Blowback (16 page)

On the south bank,
Harring, walking his wife's cocker spaniel pup, stubbed out his cigarette with care. Rita, his seven-year-old daughter, would bite his head off if she knew he smoked. But much worse would be littering!

At least Churchill had gotten over his puppy diarrhea. Harring was sick of taking jabs from his fellow spooks at Thames House.

He raised his tiny camera again, zooming in to photograph both men a final time. Identifying the professor was no problem. He had a massive archive on the old man—just two weeks ago there had been a flurry of new death threats against Great Britain's honored Iranian guest.

But the other, younger man—Middle Eastern, early thirties, tall, slender; Harring had jotted the descriptors in his notebook. Still, all his shots had more hat, shades, and five-o'clock shadows than anything helpful. But one shot had been halfway decent—the younger man just beginning to walk away and the book he'd left behind on the bench. In his line of work, Harring had quickly learned, a book is never just a book.

•   •   •

Late that afternoon,
Harring ran the photograph through the surveillance database and discovered the match—the man photographed with Mokri was David Khoury, Lebanese American, a credited third secretary at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. He was also suspected CIA.

Within an hour, Harring had discovered that Mokri and Khoury had crossed paths before, in Beirut and in Boston, where Mokri stayed as a guest of Khoury's parents. So they had multiple, mundane connections. But why was Mokri meeting with suspected CIA now?

And they
did
pass a book.

And the body language was just a bit off . . .

Adding up to enough so he flagged the file and made certain his Director-General—Alexandra Hall—had it on her desk.

Grateful for
the baseball hat shading her face from Nicosia's strong midday sun, Vanessa jogged in place at a street corner until a car cleared the intersection. Only minutes into her half-hour run, she was already dripping with sweat. The car passed, and she launched into her run again, setting her sights on the top of the next hill, accessed by a narrow street in an old residential neighborhood. As she matched her breath with the rhythm of her feet hitting flagstone, she picked out small details from the private homes, each butting up against the next so they seemed to form one solid wall of pastel rainbows. It was a lovely street on one of her favorite running routes—a route she didn't repeat often. But today she couldn't find the usual pleasure, because her mind was caught up with Sergei and the sense that he would call very soon. How crazy would he be today?

•   •   •

A crash,
a woman's cry. Sergei froze inside his study. Only for an instant, and then he dropped his cell phone onto the desk, yanked the drawer open, gripped his loaded Makarov, finger on the trigger.

“
Vse ponyatno,
boss—”

At the all-clear from Olaf, his bodyguard, Sergei peered out into the living area of his penthouse. The maid, a tiny woman in a pink uniform, stared dolefully at shattered crystal now covering the marble floor, all that remained of the Swarovski vase she'd demolished. A melancholy Olaf stood just a few feet from the maid.

Sergei eyed him sharply. Then, with a controlled breath, he shut the door. Olaf was trustworthy but sometimes a bit dull. Still, Sergei couldn't imagine replacing him, so Olaf would be on board, along with his daughter and several of her school friends, when Sergei sailed his yacht out of Cyprus later that day. Sergei's gut snarled that it was time—time to get off the island, time to lay low and protect his family.

He stared down at the pistol. It felt cool and satisfying in his grip. He pushed it into the black leather document bag, a gift from his wife, Zoya, purchased at Harrods. A Raf somebody, she'd said, as if that explained all. Knowing Zoya, she'd spent at least five hundred pounds on it, maybe a thousand. She wasn't a bad wife, just boring. But she heard things, kept her ears open, and spoiled the twins, Anya and Valentin. Their son's latest fiasco, a Moscow Yauza street-racing disaster. The Porsche 911 Turbo transformed into twisted metal and abandoned while Valentin limped away to his favorite after-hours club.

It was Zoya who warned Sergei to take extra precautions because she had a bad feeling—
Remember what happened to Litvinenko.

And Sergei did, all too clearly. The poor bastard was poisoned with radiation.

For an instant, the black heat churned in his belly. How he hated the men who bought and sold Russia, men who would kill their own mothers.

