Father Night, page 13
“I pray not.”
Kurin gave him an encouraging smile, then shut the panel, replaced the cushions, and settled on one of them to wait for the inevitable armed intrusion. His thoughts were with Jack and Annika, who by now must be in the elephant car with Huey, the elephants’ trainer. Despite their size, elephants were skittish. They were easily spooked by fire or loud noises, just to name a few of the many possibilities, but they knew and loved Huey, who had been with them for a decade. Kurin, who secretly spoke to God when he was alone and in despair, said a prayer that the beasts would accept the two humans because they were in Huey’s company.
* * *
“I DON’T see her,” Lenny said, slewing the car around at the end of P Street SW.
“Keep Vera here,” Bridges said, as he bolted from the sedan. The sunlight struck him a glancing blow, and he squinted into the glare. He drew his service pistol and, leaping over a low fence, headed straight for the Titanic Memorial.
Bridges felt the breath hot in his lungs, a constriction in his throat. He had no doubt that Alli had gone to meet someone who claimed to know the identity of the man who had posted the rogue site. Mentally, he kicked himself for not paying enough attention to her obsession with this individual. Jack wouldn’t have made that mistake. And now Bridges saw Alli as she had been back at the diner, nonchalantly asking if any progress had been made in IDing the perp, when he was certain now she knew quite well that there hadn’t. Somehow, though, she had found a lead and had come up with this elaborate plan to lull Bridges, then ditch him while Vera kept him occupied. He didn’t know whether he was more angry at her or terrified for her safety.
He saw the granite man with his arms outstretched, no one nearby, and veered to one side to give himself a view of the rear. Nothing. But now, as he picked his way closer, his heart began to pound in his chest. Directly behind the monument a couple of drops of fresh blood shimmered like jewels in the sunlight.
* * *
RODYA STAS did not like animals—any animals, but especially the large ones his scientist friend called charismatic megafauna. He smelled them as soon as he swung aboard the train. Goddamn circuses to the seven levels of hell, he cursed silently as he made his way through the cars. Two of his men had stayed with the engineer, scaring him so badly he nearly wet his pants.
Stas was FSB, but he took his orders from Grigori Batchuk, who called himself Myles Oldham now that he was out of the country. Grigori wanted Gourdjiev and his granddaughter Annika. So far as Stas could determine, the two of them were quite dangerous and deserved a bullet to the back of their heads. But that wasn’t what Grigori wanted; Grigori wanted them alive and well and ready for an extended period of articulated interrogation. In fact, Stas had been in charge of installing the implements of this interrogation in an abandoned warehouse Grigori had purchased for this very purpose. A bristling array of terrifying toys awaited the old man and his granddaughter. Stas was not a forgiving man. Gourdjiev had managed to make a fool of him, not once but twice. Stas found that intolerable. Frankly, at this point he didn’t give a shit what Grigori wanted, he had become fixated on what he himself wanted. The repercussions would take care of themselves. He knew Grigori only as a hazy figure, a voice over the phone. The man hadn’t been inside Russia in years. In fact, it appeared to Stas as if Grigori had abandoned the motherland entirely.
He passed from one car to another, the animal stench burning his eyes as well as his nostrils, as he headed down the line. He had to force himself not to shoot all the animals and be done with it. The only thing that stopped him was the thought that bigger game awaited him.
The old man had nearly slipped through by faking his own death. Grigori’s doctor at the hospital had been fooled, and so had Stas. Up to a point. He’d spent weeks reading up on the old man’s MO. He was as slippery as an electric eel, and just as dangerous. It was easy for Stas to test out his theory because he had infiltrated Gourdjiev’s organization, which was how he had found out about the fake ambulance. What he hadn’t counted on was the old man discovering the men Stas had turned.
Stas and his men had already methodically tossed all the residential cars. He’d leered at the female acrobats, wondering what they would be like in the midst of sexual congress. He pushed aside the midgets. Some held out their papers with trembling hands, but he batted them to the floor. He had no interest in papers. He knew who he was looking for; their faces were etched on the scrim of his mind. He was following up on an anonymous report, relayed to him by one of Grigori’s men at the Kursky station, that Gourdjiev was spotted at the rail yards—not the passenger station—an odd place for him to be hanging out unless … Stas had checked the departures from that area and had come up with the Red Square Circus.
