Father Night (21 page)

A sudden thought caused him to pull out his cell and call the SITSPEC number Paull had given him.

“Fraine,” he said when he connected. “Do you have a tail on me?”

“Negative.”

“Someone else does, then.”

“Location.”

When Fraine gave it, the voice said, “Don’t go anywhere fast.”

Fraine knew what that meant.

*   *   *

T
HE
L
ADA
exited the highway and, slowing, headed down a secondary road lined with tall, stately firs on the right and a sheer split of blue and ocher rock face on the left. They were coming off high ground, slaloming down into the shallow bowl of what would in summer be a verdant valley. Now it was filled with narrow brown furrows of earth turning fallow, in the middle of which was a tarmac landing strip. A small shack sat off to the side at one end, at the other a wind sock on a tall pole. The Antonov An-2 biplane was sitting at the shack end of the runway, two men waiting impatiently beside it. One of them with field glasses apparently saw them because he gestured to his compatriot, then waved his arm back and forth, signaling that they had been spotted.

“The Antonov looks in good shape,” Annika said, clearly relieved as she sat forward and peered out through the windshield.

“I never thought I’d say this,” Katya said, “but I’ll be most happy to leave Russia.”

“Have you ever been outside the country?” Annika said.

Katya smiled. “Not as an adult, but my father was an exporter, and once, for my sixteenth birthday, he took my mother and me to Paris. That was an eye-opener, let me tell you. The architecture! I couldn’t stop looking. And I can still taste the delicious ice cream he bought me on the Île Saint-Louis in a shop called—what was it?”

“Berthillon,” Annika said.

“Yes, yes, that’s it!” She was delighted, and was about to voice that delight, when something hit the Lada. The sedan slewed, but its weight stopped it from losing the road. The driver fought to regain control.

“It must be a blown tire,” said someone, maybe Toma or one of his men. Nevertheless, their handguns were drawn.

The driver, apparently believing the same thing, slowed down, but when the Lada was hit a second time, the force launched it forward, spinning out of control. The car slammed head-on into a fir with such force the entire front crumpled. The wheel and dashboard served as battering rams to instantly crush the four men in the front seat and violently jolt those in the back.

*   *   *

A
LLI, BOUND
in place on the chair, had been contemplating why she could not read Waxman’s body language when the door grated open. She shielded her eyes against the expected glare, but it never came. Nor did she hear Waxman’s familiar step-tap-step across the concrete. Instead, she heard the quiet tread of a much larger and heavier man.

She sensed who it was even before he said, “What do you know about my brother?”

Reggie Herr stood directly in front of her.

“Tell me.” His voice came from lower down. He must have crouched down to her level.

“Why did he hate me so much?” Alli said.

A quiet breathing. “He didn’t hate you, he didn’t think about you at all. You were a means to an end, nothing more.”

“A thing.”

“Yes.”

“So killing a human being was nothing to him.”

“Like swatting a fly.”

“You, as well.”

“We were two peas in a stinking pod.” His quiet breathing filled the cell. “Now tell me.”

“You help me,” Alli said, “and I’ll help you.”

She heard his knees creak as he stood up. Then the stealthy padding as he crossed to the door. He closed it just as stealthily behind him, and that told her what she needed to know.

*   *   *

J
ACK AWOKE
in a coughing fit. Black smoke, seeping in through the shattered windows, filled the interior of the Lada, obscuring his view. The car was a twisted mass; the entire front had collapsed and been jolted backward. His body ached but his limbs seemed intact. He had turned to check on Annika when he became aware of shadows approaching the Lada. The smoke obscured their identities. They could be the two men he had seen down at the airstrip, or they could be the crew that had attacked the car, for there was no doubt in his mind that the Lada had come under attack from small rocket fire.

He slapped Annika’s cheek as he crawled over her and out one of the windows. Someone grabbed him, hauling him roughly to his feet.

“Check on the others,” a harsh voice said.

