Rules of Vengeance (27 page)

“I want you to deliver all the pieces you’ve tagged and bagged to the lab,” he said. “Stay on them until they come up with something, then call me. Doesn’t matter what time.”

Baxter stomped off toward the mobile HQ. For the first time in twenty-four hours, he had a smile on his face. It was an ugly, pained smile, but nonetheless, it counted.

Den Baxter had the scent of his prey.

It was only a matter of time until he found them.

   The truck had come to a halt. Jonathan lay still, listening to the hiss of air escaping the brakes and the low-throated rumble as the engine quit and died. The window was open and Jonathan could hear the growl of cars and trucks arriving and departing around them. He waited for the driver to climb from the cabin, but the man remained stubbornly at the wheel, arguing with his dispatcher over a change in his routing. To Hamburg now, farther north than Berlin.

Jonathan edged the blanket from his face. Blinking back the light, he raised his head in order to catch a glimpse of the outside world. He needed to situate himself on a map. They’d been driving for over two hours at what felt like a rapid speed, and he estimated that they’d traveled 200 kilometers at the very least. From his position behind the driver’s seat, he spied the corner of a Shell Oil placard, and beyond it a highway sign offering the distance to Brussels as 16 kilometers. Aachen, in Germany, was another 74, and Cologne, 201. The distances reinforced his impatience. All were too far in the wrong direction. With a full tank, the driver could make it another 600 or 700 kilometers before having to refuel.

Jonathan’s hands twitched with the need to move, yet he forced himself to remain still. He couldn’t afford a confrontation with the driver. Not here, where a dispute would be witnessed by dozens and the likelihood of a policeman’s being nearby was high. He would have to keep hidden longer.

Just then the driver ended his call. But instead of climbing down from the cabin, he turned in his seat and lunged toward the bunk. Jonathan yanked the blanket over his head and held his breath as forceful hands searched among the books, magazines, and papers littering the bed. Finally there came a grunt of satisfaction as the driver found what he was looking for: a logbook barely an inch from Jonathan’s head.

The driver’s door opened and he descended from the cab. Jonathan threw off the blanket and sat up. Gasping, he crawled across the bunk to the passenger door. In the side mirror, he watched the driver unscrew the gas cap, insert the fuel nozzle, then move to the rear of the truck, where he knelt to check the tires’ pressure.

This was the time.

Jonathan moved into the front seat, and opened the passenger door and jumped to the ground. Parked adjacent to him, no more than 2 meters away, was a Peugeot sedan painted with the orange-and-blue insignia of the Belgian police. An officer sat at the wheel. Another uniform was standing nearby, pumping gas and blocking passage toward the front of the truck. Jonathan hesitated, his hand still on the door, then walked in the opposite direction. A moment later the driver rounded the rear of the truck, effectively boxing him in. He looked at Jonathan and said loudly in Italian, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Jonathan approached, smiling. He was aware of the policemen’s gaze and knew that he held their undivided attention. The driver was a grizzled man, fifty or more, and in bad humor after the drawn-out arguments with his wife and his boss. Jonathan thought of the academic tomes, the newspapers. The driver was an intelligent man, to be sure. Only the truth would do.

“I hitched a ride in your truck from England,” he answered, his Italian fluent, if workmanlike. “I apologize. I should have asked, but I was afraid you would say no, and I couldn’t take that chance. I’m broke and I’m trying to get to Rome to see my girlfriend. I saw your plates, so I took a chance.”

“I’m going to Hamburg.”

“Yeah, I heard. That’s why I thought I’d get out here.” Jonathan let his eyes gesture at the police.
“Prego, signor.”

“Where are you from?” the Italian asked in a quieter voice.

It was the defining question. Funny that a man effectively without a country should have to answer it. “America.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jonathan saw a policeman approach.
“Ça va, monsieur?”
he asked the driver.

The driver sniffed, his eyes never leaving Jonathan’s.
“Tout va bien,”
he responded finally.

“Vous êtes certain?”

“Oui.”
The driver knelt and unscrewed the tire pressure gauge. As Jonathan passed, he glanced up. “Your Italian’s not bad for an American,” he said in English. “Now get lost.”

