutral country in the world, and being conducted by a former American spy, not a Muslim fanatic, was almost too much for them to comprehend. Glamer had a team at the clock tower within three minutes, and they found the brick of C-4 plastic explosive, attached to a timer detonator, exactly where Jim Hall had said it would be. Instantly, emergency calls were made to get every cop in the city out on the streets and searching for bombs.
“So they found it okay?” The opening words of the next call were menacingly humorous. “I would have hated to see that beautiful piece of art turned into a bunch of really old splinters, but, hey, that’s the game.”
“Let me speak to Lauren,” Swanson demanded, some power in his own voice.
“She’s not available right now, Kyle. The poor girl has had a rough time over the past few hours. You will see her soon.” Hall let the silence extend for a few seconds. “Now back to work. In four hours, at exactly nine o’clock this morning, a black SUV will pull up in front of the bank. Police will have a parking spot ready for it. The driver will remain at the wheel, and three other men will go inside the bank to meet a bank official with access to my safe deposit boxes. When the meeting takes place, my representative will tell the police the location of the second bomb, which is set to explode at nine thirty.”
“How many bombs are there, asshole?”
“Enough,” replied Hall. “My people will empty the boxes and take the cash in duffel bags to the SUV. By then, the cops will have found the second bomb, and I will give further instructions. There will be safe conduct all the way through the border at a point of my choosing.”
Kyle was jotting down the information on a white legal pad, with Glamer reading over his shoulder and making notes of his own. The commander wrote Keep him talking on the pad, and Swanson nodded. The police were tracing the call. “You aren’t going to be at the bank?”
“Shut up,” Hall barked. “We are out of time for this call. While that exchange is happening at the bank, you will be meeting me somewhere else, and I’ll swap Lauren for the cash and safe passage. Until I am out of danger, the bombs will only be disclosed one by one. Arrest anybody and I will turn this city to cinders. Remind them of what happened in Islamabad. Call you later with the address.” Hall laughed distantly and hung up and destroyed the cell phone. He had several spares.
Stunned silence engulfed the room. Commander Glamer leaned forward, hand on the table, and stared at each of them in turn. “He is leaving no room for negotiations. Just issuing orders for us to do this and do that and then the promise that something else will happen.”
Strangely, it was Mark Brand of the CIA who broke the silence this time. He knew a lot about making detailed plans that reached too far into the future, and was ruled by the old saying that the best plan never survives longer than the first gunshot. “Too much choreography on the part of Hall. It leaves too many chances for things to go wrong for him, as well as for us.”
“But we have no choice but to lock the bank down and erect concentric circles of protection while we continue the bomb searches. Getting across the border will be impossible, for even if we agree, none of the surrounding countries would. He has no leverage with them. It makes no sense.” Glamer slapped the tabletop. “I will make the arrangements, Gunny. You stay here and keep us informed of any new calls.”
The commander left the room, and the two Americans were alone. “What’s on your mind?” Kyle asked the CIA man. The guy was fully involved now, showing a background that he had kept well hidden in front of the police.
“I think it is a dodge. Hall has laid out a plan so complicated that it collapses beneath its own weight. How about if his car has a flat tire on its way to the bank? Or the bank manager panics and refuses to give up the cash? A dozen things like that could derail it all. Therefore, I believe that Jim Hall does not care if his plan succeeds, and that leads me to believe that probably there are no other bombs. He is looking for a way out.”
Swanson walked over to the coffeepot. In other places, the coffee would be old and tired after several hours. Here it always seemed freshly brewed, and someone had just put on a new pot. It held a scent of chocolate. He poured a cup and regarded Mark Brand again. Perhaps not such a pencil-pusher after all. It made sense. Hall shifted the eight million from those other two accounts, plus whatever else he had stashed away. Maybe he was ready to sacrifice the Swiss account. “He still has Lauren. I’ve got to go and get her.”
The analyst’s background in the CIA officer was perking right along with the fresh coffee. “That’s the other half of the distraction. The police will be tied up at the bank and are combing the city looking for nonexistent explosives. You will be busy rescuing Agent Carson. All of his enemies will be distracted long enough for him to get away.”
“Hiding, blending, and deceiving,” Kyle said. “Basic sniper tactics.”
“Yes. And the CIA still cannot be involved. Hall would still ruin a lot of networks if he thinks we are in the game.”
“He doesn’t want to do that. He knows you guys have no control over me, which is why he has not been leaning on you to stop me. And if he plans on living a long and happy life, he definitely does not want to ruin such a good insurance policy. You guys would be all over his ass in a blink to limit the damage.” Swanson looked at him steadily. “The Swiss won’t let me have a gun. Will you give me yours?”
“Absolutely not.” Then Brand brought a small box out of his briefcase and pushed it across the table. “However, you can do me a great favor. I was to give this material to Agent Carson at our dinner that never took place. Perhaps you could deliver it for me when you see her again.”
Swanson put down his ceramic coffee mug and opened the lid. Inside the box was the small leather wallet with Lauren’s badge and credentials, and resting on a cushion of white foam was her pistol, with a full clip of ammunition.
“Good luck, Gunny,” Mark Brand said and extended his hand.
Kyle shook it, and his lips curled into a smile. “Thanks. Things just got a lot better.”
48
L AUREN C ARSON HOVERED JUST below consciousness, in a dull black drug haze that had begun when she was pulled into the van and held down while someone popped a nee
dle into a vein. A few heartbeats later, the drug had circulated throughout her body and she was down and out. Now she was coming to the surface, being brought up slowly and expertly by the woman who had helped kidnap her. She was thirsty beyond belief, her mouth cottony and her body dehydrated. She sighed aloud when she saw light for the first time, but her eyes were still unfocused. She worked her jaw slightly and said, “Water…” A paper cup was lifted to her lips, and a hand held the back of her head to help her drink a few swallows. Then it was taken away. Jim Hall watched, then nodded to his woman helper, who had been chosen for the kidnap mission because of her training as a military nurse. Her portion of the job was almost done, and she would walk away with ten thousand euros. The nurse picked up a filled syringe off a clean towel, found a vein in Lauren’s arm, and put in the needle, slowly pushing in a drug to speed the recovery.
Lauren sensed feeling returning to her arms and legs, which she still could not move. She lifted up slowly from worse to bad to better and heard a familiar gentle voice say, “Come on, Lauren, girl. Time to get up.”
Her memory was scrambled because the drug still had her in its strong grip, just not as tightly. A woman’s hands worked around her. A nurse? Am I in a hospital? Her clothes were being adjusted, shoes wiggled onto her feet. The nurse’s and stronger hands, those of a man, helped her into a sitting position. Nausea swept over her momentarily, and she gagged the fluid back down. She was given more water.
The calm voice again. “Okay, Lauren. It’s almost over. We’re going to see Kyle now.”
Kyle! Yes. Kyle would take care of her. The mention of his name brought hope, and she strained to stand, helped by the guiding hands. The tendrils of the drug still held her back from fully functioning.
The man and the woman took her weight as they guided her through a short, dark hallway and into an elevator, which took them all down. Even at the slow rate, Lauren had to struggle not to throw up. It clanked to a halt, and she heard the male voice say, “Go on down and get the car ready. I’ve got her now.” Flat heels made sharp snapping noises in the hallway.
An Act of Treason Page 28