Gun Metal Heart (31 page)

God's judgment is swift
, Petrovic thought. He faced the question: Carry out his plans for the sake of all Serbia? Or save Adrijana and their daughters?

Sacrifice the battle? Sacrifice his family?

Major Arcana didn't interrupt him. The silence stretched a full minute.

Petrovic gulped whiskey. Bile rose in his throat.

He said, “Proceed.”

She said, “You're sure?” And the words were a soft purr.

He turned to the window, eyes down the avenue at the American buildings. “Do it.”

“Come what may?”

“Yes.”

*   *   *

Viorica said, “Very good, Acting Foreign Minister.” She disconnected the line and hit the next speed dial. Bryan Snow, her bought-and-paid-for engineer in Sandpoint, Idaho, answered without speaking.

Viorica adopted a deep, cartoony baritone. “Release the hounds!”

*   *   *

Before they stepped out of the
apoteka
, John grabbed Daria's sleeve. “If I'm right about the drones, the second that one of them locks onto your face or your voice, you're tagged. We go out there, there's a good chance we're screwed.”

“Can't stay here.”

“Okay. But the U.S. Marines and the State Department know I tried to sneak onto the embassy grounds with a fake ID, so they won't help us. And Petrovic probably knows you're here and on the loose, so the Serbian military will be looking for us. Plus, he runs the White Scorpions. Plus, there's the Belgrade police. Plus, there's this Viorica of yours.”

Daria adjusted her backpack full of guns. “And your point?”

“Making small talk.”

She led him out onto the gloomy street. It was still overly warm and a bit muggy. John wished he'd doffed his suit jacket, although the blackness of it might come in handy in the dark. Street lights had popped on and shop windows cast shadows over the sidewalk. They moved away from the pharmacy. Belgrade is a pedestrian's city, and the sidewalks were full, mostly with teens and twenty-somethings, but also with working men and women taking their time to stroll home or to a pub on a warm evening.

Daria frowned. “Does the name Thorson mean anything to you? Owen—”

“—Cain Thorson? Sure. I know him. We both do.”

She turned, eyebrows arched.

“CIA guy. Headed up Pegasus.”

“The thing in Manhattan?”

John smiled and studied her eyes to see if she was having him on. “Yes. The thing in Manhattan. When you ash-canned his career. Also the takedown in Milan. The guy aiming his gun at you. Okay, aiming his gun at you through me. Big, blond, good bone structure?”

Daria wrinkled her nose. “If you fancy
that
sort of thing.”

“Which again…”

She patted his arm. “Now, now. Be nice, John.” Her eyes darted as she put together the pieces. “So Thorson was CIA. Then he was freelance…”

John shrugged. “Guess so. I lost track of … Wait.
Was
freelance?”

Daria turned raven-black eyes on him.

John said, “If he
was
freelance, what is he now?”

“Room temperature.”

John took a second to get there. “Ah, God. Dee. You didn't. The CIA's deal was to leave you alone so long as you left them alone. Killing even an ex-agent is—”

“Tomorrow's problem. Tell me about this Petrovic. He's today's problem.”

John opted to leave the lecture for later. “So my guess is: Petrovic thinks he hired Viorica. And
Skorpjo
thinks they work for Petrovic through Viorica. But she's playing a different game.”

“We agree on that part.” Daria tucked into John suddenly, as lovers might, turning him and pointing at the display of cashmere sweaters in a store window. A camouflaged jeep rolled past them. “I got away just now because I had a blade in my boot. There's no way Viorica didn't frisk me and find it. She knew I was armed and didn't warn the White Scorpions. She's definitely playing a different game.”

The jeep didn't stop. Daria and John started moving again.

“Diego and I met this guy in Sarajevo, a member of the Bosnian Parliament. Zoran Antic. I ran into Antic tonight, going into the U.S. ambassador's residence for the event.”

“You couldn't talk him out of it?” She scanned the skies for drones and the street for police and soldiers.

“Tried. He wouldn't budge. He also knew you'd been captured.”

Daria stopped in her tracks and turned to him.