He gagged as he entered the car with the big cats, lions and tigers and leopards stalking back and forth in their cages. The largest of the male lions must have scented him. He lifted his head, his yellow eyes heavy on Stas. His jaws yawned open and he roared. Teeth like nightmares. Stas got the hell out of there.
The next car brought him to the elephants—a pair of them, their disgusting trunks swaying back and forth. Their trainer was with them, one hand on the flank of both animals, to keep them calm, Stas conjectured. Stas came near them, but they turned their colossal heads and stamped their feet, pale tusks scything through the fetid air, and Stas wanted no more to do with them.
The next two cars were filled with familiar circus paraphernalia: tents, thick ropes coiled like adders, sledgehammers, boxes of wooden pegs, on and on. He soon grew bored and continued to the last car.
The ringmaster was sitting on a poufy love seat when Stas entered. To Stas’s cruel eye he looked like a pouf himself, but who could say?
“Name,” Stas said, though he already knew it.
“Pavel Kurin.” The ringmaster rose slowly, almost reluctantly. “At your service.”
Stas began to walk around the interior, in precisely the same way the big cats had stalked their cages. “What have we here, Pavel?”
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t catch your name.”
“I didn’t throw it.” He flashed his FSB credentials.
“We’re just a circus.” Kurin spread his hands. “I don’t know what you want with us.”
Stas glared hard at him. “No one’s just anything, Pavel.”
“We’re simple people.” The ringmaster gave him a helpless look. “I don’t—”
“None of us are simply who we are,” Stas explained. “There is nothing simple about the human condition, Pavel. There are layers, then layers beneath those layers, but do I really have to belabor this point to a man like you?”
“A man like me?”
Stas continued to circle. “A man who made his break with society a long time ago, a man who harbors freaks, simpletons, children in adult bodies.” He glanced around at the walls of photos. “I mean, look at this. You’re a fucking freak yourself.”
Kurin stood straight, putting steel in his backbone. “I provide a valuable service.”
Stas paused, his feet spread at shoulder height. “Indeed you do, Pavel, which brings us to my visit today.” As they talked, Stas had been examining every piece of furniture in the car. Now he gestured. “Please step away.”
“I beg your—”
“Step away from the love seat, Pavel.”
As Pavel did as he was ordered, Stas approached the love seat and produced a long-barreled .357 Magnum. He kicked off the cushions and aimed the Magnum at the wooden plank.
Kurin trembled. “What are you doing? That’s a family heirloom. I beg you, don’t do anything to—”
Stas squeezed off six shots in succession. The car stank of cordite and aftershock.
“Just to make sure you’re not providing other valuable services,” Stas said. “Services entirely unrelated to your little traveling freak show.” He reloaded the Magnum and fired another six shots through the wood at point-blank range.
* * *
ALLI FELT Herr on her tail as she fled, panting, around a corner. It was at that moment that she sensed a blur of motion from one side. Risking a glance, she saw Dick Bridges tackle Herr. The two of them crashed to the sidewalk, rolling over and over. She stopped and turned. The fall had knocked Bridges’s gun out of his hand.
She was about to run to pick it up when she heard her name being called. Waxman was standing beneath a tree. Next to him was a Lincoln Town Car with the passenger’s door open.
He gestured with his walking stick, pointing it at her. Something struck her leg and she tried to lift it out of the way. She felt strange and cold.
“Come now, Alli. You’re in danger here!”
She pointed at Bridges. “But I know—”
“Yes, I know Dick Bridges. I’ll take care of it. Quickly, now! Get in!”
“I can’t.” She tried to run, but seemed stuck to the ground. “That man was impersonating you. He—”
“Yes, Alli,” Waxman said, approaching her. “I know all about it.”
She whirled. “What? You?”
She took a stumbling step and fell. Pain seared her knees from the sharp-edged gravel underfoot. She put her hands under her. Looking up, she saw that Waxman’s smile seemed as big and wide as the Cheshire Cat’s. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
“That won’t work,” came a voice from above her head. “Nothing will.”
