Shadow of Doubt, page 5
Crouching down, she inspected the revolver. It was a Manurhin MR 73, chambered in .357 Magnum. The wooden grips were worn and the weapon itself was scratched up. It was an old gun that had been around. Parts of it appeared to have some sort of gunk on it. She didn’t have to touch it to know what it was. She had a pretty good idea what she was looking at.
Straightening up, she withdrew her flashlight and opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink. It only took a moment to find it. Underneath the counter were the strips of duct tape that had been used to hold the weapon in place.
Jadot had obviously known he was in trouble, but whatever had gone down, he hadn’t been able to get the upper hand.
Examining the corpse, she saw the same tacky tape residue from the pistol where Jadot’s shirt met the top of his trousers. At some point, he must have tucked the revolver into his waistband.
After taking one last look around, Brunelle exited the kitchen. At the front of the apartment, she saw Vincent chatting with the evidence techs.
For a moment she thought about letting him know what she was up to, but then decided against it. The last thing she wanted was him trying to accompany her.
She took the stairs to the ground floor, crossed the vestibule, and pushed the electronic door release, which allowed her to step out onto the sidewalk. The moment she did, she was reminded why owning a car in Paris was such a pain in the ass. Parking, especially in some of the older neighborhoods like the Marais, was almost nonexistent.
Jadot’s street was too narrow for parking, so she’d have to try some of the wider streets nearby, like the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and the Rue des Archives. If she didn’t get lucky on any of the immediate streets, she’d have to google the neighborhood parking garages. To make things even more difficult, the break they had been granted in the weather was going to end soon. More rain would be moving in.
She was noting the position of security cameras outside the apartment building, wishing she’d packed an umbrella, when her phone chimed. It was a text from her colleague back at the DGSI. The vehicle registry search had been a bust. According to their records, Jean-Jacques Jadot didn’t own a car.
After texting back a thank you, Brunelle made a mental list of possibilities. The most likely was that it was a rental or might belong to a friend. The lack of a plastic tag wired to the fob with the details of the rental agency made her lean toward the latter. Either way, she was going to have to walk up and down the streets, and in and out of parking garages, pressing the unlock button until she heard a chirp and saw a pair of headlights blink.
It would help if she at least knew what make of car she was searching for. Renault? Peugeot? Mercedes? Nissan?
Removing the fob from her pocket, she turned it over in her hand. That’s weird, she thought. There was no logo.
She didn’t own a car herself, but she had driven plenty of them. Automakers branded everything. She couldn’t recall ever seeing a fob without a car company’s logo.
Looking at it some more, she wondered if maybe it was a replacement—something from a third-party vendor. Taking her phone back out, she snapped a photo, opened her browser, and did a reverse image search. A fraction of a second later, the results loaded.
It turned out not to be a remote key fob at all. It was only designed to look like one. In reality it was a USB flash drive. She had a decision to make. It took her less than a second.
Since Vincent had already laid claim to Jadot’s phone, she had no qualms about “liberating” the fob. A healthy division of labor, she told herself, was good in any high-profile investigation.
While she understood that it was important that they share information, she also understood what kind of a man Vincent was. She’d be as forthcoming with him as he was with her. And she’d do it on her timetable.
The sooner she figured out who had murdered Jean-Jacques Jadot, the better. She just hoped Vincent was wrong. If the killing was related to the intelligence officer’s work, there was no telling what kind of a Pandora’s box they might be opening.
CHAPTER 8
OSLO
The safehouse was hidden in the middle of one of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods, Tjuvholmen.
Roughly translated, the word meant “isle of thieves,” which was exactly what it had been for hundreds of years—a small island where pirates, cutthroats, and other ne’er-do-wells set up shop in hopes of escaping the long arm of the law.
Now connected by a series of bridges, Tjuvholmen and the adjacent Aker Brygge area boasted some of Oslo’s hottest restaurants, bars, nightclubs, museums, boutiques, apartments, condos, and townhouses.
Wrapped within shimmering glass and steel structures, every commercial and residential space took advantage of unparalleled views across the sprawling Oslofjord.
One such waterfront apartment had been quietly leased by a fictitious British investment banking firm, allegedly as a corporate residence for its visiting executives. The true holder of the lease, however, was the Norwegian Intelligence Service.
The stunning unit had five bedrooms, five and a half baths, and three adjacent parking spots in the massive underground garage complex that served Tjuvholmen like a web of catacombs.
With its marble countertops, high-end fixtures, and gallery-level art, the apartment looked like something out of Architectural Digest. The icing on the cake would have been the vistas through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but all of the drapes had been pulled. What was happening inside needed to stay inside. The debriefing of Leonid Grechko wasn’t meant for public consumption.
Sølvi looked at her watch. They had been at it for over five hours. It was long past time for a break.
The session had been taxing. The Russian spymaster had changed tactics and was no longer being forthright. He was playing games.
She wasn’t surprised. In fact, she had been expecting it. They were getting closer to the most valuable intelligence he had to offer. And the closer they got, the harder he was going to bargain. She was going to have to get much tougher with him. Before that, however, she needed a mental reset.
