Authors: Alan Jacobson
“Take-away?”
“That’s what they call takeout. You’ve gotta get with the program, Karen.”
Vail walked into the red-faced brick building and found the hostess. “I need to order take away.”
“Right then. Do you know what you want?”
Matter of fact, I do. But it’s got nothing to do with ordering takeout on the run from assassins.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Vail walked out of the restaurant with a bag dangling from her right hand. DeSantos was standing across Villiers Street with a panoramic view of the immediate vicinity: one of the tube’s exits, the Café Rouge entrance, and a couple of T-shirt and news vendors.
DeSantos walked with her up the steps onto a plaza that led to both the main entrance of Charing Cross station and her hotel.
“Smells good,” he said as they passed through the main doors.
“That’s probably the Poulet Breton.”
“Not sure what that is, but I hope it’s for you.”
“Yes, that’s mine. Chicken, mushrooms, leeks and courgettes, with mash. I think. And don’t ask me what courgettes are.”
“And for me?”
“Rump steak, aged thirty-five days and less than six hundred calories.”
Bypassing the elevator, they took the wide, circular staircase up to Vail’s floor.
“You got me something called ‘rump steak,’ and you’re watching my calories? Are you sending me a message?”
“Just looking out for your health. Consider it my way of repaying you for gathering me up in Oxford.” As they walked down the hall, Vail pulled out her key and said, “Did I tell you Jack the Ripper stayed in my room?”
“How fitting. Must have a killer view.”
Vail chuckled. “Very good.”
He pointed at the room privacy card she had hanging from her door. “Someone inside that you don’t want me to know about?”
“I wish it were Robby. But no, nothing so romantic. I clean my house once a week, why do I need my hotel room cleaned every day? I don’t like my stuff disturbed.” She swiped her card and pushed open the door.
They walked in, and just as they cleared the threshold, Vail stopped.
A shadow—on the far wall, created by something standing in front of the lamp she had left on by her bedside. The dark form moved slightly, and DeSantos felt Vail’s body stiffen. He shuffled her behind him.
They stood there, waiting.
They didn’t have to wait long.
As DeSantos motioned to her to back out of the room, a man came in from the hallway and grabbed Vail from behind.
The shadow DeSantos had seen on the wall morphed into a thick Russian-looking thug—holding a knife. He lunged at DeSantos, who blocked the man’s arm, then grabbed his wrist and yanked down, all in one motion. As the knife dropped to the carpet, DeSantos landed a cross to the intruder’s cheek.
But in that split second, when the sting of the impact registered in DeSantos’s brain, he realized that the blow caused him more pain than it did his adversary.
The attacker grabbed DeSantos’s throat, but DeSantos slammed his thumb web into his assailant’s trachea, temporarily stunning him. He instantly released his hold.
DeSantos jabbed his neck again, fast and hard, with the intent to kill.
The man’s windpipe collapsed and he dropped to his knees, gasping for air that would never come.
THE ACCOMPLICE DRAGGED VAIL backward out of the room and into the hallway. His elbow was pressed firmly against her neck, the blood flow to her carotids slowing. As the oxygen evacuated from her brain, she came to the point of losing consciousness.
Do something. Now, before it’s too late!
Vail tightened her abdomen and lifted her legs, throwing off the balance of the man dragging her. She slammed her feet against the ground and started walking backward, propelling both of them in an out-of-control lunge to the floor.
He stumbled and fell, pulling her to the carpet with him. She swung her elbows to keep him from getting hold of her again, then rolled and slipped out of his grasp.
Get away—down the hall—
She scrabbled to her feet and started forward in a frantic out-of-balance stumble. She heard her attacker growl in anger as he pursued her.
The first door she came to was partially open, and she shouldered it on the run.
But it was a vacant banquet room, with no other exit. She grabbed for the door handle and ran back out, the man only a dozen feet away.
Ahead: more corridor, with a hook to the left. She legged it along the carpet, grateful she was wearing low-heeled boots, hoping someone would appear and scare off her shadow. Then again, a guy like this did not break pursuit; he was the kind who broke the neck of anyone who got in his way—and then finished off his job.
Vail’s only hope was to put distance between her and him.
She passed more unoccupied rooms, swung left and then made a quick right through double-windowed doors: a catering kitchen that served the banquet halls.
Knives. Where the hell are the knives? Who ever heard of a kitchen without knives?
She threw ladling spoons, pots, pans—anything in her way—across the floor behind her, looking for a sharp weapon of some sort.
And then she froze. The man had entered the kitchen behind her. She turned and faced him. He had a square, firm jaw and narrowed eyes. His hands flexed, no doubt in anticipation of wrapping them around her neck.
