Day Of Wrath (42 page)

So he’d ordered his staff to assemble a dossier on the company and its highest-ranking people.

The dossier sitting open on his desk.

Mcdowell smiled nastily.

There it was in black-and-white—Wolf, Heinrich, Chief of Security, European Division. That smug son of a bitch hadn’t even bothered to use another cover identity when dealing with him. Well, that carelessness would cost the Stasi prick heavily.

What would his new bosses say if they knew they had an ex-German secret policeman running heroin using Caraco as a cover?

Mcdowell knew that he wasn’t out of the woods—not yet.

But at least now he had some leverage. If Wolf threatened him with exposure and ruin again, he could turn the threat against him. And, if need be, he could always shop the German bastard to the FBI’s counterintelligence section as part of a plea bargain.

He recapped the nearly empty bottle and slipped it back into the drawer. Have to remember to bring in a new one, he thought.

The bourbon wasn’t lasting as long as it once had.

The light on his phone flashed and he scooped it up. “Mcdowell.”

“This is Wolf.”

Mcdowell choked back a laugh. Speak of the devil … “Hello, Heinrich.”

“I have an assignment for you.”

Mcdowell shook his head. “Not sure I can help you, Heinrich.” He picked the Caraco dossier off his desk and spun around in his chair to face his office window. “Fact is, I’m thinking about retiring …”

“From the
FBI
?” Wolf’s voice hardened. “That would be a serious mistake,
PEREGRINE
. One with grave consequences.”

The
FBI
agent shrugged. “I don’t know about that, Heinrich.

Seems there are a lot of opportunities out there in the private sector right now.” He narrowed his eyes. “I could always apply at Caraco.

Seems to me they might need a new security chief for their European companies real soon. What do you think about that, Herr Wolf?” The German said nothing for several long seconds. Then he said slowly, “Are you attempting to renegotiate our arrangement, Mr. Mcdowell?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Mcdowell turned back to his desk. “My terms are pretty simple: You leave me alone—permanently. In return, I keep my mouth shut about your little extracurricular activities.

And everybody goes away happy.”.

“Your terms are unacceptable,” Wolf said grimly. “You overestimate the strength of your position,
PEREGRINE
.”

“Oh? How’s that?” Mcdowell asked, feeling doubts creep into his mind for the first time since he’d pinpointed the German’s current identity.

This conversation wasn’t going according to his plan.

“You may inconvenience me for a short while,” Wolf explained.

“You may even cost me some money. But I think you would find that a poor exchange for years of hard labor in one of your federal maximum-security prisons. I do not believe that your fellow
FBI
agents view traitors kindly. And, as you know, prison can be a dangerous place.”

This time it was Mcdowell’s turn to stay quiet. He chewed his lower lip in frustration. Wolf wasn’t rolling over the way he’d expected.

“But I will offer you a compromise, PEREGRINE—as a token of my goodwill.”

“What kind of a compromise?”

“If you successfully complete this one last assignment for me, I will cancel your remaining debt to my organization. We will be even, and you will be rid of me.”

That sounded promising. Still holding the phone in one hand, Mcdowell fished the bottle back out of his desk with the other.

“What do you want done ?”

“Special Agent Gray and Colonel Thorn are in Washington, D.C” Wolf said flatly.

“What?” The bourbon glass fell onto his carpeted floor and rolled under the desk. “Impossible!”

“Evidently not. Thorn and Gray are clearly quite. resourceful,” the German said. “Too resourceful to be left at large.”

“Well, what more do you expect me to do about them?” Mcdowell demanded. “Because of me, they’re already subject to arrest on sight.

I can pass the word they’re hiding out somewhere around here to the local Bureau field office, but that’s about it.”

“No,” Wolf said. “I insist on a permanent solution to the problem.”’ Mcdowell shivered involuntarily. He cleared his throat. “I see.”

“Good,” Wolf said. “Now, listen carefully. Your part is simple—but you must make no mistakes …”

Mcdowell heard him out in silence, desperately wishing he could take one more drink. The warm glow he’d been nursing all day had suddenly withered into a dull, pounding ache between his ears.

The Madison Inn, Near the Woodley Park Zoo It was after sunset.

