Labyrinth (7 page)

“Respect is closer to it. He's been at this as long as I have, maybe longer. We're both anachronisms. I'd bet he feels the same way about me.”

“Ever talk to him?”

Dogan looked Keyes over again. Big, strong, and smart. Yes, the Company was choosing well these days, but Dogan wasn't ready to entrust the country's safety to men like him. There was something missing in men like Keyes, a genuine regard for what they were doing and an understanding of the total picture—something like that. Dogan couldn't put his finger on it.

Keyes's walkie-talkie began to squawk.

“I'll take it from here,” Dogan said, and the youth handed the box over reluctantly with an “I wanted to do it myself stare. Dogan lifted the plastic to his lips. “This is Grendel.”

“Grendel,” a voice boomed. People at neighboring tables looked over.

“Don't talk so damn loud!” Dogan ordered in a whisper.

“Grendel,” the voice started, softer, “subject has entered Place du Tertre from Sacré-Coeur side.”

That would be the front from his vantage point, Dogan calculated. The speaker was thorough.

“Is he alone?” Dogan asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Clothing?”

“Black overcoat, unbuttoned. Tan suit.”

Damn!
thought Dogan. It was eighty degrees and the Russian bastard was wearing an overcoat. Must have thought he was still in Moscow. That would make him stand out. A shield was in order.

“Detach two of your team to his rear. Understood?”

“Understood, Grendel. They'll be in his shadow.”

“No! Not too close. If we spook him he'll stand out even more. I don't want him to know they're there.”

Sweat slipped down Dogan's back and stuck to his shirt. He felt sticky. Something was wrong about this, all wrong. His eyes swept the area around the Place du Tertre, the street bordering it across which lay a row of shops and stores. Everything looked routine.

“What's the matter?” Keyes asked. “Do you see something?”

“Shut up!” Dogan barked. His eyes kept sweeping. Artists with paintbrushes in hand doodled across canvas as they talked nonstop to wide-eyed tourists hoping to turn them into buyers. A mailman bicycled down the street. A blind beggar stuck his cup in the faces of approaching tourists. A single car with an old woman driving crept down the neighboring street, stopped to let two men wheeling baby carriages pass, and then stalled. The woman fought to restart it. Behind her, horns honked.

“Where is he now?” Dogan asked into the walkie-talkie.

“Halfway down the street” came back the voice. “Should be in your view now.”

“Is anyone else following besides us?”

“Negative. Do you want me to move the rest of my team in?”

“Absolutely not!” Dogan ordered. “Stay where you are until you hear different from me. Keep your eyes and your men on the
head
of the street. We're not home free yet.”

Dogan glanced down the
place
. The man in the black overcoat was shouldering his way through the crowd, the agents at his rear much too obvious in their attempt to keep up. The defector reached one of the artists' booths and stopped.

The men with the baby carriages, dressed like butlers, had started toward the red-clothed tables.

“We move,” Dogan told Keyes.

The younger agent looked frazzled. “That wasn't the plan.”

The baby carriages squealed closer.

“Take him!” Dogan shouted at Keyes and into the walkie-talkie at the same time, already propelling himself from the table.

The baby carriages were just behind him. The walkie-talkie squawked.

Dogan threw himself at his targets, the move perfectly timed. An instant later he had both men dressed as butlers pinned on the ground, holding them to make extracting a weapon impossible.

One of the baby carriages teetered on half its wheels, spilled over. A baby slipped out, crying more from surprise than hurt.

Dogan looked down at the butlers. Their eyes showed fear. They were babbling in French.

“Grendel, come in! Come in, Grendel! … I'm taking my team in. Repeat, I'm taking my team in!”

“NO!” Dogan screamed as if the man at the head of the street could hear him, lunging off the butlers back to his feet. Where was the damn walkie-talkie? How had he dropped it?

Dogan spotted it next to the closest red tablecloth. He jammed it to his lips, the plot suddenly clear to him.

