Authors: Alan Jacobson
51
V
ail stopped at the Yellow House Bar and Kitchen in Surrey Quays, near where Uzi and Rodman were camped out in their mobile digital lab. DeSantos ordered several dinners to go: Scottish beef burgers with Gruyère cheese, hand-cut chips, Cokes. Once back in the car, he called Uzi and told him they would be there in five minutes.
“Good thing,” Uzi said, “because I’ve got a few things to show you.”
“You’re getting my hopes up, Boychick. You’d better deliver.”
“You deliver the food, I’ll deliver the goods.”
When they approached the cyber café, they circled the block three times, ensuring that they were not being followed—and that Uzi and DeSantos were not being watched.
They climbed into the back of the van and pulled the doors shut behind them.
“Whoa,” Vail said, taking in their setup.
“Not bad for a go bag and a couple of laptop cases, eh?”
Uzi’s ultrabook sat atop two stacked milk crates, with a third serving as a seat. Rodman’s workstation was identical, with an extra computer sitting off to the side.
Uzi pointed to the unattended laptop’s screen. “We’ve got three mini cameras stuck to the outside of the van, just to make sure no one suspicious comes by. Nothing outrageous, but it gives us eyes on the ground. We can play the CCTV game, too.”
“You using that cyber café’s wireless signal?” Vail asked.
“For now. We’re doing low bandwidth stuff, so it won’t raise any alarms, and I’m masking our PCs, so they can’t be discovered.”
“Need be,” Rodman said, “we’ve got the ability to use an encrypted internet connection provided we have some unobstructed sky.”
“Satellite?” Vail asked.
“Very good,” Uzi said with a nod.
“Why is everyone so surprised when I know something?”
DeSantos chuckled. “You really want an answer to that?”
“I’m going to ignore you,” she said as she reached into the brown shopping bag and pulled out the Styrofoam meal containers. “We should’ve brought a can of aerosol deodorant with us. It stinks in here.”
Uzi sniffed the air. “Of what?”
“Hardworking men,” Rodman said.
Because of Rodman’s size, Vail felt it was better not to recharacterize his description. She left it at that.
“All I smell is food.” Uzi popped the lid on his and sniffed the sandwich. “Oh, that’s heavenly. Red meat, ketchup, and fries. Excuse me. Chips.” He turned to Vail. “How’d you know?”
“Easy,” DeSantos said. “
I’m
the one who ordered it.”
Uzi slid over a couple of milk crates and Vail and DeSantos took seats.
A moment later, after all of them had dug into their meals, DeSantos asked, “What’d you want to show us?”
“I checked on Buck,” Rodman said, his jaw working vigorously. He swallowed, then continued. “He’s alive. Treated and released. Don’t know what the deal was, but I figured you didn’t care. He’s fine.”
Vail felt a sense of relief.
Guess they won’t be adding Murder One to my case. Oh, wait—that would’ve been the
second
count. Or third?
“Nothing yet on the St. Paul’s search,” Uzi said as he wiped ketchup from the corner of his mouth. “Might not be in the system yet. If they haven’t filed the report, it won’t be on their server. I can’t find what’s not there.”
“Keep me posted on that. It might give us a clue as to whether or not Richter, and Buck, were telling the truth. If they lied about that, they may’ve lied about the other stuff, too.”
“Those guys you asked us to get in touch with,” Uzi said. “Reid and Carter. Spoke to Carter, but it wasn’t easy. He didn’t know who the hell I was, and I had to talk in circles around everything in case his phone was being monitored. I’ll send you Reid’s new number. When you’re ready, don’t use the iPhone I gave you. Since he’s vulnerable to being tracked, it’s not worth being voice ID’d to it and losing it altogether. Call them from a burner phone and dump it.”
“We’re using SIM cards,” Vail said.
“Fine. Just power down the handset and remove the battery after each call. Dump the card.”
Pain in the ass.
“At least they’re still willing to talk to us, after what we did to Buck.” DeSantos dug out some fries that had fallen into the bottom of his Styrofoam container. “We’re gonna need more SIM cards.”
“Thought you might.” Rodman rooted around his backpack and pulled out a small metal box. He tossed it to Vail.
