Gun Metal Heart (23 page)

Daria bent to kiss him on the lips, then straddled the bench, boots on either side, her knees touching his thigh. She knew that he couldn't feel the touch.

The Viking produced a standard white envelope and a standard two-fold sheet of paper with Daria's distinctively bad handwriting. “Have you any idea how many years it's been since anyone wrote me an actual letter?” He spoke English but in his Swedish accent.

“The villains control telecommunications. I decided to go old school, as the Americans say.”

Fredrik had brought coffee for both of them in lidded takeaway cups, plus a bag of prepackaged cheese sandwiches and packets of chips, along with two liters of water, for Daria. She rifled through the bag as Fredrik spoke. The childhood illness that had robbed him of the use of his legs also limited his lung capacity. He was always out of breath, even when not moving, and spoke in a raspy whisper.

“The Audi is fueled up. There's a bag with some travel essentials, a change of clothes.” He eyed her cropped T-shirt and leathers. “Knowing your sartorial tangents, it's all very tasteful, of course.”

Daria said, “Of course.” Knowing Fredrik, the clothes would fit perfectly. The man was a master of the minor detail. It's how he'd made his fortune.

“You'll find money for tollbooths in the slot beneath the radio. Also three preloaded debit cards, some random cash for petrol and whatnot, and two mobile phones. Burners. You have a passport and driver's license, insurance papers. You bought the car used in Bonn. Maintenance records are in the glove box. It was a rush job, but it will do.”

Daria was surprised. “That's an expensive package. You know I'm good for it. Can I—”

Fredrik waved her off as if it were the slightest of issues. “I never pictured you as the GPS sort, so there are maps of France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, and Hungary. Also Serbia, obviously. I've marked a route. Border guards have been paid off, so please stick to the route. I have you crossing over at Subotica, Serbia. Take any other crossing and, I assure you, you'll be well and truly fucked.
Skorpjo
controls access to the entire country. I've bought you a three-hour window at the border, the day after tomorrow. That gives you about forty hours to cross Europe. Tight, I know.”

Daria looked up from the paper bag, which she'd set between her thighs on the bench. “No chocolate?”

Fredrik reached into the pocket of his Windbreaker and produced three Toblerone bars. Daria's eyes sparkled.

“You do love me!”

Fredrik Olsson, known to the criminal element of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East as the Viking, looked down and let his lank hair obscure his eyes.

“Yes.”

Daria let the moment pass. “My friends?”

“Diego and the American are in Serbia, or will be by this afternoon. Diego, I don't mind helping. I feel bad about the loss of his friend, Vince. Although Vince was an idiot.”

“True.”

“Not wild about helping the American. I've worked hard to avoid a reputation in the States.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I understand. I trust John Broom. Thank you.”

Fredrik twitched hair away from his eyeglasses. His was a terrible haircut, Daria mused. It wasn't out of style in that it had never been in style. His jacket and trousers had the look of a used-clothing bin. It was difficult to imagine that the Viking was filthy rich and had a hand in the infrastructure—transportation, funding, fencing—of half the major crime on the continent.

“Something else.” Daria sipped her coffee. It was far too sweet but she didn't comment. “
Skorpjo
is working with a tall blonde. Quite lovely. Superb language skills. Silver eyes.”

Fredrik grew very still. He seemed to be watching something on the cement floor of the picnic pagoda.

Daria sipped her coffee.

He lifted his hand and felt the shaft of one of the aluminum crutches, which made him look away from her. “Please, please tell me you're joking.”

She knew that he knew where this was heading. “This woman certainly matches her description.”

Fredrik twitched back his hair. “You just described ten thousand women in Europe.”

“She beat me, soundly, in a fair fight.”

He whispered, “Oh.”

“Have you worked with her? Can you tell me what to expect if—”

Fredrik picked up his crutches and began the laborious process of standing. Daria didn't offer to help. “I would never discuss
you
with anyone else. You know that.”

