Half a dozen times, Platon’s men opened fire as the Audi bobbed and weaved along the road. Each time, the car kept going, hit but not mortally wounded. And then, just as Platon’s frustration was mounting again, a miracle happened.
The road was approaching another absurdly picturesque little town, crowded onto a cliffside promontory. Platon looked at his map. The place was called Le Bar-sur-Loup. Just outside the village, there was a viaduct that cut across a spur of the river valley in a rhythmic, marching line of stone arches. There were no cars on the viaduct, but a handful were scattered about a parking lot at one end. Platon could see a few people strolling out over the valley to admire the view.
He also saw the Audi pull into the parking lot. He saw the driver get out, carrying something close to his chest, something bulky. His head looked misshapen, covered in some way. The man started running, turning his shoulders, so that the package in his arms was half hidden and impossible to identify from the helicopter. Platon reckoned it must be the missing case.
For a few seconds the running man was masked by a clump of trees, but then he reappeared, right out in the open, racing toward the very middle of the viaduct.
The man stood right by the stone parapet. Now it was evident that he was wearing a gas mask. Platon assumed he did not want to be identified by the people around him. The Russian smiled: Well, they’d leave identification to the pathologist.
The man placed whatever he had been carrying on the ground, behind the parapet, then raised a gun in the air. Platon could not hear any shots over the sound of the helicopter, but he assumed some must have been fired, because the other people out there on the viaduct started running away to either side.
Platon tried to work out what the man thought he was doing. Did he think he could bring down a helicopter full of armed men with a mere pistol? Or was he hoping to cut some kind of deal? If he really did have the case that had been attached to Bagrat Baladze, maybe he’d threaten to throw it off the side of the viaduct, hoping that might save him.
Either way, he could go screw himself. Platon was sick of playing games. He intended to wipe this infuriating thief off the face of the earth.
“Go down,” he said to the pilot. “Get us as close as you can.”
73
S
tanding on the viaduct, Carver saw the helicopter turn toward him and smiled. He stood tall as it approached, knowing that he was not in any danger until it turned its side to face him.
He was counting on that.
He also reasoned that the helicopter was a lot bigger target than he was. And he was the one standing on the solid surface of an earthbound structure, while his enemies were being jerked around in an airborne craft that was never perfectly still, even when hovering.
He hoped that would count for something. If it didn’t, he was screwed. At best, he’d get only one shot.
So he stood, and he waited, as still and straight as a prisoner in front of a firing quad. The helicopter was barely a hundred yards away now and still nosing toward him. As it came ever closer, the sound of the rotors slicing through the air was deafening and the downdraft beat on him like a man-made gale.
They thought they had him—that was obvious.
Finally, the chopper’s forward movement ceased. In the moment of stillness that followed, Carver thought he recognized the man in the copilot’s seat, but then the thought vanished from his mind as the tail of the predator swung around, bringing the guns in the open doors to bear on him.
And as it did so, he picked up the grenade launcher that was lying at his feet and, in the same movement, brought it to bear on the helicopter. Then, with the ice-cold patience of the well-trained soldier, he waited the extra fraction of a second needed to present the biggest possible target. The helicopter finished its rotation and, just as the first bullets shot past him, with that terrible, insect whine, the full width of the door was opened to him and he pulled the trigger.
The very instant that the grenade left the barrel, Carver was hit in the chest by two rounds, knocked off his feet, and thrown across the full width of the viaduct, crashing into the opposite parapet. The impact of the stone against the back of his head dazed him for a couple of seconds, so that by the time he was able to focus on his target, the gas had already formed an impenetrable cloud inside the Dauphin’s cabin and the machine was lurching and pitching in the air as the pilot was overcome.
Carver saw one of the men who had been firing at him emerge from the billowing smoke, blindly walking right out of the open door and tumbling to his death, his throat too scarred by gas to scream as he fell.
