Watchlist (36 page)

A skitter. Rats.

A drip of something on her neck. Water.

A smell of something dead and close.

The blow came from the left, aimed at her bad shoulder. But she was quick enough to jerk away so the wine bottle hit her upper arm instead.

Tesla gritted her teeth against the pain and gripped the gun tighter.

A crash over her head and she was sprayed with glass and doused in something cold. Another bottle exploded and she shut her eyes against the sting of the wine in her face.

Nearby, a slap of wood against wood and Tesla saw Jana fleeing out a service door. Struggling to control the pain, struggling to breathe, the wounded woman followed her assailant as quickly as she could.

The foot pursuit, south through subdued streets of upscale townhouses and private hotels, seemed to last forever and ended only when Jana streaked across L’avenue de New York, making for Pont d’Alma. But despite her pain and exhaustion, Tesla closed in. And just as Jana made it to the bridge, she collapsed. Unable to see any further, hiding the gun, Tesla hurried through the traffic, heading directly for her assailant.

Jana managed to pull herself to her feet. She glanced up and saw that Tesla had now crossed the road and was getting closer.

Resignation and despair filled Jana’s dark face.

Had Tesla not been in such pain, had she not seen in vivid memory the young NATO soldier’s arm shredded by the blast Jana had ordered, had she not known what carnage this woman was capable of, she might’ve felt pity for her.

But Jana’s face clearly explained that she knew the end had come and that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be tortured any longer. She glanced over the side of the Pont d’Alma toward the Seine and noticed the approach of one of the famed
bateaux mouches
—the “fly boats” that take tourists up and down the river. Jana’s eyes met Tesla’s and they struggled up the railing of the bridge.

“No!” Tesla cried, thrusting out her hand.

Jana hesitated only a moment and then tumbled into the murky water, directly into the path of a boat. Tesla saw her vanish under the prow.

The ship passed, the captain unaware of the tragedy. The tour guide’s voice echoed uninterrupted over the water. Tesla waited only a moment until she could see in the wake the outline of the woman’s torso, floating on her belly, arms outstretched, head bent completely under the brown water.

A police car was just arriving as Tesla returned to the Queen Elizabeth hotel. She detoured to the impasse entrance and went upstairs. The door to their room wasn’t locked.

“She’s gone,” Tesla whispered. “Dead.”

Charley was curled on the sofa, hugging her knees. She looked up at Tesla, face ashen.

“It won’t stop,” she said.

Tesla set the gun on a table. Charley was in shock. She went and sat down next to her.

“It’s OK, Charley,” Tesla said.

“It won’t stop.”

“I know. But—”

“The phone,” Charley said. “It won’t stop.”

Tesla’s whole body ached and her head was spinning. But she realized that Charley was staring at something on the carpet. It was Jana’s cell phone.

Tesla picked it up. The screen showed five calls and three messages. “Did you answer it?” she asked.

Charley just shook her head.

Tesla quickly scrolled through the calls. All from the same number but she didn’t recognize it. She punched in the message retrieval. The first one was in Hindu, unreadable to her. But the second was in French: ÒU ÊTES-TU?

It was the third one that made her stop. It translated to REPORT CM MISSION STATUS.

CM? Charlotte Middleton? But what was the mission?

Tesla hesitated then punched in a text response in French: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Immediately, the cell hummed then the message appeared: ALIVE OR DEAD?

So there was her answer. It was Harold’s daughter they wanted. But why? Then she realized that she hadn’t heard from Harold since he left—from either his regular cell or his encrypted one. Which meant he had either been apprehended—or killed. One call to Charley or her would have pinpointed their locations. Harold did not want his daughter’s whereabouts discovered.

Tesla looked over at Charley, rocking slowly back and forth.

Bait, a distraction. That is what Charley was. They wanted to use her against her father somehow. She was his one weakness and if Harold thought she was in danger, they knew he would do anything to get to her.

Suddenly, Tesla knew what she had to do.

She punched in a text response. CM DEAD.

Tesla shut her eyes, waiting for the response. When it came, her blood chilled.

SEND PROOF.

Again, she looked to Charley. Could she do this? Could she get this shattered young woman to help?

Tesla went to the sofa and took Charley’s hands in hers. “Charley, I need you to listen to me,” she said gently.

Charley just looked up at her.

“Charley, I need to take a picture of you.”

“Picture?”

Tesla scanned the wreckage of the room. She spotted the bloody blouse she had used as a gag on Jana. “Help me, quickly,” she said.

Leading Charley by the hand, she picked up the blouse and took Charley over to where Jana had been sitting. “Put this on,” Tesla said.

Charley recoiled. “What?”

“Please, Charley, we don’t have much time.”

