Jim Randal and Josh Sutter were in the hotel bar sipping on a couple of draft beers. They were cool, clearly disenchanted with their State Department accountant. 'Missed you this morning,' Josh Sutter told him without meeting his gaze.
'Late night.'
'Whatever.'
'What's the problem, guys?'
'We can't figure out what you're doing,' Randal said, his rough Queens dialect ripping out of his throat. 'You don't want to talk to the investigators. You don't tell us what you're up to. You want this telephone number and then, when you get it, you take off to buy yourself a threesome!' Randal had been rehearsing this.
Sutter, the good cop to Randal's bad, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands together. His tone was conciliatory. 'Look, T. K., the thing is we're getting a lot of questions we can't answer.'
'From the Germans?'
'From our supervisor in New York. It's like. . . are you really
here
, are you working this thing? I mean what's up?'
'Jack Farrell has put himself in Helena Chernoff's hands.'
'Tell us something we don't know,' Randal grumbled.
'Once I find out how he made contact with her I'll have Farrell
and
Chernoff, but this much I guarantee: Hans isn't going to be able to help me with that.'
Randal wasn't satisfied. 'What about the money? I thought that was your
specialty
. Forensic accountant, right?'
'What if I told you I've got a chance to find Farrell tonight, maybe even take him down?'
Josh Sutter's face lost its tension. Jim Randal wasn't as confident. 'You don't play that card without giving us something real. Tell us what you're doing. Have you got something or is this just another Chinese dinner?'
Malloy shook his head. 'It can't go on paper, gentlemen.'
Malloy waited for the agents to look at one another, but he was disappointed this time. They were both staring at him as if he had just committed blasphemy. In their world everything went on paper.
'You think you can find Jack Farrell tonight?' Sutter asked. A vein started ticking in his neck. The spook had something, and he loved it.
Malloy nodded but said nothing else.
'What's the catch?' Randal asked.
'The catch is I don't want the Germans involved.'
Sutter laughed. 'Seeing as how we're in the middle of Germany that might be kind of hard to do!'
'You want to take the guy home or leave Without him?' Malloy asked.
Randal swore as his eyes swept round the room. 'Who are
you working for, T. K.? Because I'm sure not buying this accountant nonsense!'
'Listen to me. The Germans aren't giving up Jack Farrell. If they arrest him, they'll keep him.' It was a cold-blooded lie, but Randal and Sutter didn't know that. From their perspective losing Jack Farrell to the Germans was nothing short of disaster.
'Hey,' Randal answered, hot suddenly at someone besides Malloy. 'Farrell is
ours!'
'If the Germans get involved he's theirs.'
Josh Sutter shook his head. 'Hans told us—'
'The minute they arrest Jack Farrell
Hans
is going to disappear. You'll be meeting with guys who don't understand English. To make a long story a sad one, you'll fly home without Jack Farrell and the U.S. Attorney will get an earful about all the German laws Farrell broke when he came into the country under an alias.'
'Why would they want to keep the guy?' Josh Sutter asked.
Malloy smiled, 'I can give you half-a-billion reasons, but the short answer is because they can. It has happened before, and you both know it.'
'But Hans said—'
'Hans is telling you what his handlers tell him to tell you.'
They were both suddenly angry, but they believed him. They didn't want to, but they did, and they also knew there wasn't anything they could do about it if the Germans wanted to charge Jack Farrell in a German court of law.
'On the other hand,' Malloy told them, 'you pitch in with the take-down when and if it happens, and I'll get your man on American soil before the Germans even know we've got him.'
Josh Sutter took this one. 'How? How are you going to do that, T. K.? Are you going to put him in your suitcase?'
'We've got over a dozen U.S. military bases a few hours south of here. U.S. soil, gentleman. We get Jack Farrell to one of those and he's
ours.'
'Tonight?'
Sutter asked.
'Maybe tonight. Maybe at dawn. Maybe tomorrow night. Right now I'm still a step away. Nothing is certain. But if something breaks it's going to be after midnight, and I am going to need to know if I can count on you or not.'
'What are you talking about?' Randal asked. 'I mean what exactly are you asking us to do?'
'I have two people I'm using for the extraction and one person watching our backs. I'm not sure one person is going to be enough for that. What I'm worried about is we go in to get him and Chernoff brings a second line of defence in behind us. I need you on the perimeter to let us know if that is happening and how bad it looks. We'll handle what they throw at us, I don't need fire power, but we need some advance notice if they are coming. And that will be your job.'
The two men looked at one another. 'How solid is your lead?' Jim Randal asked.
'It's promising. Worse case scenario, it comes to nothing, but if something good happens, and I think it might, I'm not going to have time to explain myself. I'm going to need you two - or I'm going to have to do this on my own and hope I don't get sucked into a trap. If that's my only option, so be it, but you're not going to take credit for the arrest. On the other hand, if you pitch in, I'll crawl back into the woodwork and you two can take all the credit.'
Jim Randal looked at his partner again and then at Malloy. 'I appreciate your levelling with us.'
'I'm glad you do, because I just put you in the middle of a criminal conspiracy.'
Both men looked as if they had been tapped in the jaw.
'If you want out, you had better call Hans and tell him what I just told you. Otherwise, you are a part of this, whether or not you do anything tonight.'
'Nobody is calling Hans,' Sutter answered.
'If we get Farrell,' Malloy told him, 'and the Germans figure out what happened, which they will once they have enough time to look at the situation, they'll ask for you both to be
extradited and brought back here to stand trial. Of course in New York you two are going to be a couple of heroes and absolutely no one is going to want to give you to the Germans.'
