Rules of Vengeance

by Christopher Reich

  The tumblers to the front door slid back. Robert Russell’s heels clicked on the marble floor. The trespasser took off the balaclava, unzipped the jumpsuit, and waited. The disguise was no longer needed. It was essential that Russell not be frightened. His keychain held a panic button that activated the alarm.

  Russell walked into the kitchen. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” he exclaimed.

  “Hello, Robbie. Care for a drink?”

  Russell’s smile faded rapidly as the facts arranged themselves in his razor-sharp mind. “Actually, just how the hell did you get in here?”

  He had barely finished the words when the trespasser, operational designation Alpha, brought the bottle of vodka and its ice sheath down on his skull. Russell collapsed to all fours, the keychain skittering across the floor. The blow left him stunned but not unconscious. Before he could call out, Alpha straddled him, grasped his jaw in one hand, his hair in the other, and wrenched his head violently to the left.

  Russell’s neck snapped like a rotted branch. He fell limp to the floor.

  It took all of Alpha’s strength to drag the body across the living room and onto the balcony. Alpha flung his arms over the railing, then grasped Russell’s legs, hefted the dead weight, and rolled the body over.

  She did not wait to see Lord Robert Henley Russell strike the granite stairs 35 meters below.

  2

  Kenya Airways Flight 99 inbound from Nairobi touched down at London Heathrow Airport at 0611 British Summer Time. The manifest listed 280 passengers and 16 crew aboard the Airbus A340. In fact, the number was well over 300, with a dozen infants piled on their mothers’ laps and a handful of standbys clambering into the fold-down seats meant for flight attendants.

  Seated in row 43, Jonathan Ransom checked his watch and shifted uneasily. Flight time had clocked in at exactly nine hours—thirty minutes faster than scheduled. Most passengers were delighted by the early arrival. It meant beating morning rush hour into the city or gaining a head start on the day’s sightseeing. Jonathan was not among them. All week departures out of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport had suffered lengthy delays because of an ongoing strike by local air traffic controllers. The previous day’s flight had arrived in London six hours late. The day before that, it had been canceled altogether. Yet his flight had arrived not only on time, but ahead of schedule. He wasn’t sure whether it was luck or something else. Something he didn’t want to put a name to.

  I shouldn’t have come, he told himself. I was safe where I was. I should have played it smart and stayed out of sight.

  But Jonathan had never ducked a responsibility and he wasn’t about to start now. Besides, deep down he knew that if they wanted to find him, there was no place too far away, no spot on the globe too remote where he might hide.

  Jonathan Ransom stood a few inches over six feet. Dressed in jeans, chambray shirt, and desert boots, he looked lean and fit. His face was deeply tanned from months of working beneath the equatorial sun. The same sun had chapped his lips and left his nose freckled with pink. His hair was shorn to a soldier’s stubble and cut through with gray. His nose was strong and well shaped, and served to focus attention on his dark eyes. With his two-day beard, he could be Italian or Greek. A bolder guess might place him as a South American of European descent. He was none of these. He was American, born in Annapolis, Maryland, thirty-eight years earlier to a distinguished southern family. Even in the narrow seat, he appeared to control his space instead of allowing it to control him.

  To channel his nerves, Jonathan gathered up the varied journals, articles, and reviews he’d brought to prepare for the medical congress and tucked them into his satchel. Most had names like “Diagnosis and Prevention of Tropical Infection” or “Hepatitis C in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Clinical Study” and had been written by distinguished physicians at distinguished universities. The last was printed on simple copier paper and carried his own name beneath the title. “Treatment of Parasitic Diseases in Pediatric Patients,” by Dr. Jonathan Ransom, MD. FACS. Doctors Without Borders. Instead of a hospital, he listed his current place of work: United Nations Refugee Camp 18, Lake Turkana, Kenya.

