10
The taxi sped up Szent Gellért Tér in front of the Danubius Hotel. Sam followed behind, her pace deliberate but unhurried, her gaze out to the west, following the man in the oversized suit coat out of her peripheral vision.
The taxi passed Suit Coat. He looked inside the cab as it passed. He did a double-take. He evidently hadn’t expected the backseat of the cab to be empty. His head whipped around to find Sam.
Amateur move. Dead giveaway. Sam smiled.
Suit Coat turned his torso back around and resumed his march up the hill. His pace quickened.
Sam pulled her phone from her purse and pretended to futz with it. But she was really watching the watcher, again out of the corner of her eye.
Her phone made a noise.
The man turned around again.
Sam kept her eyes down at her phone. Text message from Brock. “Couldn’t wait to see you, so I changed my tickets. I leave tonight. :)”
Sam had mixed feelings about that bit of news. She was more than game to roll around naked with Brock, yet Suit Coat’s presence in her life was compelling evidence that things were a long way from copacetic in Budapest.
The man turned right at the first intersection, halfway up the hill.
Sam followed fifteen paces behind, cursing the timing of Brock’s text and the way it had taken her mind from the task at hand: figuring out who the hell was following her, and why.
There had to be another agent on the surveillance detail. Probably more. Find the others, she told herself.
She looked around, hoping she looked a lot more casual than she felt. She surveyed passersby. Old lady in a red scarf. Old man in a crazy Hungarian hat, complete with a feather. Young mother with two ankle-biters in tow. No eye contact from anyone. Almost as bad as DC. Maybe the Soviets had beaten the friendliness out of everyone.
The man with the oversized suit coat ducked into a haberdashery.
She still hadn’t located the backup man, and she became more seriously concerned that maybe there wasn’t a backup man. Maybe she was being followed by an entire surveillance team. Maybe she had made one of them, but the rest of them were playing it cool and professional.
She cursed beneath her breath. Her instincts clashed with each other. The survival instinct told her that the situation was getting out of control. She should abort, regroup. Fly home, maybe.
An equally cogent voice hounded her. It said that these kinds of situations didn’t tend to age well, left to their own devices. Surveillance teams didn’t usually lose interest. They inevitably brought drama of some sort. The tails on the airplane, in the Budapest airport, and again outside of Severn’s hotel were best not ignored.
And surveillance could turn to a much bigger problem in the blink of an eye.
Plus, she had them on the run. She had seized the initiative. She had spotted the tail and forced him to react to her.
She was forcing Suit Coat and his cronies — wherever they might have been at the moment — to move deeper and deeper into their contingency plan. Why quit now?
She wasn’t itching for a confrontation, but she needed to know what was going on. It would have been far too easy to blunder into a buzz saw otherwise. It happened all the time in the counterespionage world.
She took a deep breath and ducked into the store, now ten paces behind Suit Coat.
The shopkeeper greeted her. She forced a smile, waved, and walked past.
Suit Coat was already three-quarters of the way to the back of the haberdashery. He clearly wasn’t shopping. He didn’t look back at Sam, but she saw his reflection in a fitting mirror as he passed.
It was definitely him. The chase was still on.
She didn’t have a plan. She didn’t speak Hungarian. She was probably outnumbered. She didn’t have much going for her, other than a strong desire to figure out who the hell was following her.
Suit Coat opened a door in the back of the hat shop. The shopkeeper’s sharp protest needed no translation. Suit Coat ignored the shopkeeper and strode out into the daylight, turning left immediately outside the door.
Sam followed into a blind alley between two ancient buildings. They were still pockmarked, possibly from one of the many wars that plagued Hungary in the last century.
Suit Coat’s pace quickened. He found a stairway cut into the alley and descended.
Sam kept pace.
He disappeared down the stairway.
Sam broke into a jog. She spotted the top of the man’s head as she approached the top of the stairs. The rest of his body came into view a few steps later. He was working a key into a lock in a wide, low, heavy-looking door at the bottom of the stairwell.
“Sir?” Sam called out, hoping the man spoke English. “Sir, you dropped something,” she lied. “I picked it up for you.”
No response. He didn’t even look at her.
She was on the fourth step when the man finally got the door open. He charged through the opening. He slammed the door shut.
Sam’s foot stopped the latch from catching.
Suit Coat threw his weight against the door. Sam felt her shoe give, crushing her foot. She gritted her teeth and pushed back. “Sir, I have something of yours,” she lied again. “You dropped it.”
Suddenly, the door sprang open. Sam tumbled inside a low, dank, dark hallway, barely keeping her feet.
Suit Coat’s footfalls echoed down the corridor. He was running away into the darkness.
Sam righted herself and followed.
She found herself in a dark corridor with a low ceiling. More cellar than basement, with hunks of scrap metal and steel rebar scattered about. Sam was careful not to trip over the debris as she followed Suit Coat at a run.
He rounded a corner, moving deeper into the subterranean gloom.
Sam followed, again questioning the wisdom of the whole enterprise. Perhaps her questions about who was following her and why could be answered at some other time, in some less dangerous way. The voices in her head argued with each other. Press the advantage. Retreat and fight another day. Stop. Don’t stop.
