Gun Metal Heart (28 page)

For now.

*   *   *

Dragan Petrovic had Teodore pick him up early so he could shower and change before the cocktail party. He left the Parliament building early, even though he had no intention of arriving at the U.S. ambassador's residence on time. But during the inevitable investigation, it would appear odd if he hadn't left early.

He also wanted to remind Adrijana and his daughters that he would not be home for dinner. He tried to eat dinner at home no fewer than four nights per week.

He barely made it into the family room when Adrijana appeared and threw a hug around his shoulders. She kissed him. He was surprised but pleased.

“A good day?” he asked, setting down his case.

“You devil! A good day!” She kissed him again.

His eldest daughter, Sofija, raced into the family room. And she hugged him as well.

“Mother told us! Thank you!”

Dragan hugged her back. “Ah…?”

Adrijana made a clucking noise. “Was it supposed to be a surprise? I'm sorry, darling. The invitation arrived at noon. We were just thrilled!”

“Invitation?”

“To the American embassy affair!”

The edges of Petrovic's vision began to blur.

“Sofija and Ana are beside themselves! We had to get new gowns. Ljubica said she wouldn't be caught dead in a gown. I'll count it as a victory if we get her to bathe! I'm wearing the blue thing, from my brother's wedding. You remember.”

His wife and daughter bustled away. Dragan Petrovic stood where he was, rooted, throat dry, heart bursting through his ribs.

He spotted the invitation on the coffee table. It had come from the American deputy chief of mission herself. It contained Adrijana's name, and the names of their daughters.

They were expected.

Their absence would be noted.

Especially afterward. During the investigation.

Dragan Petrovic felt his world crumble under his feet.

 

Thirty-Five

Kostic stepped up behind Daria's chair and reached around to squeeze her breasts roughly through the Lycra yoga tank.

“We will be friends. Yes?”

Daria winced in pain. “Looks that way.”

The silent Lazarevic returned with a bottle of vodka. He took a swig, handed it to Kostic who did the same, then handed it back. Kostic circled the metal chair.

Owen Cain Thorson watched the scene, still muttering to himself. His face had taken on a sheen of perspiration, and his hair was matted with sweat. The bandage on his cheek had begun to reek. He never turned away from Daria and never stopped his soft rant.

Kostic lit a cheap cigarette and took a lungful of smoke. He stood in front of Daria's chair, their knees touching. Daria looked up at him, her face at his belt height.

“You remember squibs.” Kostic touched his own elbows. “You behave. You be good or we blow off an arm. What you good for now, we don't need arms. Yes?”

He reached for his belt.

He watched as Daria lifted her arm.

He blinked.

That arm could not be lifted. It was tied down.

In her hand, she held an old-fashioned, steel, straight razor. Which she couldn't possibly hold.

Daria slashed horizontally. Kostic took a stumbling step backward.

Daria lifted her left wrist an inch and used the razor to slice through the left flex-cuff.

Kostic took another step back. He began to speak, and a pink bubble of blood popped at the corner of his lips.

Daria used the blade to sever her ankle cuffs before Lazarevic realized something was wrong.

Kostic tried to call out, and a flow of bubbling, aerated blood drooled over the edge of his lips and down his double chin.

Lazarevic realized something was wrong. When he saw Daria rise, he let the vodka bottle drop and reached back for the holster on his hip. He grabbed it and swung back around.

Daria was on her feet and across the room in under a second. She slashed horizontally with the razor. Fully open and locked, the cutthroat razor gave her eight inches of extra reach.

Lazarevic's .9 millimeter Makarov clattered to the floor. He glanced down and saw the exposed bones of his wrist.

Daria reversed the blade and thrust it upward. The Spanish steel handle smashed into the bottom of Lazarevic's nose. His neck snapped back, and the huge man tumbled like a felled log.

*   *   *

Dazed, Lazarevic lay like that for a little over three minutes. His vision cleared. He had slammed his skull into the floor when he landed. Coming around, he realized he was losing copious amounts of blood. He cradled his right arm against his chest and felt the hand flop like a dead fish. He blinked stupidly, trying to clear his head.

