The Last Refuge (28 page)

Okay, so he would meet the man. Or was it a woman? Whatever, he would meet the person who’d nearly sliced his fingers clean off, find out what the hell they wanted. Anna could snap a few photos. Kellner would get one of his contacts in Kiev to run the photo. Kellner could organize a proper hit, do it right. He would get extra protection for a week or two, until it was done.

Borchardt walked to a kiosk inside Kensington Gardens and purchased a small cup of green tea. He glanced left. Benches lined the edge of the grass meadow for as far as the eye could see. They were crowded with people, sitting and reading. On the fourth bench, he saw Anna—tall, gangly Anna, like a librarian on steroids. She sat, reading a book, one of three people on the bench.

Borchardt stood near the entrance and sipped his tea. He finished the cup. At least half an hour passed. He paced from one side of the park’s large entrance to the other. He felt perspiration beginning to wet his underarms. He removed his suit coat. He went and sat on a bench near the entrance. What had happened? On the woman’s leg, he’d written one hour, but perhaps he thought Borchardt wouldn’t retrieve the paper so early. In fact, now that he considered it, what did “one hour” actually mean? One hour from
when
exactly? Would he be forced to wait at Kensington Gardens all day? Fuck that.

An hour turned into two, then three. Finally, at nine o’clock, Borchardt stood. He glanced at Anna, then exited the park. He walked to the Bentley. A bright orange slip of paper was tucked into the right windshield wiper; a ticket.

“Fuckhead,” he muttered as he removed it, and threw it to the pavement, then climbed in the large sedan. He put the keys in the ignition, then started the Bentley.

“Hi, Rolf,” came the voice from the backseat.

Borchardt practically jumped from his seat. He lurched his head violently around, his comb-over came flying off his head as he did so.

“Christ, you scared me,” yelled Borchardt at Kellner seated in the backseat.

“Sorry,” said Kellner. “At least I didn’t wait until you were driving.”

Borchardt shook his head, then leaned against the steering wheel.

“I practically had a heart attack. How the hell did you get inside the car?”

“You left it unlocked,” said Kellner. He lit a cigarette, then opened the window.

After a few minutes, a tall, severe-looking woman with a broad forehead and long, brown hair climbed into the front seat of the car. Anna, Kellner’s assistant. She said nothing.

Borchardt pushed the car out into traffic.

“Let’s go back and look at the note,” said Kellner, a hint of exasperation in his voice. “The mousetrap. Maybe it was a prank, yes? Some kid from down the block.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Borchardt. “Some little teenage prankster who almost severed my fingers off, Vlad.”

Borchardt paused.

“Am I inconveniencing you, Vlad?” Borchardt asked, looking into the rearview mirror.

“No, Rolf. Come on. What’s that for?”

“How much did I pay you last year? Three million euros? Four? To do what? You let me know if I should just drop you off right here. You miserable Ukrainian—”

“Estonian.”

“Estonian, Ukrainian, who the fuck cares, you’re all the same. You miserable
Estonian
fuckface douche bag. I mean, ex-agents, looking to bodyguard billionaires, are so hard to find. I’ll have a rat’s nest full of them by lunchtime.”

“Whatever you want to do, Rolf,” said Kellner, calmly puffing his Dunhill in the backseat.

Borchardt drove in silence for several minutes. Finally, he spoke.

“So what happened?” asked Borchardt.

“He didn’t show up,” said Kellner.

“Gee, you think?” Borchardt shook his head. “Or he did show up, mark me, and is now following us. Or he saw you or Anna and got scared.”

“He already knows where you live, so he wouldn’t need to follow. I doubt he marked Anna or me. But maybe you’re right. Who knows. We’ll go back and look at it. Maybe we ask Trudeau to look at it.”

“Maybe,” said Borchardt, beginning to calm.

He pulled onto Upper Phillimore Gardens. At his mansion, he turned into the brick driveway that sloped down beneath the enormous building. He pressed the door opener and the door moved quickly up. Borchardt moved down the driveway into the garage, then parked as the garage door slid back down behind them.

They climbed into the building’s elevator. Anna pressed the button for the first floor. The elevator climbed, then came to a smooth stop on the first floor. Borchardt exited the elevator first, followed by Kellner and Anna.

