Rules of Vengeance

by Christopher Reich

  “Nothing. I don’t speak Russian.”

  “Really? Tell me, then, how did you teach the doctors in Kabul?”

  Of course they knew about him, thought Jonathan. Their surveillance didn’t stop with the pictures taken at Oxford. “Her personnel file,” he admitted. “I just saw a few pictures.”

  “That is all? You are certain?”

  “It was enough.”

  “Then we have nothing to worry about. You’re sure you don’t want anything? Take an orange. They are blood oranges from Israel. We must make a drive now.” The Russian slipped his keys out of his pocket. “Stairs at the end of the hall. After you …”

  “Gendarmerie. Ouvrez la porte.” The forceful voice was followed by a series of violent raps against the door.

  The Russian stepped past Jonathan, his eyes going to the door.

  “Stay here,” said Alex, as he advanced toward the entry.

  The police knocked again. Louder this time.

  Glancing around the kitchen, Jonathan picked up the first thing he saw that might serve as a weapon. It was a large cut-glass fruit bowl, and he rushed forward and brought it in a roundhouse against the side of the Russian’s head. The agent staggered and fell against the counter. Jonathan brought the bowl down on the back of his skull, sending Alex crashing to the floor. And then, possessed by an animal fury, he struck the Russian again. There came an expulsion of breath. The body shuddered and was still. The Russian was dead.

  “Police! Ouvrez la porte! Maintenant!” The pounding at the door increased in urgency, the voices demanding that he open the door.

  Jonathan eyed the pistol. He’d left Prudence Meadows’s gun in Rome, and he’d sworn never to touch one again. It was, he decided, a rash promise. He scooped up the pistol and ran down the hallway. The door to the stairwell stood open. A flight of stairs led steeply down to a dusky basement. He ran down several steps, then abruptly stopped. He gazed up. From where he stood, he could see the door to the office half open, and beyond it the laptop computer.

  “Police! Ouvrez!”

  Jonathan hesitated for a moment longer, then moved.

  63

  Kate Ford jumped from the Écureuil helicopter as soon as the skids touched ground. Head bowed, she ran to a small contingent of policemen gathered across the road. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “At the house,” called one of the men as he led her toward a Renault painted with the fluorescent orange stripes and white body of the French state police. “You’re late. Come with me. I take you there. My name is Claude Martin.”

  Kate shook hands and introduced herself. “What do you mean, late? You were supposed to wait for me.”

  “Monsieur le Commissaire grew nervous. He will not permit Ransom to escape from us.”

  The barb cut deep. Ransom had escaped from the English. He’d escaped from the Italians. Monsieur le Commissaire intended to show that the French at least were competent. History writ small. “So Ransom is there?”

  “We’re not certain, but we found a motorcycle parked up the road.”

  Kate nodded and looked away, struggling to mask her disappointment. The flight from Italy had passed in a flurry of diplomatic wrangling. Calls had passed from the Met to the French National Police, from Five to the DST—the Directorate of Territorial Security, France’s internal special forces—and then crisscrossed between the four of them. The French were wary about launching what they termed a wild goose chase to capture a foreign fugitive who most likely was nowhere near their borders. A full hour had been wasted debating the likelihood that Ransom could have covered such a long distance in so short a time. Another hour had passed discussing who would pay for the operation, England or France. It was finally decided that the police of the Alpes-Maritimes would coordinate the operation with the local brigade of the DST, to be flown in from Marseille. The bill would be settled later.

  “How many men do you have in place?” asked Kate, feeling the knot that had been in her stomach during the entire flight from Italy tighten.

  “We ordered two of our best men up to the house five minutes ago,” said Martin, who by his shoulder boards was a corporal, and by his peach fuzz and hulking shoulders barely out of university. “We have a dozen more setting up a perimeter.”

  Kate wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “I’d requested a tactical team from the DST. I thought this had been settled.”

  “I wouldn’t know. We only arrived fifteen minutes ago.”

  “So it’s just local?”

  “So far, yes.”

