A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel (27 page)

Stein’s appearance in the newspaper had Antaeus’s hand all over it.

I saw another train approaching.

P
ainter and Kopa
ń
ski were entering the town of Vienna.

Painter shut her cell after speaking to the head of the undercover task force. “Squad cars have their perimeter. If we want to, we can shut down every street and road in and out of the zone. They’ve got uniformed officers on foot too, in case Cochrane bolts without a vehicle. In the zone, the undercover unit is in place, watching the station. If he’s in there, this won’t be another Lynchburg fuck-up. There’s no way out for him this time.” She asked, “Do you want to be the one who goes in there? You owe Cochrane a visit after he put you on your ass on the Amtrak.”

Kopa
ń
ski would dearly have loved to be the officer who went into the station to get a visual on the Englishman. But he said, “No. I stand out too much.”

As they drove past a stationary Fairfax County squad car that had been partially concealed between trees, he glanced at Painter and said, “I just want you to be very careful. No heroics. Promise me that?”

For a moment, she was unsure how to respond to the tough detective’s genuine concern. Quietly she responded, “Sure, Joe. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

T
he train pulled into the station and three people alighted, one male, the others female. The male was over a hundred yards away from me.

I removed my shades and checked the time on my cell.

It was precisely 11
A.M
.

K
opa
ń
ski parked his vehicle as close as he dared to the Metro station. “You sure the radio mic is working fine?”

Painter had fitted the device under her blouse in the car and had tested it several times. It had excellent connection to the radios of the D.C. undercover unit and the commander in charge of the Fairfax County troopers. “It’s working.”

She opened the car door, put one foot on the ground, and stopped as Kopa
ń
ski grabbed her arm.

“How close do you think you’ll need to get to him to make a positive ID?”

She answered, “No idea. Depends what he’s wearing.”

With urgency, he said, “Just don’t get too close.”

“You care about my safety, Joe?” Her tone was jesting.

But Kopa
ń
ski wasn’t seeing the funny side. “If he recognizes you, you’ll be dead before you can do anything about it. Not too close.”

Painter approached the station entrance. Earpiece in place, she spoke into her body mic. “This is Detective Painter. I’m approaching Vienna. Stand by. I’m now entering the station.”

She hadn’t felt this tense since her Night Stalker helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.

I
stood still as the solitary male passenger walked along the platform toward me.

All he was carrying was a satchel. He was tall, athletic, mid-thirties, wearing jeans and a jacket. He wasn’t looking at me as he drew closer.

P
ainter stopped in the ticket hall of the small complex. A male and female in their twenties were buying tickets from a machine while laughing; the male was too short and the wrong age to be Cochrane. An elderly black woman was berating a staff member, telling him the subway prices were way too high. A father was bent over, wagging his finger at his naughty son. And a mother was negotiating her way through the ticket barrier, clutching shopping bags and pushing a pram.

Aside from getting on a train, the ticket hall was the only way out of here.

She purchased a ticket and walked toward the barriers.

T
he passenger was now fifteen yards away from me, his face easily visible. I stared at him. The man didn’t make eye contact.

Other people in this situation would be desperate to look around to see if they were being observed by others. But that’s not how this worked. The man coming toward me controlled the ground. He’d know if something was wrong. I had to put my complete faith in him. And if he walked past me and did nothing, that meant the shit was about to hit the fan.

P
ainter whispered, “Nothing in the ticket lobby. Going through the barriers.”

In her earpiece she could hear the D.C. and Fairfax County commanders acknowledge her update and start issuing further orders to their men. The undercover unit was poised to storm the station on foot.

She placed her ticket in the barrier, it swung open, and she walked through.

T
he passenger was three feet in front of me, his satchel in his right hand. Still, he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he appeared to be staring at the ticket barriers forty yards behind me. There was a look of contentment on his face, as if he were looking forward to getting home.

Two feet.

One foot.

When he was directly alongside me, he quickly looked at my face. I glanced at him without moving my head. It was the man I’d worked with a year ago. Michael Stein. He gave me his satchel and continued walking.

I would have loved to have spoken to him.

But antisurveillance brush contacts don’t allow for any kind of behavior that might show hostile observers that two agents know each other.

All Stein could do was keep walking.

I stayed still, my back to the barriers, waiting until I was confident that Stein had exited the complex.

“I
’ve got one man on the platform. His back’s to me. Approximately forty yards away.”

“That’s close enough,” barked Kopa
ń
ski in Painter’s earpiece.

She’d never heard him so concerned for her safety. Her handbag was in front of her, and she moved her hand inside it as if she were rummaging for a mislaid ticket. In truth she was gripping her sidearm.

The man turned.

She bowed her head, pretending to look in the bag.

Would all his expert training instantly tell him she was pretending to be something she wasn’t?

She didn’t dare speak into her radio mic. He was too close.

Her stomach flipping, hand ready to pull out her gun and fire, she looked up.

The man was not Will Cochrane.

A thought suddenly occurred to her as she recalled the last sentence in the
Washington Post
article. Not caring about maintaining her cover, she urgently said into her mic, “Whatever station is two stops away from here, we need to get there now.”

