Hard Vengeance (A Jon Reznick Thriller)

by J. B. Turner

  Reznick pointed to the bathroom window. “Can I get to your van through there?”

  “Yes, it is outside. That’s where I park it every time.”

  “Keys?”

  The man rifled in the pockets of his pants and pulled out his keys.

  Reznick took the keys and the guy’s cell phone.

  “Please don’t hurt me, señor.”

  Reznick pointed to the man. “Lie facedown, eyes closed, and count back from three hundred very slowly. When you reach zero, you can go. But not a second before. Yeah?”

  “Yes, señor,” he said, lying facedown on the linoleum floor, eyes shut tight.

  “Start counting.”

  “Trescientos, doscientos noventa y nueve, doscientos noventa y ocho . . .”

  Reznick leaned over and took off the guy’s sunglasses and baseball cap. He put them on and shoved the cell phone in his back pocket. Then he reached up for the open window and pulled himself up.

  Reznick spotted the van no more than fifteen yards away. He had to risk it now. He clambered through the narrow window, quietly dropping down onto the other side. He waited as he heard voices, Spanish voices. He spotted them in the distance, maybe one hundred yards or more away.

  He adjusted the sunglasses and strode to the van. He started up the engine and pulled away, driving down a narrow road and onto the baking streets of Palma.

  Thirty-Two

  Reznick drove for a couple of miles along narrow, winding streets until he got to Palma’s historic Old Town. He pulled into an underground parking garage and called the beachside bar in Cala San Vicente.

  The bar owner answered.

  “Hi, it’s Jon Reznick, the American.”

  “Hey, Jon, you OK? I haven’t seen you for a little while.”

  “I’ve been working on some stuff. Look, I need a ride. I’m willing to pay a thousand dollars for your help.”

  “Why not catch a cab?”

  “Long story. A little run-in with law enforcement. I need someone to pick me up and get a cuff off me.”

  The bar owner laughed. “You been fighting?”

  “No. Just a slight misunderstanding with the Civil Guard.”

  “Not a fan of them myself. Neither was my grandfather. Locked up by Franco.”

  “So, can you help me? I need someone to pick me up in Palma.”

  “Palma? Now?”

  Reznick gave him the location. “I need to know that I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me. I’ll call my son. I trust him with my life. He can drive up, he isn’t working until later.”

  “Tell him to bring bolt cutters. Goddamn cuff.”

  “Man, are you crazy?”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Sure, why not? For a thousand dollars, hey, what’s it to me?”

  Reznick smiled. “Appreciate that. Tell your son to look out for a FedEx van. I’ll be in the back. And remember, don’t tell a soul.”

  Just over an hour later, a small red Seat, a Spanish brand of car, drew up alongside the FedEx vehicle. Reznick was watching from the rear window. A rap on the side of the van and Reznick opened up the back door.

  The kid carefully aligned the bolt cutters and snipped off the handcuff in a matter of seconds without breaking the skin.

  Reznick shut the back door of the van and got into the front passenger side of the Seat. He put on the sunglasses. Forty minutes later, he was dropped off at his hotel. He was reluctant to hang around in case he was tracked down by the Civil Guard or in case the hotel staff tipped them off. He picked up his backpack and belongings and paid his hotel bill. Then Reznick handed the kid his thousand dollars.

  “I want another favor,” he said to the kid.

  The kid shrugged.

  “I need to freshen up nearby. And I want your dad’s motorcycle again. Thousand extra dollars work for you?”

  The kid grinned. “You got a deal.”

  Reznick was whisked away to the bar owner’s house on the outskirts of town, where he had a shower and put on a fresh T-shirt. Just as he was about to ride back up the freeway to Palma, his cell phone rang.

  “Mr. R., it’s Trevelle.”

  “Trevelle, what the hell? I can’t believe you tracked down this number. I’d given up on you.”

  “You should know better than that, Jon.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen, sorry this took so damn long. Gerald Essenden was a tough, tough one to crack.”