“Why? What—”

“Charley, this will help your father. It will help Harry.”

“Harry?”

“Put the blouse on.”

Charley shook her head. “No, not unless you tell me why. Where’s Harry? What’s happened to him?”

Tesla bit back her impatience. She quickly told Charley that her father was in Russia and that he couldn’t do what he needed to do unless he believed she was safe.

“Then why do you want him to think I’m dead?”

“Not your father. I want whoever sent Jana after you to think you’re dead. Your father has to be able to . . . to do what he needs to do. Can you understand that?”

Charley looked away.

“Charley, do you trust me?”

She nodded slowly but wouldn’t look at her.

“Then please do what I’m asking you to do. Please.”

Charley took the bloody blouse and slipped it over her t-shirt. But then she stopped and went to the desk.

“Charley?”

She scribbled something with bold strokes of a felt pen and brought the paper back to Tesla. “Put this in the picture,” she said.

Tesla took it. Charley had written three words: GREEN LANTERN. EVAC.

“What is this?”

“When I was little, Harry and I made up a code in case I ever got in trouble. Mom thought it was stupid but we . . . ” Her eyes filled with tears. “Green Lantern is our favorite comic book hero. ‘Evac’ means I’ve gone somewhere safe to wait for him to come get me.”

Tesla hesitated then wrapped Charley in a hug.

It took just minutes to position Charley for the photograph. She posed, slumped against the wall, with the backdrop of Jana’s blood on the wall and carpet. Tesla positioned the note so it looked like a harmless piece of paper spilled from a waste basket.

Tesla was sending the photograph by the time Charley emerged with her suitcase. Downstairs, they hurried out the kitchen, avoiding the quickly expanding crowd around the dead clerk in the lobby.

A plan was already forming in Tesla’s head. She would send Charley on the first plane to the States. Once Charley was safe, she would find a way to get to Harold.

Jana’s cell buzzed. As they exited the hotel and started along rue Pierre 1er de Serbie, Tesla glanced at the cell’s screen.

One word in English:

BEAUTIFUL.

13

BRETT BATTLES

“
Y
ou must know what Sikari has in mind,” Harold Middleton said to Chernayev. His blood had run cold when the Russian had told him the U.S. secretary of state would be visiting the Baglihar dam. He told the man about the email message from Sikari to Kavi Balan—the plan for the Village. To blow up the dam with the thermobarics explosives from Florida. Middleton now understood.

Chernayev seemed to consider Middleton for a moment. “Sikari is dead,” he said.

“Dead?” The American gasped.

“By his own arrogance, from what I understand. A man he called his adopted son has assumed control of Sikari’s interests. Sikari’s interests were in the dam itself. It is the son, Archer, who has seen the opportunity the secretary of state’s visit will create.”

Middleton stared at nothing, stunned by the news. The whole point of the Volunteers’ mission was to find Sikari and bring the war criminal to justice. And yet even with the man gone, it seemed more horrifying events were now in motion.

“But you’re responsible, Chernayev. You sold him the explosives.”

“No! My companies sell explosives, yes. And I shipped some to the site of the dam, along with a lot of other materials. I’m a partner in the construction project.”

“Thermobarics are military grade.”

Chernayev gave a faint smile. “That’s why I had to ship them in a, let’s say, circuitous route. My engineers didn’t want to use TNT. The foundation work takes forever. They wanted the real thing.”

“Well, that real thing is going to be used to blow the Village to smithereens.”

Chernayev grimaced. “You traced me through a company of ours in Tampa, right? Sindhu Power.”

“That’s right.”

“Before we closed it up, we were robbed. Explosives were stolen.”

That explained why Sikari was interested in the place. And why the thieves had left the bomb that killed Jean-Marc Lespasse.

“Still, you funded Sikari’s education.”

“Ah, the past . . . the past. How I wish we could change it. Yes, I recognized him as brilliant, one of the sharpest young men I’ve ever known. I wanted him to work for me, creating lower cost nuclear energy for developing countries. We had a falling out. I didn’t like where he was going. He wasn’t interested in peaceful use of heavy metal. He was interested in weapons. But would he listen? No. Like so many young idealists, he wanted to go back to his home country and fight for independence.”

“And the technology that the Group is after?”

“What Sikari developed was based on the old Nazi copper-bracelet theory. But what he created was only partially successful. It wouldn’t operate as a super-generator the way he wanted . . . Look, I’m a businessman, Colonel Middleton. I make more money off the living than the dead. If something happens to the American secretary of state, it’s not just war in the Indian sub-continent we will need to worry about.”

Harold Middleton wasn’t sure he believed everything the Russian said, but it was true that if the secretary were assassinated the whole world would reel from the repercussions.