Peter Thorn lay flat on the bed with his hands folded behind his head.

By turning his head, he could see Helen Gray sitting silently by the window. She was on watch-scanning the street below for any signs that the
FBI
or their mysterious enemies had finally tumbled to their presence back in the United States.

Their room was in darkness—lit only by a soft yellow glow from the street lamps outside. Neither of them wanted to risk their night vision to brighter light.

Thorn frowned. Something had been nagging at him for days.

Something about the trap they’d triggered near the Wilhelmshaven docks.

He’d run the scenario backward and forward in his mind a hundred times, but he still couldn’t see how the men who’d tried to ambush them had tagged them so quickly.

The man who’d called himself Steinhof had come straight up to them—in the very first bar they’d visited.

That couldn’t have been an accident.

And unless Thorn was willing to believe the impossible—that the people they were after had enough operatives to cover every waterfront dive in Wilhelmshaven—then Steinhof and his murder squad had spotted them earlier. But where? At the Port Authority?

He summoned up his memories of the office there. No, nobody had been within earshot when they’d asked their questions, about Baltic Venturer. Could the bad guys have been alerted by the German clerk who’d helped them, Fraulein Geist or Geiss or someone like that? He shook his head, remembering the drab, rigid woman behind that counter.

She hadn’t struck him as somebody who would willingly involve herself in irregular intrigue.

No. Steinhof could have tracked them after they left the Port Authority or the customs office, but to do that he would have had to have known what they looked like—and roughly when they were likely to arrive in Wilhelmshaven.

Which left one disturbing possibility … “We got company, Peter,” Helen said suddenly. Thorn was off the bed and by her side in less than a second.

“Where ?”

“Under the He saw the just pulled up ened. “Shit.” second street lamp—this side.” car she’d spotted, a dark, four-door sedan that had and parked— right beside a fire hydrant. He stiffened. The front passenger side door opened and Sam Farrell got out onto the sidewalk.

Thorn let out a low whistle. “That’s a relief.

For a second there, I thought—”

“Not so fast, Peter. Look who brought him,” Helen said tightly.

The sedan’s driver came into full view under the street lamp.

It was Larry Mcdowell.

Jesus, Thorn thought grimly. He turned to Helen. “Do we bug out?”

She sighed. “No point. There’s another car further out-hanging a block or so back. And Mcdowell may be a moron—but he’s not a complete moron. By now, he’ll have units in position around the whole immediate area.”

Thorn nodded. He watched Sam Farrell head for the front door to the inn, with Mcdowell right behind him. They were out of places to run.

The knock on their door came just a minute or so later. “Special Agent Gray. Colonel Thorn. This is Deputy Assistant Director Mcdowell.”

Holding his temper in check, Thorn flipped the lights on, then opened the door and stepped back.

Sam Farrell came in first, shaking his head apologetically.

“Pete, Helen, I’m sorry as hell about this, but he was waiting on my front steps when I got home .”

“You don’t need to apologize to these two,” Mcdowell said, pushing past the other man to stand in front of Thorn and Helen. “Colonel Thorn and Special Agent Gray should consider themselves very lucky to see me.

The first people through that door could have been a
SWAT
team.”

Helen glared at him. “If you’re here to arrest us, just do it.”

Mcdowell smiled smugly. “Now, Miss Gray. I suggest you watch your tone.”

He spread his empty hands. “I’m not here to arrest you.”

Sure. Thorn looked narrowly at the senior
FBI
agent. “What’s your game, Mcdowell?”

“No games, Colonel.” The other man half turned toward Farrell.

“Shut the door, please, General. I think we need some privacy.

Once the door was closed, Mcdowell turned back to Helen and Thorn.

“It’s simple, Colonel, so please try to pay attention.

Despite what you might have thought, the Director and I haven’t been sitting idly by these past few days. On the contrary, we’ve been very busy tracking down these illegal shipments you claim have been entering the United States.”

“Then why close down the Galveston probe?” Helen demanded.

“Strategy, Special Agent Gray.” Mcdowell shook his head. “I know that you’re a competent tactician, but you clearly have only a limited comprehension of the big picture.”

He quickly held up a hand to forestall Thorn’s angry response.