“Thanks.”

Jonathan continued toward the kiosk. With each step he expected the police to call out. They would ask to see his identification papers and discover that he had no passport. They would take his driver’s license instead, and ask him to sit inside the police car while they checked him out. That would be that.

But the policemen said nothing. Jonathan was still a free man. For the time being.

   Inside the kiosk, Jonathan purchased a razor and shaving cream, two oranges, a salami sandwich, mineral water, a toothbrush and toothpaste. The kiosk was part of a larger shopping gallery that spanned the highway. There was a Mövenpick restaurant and a clothing store, some tourist shops, an electronics shop, and several tobacco vendors. He passed from one to the next, purchasing a new pair of pants, a button-down shirt, a windbreaker, and a baseball cap. There was a single-user bathroom. It took him ten minutes to cut his hair and shave it down to a stubble. At last the gray was gone. He applied a self-tanner to his face, careful to blend it naturally with the lighter flesh tones of his neck and chest. Finished, he found a pay phone and called for a taxi.

Fifteen hours had passed since his escape from Graves. He had no doubt that his name already figured high on every fugitive watch list across Europe. But he knew enough about law enforcement, and more about governments and bureaucracies, not to be overly concerned. It would take awhile for his information to be forwarded to hotels, car rental companies, airlines, and the like. At some point Graves would see to it that his credit cards were frozen, too, but all that was in the future.

Jonathan guessed that he had a window of twenty-four hours to get where he needed to go.

He arrived at Brussels airport an hour later. And thirty minutes after that he was signing the papers to rent a mid-size Audi sedan. The clerk slipped the car keys across the desk. “One last question, sir.”

“Yes?” replied Jonathan.

“You do not plan on driving the car to Italy, do you?”

“Is that not permitted?”

“Of course it is permitted, but we would insist on a higher rate of insurance. Alas, there is much theft there. Rental cars are a prime target.”

“How can you tell which one is a rental car?” asked Jonathan.

“By the license numbers. In Belgium, all rental car plates begin with a sixty-seven. It is the same with each country.”

Jonathan digested the information for future use. Then he answered the clerk’s question. “No, I don’t plan on going to Italy,” he lied. “In fact, I’m going to Germany. Hamburg. I’ve heard it’s lovely.”

“I wish you a safe journey, Dr. Ransom,” said the clerk.

Jonathan nodded and left the counter. Emma had taught him well.

   “Five days
. We
don’t know where, when, or how. Only that Robert Russell suspected an impending attack of some kind at a nuclear plant and that he was the nearest thing we have to a seer.” Charles Graves walked briskly across the tarmac toward the waiting aircraft, hands buried in his pockets. A fitful wind blew off the ocean, flinging sea spume into the air. It was nearly two in the afternoon, and despite a clear sky and brilliant sun, the air was chill.

“I do know one thing,” said Kate.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve been wrong all along.”

“About what exactly?”

“Everything.”

Graves pulled up. “I’ll grant you we’ve been a step behind, but I wouldn’t say we’ve been wrong.”

“Really? Then tell me this: who was Emma Ransom after? Ivanov or Mischa Dibner?”

“Ivanov, obviously. And I have a car bomb packed with twenty kilos of grade-A Semtex to prove it.”

“But didn’t Russell think the attack was going to be against Mischa Dibner? I mean, she was the one he’d spoken to about it.”

“His intelligence was incomplete. Happens all the time. He missed one this time. So what?”

“What if we’re both wrong? Remember the clue ‘Victoria Bear’? Maybe that was the target. The Department of Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform. That’s where the UK Safeguards Office is housed and where the emergency meeting with the IAEA was scheduled to take place.”

“And Interior Minister Ivanov? How do you explain his timely arrival at the scene?”

“I can’t,” said Kate. “I’m not there yet. Let’s stay with Mischa. She was inside the building at the time of the blast, but she didn’t stay there. She couldn’t have done.”

Graves nodded, his eyes saying that he was beginning to see where Kate was headed. “How so?”