“What do you want?” she yelled at him.
He took a step forward. “I will make it so it doesn’t hurt,” he said with a Chechen accent, his tone steely, fateful.
Vail backed away, moving along the stainless steel trough used to rinse dishes, her right hand dragging along the countertop, near the grill. She touched something cold and grabbed it: a serving spoon. She brought it up and held it out in front of her.
He grinned, not because it was funny but because she would think such a silly weapon had shifted the odds in her favor.
He took another step forward—and stopped, his body going suddenly rigid. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. And then he fell forward.
Behind him, DeSantos. And in the man’s back, a long, wood knife handle protruded, a circle of blood staining his jacket.
“Saving your ass is getting to be a habit,” he said as he reached inside the man’s back pocket and removed his wallet.
Vail threw the spoon atop the deceased assassin. And gave him a kick in the skull for good measure.
“He’s dead, Karen.”
“I know that.” She brushed her red hair off her face. “Made me feel better.” As she walked past him, she whaled on him again, this time in the ribs. “Definitely makes me feel better. Bastard.”
DeSantos removed the pertinent information from the wallet, rubbed it against his pant leg to remove his fingerprints, and then, holding it by its edges, tossed it in a nearby sauce pot. “We need to get your stuff and get out of here. No idea how many others are involved.”
“Involved in what? Who’s pulling the strings?”
“Don’t know that either. C’mon, let’s get moving. We’ll have time to debate what all this means. But right now, our forensics are all over two murder scenes. Oh yeah, there’s a dead guy in your room.”
“You just left him there?”
“I thought it was more important to find you.”
“You thought right.”
“Look at it this way,” he said. “We just found another use for that room privacy card.”
27
A
fter wiping down the room for trace evidence of the man and the scuffle he had gotten into with DeSantos, Vail threw her belongings into a suitcase while DeSantos searched the assailant and took his cash and identification.
Next, they moved the body down the hall into the ice room and propped him against the Coke machine in a seated position. DeSantos opened the top few buttons of his shirt, then splashed the man’s face with a few ounces of Gordon’s London Dry Gin, which they had taken from the mini bar. Vail set the empty bottle in his right hand and messed his hair.
The hope was that he would look like a passed-out drunk and not be reported until the maids started their morning rounds.
It was an imperfect plan. When the cops started their investigation, they might trace the gin to the missing Gordon’s from Vail’s room, since those purchases are closely monitored. It would take a sharp inspector and some luck. But it was worth the risk if it fooled a guest or two and deterred them from reporting a dead man in the ice room.
They walked a few blocks, turned west for another tenth of a mile, and then caught a cab. Vail made a point of asking for a hotel recommendation in the area, and the man suggested a couple of places. They chose the Thistle Victoria, and he dropped them off ten minutes later. DeSantos paid the driver with the cash he had appropriated from his second victim, and they got out across the street from Victoria Station.
Vail waved off the bellman before he could get a grip on her suitcase because she knew that they would not be staying at this accommodation. They moved toward the registration desk, then turned and made their way into the adjacent train depot.
Victoria Station was a major UK transportation hub, being the second busiest center of passage for the Underground, the Gatwick Express train, and various coach lines. It was an ideal place for Vail and DeSantos to slip away to an undetermined, and hopefully untrackable, location. However, the cavernous facility, two stories with restaurants, shops, and vendors of various sorts, did not provide much cover from the ubiquitous closed-circuit cameras that permeated the London landscape.
Hundreds of commuters scurried in all directions, the buzz of conversations, rolling suitcases, and public address announcements coalescing into a white noise common to large transportation venues across the world.
Enormous LCD screens, suspended over the main floor, displayed various bits of information, from travel itineraries to station vendor locations.
Vail burned some of their arrogated cash on a knit wool cap to hide her thick red hair, and a baggy “I Love London” sweatshirt to conceal her figure. DeSantos selected a new baseball hat and a muffler. Though hardly a complete disguise, the two items masked his appearance to some extent. He added a T-shirt and a hoodie, since, unlike Vail, he did not have a change of clothes. He would have to buy underwear and other essentials the next morning, if they had time.
They took the Underground a few stops to Piccadilly Circus and booked themselves into the Savoy Hotel, a ritzy landmark that DeSantos charged to Rick Trainor’s Mastercard.
“We’re nearly full, Mr. Trainor,” the registration clerk said. “We have only a regular room, no suites. King bed. Will that suit your purposes?”
“That’ll suit us just fine,” Vail said as she took DeSantos’s elbow in her hands, trying to like any married couple.
