A Raging Storm (6 page)

“You’re right,” Storm said. “I did hide information from you.”

“At least you’re honest about that,” she said. “My point is: How are we supposed to work together if I can’t trust you? I don’t know for certain if you are being honest with me right now.”

“I understand,” he replied, “but I work with people all of the time who are not telling me the truth and are hiding things from me. I’ve even worked with people who wanted to kill me.”

“I can understand that,” she deadpanned.

“But you find a way to get around all of that and accomplish the mission.”

“How? Especially if you don’t follow the rules?”

“I don’t trust rules. But I do trust my instincts and what they tell me about the people working with me. Rules can get you killed.”

“So can breaking them.”

“Agent Showers, have you ever had a one-night stand?” he asked.

She let out a sigh. “I’m trying to have an adult conversation.”

“Perhaps it’s not the best analogy, but hear me out. If you meet someone in a bar and you end up in the sack, you have certain expectations, maybe even certain demands, but you don’t fall in love with that person and you don’t share your most intimate secrets with them, even though you are doing something very intimate. You don’t necessarily trust them either. You just do your job and move on. The same is true at work.” He smiled, clearly happy with that explanation.

“You’re making my head spin with your logic. Is that what a one-night stand is to you?” she asked, raising a brow. “A job? And then you move on?”

Without waiting for him to answer, she said, “I guess that’s one of the differences between us and why I work at the FBI and you work for Jedidiah Jones.”

“Now my head is spinning,” he said, mimicking her.

“When I was in college, a CIA recruiter came to see me. He told me that people who worked for the Agency were not obligated to follow U.S. laws when they traveled overseas. He bragged that a CIA employee could lie, cheat, steal, break into apartments, and even kill. The rules don’t apply. That’s what he said. That’s the sort of folks he wanted working for him. People who think they are above the law. People like you.”

“He was just being honest with you,” Storm said. “As my mother used to say, ‘You got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.’” He finished his beer and waved to the waitress.

“I’m not a person whose moral code ends when I cross the U.S. border,” she said. “Oh, another thing. I don’t do one-night stands. So don’t get your hopes—or anything else—up during our trip.”

“Around you,” he replied, “I’m always fully hopeful.”

“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said. “I’ll see you on the plane.”

“Don’t get confused and go into the wrong potty,” he said, smirking.

“I only do that when I have to rescue you,” she replied, leaving.

He noticed that she’d not left a tip.

“Lady friend troubles?” the waitress asked, returning to his table.

“She’s a bit high-strung.”

“Too skinny, too.” The waitress bent over when she served him another beer, giving Storm an eyeful. “This one’s on the house. My name’s Eve. You know, the girl who ate that nasty apple. Why don’t you stop in again when you get back from wherever you’re flying off to.” She walked away slowly, making sure that he got a good view.

The gate agent announced over the intercom that it was time to board the Heathrow flight. First class ticket holders hurried forward. Business class was next.

Storm checked his first class ticket. But he did not move. He had no interest in boarding early. If he did, all the passengers that came after him would see his face as they slowly made their way down the aisle, finding their seats and storing their luggage. Storm wanted to be the last on a flight. He wanted to sit as near the front of the plane as possible, and he wanted to be the first off every flight. This way, he could observe all of the other passengers and hopefully not call attention to himself
.

When it looked as if the last passengers were on the walkway, Storm tossed a ten-dollar tip on the table and walked over to the gate. He’d not seen Showers and was curious where she’d gone.

“Welcome aboard,” the agent said, taking his ticket. “Oh, you’re first class. You could have boarded earlier.”

“Nature called.” He bent down to tie his shoe, stalling. Where was Showers?

Storm heard the sounds of someone running toward him.

“I’ve got a ticket.” It was a woman, but not Showers. Storm noticed that she had a distinct Russian accent.

“Looks like you have three late-comers,” Showers said as she stepped to the gate.