  Kate didn’t know why she was surprised. She wasn’t in London calling out a team of her own to set up a blind on a suspected bank job. This was international, and international things rarely went smoothly or quickly.

  “How far is it to the house?” she asked.

  “Five minutes, but I get you there faster.”

  Kate climbed into the front seat. Martin left a yard of rubber on the pavement as he pulled away and attacked the road as if it were a Formula One track. “You said there was a motorcycle parked up the road, but did anyone get an actual sighting of Ransom?”

  “I’m not certain, but I do not believe so. We are setting up a surveillance position across the hill, but it is getting dark.”

  The car negotiated a last hairpin turn and slammed to a halt. Parked on a steep section of pavement in front of them was a cluster of vehicles—a van, two police cars, and an unmarked sedan—but nothing that looked remotely like it belonged to the DST.

  Kate left the car and hurried to a circle of uniformed policemen. In short order she was introduced to the chief of the state police and his lieutenants. There wasn’t a woman in the bunch.

  “We sent two men to the front door five minutes ago,” explained the commissaire. “No one answered.”

  “Do you have a visual?”

  “No,” responded the commissaire. “But no matter. We have the residence surrounded. If he is there, we will get him.”

  Kate offered no reply. She’d said the same thing herself more than once and here she was all over again. “Do you have a phone line into the house? Let’s call and see if anyone answers.”

  The commissaire shot her a black look. “It is too late for that.” He motioned toward the hillside, where six uniformed policemen clad in Kevlar vests surrounded the house. Four of them were positioned near the front door; two more had climbed onto the terrace.

  Just then there was a shrill whistle, and the team commenced its assault. The men on the stairs charged the entrance. The others went in through the terrace doors. A moment later came the explosive thuds of a Wingmaster blowing the front door off its hinges. Two muffled explosions followed: stun grenades, designed to immobilize any occupants. Smoke curled from the terrace.

  Three minutes later a policeman appeared at the railing. “Il n’y a per-sonne là-dedans,” he yelled down.

  “What did he say?” asked Kate, looking from face to face. “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s no one inside,” translated the commissaire. “Merde! Do you know what that means?”

  Kate turned away, biting her lip white. She had come to know Ransom as a resourceful man. He had slipped through Graves’s fingers in London, managed to escape England and to navigate as he pleased hither and yon across the European continent while being the subject of an international manhunt. But this was too much. Was Ransom a ghost?

  “Attention! Someone is leaving!” one of the men shouted.

  Fifty meters down the road, well behind the mass of parked vehicles, the door to an unnoticed garage bay stood open. Kate spun in time to see a white Peugeot burst onto the road and turn sharply down the hill. She had only a moment to glimpse the driver. It was a man with cropped dark hair and a tanned face, wearing a dark T-shirt.

  For a split second he looked directly at her.

  Ransom.

  Kate ran to the nearest car and jumped in the front seat. The keys were in the ignition, and she fired up the engine. Martin,
the blossom-cheeked corporal, climbed in next to her. “You can drive?” he asked.

  Yes, she could drive. And she had two years on the Sweeney to prove it. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

  She dropped the clutch and spun the car through a tight U-turn. The car was a Renault sedan with a standard V6. Maybe 250 horses. If she kept the engine redlined, she might have a chance of catching him. Ransom was 500 meters ahead and gaining. She caught the flash of his brake lights before he disappeared around a bend.

  “You know these roads?” she asked.

  “I grew up in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Just then they rounded a curve. Kate was going much too fast. The rear wheel skidded off the asphalt onto the ribbon-thin shoulder. There was no safety rail. Another few centimeters and it was a sheer drop of 200 meters to the coast road.

  “Down there,” said Martin, pointing out the window, and she wondered if he was always this pale.

  “Where can he go?”

  Martin explained that the road led east toward Monaco and that there were very few side roads along the way intersecting this one. If Ransom selected one, he would reach a dead end within a kilometer. If he remained on the main road—if that’s what you could call a strip of asphalt barely wide enough to accommodate two VW Beetles—he would arrive at an intersection where he could choose between the superhighway, a road leading into the high backcountry, or the main artery into Monte Carlo.

