by Matthew Dunn
That day, Vienna was dangerous and we were too down the line.
Two stops away from Vienna on the Orange Line was West Falls Church.
I knew cops were swooping on Vienna. I’d heard Detective Thyme Painter talking to the chief of the Fairfax County Police Department via the intercept device I’d found in Tap’s car. Still, it had been a significant risk going to West Falls Church.
Were it not for my overwhelming fear for Tom Koenig’s safety, I might have felt good about this moment. Just having the briefest of contacts with Stein meant someone out there cared. Holding the satchel meant the world to me.
Rain started pelting the windshield of my car as I opened the bag and checked its contents. Inside were two packages and an envelope. One of the packages contained three hundred thousand dollars. The other was a bundle of dynamite.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a letter.
Have you considered that this might all be personal revenge from one individual? I’m sure you have. A powerful person is doing this to you. I don’t know who that person is. But I do know that someone like that will have people watching over him. A blow is best dealt from distance. Consider that. I’m so very sorry to hear about your sister. —A.
A had to be Antaeus.
The former Russian spymaster had given me a lifeline. And a tactic.
But the sentence about my sister made no sense.
She was in Scotland, leading a quiet life, and would never cross Antaeus’s radar. With a sense of impending dread, I grabbed the Washington Post and read the other article on the front page. It summarized a briefing to the press given by Lieutenant Pat Brody of the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, NYPD Public Information.
The first thing that jumped out was that the Waldorf murder weapon had been found in Lynchburg. In a part of the city where I’d never been. And ballistics analysis left no doubt that the same gun had been used to kill the woman in Manhattan. It had also been the pistol fired on the Granges, their cop protectors, and the two cops in Lynchburg.
The weapon I’d picked up in my hotel room was an identical model to the murder weapon, but not the same gun. I briefly wondered whether this was sufficient to absolve me of all crimes. No. My innocence couldn’t be proven simply because I was carrying a weapon that didn’t kill the people I was accused of murdering.
I carried on reading.
And stopped on the words Sarah Goldsmith.
My sister.
The victim.
In the Waldorf.
My head flopped to my chest. It might as well have been cut off.
I’d touched her fingers, because I wanted her to know someone cared. But I thought I didn’t know her. How could I know? Her long blond hair had been cut short and dyed brown. Her face had been obliterated by bullets. There was no ID on her. But now I could feel my dead sister’s fingers touching mine. It made the moment wholly different. And all I could think about was that I’d looked at a murder victim and hadn’t known that she was the last remaining member of my family.
So much had been done to me. But for the world to now believe I was capable of shooting my sister was an unbearable agony. Worse was the utter loss. I’d intended to Skype her when the twins and I were settled in our new home. I’d wanted to build bridges with her, show her that I was living a peaceful life. I was sure that’s all she wanted to see—her brother no longer putting himself in great danger. She’d have finally been happy that she no longer had to worry about getting a call saying I was dead.
I couldn’t stop my tears as I continued reading the article.
More details about Lynchburg.
Conjecture on my state of mind and motivation for going on the rampage.
And then a line that made me drop the paper and bang my fist against my forehead.
The body of Sarah Goldsmith’s husband, James Goldsmith, was found yesterday at the Goldsmiths’ home in Scotland. Local police released a statement saying that the death was apparently a suicide and occurred shortly after Goldsmith learned of his wife’s murder.
James—a nice man. Perfect foil for my high-strung sister. He’d met her at university and was besotted with her ever since. A guy who made Sarah laugh.
And James went to his grave thinking I killed his wife.
This was unbearable.
On Tap’s intercept device, I heard Painter say that I wasn’t at Vienna but most likely was at West Falls Church. I put my hands on the ignition key. Stay here and let them capture me? The pain would end that way. Or drive out of here and try to find Tom?
What to do? I had to make a decision fast. But all I could think about was how much pain and death I’d brought to those around me.
In the basement of the isolated farmhouse twenty-nine miles north of D.C., Viktor Zhukov partially lifted the black hood up to reveal Tom Koenig’s mouth. “How are you this evening?”
The rancid smell on the man’s breath made Tom squirm. “Sc-scared. Please . . .”
“Hush now. This will all be over soon.” He looked at the metal girder in the ceiling above Tom’s chair. “You know who’s done this to you, don’t you?”
“Please . . . please . . .”
“Shut up!” Zhukov walked to the technical equipment on the side table. He moved his finger down the sheet containing the list of pre-recordings. Motioning for the colleagues in the room to be silent, he asked, “Sir, you still want to go ahead with this?”
He pressed play on one of the audio devices.
A man’s voice said, “Of course. My mind’s made up.”
Zhukov smiled as he saw Tom fruitlessly try to get out of his shackles. He went upstairs and spoke to one of his colleagues. “Destroy and get rid of all the basement audio equipment. We’ve no need for it now. We’ll finish the boy tomorrow evening.”
Chapter 26
Wracked by grief and shock, I was shaking as I drove my car onto the shoulder of a deserted country road north of D.C.