“But if it is Viorica … if she's in Belgrade…”

Fredrik levered himself upright. His legs hung uselessly from his narrow hips. He could never find belts small enough, and ten inches of leather tongue lolled to the left of the buckle.

“The key is in the ignition.”

“Thank you. I owe you.”

He said, “No. I found out that Asher Sahar planned to have me killed last winter, after I spirited him into France. If you hadn't stopped him in Milan, I wouldn't be here. So, thank you.”

He edged toward the door and the bright rectangle of sunlight that spilled into the pagoda. It made his washed-out skin and dirty blond hair even less colorful.

Daria sat, straddling the bench. “I can't contact Diego and John Broom.”

“True.”

“If it is her, if she's there, you have to warn them.”

He sighed as well as a man with diminished lung capacity can. “Daria…”

“You have to warn them.” She turned to him. He kept his back to her. “At least Diego. He's your friend. If he knows who he's up against, if he's prepared—”

Fredrik Olsson, the Viking, wheezed a laugh. He rarely laughed, and it caught Daria off guard.

“Prepared? What if the roles were reversed? What if Diego faced you? Would being
prepared
save his life?”

Daria didn't answer. She didn't have to.

Fredrik looked back over his thin shoulder, hair bobbing in front of his lenses.

“You're mirror opposites. Viorica is everything you would have been if you'd been a true freelance and not working for this government and that. Always limited yourself to the
rules of the game.
You are everything she would have been if she'd stayed in the espionage business.”

Daria stood. “Wait. Viorica was a spy? For whom?”

He studied her. She waited.

“I'm very fond of you,” the Viking whispered. “I always have been. I'll not forgive myself if this ends badly. But I won't take sides.”

“Warn Diego. Do it.”

Fredrik gripped his crutches and tucked them tight under his spindly arms.

“Do it!”

“Go with God.”

“Go to hell.”

He smiled without offense. “I'm not the one driving to Serbia.”

 

Twenty-Eight

John had this intrinsically American notion that you could drive from one Slavic capital to the next in a more or less straight line, à la the highways between, say, Sacramento and Salem.

Not so.

He and Diego filled the Cooper's gas tank and wound slowly north from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. They inched along narrow roads, gained and lost elevation frequently, and eventually made it to the shabby, industrial city of Tuzla. The main entrance to the town was a crossroads literally shadowed by massive nuclear cooling towers. From there they hit the border between Bosnia and Croatia. A quick right-hand turn onto a four-lane highway and, less than a half hour later, they passed out of Croatia and into Serbia for the first time.

Since each border featured two guard stations—one on each side—they handed over their fake passports four times in thirty minutes. And each time, John's heart raced. Especially entering Serbia.

But the guard in the blue Policja uniform waved them through with hardly a glance.

They were on a modern, well-paved highway now, and Belgrade loomed on the horizon far quicker than John had anticipated. Once in the city, past the vast banks of bland, Communist-era communal apartments and the hulking soccer stadium, John recommended finding a hotel in the triangle between the historic Stari Grad (or Old Town), Parliament, embassy row, and the historic train station, east of the Danube.

Diego spotted a hotel sign in English and pulled into the hilly central core of the city, which was aging and a little run-down. He said, “Figure she'll find us?”

“Don't know. But if we stay near the government offices, I guess we'll be more likely to stumble on each other.”

Diego got out of the car and stared over the roof at John. His eyes were shaded by his hat. “Filling me with confidence.”

“Well, I advise the U.S. Congress. Pulling a plan out of my ass comes naturally.”

They checked in. After washing up, John headed to an Internet cafe on avenue Ozun Mirakova and bought sixty minutes of time on an aging, twelve-inch-deep computer monitor.

An e-mail awaited John at the address set up for him at the International Red Cross. It featured no letterhead and no signature:
DG alive. Seen near Turin, Italy. Lost her again.

John just sat and breathed for a while. He realized he was grinning. He'd known deep in his heart that she was still alive. She had to be. This confirmation was a relief, though.

