The Bancroft Strategy (2 page)

Goddammit!
Had they been on to him all along?

Now he made out his surroundings clearly. He was in something like a home office, with a costly-looking Turkish flatweave on the floor, an ebony-framed mirror on the wall, and a large Biedermeier-style desk.

Behind it stood Richard Lugner.

A man he had never met, but a face he would know anywhere. The slitlike mouth, the deeply pitted cheeks, the two-inch-long scar that curved across his forehead like a second left eyebrow: The photographs did him full justice. Belknap took in the man's small, malevolent, anthracite eyes. And, in Lugner's hands, a powerful shotgun, its twin boreholes bearing down on him like a second pair of eyes.

Two other gunmen—well-trained professionals, it was obvious from their bearing, their firing stance, their watchful gaze—stood to either side of Lugner's desk, their weapons trained on Belknap. Members of his private guard, Belknap immediately guessed—men whose loyalty and competence he could trust, men on his own payroll, men whose fortune depended upon his. For a man in Lugner's position, the investment in such a retinue would have been well worth it. The two gunmen now crossed over to Belknap, holding their weapons level as they flanked him.

“Persistent little bugger, aren't you?” Lugner said at last. His voice was a nasal rasp. “You're like a human
tick.
”

Belknap said nothing. The configuration of gunfire was all too clear, and professionally arranged; there was no sudden move he could make that would change the geometry of death.

“My mother used to remove ticks from us kids with a hot match head. Hurt like hell. Hurt the critter more.”

One of his private bodyguards emitted a soft, throaty laugh.

“Oh, don't act like such an innocent,” the traitor went on. “My procurer in Bucharest told me about your conversation with him. It left his arm in a sling. He didn't sound happy about it. You've been
bad
.” A moue of ironic disapproval. “Fighting never solves anything—weren't you paying attention in seventh grade?” A grotesque wink. “Pity I didn't know you when you were in seventh grade.
I
could have taught you a few things.”

“Screw you.” The words flared from Belknap in a low growl.

“Temper, temper. You have to master your emotions, or your emotions will master you. So tell me, greenhorn, how'd you find me?” Lugner's gaze hardened. “Am I going to have to garrote little Ingo?” He shrugged. “Well, the child did claim he liked it rough. I told him I'd take him to a place he'd never been before. Next time we'll just take it to the next level. The final level. I don't guess anybody will mind all that much.”

Belknap shuddered involuntarily. Lugner's two hirelings just smirked.

“Don't worry,” the traitor said in a voice of pretend reassurance. “I'll be taking
you
to a place you've never been before, too. Have you ever discharged a point-four-ten Mossberg tactical shotgun at close range? At a man, I mean.
I
have. There's nothing like it.”

Belknap's gaze moved from the fathomless black of the shotgun muzzle to the fathomless black of Lugner's eyes.

Lugner's own gaze drifted to the wall just behind his captive. “Our privacy won't be disturbed, I can promise you. Wonderful thick masonry in these apartment blocks—the soft lead pellets will hardly blister the skim coat. Then there's the soundproofing I had installed.
I figured it wouldn't do to disturb the neighbors if some Bahnhof Boy turned out to be a
groaner
.” Flesh retracted from porcelain teeth in a hideous simulacrum of a smile. “But you'll be taking a different kind of load today. You see, this Mossberg will actually blast away a large portion of your midriff. It will, mark my words, leave a hole you can reach your arm through.”

Belknap tried to move but felt himself clamped in place by hands like steel.

Lugner glanced at his two henchmen; he had the air of a television chef about to demonstrate a surprising culinary technique. “You think I'm exaggerating? Let me show you. You'll never experience anything like it.” There was a quiet
snick-click
as he released the safety of the shotgun. “Not ever again.”

Belknap was able to make sense of the ensuing seconds only in retrospect. A loud crash of window glass; Lugner, startled by the sound, turning to the bay window to his left; muzzle flash from a handgun, a split-second later, sparking into the darkened apartment like a lightning bolt, glaring off mirrors and metal surfaces; and—

A plume of blood at Richard Lugner's right temple.