“No! Do you hear me? Stay where you are! Repeat, stay where you are. We've been had. Stay where you are!”

There was no response. The man had already moved his team in.

“Damn!”

Then Dogan was running, hurdling one table and slithering between tight groups of people. By the artist's booth, Keyes and others were hustling the man in the black overcoat away.

“Follow me!” Dogan shouted as he passed him.

Keyes hesitated only slightly, then took off. He had almost caught up with Dogan when the man with the walkie-talkie sped by them and screeched to a halt.

“Assholes,” muttered Dogan, shoes clip-clopping atop the cobblestone.

The head of the Place du Tertre was in sight with the dome of the Sacré-Coeur basilica in the background. But so was a white-haired man who might have been a twin of the one agents were holding at the booth forty yards back, except he wasn't wearing an overcoat. Dogan watched helplessly, still too far away to respond, as a well-dressed man grabbed him on either elbow and spirited him toward a waiting Peugeot. The real defector resisted only slightly before giving in. The car sped off.

Dogan's eyes locked on the blind beggar who had somehow gotten fifteen yards ahead of him and apparently was no longer blind. The man tipped his cap.

Vaslov!

In spite of himself, Dogan made the semblance of a wave. He didn't even consider going for the pistol in his belt.

Keyes roared to a halt just in front of him and digested the scene, eyes blazing.

“That's Vaslov!” he screamed. “Vaslov!” The man dressed as a beggar was strolling away from the Place du Tertre, drifting into a crowd. “You're letting him get away!”

Keyes rushed forward, drawing his pistol. A goddamn cannon, Dogan saw.

“Let him go!” Dogan ordered. “Let him go!”

Keyes was hearing none of that. He sped into the street and angled for a shot into the crowd the blind beggar had become a part of. The young bastard was violating a direct order and you just didn't do that to Grendel. Sure, the kid was a pro; he had recognized Vaslov from file pictures, after all. He was good, far better than Dogan had estimated. But he was too green to understand.

Passersby saw Keyes's cannon and started screaming. Dogan crashed into him and shoved him aside but the kid pushed back, still aiming the gun, ready to fire.

“I said let him go!” Dogan repeated, and something in him broke. He grabbed the younger agent's wrist at its weakest point and twisted. There was a snap and Keyes howled in pain. He started to swing his free hand at Dogan.

Dogan's defense was just as fast. He blocked the strike effortlessly and crashed a set of rigid fingers under the youth's jaw. Keyes's head snapped backward and he went down, eyes dimming. His jaw would probably never work right again and his days of bare-hand kills and quick draws were finished as well. All in ten seconds of Dogan's wrath.

The rest of the agents had caught up with the scene by this time, two still holding the imposter Vaslov had planted. Passersby stopped, crowding together to observe two men huddled over an unconscious third.

“Get an ambulance,” Dogan ordered.

There'd be hell to pay for this, he knew. Keyes represented a substantial investment on the Company's part and he had ruined it just like that. Probably did them a favor, but they wouldn't see it that way.

He walked away from the crowd disgusted, wondering if Vaslov was still watching.

Chapter 6

LOCKE FOUND HIMSELF
unable to sleep during his flight. He was going back to England, his place of birth but never his home.

His memory of those days was sketchy. So as the 747 streaked across the Atlantic, he patched the story together for the thousandth time in his mind, taking what he remembered and mixing it with the bits he had been able to pry out of his father as the years wore on. The old man had died at eighty just the year before in a Virginia rest home.

It was in his last days that the old man became most lucid about their years in London and flight to America. He rambled on and on, jumping from year to year with the passing of a minute and making no connections. It was left to Locke's scholar's mind to string events together and put them in context.

Locke's father was an English diplomat assigned to Germany in the mid-thirties. He knew in a matter of months what was coming, and his reports were listened to but not acted upon. He married a young German girl and spirited her back to his homeland when channels of diplomacy broke down and Hitler's war machine started to roll.