Uzi took another bite. “Got some more good news.” He chewed a moment, then swallowed. “I disassembled the CLAIR and hooked up my gizmos to it. And it looks like someone else may’ve sent that message sending you there to kill Walpole. You were set up.”
She snorted. “We already knew that. Was it Buck?”
Uzi took another bite. “Don’t think so. I’m getting close to locating where the message originated from.”
“How?” DeSantos asked. “It self-erases its memory.”
Uzi looked over his burger, determining where he would take the next bite. “There are historic buffers available for user review, as well as internal diagnostic buffers protected by specialized hardware that self-destructs if an unauthorized person tries to access it. A number of gaming companies use this technology to protect information on systems returned for repair. The CLAIR has a specialized network chip with a circular buffer that holds a few minutes of the last communication.”
Vail looked at DeSantos, who merely shrugged.
“So where’d the message come from?” she asked.
He took a bite, holding up an index finger while his jaw ground from side to side. After swallowing, he said, “That building I told Santa about, the Home Office. Because of their setup, I couldn’t locate which room it came from. Or even which floor—yet. I’m still working on it. But Hot Rod found something.”
All heads swung toward Rodman, who was taking a pull from his Coke. He set it down and said, “I put together a backgrounder on Walpole, to see if we could explain why someone would want him offed.”
“He’s a politician,” Vail said. “I’m sure the list is long.”
“Here’s the part where you thank me profusely. Turns out that Walpole was sitting on a secret government commission that was investigating a British bank that’s suspected of laundering lots of dough for Hussein Rudenko.”
“Uh oh,” Vail said. “Big money equals big motive.”
“Walpole was the driving force to shut down the bank’s operations. He apparently got a lot of pushback because the bank’s a British institution and they’ve got a tremendous amount of influence in Parliament.”
“How do you know all this?” DeSantos asked.
Rodman popped a few fries in his mouth. “Simple. I looked. They have minutes from their meetings. It may be a secret commission, but I’m guessing they think their systems are secure.”
“Doesn’t every government?” Uzi asked. “Until they’re hacked?”
They all laughed.
The third laptop beeped and a red bar appeared along the top of the screen.
“I got it,” Rodman said as he rose from his crate and took a seat in front of the other PC.
“Point is,” Uzi said, “Walpole was a huge threat to Rudenko’s business. I’m sure he launders money through multiple places, but if some lone wolf is pushing to shut you down, what do you do?”
Vail stopped just before taking the next bite. “If you’re Hussein Rudenko, you do what you’ve done to everyone who’s gotten in your way. You get rid of him.”
DeSantos crumpled his napkin and tossed it into the empty bag. “And we were his contract hit team.”
“Hey,” Uzi said, “if we’re lucky, when this is all over you’ll get to tell Rudenko how pissed you are about it.” He swiveled on his seat. “Whatcha got there, Hot Rod?”
Rodman struck several keys as he spoke. “That facial recognition software I was running on the CCTV databases. Got a match.”
“For who?” DeSantos asked.
“Rudenko.” He scrolled down a list of commands and hit enter. One of the photos they had of Gavin Paxton appeared. It slid left and a grainy black and white image of a man appeared on the right. Rodman struck a key and specific points where the features matched glowed yellow. “Looks good.”
“Where?”
“Wait, I’ve got another match. I don’t know how we didn’t hear it before.” He played the keyboard and another face appeared. “That guy you asked about—Walker.”
“Yeah,” DeSantos said. “Kyle Walker.”
“And some other guy, George Fields. I’m pulling up some information on him.”
“Where?”
“Hang on a second, I’ll get you a location for both of them. Looks like the same place. They were outside a SecureStuff self-storage facility in Bermondsey, borough of Southwark. Old Jamaica Road. That mean anything to you?”
“Yeah,” DeSantos said. “Near the train tracks, about a mile or so from here.” He checked his watch. “Let’s go now, eyeball the place, see if we can catch Rudenko or Walker coming by. What time were they there?”
Rodman struck some keys. “Give me a minute. Still figuring this software out.”
“Want me to come?” Uzi asked.
“I think you two should stay here,” Vail said. “No one can do what you do, and we don’t want to roll in there with all hands on deck. It puts all of us in one place, and there’s a greater chance we’ll scare him off. Rudenko’s very smart. He could have lookouts.”
