Blowback (14 page)

“We need a team on R/258.”
Vanessa tipped her head toward the monitor, where Chris Arvanitis stared back, mouth pursed, brows raised, forehead creased in obvious exasperation. Roughly six thousand miles between them, and she could almost smell the stale coffee in his mug, thanks to Headquarters' secure version of FaceTime. He was in his office, door open, and she sensed the energy and bustle of activity surrounding Chris and CPD. She was sticking it out on Cyprus, doing her best to protect her erratic, possibly paranoid Russian asset. She was the one who should be overseeing the options for capturing Bhoot—she had the best shot at predicting his movements, his behavior once he realized he was cornered—

“Come on, Vanessa, you know you've got it.”

“He's tipping out of control, sounding paranoid, and probably has good reason to be.”

“Are you telling me you can't handle him?”

Damn.
Was that condescension in Chris's voice? “
No
—that's not what I'm saying.”

“Good.” Chris glanced at his watch, frowning. “Listen, I've got an ops meeting in five. So hear me on this: The closest surveillance team is in Beirut for two more days. So the answer is
yes
—in forty-eight hours.”

“That may be too late.” Vanessa gnawed the corner of her lip, unable to shake the sense that something bad was on the way. “I'm talking about now.”

Chris raised both eyebrows. “Who do you want to call, Batman?”

Her thoughts chaotic,
Vanessa paced the length of her apartment a half-dozen times, growling at Vasilias each time she passed the kitchen counter where her landlady's fat cat sprawled, eyeing her dubiously. On
MasterChef
, a sweating man in a purple chef's hat inched a tall, pouffe-shaped soufflé from a gleaming silver oven—smiling in triumph until it collapsed. The audience gasped, but Vanessa barely noticed, stabbing her cigarette out in her one and only ashtray—a very small brass dish bought from a vendor in a village on Rhodes; a gift from Khoury.

Which brought to the front of her mind again, still no word from him.

Finally, she stopped trying to deflect the various waves of agitation and frustration, and she retrieved the sketch pad from the drawer of the small drafting table by her office window. She opened the pad to the last page, where she had hidden two charcoal sketches. As she pulled out the pages, Tunisian sand dusted her bare thighs.

The first was a sketch of Khoury when she'd caught him unaware on the beach: leaning back on his right arm, a cigarette in his left hand, hair tousled from salt water, his profile barely visible as he stared out to the horizon.

She'd sketched the second when she found him sleeping in their bed on their last afternoon. As she studied the drawing, she traced her index finger very lightly along the charcoal lines. Her stomach clutched at the worry and fatigue she saw so clearly on his face. How had she missed it then? And what had he wanted to tell her in Cairo?

For minutes she sat with the pad and sketches lying in her lap. These were the only drawings she had of Khoury, and maybe she needed them to reassure her that their relationship was real. It went against protocol to keep personal photographs, although she had a few snapshots locked inside her small safe along with her personal firearm, a FN Five-Seven pistol, her passports, and other irreplaceable documents. Vanessa Pierson's cover identity rarely touched her other lives. But her relationship with David Khoury crossed that boundary, and that made it dangerous.

The children's bodies
blocked her path through the narrow streets of the Kurdish village; at first she thought the kitten was dead, too, but then she saw its eyes were open and it seemed to be watching her expectantly. She reached out, wanting to take the tiny animal into her arms, but someone whispered to her—“Go back to sleep, don't dream of this”—and just then she heard the sound of footsteps and she was on her hands and knees. When she turned, she saw a faceless soldier in the distance.
Help them,
she called out.
Please help them!

A siren sounded shrilly, but they were coming too late to help.

Vanessa lost the images as a ping from her computer made her bolt from the urgent nightmare up to consciousness.

Groaning, she dragged herself from the chair where she must have fallen asleep.

Dark outside. No sense of time.

She leaned toward the monitor, clicking accept.

“About time,” Sid said, as his creased and crinkled face filled the screen.

Vanessa pulled herself straight, skimming strands of loose hair back from her face. The clock on her monitor showed 3:48—she'd slept only minutes.

Sid stared back at her over the top of an oddly small pair of reading glasses kept around his neck by a lanyard; deep purple circles pooled beneath his bloodshot eyes. Close to sixty, with an oddly luxurious head of Cary Grant hair, it was easy to get that he'd lived hard, traveled wide, and seen it all and then some.

But for a moment Vanessa worried that he wouldn't live to make retirement.

“You don't look so hot yourself,” he cracked blandly, reading her too well. “Maybe it's time for that spa vacation.”

“Thanks for the tip.” She played along, curious and ready for an update on Operation Ghost Hunt, but also wary. Why was he reaching out when almost everyone else at Headquarters had no problem ignoring her? Was he on a fishing expedition? If so, fishing for . . . ?