“Yes,” the agent replied, “and all three of you are seated in first class. What a coincidence.”

“Yes, indeed,” Storm said.

Storm knew the instant that he saw her and heard the Russian accent. In her late twenties, she was wearing functional shoes, skin-tight designer jeans, and a dark gray sweater pulled over a low-collared, gray, wide-striped shirt whose tail peeked out. A professional women’s dive watch was on her wrist. She wore no jewelry but did have a thin silver belt around her waist that Storm suspected could be an effective garrote in her well-manicured hands. He put her at five-foot-six and 119 pounds. She had long black hair pulled back from unblemished bronze skin. Her dark eyes were highlighted perfectly by thin brows.

Storm knew the SVR—the successor to the Soviet KGB—didn’t believe women were emotionally stable enough to be trained as operatives. Instead, the Russian intelligence service used them as secretaries, couriers, and sometimes as prostitutes in covert operations. They also sent them abroad as
illegals
, giving them fake backgrounds and sending them into enemy countries to embed themselves in the local culture and gradually work their way into useful positions to spy. But they never used them as Vympel soldiers or on protective details.

If Storm was correct, this woman was not a native Russian but was from one of the Soviet’s former republics whose intelligence services didn’t share Moscow’s machismo attitude. He suspected she worked for Ivan Petrov.

The overnight flight proved uneventful. Unfortunately, Storm found himself seated next to a rather plump middle-aged woman who drank four glasses of Riesling, fell asleep instantly, and began snoring with an open mouth.

As soon as the flight landed, Storm exited, keeping an eye on both the late arriving passenger and Showers. After clearing Customs and Immigration, he ducked into Heathrow’s Virgin Atlantic clubhouse, where he used his laptop in one of the private rooms to send a photo to Langley of the female passenger. He’d snapped the picture with his cell phone when she’d gotten up to use the toilet after dinner on the transatlantic flight. The agency’s facial recognition program identified her in less than a minute.

Antonija Nad was a former member of the Special Operations Battalion in the Croatia armed services. The BSD, as it was known, focused on airborne assault and behind-enemy-lines combat. It was one of the most respected special forces units in the world. It was also one of only two European forces that allowed women to fight in specialized units. She’d resigned from the Croatia military a year ago to work for PROTEC, a security firm based in London.

He had guessed correctly. She had to work for Petrov
.

Storm checked the time. By now, Showers and Nad would have exited Heathrow. He walked to the airport’s rental counters to get a car and an hour later pulled up outside the London Marriott Hotel Park Lane across from Hyde Park. Storm never understood why Americans booked rooms in American hotels when they traveled overseas. It was like eating McDonald’s in Paris. But someone in the government, who had arranged the tickets and hotels, had gotten them adjoining rooms there.

Because Showers was still being briefed at Scotland Yard, she hadn’t checked in. Storm decided to find a room elsewhere. He drove through the neighborhood until he spotted a cozy bed-and-breakfast a few blocks from the hotel. The grandmotherly owner at the antique reception desk said one room was available, which he rented with cash.
Jones had warned him to not trust anyone. He was taking his advice
.

The flat was on the second floor of what used to be a high-end Hyde Park row house, with huge rooms. But that had been when the sun never set on the Union Jack. Since then, the building had been divided into small units barely bigger than a double bed. He’d stayed in worse. It was clean and had Internet access. Best of all, no one would know he was here.

Before he’d left Langley, Storm had collected crime scene photographs taken by the FBI. Taking a seat at an oak desk from the 1850s that faced his room’s street window, he sorted through the photos, stopping when he reached a batch that had been taken on the roof of the Capitol Police headquarters, where the sniper had hidden.

The shooter had used a bag of sugar to support the barrel of the 9.8-pound Dragunov rifle. The bag was a readily available prop that no one would consider suspicious if he was seen carrying it. The Dragunov was a gun that could easily be disassembled and hidden in a briefcase.