John found a second anonymous message on the IRC server:
Drones—found 3 makers lenses (plastic) and 6 makers batteries (hybrids). Only 1 cross match: Am Citadel.

John thumped the table with his fist. American Citadel was a midrange member of the military-industrial complex headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. In and of itself, the fact that they invested in research into lightweight camera lenses and lightweight batteries wasn't damning. But everybody in Washington knew that the company was facing crippling sanctions from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Federal Trade Commission for violation of trade embargoes with more than one war-torn country.

For the past year or so, the rumor in D.C. was that American Citadel would get sold to one of the biggies—Boeing, maybe, or General Electric—then strip-mined of its component parts to be sold off. Doubling down on under-the-table arms sales might provide enough capital to keep the wolves at bay for a while.

John sent an e-mail back to his contact at the Red Cross:
Where is R&D for Am Cit? Which state? Tell The Man.

The Man being Senator Singer Cavanaugh.

John didn't know if this line of inquiry would help Daria. But it was a start.

Sandpoint, Idaho

Colonel Olivia Crace sat in the office she'd been allocated at the American Citadel R&D off-site facility and pulled a steel attaché case out from behind a large potted plant. She set the case on the desk and used the pads of both thumbs to dial the combination, then popped open the lid.

She pulled out a USB cable and plugged it into her cell phone. The attaché case's encryption technology began scrambling the signal even before she reached General Howard Cathcart in his office in the basement of the Pentagon.

Cathcart didn't bother with small talk. “We have her.”

Crace tolerated her superior officer's penchant for ambiguity, but barely. “Which
her
, sir?”

“Major Arcana!” the gruff man barked, as if it should have been obvious to the junior officer. “She used an ATM with a security camera near the American embassy in Belgrade, Serbia. One hundred percent match, according to NSA.”

“Okay. Well, the Citadel technicians found, then lost, Gibron. She used the Tour de France to flummox the drones.”

Cathcart sounded incredulous. “The bike race?”

“Yes, sir. The drones are every bit as good as we hoped, but there was just too much signal-to-noise interference in the vicinity. I'm not happy that the American Citadel people lost her, but I think it speaks to her skills more than their ineptitude.”

“Hmm.”

“Gibron started in Italy. She's in France, to the best of our knowledge,” she added.

“And Arcana's in Serbia. We would ask Sneaky Pete to interdict, normally, but given the obvious…” He let the thought drift away.
Sneaky Pete
was military parlance for the CIA, and
interdict
was a Washington nicety for assassination.

Crace sat in the salesman's chair, in the salesman's office, and studied the potted plants. “The micro-drones, sir?”

Cathcart had been thinking along the same lines. “Another urban demonstration. I've spoken to … parties here. We are close to an agreement. One more demonstration ought to seal the deal.”

“I'll alert the crews here. They can get the truck to Serbia in, I don't know, a day, day and a half.”

“Do it,” Cathcart said. “We find this Major Arcana and handle her. Gibron is being hunted by every intelligence service in the West. She'll be out of our hair soon.”

She heard him hang up. Crace disassembled the secure communication equipment, slid the steel case back behind the terra-cotta pot, and went to inform Bryan Snow and his pilots of the new target.

 

Twenty-Nine

Daria changed into a fresh T-shirt in the women's bathroom of the French roadside rest stop. When she emerged, one of the Audis and her borrowed motorbike were gone. So were the Viking and his bodyguard.

She checked the supplies in the other sedan, and headed north.

She ate cheese sandwiches and chips and drank bottled water as she curved east into Switzerland, past Bern and Zurich, along the E60.

She slept that night at a cheap motel outside Sanct, Switzerland.

In Hungary she began vectoring south, past Giyor, circumnavigating Budapest and catching the E75 toward Szeged. Along the way she stopped at border crossings and for gas, eating from vending machines and refrigerator cases in gas stations.

She stayed the night in Kistelek, Hungary. The hotel room was austere but clean, the bed linen taut and starched. She lay down fully clothed, an arm across her forehead, staring at the ceiling.