Determined, she crawled toward the gun, but already the world was beginning to spin around her. Still, she kept on, drawing closer and closer to Bridges’s gun shining on the pavement.
She was only a hand’s-breadth from it when Waxman used his walking stick to flick the weapon away. Her head came down, hanging between her shoulders as she tried to marshal her energy, but it was no use. The drug injected into her was too powerful. She fell onto her face. Someone caught her, picked her up, and bundled her into the backseat of the Lincoln.
Dimly, she could see Waxman walking briskly, without his limp, to where Herr and Bridges were grappling hand to hand. She tried to move, but she was paralyzed. She tried to cry out, but she was mute. The muscles of her throat wouldn’t work.
“Stop!” Waxman commanded.
At once, Herr pushed Bridges away. Rolling onto his back, Bridges levered himself onto one knee. He scrabbled for his fallen handgun, but Waxman trod hard on his hand.
“That will be enough,” Waxman said gruffly.
Herr leapt at Bridges, arms around his neck and the side of his head. Bridges, caught off guard, struggled mightily, but Herr’s hold was immovable. Herr gave a powerful wrench, and Bridges’s neck cracked. Bridges’s eyes rolled up in his head and his hands flopped into his lap. Herr kicked the corpse into the gutter.
Waxman stared down at Herr. “Let that be a lesson to you, Reginald. You should have broken his neck in the first ten seconds.”
PART TWO
December 9–December 13
The most secret fear is that a blind,
unthinking passion might rip us away from
the group we belong to, make us guilty of betrayal.
—CARLOS FUENTES, Diana: the Goddess Who Hunts Alone
NINE
ALAN FRAINE had not slept in thirty-six hours. Still, he didn’t feel tired, and it wasn’t just the caffeine released by the coffee and chocolate circulating in his system. Secretary Paull had assigned him the task of electronically breaking into the group the only known member of which was Leonard Bishop.
Fraine rose from his task chair and, fists pressed to the small of his back, stretched his aching muscles. He walked about the room Paull had provided at the Dupont North Hotel, which, despite its tony name, was a slightly run-down establishment in a not altogether savory neighborhood. Not a good idea to be working on this project within Metro’s building, where Bishop held an eagle’s-eye view. In fact, the computer Fraine had been working on day and night was not tied into any government server—that would have been too dangerous. Fraine was working with the other member of Paull’s SITSPEC, a twenty-one-year-old hacker named Leopard. At least that was his hacker name. Fraine knew him only by this handle, and was glad of it. Leopard knew him only as Alan. He had no idea what Fraine’s real job was, and most likely was also glad of it. Compartmentalization was paramount in any black op, but especially this one, where high-level homegrown adversaries were lurking in the tall grass inside the Beltway.
Leopard was a tall, lanky, towheaded kid with angry zits blooming on his forehead and chin. His love of all things junky, greasy, and sugary guaranteed those blemishes weren’t going away anytime soon. Still, the computer screen didn’t seem to mind, and neither did Fraine. When it came to slipping unnoticed through firewalls, the kid was a stone-cold genius. Plus, he knew how to brew coffee so strong it made Fraine’s heart pound. Under what rock Paull had found him was anyone’s guess.
Fraine stared out the window at the Hahnemann Memorial in the distance while he sipped some of the kid’s liquid caffeine. Hahnemann had been a German doctor, the father of homeopathy. Curious that he would have a statue here.
Fraine turned away, knowing that he was trying to distract himself. He wondered how Nona was handling Bishop; according to Paull’s directive, they had had no personal contact since she had agreed to dive into the chief’s personal private hell pool. Fraine didn’t like it; that wasn’t required. Though he felt a natural protectiveness toward her, he also knew she was hard as Satan’s heart. She would not break because of what the SITSPEC assignment required of her. But still. Whoring herself out had never been in her job description; taking one for the team had.
“Yo, check it,” Leopard said.
He’d been sitting beside Fraine for six hours without getting up even to relieve his bladder. Fraine was beginning to suspect he didn’t have one. All that crap went down his throat and got burned up by his furious metabolism. I should be so lucky, Fraine thought, as he crossed the room and sat back down.
