Blowback (5 page)

She almost blurted out the truth—
I can't sleep—

But she didn't. Instead, she watched his back until he disappeared down the stairs of the second-story condominium, and then she began the three-hour job of composing a detailed summary cable for Operation Ghost Hunt's bigot list, the short list of those read in on the op and cleared to read traffic on it.

•   •   •

She clawed her way out
of the nightmare sometime between one and two a.m.—the Kurdish boy and girl, bodies splayed out against hard earth; the dead kitten sprawled between them; the strange snow the color of straw falling all around, hot against Vanessa's skin, apple sweet on her tongue . . .

Awake, the minutes dragged on and the thin plaster walls of the condo seemed to slant in on her. She pulled a miniature of Maker's Mark from her toiletries bag, broke the seal, and finished it.

She sucked in a ragged, shallow breath, silently reminding herself—
It happened twenty-five years ago.
You were a little child growing up halfway around the world when Saddam Hussein ordered the massacre in Halabja.

But the recurring dream always felt like a premonition, as if it came from the future instead of the past.

When she could function, she sent a text message to her brother, Marshall, who was with the Marines in Afghanistan: Second Platoon, Alpha Company, 3rd Recon Battalion.

A code phrase they'd used between them since they were kids.

drop—eat dirt—and give me 50 private pierson!

Almost an hour later when she was walking out the door of the condo, she read his text reply:

love you baby sis. who'd you po now?

Pauk strode deliberately
along the Quai Malaquais past the
Vélib
stand with its stable of gray bicycles, quickly skirting the Institut de France to the Quai de Conti, where he jogged through traffic to reach the river. Here, so close to the Pont des Arts, families and tourists filled the
quai
, but Pauk quickened his pace and they moved out of his path. A young woman glanced at him but quickly looked away. He slowed for a moment as he approached the busy steps of the old wooden footbridge. An unusually warm evening, and the mice had come out to play—picnicking students just back from August break, artists and street musicians, and the ubiquitous trolling
bateaux-mouches
, their loudspeakers blaring in German, Spanish, Mandarin for the tourists.

Fine,
the crowd served his purpose, allowing him to remain invisible in light or shadow. Even as he climbed the steps, inhaling the hazy cloud of tobacco and dope, he slid his hands into his pockets, fingers feeling for a pulse from the disposable cell phone. It would take him seconds to reach the midpoint of the bridge, past the
bouquinistes
that were shuttered for the evening—before his time was up.

He walked quickly, despite the strollers and the stoned couples and the human statues. Always moving, always assessing—the unicyclist pedaling his way, circling now to juggle colored balls, and the small crowd gathering as if choreographed; the couple kissing in the shadows, both of them girls; and beyond, the Americans yelling at their feral brats.

He carried a book under one arm—
Et Si la Mort N'Existait Pas?
Madame Desmarais had pressed it into his hands when they first met two years ago.

Just past the unicyclist's audience, Pauk slowed again to press himself against the railing. A
bateau-mouche
nosed from beneath the bridge, a Swedish-speaking tour guide pointing out Notre Dame in the distance. Pauk lit a Gitane, sucked in pungent smoke, let the match drop to the Seine. As he exhaled he pulled the cell from his pocket almost before it began to vibrate with an incoming message.

He gazed intently at the small, bright screen and the face that filled it. Although the image was grainy, its poor quality did not distract him from his study of the features. He memorized the heavy jaw, the deep-set eyes, and thick, low brow.

His eyes flickered over the brief text:
cyprus 0920
.

A tiny roar rose from the crowd, and he glanced up just as the unicyclist caught a yellow ball in his mouth. The women still embraced, and the American brats clustered on the opposite side of the bridge from their parents.

Pauk took one last look at the screen before he powered it off. He pinched out the Gitane, exhaling bitter smoke. As he approached the American kids—three boys and a ragamuffin girl—they launched stones off the bridge. A parent yelled, “I'm warning you!” And Pauk peered over the railing to see if the children had done damage. No passing boats. It was easy enough to toss the phone into the dark waters of the Seine—and with it all traces of his next kill.

The target snapped into place
forty yards in front of Vanessa. She slid the magazine into the Glock and felt it lock. Her stomach clenched, her arms pulled up, fingers of her right hand closing around the grip frame.

Was it only thirty-six hours ago that she annihilated targets with a toy gun while waiting for Arash in the Prater?

She exhaled slowly, pressing her feet into the concrete floor, adjusting her stance. The Glock belonged in her hands. The first firearm she'd ever fired was a .243 Winchester when she was ten and finally allowed on a hunting trip with her father and Marshall. She was at home here inside the shooting cage at the Agency firing range. How many times had she practiced this ritual? Fifty? A hundred? In the early hours of the morning, her only company was the invisible range master. It was all so familiar: the muting cradle of her earmuffs, the lingering smell of gunpowder, the faint glow from the call-indicator light.