I
walked out of the West Falls Church Metro station and entered my vehicle. The parking lot was half empty and I couldn’t see anyone else.

Everything had gone according to plan. Inserting the coded message inside the
Washington Post
interview had been a hell of a long shot, because the chances of my not reading the article were significant.

The final sentences of the article were a code telling me that Stein wanted to meet with me and give me something. But the meeting place wasn’t the Vienna Metro. It was in a place denoted by the final sentence of the article.

That day, Vienna was dangerous and we were too down the line.

T
wo stops away from Vienna on the Orange Line was West Falls Church.

I knew cops were swooping on Vienna. I’d heard Detective Thyme Painter talking to the chief of the Fairfax County Police Department via the intercept device I’d found in Tap’s car. Still, it had been a significant risk going to West Falls Church.

Were it not for my overwhelming fear for Tom Koenig’s safety, I might have felt good about this moment. Just having the briefest of contacts with Stein meant someone out there cared. Holding the satchel meant the world to me.

Rain started pelting the windshield of my car as I opened the bag and checked its contents. Inside were two packages and an envelope. One of the packages contained three hundred thousand dollars. The other was a bundle of dynamite.

I opened the envelope. Inside was a letter.

Have you considered that this might all be personal revenge from one individual? I’m sure you have. A powerful person is doing this to you. I don’t know who that person is. But I do know that someone like that will have people watching over him. A blow is best dealt from distance. Consider that. I’m so very sorry to hear about your sister. —A.

A
had to be Antaeus.

The former Russian spymaster had given me a lifeline. And a tactic.

But the sentence about my sister made no sense.

She was in Scotland, leading a quiet life, and would never cross Antaeus’s radar. With a sense of impending dread, I grabbed the
Washington Post
and read the other article on the front page. It summarized a briefing to the press given by Lieutenant Pat Brody of the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, NYPD Public Information.

The first thing that jumped out was that the Waldorf murder weapon had been found in Lynchburg. In a part of the city where I’d never been. And ballistics analysis left no doubt that the same gun had been used to kill the woman in Manhattan. It had also been the pistol fired on the Granges, their cop protectors, and the two cops in Lynchburg.

The weapon I’d picked up in my hotel room was an identical model to the murder weapon, but not the same gun. I briefly wondered whether this was sufficient to absolve me of all crimes. No. My innocence couldn’t be proven simply because I was carrying a weapon that didn’t kill the people I was accused of murdering.

I carried on reading.

And stopped on the words
Sarah Goldsmith
.

My sister.

The victim.

In the Waldorf.

My head flopped to my chest. It might as well have been cut off.

I’d touched her fingers, because I wanted her to know someone cared. But I thought I didn’t know her. How could I know? Her long blond hair had been cut short and dyed brown. Her face had been obliterated by bullets. There was no ID on her. But now I could feel my dead sister’s fingers touching mine. It made the moment wholly different. And all I could think about was that I’d looked at a murder victim and hadn’t known that she was the last remaining member of my family.

So much had been done to me. But for the world to now believe I was capable of shooting my sister was an unbearable agony. Worse was the utter loss. I’d intended to Skype her when the twins and I were settled in our new home. I’d wanted to build bridges with her, show her that I was living a peaceful life. I was sure that’s all she wanted to see—her brother no longer putting himself in great danger. She’d have finally been happy that she no longer had to worry about getting a call saying I was dead.

I couldn’t stop my tears as I continued reading the article.

More details about Lynchburg.

Conjecture on my state of mind and motivation for going on the rampage.

And then a line that made me drop the paper and bang my fist against my forehead.

The body of Sarah Goldsmith’s husband, James Goldsmith, was found yesterday at the Goldsmiths’ home in Scotland. Local police released a statement saying that the death was apparently a suicide and occurred shortly after Goldsmith learned of his wife’s murder.

J
ames—a nice man. Perfect foil for my high-strung sister. He’d met her at university and was besotted with her ever since. A guy who made Sarah laugh.

And James went to his grave thinking I killed his wife.

This was unbearable.

On Tap’s intercept device, I heard Painter say that I wasn’t at Vienna but most likely was at West Falls Church. I put my hands on the ignition key. Stay here and let them capture me? The pain would end that way. Or drive out of here and try to find Tom?

What to do? I had to make a decision fast. But all I could think about was how much pain and death I’d brought to those around me.

I
n the basement of the isolated farmhouse twenty-nine miles north of D.C., Viktor Zhukov partially lifted the black hood up to reveal Tom Koenig’s mouth. “How are you this evening?”

The rancid smell on the man’s breath made Tom squirm. “Sc-scared. Please . . .”

“Hush now. This will all be over soon.” He looked at the metal girder in the ceiling above Tom’s chair. “You know who’s done this to you, don’t you?”

“Please . . . please . . .”

“Shut up!” Zhukov walked to the technical equipment on the side table. He moved his finger down the sheet containing the list of pre-recordings. Motioning for the colleagues in the room to be silent, he asked, “Sir, you still want to go ahead with this?”