The Fifth Man (17 page)

“Your father said you were smart.”

“Did he?”

“He said you were smart and dumb at the same time, like he was at your age.”

“I guess that’s a compliment.”

“It is, believe me. Here, go to this website.” Max handed Matt a small piece of notepaper with a web address and a password written on it. “Put in the password. Download the software. Then send your friend Diego the image. There’s a phone app there too. Download it.”

“How does it work?”

“If there’s an auditor, he gets some kind of believable spam, like a recipe for bread or a picture of a Maserati.”

“Is there a footprint? I mean Diego…”

“No, no cyber trail. It’s completely locked down. It’s all we use, email and cell phone, totally secure.”

“If there’s an auditor, can you track
him
?”

“No but we’re working on it.”

“Okay. Where’s the image?”

“Here.” Max handed Matt a CD.

“And where exactly is this birthmark?”

“Her right shoulder.”

“OK.”

“Time is short, Matt.”

Matt nodded and watched Max let himself out of the hotel room. Then he slipped the CD into his laptop and opened the photograph. As he was looking at it, Anna, naked, with a towel on her head, came out of the bathroom and peered over his shoulder.

“You can’t see her face,” she said.

“No.”

“Who is the man?”

“His name is Marko Dravic. He’s the one who kidnapped Tess. But it’s the woman that’s important.”

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Anna woke up with a start that night. She didn’t know why. Had she been dreaming?

She and Matt and Tess were staying in a suite on the same floor as Chris Massi’s penthouse at the Europa. It had the same view as the penthouse. She went to the window and pulled the curtains open and looked down at Prague. Yes, she
had
been dreaming—the same recurring dream of her father standing in the snow, ax in hand, looking up at her as she stood at her bedroom window. The same rush of fear that always woke her up. But tonight Mr. Blond Man appeared for the first time ever, his face clear and bright and hard as stone in the winter morning sunlight, her first dream ever of him.

She gazed at the lights of Prague. She had been right. He
was
down there someplace, someplace close. She returned to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Matt,” she said, shaking him, knowing now why Joseph Massi, Sr. had chosen Wall Storage to hide his two million dollars, why she had married Skip Cavanagh, why she had shot him, why she had returned to Prague. Matt turned toward her and looked at her.

“What?” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’m okay.”

“What is it?”

“I have to speak to your father.”

32.

Prague, September 4, 2012, 6:00 a.m.

The eight men who entered the lobby of the Vinice Residence Towers on Ruska Street looked and acted like commercial air conditioning servicemen. BUDOVICE HVAC was emblazoned in flowing script above the pocket of their navy blue work shirts, and they arrived in bright white vans with the same markings on all sides. As a precaution, earlier that morning, one of them made his way to the roof of the twenty-five story building and disabled the three commercial air handlers that pumped cold or hot air into the tower’s two hundred apartments.

The doorman had been told to come in late, the lobby was empty and the ride on the elevator was uneventful. On the way up they pulled their Glock 22s from their tool bags and screwed on silencers. On the twentieth floor, four went to apartment 210 and four to 214. Both doors blew up from within when they shot at the locks, killing four of the servicemen, two at each door. A few minutes passed while the survivors called for help and removed the bodies of their colleagues. When they entered the apartments, they found a man and a woman dead in each one. Small leather pouches worn on the necks of each gave off a bitter almond smell and autopsies done later confirmed death from cyanide poisoning.

33.

Prague, September 4, 2012, 5:00 p.m.

“I talked to Kovarik,” Max said. “He thinks they kept the doors rigged whenever they were home.”

“That’s a lot of trouble.”

“They’d rather be dead than tortured.”

“Any matches anywhere?” Chris asked.

“One print on one finger matched with an Iranian who had been at Gitmo and released. The other three Kovarik is pretty sure were Caucasus Emirate people.”

“Any intel?” Chris said. “There must have been computers, cell phones.”

“The cell phones and emails they had been surveilling all along,” Max replied. “They’re opening up the devices now. They don’t expect to find much.”

“What’s Kovarik’s take?”

“He thinks the operation will be aborted.”

“Do you agree?”

“Yes,” Max answered. “Kovarik has let it out that there was a survivor. The thinking is, if they tried to use a new team, the operation could still be traced to its source through him. They can’t take that risk, the puppeteers.”

“That makes sense, if this was routine insanity.”

“You don’t think it is?”

“No. Getting
me
involved makes it different.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Max said. “Kovarik has no other leads.”

“I assume the security at the ribbon cutting will be at a very high level.”

“Are you kidding?” Max replied. “Crazy high. I mean,
Hillary Clinton
?”

“There’s no one else in the city that they know of?”

“No. No leads.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”

“They’re gone by now.”

Chris and Max were in the penthouse’s living room, sipping coffee. Sunlight was beginning to stream in through the wall-to-ceiling windows behind them, Prague to awaken to another day. On the glass table, next to the silver coffee service, lay an eight-by-ten color photograph of a woman’s shoulder. Max picked it up. “What about
her
?” he said.