They looked at one another, weighing the risks against the rewards. It was dangerous work and Malloy didn't care for them to get halfway into the thing before they realised this was a criminal matter. 'What are the Germans going to do if they bust us?' Josh Sutter asked.
'They'll make a lot of threats - you know how cops are - but if you give them what they want, they'll let you go home. Of course they won't ever let you come back. . .'
'I can live with that,' Randal answered. 'What are they going to want?'
'Me. But that's fine. If the police end up in the middle of this thing, it will be my fault. You can tell the Germans everything you know and no hard feelings.'
'What are they going to do to
you?'
'Don't worry about me. I do this for a living.'
They looked at each other again. No way were they going to flinch - not if they could take Jack Farrell back to New York in handcuffs. 'We're in,' Randal said.
'What I need from you tonight is to be ready for a call. Sometime between midnight and dawn - be dressed and ready to move the minute you hear my voice. He handed Randal a slip of paper with an address and cell phone number. Come to that address. It's a bar. One of you come inside and sit down and have a drink. The other needs to stay in the car and keep it running. Are you both armed?'
'We've got a provisional license,' Randal told him, 'but Hans said it's like our ass if we actually have to draw our weapons - unless it's really a life-threatening situation.'
'If we get into that kind of trouble, we're not going to be explaining it to the Germans. We'll take care of business and then go underground and wait for the cavalry. And if anything happens to me. . Malloy tapped the cell phone number he had written down on the slip of paper he had given Randal, 'call this number. The person who answers will get you out of the country.'
'Does he have a name?' Randal asked.
'Sure she does, but you don't need to know it. Just call her if you're on your own and do exactly what she tells you to do. For now, get something to eat and try to get some sleep before midnight. . . and be ready to leave everything behind if it comes to that.'
'You mean our luggage?' Josh Sutter was concerned.
'I'll reimburse you for everything or I'll have it retrieved if it's possible, but if you've got something you don't want to lose get it down to your car now. And. . . it's probably a good idea to switch your plates with someone else in the parking garage.'
'That's a felony,' Jim Randal told him.
He wasn't joking, but Malloy smiled and stood up to leave, 'Think they can extradite you for it?'
Malloy had two helpings of spaghetti at a mom and pop Italian restaurant and a couple of glasses of red wine to take the edge off. He didn't bother with coffee afterwards. On the walk to his Neustadt hotel, Dale Perry called. 'The lawyer was in town this afternoon - at his office for a few hours,' Dale said. 'He's been at the house all evening.'
'Great. I'll get by to see him in a couple of hours. Did you find anything on those phone numbers I asked you to look into?'
'I'm still waiting to hear from my contact.'
The Do Not Disturb sign was hanging on Malloy's door, exactly as he had left it, but one corner had been bent down, so Malloy knocked. A moment later Ethan opened the door. Kate was sitting on the bed. She had obviously been asleep and was trying to come awake. Ethan looked like he hadn't slept for a couple of days.
They were dressed in black jeans and dark sweaters. Malloy
took a peek into one of the two black canvas bags they had tossed on the floor. He saw three AKS-74s, the airborne model of the classic Kalashnikov with the side-folding triangular metal stock, three hand grenades, the butt of an Army Colt and an assortment of ammo and clips, armour, NVGs and tools.
'Where do you get this stuff?' he asked Kate.
She yawned, 'I've got a friend in Zürich.'
'I probably know the guy.' Malloy was a close friend of the Zürich crime boss, a man named Hasan Barzani. He had in fact helped put Barzani at the top of the heap. Barzani was the only person in Zürich he knew who kept this kind of weaponry ready for sale.
Kate smiled. 'I doubt you know
my
guy.'
'I bet I know his source.'
'You probably do, but not my guy. My guy is. . . special.'
'Just so Giancarlo or Luca Bartoli don't know about it.'
'I haven't dealt with them for a long time,' she said and bent over to put her shoes on. 'And definitely not for this.'
Ethan was moving around the room as they spoke, cleaning prints off surfaces. Finished with that, he opened one of the canvas bags and started handing out equipment. He started with gloves and night vision goggles. After that ski masks, Cobra vests, and loose fitting rain slickers to cover them. Finally he handed out Taser stun guns, handcuffs, a few lengths of rope and headsets. The headsets provided basic send and receive communication between the three of them for distances up to three or four hundred metres. They were high quality and picked up a whisper or a breath. They could be turned on or off with the touch of a button on the ear piece.
'Did you get us a car?' Malloy asked.
'There's a parking lot around the corner,' Ethan told him as he grabbed both bags. 'Shouldn't be a problem.'
The hotel entry way was dark as they left. It was just after ten o'clock. The street outside was quiet. At a public parking lot a
couple of blocks away Ethan found a car parked in
the shadows and slipped a long flat blade down between the driver's window and the side of the door. He hooked a wire deep inside the door and gave a slight tug. The lock jumped up, and he opened the door. Kate and Malloy climbed in. Ethan pulled some wires out from under the dash, cut away the rubber coating on a couple of them and then rubbed the raw ends together. The engine groaned and then kicked to life - the whole thing accomplished in an impressive thirty seconds.
From the backseat Malloy said, 'I'm guessing that wasn't your first time.'
'I hate stealing cars,' Ethan told him. 'Too many things can go wrong.' As he said this, a cop car rolled by the entrance to the parking lot.
'I see your point,' Malloy answered.