Presence of Mine Enemies Page 10

  “It will be most welcome, David. We’re working to establish the provenance of the vehicle now, see if we can tie it to any known actors. We—”

  Lay’s computer dinged with an incoming alert in that moment, distracting him as he looked over to see a message pop up on the screen. Ron Carter. One of the Clandestine Service’s top analysts, a man he’d known for many years.

  The message was terse, which was like Ron. And as chilling as it was terse. One of ours is believed to be among the dead.

  Heinrich Köhler’s voice still in his ear, Lay clicked on the attachment, a personnel file opening in his browser. The face of a middle-aged African-American colonel in full dress uniform gazing back at him, his eyes flickering down to read the text.

  The defense attache. And what was more. . .

  “Excuse me, Heinrich,” he said, staring into the dead man’s eyes. “I’m going to have to call you back. Something’s come up.”

  2:33 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  A café

  Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium

  It was like reliving the worst moments of his life, all over again. Every misstep. Every failure.

  Playing on repeat through his brain. Like a series of bodies hitting the ground, again and again. Davood. Aydin. Ismail Bessimi. Carol herself.

  Only the latest, the most personal, in a list that was far too long.

  Harry sat there in the café, his eyes glued to the television mounted on the far wall—his tea now growing cold, forgotten on the table before him.

  The confirmed death toll was thirty now, with the potential to rise, even yet. Video uploaded by a young Japanese college student who had been filming the boulevard on her smartphone at the moment of impact had hit the Internet and was going viral—showing a brown sedan coming into frame from the left, ostensibly just making the turn, but coming too fast for that.

  And just seconds later, the shockwave of an explosion hammering the boulevard—debris raining down upon the young woman as she struggled to get away. Her screams filling the microphone.

  Terror.

  Like that which his young “friends” wanted to sow. They were too young to truly understand the world, the consequences of their actions.

  His face hardened. Not too young to pay them.

  8:32 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time

  A ranch house

  Chandler, Oklahoma

  “. . .attack upon the Adlon Hotel, which stands only two blocks from the United States Embassy in Berlin. Counterterrorism experts speculate that the attack may have been an attempt on the embassy itself, which was deterred by security measures in place. There has currently been no claim of responsibility from the Islamic State, however, and. . .”

  Talking to fill up space, Roy Coftey thought, staring out the kitchen window of the ranch house to the east, the last of his coffee in his hand. That’s all cable news hosts ever did–worthless, the lot of them.

  There wouldn’t be anything worth hearing for days, not in open sources at least. God only knew what the folks in the intelligence community were coming up with—and could, so long as the lights weren’t switched out on them.

  He heard movement behind him and turned to see Melody enter the kitchen, her long blonde hair still wet from the shower—a towel wrapped around her body.

  “There’s been a terrorist attack,” he announced brusquely, “in Berlin.”

  “I saw,” she replied, a grimace crossing her face. “It’s all over Twitter. Some of the images. . .you have e-mail one of us needs to answer—CNN and Fox News reaching out for comment.”

  Speak of the devil. Coftey shook his head, placing his empty cup in the sink as he gathered up his wallet and keys. “Think something up and send it before you come out to the parade route—you know me well enough to know what I’d say.”

  There wasn’t time to deal with it himself, not with all that remained in the offing for this day.

  “You’re leaving already?” she asked, pulling a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. “The parade’s still hours away.”

  He smiled, the first genuine one he’d allowed himself since the text message had landed on his burner phone the previous afternoon. “You don’t know towns like this. They always find a way to fill up the time. And I’d be well advised to be in the thick of it, pressing flesh.”

  “I’ll get something written up,” she replied, not looking up from her phone. “Should I send it your way for approval?”

  “Don’t bother. I won’t have time to read it. And Melody,” he hesitated choosing his words carefully. “If anyone stops by the house before you leave, call me. Right away.”

  3:41 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  The apartment

  Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium

  Forty-three dead. Another eighty injured. Harry paused for a moment on the stairs leading to their second-floor flat, his fingers digging into the rail until his knuckles whitened.

  He’d left the café when he could take it no more, the death toll climbing steadily with each passing hour since the attack.

  Remembering the reaction of his young “friends”, of the joy filling their faces at the news. He could have killed them both in that moment.

  And perhaps that would still be his best way out of all this, he thought, a darkness overshadowing him—steal a car and drive out, the three of them, into the countryside. Three out, one back.

  He’d killed better men in his life. Men who’d seen him coming, been ready for him. And he’d killed them all the same.

  It wouldn’t be difficult.

  But somehow, for some reason he struggled to define, he found that he didn’t want their blood on his hands.

  He knew who they were, what they were, and yet. . .they had taken him in, given him shelter when there’d been nowhere left for him to run.

  Nowhere else to hide.

  It was hard not to feel something of kinship after all of that. Was it a form of Stockholm? It was hard to know, and perhaps it didn’t matter—not in the end.

  Not so long as he could get them on that plane.