The traitor's expression suddenly went slack as he collapsed on the floor motionless, the shotgun falling with him like a stroke victim's cane. Someone with perfect aim had put a bullet through Lugner's head.

The guards spread out in either direction and aimed their weapons toward the broken window. The work of a sniper?

“Catch!” a voice called out—that of an American—and a handgun came sailing through the air toward Belknap. Belknap snatched it by sheer reflex, alert to the half-second of indecision between the two gunmen, who now had to decide whether to shoot first either at the prisoner or…the lanky stranger who had just swung through the four-paned casement. Belknap dropped to the floor—felt a bullet zing just above his shoulder—and fired twice at the gunman closest to him, striking him in the chest. Center mass: standard procedure
for shooting on the fly. But it wasn't adequate for a close-range standoff like this one. Only a central-nervous-system shot would instantly neutralize the threat. Mortally wounded, scarlet blood gouting from his sternum, the first gunman began discharging the rounds in his magazine wildly. The sturdily constructed suite amplified the
boom
of the large-caliber shells, and, in the gloom, the repeated white muzzle flare was painfully bright.

Belknap fired a second time, shooting the man in the face. The gun, an old-style semiautomatic Walther, favored by certain ex–military types because it reputedly never jammed, fell heavily to the floor, followed by its owner moments later.

The stranger—he was tall, agile, clad in tan workman's coveralls, glittering with shards of broken glass—leaped to one side to avoid the other hireling's fire even as he returned fire with a single perfect head shot, another instant drop.

The stillness was eerie, long seconds of the profoundest quiet that Belknap had ever known. The stranger had looked almost bored as he dispatched Lugner and his crew, nothing indicating that his pulse had risen in the slightest.

Finally, the stranger spoke to him in a languid tone. “I assume they had a Stasi lookout stationed in one of the alcoves outside.”

Which was precisely what Belknap should have assumed. Not for the first time, he silently cursed his stupidity. “I don't think he'll be coming in, though,” Belknap said. His mouth was dry, his voice scratchy. He could feel a muscle in his leg trembling, vibrating like a cello string. Outside of training exercises, he had never stared down the wrong end of a shotgun before. “I think the play was to leave their special guest to his own devices in…disposing of unwanted visitors.”

“I do hope he has a good housekeeper,” the man said, flicking shards of glass from his tan coveralls. They were standing among three bleeding corpses, in the middle of a police state, and he seemed in no hurry at all. He extended a hand. “My name's Jared Rinehart,
by the way.” His handclasp was firm and dry. Standing close to him, Belknap noticed that Rinehart was free of sweat; not a hair was out of place. He was a model of sangfroid. Belknap himself, as a glance in the mirror confirmed, was a mess.

“You made a frontal approach. Ballsy, but a little headstrong. Especially when there's a vacant apartment one floor up.”

“I see,” Belknap grunted, and he did, immediately working out Rinehart's movements, the nimble sense of situational strategy behind them. “Point taken.”

Rinehart was slightly elongated, like a Christ in a mannerist painting, with long, elegant limbs, and oddly soulful gray-green eyes; he moved with a feline grace as he took a few steps toward Belknap. “Don't beat yourself up for missing the Stasi man. I'm frankly in awe of what you've accomplished. I've been trying to track down Mr. Lugner for quite some months, and without any luck at all.”

“You caught up with him this time,” Belknap said.
Who the hell are you?
he wanted to ask, but he decided to bide his time.

“Not really,” said his rescuer. “I caught up with
you.
”

“With me.” The footsteps in Marx-Engels-Forum. The disappearing act of a true pro. The reflection of the lanky workman ghosted in the amber-tinted glass of the Palast der Republik.

“The only reason I got here was by following you. You were something, let me tell you. A hound on the trail of a fox. And me, breathlessly following like some country gent in jodhpurs.” He paused, looked around with a stock-taking air. “Goodness gracious. You'd think some hotel-room-trashing rock star had paid a visit. But I think the point's been made, don't you? My employers, anyway, won't be at all displeased. Mr. Lugner had been such a bad example to the working spy, living high and letting die. Now he's a very
good
example.” He glanced at Lugner's body and then caught Belknap's eye. “The wages of sin and all.”