If this Archer Sikari were truly moving forward with his father’s plan, then the arrival of the secretary of state would be too irresistible to pass up. One of the goals the secretary had laid out not long after being sworn in was to ease the tensions between India and Pakistan with an emphasis on the troubled region of Kashmir. This was undoubtedly the reason she was traveling to the area.

Middleton said, “We’ve got to contact the State Department immediately.”

“Of course they’ve been notified. But they’re in agreement that the visit should go on. Security is going to be very high—both State Department and my company, BlueWatch. In any case, we have no knowledge that Archer even knows about the visit.”

“Why do you want me to go there?”

“It’s not just me.” The Russian handed Middleton a decoded communiqué from the State Department. He recognized the name of one of the deputy directors. It authorized Middleton and the Volunteers to locate Archer Sikari and coordinate with local authorities to arrest him. A final paragraph added that Tesla, Carson and Chang had been notified and had acknowledged receipt. That meant they were fine.

Middleton noticed the document didn’t say anything about Charley.

“I have to contact my daughter.”

“Encrypted emails only,” Chernayev said. “My compound is constantly scanned for cell and text signals.”

He wrote out a message for Charley. Chernayev gave it to a young man in a BlueWatch uniform. He hurried off to send it.

“Now, will you go to Kashmir?”

“Of course,” Middleton said.

“One of my men will take you to a room where you can get some rest. Arrangements are being worked out now and as soon as everything is ready, you will be on your way.” He held out his hand to Middleton. “I wish you a safe and successful journey.”

Middleton looked at the Scorpion’s hand, then reluctantly reached out and shook it.

As Archer knew he would, Sanam had called him to tell him that they were ready to carry out the plan. Archer had already set in motion the delivery of the explosives through his American subcontractors. Within 36 hours, Sanam’s men had begun placing the charges in the pre-determined locations within the dam.

Archer felt extremely satisfied. The only thing left to be determined was where he was going to be at the time of the big event. The dam was located in a mountainous rural area, but there were plenty of places he could choose where he would be able to see the dam as it crumbled into a useless pile of cement, carrying the secretary of state to her death.

Most of the locations were only reachable by helicopter, but that wasn’t a problem for him. With his father’s fortune now at his disposal, he could purchase a fleet of helicopters if need be.

He could feel the power that was rippling just below his skin. It was an electrical force he could only dream about before. On all those nights when he and Harris shared a room, and after his brother had fallen asleep, Archer had let his mind imagine this very moment—this time when he would be in charge. When he would be the power.

If there was one thing that troubled him, it was Jana. She was his sword and his lover, but he hadn’t heard her voice in over two days, not since before she had forwarded him the photographic proof that Charlotte Middleton was dead.

Too bad for that. He had hoped they would have been able to take Harold Middleton’s daughter alive. But better dead than running free.

Jana sent a text that said she would come to him as soon as she could, but that a member of Harold Middleton’s Volunteers was trailing her, so she would have to take care of that problem first.

He so wanted to call her, but refrained. Their procedure was to avoid voice contact. This had been Archer’s idea. He wanted no one to know what his voice sounded like. Even with the absolute best encryption, there was always a chance that someone somewhere would be able to break it.

Archer’s power would rest in his ability to remain a ghost, feared and unknown.

So until she arrived, he would have to content himself with the anticipation of having her at his side.

Something he was already practiced at doing.

“We have a problem,” Umer whispered to Sanam.

They were sitting in a small restaurant in a village 20 kilometers from the Baglihar dam. The restaurant was really the front room of a dilapidated shack. The rest of the shack served as the home for the family that ran the place.

At the moment, Sanam and Umer were the only customers. The young boy who had been serving them had gone into the back to leave them in peace while they ate.

“What is it?” Sanam asked.

“The remote controls for the detonators.”

“What about them?”

“They don’t work.”

Sanam froze for a moment, startled by his old friend’s words. “They are defective?”

“Not exactly. When we put them inside the dam, there is too much concrete. The signal must not be getting through.”

“But they work otherwise?”

“I had one of the men smuggle a remote back out and I tried it. Outside, it worked fine.”

The idea of eating no longer appealed to Sanam. Everything they had been working toward, the years of infiltration and manual labor, all the pressure he’d put his men under for the last two days, it was all for nothing. And the opportunity they were going to squander, undone by something as simple as a blocked radio signal. How could this have even happened?

“The American,” Umer said, “we shouldn’t have trusted him. He’s given us equipment he should have known would not work.”

Sanam could see murder in his friend’s eyes. “Calm down, Umer. There’s still time. I’ll talk to him and get remotes that will work.”

“And if they are faulty too?”