I turned off the ignition and sat in stunned silence in the blackness that surrounded me. Regret coursed through me. No doubt it would have taken time for Sarah to fully trust me in my new life, but I was convinced it would have happened. Now, memories—random, frenetic—cascaded.
Me crying when I was five and Sarah putting her arms around me and telling me Pa would come home soon. Even though she and Ma knew he stood little chance of anything other than death in his Iranian prison.
The time I was six and she was seven and I’d laughed as our mother walked us to school, Ma oblivious that Sarah’s skirt had accidentally hitched in the lining of her panties.
Sarah telling me that she’d do my homework if I didn’t tell Ma that I’d spotted her holding hands with a boy.
Age seventeen, me returning to my home in Virginia, so pleased to be able to tell Ma that I’d gotten school grades that would take me to England and Cambridge University. That’s when my life turned. I’d walked in on four armed robbers killing my mother and about to do the same to Sarah.
The look of horror on Sarah’s face when she saw me execute the men with the kitchen knife Ma used to carve our Sunday roasts.
Running off to the French Foreign Legion to escape punishment. CIA and MI6 friends of my father hushing up the incident. Five brutal years in the Legion. Returning to England and academia. And realizing that I was a fundamentally changed man.
Then fifteen years of near constant deployment by British Intelligence. I’d had little time to see my sister and zero ability to show her that underneath it all I was still the little boy who once had freckles and blond hair and used to laugh from his belly.
I got out of the vehicle and paced back and forth, like a caged lion that had grown demented in captivity. A pistol in my hand, I leaned against the car, the handgun resting on its roof and caressing my face.
It would be so easy.
Just pull the trigger.
End this.
Rain banged against the roof of the car and the nape of my neck.
A very
different memory came to me. One where I was undergoing the brutal selection course to enter the Foreign Legion’s special forces unit Groupement des Commandos Parachutistes. After five days of no sleep, the recruits had been forced to stand in an icy lake in the Pyrenees, water up to our necks, rain pounding our faces.
From the banks of the lake, an instructor had shouted at us, “If you don’t like this, you’d better quit. How you feel now is how it’s going to feel for every second of every day in GCP. If you embrace that, you’ll survive with us.”
And I recalled being pulled aside on the regular MI6 new entrant intelligence course. I was told that I’d been singled out for a classified twelve-month training course that in all probability would break my mind and body. I could only start the course after signing documents absolving the British government of any blame if I died in training.
In my whole life, I’d never quit.
For the first time, everything now felt different.
I was holding a gun.
And I was seriously thinking of turning it on myself.
My sister, her husband, Robert and Celia Grange, police officers—they’d all died as a consequence of me mightily pissing someone off. Tom and Billy had lost a surrogate father. Tom was kidnapped. Billy would be distraught with worry. So too his aunt Faye.
Why had Sarah been in New York? What had happened to me in the Waldorf? Why did James take his own life so quickly after he’d heard about his wife’s murder? Who was doing this to me?
The questions prompted anger. I was deep in thought, imagining what I could have done to put me in this god-awful situation. The details of how this plot against me had been constructed hadn’t mattered to me before. Understanding them wouldn’t have changed a thing. Now, I needed to know.
Sarah had no business affairs in the States. Nor would she have been on holiday here without her husband. She was lured to New York on a false pretext. How? My mind raced. Money. The kidnapper had somehow put her and James into a desperate financial situation. Probably that had been done over weeks, more likely months. Once they were crippled with debt, a lifeline was offered, most likely a lucrative job offer. Sarah was in the States for an interview. But there was no job. It was bait to get her to New York. Once there, she was snatched. Her hair was cut and dyed. Rings and other identifying materials were removed. All that was left to identify her was her face. She was bound and gagged and placed into a large bag.
Men entered my hotel room, donned gas masks, and pumped sleeping gas into the bedroom. They injected me with a drug to completely knock me out. Windows were opened to let the gas drift out of the room, so there’d be no scent of it in the morning. My bank card was copied, and subsequently it was used to completely drain my account. My bootprints were expertly copied, most likely using a mold to get their exact shape and dimensions. Those prints were used at the bottom of the Granges’ lane.
Sarah was put in the bathtub and shot twice in the back of the head, obliterating her last identifiable feature. Her binds and gag were removed. Unconscious, I was hauled into the bathroom. My hands were dipped in my sister’s blood and pressed onto the bathroom wall. One of Sarah’s fingers was used to scratch my arm so that my DNA was under her nail. And the scratch was made over the puncture wound from the syringe. That way I had no reason to think the sting on my arm was anything other than a scratch. I was taken back to my bed. And the next morning when I woke up, I put my grogginess down to jet lag.
To have planned this and to know that I’d checked in to the Waldorf meant that I must have been under observation for some time. The kidnapper knew about the twins and my plans to adopt them. And he would have known that two months ago I’d planned my trip to the States. In making those plans, I’d triggered the move on Sarah. And after she was murdered, James had killed himself because it was the final straw.
I didn’t know if my conjecture was correct. But it all made sense.
Still, even though I trawled my imagination, I had no clue as to who was behind all this. There were far too many candidates who hated my guts.
