“It wasn’t easy,” her father said, and he sounded more resigned than angry. “Why are you going to Amsterdam?”
“Nate’s on his way there.”
“Not good enough.”
“I’m chasing a story.”
“Not according to Tom Smekar, who told me he had no idea what you were up to, but when I mentioned Amsterdam he didn’t seem surprised. He gave me the name of the travel bureau the paper uses and they gave me your flight information.” Smekar was the Trib’s managing editor.
“Now what? You can’t tell me that you’ll somehow manage to have the plane turned around.”
“What story?”
“Nate has gone to find the computer hacker who’s been screwing with our grid and stop him before he crashes the entire system.”
Forester was silent for a beat. “I’m not going to ask you where you got that, but you’re right. I can’t have the airplane turned around in midflight. But Amsterdam is still cold this time of year. What are you wearing? Something warm I hope.”
For just a moment the question made no sense to her, and she almost told him that she had taken her blue blazer and she would be fine. But then it dawned on her what he meant. “I took a white turtleneck sweater and my tan Burberry. I’ll be fine.”
“Luggage?”
“I checked one suitcase.”
“Fine. Someone will meet you at the baggage claim area and you’re not to give him any trouble. If you do he’ll have you arrested.”
“He’d be interfering with the freedom of the press, and I’d scream bloody murder.”
“You won’t be on U.S. soil, and no is going to listen to a hysterical female.”
“Goddamnit—”
“No, sweetheart, this is too important for you to stick your nose in it.”
Ashley’s anger spiked again. “You don’t have the right.”
“Nor do you have the right to possibly get someone killed for the sake of a story.”
That stung. “But it’s Nate.”
“Especially not Nate, not now,” Forester said. “I want your word that you’ll cooperate.”
“I can’t,” Ashley told her father, and she nearly hung up.
“It probably doesn’t matter in any event. By the time you get there it’ll be over with one way or the other. You’ll be too late. And you’ll be under arrest until you can be put on a flight back to Washington. I’m sorry, Ash.”
“Me, too, Daddy.”
64
MAKAROV, DRESSED IN jeans and a dark jacket, stood in the deeper shadows away from the traffic signals at the corner across from the condemned apartment buildings. No lights shone from any of the windows, but a hundred meters east, he could see the dim, flickering open fire at the Roma camp, and from somewhere in that direction he thought that he could hear a dog barking.
It was coming on three thirty in the morning, and the hum of traffic on nearby Westerstraat was nearly nonexistent. For all intents and purposes Amsterdam was sleeping and would not begin to come alive with work traffic for another hour or so. Only the delivery vans and trucks and the garbage collectors were out and about.
Sumskoy was right behind him. “Why have we stopped here?” he asked.
“Someone else has shown up.”
“Where?”
“Just around the corner on the east side of Dekker’s building. He must have come across from the Roma camp.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Sumskoy said. He’d been nervous all morning, especially so after he’d handed over the large, thickly padded envelope he’d brought into Holland under diplomatic immunity.
They’d met in Makarov’s suite.
“For God’s sake, if you get caught none of this can be traced back to me.”
“If we get caught, Vasili,” Makarov said. He opened the envelope and took out the Austrian-made 9mm Steyr GB, two eighteen-round magazines of subsonic hollow points, and a suppressor. It was a very quiet weapon that Spetsnaz troops had used for assassinations of high-value targets in Afghanistan.
“I’ve had second thoughts.”
Makarov loaded the pistol, chambered a round, fitted the suppressor, and pointed it at the Russian FSB officer. “Too late for that.”
Sumskoy stepped back a pace, but then he nodded, resigned. “Okay, Yuri, but I’ll need to get a couple hours of sleep, I’m fagged out, and I would be no good to you otherwise. And I’ll need to change clothes. Something dark.”
Makarov lowered the pistol. “Don’t try to run, Vasili, because I will find you and when I do I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”
Sumskoy had been waiting in the rental Volvo parked around the corner from the hotel a half hour ago when Makarov had shown up and they had driven over here parking a half-block away.
The figure on the other side of the building appeared around the corner again for just a moment then ducked back. He was looking for something or someone.
“Let’s go,” Makarov said and he headed down the street to the end of the block, Sumskoy right behind him.
“Are we getting out of here?”
“No,” Makarov said.
“What then?”
“I want to see who else is interested in Mr. Dekker, and why.”
“Could be Dutch cops or maybe one of the AIVD people,” Sumskoy said. “If it is, we’re getting out of here.”
Makarov turned. “If it is I’ll kill him, and we’ll proceed.”
“My God,” Sumskoy said softly, and he looked as if he were on the verge of bolting.
“Steady,” Makarov said. “It’ll be a lot easier with your help, but if need be I’ll manage on my own.”
Sumskoy understood immediately. “You’d really kill me?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get on with it, I want to be drinking vodka in Moscow tonight.”