  For eight years Jonathan had worked for Doctors Without Borders, the humanitarian relief organization dedicated to bringing medical care to areas of acute crisis. He’d taken his skills to Liberia and Darfur, to Kosovo and Iraq, and to a dozen places in between. And for these last six months he’d served as principal physician at the Turkana camp, on the border of Ethiopia and Kenya. The camp’s current population numbered upward of one hundred thousand persons. Most had come from the horn of Africa, displaced families fleeing war-ravaged regions in Somalia and Ethiopia. As one of only six physicians at the camp, and the only board-certified surgeon, he spent his time caring for everything from broken ankles to bullet wounds. But this year his crowning glory lay in another department. He’d delivered a hundred babies in 140 days without losing a single one.

  At some point along the way, he’d become an expert on parasitic diseases. With the world community paying increasing attention to the problems of disease and poverty in developing nations, doctors with experience “on the front lines” were suddenly in vogue. Early in the spring, he’d received the invitation from the International Association of Internists (IAI) to deliver a paper on the subject at its annual congress. Jonathan did not enjoy public speaking, but he’d accepted all the same. The subject merited wider recognition, and the opportunity to address such an influential body didn’t come along often. It was an obligation he couldn’t shun. The IAI had paid his fare, booked the flight, and arranged his accommodation. For a few days he’d have a real bed to sleep on, with clean sheets and a firm mattress. He smiled. At the moment, the prospect sounded inviting.

  It was then that Jonathan saw the police escorts and his heart did whatever it did when you couldn’t catch a breath and you felt paralyzed from the neck down.

  Two blue-and-white Rovers belonging to the British Airport Authority drove alongside the aircraft, their strobes lit and spinning. In short order, two more vehicles joined their rank. Jonathan pressed his back against the seat. He’d seen enough.

  Emma, he called silently, his heart roaring to life. They’ve come for me.

  “They’ll be watching you. You won’t see them. If they’re good, you’ll never even be aware of it. But make no mistake, they’re there. Don’t let your guard down. Ever.”

  Emma Ransom looked at Jonathan across the table. Her tousled auburn hair fell about her shoulders, the flames from the hearth flaring in her hazel eyes. She wore a cream-colored cardigan sweater. A sling held her left arm to her chest in order to immobilize her shoulder and allow the gunshot wound to heal.

  It was late February—five months before Jonathan’s trip to London— and for three days they’d been holed up in a climbing hut high on the mountainside above the village of Grimentz in the Swiss canton of Wallis. The hut was Emma’s rabbit hole, her escape hatch for the times when things got too hairy.

  “Who are ‘they’?” Jonathan asked.

  “Division. They have people everywhere. It might be a doctor you’ve worked with for some time, or someone just passing through. An inspector from the UN or a raja from the World Health Organization. You know. People like me.”

  Division was a secret agency run out of the United States Department of Defense, and was Emma’s former employer. Division ran the blackest of black ops. Clandestine. Deniable. And, best of all, without congressional oversight. It was not an intelligence-gathering agency per se. Its members weren’t spies, but operatives inserted into foreign countries to effect objectives deemed essential to U.S. security or the protection of its interests around the globe. That objective might involve the manipulation of a political process through extortion, blackmail, or ballot rigging, the destruction of a geopolitically sensitive installation, or, more simply, the assassination of a powerful figure.

  All Division operatives worked under deep cover. All assumed false iden
tities. All carried foreign passports. Shorter operations ran to six months. More complex ones could last two years or more. Prior to posting abroad, every effort was made to construct a meticulously documented legend. In the event that an operative was caught or exposed, the United States would deny any association with the individual and would make no effort to secure his or her release.

  “And what am I supposed to do?” Jonathan asked. “Stay here in the mountains for the next twenty years?”

  “Go on with your life. Pretend I’m dead. Forget about me.”

  Jonathan set down his cup of tea. “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  He took her hand in his. “You’re wrong. I do have a choice and so do you. We can leave here together. We can go back to Africa or to Indonesia or… oh, hell, I don’t know … but we can go somewhere. Somewhere far away where they won’t think of looking.”