“The law. In case of a blast or a terrorist act, the law calls for the mandatory evacuation of government buildings in the vicinity. You saw Victoria Street five minutes after the car went up.”

“A bloody debacle. Looked as if half London worked inside those buildings.”

“Exactly. And I’m willing to wager that Mischa and her team from the IAEA were among them.”

“Do we know that for certain?” Graves was no longer doubting, but playing devil’s advocate.

“No.” Kate spoke slowly and with great care. She was walking on quicksand and she knew it. “What if Emma Ransom just wanted to force Mischa and her team out of the building?”

“And the attack on Ivanov was the means to do it?”

“Precisely.”

“Which means there must have been something pretty valuable inside that she wanted to get her hands on.”

“Something that Mischa and her team from the IAEA had brought with them.”

Graves pulled his cell phone from his jacket and placed a call. “Get me Major Evans, Department K.”

Kate stayed at Graves’s side. Department K of MI5 was in charge of protective security for all government offices in the British capital.

“Hello, Blackie. Charlie Graves. Listen, I’ve got you on my cell’s speaker. A bit windy here, so if you could speak up, it would help. I’m with DCI Kate Ford of the Met. We’re tracking down a lead on yesterday’s bombing. Quick question. Anything odd come up during or after the evacuation of our people at One Victoria Street? Department of Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform? Theft of some kind?”

“You could say that,” came a clipped upper-crust voice. “All hell’s breaking loose down here. During the evacuation someone got into the offices of the nuclear safeguards people and nicked some high-grade stuff.”

“Can you give me some more detail?”

“Officially some briefcases and travel bags were lifted from a meeting room on the third floor.”

“Did they belong to the team from the International Atomic Energy Agency?”

“How the devil did you know? The meeting was supposed to be very hush-hush.”

“Go on, Blackie. What was in those briefcases?”

“Take me off speaker,” said Evans.

Graves deactivated the speaker. Kate watched with alarm as his face grew taut. He thanked his colleague and hung up.

“What is it?” demanded Kate. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No one gives a damn about the briefcases and travel bags that went missing. It’s what was inside them. Someone made off with several laptops belonging to the members of the IAEA’s Safety and Security Division.”

“Emma Ransom.”

“Who else?”

“So why the concern? Precisely what was in the laptops?”

Graves swallowed hard and fixed her with a doleful gaze. “Bloody everything.”

   Lev Timken was not a man that you would care to observe making love. To begin with, he was obese. He was also short, ugly, and as hairy as a Mingrelian bear. But these unappealing physical attributes were nothing compared to his primal grunting. In the throes of passion, the man produced a gut-curdling bark that would make a horny elephant seal blush.

“Can’t you turn down the sound?” demanded Sergei Shvets.

From his position in the backseat of his BMW stretch sedan, Shvets enjoyed an unimpeded view of the advanced communications center built into the dashboard. At that moment the monitor was displaying a high-definition picture broadcast from Timken’s bedroom. “Sound and light,” as the men in Directorate S called it. Shvets had installed similar surveillance systems in one hundred apartments around the city. It was necessary to keep an eye on your adversaries.

His driver obediently lowered the volume.

“Christ, look at him,” said Shvets. “I believe that I’m doing the women of Moscow a favor. He has enough blubber on him to supply a village with oil to last a Siberian winter.”

“And enough fur to make a dozen coats.”

Shvets was parked across the street from Lev Timken’s apartment building on Kutuzovksy Prospekt. The building dated from the 1930s, when Stalin was on his quest to westernize Moscow, and it would not have looked out of place off the Étoile in Paris or the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin.

Timken had made his fortune in the halcyon days of the ’90s, a KGB colonel in charge of weapons procurement and production. When the Communist Party ceased to exist, he claimed ownership of a raft of factories producing everything from bullets to bombers and sold their output to the highest bidder, usually budding African despots in need of a competitive advantage to oust their rivals from power. In short order Timken traded his uniform for a business suit and departed Army Southern Command in the unglamorous city of Minsk for the private sector and a shot at the big time in Moscow, or “the Center,” which was how Russians referred to their nation’s capital.