It had taken all of her professional strength to set aside everything Scot had told her back at her apartment and to focus solely on Grechko’s debriefing. Right now, that’s what mattered most.
Nevertheless, she felt betrayed, unable to give Holidae Hayes even the slightest benefit of the doubt. It was a personal and professional gulf that would never be bridged. As far as she was concerned, Hayes was dead to her. Completely.
After letting the security team know that they were taking a break, she allowed Grechko to leave the debriefing room and stretch his legs. Her only prohibition was that he wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment—that included not stepping out onto the balcony.
Once he had exited, she spent a few moments jotting notes—avenues of conversation she wanted to pick back up on after their break.
After getting everything down on paper, she closed her notebook and went in search of some coffee.
The apartment had a machine that used pods, but she much preferred the pour-over method and had purchased a glass Chemex system to keep there. For a coffee aficionado, it was well worth it.
“Can I interest you in some tea?” the Russian asked as she joined him in the kitchen. He was standing at the sink filling a kettle.
“No, thank you,” she replied, opening the cabinet where she kept her coffee beans. Taking them down, she popped the top off the burr grinder she had brought from home and filled the hopper.
The Russian shook his head and laughed. “Norwegians and their coffee.”
“Russians and their tea,” Sølvi said with a smile. “Not to mention their vodka.”
“Touché.”
Looking over at the leader of the security team—a tall, muscular man in his mid-fifties seated in the living room—she asked, “Coffee, Martin?”
“Yes, please,” the man replied.
“You’re sure you don’t want tea?” Grechko interjected, attempting a little good-natured competition. “I can even do it Moroccan-style for you.”
All business, Martin stated, “I’m only interested in Norwegian-style. Coffee, black.”
The Russian turned his attention back to Sølvi. “You people don’t produce a single bean, yet you’re the world’s second-largest consumer per capita. Amazing.”
She knew what he was up to. He was being a chameleon.
Away from the debriefing room and its video cameras and microphones, Grechko had shifted back into “charm” mode. He was trying to build rapport with her, to get her to trust him. It was what all good intelligence officers did.
Except in this case, he wasn’t the debriefer, she was. And she had no intention of being drawn into any of his games.
That said, she could understand how he had risen so high through the ranks of Russian intelligence.
He was a distinguished-looking man in his early sixties with an above-average intellect. He carried himself with poise and a heap of self-confidence. But beneath that confidence, behind the charm that he turned on and off like a light switch, he was tired, world-weary. He was a man who had seen enough—particularly the unspeakable things that men could do to other men.
He had done many of those unspeakable things himself—all in service of his nation. A nation, if he was to be believed, that he had lost faith in and no longer wanted any part of.
With only the clothes on his back, he had driven across the Norwegian border at Storskog—one of the few European crossings still open to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. It was a trip that citizens of Murmansk Oblast made every day. The prices in Norway, not to mention the quality of the goods, were far superior. It wasn’t until the next day that anyone realized he had fled. By then Sølvi had already whisked him the nearly two thousand kilometers south to Oslo.
He was now a man without a country, completely dependent on the Kingdom of Norway for his survival.
For that reason alone, Sølvi was eager to dispense with the “cooperative” defector, “reluctant” defector nonsense and get to the bottom of what he had to offer.
“That’s a shame,” Grechko said, staring into an empty tea tin. “You’re all out of black tea.”
Dumping the coarsely ground coffee into the moistened filter of her Chemex, she told him, “There’s more. Check the pantry.”
He set the tin down and walked around the corner of the gourmet kitchen. The large butler’s pantry was lined with well-stocked shelves containing everything from breakfast cereal to barbecue supplies for the currently off-limits outdoor grill. Through a connecting door, there was a laundry room, which could also be accessed from an additional door off the main hall.
The Russian searched for a few moments, before shouting, “I can’t find any.”
Sølvi rolled her eyes, stopped what she was doing, and went to help him.
As she did, Martin rose from his chair in the living room. “Do you hear that?” he asked.
From where she stood, all she could hear was the pressure building inside the kettle on the nearby stovetop as the water began to boil. She shook her head and continued to the pantry. There she waved Grechko out of the way.
The safehouse was meant to support the entire team for up to two weeks if necessary, without anyone having to enter or leave. She knew the contents of the pantry like the back of her hand—right down to the large nylon duffel bags and hard-sided plastic cases on the bottom shelf of the far wall. They included everything from an advanced tactical medical setup complete with surgical equipment, vials of morphine and epinephrine, a pulse oximeter, tourniquets, and defibrillator, to a high-end vehicle diagnostics and repair kit, capable of handling almost anything one of their vehicles downstairs might throw at them. Every single item was meant to reinforce their self-sufficiency.
Moving a couple packages of Knekkebrød, Sølvi retrieved a fresh tin of black tea and handed it to him.
“Huh,” Grechko replied, having practically been staring right at it.
Back in the kitchen, the kettle began to whistle.