Then the helicopter started moving and Carver realized to his horror that it was heading right for him. Fear swept the dizziness from his head and he scrambled to his feet and ran for his life as the helicopter collided with the side of the viaduct in a cacophony of roaring engines, screaming metal, and blunt stone, its rotor blades gouging into the parapet and sending projectiles of stone flying through the air in every direction. One hit Carver on the back, and once again he thanked the sheer chance that had spared him any time since he’d left the burning house in which to take off his bulletproof vest.
Behind him, the helicopter had lost its grip on the viaduct, first sliding off its stonework and then plunging down to the valley floor, where it landed with a final, metallic crunch, a moment’s silence, and an explosion of flames.
Carver walked back to where he had been standing, picked up the grenade launcher, and threw it into the inferno below. He checked to see that there was no one nearby, and then pitched the gas mask over, too. Then he looked at his watch. It was half past five. That gave him an hour and a half to drive to Cap d’Antibes, check into the Hotel du Cap, grab a shower, change into whatever clean clothes he could find, and get ready to see Alix again.
That sounded just about perfect.
74
I
t was half past eleven in the morning in Washington, D.C., and they were back at the White House, in the Woodshed meeting room. Leo Horabin wanted an update on the investigation. The story was told from the beginning, with Kady Jones screening Henry Wong’s photograph of Vermulen and Francesco Riva, and explaining the potential significance of their meeting. Tom Mulvagh then described his investigation into Vermulen’s movements in Europe and the death of his personal assistant Mary Lou Stoller.
“I began a detailed analysis of Mrs. Stoller’s replacement as the general’s assistant, Ms. Natalia Morley, in conjunction with Ted Jaworski. Ted, perhaps you’d like to present the findings of that analysis.”
The CIA man took over.
“Certainly. The bottom line is, Natalia Morley does not exist. It’s a false identity, prepared well enough to stand up to the level of investigation an employer makes into a secretarial hiring. There was a birth certificate, marriage license, and divorce papers, references from prior employers, credit-card records, and so forth. But the moment I started looking deeper and wider, it all fell apart. I could find no trace of her supposed husband, Steve Morley. The couple’s home addresses in both Russia and Switzerland were phony. Ms. Morley had given a name and number for the human-resources department of the Swiss-based bank that had employed her, but when I called that number it had been disconnected and no one at the bank had ever heard of her.
“So if this woman isn’t Natalia Morley, who is she? Since she claimed to be Russian, that was the first place to look. I had my people secure security footage from Dulles International the day she and Vermulen left for Amsterdam, and compare it with known KGB and FSB operatives.”
He called up a picture, covering half the screen at the far end of the room.
“Okay, then, this is ‘Natalia Morley’ a month ago at Dulles. And this . . .”
The other half of the screen was filled by a second shot. The two faces on the screen had been taken many years apart, but they unmistakably showed the same woman.
“. . . is former KGB agent Alexandra Petrova. She is age thirty. She was born in the city of Perm, several hundred miles east of Moscow, and began work in Moscow about nine years ago. The KGB used her in honeytraps. Her specialty was seducing powerful, middle-aged Western males. She’s not been involved in any intelligence activity that we know of in the past five years. But it looks like she’s gone back to work.”
“You’d think a man as experienced as Kurt Vermulen might know better,” Horabin said. “Do we warn him he’s been compromised?”
“No, sir,” retorted Jaworski. “On the contrary, I propose we find out why the Russians have gone to so much trouble to compromise him. They think General Vermulen justifies their attention. We think he may be involved in some kind of project that involves miniaturized nuclear weapons. Put those two things together and what you get looks very much like Russian suitcase nukes. We’ve been tasked to find those nukes. I think this is the lead we’ve been waiting for.”
“Dear Lord,” muttered Horabin. “What’s Vermulen doing now?”
Jaworski grimaced.
“That’s the problem. We don’t know. We don’t believe he’s still in Rome. He left his rental car at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, but he hasn’t taken a commercial flight out that we know of, and there’s no record of him chartering any private aviation. There is one other possibility, though. Da Vinci’s located at a place called Fiumicino, about eighteen miles out of town. It’s right by the coast and there’s also a harbor there, with a yacht marina. It’s possible he could have departed Italy by sea.”