Indecision was a de facto decision. She charged onward, making up ground.
Plastered walls and ceiling gave way to bare stone. Sam’s legs were moving somewhere between a jog and a sprint to keep up. Suit Coat was much faster than he looked.
One more corner loomed. The light grew worse, the ceiling lower, and Sam had to stoop to keep from bashing her head against supports set in the rough stone ceiling.
Sam gritted her teeth and ran, bent over uncomfortably at the waist and neck.
She was no longer in a corridor. She was now in a cave.
Guess I won’t need to take that tour.
The ceiling was just a couple of inches above her tall frame, and the walls were just wide enough to permit her arms to swing as she ran. It wasn’t a large passageway.
It couldn’t go on forever, Sam thought, passing through regions of light and shadow between dim bulbs spaced unevenly at shoulder height.
Another corner appeared. Suit Coat slowed, his feet slipping on the earthen floor. He slapped his hands against the far wall to make the corner, pushed off again at a run, and disappeared into the side corridor.
Sam rushed headlong after him.
She turned the corner.
And impaled herself on a long metal rod, gripped on the other end by thick, strong hands.
White hot pain seared her side. Her body curled up around the steel shaft. Her momentum pushed the rod deeper into her flesh. A shriek escaped her lips. She fell to the floor, gasping for breath, hands groping for the rod, desperate to pull it out of her side.
Suit Coat was on the other end of the rod. He jabbed it forward, plunging it further into her body. Sam looked up at him, saw the snarl on his face.
Slavic. High cheek bones.
Just like 32A.
He drove his weight, the force of his thrust overcoming Sam’s grip and driving the rod deeper, tearing muscle and guts and sinew. She scream
ed, a loud, piercing, anguished howl amplified by the stone passageway.
The man pushed harder. The rod drove further into her side.
Sam’s eyes rolled back in her head.
She knew what had to be done. To make it stop, she first had to make it worse.
She gritted her teeth. Then she let go of the rod. It moved ever deeper through her innards. She felt like she was going to pass out, but she forced herself to stay awake, to focus on her right hand. She forced it to find her purse, forced it to find the heavy metal object within, forced it to find the right grip, to check the safety was still off, to point it at the man’s heart, to pull the trigger.
The explosion was unbelievable. The gunpowder flash lit the man’s shocked face. Crimson goo exploded out a gaping hole in his back. The giant bullet tore his heart out and splattered it against the wall and ceiling.
He fell. He was dead long before gravity finished with his body.
Sam panted, fighting panic and hyperventilation and shock.
Was the man alone?
Or were there others?
She listened for footfalls in the earthen cave. She couldn’t hear anything but the sound of her ears ringing in the aftermath of the gun blast.
She looked down the short corridor. No movement.
She turned her head, saw the corner leading to the long corridor, the corner where she had made a rookie mistake.
A deadly mistake.
She saw shadows dancing on the far wall.
Someone was rushing down the long hallway.
More than one person.
She could shoot the first, but the second would have plenty of time to return fire.
She looked again at the shadows. She grimly surmised that there might even be a third person.
It wasn’t a good situation. She needed to find cover, and quickly.
She looked down at her side, regarded the thick metal rod jammed through her guts, cursed silently. It was clear she wasn’t going to make it far with four feet of steel protruding from her innards.
That left her with one option.
Sam dropped her weapon and gripped the steel rod with both hands, sliding upward along the shaft to find raw metal unslicked by her own blood.
She tightened her grip, gathered resolve.
The shadows loomed larger, closer. She was running out of time. Her heart thudded in her chest. Sweat dappled her brow. She held her breath, clenched her jaw, steeled herself.
Then she ripped the poker from her side.
She felt intense, immeasurable, otherworldly pain.
The animal howl she heard was her own. It seemed far away from her consciousness, like somebody else’s problem, or someone else’s universe.
The pain wouldn’t stop. It was deep and vicious and inexorable. It overtook her. Darkness came in its wake. She passed out.
11
The morning unfolded uneventfully for David Swaringen. His feelings of unease dissipated as he spent more time next to Clark Barter, the National Security Agency’s Deputy Director for Operations. Barter ran a tight ship. People on the floor moved with a purpose. It was all business.
Swaringen still felt out of place, but had the sense that he would rapidly catch up. He was, after all, a Harvard MBA. There’s nothing he couldn’t figure out, given enough time and resources. He took copious notes. Barter told him in no uncertain terms that the notes had to remain inside the secure facility. “No classified information leaves this room, unless you want me to saw your nuts off.” Not the kind of admonishment Swaringen was soon to forget.
By seven, a sort of dreariness had settled over Swaringen’s brain. The luster of the classified environment was wearing off, and it had begun to feel much like many of the office jobs he had held in his prior life.
Then something extremely interesting happened.
It began over in a far corner of the operations room. A buzz began. Swaringen could feel it before he was fully aware of it. He turned to look. Two operations personnel had gathered around a third. They all stared intently at a video monitor.
Swaringen looked at the monitors. Three screens showed three separate angles of the same scene, of a car, driving on a dusty road, out in the middle of nowhere.