They had to hold up in the shuttered doorway of a small cellular phone shop as a taxi passed the intersection. When it was gone they crossed the street and hurried around the back to the east corner of the apartment building where Makarov once again pulled up short.
He took a quick glance around the corner, just as the figure of what he took to be that of a large man dressed all in black turned and started to the rear of the building.
“He’s on his way back,” Makarov said, pulling the pistol from inside his jacket. “But I don’t think he’s a cop.” He held up a hand for silence. The man was just around the corner, and he’d stopped.
Sumskoy didn’t move a muscle, but Makarov eased to less than an arm’s length from the edge of the building and raised his pistol.
A man appeared and Makarov jammed the silencer’s muzzle into his face.
“Move and I will kill you,” he said. But then he recognized who it was and he lowered his pistol. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” Colonel Dabir, chief of VEVAK special operations, said. He looked past Makarov. “Who is he?”
“A friend,” Makarov said. He glanced over his shoulder toward the street from where someone passing might spot them, and then hustled them around the corner to the shelter of the east side of the building. “You were waiting for me to show up, otherwise you wouldn’t have been so sloppy. Why?”
“We couldn’t get in contact with you, and Luis called me with something that you needed to know about before you went in.”
“It’s your operative who was watching Dekker who went missing. I know about it.”
“It’s something else,” Dabir said. “The Americans have sent one of their carrier groups out of Norfolk to the south, at its best possible speed.”
“They’re heading to Caracas,” Makarov said. It explained the urgency of his assignment. “It’ll take them two or three days to make it that far.”
“Yes. But that’s not the most immediate problem. Some serious mischief was done to an electrical transformer yard in southern Texas and the blame for that, along with the rolling blackouts, has been laid on President Chavez’s doorste
p.”
“It’s why we’re here, to prevent Dekker from unleashing the Russian virus which your government provided him. What’s the problem? Why else did you come here?”
“Moving the carrier south is provocative,” Dabir said.
Makarov had to laugh. “So was causing the blackouts and damaging a transformer yard.”
“Luis says that Chavez is dying, and there’s no telling what the madman is capable of doing next.”
“It sounds to me as if your President Ahmadinejad is trying to save his own ass. He’s got trouble enough as it is with Israel.”
Dabir nodded. “The aircraft carrier got his attention. He’s seriously expecting another one to come into the Persian Gulf, and despite all his bluster he’s finally realized that if he makes any sort of a military move it would signal the end of the regime. The Ayatollah has taken him to serious task. A lot of unrest right now, and no one knows how this can possibly turn out for the good without your help.”
“Maybe I should ask for more money.”
“Anything. Name your price,” Dabir said, and he was serious, as frightened men usually were.
“Later.”
“The kid has a hair trigger.”
“Is that what your watchdog told you?”
“I was here a few days ago, and she told me that she wanted out. She was afraid for her life.”
“You should have told her to kill him first,” Makarov said. “Would have saved us the trouble tonight.”
Nothing moved in the apartment complex, and still the only light came from the glow of a fire or fires at the Roma camp. The dog that had been barking earlier was silent, and for just a brief moment Makarov wished that he could be just about anywhere other than here. It was a sentiment that had become increasingly strong over the past weeks. Time to move on, he told himself for the umpteenth time. Ilke was going to be over the moon.
“Is there any chance that Dekker has spotted you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. Karn said that his anti-intrusion devices were mostly centered on the area of the entryway and the stairs.”
“How about the elevator shaft?”
“I’m not certain, though I don’t think it would be such a good idea to climb that far.”
“It could end up being necessary.” Adapt. It was the mantra of every decently trained Special Forces around the world. Improvise.
“What is your plan?” Dabir asked.
65
AFTER PARKING ON a side street across from the Roma encampment, DeJong led Osborne past the one small oil barrel fire tended by a pair of men who watched them pass but said nothing. They stood now at the corner of the building on the east side looking directly across a parking lot to Dekker’s building.
The figures of three people were huddled in the shadows on the near side of the building, just around the corner from the front entrance.
“It would appear that you’re not the only one interested in Herr Dekker this morning,” DeJong said.
“Most likely none of them carried weapons across the border,” Osborne said with sarcasm.
“I can inform my office who will send a SWAT team to investigate. But if none of those men are armed, and they can present reasonable explanation for their being here at this hour, then you will have gained nothing.”
“Your people could find something wrong with their identity papers; that would give a reason to hold them until a proper investigation could be made.”
“These guys are almost certainly professionals, their papers would be in order.” DeJong shrugged. “I promised that I would take you this far as a service-to-service favor.”
“You won’t help me?”
“No.”
In Afghanistan Osborne had worked as and with a team. But sometimes in the heat of a battle he, like many other soldiers, found himself cut off, isolated, and he’d had to operate on his own initiative. He’d lost his left leg below the knee charging a Taliban position. For that brief minute or so he hadn’t been responsible for anyone’s safety except his own. Ever since then he’d worked best alone. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. He’d come to prefer the latter.