“Don’t glare at me, Colonel. I’m merely pointing out the facts.

The Galveston operation was a dry well—anyone who read the reports could see that. The place had been stripped clean. We knew we weren’t going to find anything useful there.

“But the raid did generate a very revealing response from Caraco’s senior management,” Mcdowell continued. “And ever since, we’ve been very quietly investigating their personnel and several of their key American facilities.”

“And you found something suspicious?” Helen asked.

“Yes and no,” Mcdowell said. “We’ve certainly detected some odd activity at one of Caraco’s sites—an industrial park complex out near Chantilly. We’ve got surveillance teams around the place right now.”

Helen breathed out. “So the order for our arrest was—”

“A blind,” Mcdowell confirmed. “We needed to get you out of Germany quickly and thought that might be the least conspicuous way to do it.”

He shrugged. “Evidently we underestimated your resources. And those of General Farrell.”

“What do you want from us now?” Thorn asked sharply, still fighting his instinctive dislike for Helen’s superior. The message the
FBI
agent was sending sounded good—almost too good to be true. Was this stuff about “all sins are forgiven” just a ruse to get them out of the inn quietly—without any unpleasant publicity?

“The Director would like both you and Special Agent Gray to come out and see if you recognize anybody. Some of the suspicious people we’ve observed prowling the grounds at this Chantilly complex recently flew in from Europe. We want to check the possibility that one or more of them might have been part of the team you say attacked you in Wilhelmshaven.”

Thorn could see a look of hope suddenly emerging on Helen’s face.

She’d been trying to goad the FBI’s higher-ups into gear ever since she’d sent Mcdowell that first fax urging him to investigate the Wilhelmshaven docks. And now it looked as though her efforts were finally making a difference.

He stood absolutely still.

Wilhelmshaven.

All the pieces of the puzzle that had been nagging at him abruptly fell into place. Mcdowell had known they were going to Wilhelmshaven.

Mcdowell had known why they were going there. And that bastard had access to their service photos—the same photos he’d later faxed to the Berlin police.

It all fit. And it all added up to a very ugly picture of treachery, betrayal, and attempted murder. Mcdowell had set them up.

Once. Twice, if you counted Berlin.

And he was about to do it again.

Without thinking, Thorn turned away and then whirled around again—sending a hard right cross smashing into Mcdowell’s smug face.

The
FBI
agent’s head rocked backward under the impact and then snapped forward—right into a left hook that caught him under the chin and threw him onto the floor, flat on his back.

“Peter!”

“What the hell are you doing, Colonel?” Farrell barked.

Thorn ignored them both. He moved closer to the man he’d knocked down.

Still groggy, Mcdowell rolled over and pushed himself up on one knee.

The
FBI
agent’s hand fumbled under his jacket.

“Not so fast, you son of a bitch.” Thorn’s own hand flashed out and gripped Mcdowell’s wrist. He yanked the other man’s hand out into the open. The butt of a pistol came into view.

He squeezed.

Mcdowell squawked and let go. The pistol thudded onto the carpet.

Thorn released his wrist and scooped up the weapon in one smooth motion. It was a 9mm SIG-Sauer P228. He cocked it with his thumb and placed its muzzle squarely against Mcdowell’s left temple.

The
FBI
agent froze. Sweat trickled down his forehead. Blood dripped from a cut on his lip.

“Nice weapon,” Thorn said conversationally. He pressed harder, grinding the muzzle into Mcdowell’s forehead. “I really hate to think of how messy it’s going to get when I blow your brains out.”

The other man’s eyes widened. He whimpered.

“Pete,” Farrell said softly. “Don’t do it.”

Thorn could see that his former commanding officer had his own pistol out now, and that it was pointing roughly in his direction.

He shook his head. “I haven’t gone loco, Sam. Not yet anyway.”

“Convince me.” Farrell’s voice was strained.

“I’ll let Deputy Assistant Director Mcdowell here do my convincing for me.” Thorn caught a glimpse of Helen out of the corner of his eye.

Still ashen-faced, she was working her way around to Farrell’s blind side. Christ, they were all teetering on a knife edge. He cleared his throat. “Stay where you are, Helen.”