“I’m seeing her later. We’re having dinner.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Double agents are a tricky business, Chris. But you know that.”

“I do, but I can’t pass up the opportunity. And her mission will be very narrowly defined.”

“What?”

“To find one man for me who I believe is embedded somewhere in the Kremlin.”

34.

Prague, September 4, 2012, 10:00 p.m.

“Nicolei was disappointed he was not invited. He finds you fascinating.”

“I needed to speak to you alone, but he actually can help us.”

“Help us?”

Chris handed Valentina Petrov two photographs, the first a close-in image of an amoeba-shaped birthmark on a woman’s right shoulder, a portion of a diamond necklace appearing at her neck; the second a full view of the lounge of the National Hotel’s bar with Marko Dravic sitting in the center and a partial rear view, slightly blurry, of a woman in a strapless black cocktail dress on the far right. He watched as the beautiful Russian spy took them in. They were sitting in his penthouse, drinking a special vintage Cristal Champagne that he had ordered for the occasion. “Let’s toast,” he said, lifting his glass, when she looked up at him.

“To what.”

“To our joining forces.”

“Chris…”

“Yes?”

Valentina shrugged her lovely shoulders.

“I’ve had the photograph enhanced,” Chris said.

“I’m afraid I can be of little help.” Another shrug.

Submission
, Chris thought. “Was there a drop that night at the National?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. A piece of paper I was told I would find in the lobby by the house phone. I didn’t read it.”

“Do you know Dravic?”

“No.”

“Marchenko?”

“No.”

“Who gave you the icon?”

“It was in a drop here in Prague, with instructions.”

“Which you burned.”

“Yes.”

Chris sipped his champagne, relieved that he did not have to kill Valentina Petrov.

“You have saved your life,” he said, “and your brother’s.”

“He is not part of this.”

“I believe you but he can help.”

“How?”

“I would like access to the underground passages between the Kremlin and Christ The Savior.”

“Access?”

“Yes.”

“Your people?”

“Yes.”

Chris noticed the slightest change in Valentina’s composed face, a deadening of the eyes that lasted a fraction of a second, the time it took for her to lower and lift her lush lashes. She knew that such access meant only one thing.

“You will live, your brother will live,” Chris said. “And perhaps you will both be able to get away. The GRU is nowhere near as good as the KGB was in tracking down traitors, and you will have my help.”

Silence.

“Shall we toast?”

Valentina Petrov raised her glass, nodded to Chris, and sipped. Chris did the same.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Whoever gave you your ultimate orders.”

“Do you want the name of my contact?”

“Of course not. He’s a drone that would only lead to other drones. He may even be dead.”

“How did you get these pictures?”

“I have people there,” Chris said. “The same people who will kill you and your brother if you betray me.”

“One last question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Twice. To my ex-wife and to a heroin addict.”

“What happened to her, the heroin addict?”

“She’s dead.”

“Did she betray you?”

“No, she overdosed.”

35.

Moscow, September 6, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

“I assume we are aborting,” said Marko Dravic.

“You are correct.”

“And the meeting as well.”

“No, that must go forward. And I want the photograph.”

Dravic paused. This was insane.

“Our friends will certainly balk.”

“They are not our friends. They are the enemies of our enemy. There is a difference.”

And who, then, are our actual friends?
Dravic thought, then, out loud, “What shall I tell them?”

“That Fallen Heroes is off but that I want the meeting to take place. Tell them again, no meeting, no oil products, no UN cover.”

“They may still refuse. They are exposing one of their masterminds.”

“I will keep my word. They will both be starved to death.”

“Or start World War Three. The Japanese started World War II because of an oil embargo.”

“If they do, we will not be on their side. You can tell them that.”

“And Massi, shall I tell him that the operation is off?”

“You can tell him, but he will have surmised it from the botched raid on Ruska Street.”

“What if he won’t meet with us?”

“We will think of something else. But he will. He smells a rat, he is curious.”

“What about the fifth man?”

“I will take care of him.”

“I must ask, who is Chris Massi? Why are you doing this?”

“Do you know why Don Marchenko is in our pocket?”

“No.”

“Do you think he cut us in on all those credit card millions out of the goodness of his heart?”

“No.”

“I did him a favor once in America. I killed his only rival. Massi happened to be there at the time, probably trying to get a piece of our skimming machine business in the U.S. I thought he was dead too, that I had gotten lucky and killed two birds. But I was wrong. He saw my face. He is the only person in the world, besides you, who can identify me.”

“You went alone?”

“No, one of our American agents joined me, but he’s dead now, of course.”

“Does that mean I’m next?”

“We have been friends for forty years. I am Uncle
V
to your two beautiful children. I cannot imagine you would betray me.”

“That will not happen,” said Dravic, the message loud and clear that if it did, his children would die. And the Wolf had no children, no friends, no lovers, no one that could be killed in return.