Uzi glanced at DeSantos, who nodded agreement. “Makes sense to me.”
“Three hours ago,” Rodman said. “Doubt they’re gonna be sticking around. Looks like storage unit twenty-five.” He kinked his neck. “Maybe thirty-five, hard to tell.”
“What were they doing there?” Vail asked.
Uzi looked over Rodman’s shoulder. “Don’t know. If you give us some time, we might be able to tap into the feed from that camera.”
“Do it,” DeSantos said. “But Karen and I aren’t waiting around. We’re heading over there.”
“And we’ve gotta move the van.” Uzi checked his watch. “We’ve stayed here too long. Let’s set a check-in schedule, on the half hour every hour. If you don’t call within two minutes, we’ll power down and try again the next half hour.”
“Fine. We’ll do the same.”
“There’s something else,” DeSantos said. “Knox. He…” DeSantos shrugged. “He kind of told me to abort the mission.”
“When?” Uzi asked.
“Right before I injected Buck. I called him.”
“You what? You called him?” Rodman asked, his deep voice rising uncharacteristically. “GQ, what the fuck?”
“Stupid, I know. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
“From what we know of this op—which I’m sure is less than you know,” Uzi said, “we’re the front line of defense in this attack. Am I right?”
Vail cleared her throat. “Unfortunately. Yeah.”
“So then what the hell are we doing, sitting here and staring at each other? Get moving.”
DeSantos stuck out his fist and Uzi and Rodman bumped it with theirs. Vail popped open the rear doors and they jumped out of the van.
52
C
live Reid sat down at a back table on the second floor of The White Lion pub in Covent Garden, where Ingram Losner had just ordered them both a pint of Nicholson’s Pale Ale. He adjusted his Fedora, pulling it down a bit further on his face, nearly against the dark tinted eyeglasses he was wearing.
Losner pushed the glass across the table to his friend. “You look a bit pale, almost like the ale, I’d say.” He grinned.
Reid absentmindedly examined the foam inside his glass. “I haven’t been truthful with you, my friend, and I want to apologize upfront about it.”
Losner laughed. “More tall stories about that buxom lass you were dating?”
Reid looked at him, his gaze stern. Penetrating.
Losner set his drink down. “This is serious, is it?”
“I’ve got an arrest warrant issued for me. Yeah, it’s serious.”
“A warrant, you say? Today’s my day off, mate. What in hell have I missed?”
Reid leaned across the table. “I need your trust. What I’m about to tell you is classified, official business. Can I count on you to keep it to yourself?”
Losner swallowed. “Of course.”
“I’ve been working undercover. For MI5.” He held up a hand to deflect any questions. “‘Why’ is for another time. Thing is, I need your help and I’ve nowhere else to turn. Five’s been compromised. Six too. All our agents, potentially exposed. From the inside, by the looks of it. And things are going down now that require us to think outside the box, put aside our English inhibitions and take a stand.”
Losner took a long pull, then set the ale down.
Judging by the look on his face, Reid felt as if the revelation was too much to process, the favor too much to ask.
“I’m working with Director General Buck, Ethan Carter, Karen Vail, and three of her colleagues to identify who’s our inside rat.” He moved to within a few inches of Losner, who’d leaned his elbows onto the table to meet him halfway. “Hussein Rudenko is in London Town. He’s moved a fair amount of ricin into the city. We need to find it—and him.”
Losner laughed. “No one knows what he looks like. We’ve been looking for him for, what, thirty years?”
“Gavin Paxton, from Idris Turner’s gallery. Remember him?”
“Of course.”
“Now you know what Rudenko looks like.”
Losner’s brow lifted. “Shite.”
“Shite is right. We had him, he was in the same blasted room as us.” Reid shook his head. “I need eyes and ears in the Met to make sure we don’t bugger this up more than we already have. Monitor what’s going on, let me know if there’s a problem.”
“I like Vail. But how sure are you of these people? Minister Walpole, that’s not exactly a thing you want on your résumé now, is it?”
Reid leaned back and took a gulp of ale. “Put it this way, mate. I’ve staked my career on them.”