The Dragunov’s barrel had been equipped with a flash suppressor to help hide the shooter’s location. But it didn’t have a silencer. This meant the sniper had not been worried about the sound of the gunshot.

Like all professionals, the assassin had known that there would be two actual sounds when he pulled the trigger. The sound from the initial bang—the muzzle blast—would be masked by the noisy, rush hour street traffic around the headquarters building. The second sound would be the sonic crack that a bullet makes as it flies through the air. The bullet would create a sonic wave behind it as it sped forward. Anyone hearing the crack would look forward in the same direction as the bullet was going, not backward where it had come from. There was no need for him to use a silencer. Only the muzzle flash mattered, especially at dusk.

Storm looked at snapshots of the Dirksen Building taken from the sniper’s viewpoint. The distance was roughly four hundred yards, or the length of four football fields, the equivalent of 1200 feet. Storm knew the Dragunov was most effective between 600 meters and 1300 meters, or 1,970 feet and 4,270 feet, which meant the fatal shot actually had been taken much closer than during combat. It would have been an easy shot for a skilled marksman.

He turned to a photo of the Dragunov and examined the weapon. Ordinarily, the rifle’s stock was wood with a hole cut out of its center to make the gun lighter. Someone had modified the rifle in the photo by attaching a shorter, solid wooden stock to it.
Why?

He tucked the photos away, stretched out on the bed, and used the remote to turn on a television hanging from the ceiling. He flipped channels until he found the BBC’s twenty-four-hour newscast. Agent Showers suddenly appeared on the screen with a uniformed bobby on one side and a man identified as a Scotland Yard detective on her other. The announcer said:

“The FBI has sent one of its agents to London to interview Russian oligarch Ivan Petrov as part of its investigation into the recent murder of United States Senator Thurston Windslow. The senator was slain in his Washington, D.C., office on Capitol Hill by a sniper who remains at large. The agent, April Showers, refused to comment, but sources tell the BBC that the FBI considers Petrov to be a ‘person of interest’ because of his close relationship with the slain senator.”

As he and Showers had both feared, someone at Scotland Yard had tipped off the British press about their arrival. Showers was paying a price for playing by the rules.

The cell phone that Jones had given him rang shortly after 12
P.M.
London time, waking him from a short power nap.

“We’ve been invited to have tea with Ivan Petrov,” Showers said.

“He must have been impressed with your BBC appearance.”

“Did you rent a car?” she asked, ignoring his comment. “It’ll take us about two hours to get to the Duke of Madison’s estate outside of Gloucester.”

“Your buddies at Scotland Yard didn’t offer to drive us?”

“Are you going to rub that in all day?”

“Probably,” he replied. “I’ll meet you outside the hotel in ten minutes.”

“I can just knock on your door when I’m ready,” she said. “We’re in adjoining rooms, aren’t we?”

“I’m out sightseeing. I’ll pick you up at the front entrance.”

For a moment, Storm wondered if he was being too paranoid. Maybe he was overreacting because of Tangiers. But he couldn’t help himself. While he was in England, he could not afford to let down his guard. The older man sitting in Hyde Park on a bench reading the
Times
was not really reading the
Times.
The woman behind him when he was on the sidewalk was not really walking her dog. “Trust no one,” Jones had said. It was his mantra
.

He’d rented a Vauxhall Insignia because the German-made car, which was similar to a Buick Regal, was as common in England as a Honda in the U.S. It wouldn’t draw attention. After Showers’s BBC debut, of course, their arrival was hardly a secret.

Showers exited the hotel dressed in an attractive gray pantsuit, carrying a light jacket and her briefcase. Storm had entered the address of the Duke of Madison’s estate into the Vauxhall’s onboard GPS. He glanced at the rearview mirror as he began weaving through London’s congested streets. Eventually, they reached the M-40, the main thoroughfare that would take them west to Gloucester. About four miles outside of London, Storm spotted a black Mercedes-Benz lurking two cars behind them.