The Wolf of Sarajevo (25 page)

“What's in Geneva?” Eric asked. “Maybe a bank?”

“A lawyer,” Sarah answered. “Mali's lawyer.”

“Could he be holding whatever it is we're looking for?”

“It's possible. What about Father S? Who's he? Or they? Maybe it says fathers.”

Something stirred in the back of Eric's brain, a connection struggling to be made. It was like the feeling of having a name at the tip of your tongue. It was almost there, but the harder you tried to lock it in, the more elusive it seemed.

Eric used a small camera that Dragan had given him to take pictures of the book and the letters. Most of the correspondence was in French, a language Eric did not read. Sarah could look at them later. Her French was good enough that she could have passed as a Parisian.

“I can't find any sign of a safe,” Dragan said from across the room with just a hint of frustration. “Nothing in the walls. Nothing on the floor. Maybe he doesn't have one.”

“Seems unlikely for a paranoid son of a bitch like Mali,” Sarah suggested. “Keep looking. We have to find his hiding place.” Any possible hint of despondency was buried under a thick layer of indignation that the risks they were running should go unrewarded.

Eric looked at the open drawers of the desk. Something did not seem quite right, and it took a minute for him to realize what it was.

“The drawers on the left are shorter than the ones on the right by a good eight inches. Why would that be, unless . . .”

“There's a hollow space behind them,” Sarah finished his thought.

Eric explored the elaborate carving on the back of the desk. He ran his fingers over the wood. One of the heads of a two-headed eagle—the symbol of the Serbian monarchy—seemed loose. He
pushed it like a button and the back panel swung out, revealing a safe built into the desk.

“Can either of you get it open?” Eric asked.

“Unless there's something special about this lock, it shouldn't be hard,” Sarah said confidently.

From her backpack, Sarah pulled out an odd-looking apparatus that Eric could not identify. A small video screen was connected by several thick cables to what looked like some kind of miniature plunger. Sarah set the head of the plunger over the spin dial. It clapped onto the steel with a force that suggested the rubber shell concealed a powerful magnet. Sarah attached four leads to the safe door in a diamond pattern around the lock. The plunger made an odd clicking noise that sounded almost like dolphins at an aquarium. Sarah looked over her shoulder at Eric and Dragan.

“Sonic pulses,” she explained. “The vibrations let the computer read the location of the locking pins.”

A slight whir indicated that underneath the rubber cup something was spinning the safe dial. Sarah watched the video screen and made a series of seemingly small adjustments to the readouts. Some sixty seconds later, she reached for the handle and pulled down. The door popped open without a sound.

“Easy as pie,” Sarah announced.

Inside, they found stacks of bills bound with currency straps from several local banks. There were dollars bundled into bricks of ten thousand, euros, Swiss francs, and rubles. Sarah had no interest in the money. Nor in the 9mm pistol and spare magazines on the bottom shelf.

She scanned quickly through a short stack of papers that looked to Eric like land records.

“It's not here,” she said.

“What is it, Sarah? What are we here to find?” Eric asked.

“A tape or its electronic equivalent, a disc or even a memory stick. This is just . . . money.”

“Quiet,” Dragan hissed.

They froze.

The keypad on the inside was synched to the cipher lock on the outside. It was beeping. Someone was keying in numbers on the far side of the door. The code.

“Move,” Dragan said, and there was no mistaking his urgency.

Eric slammed the safe door closed with a disconcertingly loud crash. Sarah scooped her gear into the backpack she carried and Dragan scanned the room for a place to hide.

“This way,” he insisted. The burly Serb grabbed Sarah and Eric by their upper arms and half guided, half dragged them behind the bar.

As they got their heads down, the door opened. Eric could see the guard in the reflection from the bar mirror, which meant, he realized, that the guard would be able to see them as well if he looked in their direction.

The guard was young and fit-looking, and he walked with the confident swagger of an athlete. He was well over six feet tall and at least two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle. But Eric was more concerned about the pistol strapped to his thigh and the radio hooked onto his belt.

The guard walked over to Mali's desk and inspected it as if something did not seem quite right. From under her jacket, Sarah produced a handgun. It was small and looked to be made of more
plastic than metal, but it had a large silencer screwed onto the barrel. It did not look like a pistol. It looked like a murder weapon.

Dragan held up an index finger and shook his head slightly. The meaning was clear: not “no” so much as “not yet.”

“Evo ga,”
Eric heard the guard mutter.
Here it is.

He pulled something from the desk drawer and pointed it at the far wall. The television came on, already tuned to the channel showing the soccer game. If he decided to fix himself a drink, they were all screwed.

The radio on the guard's belt squawked.