  “How come?”

  “Long story.”

  “So, what did you find out about the British diplomat?”

  “A lot. You want to talk about it?”

  “Do I want to talk about it? Are you kidding me? Of course I want to talk about it.”

  “You want to do it face-to-face?”

  “What do you mean, through Skype or FaceTime?”

  “No, I mean, me and you, in person.”

  Reznick wondered what Trevelle was saying. “I think you’ve lost me.”

  “Jon, I’m here.”

  “What?”

  “In Mallorca. I just landed. In Palma. What do you want to know?”

  Thirty-Three

  Just over an hour later, Reznick was back again in Palma’s Old Town after locking up the bar owner’s Ducati against a streetlamp on a quiet side street and checking in at a new hotel. He met Trevelle in his hotel room overlooking the city’s historic cathedral. The ex-NSA contractor wore loose-fitting cargo pants, a gray Metallica T-shirt, and black Adidas sneakers. Reznick hugged the lanky black twentysomething cybersecurity expert tight.

  “This is a long, long way to come.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m jet-lagged out of my brain. By the way, I’m sorry about Martha. I know you were close to her. And she was a good person. She cut me a break.”

  Reznick sat down in an easy chair. “Word is getting around, huh?”

  Trevelle paced the room like a caged tiger. “What the hell is going on, Jon? I’ve been trying to figure it out on my way across the Atlantic.”

  Reznick told him what he knew. From the explosion on the yacht to having to escape from the clutches of the CIA. “It’s all gone to shit.”

  “This is just crazy, I mean, an FBI assistant director? You think she was assassinated?”

  “Yes, I do.” Reznick had filled him in on the fragment of the electronic motherboard with Arabic writing. Mac’s disappearance. His sister’s death in a car crash. The body up in the hills. The old lady who’d rented a house to a mysterious American gentleman with a Spanish passport, and ended up dead down a well. And the car ramming him and Lauren into the drainage channel.

  Trevelle nodded. “A pattern of cover-ups. Some person or organization is trying to cover their tracks.”

  “Precisely. But I think there’s more to it than that. That’s why I needed your help.”

  Trevelle grinned. “Well, you’re in luck. I’m here. And I’m going to help you any way I can. I want to be your eyes and ears where you want to be but can’t.”

  Reznick was intrigued. “Why are you doing this for me, man? You don’t owe me.”

  “Don’t I? You know, it’s funny, I was thinking about this after you called. Thinking long and hard about the lengths you went to, to save Rosalind Dyer in DC. Remember, the whistleblower woman?”

  Reznick nodded.

  “We all need help. Even you. I have IT skills, cybersecurity insights, computer skills, knowledge that’s only found in high-level government agencies, notably the NSA. My former employer, God forgive them.”

  Reznick smiled. “First things first. The British diplomat. I believe he may hold the key. After all, Catherine McCafferty was en route to see him when she was killed. He knows what’s going on.”

  “Essenden, yeah. I found out quite a lot about him. I also have a photograph of him, so we know what he looks like.” Trevelle looked at him curiously. “But how do you know he’s not just a nobody diplomat? A bureaucrat.”

  Reznick shook his head. “I do
n’t think so. First, the facts. Essenden is a military attaché. He’s a senior diplomat for the British consulate. And he has immunity. But I’d guess that with the highly sensitive nature of what Mac found on his dive, he’s also the point man liaising between Spanish military intelligence and the State Department, not to mention the CIA, on this issue.”

  “He’s a cutout?”

  “That’s what I think. He’s the intermediary.”

  “So, the American connection is in the background.”

  “Correct. The fragment of the device that Mac found is highly classified, highly sensitive. The consequences of this getting out would be huge. Just imagine the media firestorm.”

  “It would be crazy.”

  Reznick sighed. “Yeah. But getting back to Essenden, if I had to guess, I think he’s not just an ordinary diplomat. He’s MI6.”

  Trevelle whistled. “That’s interesting.”