As the man began to shake him, Jack slammed his fist into the man’s solar plexus, then followed it up with a kidney chop. In the maelstrom of choking smoke, Jack felt the cold metal of a submachine gun and wrenched it away. As the man came awkwardly after it, Jack broke his jaw with the butt, then kicked him off his feet. The man’s forehead struck the Lada’s rear fender and he went down heavily.

Jack could just make out a second man poking his assault rifle through the window Jack had crawled out of. Jack raised his weapon and squeezed off a short blast. The man jumped, his body plastered against the twisted metal of the Lada, blood spurting.

Jack heard his name being screamed and, peeling the body off the side of the car, he saw Annika pushing her grandfather through the ruined window.

“He’s okay,” she said. “Just stunned.”

Jack grasped the old man under the arms and pulled him clear of the car. As he did so, he saw in the corner of his eye a spark ignite through the swirling smoke. Flames whooshed up. Once they reached the gas tank the car would go up like a Roman candle.

“Katya?”

“Going back for her now,” Annika said, turning her back on him.

Hoisting Gourdjiev over his shoulder, Jack staggered a hundred yards away—a safe distance, he judged, even if the Lada should go up. As he was setting the old man down, a battered Volga chugged up. Jack grabbed one of the assault rifles, but the two men who jumped out belonged to the old man.

He told them as well as he could what had happened and one of them set off at a run. The other helped tend to Gourdjiev. Jack heard Annika screaming and he rose, sprinting back into the smoke and flames.

“You’ve got to get her out right now,” he said as he knelt beside the window. “Hand her to me.”

“I can’t.” Annika’s voice was breathless and, for the first time since he’d known her, tinged with panic.

The moment he poked his head in, he saw the problem. “Is it both her legs or just one?”

“I don’t know.” Annika was tugging at the front seat assembly without any luck. Then she turned her head. “Jack, one of her legs is crushed all the way up to the thigh.”

“We’ll never get her out.”

Annika was tugging again. “We have to try, don’t we?”

The flames were rising higher. He could feel their suffocating heat. “If I can get to the seat from the front, maybe the two of us will have enough leverage to unpin her leg.”

He rose and kicked in the glass of the front window, but when he crouched down, he saw that it was useless. The four corpses were mashed between the dash and the seat backs. The wheel was buried in the driver’s shattered chest. He tried to reach over them, but he could not get a grip on the seat, let alone gain the leverage needed to shift it.

“There’s no way to move the corpses out of the way,” he shouted to Annika over the crackling of the fire. “You’ve got to get out now!”

Annika was still tugging at the seat. “If I can just move it a little, I think I can—”

“We’ve run out of time!” Jack reached through the rear window and grabbed hold of her.

“No! No, I can’t leave her!” Annika was crying. “How can I—”

A small explosion cut her off. The back of the rear seat burst into flames and, as she recoiled toward him, Jack hauled her bodily through the open window. Still she fought him, as he lifted her and carried her to where the men were tending to their leader.

The old man opened his eyes. He saw Jack setting Annika down beside him. Soot and ash were churning like snow in hell.

“What happened?” he said in a tissue-thin voice.

Then the Lada exploded in a fireball of crimson flame and black smoke rising high into the still air.

T
WELVE

F
ORTY MINUTES
of waiting in vain for someone from Paull’s SITSPEC team to show up gave Fraine the impression that he was on his own. Either the team was not the well-oiled machine Paull had represented it to be or something unexpected had come up. Just as well, he thought. He preferred being on his own; then the only mistakes were his. But he wasn’t going to make one.

He had been sitting in a window seat of a Starbucks, sipping a latte and not tasting it. The car was parked across the street. Three minutes after he had sat down, Bland Man, his walking tail, had come in, ordered, and was standing at the counter between a businessman barking orders into his cell and a heavyset young woman shopping on her iPad. Bland Man had no problem keeping Fraine in sight out of the corner of his eye. Several minutes ago, Bland Man had left, exiting through the front door and disappearing down the street.

Now Fraine rose, dumped his paper container in the trash, and made his way to the rear of the store. He had chosen this particular Starbucks because it had two entrances. The rear entrance gave out onto an indoor shopping arcade with a curved, coffered roof of green glass squares. Fraine spotted Bland Man right away, lurking in front of a shop directly across from the Starbucks entrance. He loved his reflections, that one.

