by Ben Coes
“He locked it. It’s on a timer. We won’t be able to get out for five minutes.”
Five minutes later, the bolts on the vault door made a loud clicking noise and it swung slowly open.
Katie, Tacoma, and Calibrisi ran down the basement hallway, then climbed the stairs. Tacoma sprinted through the kitchen to the entrance foyer, then ran through the open front door. In the distance, two headlights flickered as a car sped down the driveway, out of sight. Tacoma turned around and ran back inside.
“Keys, Hector,” shouted Tacoma as he ran toward the front door.
Calibrisi looked frantically around the kitchen table, where he’d left them. They were gone.
Calibrisi walked to the door as Tacoma sprinted in. Tacoma stopped, then looked at Calibrisi and Katie behind him, all of them realizing at approximately the same time that Dewey had left, had taken Tacoma’s car along with Calibrisi’s keys and God knows what else.
Calibrisi pulled out his cell phone.
“The president?” asked Katie.
“No, that’s my second call,” said Calibrisi, a flash of anger appearing on his normally placid face. He put the phone against his ear. “Control, get me Couture. He’s in Argentina.”
As he waited, Calibrisi looked at Katie.
“It’s time to start hitting back.”
40
SHERATON HOTEL
CÓRDOBA
Couture stood in his Córdoba hotel room, staring out the window, phone against his ear.
“Yeah, I’ll handle it, Hector,” he said, anger sharpening his eyes. “I know precisely who the fuck did it.”
He hung up the phone.
Charlie Couture wasn’t a very complicated individual. Physically, what you saw was what you got—five feet nine inches of raw muscle and bad attitude, weighing in at precisely two hundred pounds. As for Couture’s demeanor, it was a cross between a pit bull and a wolverine. Like many CIA paramilitary, he didn’t have many friends. He’d risen not because of his political skills but because of his lack of political skills. He was reliable, a workhorse, sent to places that were on the cusp of anarchy, where political turbulence was just beginning to boil up and threaten America. Once there, Couture had a relatively straightforward job, and it wasn’t diplomacy.
Buenos Aires was a plum assignment. There was occasional unrest and a strong strain of remnant communist anti-Americanism, but for the most part the country was stable. But Buenos Aires wasn’t about Argentina. It was about the rest of South America, particularly Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. These were trouble spots.
Couture speed-dialed Timms, his lead investigator in Córdoba.
“We’re leaving,” said Couture into his cell phone. “Have everyone pack up their shit and be downstairs in five minutes.”
Couture stuffed his green nylon duffel bag with all of his belongings. He walked out of his hotel room, leaving the door wide open. He walked quickly down the hall, carrying his duffel bag, and entered the fire stairs. He climbed from the fourth floor to the ninth floor, two steps at a time. He walked down the hallway until he came to room 955. He knocked loudly on the door.
“Colonel, it’s Charlie Couture,” he barked. “Open up.”
He pounded the wood a few more times. Then, from the inside, he heard Marti’s sleepy voice.
“What is it, Charlie? Can it wait?”
“No,” said Couture. “I just got off the phone with Hector Calibrisi. It’s urgent.”
There was a long silence, at least ten seconds. Then Couture pounded the door again.
“Open the fucking door, Colonel,” said Couture. “We found something.”
Couture leaned in toward the door.
“We found evidence linking Iran,” he whispered.
“Really?” said Marti.
The dead bolt turned. The door opened slightly. Marti put his head behind the chain.
Couture kicked viciously, ripping the chain off and slamming the door into Marti’s face, where it struck his nose, crushing it.
Couture followed the door in and leapt at Marti, wrapping his thick muscled fingers around the older man’s neck and tackling him to the floor. He straddled Marti as he choked him.
“Did I say Iran?” asked Couture, gripping his throat and strangling the life out if him. “I meant you, motherfucker.”
Couture felt the weak swings of Marti’s fists against his back. He watched as Argentina’s top law-enforcement official turned reddish blue and suffocated to death.