  “Britain’s foreign intelligence service. Our equivalent of the CIA.”

  “I get the picture.”

  “I’ve known people who work for them. They’re smart. Resourceful. And they have amazing connections to the American intelligence community, at all levels. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “So how would it work? The British diplomat passes on information to the State Department on the ground in Mallorca?”

  “That makes sense. An individual, in this case a Brit, someone who is trusted and who can ferry information between the Spanish intelligence agencies and, crucially, the Americans. Like I said, the Americans, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department, they’re all in town. They’ve interviewed me.”

  Trevelle nodded.

  “Think about it. Both MI6 and the CIA are adept at gathering vital intelligence using interpersonal contacts. Especially when it comes to national security. The traditional area of tradecraft. Spying. We’re talking old school, human intelligence gathered by real people, not through analysis or electronic surveillance. And trust me, if an FBI assistant director is killed on a boat in the Med, and there’s Arabic writing discovered, this is the stuff they deal with.”

  “Shit, can you imagine what would happen if the press got their hands on this story?”

  “It would be a kerosene wildfire,” Reznick said.

  “What about the mysterious American?”

  “We’ll find him. But first things first, we need to see what Essenden knows.”

  “And that’s my cue.” Trevelle got up from the sofa and pulled out a suitcase from underneath his bed. He unzipped it and took out a MacBook Pro and placed it on the coffee table in front of Reznick. The hacker flipped it open and logged on to a virtual private network in Switzerland that would conceal both his location and his electronic traffic from any interlopers.

  Trevelle adjusted the computer screen for Reznick to see better, then tapped a key, and a Google map appeared, a street view of the center of Palma. He clicked another key, and a red arrow appeared.

  “What’s this?”

  “The GPS location of Gerald Essenden. British consulate in Palma. Real time.”

  Reznick stared at the screen. “Are we sure?” He glanced at Trevelle. “You’re tracking a British diplomat’s cell phone?”

  “Here’s the thing, Jon. He has two cell phones, I’ve discovered. His Foreign Office–issued iPhone, with state-of-the-art encryption.”

  “I thought you could hack anything?”

  “I can. But I know that if I attempt to hack Essenden’s MI6-encrypted cell phone, it would ping all sorts of alerts notifying them that there was a remote entry attempt. And I’m guessing you wouldn’t want him to be aware of that.”

  Reznick nodded. “True. So what am I looking at?”

  “This is his personal cell phone, which he bought here in Palma a few days after being transferred here from Madrid, around the time your friend Mac went missing.”

  “Interesting. So we have his exact location?”

  Trevelle nodded.

  “Good work.”

  “You want me to keep an eye on him?”

  “The guy, if he is a military attaché, will use countersurveillance techniques, so getting a visual on him would be incredibly dangerous. So, electronic surveillance is good. Very good.”

  “What are you hoping for?”

  “I want to know who he visits. I want to know his whereabouts at all times. This guy knows a lot.”

  Thirty-Four

  Three hours later, the GPS signal of Essenden’s cell phone began to move.

  Trevelle handed Reznick a brand-new, specially encrypted cell phone and earbuds. “So we can communicate,” the hacker said.

  “You really need to get out more.”

  Trevelle stared at the screen. “I’ve got the app running on your phone and mine, in the background.”

  Reznick watched as the GPS arrow moved slowly through Palma’s narrow streets. He got to his feet and put in the earbuds. “I got this.”

  “I want to help.”

  “You are helping.”

  “No, I mean I want to get out there on the street and help. Keep track of him.”

  Reznick wondered if that was a smart move. He didn’t want to put Trevelle at risk. But he also knew that an extra pair of eyes and ears on the ground would be helpful in addition to the electronic surveillance.

  His mind flashed to images of Lauren being interrogated by Finsburg. He’d trusted Johnston that she was safe, and he knew she was smart and tough. But as a father, he couldn’t help but worry.

  Reznick’s thoughts snapped back to the present. “Keep at least fifty yards from me.”

