Reckless (28 page)
Authors: Andrew Gross
He crossed after her, following her down the narrow alleyway. Around the back of the building, the small road opened up.
A car parking lot.
Maria Radisovic was depositing her parcels into the rear of a small blue Opel. Then, taking a last look around, as if she felt Hauck watching, she got in.
The instincts that had guided Hauck all these years suddenly kicked in. Blood pumping, he ran back out of the alley and signaled Naomi over to their Ford, parked on the side of the street.
“Get in!”
he shouted, throwing the driver’s door open.
Naomi hopped in beside him as he turned on the engine. “What?”
“We’re in business!”
M
aria Radisovic’s blue Opel pulled out of the small alleyway and turned left on Zinak Street, heading out of town.
Hauck waited until the car disappeared around a bend, then pulled out after her. He felt confident that the woman, supplies in tow, was leading them somewhere promising.
About a mile ahead, tracking the river, the road widened and the commercial shops and apartment dwellings gave way to warehouses, gas stations, even a local power facility. Hauck followed, keeping a couple of hundred yards behind.
A road sign read SEBECEVO, 8 KM.
A couple of miles beyond town, the road they were on started to wind and climb. It narrowed, cutting through the dark hills surrounding the valley Novi Pazar was situated in. Traffic was sparse. Radisovic chugged along at a modest pace. Hauck had to work at it to remain so far behind. Every once in a while a commercial truck zoomed past them.
Neither he nor Naomi had much to say. They both seemed to feel the same anticipation that Maria was going to lead them to something. As the road climbed, the little Opel slowed and Hauck had to keep his diesel in second gear to remain an appropriate distance behind.
SEBECEVO, 3 KM.
As the road crested and started to descend into a wide valley, the Opel’s turn signal began to flash. It was remote terrain. Hauck glanced at Naomi.
They had arrived somewhere.
An unpaved road came into view, marked only by a telephone pole with a sign, SISTENA R, the river. The car ahead made a right turn. It slowed and chugged along the dirt road, and coming upon it, Hauck drove by, glancing at Maria Radisovic bouncing along the rutted terrain. “I don’t want her to spot us turning.”
About a quarter of a mile down the main road he turned onto the shoulder. He spun back around and stopped before the turnoff. They could no longer see Maria Radisovic’s car.
“This is it.” He eyed Naomi expectantly. “Last chance to pull out.”
She shook her head. Anticipation shone in her eyes. “Let’s see what she’s up to.”
They turned down the gravelly road. It cut through a fallow field and wound through a dense thatch of woods, steadily rising. Hauck’s pulse seemed to bump along in the same rhythm as the car.
They passed a tree-shaded cottage, barely more than a hut, with a few farm animals in pens. A dog ran out at them, barking.
No sign of Maria’s Opel.
Around a bend, the road cleared the woods and led them into a wide valley. Hills rose up in front of them. Hauck could see a couple of houses dotting the hillside ahead.
“I’m pulling off for a second,” he said. “I can’t take the chance she’ll spot us following her.”
He slowed onto the side of the dirt road and threw the car into park. Hauck reached into the back and took out a pair of binoculars from his canvas bag. Focusing, he made a wide sweep of the hills. About a mile ahead, he spotted the Opel climbing a steep ridge and, following its path and the valley beyond, came upon the outline of a dwelling, the brightness of a red tiled roof.
Naomi asked, “What do you see?”
The Opel drove down the road and came to a stop in front of the white, red-roofed farmhouse.
“I think I see pay dirt,” Hauck replied.
They drove past the ridge and left the car hidden behind a cluster of trees where it wouldn’t be spotted. Hauck grabbed the bag and took the binocs, some bottled water, a Nikon camera, and his Sig 9 mm, just in case.
“You’re sure you’re up for this?” he asked Naomi one last time, a little playfulness behind it. “Desk detail is over.”
She tied her hair in a ponytail and zipped her Windbreaker. “Let me know if I go too fast for you,” she answered.
