Authors: Alan Jacobson
48
D
eSantos lowered the phone. He looked at Vail through the rear window, and for the first time since she had met Hector DeSantos, she saw fear in his eyes.
She opened the door and got out. “I take it that did not go well.”
He dropped Buck’s phone on the pavement and smashed it under his heel. Powering down the device would’ve accomplished the same thing, but she knew it would not have been nearly as satisfying.
He leaned his back against the side of the car. “Anything from Uzi?”
Vail assembled her BlackBerry, checked for texts, and then shut it down and removed the battery. “No.”
DeSantos bit his lip and canted his head toward the overcast night sky. Then he abruptly pushed away from the vehicle and said, “Go take a walk. Be back in ten minutes.”
“What?” Vail asked, moving in front of DeSantos. “Go take a walk? What the hell does that mean?”
“Just do it. Be careful, keep your head down. Avoid people.”
“But—”
“Karen, I’m going to do something that runs counter to your FBI regs. I don’t want to put you in that position.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding. I’m ‘so fired’ when I get back that any further breaches in procedure aren’t even worth discussing.”
“This may leave you with a fate worse than getting fired. Not to mention it running counter to your morals.”
Vail hesitated, examined his face. In a low voice, she said, “Hector, we broke into the house of a key British politician and murdered him.”
I can’t believe I just said that.
She gave a nervous laugh. “What more could we possibly do now that would screw things up more than they already are?”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“I’m in this to the end. It’s the best chance I’ve got of helping us clear our names, to say nothing of stopping this attack before it’s too late.” She gestured toward their prisoner. “Go do what you need to do.”
His eyes remained riveted to hers a long moment. “Keep an eye out and bang on the window if you see a problem.”
DESANTOS GOT INTO the backseat of the car.
“You people are acting irrationally,” Buck said. “Let me go and I’ll consider not pressing charges.”
DeSantos nodded slowly. “Director General, if you’re innocent, then I apologize profusely for snatching you up. And I apologize even more for what I’m about to do.”
“What you’re about to—What are you talking about?”
“Sir, these are extraordinary times. And unfortunately they call for extraordinary measures.”
“Let me out of this car. Now!”
“What happened with the search of St. Paul’s? Did you actually carry it out?”
“Of course. A forensics team found slight traces of ricin in a storage room, but otherwise it was clean.”
They must have moved it—if Buck was telling the truth. If
Richter
was telling the truth. DeSantos bit down hard on his bottom lip, frustrated that they could not make any definitive headway.
“Where is it now?”
Buck wrinkled his nose as if DeSantos was a daft idiot.
“Fine. We’ll do it my way.” He reached into his pocket and removed the syringe containing the remaining SP-117.
Buck’s eyes focused on the needle. Fear enveloped his face like a sheet over a corpse. “Mr. Cruz. I strongly urge you to think about what you’re about to do. I can help you get whatever it is that you want. There’s nothing to be gained by killing me.”
DeSantos tilted his head. “Why would you think I’m going to kill you?”
Buck looked away. “I know about Minister Walpole.”
“Thanks to you, the whole goddamn world knows about Walpole!” DeSantos took a breath, fighting to restrain his anger. He leaned closer. “I want to know who you’re working for.”
“What in bloody hell are you talking about? I work for the British people. The government, the Home Office.”
“Then why did you send me and Vail to the minister’s house? Why’d you set us up?”
“Why on Earth would I do that?”
“The CLAIR. The two devices were paired, right? Yours and mine?”
“You know they are. I told you that.”
“And there’s no way anyone else could’ve sent me a message using your handset.”
“Absolutely none. The first staff I vetted when our system was compromised was our tech people. It’s a very small, close-knit department. And the CLAIR was in the pocket of my trousers the entire time. I sent no message telling you to go to the minister’s residence.”
DeSantos shook his head. He held up the syringe and removed the cap.
“Give me your handset. I’ll prove it.”
“I don’t have it.”
Buck pushed his back into the seat. “Then you just have to believe me.”
“I want to. But I don’t. And there’s only one way to find out with reasonable certainty.”
“Please. Don’t kill me. I did
not
set you up.”
“I don’t intend to kill you, sir.”
Buck’s brow crumpled in confusion. “Then what’s in that syringe?”
“SP-117.”
Buck’s eyes widened. “From our Cotswolds facility?”
“Exactly.”
“No, please. There are other ways of verifying that I’m telling you the truth.”
“Maybe. But nothing that’ll work as quickly. And in case you’ve forgotten—assuming you’re not part of it—there’s an imminent attack planned for this city. I don’t have time to waste.”
Buck banded his arms across his chest. “This is going to set an extremely dangerous precedent.”
“Extraordinary circumstances. Extraordinary measures.” DeSantos leaned his body weight into Buck’s torso and plunged the needle into his neck.
49
U
zi tapped away at his keyboard beside Rodman, who was seated in front of his own laptop. Rodman’s eyes, however, were fixated on Uzi’s screen.