The clerk swiped the room keys, then handed them the welcome packet.
As they made their way to the elevator, Vail said, “So who pays Rick Trainor’s credit card bills? This place is several hundred a night.”
“You and me,” he said. When she tilted her head in confusion, he said, “US taxpayers. OPSIG’s budget is black, just like our ops.”
“So this is an OPSIG operation?”
DeSantos looked at her.
“Fine. You can’t tell me.”
They made their way to the room, exhibiting extreme care despite the fact that no one had known they were headed here. The room was clear and they tossed their purchases on a chair beside the bed.
“You’re looking forward to this,” she said.
“Let me see. I’m in London at a luxury hotel and I get to sleep with a beautiful woman. What red-blooded heterosexual male would not look forward to that?”
Instead of accepting the compliment, she said, “There is an imaginary dividing line in this mattress. Cross it, even to play footsie, and I will do some undesirable things to your balls.”
“Karen, I’m disappointed. After all we’ve been through, do you really think I’d try to take advantage of you?”
“I think that men sometimes listen to the heads below their waist rather than the ones above their shoulders.”
DeSantos pursed his lips. “Fair enough. Can’t argue with that one. But I would never disrespect you that way.”
They managed to get several hours of shuteye without incident before Vail’s BlackBerry rang. Without opening her eyes, she felt around for the night table—and instead got DeSantos’s shoulder. He picked up the phone and answered it.
“Hey,” she said, hitting his shoulder intentionally—and more forcefully—this time.
He feigned pain and shielded his face. “It’s Uzi.” Into the phone, he said, “Yeah, she’s lying in bed right next to me…Yeah, imagine that. I bedded Karen Vail…I know, right?”
Vail plunked him on the head and he handed her the phone.
“Don’t listen to him, Uzi.”
“I never do. So I’ve got your COFEE order. Black, with a hint of deception.”
Vail groaned. “It’s too early in the morning for humor.”
“Even good humor?”
“
Good
humor may be okay. But I didn’t hear any.”
“After working my ass off to get this stuff decrypted and analyzed, you’d think you would show me some love.”
“That’s what Hector was hoping for last night.”
Uzi chuckled. “Okay, so here’s what I’ve got. You pulled some pretty good stuff off our subject’s hard drive. I even captured a few of his passwords. There’s no smoking gun, but your suspicions about him appear to be right on target. I’ve been read into the situation by the director.”
“You got Knox involved?”
“Turns out he already was. Even if he wasn’t, I had no choice. There was something very upsetting in the data. I can’t go into it over an unsecure connection. But it’s huge and affects us here in DC.”
Knowing who their subject was, this was not good news.
“Problem is, you didn’t get it all. You need to go back, get the rest of the data.”
“Go back there.” Vail laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
“I tried the joke at the beginning of our conversation. You didn’t like it, remember? Right now, I’m dead serious.”
“We’re going to need details, so we know what we’re looking for.”
“Can you get a Sat phone?”
“Right now, we’re in the shit. We’ve got assassins after us, and our DNA is all over two crime scenes.”
“See, I leave you two alone for a day and look what happens.”
“You’re trying to be funny again.”
“Trying.”
“It’s not a good time.”
“Okay, look. I’ll figure something out. You just get over to our guy’s place and we’ll go from there. But we need that information.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
She rolled out of bed and started getting her things together.
“What’s the deal?”
“Back to Paxton’s place. Looks like we’re right about him. Problem is, there’s apparently some stuff we snagged off his hard drive that’s incomplete. And it appears to be very important to Washington. Knox is involved.”
DeSantos absorbed it in stride, then pulled out his phone. “Let me get with Reid and see if he’s got eyes on Paxton. Get your stuff together but only take what’s essential. I assume we’re coming back here, but there’s no way to know.”
THEY TOOK THE TUBE to Paxton’s apartment building, prepared to enter without their utility company uniforms—or weapons to defend themselves.
“It doesn’t take a black ops specialist to know that this is going to be a lot more risky than last time.”
“Last time was a piece of cake,” DeSantos said as they stood across the street surveilling the area.
“Didn’t feel like a piece of cake.”
“It will. Compared to now.”
Lovely.
DeSantos’s Nokia vibrated and he checked the display. “Reid’s got Paxton. He’s in the gallery. We’re good to go.”
They entered the building and took the stairs to Paxton’s apartment. DeSantos waited down the hall while Vail went to the door and knocked. If no one answered, DeSantos would pick the lock and enter while she maintained watch. If someone was there, she would ask to use the phone because of an emergency, get a look around, and assess how many individuals were present. It was less threatening for a woman to ask for entry than a man. Plus, if she ran into difficulties once inside, DeSantos would be in a position to respond.