Belknap looked around him, saw the blood of three slain men seeping into the red carpet, oxidizing to a rust hue like the one it had
been dyed. A wave of nausea passed over him. “How'd you know to follow me?”

“I was reconnoitering—or, to be honest,
loitering
—around the souks of Alexanderplatz when I thought I recognized the cut of your jib from Bucharest. I don't believe in coincidence, do you? For all I knew, you were a courier of his. But connected in one way or another. The gamble seemed worthwhile.”

Belknap just stared at him.

“Now then,” Jared Rinehart went on briskly. “The only question is: Are you a friend or a foe?”

“Excuse me?”

“It's rude, I know.” A mock wince of self-reproach. “Like talking shop at dinner, or asking what people
do
for a living at cocktail parties. But I have practical interest in the issue. I'd rather know now if you're, oh, in the employ of the Albanians. There was a rumor that they thought Mr. Lugner had kept the really good stuff for their Eastern bloc rivals, and you know what those Albanians are like when they feel stiffed. And as for those Bulgarians—well, don't get me started.” As he spoke, he took out a handkerchief and daubed at Belknap's chin. “You don't encounter that combination of lethality and stupidity just every day. So that's why I've got to ask—are you a good witch or a bad witch?” He presented the handkerchief to Belknap with a flourish. “You had a little splash of blood there,” he explained. “Keep it.”

“I don't understand,” Belknap said, a mixture of incredulity and awe in his voice. “You just risked your life to save mine…without even knowing whether I was an ally or an enemy?”

Rinehart shrugged. “I had a good feeling, let's say. And it had to be one or the other. A chancy business, I grant, but if you're not rolling the dice, you're not in the game. Oh, before you answer the question, you'll need to know that I'm here as an unofficial representative of the U.S. Department of State.”

“Christ on a raft.” Belknap tried to bring his thoughts into focus. “Consular Operations? The Pentheus team?”

Rinehart just smiled. “You're Cons Ops, too? We ought to have a secret handshake, don't you think? Or a club tie, though they'd have to let me choose the design.”

“The bastards,” Belknap said, whipsawed by the revelation. “Why didn't anybody tell me?”

“Always keep 'em guessing—that's the philosophy. If you ask the op boys at 2201 C Street, they'll explain that it's a procedure they occasionally use, especially when there are solo operatives involved. Separate and de-linked clandestine units. They'll say something fancy about operational partition. The potential downside is you trip over your tail. The upside is you avoid groupthink, lockstep, get a wider variety of approaches. That's what they'll tell you. But the truth, I bet, is that it was an ordinary screwup. Common as crabgrass.” While he spoke, he turned his attention to a mahogany-and-brass liquor stand in one corner of the study. He lifted up a bottle and beamed. “A twenty-year-old slivovitz from Suvoborska. Not too shabby. I think we could both stand a wee dram. We've earned it.” He splashed a little in two shot glasses, pressed one on Belknap. “Bottoms up!” he called out.

Belknap hesitated, and then swallowed the contents of the shot glass, his mind still whirling. Any other operative in Rinehart's position would have maintained an observation post. If a direct intervention had to be staged, it would have been timed to a moment when Lugner and his henchmen had put their weapons away. Some moment
after
they had been used. Belknap would have been given a posthumous ribbon to be placed on his casket; Lugner would have been killed or apprehended. The second operative would have been praised and promoted. Organizations valued prudence over valor. Nobody could be expected to enter, alone, a room that contained three gunmen with weapons drawn. To do so defied logic, not to mention all standard operational procedures.

Who
was
this man?

Rinehart rummaged through the jacket of one of the slain guards,
retrieved a compact American pistol, a short-barreled Colt, released the magazine, and peered inside. “This yours?”

Belknap grunted assent, and Rinehart tossed him the weapon. “You're a man of taste. Half-jacketed nine-millimeter hollowpoints, scalloped copper on lead. An excellent balance between stopping power and penetration, and definitely not standard-issue. The Brits say you can always judge a man by his shoes. I say his choice of ammunition tells you what you need to know.”