Losner let his gaze roam around the room before engaging his friend. “Okay. I guess that makes two of us, then.”
53
V
ail drove slowly along Old Jamaica Road, a residential neighborhood bounded on both sides by apartment buildings. CCTV cameras were plentiful.
Ahead on the right was the storage complex, a green- and salmon-colored low-slung brick building built beneath a broad network of train tracks. She drove by slowly and turned right on Marine Street to come around the periphery of the property.
“Pretty quiet,” DeSantos said. “Lighting sucks. Go ahead and bring us around, pull into the lot. I think we can risk getting a good look around because the cameras won’t be able to see much through our windows.”
Vail turned the car around and headed back to the storage complex. They parked and waited twenty minutes, using the time to catalog the cameras they could see. DeSantos said he was reasonably certain they could shield their faces from the lenses.
As the minutes ticked by, Vail stirred in her seat. There had been no activity.
“Guess no one’s paying their storage units a visit at this time of night.”
“Let’s go in,” DeSantos said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting around. If the ricin’s here, we need to get Reid and Carter over here with their hazardous materials unit.”
“Unless they want to sit on the place, watch it in case Rudenko and his men return.”
“That’s up to them. But first we need to know if this is one of the three places they’re storing the ricin.”
“Three places. You’re assuming the info Richter gave you is real.”
“He was under pretty good. The drug worked on him. I think we can go with that. Let’s put it this way. We’ve got nothing to lose. It’s here or it’s not.”
THEY GOT OUT OF THE CAR and walked up to the building, taking care to angle their bodies and approach from a direction that prevented the closed-circuit cameras from getting a good image of their faces.
The units were numbered clearly above each green metal roll top door.
“There it is,” Vail said. “Gotta be twenty-five. Thirty-five is too far down, the next block of units.”
Before they neared the gate, a pair of headlights swung into the parking lot and cast a bright splash of illumination across the brick.
DeSantos pulled her back into an alcove that was draped in shadow. “Let’s wait for them to leave.”
Two car doors slammed, but the vehicle was out of their line of sight.
Footsteps crunched along the gravel-littered asphalt of the parking lot.
A few seconds later, a man and a woman walked into the breezeway, along which many of the storage rooms were located. Vail leaned back into DeSantos. She recognized the woman. “Nikola Hačko,” she whispered into his ear. “The chemical engineer.”
“And the guy’s Emir Dhul Fiqar.”
“We’re supposed to grab them up,” Vail said.
“Not so fast.” He pulled her back a step. “Let’s see why they’re here.”
As they watched, Fiqar produced a key and opened the lock. He pulled up the rolling door and they both stepped inside.
Vail reached into the small of her back and removed the SIG. She press-checked the chamber and then held the gun in both hands, pointed at the ground. Judging by the slow scrape of one mechanical part sliding on another and the accompanying movement she felt behind her, she figured that DeSantos was following suit.
Vail slowly peered around the brick wall, then drew back. “I say we take them while the door’s open. We’d have both them and the ricin—with minimal risk.”
“No.”
Vail twisted her neck and torso to make eye contact with DeSantos. “No?”
“We’ve only located one of potentially three sites where the ricin’s being stored. And no Rudenko. If we let them do their thing and then follow them, we may get everything.”
“And if they go to a bar to throw back some shots and shoot the breeze?”
“Then after they get juiced up, we’ll take them drunk. Either way, can’t lose.”
I’m not so sure of that.
They waited another five minutes before Hačko and Fiqar emerged, a heavy bag in Fiqar’s hand. Hačko pulled the door down and locked it, then followed Fiqar back to their car.
“Let’s go,” Vail said.
DeSantos again grabbed her shirt and drew her back into the shadows. “Not yet. We’ve gotta do this right so they don’t see us.”
“And if we lose them?”
“We won’t. But even if we do, we’ve still got the ricin.”
The brake lights lit up, followed by a puff of exhaust from the tailpipe.
“Okay,” DeSantos said, “let’s go.”
They walked back to their car, wanting to run but keeping themselves under control—just a couple returning home from a night out at their favorite neighborhood storage cubby.
DeSantos took the wheel and pulled out of the lot with his headlights off.
“Right up ahead,” Vail said.