  Harry inserted his key into the lock, attempting to push all such thoughts from his head as he pushed the door open, entering the small flat. Reza was at his classes, and Yassin was out, helping an elderly Muslim widow two floors down with her shopping—both of them, gone for hours. It should give him enough time alone to begin pulling things together for the Emiratis.

  A mixture of genuine history and fabrication, like any good lie. Enough to ensure they were stopped—watchlisted. Put away for long enough for him to get clear.

  And then he heard it, a strange, indistinguishable sound coming from somewhere deeper in the apartment—every fiber of his body tensing as he froze, rooted in place.

  His ears straining for the slightest sound, any repetition of what he had heard. His eyes flickering across the apartment in the dim light, struggling to place it.

  Another moment, and then it came again, this time from the bedroom—still unrecognizable, something between a grunt and a moan—but human all the same. He wasn’t alone.

  He crossed the kitchen with quick, noiseless steps, wrenching a steak knife from the cutting block and flipping it over, reversed in his hand as he moved, cat-like, toward the bedroom door.

  The sounds growing ever clearer and more distinct as he approached. Bringing the knife back, out of sight along the flowing white sleeve of his thawb as he pushed the door open.

  “Reza!”

  2:45 P.M. British Summer Time

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  “. . .I understand, I’ll get right on that,” Simon Norris said impatiently, responding to the person on the other end of the phone. “Of course. As soon I have anything, you’ll be the first to receive it.”

  He signed off with a heavy sigh, replacing the phone in its cradle on his office desk. Finally.

  His day hadn’t gone anything remotely according to plan, the MI-5 analyst thought
, running his fingers through his hair. The bombing in Berlin, throwing everything off.

  None of which changed what he had to do.

  He’d drunk himself to sleep, waking up this morning with a pounding headache, the worst hangover he could remember in his life—even surpassing those he’d known in college. The events of the previous night—the Russian—seeming distant, somehow. Little more than a bad dream.

  And yet, as the effects of the alcohol had worn off, everything had come flooding back. All the horror of what was now his life.

  “Arthur Colville really wasn’t—shouldn’t—have been that important,” the Russian had said there in the restaurant, something of regret in his voice. As if the miscalculation had been his own. “Just one of scores of such agents of influence—polezniye duraki—across Europe.”

  Useful idiots. A Russian term that dated back at least to the first half of the 20th Century, serving as reminder that Russia’s intelligence services had been relying upon unwitting dupes as far back as Stalin.

  Was that what he was, now? Perhaps.

  “Given the West’s endearing fetishization of free speech,” Alexei had gone on, “it was assumed that, as a newspaper publisher, Colville was relatively safe from scrutiny. As a result—”

  He’d interrupted, unable to take it any longer. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “As a result,” the Russian had continued imperturbably, “his handlers were not as cautious as they should have been. They left us exposed. And that, Mr. Norris—is where you come in. You’re going to help me mend their errors.”

  “And if I refuse?” It had seemed silly—cliched—to have asked. And yet he’d done so anyway, unable to stop himself.

  The Russian had just looked at him, favoring him with the kind of indulgent smile one might give a wayward child. “I think we both know the answer to that, Simon. And it’s not a road either of us would wish to travel down.”

  3:49 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  The apartment

  Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium

  It was as though a bomb had been set off in the bed at the sound of his voice, white limbs flashing in the semi-darkness as Reza rolled off the body of the young woman lying beneath him.

  Her scream filling the small confines of the bedroom, mingled with the sound of cursing in French as Reza grabbed for his pants—stumbling into the wall and nearly going down as he struggled to pull them on.

  “What’s going on here?” Harry demanded, forcing righteous anger into his voice as he descended on the couple, the answer to his question only too obvious—Reza still naked from the waist down despite his best efforts, the girl struggling to cover herself.

  “Ibrahim, I’m sorry—I-I thought you’d be gone the rest of the afternoon, I thought—”

  “You thought it was a good opportunity to come back here and bed your slut,” Harry stormed angrily, finishing his sentence for him. He heard the girl start to speak up in their defense and turned on her, a long forefinger jabbing out in her direction. “Enough. Get dressed and get out.”

  “Ibrahim, this isn’t necessary,” Reza protested weakly, looking more than faintly ridiculous standing there against the wall, finally having managed to pull up his boxers. “This—”

  “You’re in no position to decide,” came Harry’s furious retort, his eyes flashing fire as he transfixed the college student with a hard stare. “What were you thinking? You know what the Prophet said should be done with fornicators, you know—”

  “I know, I know,” Reza said, putting up a hand as if he expected Harry to strike him—tears shining in the boy’s eyes. “But Nora. . .I love her, and—and this was the last time I’d be able to be with her before I leave, and I didn’t want to die a virgin. I just had to—”

  Harry began to respond and then he froze, a cold chill running through his body.

  “Did you tell her that?” he demanded, the question coming out as a low hiss. “Did you?”