41
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF
WEST WING
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The White House chief of staff’s office was a stone’s throw from the Oval Office, connected by a short private hallway.
The doors to the interconnecting hallway sometimes stayed open, usually during crunch times, such as just before an important speech, like the State of the Union. During these times, the president, chief of staff, and various senior-level White House and administration staffers walked freely between the two rooms.
Then there were times when the doors between the two offices were shut. Usually this happened when the president needed to conduct a private meeting, outside the earshot of anyone or anything. But for the most part, the president’s life, and consequently the Oval Office, was a relatively open book.
It wasn’t the Oval Office where the shit hit the fan. That took place in the chief of staff’s office.
If the Oval Office was large and fancy, with every inch of space, wall, curtain, fabric, photograph, and painting as orchestrated and thought-out as a symphony, the chief of staff’s office was more private, intimate, comfortable, luxurious in its own special way, with stunning views of the White House grounds.
It was the place where the grittier business of running the hardball, day-to-day, between-the-lines work of the presidency took place. The Oval Office was where hands were shaken; the chief of staff’s office was where arms were broken.
Adrian King Jr. was the White House chief of staff. King, thirty-five, was five feet eight, with brown hair that was as thick as shag carpeting. His trademark feature was a set of bushy eyebrows that looked like some form of rare caterpillar.
King was the most feared man in Washington. He didn’t play politics. He was loyal to a fault and the most hardworking person at the White House. But if you fucked with the president, with anyone under his general purview, or with him, watch out.
King stood behind his desk. In front of him was the complete dossier on Hu-Shao, including photos, a complete biography, and indisputable evidence that placed the Chinese agent in the sniper’s nest in Córdoba.
He pored through the dossier with the speed, thoroughness, and efficiency of a trained prosecutor. When he was done, he put the papers back into the folder.
“Hector, I’m going to ask this once,” said King, looking at Calibrisi, who was seated on the houndstooth sofa against the wall, beneath bookshelves lined with leather volumes and silver-framed photos. “Are you absolutely, positively fucking sure Dewey cut the finger off himself?”
“Yes,” said Calibrisi.
“Would Premier Li have to sanction this?” asked King.
“Not if Dewey was the intended target.”
King breathed heavily. He looked at the other man in the office, Secretary of State Lindsay.
“And was he?”
“Yes,” said Calibrisi. “Dewey exposed the identity of a high-placed MSS asset inside Israeli intelligence. This was payback.”
“Some fucking payback,” asked King. “If this was sanctioned by Li, this is war. If it wasn’t, well, what the hell is it then? They still assassinated America’s top national security official. It’s still war.”
Lindsay put his coffee cup down on the table in front of him.
“We all know that’s not practicable,” said Lindsay.
“Tell that to Jessica, Tim,” snapped King.
Lindsay sat back, chastened.
“W
hat I mean, Adrian, is we can’t just go to war with China. We don’t have the troops. We would have to reinstitute the draft. I mean, it’s an absurd conversation to even have.”
“Oh, yeah,” said King, seething. “We might not have the troops, but we have enough fucking nukes to turn that miserable fucking no-good goddamn rice bog into a glow-in-the-dark cockroach park.”
Lindsay, a former admiral and chief of naval operations, who was almost thirty years King’s senior, nodded calmly.
“I’m angry too, but we’re not going to war over it,” said Lindsay. “You know it. I know it. Hector knows it.”
“The Chinese tried to alter the identity of the dead operative,” said Calibrisi. “They planted prints from a known terrorist with no ties to China. They think we don’t know. They had help from someone inside Argentina.”
“Who?” asked King.
“The head of AFP,” said Calibrisi.
King looked as if he was about to flip his desk over.
“Do you know how much we give those ungrateful bastards!” yelled King, reaching for the speaker button on his phone console.
“Yes, Mr. King,” came the voice of King’s assistant.