  “The app will be like a GPS, telling you to turn left or turn right as you lock on to the target.”

  Reznick took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

  The surveillance began.

  Reznick got a visual on a middle-aged man meandering through the streets. The man wore a pale blue shirt and chinos, and he had a backpack on. The target was about a hundred yards down the street from Reznick, who held back for a few moments. He turned around and saw Trevelle cross the street, keeping sight of the target. “Not too close,” he said into the phone. “Back off.”

  “Copy that. I want to get a bit closer.”

  “I’ll shadow you,” Reznick said.

  Trevelle continued down the street toward Essenden. “He’s stopped to check out an art gallery.”

  “Head in a different direction, countersurveillance move.”

  Reznick watched as Trevelle headed down a side street away from the target. “Keep walking, due southwest like you’re doing.”

  “Copy that.”

  Reznick waited until the target moved on and turned a corner. He counted to ten before he resumed walking. The voice from the app said, Turn right, and then continue for twenty yards. Reznick bought a Coke from a street vendor. He waited for another minute before he walked on. Head along this route, then due east. A few moments later, Reznick turned into an affluent street with a huge imposing building opposite. The target is at this location. It was a hospital. Clinica Rotger.

  “You there yet?” he heard Trevelle say through his earbuds.

  Reznick walked on for another twenty yards before he stopped. “Copy that. Hospital.”

  “Stand by, I’m approaching from a southeast direction. Location is an exclusive private hospital, one of the best in the Balearics.”

  “Maybe he’s getting treatment.”

  Trevelle said, “Website I’m checking says it’s used by VIPs, wealthy individuals, etc. Very exclusive.”

  “I’m going in.”

  “Hang on, Jon. I’m going to try and get a more specific location.” There was silence for a few moments. “He’s on the first floor. Can I make a suggestion?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to activate the microphone on his cell phone.”

  Reznick smiled. “The old roving bug, huh?”

  “Copy that.”

  Reznick spotted a coff
ee shop opposite and headed inside, glad to feel the cool air on his skin. He ordered a latte and sat down.

  “The conversation, it’s only coming to me,” Trevelle said.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s inquiring how his friend is.”

  “Who’s his friend?”

  “Jill Buchanan.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “I’m checking online . . . stand by. Negative. Nothing on any relevant databases. But Jill Buchanan is the name of the patient in the hospital’s system.”

  Reznick touched the earpiece to make sure it was still in place.

  “The doctor he’s speaking to is in charge of the intensive care unit,” Trevelle said. “So, it sounds like he’s just checking on a friend or relative of his, maybe a British expat, I don’t know.”

  “I’m wondering if we’re wasting our time with this guy.”

  Trevelle was quiet for a minute. “Yeah, he’s talking about her condition. The doctor is saying she’s critical. And Essenden told the doctor to only speak to him about Jill Buchanan. Essenden has given the doctor his card.”

  Reznick finished his coffee. “Stay out of sight.”

  “Got it.”

  Reznick only had to wait for a couple of minutes. The diplomat emerged, sunglasses on, talking into a cell phone. He wondered if it was the personal phone or his Foreign Office cell phone. “Got a visual on him,” he said.

  “Copy that. We’ve got his position tracked.”

  Reznick weighed whether they should head back out onto the streets of Palma. “We’re definitely tracking his position?”

  “Every step of the way.”

  “And you’ll be able to determine where he goes?”

  “Copy that.”

  Reznick sat in the coffee shop for a few moments longer, wondering who Jill Buchanan was. His curiosity got the better of him. If nothing else, it would be useful to rule her out as being pertinent to the investigation. “I’m going in,” he said.

  “Into the hospital? You want me to keep track of Essenden?”

  “Electronically. Get some coffee or water. I’ll see you outside in ten minutes.”

  Reznick needed a bit of cover, so he headed to a nearby shop and bought a bouquet of flowers. He walked into the hospital and headed up a flight of stairs. He followed a long corridor whose signs pointed to the intensive care unit.