Blowback (2 page)

Later, she wouldn't be sure what caught her eye. The glint of metal through the far trees? The slightest motion in the distance where the ground rose slightly and a sniper could take a shot?

Instinctively, she turned toward Arash.

He was halfway to his feet.

She felt the rush of air between them—heard a small, hard snap.

A piece of tree bark slapped her cheek as she reached out for Arash—“
No!”

Saw the fear and confusion in his eyes.

Almost instantly there was a second hiss of air, a second snap of sound, and Arash's head jerked back and his body seemed to hover for an instant before he crumpled to the ground.

Vanessa dropped to her knees next to him. The bullet had hit him between the eyes. A shudder ran through her as his death registered viscerally. Then shock shut her down, leaving only the instinct for survival. Was she still in the shooter's sights?

She had to get away from there as quickly and as invisibly as possible. But first she searched Arash's pockets for anything that would give her more information about the facility—he'd been seconds away from verbally giving her the coordinates to memorize. She found nothing.

She rose numbly to her feet, turning from the few gathering onlookers. As she forced herself to walk intently through the dark-limbed trees toward the park boundary, the world jerked back to life, harsh voices, sirens. The
polizei
would show soon; Interpol and Europol soon after.

When she believed she was alone, she slipped the scarf from her neck and tied it over her head. She slowed for a few strides as disparate emotions overpowered the shock. But she pushed them back and kept moving. Already she could hear the sound of traffic from the main boulevard. She'd moved deliberately toward the shooter's location, knowing the shooter was gone—but trying to gather as much info as possible. She passed the knoll she would have chosen to take her shot.

Was he just ahead of her? Why hadn't he killed her, too?

As she walked quickly under the last of the tree canopy, she heard sirens.

She reached the boulevard, stepping into twilight. She hesitated, looking toward the noise. The city's inhabitants and tourists were strolling the avenue, enjoying a pleasant September evening.

But not the man leaving the park less than a half-block away.

He was more shadow than substance beneath a gray overcoat and fedora. Judging from the people around him, he stood under six feet tall. Was he stocky? Probably not, because the overcoat looked padded at the shoulders and long in the sleeves, while his gloved hands seemed disproportionately large. As he moved, he scanned the area intently, and she noted the high cheekbones and sharp Slavic angles of his face. At a guess, she'd tag him for Eastern European.

He turned away from the intersection, moving with other pedestrians, staying close to the park boundary. A satchel hung heavily over his left shoulder. Black, ubiquitous—half of Europe carried one. It wasn't long enough to contain a full rifle. But a pro could assemble and disassemble a customized rifle in a matter of seconds. He wouldn't leave it behind.

Vanessa followed, keeping to the shadows as they skirted the park.

He didn't look back, but Vanessa sensed his wariness, almost kindred with her own. If she was right about his sniping position, he'd fired from a distance of about three hundred meters. A windless day made it an easy shot for a decent sniper—except it was dusk, and the falling light made the shot more difficult.

Is that why he'd missed her?

The question raced through her mind even as she walked in a numb haze, still fighting against the shock of Arash's murder.

No way to be tracking a target.

As he approached a busy intersection, she moved to close the distance between them.

Just as he turned his head and looked back at her.

She hesitated, letting her mind overpower her instinct to keep tracking him.

He timed it perfectly, waiting for the light to change, moving toward the trolley stop just as the queue surged forward.

In a matter of seconds, he vanished.

Had he joined the quick rush of pedestrians who jumped the trolley?

Was he still ahead of her, halfway down a gloomy side street?

But what the hell could she do? She was a NOC—a nonofficial cover officer. If she let herself get caught up in an international imbroglio involving the assassination of a high-level Iranian target in Austria, the CIA would disavow any knowledge of her. End of story.

Her job demanded she stay undercover and avoid getting caught. An asset's life depended on it. So could her own.

She stopped with a shudder, and Arash's face filled her mind. She saw him falling, saw the dark hole in his head.

Barely aware of the curious glances of a few passersby, she clutched her jacket tightly, fighting free fall, working to regain control. She had to get out of Vienna as quickly as possible.

In this instant she had only one purpose: get Arash's intel to Headquarters.

She pivoted back toward the park and then away, drawn north. She knew Vienna. She'd visited as a child. It was part of her world map.

The street address of the safe house came to her.
Not far from here.
She pushed back from the edge and forced herself to move through the falling darkness.

Vanessa stared
almost blindly past the officer sent by Vienna Station and looked at the TV, where a CNN reporter spoke solemnly: “. . . this time of heightened tension, Iran's minister of defense has issued a public statement blaming Israel and America for today's assassination of a prominent Iranian nuclear engineer, a member of the Iranian delegation to the IAEA conference in Vienna, Austria, who was gunned down in that city's landmark Prater . . .”

Vanessa muted the rest of the sound bite, a repeat, to refocus on the officer, who struck her as untested and much younger than her own twenty-nine years. “Go on.”

“Obviously not a good idea for you to fly out of Vienna, so you've got a throwaway alias to get you as far as Prague.” He pushed a black plastic wallet across the coffee table. “Canadian, twenty seven, European history student on a year's study leave in Vienna.”

Prague—the site of her last screwup, and things had only gotten worse since then . . .

“The Chief of Station is talking to the head of BVT,” he said. “We have our scanners tuned to police channels; we're running all the traps.”

Distracted, she nodded, already impatient to get her eyes on available CCTV footage. It was possible they'd caught a view of the shooter on one of the myriad public and private security cameras in Vienna. If so, she could find him.