“Yeah. He told me you'd been captured. He also said I was ‘searching the skies and fearful of the words
Made in America
.' Which means he knows about the drones. Which means he's been in contact with this Viorica. Who, by the way, I saw tonight. She stopped and talked to Antic outside the residence. They're in cahoots.”

She blinked at him. “
Ca-Hoots
?”

“Cahoots. It means to work together. Nineteenth-century western slang.”

She nodded. “Thank you. So: Viorica and … a Bosnian?”

“A Bosnian who first pointed us in the direction of Dragan Petrovic, couple days ago in Sarajevo. This guy Antic survived the siege of Sarajevo. Petrovic was a general in the war. Antic's got plenty of reason to hate him. So Antic sets up a Serb strongman with ties to organized crime because, hey, when are those guys not good villains? And the ambassador's residence isn't the target, because Antic insisted on going in there. Your tall blonde? After she talked to Antic, I saw her talking to a media crew outside the cocktail party. My guess: Antic controls Viorica, and Viorica controls the Flying Monkeys. Which, by the way, probably are the creation of a company called American Citadel that's manufacturing and marketing drones without the okay of State, or Defense, or the Federal Trade Commission.”

Daria said, “Good lord. You
have
been busy.”

“Yeah.”

She wrinkled her nose. “God. When I was tied up, Viorica asked me if the CIA was watching the ambassador's residence. She asked this, knowing I had a blade in my boot. She practically drew me a map.”

“Misdirection.”

She sighed. “Must be nice, being the clever one once in a while.”

“Okay. So Viorica let slip the
ambassador's residence
to lure you there. Zoran Antic's plan calls for him to be inside the ambassador's residence. We agree that something's getting blown up, but it ain't Petrovic's target, the residence. Which means…”

He let her get there.

“It's Petrovic.”

“Sure.”

Daria said, “Fuck.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

 

Forty

Allison Duffy, U.S. deputy chief of mission, had switched to a simple black dress. She wore kitten heels. She looked both professional and elegant, a tough tightrope to walk.

She had transferred her daunting to-do list to her smartphone, which she carried in lieu of a clutch. She had winnowed the list down considerably but had not tamed it. Not completely. The roughhouse at the front entrance to the ambassador's residence had complicated matters, but only for a minute. The Marine contingent had dealt quickly with the party crasher, who now was in handcuffs and secured in the residence's wine cellar under armed guard. He'd stay there until the soiree ended.

Duffy checked with the caterers to make sure the hors d'oeuvres and champagne were flowing. One of her aides had already checked. Twice. Duffy recognized the symptoms of micromanagement, even in herself, but couldn't help it.

She ticked an item off the to-do list on her phone and checked with the camera crew: a cameraman, an audio man, and a technician, plus the ubiquitous talking-head bottle blonde. They had set up an alcove with a neutral background for interviews and had been given permission to roam the party with a steady cam, so long as they didn't record any conversations. They could use audio only in the alcove. Allison Duffy had insisted.

She watched the rigger kneel and hook his camera and audio equipment into the residence's communications array. The residence was, for all intents and purposes, part of the U.S. embassy, which meant they were on U.S. soil and had to obey all State Department rules. One of the things the Qatari-based film crew had negotiated was permission to use the residence's satellite dish and transmitters to bounce a high-res signal back home.

A signal that strong might screw with Serbia's RTS 1 station or the Kopernikus Cable Network, but the news directors for both stations had never shown the West much love. Allison Duffy could live with that.

The camera and audio crew spoke mostly Arabic. Her own Arabic was fairly good, but she listened to them for a minute and realized the technical specifics of a TV setup were way beyond her.

The presenter held a cordless mic and stepped forward, sweeping perfectly coiffed hair away from her face. She had that stereotypical Hollywood look that Allison Duffy had come to associate with almost all TV news reporters around the globe: perfect in a bland, Botox-and-Pilates sort of way. The California Every-Girl look.

“Hello. I'm Allison Duffy. Deputy chief of mission.” She spoke in high Arabic. “So, is everything all right?”