The Israeli stood over him. Where had she gotten a straight razor? She'd been searched by Major Arcana!

The Israeli held the cobbled-together power strip that served as a remote control for the squibs. Speaking no Serbian, she cleared her throat and pointed.

Lazarevic raised his aching head. She'd broken his nose, and he spat blood out of his mouth. He looked down the length of his massive body.

The squibs now were adhered to his trousers, in the region around his genitals.

The crazy woman placed a thumb on one of the remote control toggles. Her knuckle turned a little bit white as she began to apply steady, even pressure.

“English,” the silent Lazarevic said. “I speak most excellent English. Perfect English. I answer anything. Anything you ask. You ask and I answer. It is that simple. Anything.”

She said, “You're a dear.”

Smiling, she turned to the fading ghost of the American agent strapped to his chair. He watched her, eyes haunted. He'd stopped ranting.

“Be good,” she told him. “I'll get to you next.”

*   *   *

Viorica walked to the silver van her team had parked next to a corrugated metal utility shed, behind a padlocked gate and just off Avenue Kralja Milana. There she met her two compatriots, Winslow and Danziger, who had been with her since long before the Serbian contract.

There wasn't much room in the van, especially since more than two-thirds of the interior had been transformed into a tightly packed replica of Bryan Snow's workstation back in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Winslow, a hyperactive caffeine addict with bulging eyes, sat in the bolted-down chair. Danziger rested against one of the computer monitors. All of the monitors were dark. Danziger, a brusque bull of a man, six foot five with a boxer's cauliflower ears, wore a shoulder holster with a silenced SIG. He took up far more than his share of the interior of the van.

Winslow said, “Did we get the drones, then?”

Viorica had created a little closet space in the van for her change of clothes. It included a mirror on an articulating arm, which she could maneuver as needed. She whisked off the jersey jacket, then yanked the white tank up and over her head.

Danziger had seen mercenary work in Sudan, Rwanda, and Pakistan. He did not shock easily. Winslow averted his eyes and pretended to play with his smartphone.

Viorica toed off her platform boots and shimmied out of the jeans and thong. She said, “The Americans are parked on the other side of the Danube. The drones can be here in under a minute.”

For the first time in weeks, she spoke with her native accent.

The hulking Danziger watched while she selected underwear from the closet. Winslow turned three shades of red, eyes averted, and tapped the icon for a game on his phone. He said, “And … er … the … ah … the Israeli?”

“What of her?” She pulled a black Lycra garter out of the closet. She wrapped it around her right leg and pressed on the Velcro. It clung tightly to her upper thigh.

From within the little closet she selected an Italian switchblade stiletto with a blood-red handle. She touched the stud, and the slate-gray knife popped forward, bayonet-style, rather than rotating on a hinge. It was six inches long. The tapered blade and the handle were hammered steel. A touch of the stud and the blade retracted. Viorica slid it into the Lycra band around her thigh, on the inside, where it wouldn't bulge under clothes.

She pulled out a black leather Armani skirt and snugged it up her legs. It covered the stiletto and the Lycra band.

Her tech expert frowned but kept his eyes averted from her long, lean body. He'd noted the old, well-healed bullet wounds, of course. They were hard to ignore. “You have her? She's out of the way?”

Viorica shrugged on a black silk camisole. Then a tight leather tunic, supple and black, with squared shoulders and a plain, round collar. “I supposed that depends.”

“On…?”

“I left her with Kostic and Lazarevic. I told them to keep away from her, and to keep guns aimed at her. She has a blade in her boot. A blade she can reach. If they followed my suggestions, she's out of the way.”

She added a very wide black-leather belt that cinched her waist tight. It made the tunic and pencil skirt look a bit military. If the military wore Alexander McQueen.

The men waited. Danziger shook his head a little—for him, the equivalent of a tantrum—and sipped coffee from a metal travel mug. Winslow moaned. “Please tell me they listened to you.”

Viorica shrugged. “Not likely.” She dug into a Marks & Spencer gift bag and found a small glass vial of lip gloss. She used the pad of her little finger to apply it. “Probably not.”