“Get me President Salazar down in Argentina,” he yelled at the phone.
He looked at Calibrisi.
“Who is the head of AFP?” asked King.
Calibrisi leaned forward and pressed the speaker button, cutting off the phone.
“You mean, who was the head of AFP?” answered Calibrisi calmly.
King smiled.
Lindsay glanced at Calibrisi, incredulous.
“Your guys killed—”
“Spare me,” snapped King, interrupting Lindsay. “He got what he deserved. As far as I’m concerned, Hector here can do whatever he feels like. But that’s that world. Right now, we’re in this world. And the question is, what do we do?”
“I think it’s appropriate to expel their ambassador from the country,” said Lindsay, “along with the entire embassy staff and the entire staff of the mission to the UN, and any satellite missions—L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, et cetera.”
“That’s symbolic horseshit,” said King. “What about the fuckers who actually did it?”
“It’s Fao Bhang,” said Calibrisi. “It’s his operation.”
King straightened his tie.
“Do you have a recommendation?”
“We need to confront the Chinese,” said Calibrisi. “They might deny it, but they also might administer their own form of justice and remove Bhang. That would be significant.”
“I’m going upstairs to brief the president,” said King. “When I get back, I want the Chinese ambassador in my office.”
King walked to the door.
“One more thing,” he said, looking at Lindsay. “You call Li. You call him or I’ll call him.”
“I’ll call him.”
“Tell Li the president expects him at Jessica’s funeral,” said King. “And tell him to bring Fao Bhang’s head in one of his suitcases.”
42
UPPER PHILLIMORE GARDENS
KENSINGTON
LONDON
The taxicab pulled up to Borchardt’s limestone mansion as the sun was setting over London.
The usually quiet street in front of Borchardt’s palatial estate was busy. A long line of limousines was queued up, along with taxis, assorted sports cars, and luxury sedans, and a Range Rover or two thrown in for good measure. A line of valets was opening the doors of the cars and taking those cars that needed to be parked to a parking lot around the corner. Well-dressed men, many in tuxedos, along with women in elegant, formal gowns, drifted up the dimly lit front steps toward the entrance to Borchardt’s house.
Dewey paid the cabbie, grabbed his leather bag, and climbed out. He was dressed in what he’d been wearing when he drove out of Middleburg eight hours before; jeans, T-shirt, boots. His face was covered in stubble.
Borchardt and Dewey had an unusual relationship, to say the least. Borchardt was a German international weapons dealer with ties to not only most Western countries, including the United States, but also to virtually every known terrorist organization in the world. Borchardt had few morals, but he didn’t sell terrorists anything more powerful than guns and ammunition. His reasoning was simple: he didn’t like jihadists, and he thought guns would mostly be used to kill each other. Anything more powerful, and he wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night, constantly worried that it might be his plane or boat or car that got heated up by an angry freedom fighter.
Borchardt was worth more than ten billion dollars and was considered the most powerful weapons dealer in the world. Interestingly, he made almost as much money selling information as he did selling weapons. He’d learned long ago that every time he sold centrifuges to the North Koreans, for example, the South Koreans were more than willing to pay handsomely for that information, nearly as much as the North Koreans had paid for the centrifuges themselves.
Borchardt had almost gotten Dewey killed two years before. It was Borchardt who plumbed contacts within the Pentagon to identify who killed Aswan Fortuna’s son, Alexander. Aswan paid Borchardt four million dollars for a photo of Dewey. A year after selling it to Fortuna, that photo had come within a hairsbreadth of getting Dewey killed by Hezbollah.
But the five-foot-four, waifish-looking Borchardt had made amends by helping Dewey infiltrate Iran the year before. Afterward, Borchardt told Dewey he would be more than happy to help him when he needed it. There was something Borchardt saw in the rough-hewn American. Perhaps it was the way Dewey had stood up to him, without fear, and had given him the opportunity to make amends. Maybe it was the way they each approached the world, reliant on no one. Borchardt had even allowed Dewey and Tacoma the use of one of his basement rooms for the interrogation of Bhutta, an interrogation that had yielded the name of China’s asset inside Mossad.