  “No such place exists,” whispered Emma. “The world’s grown much too small. There aren’t any far-flung corners anymore where one can just draw the curtains and disappear. They’ve all been discovered and have webcams and someone waiting to build a five-star resort. Don’t you see, Jonathan? If there were any way that we could stay together, I’d jump at it. I don’t want to leave you either. Last week, when I disappeared down that crevasse, you didn’t just lose me. I lost you, too. I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever see you again. You’ve got to believe me. We haven’t any other option but to split up. Not if we want to stay alive.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. That’s just the way it has to be.”

  Jonathan began to protest and Emma put a finger to his lips. “Listen to me. Whatever happens, you mustn’t contact me until I say it’s all right. No matter how much you miss me, no matter how certain you are that no one’s been watching you and that everything is safe, you mustn’t think of it. I know it will be hard, but you have to trust me.”

  “And if I do?”

  “They’ll know. They’ll get to me first.”

  Ten days earlier, Jonathan and Emma had come to Switzerland for a long overdue vacation. Experienced mountaineers, they had decided to climb the Furka, a peak situated midway between the villages of Arosa and Davos. The climb ended in disaster when a violent storm caught them on the mountain and Emma fell while descending a steep incline. Jonathan had come off the mountain believing his wife dead. The next day he received a letter addressed to her. Its contents unlocked a door to her secret past. He might have ignored it, but that wouldn’t have been his way. On general principle, he avoided the easier path. Instead he delved into Emma’s hidden world, anxious to discover the truth she’d kept hidden since the day they had met.

  His search had ended on a hilltop outside of Zurich, with four men dead and Emma wounded.

  That was three days ago.

  Jonathan squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. He couldn’t deny the affection in her touch. But was it love? Or was it rote?

  Suddenly she was up, making a circuit of the hut. “You’ve got enough provisions for a week. Stay put. Nobody knows about this place. When you leave, act as if I’m dead and gone. That’s just the way it is. Get that through your head. Use your American passport. Go back to work. Take whatever assignment they give you.”

  “And Division? You don’t think they’ll mind?”

  “Like I said, they’ll be watching. But you needn’t worry. You’re an amateur. They won’t bother you.”

  “And if they do?”

  Emma stopped, her shoulders tensing. The answer was evident. “It’s me they want.”

  “So when will I see you again?”

  “Hard to say. I’ve got to see if I can make things safe.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  Emma stared at him, a sad smile turning her lips downward. It was her code for “Don’t ask any more questions.”

  “You’ve got to give me more than that,” he said.

  “I wish I could, Jonathan. I really do.”

  With a sigh, she threw her rucksack onto the cot and began stuffing her belongings into it. The sight panicked him. Jonathan stood and walked toward her. “You can’t leave yet,” he said, trying to talk in his professional voice. The doctor advising his patient, instead of the husband ruing the loss of his wife. “You shouldn’t even be exercising your shoulder. You could reopen the wound.”

  “You didn’t care so much about that an hour ago.”

  “That was …” Jonathan cut his words short. His wife was smiling, but it was an act. For once he could see through it. “Emma,” he said. “It’s only been three days.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Foolish of me to wait so long.”

  He watched as she packed. Outside, it was dark. Snow had begun to fall. In the nickled moonlight, the snowflakes looked as fragile as glass.

  Emma placed the rucksack on her good shoulder and walked to the door. There would be no kiss, no labored goodbye. She grasped the door handle and spoke without looking back. “I want you to remember something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Remember that I came back for you.”

  The plane taxied to the arrival gate. The cabin lights blinked as the aircraft switched to auxiliary power. Passengers stood and opened the overhead luggage bins. In seconds the main cabin was a maelstrom of activity. Jonathan remained seated, his eyes on the police cars that had parked at right angles to the plane. No one was going anywhere yet, he said to himself. Unbuckling his safety belt, he shoved his satchel under the seat in front of him and positioned his feet so that he could stand up quickly. His eyes darted up and down the aisles, looking in vain for an avenue of escape.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. Please retake your seats. Police officers are coming aboard to conduct some business on behalf of Her Majesty’s government. It is imperative that you clear the aisles.”