“You following what I’m doing?”
Rodman licked his lips. “I think you lost me after you got into MI5’s secured network. I was trained in cyber-warfare, so I know a bit about hacking, but you passed me by about three hours ago. You’ve gone deeper than I thought possible.”
Rodman’s baritone voice was unusually resonant, but Uzi was confident no one outside the van would be able to hear him.
“You doubted me?”
Rodman shrugged. “I’ve only done one op with you. Don’t know your capabilities. Don’t know much about you, period.”
“For now, here’s all you need to know: I like challenges. If you tell me something’s not possible, I’ll find a way to
make it
possible. I’m a persistent son of a bitch.”
“Figured as much or GQ wouldn’t have anything to do with you.” Rodman watched Uzi’s fingers play across the keyboard another minute, trying to follow the commands he was typing. “Don’t you have to practice hacking to stay sharp?”
“Like anything else, yeah. Once a week I try to penetrate NSA’s servers. Every few months I actually get in. But they shut me down real fast.” He stopped, examined the code, then continued typing. “They’re not very happy with me.”
“Imagine that.”
“One day they’re gonna find out who’s been giving them fits, and that’s not gonna go so well. I may need to call in some favors to keep my ass out of Petersburg.”
Rodman consulted his watch. “How much longer?”
Uzi continued tapping away. “The Brits’ systems are actually pretty secure. I’ve had to be creative, while preventing them from figuring out who we are and where we’re doing it from. Not easy to do on short notice. If I could’ve planted a Trojan on their system weeks ago, this would’ve taken half an hour.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Uzi paused, read the lines of code on his screen, and then typed another command. “When I’ve got something to tell you, I’ll let you know.”
Rodman turned back to his own laptop, and, once again, checked the time.
DESANTOS GLANCED OUT the window. Vail turned to face him and they shared a look of concern. He was giving the medication time to work its magic on the brain, breaking down its conscious and unconscious barriers, loosening its internal safeguards and inhibitions.
DeSantos did not fully understand how these behavioral engineering drugs worked—particularly SP-117, which he knew next to nothing about. The last he had heard, the CIA was still attempting to obtain a viable, fresh sample to study from an FSB double agent.
That was shaky ground, given the damage the Agency suffered in the late 1970s when Project MKUltra was laid bare. It was largely believed that the idea of developing a truth drug had been put to rest. Then again, very few knew about its work on Memogen, or the research on the mind control drug China had used on Scarponi.
DeSantos had heard whispers in the intel community about a year before Scarponi was released from prison that some of the chemicals developed in the MKUltra offshoot, subproject MKAlpha, had been smuggled out of the CIA lab and kept in private university vaults for continued study. He would not be surprised to find out that the rumors were true.
Buck opened his eyes and took a long, deep breath. “Why are you still here?”
“Because I need some answers, sir. Are you working with Hussein Rudenko?”
Buck contorted his face. “Why would I have anything to do with that vermin?”
“You tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I am not associated with that terrorist.”
“Are you aware of any other member of the Security Service who’s involved with Hussein Rudenko or his organization?”
“If I knew that, the Queen would’ve knighted me by now.”
DeSantos frowned. The SP-117 did not seem to be as effective on Buck as it had been on Richter. He thought he had used the same dosage, but there was no way for him to be sure. Since he had not intended to use the drug again, he had not paid close attention to how much he had actually administered when questioning Richter. Then again, everyone metabolized drugs differently. He might simply need more time for it to take effect—or it might have no effect on him at all.
A couple of minutes later, while Buck appeared to be dozing, DeSantos resumed his questioning. “I need to know where the ricin is being held.”
“So do I.”
“So do you? What do you mean?”
“I need to know where the ricin is, too.”
DeSantos clenched his jaw. Was the medication flat-out not working, was Buck somehow resistant to it—or was he telling the truth?
He looked at the syringe. There were a few cubic centimeters remaining in the vial. Without forethought, he emptied it into Buck’s neck.
“Ow. Will you stop doing that?”
“I need answers. And this will help me get them.” He waited another few minutes, then asked, “Why did you want Basil Walpole killed?”
“Basil was a dear friend. Why would I want him dead?”
“We don’t have time for this,” DeSantos said. He grabbed Buck’s lapel and pulled him close. “You’re lying. We traced the signal from your CLAIR handset to Thames House. We know you sent those secure messages.”
Buck blinked. “Yes.”
DeSantos tilted his head. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
Buck’s eyelids fluttered and his body relaxed.
DeSantos released him back against the seat and slapped him gently on the cheek. “Sir, look at me. Look at me!”
His eyes rolled back and his breathing noticeably slowed.
DeSantos grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse. “Oh, shit.”
He noticed Vail cupping her hands and looking in the driver’s side window.
DeSantos opened the door. “Dial 999, emergency services.”