“My last ex-wife went on and on about the Silver Door or the Copper Door,” Sid said, breaking into her thoughts.

“Think that's the Golden Door, and I'll book it ASAP,” she said. “But first, what's the word on the SAD team?” SAD—the Agency's Special Activities Division—had been the first U.S. personnel unit into Afghanistan after 9/11; they'd gone in on horseback. “Are they ready to move as soon as we get the geo-coordinates?” Her speech accelerated as she began asking about the mission, and she was startled when Sid tapped a small yellow notepad against his monitor.

He said, “Forget the op and SAD for the moment. I've been curious about your shooter . . .” He paused to drink something from a coffee cup.

Not coffee, Vanessa was quite certain.

“So I cashed in a couple of chits that I had to use up before their expiration date. I fed the database what we had: MO, sniper, partial tattoo, Chechnya, et cetera.” He drank again, this time spilling almost clear liquid down his chin.

She pushed her face close to the screen. “Is this bus going somewhere?”

He looked at her, his Groucho eyebrows twitching. “Smile, darlin', I'm about to make you sing.”

“Screw you,” she said, but she grinned back at him. Jesus, she had to admit at the moment she was grateful that somebody,
anybody
, seemed happy to see her, even an old-timer like Sid.

“Europol has an open file, could be your shooter, your Chechen, and if it is, they can connect him to at least three other hits.”

Vanessa's pulse kicked up, and suddenly Sid didn't seem like such an old-timer.

He pushed his reading glasses up on his nose, glancing at what she guessed were his notes. “Spring 2011. The murder of a Spanish prosecutor who was going after two smugglers involved in black nukes probably linked to guess who?”

“Bhoot,” Vanessa murmured, “I remember that one . . .”

“Well, you might. The unfortunate prosecutor was shot in the open—outside the Gaudi in Barcelona. The date on this one is interesting: April first.”

Vanessa's mouth turned down. “April Fools' Day . . .”

“April first, and as you probably know, Vanessa, April 1, 1939, also happens to mark the end of the Spanish Civil War.” Sid pinched the bridge of his nose, and his glasses slid even lower so he looked like a mad professor. “Then, two months later, June third, they're pretty sure he was in Moscow at the same time an engineer working at Sverdlovsk-forty-five was assassinated in front of his residence, I'm tracking down various ballistics reports—but for two of these, the round was the 7.62×54R—the
R
standing for Russian—168-grain, hollow-point boat tail. The Russian-made Dragunov, a lethal, very effective sniper rifle, uses this bullet.” Sid's mouth pulled wide. “The utter casualness after each kill impresses me as absolutely chilling. And—
get this
—apparently some kids actually saw the shooter
walking
away. He matches the basic description for your Chechen, except one of the kids said he had huge canines . . .”

But Vanessa didn't register Sid's attempt at punctuated levity—Sverdlovsk-45 was one of Russia's major nuclear weapons assembly/disassembly facilities. “Any theory why the engineer was a target?”

“Seems he was selling stolen components as a sideline. And it looks like he might've been snitching to the Brits for more pocket change, although our cousins won't confirm or deny.”

“You said at least
three
hits,” Vanessa prompted.

“Hold your horses . . . eighteen October, 2012. Dutch officer in MIVD investigating black-market procurement, and he was killed on the grounds of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. If he's your Chechen, he took one kill shot, mid-range, and then he walked out cool as a cucumber. He's good. Precise. Enjoys his work.”

Vanessa sat still, absorbing the wealth of new information. Sid had provided surprisingly detailed intel from another agency. And Europol was just as territorial as any other law enforcement and intelligence agency. She still felt grateful to Sid—but she definitely still felt wary. Call her paranoid . . .

Sensing his rising curiosity, she nodded. “Thanks for this,” she said softly.

Sid rubbed his temples, his eyes meeting hers, weirdly enlarged by the lenses. “Listen, Vanessa, Europol would love to pin no less than a
dozen
other hits on this shooter, if they could track him down. Definitely not someone you want on your trail.”

Pauk settled back
in the recliner as Lyon kicked off against Marseille on the condo owner's massive flat-screen. From here, in the most recessed corner of the living room, he could still see the Russian's penthouse clearly, and for the past three hours things had become very quiet.

He sipped a can of mineral water through the first half of the game and the movement and the energy on-screen soothed him. He'd had word from his mentor—one more day to finish up this job and get off the island. There would be another job very soon.

Pauk never questioned how his mentor knew so much—information came cheap, and everyone had his price. But he also knew, this time, they were working against the clock.

Pauk would be busy for the next ten days, but then he would take time off. He could afford to vacation anywhere in the world. But he would probably spend his time with Madame Desmarais and
les chats
, enjoying
fútbol
. He found her company surprisingly tolerable.

He pictured his mentor's last text:
this time leave no loose ends.