“Rossiya-Matushka,”
Sergei muttered.

He strode to the wall behind the desk and carefully lifted a small Kandinsky canvas from the wall. He ran his thick fingers quickly over the previously hidden digital pad inset in the wall. A soft click, and he opened the customized safe. He slid out one of five mahogany trays, removing only a thumb drive. He concealed it inside the zipper compartment of Zoya's bag. Already, the bag was heavy from the Makarov.

A package that should make the hungry American spy very happy.

He closed the safe, entered the locking code, and repositioned the small abstract oil painting so that it was perfectly framed. For several seconds, Sergei let his eyes, his soul, dive into Wassily's image: a dark galaxy where richly colored “planets” orbited the vastness of space, a balance that confounded him with its delicate chaos.

•   •   •

Pauk pulled himself
to attention in his seat behind the steering wheel of the Fiat. The Russian was on the move. Minutes before, the muscle-bound bodyguard had appeared on the deck of the penthouse, just as he had done twice yesterday, strutting around with his holstered Sig. Revealing his boss's routines. Might as well post a neon sign:
We're going somewhere in the Mercedes!

Pauk glanced at his watch at the same time he turned the key in the Fiat's ignition. A throaty rumble as it sparked to life. He'd parked one street over from the penthouse, on a slight rise, where he had a clear visual horizon.

The heavy garage door began its slow rise. Pauk watched now through the scope. Sure enough, out rolled the black armored Mercedes SUV. From the quality of the ride, the tension on the shocks, Pauk had gauged it fortified with two extra tons of metal, ranking it close to NIJ-IV standards. It would provide some protection against armor-piercing bullets.

Windows darkly tinted, the driver not even a shadow behind the wheel, the Mercedes cruised out of the cul-de-sac. He sensed his target in the backseat, directly behind the driver. Pauk shifted the idling Fiat into gear, following, staying parallel to the other vehicle. He kept the windows open just a few fingers' widths, the air-conditioning off, to maintain connection with his target. The hot, dry air outside held still, unmoved by even light breezes.

As the Fiat dogged the Mercedes north through the city, Pauk maintained a comfortable distance between his vehicle and the Russian's. They were heading for the now-familiar A1, a straight sixty-kilometer shot to Nicosia. If the Russian planned to drive beyond Nicosia, they would pass through the Metehan border checkpoint, crossing from the Republic of Cyprus to the TRNC, or Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Sure enough, forty-five minutes later, Pauk caught his first glimpse of the metal canopy of Metehan up ahead. And the beginning of the line of vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians.

Yesterday, the Russian had arranged to depart the island on his fifty-one-meter yacht, the
Anastasiya
. Pauk had witnessed every tedious minute. It didn't take high-tech gear to get most information—a simple phone call to the Limassol Marina, inquiring about a berth to accommodate a fifty-five-meter yacht. “Berths of that size are limited of course,” the woman had told him, “but you're in luck, one opens up tomorrow.”

Pauk slowed the Fiat to join the checkpoint queue.

The Russian imagined this to be his last day on the island.
Actually,
Pauk thought, without any particular emotion,
it will be your last day in this life,
Barany,
old goat.

Vanessa broke stride
, tugging the vibrating burn phone from the pocket of her sports capris.
Sergei.
Breathing hard from her run, she stared down at the screen:
New text message.

Her body tensed. What would he throw at her now?
She brushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt across her forehead, licking salt from her lips. She rubbed one hand against her hip, feeling the keys to the VW. Even her fingers were sweating.

She nudged the screen prompt impatiently with her thumb, scanning the message:

queens window 1315

Damn!

She hit reply.

hold off!

Even as she pressed send, she began jogging in the direction of her apartment. She would cut back to pick up the Station's VW—but only after she retrieved her Five-Seven pistol from the lockbox in her office. She didn't believe for a moment that Sergei would comply with her orders to hold off. After all that had happened, she wasn't meeting with a reckless asset without carrying protection.
She would deal with the fallout if she had to, but after Vienna, she wasn't taking any chances.