“We will deal with that if it happens.”

“I don’t like this,” Umer said, his unhappiness still written on his face.

The sound of shuffling feet from the back of the restaurant announced the return of the serving boy. He approached their table to ask if they wanted anything else.

“Nothing more, thank you,” Sanam said.

As soon as the boy had cleared the dishes and returned to the back, Umer said, “I tell you I don’t like this.”

“And I tell you that I understand,” Sanam said. “I am not happy about this either. I will talk to the American and I will see what can be done.”

Middleton’s eyes flew open.

What the hell was that?

He’d been dead asleep, then something pulled him out of it so fast his heart raced. A dream? If it was, it would have been the most intense one he’d had in years. What then?

He reached over to the nightstand and checked his watch.

It was 4:09 a.m.

Middleton knew he should try to go back to sleep. Lying there awake would only drive him crazy. As he started to close his eyes he heard a muffled pop. Then another, and another.

Gunfire. It was coming from the front of the estate.

He pushed himself up instantly knowing there must have been an earlier shot, a shot that would have pulled him out of his sleep.

He threw his covers back, but before he could even push himself out of bed, he heard the rattle of a key. His door flew open.

“Quick! Get dressed. You must hurry!”

It was the guard who had brought him his dinner the evening before, but unlike last night, he was now carrying a machine gun. Behind him was another guard similarly equipped.

Middleton jumped out of bed and felt around for his clothes in the semi-darkness.

Outside the gunfire intensified. It was hard to tell how close it was, but the fact that there were two guards anxiously waiting for him to get dressed told Middleton all he needed to know.

As he pulled on his final shoe, the first guard said, “Come. Come.”

He grabbed Middleton by the arm and shoved him into the hallway.

“That way!”

The guard pulled him forward and started to run. Middleton had no choice but to do the same. From elsewhere in the house, he could hear people yelling orders and feet racing down other hallways.

The guard whipped him around a corner then angled toward a wide stone stairway. Instinctively, Middleton veered for the flight leading down, but the guard yanked him to the left.

“No. Up. Up.”

They took the stairs two at a time, racing upward, not stopping until they reached an open metal door. Beyond it, Middleton could see the night sky and the flat surface of the mansion’s roof.

As they stepped through the door, the intensity of the gunfire increased.

“This is a dead end,” Middleton said. “What are we doing—”

Suddenly another sound drowned out the sound of the bullets. It was loud, rhythmic and familiar. Middleton turned in time to see the helicopter rise up from the rear of the mansion just high enough to clear the lip of the roof. He realized it must have flown in low over the rear of Chernayev’s estate, keeping out of sight of the attackers out front.

As soon as it touched down, the side door flew open.

Middleton didn’t wait for instructions. He immediately began heading for the helicopter. As he climbed aboard, the pilot motioned for him to take the seat farthest from the door and strap in.

As soon as his safety harness was buckled, Middleton looked up, and gave the pilot a wave to let him know he was ready.

But the helicopter didn’t move.

The runners remained firmly on the roof.

Then movement beyond the open door caught Middleton’s attention. Someone else had come onto the roof. But this had barely registered on Middleton when the sky flared bright from a large explosion. The noise was deafening, even momentarily overpowering the sound of the rotors.

The moment the noise subsided, he leaned toward the pilot and yelled, “We’ve got to go!”

“Yes, Kiril. It’s time.”

Middleton turned toward the sound of the voice. Pulling himself through the doorway was Chernayev.

As soon as the Scorpion was seated, the helicopter took off. It left as it had arrived, flying low away from the firefight.

Once he felt reasonably sure they weren’t going to get shot down, Middleton looked over at Chernayev. “What was that?”

“My apologies,” Chernayev said. “Seems we didn’t get all of them the other day.”

“The Group?”

Chernayev shrugged. “Of course.”

Middleton sat silently for several moments. “So where we going?” “Same destination I told you about. India. The only difference is that I’ve decided to come with you.”

The doctor had asked no questions. He was used to the kind of patients that appeared at his back door with any number of injuries from broken ribs to third-degree burns to knife wounds. So when Tesla showed up with a gunshot wound to one shoulder and Charley Middleton propping her up by the other, he had not even flinched. He had merely quoted a price, then did what he could to repair the damage.

Afterward, the two women took a room in a small hotel near the Latin Quarter where they hid out, venturing into the streets only when it was necessary. Most trips were for food, but once they had appropriated a laptop. The owner, probably a student, had left it unattended in a café near the Sorbonne while he went to the toilet. Charley only agreed to help if Tesla promised they would later find the student and return it when they were done. She then kept watch while Tesla slipped it into an oversized bag and casually walked out to the street.