They decided to climb the adjoining ridge and look over the house Maria Radisovic had driven up to. Naomi strapped on her government-issue Colt.
“You even recall how to use that thing?” Hauck asked with a teasing grin.
“I think I can still conjure up the image,” Naomi said, locking in the magazine and brushing past him.
The terrain up the hill was steep, with tall grasses that led to a drier brush as they climbed above the trees. The sun had come out and made the climb hot. And steep. Hauck felt a little out of breath. His leg throbbed a bit, still stiff from the bullet in the thigh he’d taken eighteen months ago.
Naomi, leading the way, never even slowed.
They finally made it to the top. They kneeled down on a rock and looked over the ridge Maria Radisovic had driven up to.
“Look!”
Hauck pointed to a stucco farmhouse. Some animal pens built along a sloping hillside, maybe for sheep or oxen, but no sign of any livestock around. An earthen well dug along the side of the house.
White smoke rose from the chimney.
“Someone’s there.”
A black Audi was parked along the side of the house in back, almost hidden from view.
The cargo hatch open, Maria Radisovic’s Opel was pulled up in front.
Hauck peered through the binoculars. She had unpacked the car and gone inside. He guessed he was gazing at an abandoned farm. Maybe in the family or something they had rented. He muttered to Naomi, “What would you be thinking about why an elderly women needs to bring stuff way out in the sticks like this? Food. Booze. Tobacco.”
“I’d be thinking maybe it’s for someone she wants to hide,” Naomi said, watching over the ridge.
They had to wait a few minutes. Fifteen or twenty. The sun made it hot up there, and they opened up some water.
Finally, the front door of the farmhouse opened back up.
Maria came out first. She was followed by a figure Hauck recognized instantly. He zoomed in with the binoculars. The man was dressed in a blue plaid shirt, rumpled pants, and leather work boots. He was heavyset and broad shouldered. He looked like any anonymous worker from the town.
Except that Hauck saw his face.
“And I’d be thinking you’re right,” he said, rolling over and passing the binoculars to Naomi. “Agent Blum, say hi to Dani Thibault.” He grinned triumphantly.
I
nside the farmhouse, Dani Thibault was going crazy.
He’d been cooped up at the old family farm for a week, unable to communicate with anyone, nervous to even show his face in town, even though he’d hadn’t been there for fifteen years. He was virtually in prison, yet he knew he had to remain there, at least for a while, until things calmed down.
He went out for a smoke and looked around the foggy valley. It was a perfect hiding spot. He was in one of the most remote mountain regions in Europe, and having driven through the EU from Paris under an identity no one could trace, there was no way anyone would have tracked him here. He was sure he had gotten out before anyone would have known he was missing. He had communicated only through a private e-mail address with his mother. Franko Kostavic had disappeared fifteen years ago. And if it did somehow come out, if some old-timer recognized his face and put it together, in his family’s old village, surrounded by friends who felt the same way, he would be celebrated as a hero for what he’d done in the war, not turned in.
But it wasn’t the police or the U.S. government he was primarily worried about. No…
On his way there, in Germany, he had stopped and e-mailed the man who had recruited him at a designated cyber address. Thibault wrote that the trail of money he had received and recordings he had made of their communications were in the secure possession of a lawyer in Switzerland with instructions to share it with the U.S. government should Thibault not be around to call in and instruct him not to every six months. A simple plan, he had to admit, but a safe one. All he wanted was his freedom in return for what he had done. His silence was guaranteed.
Ultimately, Thibault knew, there were places he could go where no one would ever find him and new aliases he could adopt. Just like he had done before. He possessed all the funds he would ever need. He knew how to sniff out people, vulnerable people. The instinct came to him like the scent of a hare to a hound.
His only regret was that he couldn’t get even with Merrill. To make her pay for her betrayal. That was driving him nuts. She was a horny little bitch and his only amusement now was the knowledge that he had let free urges from deep inside her she would not so easily satisfy with someone else.