“Yes. Is splendid.” The presenter chose English but with a Russian accent.

Allison went with English, too. “So far six people have agreed to be interviewed. I've asked them to come to you. You understand? They will come here; you can't record in the rest of the mansion.”

The presenter waved Allison off as if she were a waitress asking if she needed a refill.

“Yes, yes.”

The rigger, on his knees, spat an insult at the presenter, who was standing with her stilettos on either side of a power cord. She stepped around the cord with an eye roll that Allison sometimes got from her own teenage daughters.

Allison stepped fully in the Russian's way and bobbed her head to force eye contact. “We are clear on that?”

The presenter offered a contrite nod. “Of course. Hospitality is greatly and also appreciated. You are …
super helpful
.” She seemed proud to have mastered the lexicon of Los Angeles.

Mollified, Allison walked away. She nodded at the embassy's public affairs liaison, Jay Kent, who'd been tasked with keeping an eye on the news crew.

Allison's agile mind drifted for a second to the likelihood of a Russian aerobics instructor somehow becoming a presenter for an Arabic cable channel. She had wanted to say,
How's the silicone holding up, dear?
But a career in diplomacy turned the snarky aside into a fun but finely tucked-away thought.

Allison also found her academic upbringing interfering with her snarkiness. The word
Caucasian
came from the Caucasus mountain range, which was the seat of a very large Islamic community.

Which would explain the presenter's ice blond hair and silvery blue eyes.

*   *   *

You cannot easily slip a covert comms unit into a U.S. embassy building. Ask any spy. It's difficult.

Viorica slipped her microphone into the U.S. ambassador's residence by disguising it as a microphone.

Got your Purloined Letter right here, sweetie
, she thought, as the officious DCM marched away from her.

Viorica lifted the wireless mic to her pink lips and said, “We are clear.”

*   *   *

In the silver van, Viorica's tech guru, Winslow, saw that their equipment now was lashed into the embassy's rooftop transceiver array. He adjusted his head set. “Ah. Got it. Lovely.”

He heard Viorica switch to her Russian accent and say, “Testing … testing…” One of the partygoers must have passed close to her and the team of mercenaries posing as a film crew.

“Where are my drones?” Winslow asked.

“Patience. We'll have them in two minutes.”

Winslow sat in the fixed chair before the array of flat-screen monitors laid out before him. He didn't have the room that Bryan Snow and his pilots luxuriated in back in Sandpoint, but he had all the technology at his fingers. Anything Snow could do with his micro air vehicles, Winslow could do as well once Snow passed the baton to them by disabling the American Citadel system in Idaho.

And that would be fine, so long as nobody reactivated the American Citadel controls.

Winslow heard her voice over his comms. “Has Danziger checked in?”

“He's on patrol,” the Englishman said. “I assume we are expecting opposition?”

“Could be.”

One by one, his monitors began to come alive. Each screen showed a different bird's-eye view of Belgrade.

“Mr. Snow came through,” he drawled. “We have ourselves an air force.”

Viorica said, “Well done. I called Petrovic. I asked him if he was sure—absolutely sure—that he wanted to go through with this.”

Winslow adjusted his controls and smiled at the thought. “His grand plan for the attack on the residence? Even though his wife and children are inside?”

“I'm looking at them right now.”

“And our beloved acting foreign minister said yes, didn't he?”

“He most certainly did.”

“Bloody wanker.”

Viorica laughed. “We gave him his out. What happens next is on him.”

Winslow reached for his joysticks.

Sandpoint, Idaho

Colonel Olivia Crace entered the control room, but not alone. She brought one of the three military men, the redhead with hazel eyes. And a Colt .45.

Bryan Snow stood behind his two pilots, who sat at their workstations. They were attempting to run a diagnostic to find the problem in the command-and-control of the drone suite in Serbia.

Snow adjusted his black plastic frames and looked annoyed at the disturbance. “Can you give us a minute?”

The black woman ignored him. She held a small, rectangular device that Snow, at first, mistook for a cell phone. Only when she stepped closer did he notice the short, blunt antenna.