Turning right, Fraine sifted his way through the thickening late afternoon crowd until he came to a shirt shop he knew well. He went in and immediately made himself invisible to anyone peering in through the window. It wasn’t long—three and a half minutes, to be exact—before Bland Man grew anxious enough to step into the shop to find out where he was.

Fraine picked up a couple of shirts on hangers and, making sure Bland Man saw him, went into a changing room. He waited a minute, watching the seconds tick by on his watch, then pulled open the door, grabbed Bland Man by his lapels, head-butted him, and shoved him into the changing room. Fraine delivered a kidney blow that drove the man to his knees. Then he slammed Bland Man’s forehead against the rear wall.

Reaching beneath him, Fraine relieved Bland Man of his sidearm in its spring-loaded armpit holster and his wallet. He holstered the gun, stepped out of the changing cubicle, and quickly and unobtrusively exited the store.

In a deserted side alley, Fraine took a closer look at Bland Man’s handgun. It was a CZ 75 SP-01 Phantom with polymer grips, which made it a good deal lighter and with far less recoil than the all-steel model. It had a fully loaded eighteen-round magazine and one 9mm bullet in the chamber. The CZ was of Czech manufacture, and while it was one of the best handguns available, so far as Fraine knew it was not standard issue with any law enforcement or clandestine service.

Next, he opened the wallet, which contained a driver’s license, two credit cards, approximately a thousand dollars in cash, and, apart from a slip from a Chinese fortune cookie saying, “You are in line to be richly rewarded,” not much else. The license and cards were in the name of Milton P. Stirwith, a name that meant nothing to Fraine. He searched in vain for anything else to give him a clue as to who Milton P. Stirwith worked for, but there was no sign of a helpful matchbook cover or a business card to provide a convenient lead. He accessed the Internet on his cell. A quick Google search of the name came up with no one remotely as bland as Stirwith.

Fraine took the shirts he had picked out and paid for them. Carrying the package under his arm, he whistled all the way back to Metro HQ.

*   *   *

“A
ND THE
craziest thing,” Vera said in conclusion, “was that the cops seemed convinced I’d stolen the Secret Service car!” Her agitation had climbed during her retelling of the events surrounding Alli’s abduction. She was now quite certain she had made a grievous mistake in going to the Metro Police. The only solace she could give herself was that she had been in shock, and wasn’t quite in her right mind when she drove there.

Caro, who had responded immediately to her call, said, “Didn’t he address the fact that two agents were missing?”

“He said there was no report of agents missing. But they
are
missing because they’re fucking dead.” Vera looked at her friend. “Why would a chief of detectives lie?”

Caro’s brow furrowed. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

“You’re telling me.”

“But then, if it’s become a matter of national security there would be nothing else for him to do but lie.”

“I didn’t like him,” Vera said, “and I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of them. Which is why I called you.”

Vera had sounded so desperate that Caro, though initially suggesting a public meet, had agreed to have her come up to her hotel suite, though it went against her heightened sense of security. They were sitting on a sweeping expanse of beige sofa set facing the panoramic view of Washington through the picture windows. There was a tray with a full tea service on the low glass-top table in front of them.

“Did you tell them you saw Waxman and the others?”

“No.”

“Good. You had at least some of your wits about you.”

“Bishop’s a fucking creep. He kept checking out my tits when he thought I wasn’t looking.”

Caro laughed. “I would, too, if I were him.”

“This is no joke,” Vera said, more hotly than she had intended.

Caro cocked her head. “Wait a minute, are those tears I see?” She leaned toward Vera. “You’re not crying, are you?”

“What if I am?” Vera said, feeling inordinately defensive.

“You never cry.” Caro appeared genuinely fascinated. “Neither of us feel anything for anyone.”

“Speak for yourself, Sis.” To her horror, Vera felt herself shaking. She took her teacup in both hands and drank in an attempt to calm herself. Previously, she was quite certain that she had ice in her veins. Nothing rattled her. That was the only way she could deal with her father, which, she knew, was true of Caro, as well.