Pushing past him, she reached the pantry door and was about to exit when she noticed Martin across the living room. He had pulled the drapes partway open and was staring at something.
Sensing her presence, he spun to warn her.
“Stay away from the windows!” he ordered. “Get down! There’s a drone outside with—”
But before the security team leader could finish his sentence, a massive explosion tore through the living room, sending glass, steel, and molten fire everywhere.
CHAPTER 9
The violent shock wave knocked Sølvi straight back into the pantry, where she crashed into Grechko. As the pair tumbled to the floor, five more explosions rocked the apartment.
Her training kicked in and she rolled over, completely covering the Russian defector with her body. They were under attack. There was no time to figure out by whom. Her only job was to keep Grechko alive.
She waited for a seventh explosion and when it didn’t happen, she leapt to her feet, pulling a 9mm CZ pistol from her holster. Her head was throbbing from the blasts. The air was obscured by smoke and debris.
After quickly assessing Grechko, she gestured for him to stay put and stay quiet, while she peeked out into the kitchen.
Approaching the pantry door, she readied her weapon, held her breath, and risked a glance.
The kitchen and dining and living rooms were on fire and had been completely ripped apart. The bloody, shrapnel-riddled upper half of Martin’s body lay only feet away from the pantry door. Where his bottom half lay was anyone’s guess.
Fighting back her shock, she glanced in the direction where she had last seen him—standing by the large living room windows. But as the curtains of smoke parted, she received an even bigger jolt.
A black-clad, four-man assault team, complete with ballistic helmets, full face masks, and H&K G36 automatic rifles, had rappelled down from the roof and were making entry via the shattered windows. None of them were members of Martin’s security team.
Sølvi retreated into the pantry and helped Grechko to his feet. “Stay right behind me and don’t say a word.”
When the Russian nodded, she led him into the adjacent laundry room and stopped at the door to listen for any sign of activity from the other side.
She couldn’t hear anything, but she didn’t know if that was because there was nothing, or because her hearing hadn’t fully returned after the explosions.
Gesturing for Grechko to take a step back, she cracked the door and was about to peer out when the hall erupted in a barrage of automatic weapons fire.
She leapt back, kicked the door shut, and pushed Grechko out of the way just as a line of bullets pierced the wall and went straight through the laundry room.
That exit was out of the question. They would have to take their chances in the living room.
The good news, at least for the moment, was that judging by the back-and-forth tempo of the gunfire, some of Martin’s six-man team had survived and were still in the fight.
Steering Grechko back into the safest part of the pantry, she once again instructed him to stay put and stay quiet. This time she was going to do more than just peek into the kitchen. Much more.
Squatting down, she did a press check to make sure her pistol was hot, and then, counting to three, she swung into the kitchen and, ignoring Martin’s corpse, kept her attention focused forward as she used the long, marble-clad island for cover.
Gunfire could be heard from up and down the main hallway—as if the assaulters were going room to room. In between bursts, it was quiet. No one was firing back now. That was a bad sign.
Moving to the end of the island, she made sure to use the cabinets for support and not the floor, which was pebbled with shards of broken glass. She was absolutely silent.
On the counter was a toaster crafted from high-gloss chrome. Sølvi craned her neck, trying to get just the right angle. She was hoping to use it as a mirror, to see what was happening beyond the kitchen. It was at that very moment that she heard the crunch of a footfall on glass.
The sound had been close; just the other side of the island. Whoever it was, they were standing only inches away.
She gripped her pistol tighter and applied pressure to the trigger. Planting her feet, she prepared to spring. The moment she fired her weapon, it was going to be like a starting gun going off. Unless some of Martin’s men were still alive, she was going to draw all the heat down on her.
But she had no choice. She and Grechko were trapped. The assaulters would search every room until they found what they were looking for. And she felt pretty certain as to what it was they wanted. They had come for him. She was determined not to let them succeed.
There was another crunch of glass and then another. Looking up at the toaster, she could see one of the black-clad men approaching. He was so close, she could hear him breathing behind his Kevlar mask.
In a tense microsecond, her mind processed all of the data available to her and formulated a plan. She’d be lucky not to catch a bullet in the skull, but there was no time left. Action beat reaction every time. When the assaulter’s left boot became visible, she sprang her trap. Her first shot went through the man’s foot.
As he screamed in pain, she popped back around the end of the island and shot him twice in the groin. The screaming grew even louder.
The assaulter wildly fired his weapon, chewing up the cabinets and countertops, as he stumbled backward to get away.
Sølvi didn’t give him any quarter. Popping out once more, she drilled him twice through each kneecap and was on top of him before he even hit the floor.
Placing the muzzle of her pistol just under his Kevlar helmet behind his left ear, she fired, killing him instantly.
Slamming the butt of her weapon against the man’s chest, the solid thunk confirmed that he was also wearing a chest rig with a bulletproof ceramic plate. Probably had one in back too. She had been right to aim for his lower extremities. It was the only Achilles heel the assaulters had. At least until you could get in close enough to finish them off.