I withdrew Tom’s bear from my bag and pulled the string on its back. I heard the lisping Russian man speaking to the boy. I pulled the string again, this time hearing Tom’s voice from a recording he’d made before his kidnapping.
“Hello, Uncle Will. Billy and I are very sad. People are saying you did something wrong. Is it true? We don’t understand because we thought you were happy and coming to look after us.” Tom’s voice was getting emotional. “Why haven’t you come to collect us and take us to our new home?”
I couldn’t turn my gun on myself. Tom’s voice ensured that. I brushed the teddy bear against my face.
Someone’s revenge had nearly finished me.
But I wasn’t a quitter.
And now I was going to take my own revenge.
Chapter 27
I was still in my car outside of D.C. as morning broke.
Simon Tap’s cell bleeped. A message from Knox.
THE THREE HIRE CARS WERE RENTED BY A GUY CALLED VIKTOR ZHUKOV. HE’S A SMALL TIME BUSINESSMAN IN D.C. OWNS A COMPANY CALLED LONGTRADE. CAN’T SEE HOW HE’D BE CONNECTED TO COCHRANE OR WOULD HELP YOU TRACK HIM DOWN.
I replied.
OKAY. WAS JUST PURSUING A LEAD. PROBABLY UNCONNECTED. WE MAY NEED TO MEET SOON.
I spent an hour using the phone’s Web browser.
Viktor Zhukov’s company was in a warehouse on New York Avenue NE. Primarily, it was a distributor of wholesale foods. There were no other directors in LongTrade. Public records and the manufacturer’s Web site showed it was active and filing annual tax returns. I searched for any other companies, whether in D.C. or elsewhere, that might be linked to Zhukov but could find nothing. Surprisingly, there were no photographs of Zhukov. No pictures of him in marketing promotions. Nothing. It was clear he kept a very low profile.
But the company records listed him as a Russian with a work permit to be in the U.S.
Russian.
Was this the man in Tom’s recording?
I waited two hours, until 9 a.m., and rang LongTrade. Using an American accent, I said to the company receptionist, “This is FedEx. I have a package that needs signing for by your company director. I’m a bit confused because the address details don’t give a name.”
The receptionist replied, “That’ll be Mr. Zhukov. Just bring the package to our warehouse. I can sign for it on his behalf.”
“No, ma’am. It says it has to be his signature. Is he at work today?”
“He’s out of the office. Back tomorrow.”
“Shoot. Is he in D.C. today? Maybe there’s another address I could deliver it to?”
“Yes, he’s in the city. But the only other address we have for him is his home address. I’m not at liberty to give out that information without his permission.”
I wasn’t going to ask for that. It could make Zhukov suspicious. I feigned frustration. “Listen. I’ve got a ton of deliveries to make and I’ll get my ass handed to me if I don’t get them done. Is there any way he can come into work and sign?”
The receptionist’s tone was angry. “He told me that he can’t be disturbed today unless it’s urgent. There’s nothing more I can do for you. Please bring the package in tomorrow.” She hung up.
The thought of losing a day worried me. As every minute passed, the risks to Tom’s safety increased. But something the receptionist said gave me an idea.
I went back on to LongTrade’s Web site and browsed the promotional pictures showing smiling workers, assembly lines, trucks being loaded by men wearing safety helmets, and external shots of the warehouse and its surroundings. I loaded a map of that part of Washington, memorized the route to get there, and drove.
Two hours later, my car was stationary on a side road off New York Avenue. The area around me was industrial, with numerous warehouses and other company buildings. I couldn’t see any security. There were a few workers, some on foot, others in work vehicles. None of them took any notice
of each other as they went about their duties.
I had a direct line of sight of LongTrade on the other side of the avenue. Its driveway was used by multiple warehouses close by. This was excellent. I could pose as an employee of one of the other companies, or an associate paying LongTrade a visit.
I reached into my bag and got what I needed, then walked across New York Avenue and entered the complex containing LongTrade. If challenged by anyone, I’d say I was lost and had a meeting with a company called Globalite. It was the name of a real company I’d spotted from the avenue. But I couldn’t see anyone. Presumably workers in this part of the industrial zone were all inside. That included LongTrade’s.
I could see a hive of activity through LongTrade’s windows. I circled the building, ensuring I was at least forty yards away from it. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for—just something that would help me create a disruption.
There were no windows at the rear of the warehouse, next to a parking lot. Nor could I be seen from other buildings, because they were too far away and had no windows facing this direction. The only vehicle in the lot was a van that had LongTrade’s name and logo painted on its side. Farther away from the building was a large fuel tank, with pipes leading into the warehouse. It was fixed to the ground and made of metal sufficiently secure to protect its contents from fire or lightning strikes.
I glanced around.
The first time I’d done something like this was when I was assigned by GCP to France’s intelligence service DGSE, which sent me on black ops missions.
The time to move was now.
Speed and confidence were crucial.
I walked fast to the van, rolled underneath it, used tape to fasten an item to the gas tank of the vehicle, rolled away, and walked quickly back to my car.
I’d used a small piece of the dynamite Michael Stein had supplied, together with one of the timer detonators he’d included in the package. I couldn’t see the van now. But I could hear the bang that ignited its gas tank.