“Ivan, are you making your fucking rounds?”

“Yeah,” the guard replied, pressing the button on the unit without bothering to unhook it from his belt.

“Well, hurry the fuck up. It's time to switch. I get the second half.”

“Cool your fucking jets.”

“Fuck you.”

Ivan switched the radio off. He took two steps toward the bar and then stopped. Eric was certain that he had seen them, but instead of drawing his gun, the guard turned to his right and headed for Mali's private toilet. They did not need to discuss their next move. The instant the guard was out of sight, the three of them were up and moving as quickly and quietly as they could to the door. Eric hoped that Ivan's mother had taught him to wash his hands. They needed the time.

Dragan turned the handle slowly and eased the door open without a sound. Eric and Sarah slipped through and the door closed silently behind them. Eric could feel his pulse jackhammering in
his ears. His breath was ragged as though he had been running. He was grateful to see that Sarah also looked keyed-up and anxious. Only Dragan seemed unperturbed. It was easy to imagine that this was far from the most stressful situation that his particular line of work had put him in.

Fifteen minutes later, they were back at the jeep and driving in the dark down the overgrown logging road.

Sarah examined the device she had hooked up to Mali's computer to mirror his hard drive.

“Nothing,” she said in disgust. “I didn't have enough time to crack the security. All that effort and risk for nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Eric assured her.

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever that thing is that Mali has over Dimitrović. The source of his leverage.”

“Yes.”

“I think I know where it is.”

GENEVA

NOVEMBER 14

9:30 A.M.

T
he moment Klingsor saw the face on the monitor, he knew that everything had gone to hell.

There was nothing especially imposing about the man standing on the front steps of Gisler's law office looking directly into the camera with a deceptively pleasant smile. He was of average height and build with a nondescript tan trench coat that looked like it had been bought off the rack at Macy's or a similar middlebrow department store. His features were smooth and his face unlined by troubles. His short hair was steel gray, most of it hidden under a fedora the color of charcoal that matched his round wire-rimmed spectacles. Fashion points from the Agency's foundational era.

His reputation preceded him. He was a decade into the job and had demonstrated a real affinity for its somewhat arcane practices. Everyone in Klingsor's line of work knew who he was, and no one
used his name. The moniker he carried came with the job. It was the same title bestowed on the one man on a football team who no one wanted to talk to. He was the Turk.

Coach wants to see you. Bring your playbook.

Those words marked the end of many athletic dreams and careers. The spy world was less forgiving:
Coach wants to see you . . . dead.

The Turk cleaned up the CIA's internal messes, everything from hopeless drunks to hapless traitors. Deeply flawed individuals with highly classified and potentially valuable knowledge and experience could not simply be cut loose to wander the world at will, nursing grievances and old grudges. The Turk made the arrangements for the separation from the Clandestine Service of its more problematic members. Most could be monitored or otherwise controlled. Maybe they would be asked to surrender their passports or be subject to electronic surveillance for the rest of their lives. A few, the most troublesome, the riskiest, or the least redeemable, were eliminated on a more permanent basis. The pink slip was in the form of a toe tag.

Klingsor was not certain which category he belonged in. If he was being honest, and Klingsor prided himself on his brutal honesty, the Turk's unannounced appearance at the front door was not especially surprising. Their part of the operation was not supposed to have dragged on like this. It should have been in and out, over in a few hours at the most. Gisler would have sung like a tweety bird, and Klingsor and the Echoes would have been on a flight out of Geneva with the package secured the next day. It had not worked out that way, and as hours stretched into days and weeks and the mission had morphed from securing the package to persuading Marko Barcelona that there was nothing wrong with his dead-
man's switch in Geneva, the risk of exposure had grown beyond what Klingsor would have accepted at the outset. He and his team had fallen victim to the mental trap of the boiling frog. Drop a frog in hot water and it will hop out. But put it in a pot of cold water and heat it up slowly and the frog will sit there as it boils to death, ignoring the simple lifesaving option of one good hop to safety. The frog dies before it realizes there is any danger.

The Turk's presence in Geneva meant two things. Someone on the other end had screwed up in some way. And Klingsor and his people were royally fucked.

Echo Three was with Klingsor in Gisler's office, and he too recognized the Turk.

“Should we let him in?” Echo Three asked.

“We don't really have much of a choice.”

“No. I suppose we don't.”

Echo Three showed him in.

The Turk removed his hat and coat with a precision of movement that bordered on the fastidious, hanging them both neatly on the rack in Gisler's office.

“Please, don't get up,” the Turk said, though Klingsor had given no sign that he was planning to rise from the chair behind Gisler's desk.

“Could you please give us a few minutes alone?” the Turk asked Echo Three.