Their son, Christopher, was born in London in 1942 amid the turbulence and despair of a battered country. By then his father had become an advisor to Churchill's cabinet, disappearing for long days at a time without contact, always to return to the loving arms of his wife. Charles worshipped her and the feeling seemed mutual, for Chris's mother, Rosa, was forever grateful for being saved from Hitler's wrath. Chris could vaguely recall the lingering hugs his parents shared.

In his final ramblings, the man who became Charles Locke when he reached America told his son tearfully of the pain memories of those hugs evoked, because any love his wife ever showed him was part of her cruel disguise. For years Hitler had operated a remarkably successful spy network within England capable of betraying British plans to the Fatherland almost as soon as Churchill passed them on to his subordinates. All members of the British Cabinet and ministry were urged to take special precautions against the possibility of someone close to them being a turncoat.

Those last days in the nursing home had brought back to Charles Locke all the agony of his subsequent discovery in cruel, vivid strokes. He told his story to his son as if to purge himself. He talked of suspicions arising from the peculiar number of walks Rosa took late at night when she thought he was asleep. He spoke of waiting outside their house one night after pretending to rush out for an emergency Cabinet session and watching his wife emerge into the street dressed in dark clothes. He had followed her to a warehouse where he watched in horror as others arrived, all apparently subservient to her. The meeting was held in German, and although Charles Locke was too far away to pick up details, it was obvious that his beloved Rosa was the head of a subnetwork operating in London not two miles from their home!

Charles Locke returned home that night and loaded his gun, fully intending to use it first on his wife and then himself. It was the sight of his son sleeping peacefully in his crib that changed his mind. The boy could not grow up an orphan, especially amid war. Nor could he grow up in the shadow of a man who had killed his mother for whatever reason. Charles Locke doubted anyway that he could have shot his beloved Rosa. He still loved her too much, but he also loved his country. The choice was excruciatingly simple: Ignore what his wife was or turn her in. He couldn't see himself living with either alternative, but a choice had to be made. When Rosa returned hours later, much surprised to find him waiting in his study, Locke told her he was going to call the proper authorities and would give her a two-hour headstart. There were no tears, no pleas. Just hushed whispers exchanged as Rosa packed one small suitcase. They were professionals, after all. Charles waited the promised two hours, made the call, then cried well past sunrise.

The worst thing of all, he told his son from his deathbed, was that Rosa hadn't as much as kissed Chris good-bye. Her love for him was nothing more than a facade to better enable her to perform her role as spy. Charles had hoped nevertheless that the headstart would be sufficient for her to escape the country. The British authorities, though, responded quickly and apprehended Rosa even as a German submarine was approaching to pick her up. She was tried, sentenced, and hanged all in three days. Charles was the only one who attended her funeral, not bothering to argue over the lack of a headstone. She was above everything a spy who had betrayed his love and his country. He felt the pain of emptiness, of losing something he never truly had.

Through no fault of his own, Charles lost the trust and confidence of his peers and compatriots. Eventually higher powers arranged for new identities for him and his son and shipped them to America, where they might start afresh. But Charles had left too much behind. He was never able to adapt to his new life, nor did he seem inclined to. He withdrew inside himself, leaving his son to grow up without affection or security, apart from financial. He started swallowing Scotch and ultimately it swallowed him, stealing his liver and kidneys long before his heart failed. Charles Locke lived in pain the last ten years of his life but he seemed to prefer it. And only in those last days in the hospital did Chris feel anything but bitterness and alienation toward his father.

He had long before resolved to be a different kind of father to his children. He wanted them to trust him as he had never trusted his father. He wanted to be everything to his family that Charles Locke had never been to him, and in the process tried too hard and seemed to screw everything up.
You don‘t get second chances
had been a lesson from the Academy, and he had done a nice job of botching up the only chance he would get.

Chris felt himself thrown forward as the 747's tires grazed the runway, bounced, then settled finally as the pilot applied the brakes. One last opportunity to grasp an impossible second chance—that's what had made him accept Charney's offer. The money was nice too but it wasn't the major thing.