They walked from the elevator, off the main entrance foyer, down the hallway toward the kitchen. From the hallway, Borchardt could see the plume of blood, now dried, spread in the middle of the kitchen, next to the island, the size of a large pancake. The mousetrap sat in the middle of the puddle, on its side. Borchardt entered the large kitchen, followed by Kellner and Anna. Kellner and Anna entered the large, sunlit room. The three crossed the kitchen, eyeing the bloody scene on the floor. Kellner looked somewhat uninterested as he stood above the bloody scene. He reached for his box of Dunhills.

“Welcome home,” came a voice from behind them, to the right, in the corner of the kitchen.

The three heads rotated, in shock.

He held a handgun in each hand, suppressors jutting out from the barrels, aimed calmly at them. The weapons were held by a man in a red Puma T-shirt, face brown from the sun, short hair, handsome, stubble, eyes as blue as the ocean.

Anna, ex–French intelligence, wheeled her torso, and grabbed her Para-Ordnance P12 .45 caliber from a leather holster beneath her left armpit, swinging the weapon around. Before her arm could complete its arc, he fired the weapon in his right hand. The bullet struck her forehead and kicked her backward. She tumbled onto the white marble floor, which was now littered in skull, brains, and blood.

Before Kellner could do anything, the man pulsed the trigger from the other weapon. This slug hit Kellner in the middle of his forehead and sent the large Estonian lurching back. Borchardt’s bodyguard landed in a contorted heap on his side.

Borchardt stood motionless, looking at the stranger in his kitchen.

The man held Borchardt within the frame of both weapons now. For several seconds, Borchardt just stared at him. He looked calm, even serene. His blue eyes were icy, as serious as any he’d ever seen.

Borchardt glanced down to his right side, then his left, at the two corpses on his kitchen floor, blood rioted across the room, then back to the man. The accent: American.

“What do you want?” asked Borchardt.

“Payment.”

“For what?”

“The debt you owe me.”

The man nodded at the marble counter behind Borchardt.

Borchardt turned. Next to the newspaper was a manila folder. Borchardt looked back at the man, who stared blankly back. Borchardt stepped over Kellner’s body to the marble island. He glanced behind him at the gunman, who still hadn’t moved. He kept the weapons trained on him. Borchardt reached down. He opened the manila folder.

Inside the folder was a black-and-white photograph. It was a surveillance photo, taken from a distance with a telescopic lens. It showed the head and shoulders of a soldier: good-looking, young. A small American flag patch on the chest placed the soldier’s nationality. He wore a military uniform. In his right hand, he held an M60, pointed up at the sky. Thick stripes of eye black ran beneath the soldier’s eyes. He had short-cropped hair, a sharp nose. The soldier stared straight ahead, laserlike, past the camera, a look that even the surveillance photo was able to capture in its raw aspect: danger.

It came back to him now. Was it two years ago? Such a small deal. He shook his head.

“Ring any bells?” asked the stranger.

“Yes,” said Borchardt quietly. “Aswan Fortuna wanted to know who killed his son. I remember.”

“That photo cost a lot of lives,” said the man. “Including Fortuna’s.”

Borchardt nodded.

“So I heard,” he whispered.

“The way I see it, you owe me.”

Borchardt put the photo down. He turned around, faced the stranger.

“Yes, I do,” said Borchardt. He nodded, managing to look the gunman in the eyes. “I owe you more than a favor.”

The man stood, motionless, not moving. He studied Borchardt for more than a minute.

“I never got your name,” said Borchardt. “Fortuna would have paid double for it. My contact wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Andreas,” said the man, his arms still crossed, his weapons still pointed menacingly at Borchardt’s head. “Dewey Andreas.”

“So now you get your revenge, yes?” asked Borchardt.

“I’m not looking for revenge,” said Dewey. “Frankly, I don’t care whether you live or die. If you help me, you’ll live. It’s that simple.”

“I understand.”

“Look under the photo,” said Dewey.

Borchardt turned back to the folder and flipped the photo to the side. Beneath it, another photo, this one of the Iranian nuclear bomb.

Borchardt stared at the photograph for several seconds.

“Whose is it?” he asked.

“Iran’s,” said Dewey.

“What do you want?” he asked quietly.