“What do you mean ‘it’s possible’?” rasped Horabin. “Are you telling me you don’t know?”
“ ’Fraid so,” said Jaworski. “I haven’t had the resources to uncover that information. For security reasons, and frankly for political reasons, too, our investigation of this matter has been limited to a very small number of people. General Vermulen is a decorated war hero who has never been suspected of wrongdoing, let alone arrested or indicted.”
“I’m well aware of that,” snapped Horabin.
Jaworski kept going.
“My view, and I think I speak for Tom, too, is that if we’re going to commit ourselves fully to this investigation, with the resource allocation that would entail, and the strong possibility of political fallout, we need authorization . . . from the top.”
Horabin was about to speak, but was interrupted by a cough from halfway down the table. It came from the uniformed colonel representing the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“Excuse me, sir . . . but before anyone makes that determination, there’s something else you should know. It’s a matter whose relevance only became apparent once I’d heard today’s briefing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thank you. It concerns a former Czech military intelligence officer named Pavel Novak. Back in the day, Novak was a double, worked as an agent for us. Late last night, Novak fell to his death from the roof of his apartment building in Vienna. Now, Tom mentioned General Vermulen had been in Vienna recently. I don’t know—maybe it’s just coincidence. But when the general was attached to the DIA, he was Novak’s handler.”
Tom Mulvagh muttered, “Holy shit,” under his breath. There were similar murmurings right around the table. Leo Horabin brought the meeting back to order.
“Thank you, Colonel,” he said. “I will take all this under advisement. And yes, Ted, it will go right to the top.”
75
S
amuel Carver got out of Le Bar-sur-Loup and drove the car down a zigzag succession of country lanes to the southeast of town before finding a field where he could park without being observed. A quick change of clothes—ironically, back into the suit he’d worn for Kenny Wynter’s lunch with Vermulen—a pair of shades, and suddenly he looked a lot less like the madman who’d just shot down a helicopter from the old viaduct.
He took the bag with Wynter’s remaining clothes and toilet kit out of the trunk of the car. That, and the jerry can that held all the acetone that had been left over after he’d finished his homemade bomb. He left the can open on the driver’s seat. On top of it, he placed the car’s red-hot cigarette lighter. Then he closed the door and started running. He got about two hundred yards down the road when the can exploded, followed, shortly afterward, by the gas tank, still three quarters full. There was no one else on the lane to watch as he dusted himself off, wiped a trace of sweat from his brow, then strolled about half a mile back up to the main road. Not long after that, he found a Bar Tabac, where he ordered a well-earned glass of ice-cold beer and called for a cab. He took his time over his drink, finishing it just as the cab pulled up. Half an hour later, he was standing in the shower of his junior suite at the Hotel du Cap.
It was only after he’d washed that he finally prized open Bagrat Baladze’s briefcase to discover what he’d gone to so much trouble to steal. There it was, a brown file folder, just like countless others. It had the tired, flimsy look that comes with passing time, and the Russian script written across it had faded. The seal was still intact. Vermulen would be happy with that. Though what it was that he hoped to find inside this sad bureaucratic relic, Carver couldn’t imagine.
Not that he gave a damn at this point. His mind had turned to Alix. He examined himself in the mirror. Considering what he’d just been through, he didn’t look too bad. A hell of a lot better than the last time she’d seen him—that was for sure. As he put on his jacket and straightened his shirt collar, he felt as excited as a kid on Christmas morning, and he couldn’t wait to open his present.
He looked at his watch. Seven o’clock precisely.
Showtime.
76
T
he bar opened right off the hotel lobby, in one continuous, airy, white-painted space. Carver spotted two men sitting in the lobby, another leaning oh-so-casually against the paneled-wood bar counter, a black dude the size of a wardrobe. He realized it was Reddin, the man from the Venice photograph. Vermulen had ignored Carver’s instructions and sent some muscle to watch over his courier and the package she was collecting, just as Carver had anticipated.