“I’m on it. Contact Reid and Carter, tell them to get over here with hazmat, or whatever they call it here.”
Vail reassembled her phone and made the call, deflecting Reid’s questions about the Walpole murder. “Let’s just say you don’t want to know, and I don’t want to tell you. Short version: we were set up. We’ll talk about it when this is all over and we’ve secured the ricin and have Rudenko in custody.”
While she removed the SIM card and dumped it out the window, DeSantos remained in visual contact with Hačko and Fiqar—not an easy feat in London, even at this time of night. As they entered an industrial area, the cars thinned out, forcing them to hang further back.
“Wish I had a GPS tracker on their car,” DeSantos said. “So much at stake, I don’t want to lose them. Can’t spook them, either.”
Fiqar, the driver, made a left into a light industrial park. DeSantos pulled to the curb alongside the street and watched.
“You’re not going in?”
“I’m hoping they’ll choose a spot within our line of sight. Then we can go on foot. Two bodies skulking in the dark are a lot easier to hide than a moving car on the road.”
Vail leaned forward in her seat and peered deep into the parking lot. The vehicle pulled into a slot in front of two warehouse-style buildings. “Looks like you’re getting your wish. Let’s go.”
“You go ahead. I’m gonna wait till they’re out of sight, then park behind them. If they get away from us, they’ve got no way of escaping. By car, at least.”
“You’re a devious sort,” she said.
“Thank-you. I’ve been told that.”
Vail got out and approached the targets, moving in the shadows. Engaging them separately, as DeSantos had suggested, had another advantage: if Hačko or Fiqar spotted one of them, the other still had a chance at intercepting them.
And since DeSantos was now, unbeknownst to them, blocking their vehicle, they should have, at the very least, increased their chances of successfully apprehending them—and hopefully the second store of ricin.
SIG in hand, Vail inched along the concrete tilt-up facing of the warehouse-style structure, taking care not to scuff a boot on the pavement or make otherwise identifiable noises that would raise their target’s awareness.
Vail inched up to the edge of the building and peered around the corner—when a fist collided with her cheek and sent her sprawling backward. She looked up and saw Nikola Hačko standing over her.
Vail’s SIG was a dozen feet away, where it must have landed when she hit the ground.
Hačko raised her Beretta and lined it up with Vail’s face—but Vail swung her leg up, knocking the handgun from her grasp.
Hačko hesitated, as if wondering if she should go after Vail or her pistol.
Vail dove along the cement for the weapon, but they arrived at the same time.
Hačko swung an elbow and struck Vail in the chest, driving her back. As Vail tried to regain her balance, a thought flitted through her mind:
Where the hell’s Hector?
DESANTOS QUIETLY SHUT HIS DOOR, latching and locking it to prevent Hačko and Fiqar from taking it in place of their own.
He moved quickly but deliberately, purposely approaching from the left, opposite the route Vail had taken. After stopping at the corner of the building, he listened and heard movement—but it was a distance away.
He turned the corner and kept close to the wall of the structure, remaining in a thin band of darkness and heading toward a spillage of light that was emanating from a garage-sized doorway thirty feet away. As he neared, a shadow appeared on the pavement in front of the opening.
Someone was there: Fiqar or Hačko?
DeSantos froze and pressed his body up against the cold siding. He watched as the figure stepped out of the opening and rolled a heavy drum into place by the entrance. It was a man—Fiqar.
Where the hell is Karen?
HAČKO SNATCHED UP the gun, but Vail punched her in the eye, knocking her head back into the concrete and stunning her for an instant.
Vail grabbed the barrel of the Beretta and twisted the tip away from her while shoving her forearm into the crook of Hačko’s elbow and folding the arm against the woman’s body.
But Hačko recovered quickly and head-butted Vail, driving her back.
Her face feeling like it was going to explode and her visual field charcoal-dark, Vail managed to hold onto Hačko’s forearm like a rabid dog, hoping her sight would improve before the woman could get a shot off.
Hačko got to her feet, yanking and twisting, trying to dislodge Vail’s grip. But Vail held on and kept the Beretta pointed away from her.
Her vision started to clear—as did her thoughts. She slammed the heel of her boot onto the top of Hačko’s foot, and the woman recoiled in pain. Vail yanked the handgun away and swung it, backhanded, into Hačko’s face.