Vanessa lowered the Glock and wiped the sweat from her hands.

Was she here to kill the impotence she'd felt in Vienna?

She knew how to deal with loss and pain and whatever else her life and the job demanded. She knew how to get on with it, to do what needed to be done. And yet here she stood, almost frozen.

She focused again on the Glock's front sight. She squeezed off the first round, the pistol jumping stupidly, the shot wild.

She shut her eyes and bit down on her lip. At first all she heard was the drum of her own heartbeat. She pushed the earmuffs back and caught the soft fall of footsteps and the light clang of metal as another shooter entered a cage.

She raised the Glock, returning her attention to the sights, even as she remained aware of the shadowy silhouette of the target beyond.

This time, Vanessa fired evenly and solidly, unloading the remaining rounds into the target's paper heart. When she pulled it from the line, all six holes overlapped almost perfectly.

For the third time
in five minutes, Vanessa checked her watch: 0903. Another ninety minutes until the briefing with DDO Hawkins, and still no update from the Poles on Yassi and her daughter Zari. There should be something by now, she thought, staring uneasily at the desktop screen at Headquarters.

She scrolled quickly back through the latest cables from Operation Ghost Hunt's bigot list, skimming through content just to make sure she hadn't missed something. As she worked, another part of her remembered the frigid weekend in Berlin, the meetings with Yassi and Arash, when they'd gone over how it would all work, this business of spying.

“If something happens,” Vanessa told them, avoiding the most horrifying words—
arrested, tortured, killed
—“then you will need to get to the Polish embassy.”

For a moment, Vanessa avoided their eyes. “You will give them a code phrase—tell them ‘We are friends of Ms. Dalton's, and we were told we could reach her here.'” Even now she remembered how her mouth had gone dry as she pushed the words out. She hated making promises when she could not control the outcome.

Now, to take her mind off Yassi and her daughter, Vanessa caught up with the intel feed from other agencies. She even checked open-source FBIS, Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service cables—a kidnapping in Yemen, a bomb threat at the Frankfurt Airport, an Afghani soldier opening fire on his American allies.

As she read she drummed the desktop with the fingers of one hand.
Making noise.
Because CPD—a football field of gray carpet and cubicles located in the basement of the new Headquarters building—felt too quiet. Even for the early hour. A few keyboards clacking and coffeemakers bubbling, the soft drone of CNN and other news feeds, the constant stream of data from international intelligence links. Way too quiet . . .

Especially when you knew that in an hour the bullpen would be bustling with two hundred or so operations officers, reports officers, analysts, targeteers, military personnel, and assorted ABC-warfare experts, all of them tracking the illegal trade of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons around the globe.

Vanessa craved that energy now, to match her own restless drive.

She flicked back her damp hair, and water droplets rained on the collection of darkly humorous cartoons and slogans tacked to the cubicle's walls. After forty minutes at the range, she'd quickly showered and dressed, grateful for the clean slacks and sweater from her locker. She'd searched out her “usual” temporary tour-of-duty cubicle, or TDY, found it unoccupied, sat, and kicked off her shoes.

Now she popped open a can of Red Bull and gulped the bitter-tasting liquid as she pulled up a file of grainy, flickering CCTV footage. Vienna Station (as conduit for anything from Austrian police, Interpol, or Europol) had come through on her blanket request for security video relevant to the assassination of XYTree/213. Footage routed to CPD analysts via secure link, copied to Vanessa. Pulled from closed-circuit security cameras in Prater, perimeter streets and intersections, and surrounding train, subway, and tram stations.

For now she skipped the footage from Vienna airport terminals—she'd lay odds the killer had crossed the border by car.

She chose two of the files from the Prater.

She took another sip of the Red Bull. Even viewed via split screen, on simultaneous loops, it would take two lifetimes to get through all the footage.

With a ping, a new cable landed in her inbox. Skimming, Vanessa wiped a drop of Red Bull off her chin. The pale officer from Vienna sending the security footage she'd requested from the Ringstrasse Hilton, the Iran delegation's hotel of choice.

Arash's killer was a professional. He hired a punk to create distraction and confusion, and perhaps to draw them into the open. He took the kill shot in a public place and then he walked away. How had he known where Arash would be? Best chance, he followed him on foot from the hotel to Prater.

But if I were you,
Vanessa thought, closing her eyes to bring his image to consciousness,
my first choice would be the Hilton
.
I would case the delegation hotel very carefully. And I would do it before they arrived . . .

She pulled up the flash file to begin its loop. Minutes evaporated.

“Hello,” she murmured suddenly, staring intently at the screen.