Of course, Dewey trusted Borchardt about as far as he could throw him. Borchardt was unscrupulous, amoral, and self-interested. Yet the moment the true identity of the Chinese sniper had appeared on the plasma screen back in Middleburg, Dewey knew he needed Borchardt’s knowledge and connections to Beijing. He needed information on the man behind Jessica’s death, Fao Bhang. And, he needed to start planning his infiltration of China and, ultimately, Fao Bhang’s world.
Dewey knew full well that Borchardt might betray him to the Chinese. As a matter of fact, he was counting on it.
Dewey climbed the wide marble steps up to the mansion’s entrance. A few people stared at him but said nothing. Violins could be heard from somewhere inside the mansion, along with the sounds of laughter and conversation. He saw Borchardt, dressed in coat and tails, greeting guests as they came in. They made eye contact. Borchardt finished speaking with a young blond woman in a black dress, excused himself, and made a beeline for Dewey.
“I see you got the invitation,” said Borchardt, smiling as he shook Dewey’s hand.
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Rolf,” said Dewey.
“Did you rent that tux,” asked Borchardt, pointing at Dewey’s orange T-shirt, “or do you own it?”
“Rented it,” said Dewey. “I need to have it back by midnight.”
Borchardt grinned.
“Let’s get a drink,” he said.
Dewey followed Borchardt into a room off the entrance foyer. Borchardt shut the door. It was a large library with vaulted ceilings of dark wood, a huge crystal chandelier, fireplace, walls lined with books, several big couches, a bar in the corner. Borchardt poured two drinks.
“Whiskey, as I recall?”
“Yes, thanks. What’s the party for?”
“Some board I’m on.”
“Do you need to get back to it?”
“They don’t come to see me,” said Borchardt. “They come to eat my food, drink my wine, and see my house. Frankly, I know very few of them, and those I do know don’t like me.”
“Then why are you on the board?”
<
br /> “I get to look legitimate because I’m on the board of some museum, and they get my money. It’s like an arms deal.”
Borchardt finished pouring and turned back to Dewey.
“What happened to your hand?”
Dewey didn’t answer. Borchardt handed him a glass and clinked his against it. Dewey downed it in one gulp.
“You can tell me later, I guess,” said Borchardt. “What do you need?”
“It’s complicated,” said Dewey.
“Let’s start with a country.”
“China.”
Borchardt tipped his glass back and took a large sip.
“Is this about Jessica Tanzer?”
Dewey stared at him. He was silent for a few moments.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was my fiancée. They sent a kill team to Argentina. They were after me, but they shot her.”
Borchardt nodded.
“I’m sorry, Dewey.”
Dewey was silent.
Borchardt drained the rest of his glass.
“So you want vengeance?” asked Borchardt.
“Yes.”
“Against who?”
“Two days ago, I would have wiped out the entire country if I could’ve. But I don’t want that. I want to kill the ones who were responsible for her death. Fao Bhang. Anyone close to him. If I could make it hurt, that would be an added bonus.”
“A well-planned infiltration into the PRC could take months. There’s getting in. There’s the design of the operation itself. There’s getting back safely. In addition, there’s the simple challenge of accessing Bhang. He’s going to be extremely well guarded. Look, they were after you. They sent a wet crew to Argentina? That means if you set foot in PRC and they capture you, you’re toast. They’ll simply kill you.”
“Yeah,” said Dewey. “I’ve thought about it. I’m not looking for a nice, clean round-trip ticket here.”
“I need to tell you something,” said Borchardt. “I have very deep ties to the PRC. I helped them modernize their military infrastructure, probably more than anyone. I’ve dined with Premier Li on at least half a dozen occasions. The Chinese ambassador to Britain is here tonight with his wife.”