“What? We can’t call the—”
“He’s having some kind of reaction to the drug. Do it now!”
50
V
ail made the call, doing her best to disguise her voice as she provided the location and a brief, though cryptic, description of the problem.
It’s not like I can tell dispatch that we injected the MI5 director general with a truth drug and that we just may’ve killed him.
She hung up and pulled open the rear door. “Help me get him out. They’re on their way.”
“And do what?” DeSantos asked.
“Prop him up against that maintenance shed. We can’t be here when they arrive.”
“Can I pound my fist into a cement wall first?”
“It went that well, huh?”
DeSantos struggled to get hold of Buck’s body in the tight confines of the back seat. They finally dragged him out and leaned him against the gray stucco wall of the flat-roofed building, as Vail had suggested.
They quickly backed away and climbed into the car.
Vail started the engine. “If Buck dies—I don’t even want to think where that leaves us.”
“Honestly, we probably wouldn’t be a whole lot worse off than we were before.”
“And that accurately sums up just how fucked we were before we kidnapped Buck.” She turned right onto Vincent Square and then left onto Rutherford Street. “Did you get anything worthwhile?”
“I’m not sure. I used a Russian psychoactive drug on him. A truth drug. But it didn’t work as well as it did on Richter.”
“You used it on Richter?”
DeSantos did not reply.
“Where the hell did you get it?”
“Reid and Carter had it at the safe house.” DeSantos leaned both elbows on his knees and massaged his temples. A moment later, he said, “Buck admitted he sent the secure messages.”
“Okay.”
“No, not okay. I don’t know what the hell that means. Did he understand which secure messages I was talking about? He sent us totally legit texts that were fine. It was the one leading us to Walpole that caused the problem.” DeSantos sat back. “But his ‘admission’ came right before he lost consciousness. He was, I don’t know…groggy, I guess. No idea what ‘Yes’ means. Don’t know what it gets us.”
Vail slowed and tried to look nonchalant as a Metro police cruiser passed.
“Hear anything from Uzi while I was with Buck?”
“If I’d heard something,” Vail said, “I would’ve—”
“Fine. Just keep driving. Get us the hell away from here.”
“Where to?”
Sirens sounded in the distance. “We’ll figure it out as we drive.”
UZI SAT BACK in his seat. “Whoa, got something.”
Rodman slid over. “Important?”
“Yeah. Get Santa on the line.”
As he confirmed what he had just discovered, the call connected. Rodman handed him the phone.
“Talk to me, Boychick. Give us something good.”
“I found a signal path that leads to an office at Thames House; I believe it’s the director general’s office. But from what I’ve been able to determine, there’s some kind of anomaly that could indicate it came from 2 Marsham Street.”
“And what’s at 2 Marsham?”
“It’s the Home Office. Run by the home secretary. Buck’s boss, so to speak.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, that’s the point. I’m not sure. It’s hard to explain. Put it this way: it looks like it came from Buck’s office, but I found something that strongly suggests it actually came from the Home Office. There are irregularities that don’t make sense, so I’ve got to dig deeper. I wasn’t even going to say anything until I was sure—or
more
sure. But since I don’t know what stuff you’re finding on your end, in case this meant something to you, I didn’t want to keep it to myself.”
“Okay, I’ll shout at you soon.”
“Look, I know this is frustrating, but I’m not entirely sure of what I’m seeing—yet. I’m gonna stay on it. But I can’t guarantee I’ll get any further than I’ve gotten. And yes. I know time’s running out.”
“I need help with something else,” DeSantos said. “Buck had a bad reaction to a drug I used on him. Give it a bit, then find out if he’s okay. We were near Vincent Square, so check the closest hospital. I don’t know what their procedures are when a high ranking official goes down. But I’d have to think they’re going for the closest medical facility when every second counts.”
“We can check hospital databases, but do you really want us diverting our time from the problem to check on Buck?”
“Have Hot Rod give it five minutes. If he can’t get anywhere, forget it. I’m sure it’ll be on the news soon enough.”
“Copy.”
“Something else. Contact Clive Reid and Ethan Carter for us. If Buck survived and told them what we did to him—I want to make sure we’re still cool with them.”
“We need to find Hussein Rudenko,” Vail said. “Another project for Rodman. Have him tap into the CCTV cams and see if he can locate him. Reid told me most of the cameras aren’t part of the government’s system, but he suggested it’s possible to tap into the entire network.”
“If it’s possible,” Uzi said, “we’ll get it done.”
“Buck also told me they checked St. Paul’s for ricin. It was clean but a forensics unit of some kind found traces in a storage room. If true, they must’ve moved it. But I have no idea if he was bullshitting me. See what you can find out.”
DeSantos hung up and leaned his head back against the seat.
“We need to eat. Where, I’ve got no idea. But we need something. Fast food, protein bars, whatever. But it’s gotta be a place where we can avoid being filmed.”
DeSantos closed his eyes. “Good luck with that.”