Three looked to Klingsor, who nodded his acceptance. Without a word, Three stepped out into the hall, closing the double doors behind him.

“You've done well for yourself, Daniel,” the Turk said, using Klingsor's actual given name, which was both an egregious violation
of OPSEC and a clear threat.
All that you are is naked before me,
it seemed to say.

“You look well fed also, Turk.” Klingsor had no idea what the Turk's real name was. Maybe he had forgotten it himself after so many years operating under different aliases.

“Yes. I suppose so. But one must still try to stay fit. A little time in the field always helps.”

“Is that what this is? The field?”

“You tell me.”

“It's fucking Geneva.”

“So it is. A law office it would seem. Where is the good barrister? Tucked into that freezer in the corner?”

“That's where we keep the ice cream. The Echoes have a terrible sweet tooth.”

The Turk actually cracked a smile.

“Corpsicles?”

Klingsor shrugged. “For what it's worth, I didn't kill him.”

“I know.”

“What else do you know?”

“I know a traitor when I see one.”

“That's not fair, Turk. This operation is in the best interest of our country. It's . . . patriotic.”

“It's not sanctioned. It's rogue.”

“It'll be sanctioned after the fact if we succeed.”

“But you haven't done that, have you? Succeed, I mean.”

“Not yet.”

“You're grasping at straws.”

“Maybe.”

The two men paused, eyeing each other like tired boxers in a clinch. Klingsor considered his options. None were especially appealing. Maybe he could make a run for it. They'd need another freezer for the Turk's body, but that would be easy enough to arrange. Klingsor had four different passports in four different names identifying him as the citizen of four different countries. Two of them were absolutely clean, meaning that the Agency did not know about them. There was a bank in Zurich, one of the small ones, with a numbered account and a safe-deposit box with a hundred thousand dollars in cash. He could disappear. South America, perhaps. He had friends in Uruguay.

The Turk seemed to be able to read his mind, or maybe Klingsor was just predictable, like every other asshole caught with his pants down around his ankles and his dick in his hand.

“Don't even think about it,” the Turk said, as though offering friendly advice.

“What?”

“Killing me and making for the bushes like a rabbit. You're not my first job, you know. It won't work.”

“You're sure about that? Seems like a viable option to me at the least.”

“Oh, that's right. You can't see it. I'm sorry. I forgot.”

“Can't see what?”

“Here.” The Turk reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small mirror, like the kind a woman might keep in her purse. He gestured toward Klingsor's face. “Take a look.”

Klingsor looked in the mirror. A red dot of light danced on his forehead just a little bit right of center. A laser sight. Klingsor glanced
out the window but could not see where the shooter was located. One of the rooftops, perhaps, or an apartment. It was impossible to know.

Klingsor choked down an irrational impulse to brush the dot of laser light off his face.

“Your unfortunate barrister friend aside, you are not known as an especially brutal operator. You are a more subtle player. More cautious. I respect that.”

“Is that why I'm not already dead?”

“Among other reasons, yes.”

Klingsor felt himself relax just a little bit. This was beginning to look more like the opening gambit of a negotiation than the prelude to a premature and permanent retirement.

And he was ready to negotiate. Loyalty was important to Klingsor. He valued it highly. But life was complicated. There were many values that had to be balanced. Openness and security. Freedom and respect. Duty and desire. And at the very top of the pyramid perched self-preservation, the
primus inter pares
of values. It trumped loyalty every time.

“You know some things, but not everything,” Klingsor suggested as casually as he could. “You'd like to know more.”

“Ours is the information business, no? You can never be too rich or too thin or know too much.”

“Two of the things on that list are untrue.”

“I suppose it depends on the circumstances.”

“What is it that I have that interests you?” Klingsor wondered if the red laser dot was still fixed to his skull. A part of him wanted to look in the mirror, but he did not want to give the Turk either the satisfaction or the leverage. It would weaken his bargaining position.

“We'd like to know just how deep the rot goes,” the Turk answered. He removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses with the end of his tie. “We know about Parsifal, of course, but the chain of communication we have is all in code. Good security practice. Very admirable. You, I understand, are Klingsor, and we know that your control is Kundry. What we'd very much like to know is the identity of this Kundry. Who he is and whether he represents the apex of this unauthorized operation.”

Klingsor smiled at this. He had something to trade. The rest was details.

“You're not much of an opera buff are you?”

“On the contrary, but I prefer the Italians. Wagner's a little too bombastic for my tastes. All those Valkyries and magic rings.”

“So you've never seen Parsifal?”

“No. Why does it matter?”

“Because then you would know.”

“Know what, please?”

“Kundry is a woman.”