  “How far is the intersection?” Kate asked.

  “Eight kilometers.”

  There was a flash of light in her rearview mirror. She turned and glanced over her shoulder. A fleet of police cars followed her, strobes spinning. Two motorcycle officers peeled out from the ranks and slid into the opposing lane, rushing forward to overtake her. “No, you don’t,” she said to herself, jerking the car to the left and throwing her arm out the window to signal to the overzealous policemen to stay back.

  “Call ahead. Have them block the road.”

  “No time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The intersection is in the Principality of Monaco. I will have to speak with their police captain. It will take an hour at least.”

  “Have the chopper put down there instead. Tell him to block the turnoff lanes leading to the north. We can’t allow Ransom to get onto the superhighway.”

  Martin radioed the request to his superior. “He is on his way.”

  Jonathan Ransom remained a half-kilometer ahead. The road leveled out and Kate could see its course, slaloming in and out of the mountain’s contours. For once she had the advantage. She pressed the accelerator to the floor. The speedometer touched 140 kilometers per hour. The distance between the two cars narrowed.

  Ransom braked, then swung around a bend, disappearing from view. The corporal threw his hands onto the dashboard. “Slow down!” he shouted.

  Kate touched the brakes and spun the wheel to the left. The curve went on and on, and she felt the back end getting away from her. A jolt shook the car as the rear tires left the asphalt and skidded along the dirt precipice. Dust plumed into the air. “Blast,” she said, slamming the gearshift into second and feathering the gas. The car found its line. Rubber gripped pavement and the car rocketed forward. Martin went from pale to transparent.

  “There,” he said, pointing to the intersection at the crest of the mountain. “That’s the turnoff to the superhighway.”

  Foot to the floor, Kate leaned forward, as if willing the vehicle faster. Ransom was resourceful, no question. But he was not a better driver than she, and he did not benefit from a homegrown navigator. With unyielding determination, she closed the gap between her Renault and the white Peugeot.

  Opposing traffic was light. Whenever Ransom came upon a car, he passed it recklessly. Kate followed his rule. At some point she’d decided that she wasn’t going to slow down, whatever the reason. She rounded another bend and saw the ruins of an ancient Roman temple on the hilltop. A moment later she was passing through the village of La Turbie, one hand blasting the horn to keep all living souls on the sidewalk.

  She could see the green-and-white road signs at the intersection ahead. Anything might happen once Ransom reached the superhighway. The risk of injury to him and to others would rise dramatically. She heard the sound of the helicopter’s rotors passing overhead. A few seconds later she caught sight of the bird putting down on the crest of the mountain. It was apparent even from this distance, however, that he had left the right lane clear. Ransom could not get to the superhighway but he had free access to the road leading down the hillside into Monaco.

  Kate closed the distance to four car lengths. She was close enough to see the back of his head, to glimpse his eyes in his rearview mirror. Ransom barreled over the ridge, approaching the intersection. His brake lights flared and the Peugeot slowed as he negotiated a path around the helicopter. Then, as quickly, the car accelerated, commencing the sweeping right-hand turn that led down the face of the mountain to the narrow, winding streets of Monte Carlo a few kilometers below.

  Kate sped through the crossroads seconds later. Glancing out her window, she saw the roof of the Peugeot zip past on the switchback below. Her knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “Can you shoot?” she asked Claude Martin.

  “A little.”

  “Aim for the tires. I’ll get you close.”

  The corporal drew his pistol and leaned out the window, using two hands to steady his aim. He fired four times in succession. Kate saw a puff of smoke pop from Ransom’s rear left tire. The Peugeot veered to the right, coming perilously close to the road’s edge before correcting its course. Martin ducked back inside. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The road took on a new character. The surface was smoother, well maintained. Guard rails ran along the exposed lane as it began a series of switchbacks, each punctuated by a tight 180-degree hairpin turn. Below, the buildings of Monaco crowded the hillside all the way to the sea.

  “I can shoot him the next time he passes,” volunteered the corporal. “Once he’s in the city we may lose him.”