“Got them, chief,” one of the technicians said.
“Are you sure this time, numb nuts?” Barter rocketed from his executive chair in the front of the operation center. The floor creaked beneath his heft as he half-ran to the front of the room. Technicians parted to make way.
“Sure as I’m ever going to be, chief.”
“I’m ready to hear your verification checklist,” Barter said.
Swaringen didn’t follow the litany of cryptic, terse verbiage that flowed from the technician’s mouth. Clark Barter seemed to understand all of it. He nodded intermittently, asked a question or two, which Swaringen again didn’t understand, and then nodded his head with finality. “I authorize action,” Barter said.
All conversation in the room ceased, and a low hum of intensity emerged, its locus in the front corner of the room, centered on Barter and the three video technicians.
“Inbound, sir,” one technician said.
“How long?”
“ETA in five, sir.”
Barter nodded. He looked at his watch. He pointed at an otherwise-idle technician, a hefty woman in her mid-forties. “Notify the Director.”
The woman picked up a telephone, punched a single button, and spoke in hushed tones.
Barter returned his attention to the video screen. “Armed?”
“Unknown at this time, sir,” the third technician intoned. The man’s voice was calm and even, but Swaringen heard distinct undertones of tension.
“Switch to millimeter-wave.”
The technician toggled a computer setting. The hue of the video display changed noticeably. Where there was once nothing but the solid rooftop of the car, Swaringen was now able to see details of the contents beneath. The driver was a surreal, organic blob in the upper left of the picture. There were no passengers. There were articles strewn about the car, but Swaringen couldn’t make them out.
Evidently, the technicians could. “Passenger seat, sir. Assault rifle, with the clip in.”
“Got it,” Barter said. “Tell the Director that, too.”
The woman at the phone nodded.
“ETA?”
“Three minutes until the helicopters arrive.”
“Zoom out. Any oncoming traffic?”
The technician adjusted a video setting. The view expanded. The car shrunk in size, and the surroundings grew to occupy an increasingly large portion of the video screen. There were no other cars in view. “Looks clean, sir,” the technician said.
Barter nodded. He looked at his watch. He fished an antacid from his shirt pocket and popped it into his mouth. He looked at Swaringen. “You picked a good day to have your first day.”
Swaringen nodded. He was aware that his eyes were inordinately wide. He felt every bit the befuddled neophyte, but the excitement of the room was contagious. Clearly something serious was going down.
“Zoom out further,” Barter commanded.
The technician complied. The camera backed out again, and Swaringen guessed its picture encompassed four or five square miles.
Three shadows became visible in the video display. Helicopters. Flying close to each other in an arrow formation. They advanced rapidly toward the car.
“Tactical audio,” Barter commanded.
A hiss of radio static filled the room. The noise was punctuated by occasional radio transmissions, over-amplified but still unintelligible to Swaringen’s uninitiated ears. A technician handed a microphone to Barter. “You’re hot, sir.”
Barter snatched the mic and pressed the transmit lever. “All units, Charlie Charlie Bravo online,” Barter said.
The speakers crackled in the command center. “Roger, sir,” Swaringen made out from among the static.
“Execute,” Barter said.
“Roger, Charlie Charlie Bravo. I copy, execute on your orders.” The helicopter pilot’s voice beat in time with the rotors, like someone kicked him in the chest a dozen times a second.
The helicopters caught up to the car in a matter of moments. “On my mark,” the helicopter pilot said over the radio. Swaringen found his pulse pounding. His palms felt sweaty. He had no dog in this fight, yet he was on the edge of his seat.
“Three…Two…One… Mark.”
There was a flurry of activity, a cacophony of radio calls. Swaringen was unable to follow what they said. He watched the video monitor intently.
One helicopter circled around in front of the speeding car. The remaining two helicopters flanked the car, favoring the rear. The road was arrow-straight, and there was no place for the car to go. Swaringen thought he saw a rifle protruding from a door in each of the helicopters.
“Zoom in, millimeter wave. Now, people!” Barter yelled.
The camera view changed again, along with the hue, and Swaringen was again looking through the roof of the car.
The driver’s right hand reached for the object in the passenger seat.
“Gun!” Barter yelled into the microphone. “He has an assault rifle.”
“Copy gun.” The pilot’s voice sounded calm and cool. Swaringen wondered how that was possible under the circumstances. “Request permission to engage,” the pilot said.
Swaringen watched Barter closely. Sweat had formed on the deputy director’s brow. He looked unwell but resolute.
Barter clicked the mic. “Engage.”
On the video screen, smoke erupted from the guns protruding from the helicopter bay doors.
The organic blob in the driver’s seat slumped over, stopped moving. The car veered off the road, crashed through a low bramble, and came to rest in a shallow ditch.
“Status?” Barter asked over the radio.
“Standby,” the helicopter pilot said. A long pause ensued, during which nothing much appeared to happen. Swaringen found himself holding his breath.
The chopper pilot’s voice crackled over the radio again. “Target neutralized.”
Barter nodded. “It looks that way from here as well,” he said. “Nice work.”
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 60