Unfortunately, the thought of her brought his own physical urges to the surface. Up there, what prospects could there be? Filthy barmaids or mountainous old farmer’s wives. He was used to having the most desirable women in the world. Maybe he would go into Novi Pazar. No one knew him there. There were places he could go. Women found him instantly attractive. He knew he radiated something mysterious to them, a side he had played up his whole life. Using women had never been a difficult thing for him.
The stupid old Bahraini had said it. It was his dick that would get him into trouble.
Yes, he was going crazy there.
So be it,
Thibault thought. He stared up at the hills. It was like he felt someone watching him, but he knew that was impossible. They’d held in secrets for centuries.
He stamped out his cigarette. His was just one more.
T
hey watched Thibault for another day from the same hillside, perched high on the ridge. Naomi snapped several photos. Thibault. His car. Its plates. She sent them immediately back to Washington.
They deliberated about what to do.
Thibault never strayed far from the cottage. Once or twice he came out for a smoke or to bring in wood from a shack, as the nights were still cool. Once he took a short walk along a nearby brook. The next day, Maria Radisovic came back around noon. This time Hauck and Naomi were there ahead of her. She brought along a suitcase that seemed stuffed with clothes, and Thibault came out of the farmhouse and took it in for her. He puffed on a cigar and stamped it into the ground. Before going in, he gazed around the secluded valley—almost directly at the spot where he and Naomi were located, making Hauck duck back. It was almost as if Thibault had sensed someone was watching him.
Then he went back inside.
The options they faced were complicated. They could arrest Thibault themselves, but that would mean bringing in the Serbian police. Anything else would be unlawful. Which no one wanted. That would only create a public legal battle over extradition. Without a formal treaty and with local lawyers dragging it out, a thing like that could go on forever. And once the government became aware Thibault was actually Kostavic, who knew how that would play out? They might lose whatever negotiating leverage they had.
The next best option was something more clandestine. Bring in professionals. Call in a team that could subdue Thibault, disable him, and sneak him out of the country across the border with Romania or even Macedonia. Back into U.S. hands. The new international antiterrorist accords gave them broad powers. But apprehending a Serb in his home country, doing a covert abduction in a friendly state—that would never fly. That wasn’t exactly part of the current U.S. presidential administration’s foreign policy theme.
They had found him. But time was running out and they felt their viable options slowly drifting away.
“What’s the goal here?” Hauck asked atop the ridge, swigging water as the day grew hot and long.
He had come to a decision on his own.
“Apprehend him,” Naomi said. “Find out what he knows.”
“You can always apprehend him. We know what car he’s driving, what name he’s traveling under. You can always petition the local government to hand him over. Whatever the case, he’ll be facing serious charges here. And you’ll know where he is.”
Naomi stared at him quizzically. “So where are you heading, Ty?”
“You want to find out where this leads, right? What’s important is discovering what’s behind those murders?”
She nodded, going along.
“What we need to do is get inside that farmhouse.”
He turned and focused back on the house, not elaborating further. He could see Naomi weighing what he’d said in her mind. She wasn’t a field agent. She worked behind a desk. Her job was to fit together the threads of financial conspiracy and assess the threat. In the army, she’d been an investigator. Going in there, on the fly, without the backing of her bosses in DC, like some kind of operative—that definitely wasn’t the way careers were made in Washington. She’d be crossing a huge line.
Some time later, after Hauck figured she’d stowed the idea away as a bad one, she turned. “How do we do that?” she asked.
Hauck grinned. He’d been waiting for her to reply, “Over
my dead body
!”
“Thibault’s used to being a public person. He’s going to have to leave that farmhouse sometime.”
She sat back against the ledge and nodded, not so much in agreement as in coming to grips with the idea. Finally she replied, without turning, “Anyway, if anyone’s going in that farmhouse, it’s going to be
me
. I know what I’m looking for.”
He waited a moment. “You ever done anything like that before?”
She looked at him without answering.
“I’m just saying, this isn’t exactly music theory at Princeton, Naomi.”
“Any more than it’s handing out traffic tickets in Greenwich.” Her glare suggested there wouldn’t be much negotiating on this.