  Kate considered her options. Part of her had grown convinced that Ransom knew more about Emma Ransom’s activities than he had let on. He might even know how she planned to attack Europe’s nuclear grid. If he perished, that knowledge would go with him. Still, in the end, Ransom was a fugitive. And a dangerous fugitive at that. He’d been given every chance to surrender and he had decided otherwise. “Shoot,” she said.

  She rushed the next curve and pressed her foot to the metal, needing to gain a few precious meters. She watched Ransom navigate the curve ahead. For a long stretch the Peugeot disappeared from view and she held her breath. It reappeared ten seconds later, speeding along the straightaway below them.

  “Stop here,” said Martin.

  Kate braked and the car skidded to a halt. The corporal leaped out of the car. He was already firing, moving closer to the guard rail, the spent shells tinkling onto the pavement. Ransom’s windscreen fractured into a thousand pieces and collapsed inside the driver’s compartment. One of the front tires exploded. The car swerved, then straightened. Kate circled the front of the Renault. “Did you hit him?”

  Martin lowered his pistol. “I don’t know.”

  “Christ, no.”

  “What is wrong?”

  Kate pointed.

  The Peugeot was gaining speed, accelerating toward the hairpin when it should have been braking. The car began to swerve in earnest, as if a drunk were at the wheel. Or a man who was gravely injured.

  “Slow down,” whispered Kate.

  The Peugeot hit the railing going more than 100 kilometers per hour. The car burst through the metal barrier as if it were a ribbon at a foot race. From her vantage point, the car appeared to travel endlessly into space. Then, as if an afterthought, its nose dropped, and it plummeted onto the rocky hillside. The car landed on its roof and tumbled over and over until it righted itself at the bo
ttom of the ravine.

  The flames began slowly, playfully, a tongue darting from the chassis, an innocuous wisp of smoke.

  “Get in.” Kate jumped into the driver’s seat and sped down the road, negotiating two switchbacks until she reached the spot where Ransom had crashed through the guard rail. She slid down the hillside, her eyes searching for a sign of life. Suddenly there was a flash, a deafening blast as the gasoline tank exploded. She fell to the ground, singed by the wave of heat.

  She got up slowly and neared the car, stopping when the heat forbade her. It was as close as she needed to be. From her position, she had a clear view of the man slumped over the wheel. He was badly burned by then, but there was no mistaking the dark shirt or the cropped hair.

  She turned her back to the flames and climbed the hillside. Gazing down at the wreckage, she took her phone from her jacket and called Graves.

  “Yeah,” he said. “What’s the latest?”

  “Jonathan Ransom is dead.”

  64

  The end of the cold war did not bring about an end to spying between the East and the West. After an initial thaw, relations between the United States and its NATO allies and the former Soviet Union grew as chilly as ever. Efforts to sow democratic reform in Russia failed. Plans to restructure the economy proved disastrous, resulting in the meltdown of the ruble in the late summer of 1998. Humiliated, broke, and smarting from its loss of international power, Russia vowed revenge. A new president was elected, a man from its security service who looked to history for inspiration. Russia had always needed a firm hand, and he was the man to provide it. Domestically, he quashed dissent. Abroad, he sought to win back his country’s prestige. But this time there was something different, a serrated edge to relations that had been absent in the past. To quote an American expression, “This time it was personal.”

  No one noticed more than Charles Graves and his colleagues at MI5. In 1988 the Russian embassy registered two hundred employees. It was Five’s guess that of these, seventy were graduates of the FSB Academy at Yasenevo. “Moscow Center hoods,” in the parlance. By 2009 the number of employees at the new Russian embassy in Kensington Gardens had skyrocketed to over eight hundred, of which more than four hundred were thought to be trained spies. The sheer number made it difficult, nigh impossible, to identify who among them counted as ranking officers. And despite seeing its own numbers nearly triple in the same time, Five’s internal shift toward domestic counterterrorism operations precluded it from conducting the degree of in-depth surveillance necessary to keep tabs on its former enemy.