Vail rapped on the door, listened, and waited. Nothing. She waited thirty seconds, then knocked again. So far so good. She figured it would be best to wait five minutes and try again, in case someone was in the shower and didn’t hear her.
She texted DeSantos:
waiting a few min 2b sure
DeSantos noted his smartphone’s display and held up a hand in acknowledgment.
Vail banged again, but not hard enough to raise the neighbors’ curiosity. After failing to get a response, she motioned to DeSantos, who joined her in front of the door. Seconds later, he had deftly picked the locks.
DESANTOS ENTERED THE APARTMENT, Vail remaining outside as a lookout.
He removed the knife and checked each room, confirming his intel that Rudenko had no roommate.
Seeing nothing that would suggest the imminent arrival of an unwelcome guest, he took a seat at the computer desk, which sat across the room from two large windows that led onto a steel fire escape.
Lacking the means to have a secure conversation—a satellite phone would’ve attracted attention, and it would not have worked indoors very well—Uzi and DeSantos felt that purchasing disposable SIM cards for each of their cell phones was the best workaround.
A major consideration in communicating via voice was that it gave others the ability to track them. Over the years, DeSantos and his OPSIG team had dropped in on the conversations of more “bad actors” using their cell phones than anything else. Once they identified their target and matched it to his phone and SIM card, they could track him anywhere there were cell towers by bouncing a signal to that phone and then triangulating his position off the towers. To keep that from happening to him and Vail, they planned to switch out the SIM cards so that they couldn’t be identified through their telephone handsets.
DeSantos set his knife beside the keyboard and settled himself in front of the screen. After dialing Uzi, he cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder.
“I’m here,” DeSantos said, purposely leaving out details because, despite their precautions, it was not a secure line and anyone could be listening, even if they did not yet know who was speaking.
“Go to a command prompt,” Uzi said. “Know how to do that?”
“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
“Go to the search field and type ‘cmd.’” Uzi talked DeSantos through the next several steps, then told him he was ready to give him one of the passwords he had captured using the COFEE device. “He’s using TrueCrypt, an excellent open source disk encryption program.”
“Can’t be that good if you grabbed the password.”
“If time wasn’t short,” Uzi said, “I’d explain how I did it. Not that you’d be interested.”
“You’re right. Read me the password.”
DeSantos typed in the long alphanumeric string, and then hit enter. A previously unseen drive letter appeared, along with a series of folders.
“Holy shit,” DeSantos said as he read through the file names. But the first one was all he needed to see:
HD distilled sulfur mustard agent/Yankee Stadium.
“I’m assuming we’re in the right place,” Uzi said.
Yankee Stadium. Fifty thousand people.
“Oh, yeah. That’s a fair statement.”
“I’ve set up a SkyDrive account. You’re going to upload those files, then we’ll erase all traces of you having done what you’re about to do.”
“Fine. Whatever. Let’s do this. I’m late.”
Translation: I need to get the hell out of here.
Minutes later the files were uploading to the cloud storage server somewhere in the world.
DeSantos checked his watch: he’d been in the apartment fourteen minutes. “Hey, man, I’m really, really late.
How much more?”
“Another minute and you can start erasing things using the program you downloaded.”
Leaving the line open to Uzi, DeSantos pulled the handset from his ear and texted Vail:
almost done. hows it look
He tapped his finger on the desk while he waited for the last file to finish uploading.
“You’re doing fine,” Uzi said. “You’re almost out.”
Vail’s text came back:
quiet. how much longer? pushing ur luck
DeSantos glanced up and saw the status of the last file move from 99 to 100 percent.
VAIL HAD ORIGINALLY INTENDED to stand across the street from Rudenko’s building, watching the front entrance. There was a fire exit in the rear, but to reach it Rudenko would have to walk down an alley to the right of the structure. Either way, Vail would see him.
But because Reid had an eyeball on him, it was impossible for Rudenko to mysteriously appear without a warning call, well in advance. Not so, however, for an accomplice.
Vail felt that the greatest benefit would be achieved by hanging out down the hall from Rudenko’s flat and watching for anyone exiting the elevator. If he or she turned left, Vail could alert DeSantos and try to stall the individual while DeSantos sought shelter—or a way out.
She wore her cap and baggy sweatshirt—as good a disguise as she could muster—and slouched with her back against the wall. After consulting her watch for about the tenth time, her BlackBerry buzzed: DeSantos, wanting to know how things looked.