“We haven't heard a report on the weapon—”

“Sniper rifle, guessing semiauto for accuracy on a long shot, maybe three hundred meters out, and the bullet was definitely sonic,” she said, flinching internally as she remembered the distinct snap of the passing bullet. “He carried the rifle out with him. I'll need to see the ballistics report ASAP.”

She stared at the wallet as she turned it in her fingers and then flipped it open, studying the Canadian driver's license and her own plain-faced photo. The portrait was unflattering but effectively forgettable. When the hell was it taken? She couldn't remember. Pulling up in the straight-backed chair, she silently read and reread the stats. It took three times the usual effort to commit everything to memory. She tried out the name she would use for the next few hours on her way to Prague: Tia Harris.

She glanced again at the monitor, then away from the footage of paramedics carrying the body of Arash to a waiting emergency vehicle. She couldn't stand the images—couldn't bear the sense of guilt. What if she had obeyed Chris's order to abort the meet?
Would Arash still be alive?

The pale officer cleared his throat. “We'll be getting hourly updates—”

Vanessa stood abruptly, the first taste of bile burning deep in her throat. She left him midsentence and walked steadily to the bathroom even as her breathing quickened. Inside, she slid the bolt and turned the rusting faucet to full force.

She pressed her back against the cold tiles. She slid heavily to the floor.
Useless as a fucking sack of flour.

She felt her cheek against the tile floor. Her heart crashed against her ribs at a rate that had to be lethal. Somewhere inside herself, she recognized this self-assault. It wasn't the first—the first panic attack had come when she was nineteen, right after her father's death. But she couldn't allow it
—not ever again, Christ.

•   •   •

She didn't know
how much time had passed before she heard a knock at the door and a distant voice: “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

She didn't trust herself to answer. It took all her strength to push herself off the floor. Her borrowed shirt, now sweat-soaked, clung to her back. She reached out, found the old porcelain handle, and flushed the toilet.

Finally she used her arms to steady herself so she could make it to the mirror. She blinked against the light, barely recognizing the sad, wild-eyed woman in the glass. Tentatively, she touched a finger to her left cheekbone, where the sniper's passing bullet had sent ricocheting bark. The skin was pink and tender, and definitely beginning to bruise.

Another tentative knock.

She took a shaky breath. She couldn't keep him waiting much longer.

Quickly, she splashed water on her face, dampening her hair. She used the single small towel, doing her best to rub herself dry.

She stepped out without meeting his eyes.

And gave him no opening. Instead, nodding sharply at the wad of bills in his right hand, she snapped her fingers impatiently. “I'll count them.” Her voice sounded hard, but at least it worked.

While he waited—eyeing her warily, she knew—she skimmed through the stack. “Seven hundred euros.”

He filled in a line of the inventory sheet and held out the clipboard.

Scrawling her signature, Vanessa glanced impatiently at the muted television images playing behind him. She aimed the remote and jumped channels for the umpteenth time. From CNN to a local Austrian station to the BBC.

“Here, your ticket on the night train to Prague.”

Vanessa pulled the ticket from between his fingers, slipping it into the pocket of the khakis supplied by Vienna Station. She pushed the euros into her wallet and pocketed that, too, as her companion spelled out the last set of instructions—where and when she would meet her Prague contact.

She was hoisting the dark blue backpack when she noticed the grainy, obviously amateur footage on the screen—a dark-haired woman in faded jeans and a jacket stumbling away from a man's body and disappearing through the trees. It took her an instant to register what she was seeing.

Vanessa fumbled to unmute the TV: “. . . a student came forward with this footage he'd shot during the attack, and authorities are interviewing witnesses, urgently searching for this mystery woman who left the scene shortly after the Iranian scientist was killed . . .”

“Wait,” the officer said, squinting at the screen. “Is that—”

Shit.

Vanessa stared at the unfolding scene the way you watch a train wreck. The kid with the camera had caught her on film only seconds after Arash was shot. He hadn't caught her face, thank God, only the barest profile as she searched the body and then made her exit. Still, it was worse than bad.

After driving
almost six hours straight, Pauk pulled off between Passau and Nuremberg and parked in a gravel lot next to the last of a half-dozen cars at a roadside pub-and-petrol. A place where he would not be noticed or remembered.

A dozen patrons were scattered at the bar and more at a few of the tables inside the large room. Both pool tables were busy, and two flat-screens broadcast soundlessly.

He used the bathroom, comforted to find soap if not clean towels, and then he ordered coffee and a cheese and sausage sandwich from a fat barkeep.

The barkeep idly asked if he was passing through, then took his money, didn't bother him after that.

Both monitors displayed sporting events, but breaking news got play.

He ate quickly, was almost done with the sandwich when he found himself staring at a video of the Prater on the closest flat-screen. Amateur. Grainy. But good enough that he could see the brunette woman he had failed to kill.

For the second time that day, something about her roused a dark place deep inside him—
but why?
Did she resemble someone he'd known? Had he seen her somewhere before? The mere questions threw him—because he was a man who never forgot a face, a gesture, any detail about anyone he encountered in his life.

The sight of her in Vienna had shaken him so much he'd fired twice to kill the Iranian. Who was she? His mentor hadn't warned him about the woman. Nor had he given orders to kill anyone but the traitor.

Inside his car again, engine running, he sent a text message in French—one of their shared languages—to the man he worked for exclusively. The man who had saved his life nineteen years ago in Chechnya. The one man he would gladly die for.

one problem solved. there may be another