The young Englishman looked pained. “So you let Gibron have her way with them. Even though we have her at eight-to-one odds as the most significant threat to the plan.”

“Yes.”

“Then … what?”

She slid on strappy black stilettos. She set a foot on Winslow's chair, between his knees, and did the wide leather strap around her ankle. Winslow blushed and played with his phone. Danziger, annoyed with her constant flirting, drank his coffee.

Viorica ran her fingers through her icy locks. “Then I guess the boys learned a valuable lesson.”

Danziger sipped his coffee and spoke for the first time. “A lethal lesson.”

She beamed at the guys. “The best ones often are.”

 

Thirty-Six

The floodlights limned the façade of the U.S. ambassador's residence in Belgrade and made it look like a wedding cake. It was only a block from the embassy and was within the security perimeter jointly maintained by the U.S. Marines, the Serbian military, and the Belgrade Policja. Parking isn't allowed in front of embassies or their ancillary buildings for fear of car bombs, so attendees of the foreign ministers' gathering parked two blocks away and were escorted to the building. Or they took taxis.

General Howard Cathcart arrived by taxi and was furious—he hadn't bothered to ask the front desk how far the embassy and residence were. He waited twenty minutes for the cab, and then the journey took four minutes.

Cathcart paid the driver, thinking,
None of this bullshit would be happening if I'd stayed in my damn office to begin with!

*   *   *

A hundred meters behind Cathcart, a
Skorpjo
soldier spoke into a wrist-cuff mic. “He has arrived. Over.”

*   *   *

To the right of the soldier, a Jeep Navigator arrived in the designated parking and began to disgorge the film crew from Al Jazeera English. The crew included two camera men, an audio tech, a rigger, and a typically lovely TV presenter who fluffed her hair and straightened her dress and beamed at all of the lights as if she were there to accept her well-deserved Oscar.

Thirty meters from the Al Jazeera film crew, a hired limousine glided to a halt, directed by a Policja traffic officer. It was a large enough sedan that six people climbed out. Five were low-level bureaucrats of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Parliament.

Professor Zoran Antic, soldier turned academic turned politician, eased his way out last. The seventy-year-old man looked hobbit-sized next to his aides.

The sun was an hour from setting, and Antic's aides retrieved sunglasses. One junior adjutant offered his glasses to the MP, who waved him off. “I prefer to see the world's true colors.”

Antic eschewed a cane, so the two-block walk took a while. Antic had broken a hip eighteen months earlier, and his doctor had assured him that one more such break would result in a wheelchair. He walked gingerly. The aides, all in their forties or fifties, inched along as if they were meditating and walking a labyrinth.

John Broom watched them approach. He'd emptied his International Red Cross piggy bank to buy a new suit, shirt, and tie, and he felt like himself for the first time since hitting the Balkan peninsula. Diego had split off to reconnoiter the embassy and the ambassador's residence. They still had hopes of running into Daria.

Zoran Antic's leather face crinkled. “Mr. Broom!”

“Professor.”

The old man offered John his hand. It felt weightless; all sinew and no muscle. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Maybe. Professor? Please don't attend this party.”

The aides looked concerned. Zoran Antic look merely bemused.

John said, “Sir, my friend and I are here to stop a terrorist attack. Remember the bombing of the hotel in Florence? We believe the weapons that did that are here in Belgrade. We're trying to track down our friend—the one we told you about. If we're right, and if trouble is coming, then a gathering of foreign ministers is a tempting target for terrorists.”

Antic scrunched his bushy white eyebrows. His aides grumbled. One tried to step between John and the old man, but Antic waved him aside.

“Mr. Broom, I have to be at this affair. It may seem frivolous to you, a cocktail party. It may seem a mere frippery.”

The old man stepped away from his party a couple of paces, and John backed up to accommodate him. “You are not here solely for your friend, Miss Gibron. Yes?” Antic patted John's hand. “You are also the patriot, I think.”

“Well, yes. That's part of it. U.S. technology might be hijacked, and I want to stop that as much as I want to help my friend.”