“Then get the hell out of here.”
“I’ll stay and observe,” DeJong said. “Sorry, but those are my orders.”
Osborne glanced around the corner at the three figures still huddled in the shadows across the parking lot. “A lot of guys are good at following orders, aren’t they?” he said. He turned and trotted back to where the two Gypsies were sitting on overturned boxes in front of the fire.
They looked up at him with suspicion, but said nothing.
“Do either of you speak English?”
The two men held their silence. They were probably in their mid to late thirties, but they looked much older. Their scraggly hair was long and shot with gray, they had five-day growths on their faces, and their clothing was ragged and dark, except for brightly colored vests and orange sashes around their waists. They almost looked like caricatures.
“I need some help getting across the parking lot without being seen by the three men over there,” Osborne said.
The Gypsies watched him curiously.
“I don’t have much money with me, but I can pay for your help.”
“You’re an American,” one of them said, his Eastern European Romany accent thick, almost Russian, but understandable.
“Yes. I’ve come here to help stop a war that no one could win.”
The Gypsy nodded toward DeJong who had remained in the shadows, but was watching them. “What about him?”
“He’s a Dutch cop, an intelligence officer.”
“Ask him for help.”
“He refuses.”
“Why?”
“It is political,” Osborne said. “I’m on my own. Will you help? It’s important.”
“To whom?” the other Gypsy asked, his English much cleaner.
“To me,” Osborne said.
The two Roma spoke to each other in their own language for several exchanges then the one with the heavier accent switched back to English.
“What exactly do you mean to accomplish here?”
Osborne quickly explained what he knew about the computer hacker, and about the virus that had been brought here from Russia through Iran, and the harm that was about to be unleashed in the U.S. “The three over there mean to retrieve the computer virus and use it themselves.”
“If there is trouble in the U.S. it is no concern of ours,” the Gypsy said.
“War knows no boundaries,” Osborne shot back.
The Roma nodded toward Osborne’s left leg. “You were injured in a war?”
“Afghanistan,” Osborne said and he lifted his pant leg so that they could see his prosthesis.
“There is a woman with the boy. Do you mean to kill her as well?”
“I think he’s already killed her. She was sent by one of the men over there to spy on him for Iran’s intelligence service.”
“The girl of the birds?” the one with the better English asked.
“Yes,” the other man said.
They spoke again in their own language for a long minute or so.
“Are you armed?” the one with the good English asked.
“No,” Osborne said. “The Dutch wouldn’t allow it.”
“But the three men you mean to stop are.”
“Almost certainly.”
The Gypsy said something Osborne didn’t catch, but he got to his feet. “Come with me,” he said and he headed to the nearest building.
DeJong had watched the exchange but he said nothing as Osborne followed the Roma inside and down a flight of stairs into the basement to a steel door on the west side. Only a very dim light from outside filtered into the basement.
The Gypsy unlatched the door, which swung out noiselessly on well-oiled hinges. “All the buildings are connected by maintenance tunnels. This one leads directly under the parking lot. But there is no light, and someone could be gua
rding the door at the other end. Do you understand?”
“Will the other door be locked?”
“I don’t know.”
Osborne hesitated for just a moment. “Why are you doing this?”
“For the girl of the birds,” the Gypsy said. “Go with God.”
Osborne had to stoop to enter the low-ceilinged narrow tunnel and the Gypsy closed and relocked the door, the darkness nearly absolute.
66
DEKKER HAD BEEN expecting company for the past twenty-four hours and now that it was here he wasn’t in the least bit surprised, except for the two men hiding in the shadows over on the Roma side. He didn’t know who they were, though he thought they might be cops. If that turned out to be the case the bastards would be sorry they had tried again to stick their noses in other peoples’ business.
He’d played Hawking’s Folly and he was getting pretty sharp. Another week of practice and he figured he’d be ready to release the game. Only he’d have a head start and he’d blow his competition out of the water.
On the split screen to his left, which rotated to images from eight lo-lux cameras he’d placed in and around the Haven, including the front and back stairs and the elevator shaft of this building, he’d watched first the one man show up, and then two others who joined him on the east side of the building.
Something was wrong with one of the mics down there so he’d only been able to pick up a few muffled words here and there, but nothing that his antisurveillance programs could make any real sense of.
Over on the Roma side one of the men had disappeared two minutes ago and he hadn’t come back. It could mean nothing, and yet Dekker had always been a suspicious person. He didn’t know why. But he’d been that way for as long as he could remember. He’d always had the darkest thoughts about people.
He got up and went into his bedroom where Karn’s body lay on its back beside the bed. He hadn’t bothered covering her face with a towel or anything, because he didn’t want any surprises. It was possible that she was still alive, just faking it, and at any moment would get up and do something bad.
But her eyes, which had become milky, were open, her chest was not moving, and when he touched her cheek her skin was cold and firm. And there was a smell, and a spreading stain on the floor from her backside.
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