  “I told her I was leaving, yes,” Reza choked out, clearly taken off-guard by the shift in questioning. “But I didn’t tell her where, I swear before God, I—”

  “Stay here,” Harry ordered, a murderous look in his eyes as he turned away from the young man, moving purposefully to the door—Reza’s voice calling out after him as he went.

  “Ibrahim!”

  2:52 P.M. British Summer Time

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  The Royal Bank of Scotland, Simon Norris thought, staring at the browser window open on his computer screen. It made sense that Arthur Colville would have kept his accounts there—the Colville family name dating back to Scotland in the 13th Century.

  Accounts filled with Russian rubles. Or dollars—whatever their equivalent had been after filtering through the Russians’ proxy organizations in the United States.

  Norris shook his head.

  Had Colville ever known—ever suspected—that he was being used?

  No, he decided, after a moment’s further thought. The publisher would never have been capable of that kind of self-questioning. That doubt. His unswerving moral certitude—his belief in the righteousness of their cause—the very thing which had drawn Norris to him in the beginning.

  Started him down the road to treason. To betraying everything he’d once sworn to defend. And, if he could believe anything the Russian had said. . .to nearly causing the death of his Queen.

  “England confides that every man will do his duty.”

  Nelson’s signal to his ships at the outset of Trafalgar. Colville’s words to him that night on London Bridge, on the eve of something far more terrible.

  But all that, was now in the past. Decisions, which could never be unmade.

  All that remained now was to survive. He swallowed hard, looking at the screen.

  Making the Russian money trail vanish wasn’t going to be easy, not without getting caught. He’d successfully pinned the leak of the PERSEPHONE files—the leak which had brought down the government—on his former branch head, but arranging that had taken months.

  He no longer had months. Not even weeks. And there was no longer any turning back. . .

  3:55 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  The apartment

  Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium

  Nora was still standing in the kitchen of the small apartment when Harry emerged from the bedroom, buttoning up her blouse with trembling fingers as he approached. Tears streaking her face, her hijab—the symbol of her modesty—wildly askew, as if in mockery of the pretense. Loose strands of blonde hair hanging in her eyes.

  She trembled as Harry put a hand on her shoulder, her small frame wracked with silent sobs.

  “Salaam, little sister,” he whispered, gently helping her adjust the hijab until it covered her head, worn as a true Muslima should wear it. “Dry your tears.”

  “I-I’m sorry,” she managed, her voice on the verge of cracking. Unable to look him in the face.

  “It is not to me that you should repent,” he said tenderly, turning her to face him, “but to Allah, whose laws you have violated. You have not been a Muslim long, have you?”

  “N-no,” the young Frenchwoman managed, wiping at her eyes as she tried to pull herself together. She was a pretty girl, that much he had to admit. It wasn’t hard to see why Reza had fallen for her. “Just last year—after I met Reza at university.”

  “May God be praised,” Harry smiled disarmingly, “for it is never too late to turn to the truth. But that is no excuse for doing what you knew clearly to be sin.”

  “I know,” she said, biting at her lip—fresh tears welling in her eyes. “I knew it was wrong, but Reza said that I might never see him again and he insisted—”

  His hand came up without warning, back-handing her across the cheek, the slap ringing out like a pistol shot in the confines of the small apartment. Nora cried out in fear and sudden pain—stumbling away as he closed in on her, pressing her back against the counter.<
br />
  “Do not,” he hissed, his face only inches away from hers— summoning up all the anger he had felt earlier, at the mosque, “tempt God by blaming another for your own sins. You slid back into your old ways and nearly dragged a brother down with you. That is the sin of which you are guilty.”

  She shrank away from him as if she would have tried to escape, tears streaming down her cheeks, weeping uncontrollably. Terrified.

  Good, Harry thought—his face dark as he pinned her to the counter. Fly, little bird. It may just save your life. There’s no place for you here.

  “Reza said you might never see him again,” he said, suddenly releasing her and taking a few steps away, his voice shifting back to a normal conversational tone as though nothing in the world were wrong, “what else did he tell you?”

  She just stared at him, her cheek still bearing the bright red imprint of his hand, taken completely off-guard by the transformation. “N-nothing, I swear it before God. I swear.”

  Whatever that was worth. His eyes searched her face. “You’re sure.”

  “I am,” she protested, almost seeming angry at his doubting her. “He’s talked for months of wanting to take part in God’s struggle, li-like any good Muslim should, but nothing more than that—he never told me any details. I promise you.”

  She was telling the truth.

  “Mash’allah,” he smiled, pushing away the sense of disquiet rising within him at her words. There would be time to deal with that later, if it came to that. He wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders, leading her to the door of the apartment and showing her out. “Wa’ alaikum as-salaam, sister.”

  Blessings and peace be upon you. . .

  11:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “We were using a defense attache as a backchannel intelligence conduit to the German military?” David Lay asked, looking over the top of his glasses at the analyst seated in front of his desk. “Why?”