“Fifteen years ago, this dude Bishop was in the Horn of Africa.” Everyone was “dude” to Leopard.
Fraine stared at the document on the screen. It had TOP SECRET and EYES ONLY stamped across the top. “How the fuck did you get this?”
“Firewalls, firewalls, firewalls,” Leopard said. “They’re all just video game levels to me, puzzles, see, that have to be figured out. You know the code, there’s always a path inside, and if you discover the source code, then shit, dude, you got it made.”
“Whose firewall?”
“DoD,” Leopard said. “But some branch that doesn’t exist.”
Now we’re getting somewhere, Fraine thought. “Officially.”
“Well, yes, ’cos here it is.” Leopard bobbed his head. “You gotta get all the way to Oz to find it, though.”
“This branch have a name?”
“Negatory. Just a number designation: Three-thirteen.” The kid picked at a dirty mess of cold fries overlaid with congealed cheese the color of a Day-Glo sun. “So, anyway, Horn of Africa.”
The text on the screen began to change so fast Fraine’s head hurt.
“Your man Bishop was assigned to a unit, name: Acacia. I’ve been trying to bring up that name elsewhere in here, to cross-reference, but so far no luck.”
Fraine was trying to make sense of the text on the 313 server. “What was Acacia doing in the Horn of Africa?”
“Not clear. Could be anything. One thing I do know, their deployment lasted a month. Then they were flown home and debriefed for a week in DoD HQ.”
And apparently let go, because six months later, Bishop joined Metro. Why did he go from a black ops unit of DoD to D.C. police? And how had he risen through the ranks so quickly?
“I want to find out what Acacia’s assignment was.”
The kid nodded. “Okay, but from the look of things I’d say Acacia was a death squad, deployed maybe to assassinate some politically hot football the Pentagon wanted to get rid of.”
“That’s quite an imagination you’ve got there,” Fraine said.
Leopard gave him the hairy eyeball. “You think this is my first deployment?”
“Clearly not,” Fraine said. “I would feel better if we had confirmation. A month’s deployment is an awfully long time for a death squad.”
“Not if you’re ending up elsewhere, like for instance the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
The kid had a point and Fraine conceded it. “Keep on it.” Fraine rose and grabbed his coat. “Meanwhile, I’m going to see if I can find out who Bishop’s rabbi was at Metro way back when.”
“Dude!”
Fist-bump.
* * *
“STAY HERE!” Lenny ordered, already half out of the car.
Vera, filled with fear for Alli, did no such thing. Instead, she went around, felt under the driver’s seat, but didn’t find what she was looking for: a service pistol. The stiff leather holster bolted to the underside was empty. Hesitating for only a moment, she moved off cautiously, following in Lenny’s footsteps.
She hurried across the street, feeling vulnerable in the complete absence of foot traffic, moving from parked car to parked car, crouched down, peering above fenders and around bumpers. She saw Lenny running full-out now, but even when she changed position she could not see any sign of Alli. She kept moving forward, changing her angle of view each time in order to get a sense of the whole scene.
She saw Dick Bridges sitting awkwardly on the street, then Bridges was dead, his neck snapped by a hulking man Vera did not know. And here came Lenny, Glock 9mm in one hand, sprinting toward the men. He yelled something Vera couldn’t make out, and Waxman turned toward him. Slowly, almost leisurely, Waxman lifted his walking stick. Something zipped out of its end and struck Lenny, who staggered and went down to his knees. He tried to lift the handgun to aim it at Waxman, but apparently he lacked the strength. The man with Waxman threw Dick Bridges aside and stood up, strode over to Lenny, and kicked him in the face. Lenny keeled onto his back and lay on the ground, unmoving.
At that moment, Waxman looked up, as if he were aware of Vera’s presence. She ducked down behind the Chevy van she had been using as a shield, and, keeping herself motionless, held her breath. When she heard footsteps approaching, she slid under the van, keeping herself perfectly still. This was the moment in thriller films when you could hear the woman in peril breathing hard but whoever was after her couldn’t. If her situation had not been so dire, Vera would have laughed. Women in those films were so stupid.