  With a collective moan, the passengers found their seats.

  In his seat in row 43, Jonathan leaned forward, his muscles tensed. He spotted the first of the policemen a moment later. He was dressed in plain clothes and followed by three uniformed officers with Kevlar vests strapped to their chests, pistols worn high on their hip and in full view. They bullied their way down the aisle, making a beeline for him. There were no smiles, no apologies. Jonathan wondered what they had in mind for him. Whether he would be interrogated by English authorities or the Americans had made a deal to have him turned over to their care. Either way, the outcome was foreordained. He would be “disappeared.”

  He decided to protest, if only to be noticed. He had to leave some evidence of his resistance.

  As the plainclothes officer approached, Jonathan stood.

  “You,” barked the policeman, pointing at Jonathan with his walkie-talkie. “Sit! Now!”

  Jonathan started to push toward the aisle. He wouldn’t sit. He would fight. He knew he would lose, but that was beside the point.

  “I said sit,” the policeman repeated. “Please, sir,” he added in a polite voice. “We’ll be off the aircraft in a minute. You’ll be able to leave then.”

  Jonathan sank back into his seat as the column of policemen swept past. Turning his head, he watched as they confronted a clean-shaven African male seated in the last row of the economy cabin. The suspect protested, shaking his head, gesticulating wildly with his hands. There was a shout, a scuffle, a woman’s piercing scream, and then it was over. The man was out of his seat, hands raised above his head in a gesture of surrender.

  Jonathan saw that he was a small man, bent as driftwood, wearing a heavy woolen sweater that was much too warm for the English summer. The suspect was speaking Swahili, or a dialect of Kikuyu. Jonathan didn’t need to understand the language to know that he was saying it was a mistake. He wasn’t the man they were looking for. Suddenly the accused reached for his bags in the overhead compartment. A uniformed police officer shouted and tackled him to the floor.

  Moments later, the African wa
s cuffed and led from the plane.

  “I’ll bet he’s a terrorist,” said the elderly woman seated next to Jonathan. “Just look at him. It’s plain as day.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You can’t be too careful these days,” the woman added forcefully, lecturing her naive seatmate. “We’ve all got to keep a sharp eye. You never know who you’ll be sitting next to.”

  Jonathan nodded in agreement.

  3

  It was called the Black Room, and it was one of five special operations centers manned by Her Majesty’s Immigration Service at London Heathrow Airport. BR4—Black Room Terminal 4—was located in a stuffy low-ceilinged office directly above the Terminal 4 arrivals hall. Immigration officers sat at a control board running the length of the room. A multiplex of video monitors was arrayed on the wall in front of them. Closed-circuit cameras positioned on the ceiling and hidden behind two-way mirrors focused on the travelers queuing for passport control. A wireless communications link connected BR4 with the passport inspectors on the floor.

  As the world’s busiest airport, London Heathrow saw 68 million travelers pass through its gates each year, arriving from or en route to 180 destinations in Great Britain and abroad. Ten million of them counted as international arrivals, an average of 27,000 persons entering the country every day. It was the Immigration Service’s job to process these arrivals with an eye toward ferreting out those with a criminal bent and denying them entry into the United Kingdom.

  Manipulating the closed-circuit cameras, the men and women seated at the control board proceeded systematically down their assigned queue, snapping photographs of each arriving passenger. The photograph was fed into Immigration Service’s proprietary facial recognition software and checked against a database of known offenders. In the event of a positive response, the suspect would be approached by one of the dozen or so undercover immigration officers scattered throughout the hall and guided to a private room, where he or she would be interrogated and a decision taken regarding his or her status.