•   •   •

Pauk grunted softly
as the Russian's Mercedes followed the roundabout, accelerating onto the highway. He checked his iPad's GPS, and Google Earth opened automatically, recognizing his location. As he drove, he identified upcoming exits on the map. The closest, an access road, led into the mountains through a Turkish military base, and, beyond that, it reached a dead end at a landmark: Saint Hilarion, Crusader castle.

•   •   •

Within fifteen minutes
of receiving Sergei's message, Vanessa nodded casually at the checkpoint guard as he handed back her passport. Acutely aware of the pistol tucked under her seat, she rolled forward onto Turkish-controlled land, revving internally, grateful for the relatively short line of cars. Sweat dripped down her ribs beneath her T-shirt, but she ignored it. On the most uneventful day, border control was frustrating, but today it was torture.

When she'd first arrived on Cyprus, a friend showing her the ropes had summed it up: “The Turks and the Greeks hate each other, but they've gotten used to all this.”

Another two minutes and Vanessa guided the VW onto the highway, speeding north toward Saint Hilarion and the Queen's Window. She hated that Sergei had cut himself off, disregarding instructions, calling shots on his own. At least he'd picked a fairly remote location, a famous Crusader castle on the island's Turkish side. She'd been to the tourist landmark almost ten years ago while visiting Cyprus on her honeymoon with her ex-husband, Jonah. A short-lived, ill-considered marriage in response to the emotional turmoil following her father's death.

Normally, her ops tradecraft would have been spotless—driving a rental car, following SDR, and meeting in a contained environment. She could usually at least control these aspects of the clandestine meeting, if not the asset himself. Well, this time she'd managed to salvage one out of three. Unfortunately, there was no time for SDR, and Sergei had chosen the environment. The highway rose toward the stark, jagged Five Finger Mountains to the north.

Damn it, Sergei, if you let me do my job, I might be able to keep you safe.

•   •   •

Pauk could see nothing
beyond the slow, belching bus, but so far, there had been no possible exits from the highway. So unless the Russian's Mercedes had suddenly turned into a spaceship, he was still just ahead of Pauk.

Behind the Fiat, a line of vehicles stretched several miles on the congested highway. A flagman wearing an orange hazard vest waved the cars onward.

As if there was anywhere else to go,
Pauk thought, nosing his Fiat toward the cloud of bus exhaust.

•   •   •

“B'lyad!”
Olaf punched the leather steering wheel with the heel of his hand, honking at the crawling line of vehicles ahead. 

Sergei, in the passenger seat, snorted. Here he was in his $500,000 Mercedes, stuck behind an ancient truck filled with sheep!
Such was life,
he thought, shaking his head sadly.
Come prepared with the latest S600 Guard and God sticks you behind barnyard animals.

He was glad to soon be rid of the burden of working with the Americans, at least for a while. For years now he'd kept a sharp eye on currency transfers through his bank, paying special attention to accounts exhibiting suspicious patterns.

There were rumors of a very powerful and ruthless man who ruled over the international arms black market, and Sergei knew his American spy and her CIA wanted to get their hands on him.

Well, I, Sergei Tarasov, might be handing the
devka
just what she wants so desperately.

Sergei glanced at the black bag near his feet. He'd been in banking long enough to see when clients were trying to hide something, and he knew the American forensic accountants and investigators who tracked daily transactions worldwide through SWIFT—well they would be able to follow the trail into places he could not.

There are always more thieves—catch one and another takes his place. But at least I can do my part to bring down one.

•   •   •

Vanessa kept her eye
on the continuous line of traffic snaking uphill in the distance. She could just make out the point where vehicles were beginning to break away and pick up speed. As far as she could gauge, she had another eight to ten minutes before the logjam eased. She also knew she would reach the access road to Saint Hilarion at just about the same time. She could try to make up time, but the road—twisty, narrow, and rough—traversed a Turkish military base. Not the place to attract unwelcome attention.