The woman went down hard.
“Now,” Vail said, “we’re gonna have a little talk.”
And if I’ve got a broken nose, it’s not gonna be a pleasant chat.
As she backed away to retrieve her SIG, a gunshot rang out.
DESANTOS INCHED CLOSER to the warehouse entrance, listening for people talking. At this time of night in an industrial district, there was no reason to expect company—and thus little need to keep quiet.
He heard equipment moving around, but no voices.
If his reasoning was sound, that meant Hačko was either in another area of the building, or she was somewhere else on the grounds.
With Karen?
Fiqar was on his list of men to eliminate, per Buck’s orders. But were those orders still valid? What if Fiqar had valuable information that Buck did not want DeSantos to elicit? No—Uzi felt that the text placing them at Walpole’s originated elsewhere. How sure was he? For now, until they were certain, he had to operate on the assumption that his “facts” were at best unverified.
DeSantos stood just outside the entrance, poised to enter, his back against the wall, the SIG in his hands. He waited, listened, then swung around the edge and found himself twenty feet away from Emir Dhul Fiqar.
“Don’t move,” DeSantos said.
But Fiqar either did not listen or did not understand English, because he did in fact move. He reached for the shiny silver pistol in his waistband.
And DeSantos shot him.
“TURN AROUND,” Vail said.
Hačko did as instructed.
“Shove your hands in your back pockets and don’t even think about taking them out.”
Vail grabbed a handful of Hačko’s hair and pushed her forward, using her as a shield as they moved in the direction of the gunshot. It sounded like it had come from up ahead. But in the darkness, she could not see DeSantos—or anyone else.
After turning the corner of a building, Vail saw light spilling out from an open warehouse door.
DeSantos appeared a second later, SIG at the ready.
“Don’t shoot,” Vail said, worrying that he would see Hačko and not realize that she was behind her.
“You okay?”
“Bitch broke my nose. Otherwise I’m fine.”
DeSantos approached. He looked over Hačko as a drill sergeant would appraise a recruit—disdain on his face, superiority in his body language: she was trash, and he was in charge. “Tell us where the ricin is.”
“We know one of the stores is here,” Vail said. “That’s why
you’re
here, isn’t it?”
“The other store,” DeSantos said. “The third one. That’s what we need to find.”
Hačko turned away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
DeSantos got into her face. “Yes, you do. And you’re going to tell me. Or I’m going to start breaking bones in your body. One by one, until you do.”
Hačko faced him. Defiance in her eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“We’re not the police,” DeSantos said. “We’re not going to arrest you. But we are going to leave here with what we came for.”
A small smile teased her lips.
DeSantos tilted his head. “You think I won’t hurt you because you’re a woman.” He snorted. “But you’re not a woman. To me, you’re a terrorist dedicated to killing innocent people. All I care about is the information I need to stop the attack. And that’s what you’re gonna give me.
Now
.”
Vail took a deep breath. She could not undermine DeSantos by showing resistance to his plan. But since she heard a gunshot, and Hector was here and Fiqar was not, it was reasonable to assume that Fiqar was dead and could not be questioned.
That’s why he’s leaning so hard on Hačko.
“I can’t see how it matters,” Hačko said. “You don’t have long. That last stock is our largest. Even if I told you where it was, it’d be too late.”
DeSantos’s eyes flicked over to Vail’s.
Is he telling me he has no choice, and that he hopes I’ll forgive him for what he’s about to do?
He punched Hačko in the abdomen, a quick, sharp thrust. She doubled over and dropped to her knees.
Vail held up a hand for him to stop. She gestured toward the warehouse with her head. Then she crouched beside Hačko, who was on all fours trying to catch her breath. “Nikola. Emir Fiqar’s your lover, isn’t he?”
No response—which was answer enough for Vail. She looked up at DeSantos, hoping he could read her expression, understand what she was trying to tell him.
“You’ve got it wrong,” DeSantos said. “It’s not us who’s running out of time, it’s you. Your boyfriend’s in that warehouse with a bad gunshot wound. But it’s not too late. Tell me what we want to know and we’ll get him to a hospital.”