“A replica. Exactly the same.”

“I need to know precisely how big it is.”

“Eight feet, eight inches,” said Dewey. “It weighs four and a half tons.”

“How soon?”

“Yesterday.”

Borchardt lifted the photo and looked at it closely.

“Do you see the writing on the side of the bomb?” Dewey asked.

“Persian,” Borchardt noted. “Goodbye Tel Aviv.”

“I want something a little different,” said Dewey. “Can you do that?”

“Yes, of course,” said Borchardt, “whatever you like, Mr. Andreas.”

A dull mechanical thud interrupted Borchardt as Dewey fired the Colt in his left hand. Borchardt lurched back, but felt nothing, then realized he hadn’t been hit. His eyes moved down and he saw specks of material from his coat floating in the air, toward the ground. He looked behind him and picked up the neat hole in the wood of the island, where the bullet had settled after passing through the linen of his blazer, near his waist.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I want you to understand something, Rolf. If you fuck with me again, you’ll get a bullet in the head.”

“I’ll do it,” said Borchardt. “And not because of your threats. I’ll do it because I owe you one. But afterward, we’re even.”

Dewey stared at Borchardt.

“It will be down and dirty,” said Borchardt. “Where do you want it delivered?”

“I’ll call you,” said Dewey.

Dewey holstered one of his weapons beneath his left armpit as Tacoma entered the kitchen.

“You done?” asked Dewey.

Tacoma nodded.

“One more thing,” said Dewey, turning to Borchardt. “There’s a bomb in your house, remote detonator. I’ll tell you where it is when we’re done.”

37

MINISTRY OF INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

TEHRAN

Paria walked into the conference room. Inside, half a dozen senior staffers from the Ministry of Intelligence were waiting.

Paria’s adrenaline was coursing through him, keeping him in a state of near fury. The facts were presenting themselves only gradually, in bits and pieces and fragments. It had started with the mention of Qassou by the professor at Tehran University. Then came the deaths of the VEVAK S7 and the Quds commanders in Odessa.

Now the plot was beginning to take shape, its vague outlines were becoming more sharp and defined. Qassou was working on something with an American. And not just any American.

In the center of the table was a glass pitcher with water in it. He walked to the table and grabbed the pitcher and a glass from the tray. He was only able to fill half the glass before the pitcher was empty.

“Would you like me to refill the pitcher?” asked one of his men.

Paria ignored the question. He stared for a brief, anger-filled moment at the empty water pitcher, then hurled it at the wall, where it shattered. He gulped down the half glass of water, then hurled that at the identical spot on the wall, shattering it as well.

The men at the table were silent.

“Have the Israelis killed any more people?” Paria barked.

“No, sir,” said one of his men. “We’ve increased protection at embassies across the globe.”

“What about Bhutta? Where is he?”

“We don’t know.”

“What of Qassou’s computer?” yelled Paria. “His expense reports. E-mail. Speak!”

“Nothing so far, sir,” said one of the men at the table. “Not a thing. He travels quite a bit. He spends money. But there’s nothing that connects him to the American. He has correspondence with Western journalists, of course, but nothing even remotely mysterious.”

Paria scanned the room, barely controlling his anger and frustration.

“What about the American?” asked Paria. “What more do we know?”

“Andreas is thirty-nine or forty years old, General,” said one of his aides. “He was a member of Delta. We don’t know anything more than that. We’ve been unable to corroborate that he was involved in the Khomeini assassination or the coup in Pakistan; Beijing is the source for this intelligence and we’ve asked for backup.”

Paria stared at him.

“Backup? Why the fuck do you need backup? Why would the Chinese lie?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” said Paria contemptuously.

“The American is coming to Iran,” said one of the men. “That’s my guess. He’s probably coming to try and rescue Kohl Meir. Meir saved him in Beirut.”

“I want his photo sent out to every border crossing, every news outlet, every police station, every hotel or motel, every military outpost in the country.
Immediately!
”

“Should we move Meir?” asked another agent.

Paria thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“No,” said Paria. “There’s no need. He’s in Evin. Let Andreas come for him. Triple the guards at Meir’s cell. Shut off all traffic within a square block.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But why Qassou?” asked Paria. “Why meet Qassou in Odessa?”