Spycatcher (22 page)

Thirty-Three

I
t was the first time that Will had seen the four-man CIA team together. They sat with him in a room within the small Savic Hotel in Prague's Old Town. Smoke from Laith's cigarette lingered over them and mingled with the steam from the mugs of coffee each man held. It was nearly 1:00
A.M.
, but all the Americans looked edgy and energetic.

“Why are we not on Lana?” Laith's voice sounded hostile.

“Will and I are taking a risk leaving her alone right now, but we have vital reasons for doing so.” Roger spoke slowly, glancing at Will before returning his gaze to his men. “Which hotel is she in?”

“She's in the Clarion.” Ben took a swig of his coffee and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It's about one kilometer away from here on the other side of the Old Town.”

“And the DGSE team?” Roger again.

“All four of them have arrived.” Laith blew smoke while speaking. “Like us, they've taken one room to use as their base. They're staying in the Hotel Josef.”

“What's their drill?”

Laith smiled a little. “Last time we looked, all four of them were watching Lana's hotel. But that was before you called us here, so right now I've no idea.”

“Do they have weapons?”

Julian shook his head. “Very unlikely. No time to get any, plus why would they feel the need to arm themselves?”

Roger nodded. “All right. How do they look?”

“Highly professional.” Laith extinguished his cigarette. “Their movements are slick, they barely talk to each other, meaning they don't have to, and they're using creative surveillance maneuvers.”

“Do they look like they could handle themselves in a confrontation?”

Ben frowned. “They look and move like Special Forces. They'll be able to take care of themselves if the Iranians do spot and assault them.”

Roger wordlessly ceded the floor to Will.

Will breathed in and spoke. “In one hour's time, Lana will leave her hotel to take a walk through the Old Town. This will come as a surprise to her Iranian and French watchers, but I doubt they'll view it as suspicious, as Prague is at its most beautiful at night, when its streets and alleys are empty. I think all four of the DGSE men will be on her, because this is their first night of observing her. Unlike the Iranian team, they've not yet had the chance to define a pattern of her behavior that could allow them to decide whether they can scale back coverage of her at particular points of the day. But the Iranians will most likely have only one or two people on her, as they're far more familiar with Lana's movements and they know that she's never before left her hotel after midnight. Nevertheless, when they see her taking her walk, they'll alert at least two of their colleagues to join them, and within thirty minutes of that alert they'll number three or four men.” Will looked at each of the men in turn as he spoke. “That thirty-minute gap is crucial, because during that time we're going to kill the DGSE team.”

The CIA men were silent for a while, and Will wondered who would speak first.

Roger looked at his men. “Do any of you have a problem with this task?”

Julian looked directly at Will. “As long as we're authorized to do this, I've got no problem. But how are we going to do it without being seen by the one or two Iranian specialists?”

Will nodded at Roger, who then spoke. “The Old Town is a labyrinth. A team of two Iranians won't be able to do much more than follow Lana wherever she goes and stay pretty close to her for fear of losing her position. But the DGSE team of four will be able to box her position from a greater distance, given their higher numbers. That means we can attack their perimeter without being seen by the Iranians.”

“What about the bodies?” Laith took out another cigarette and held it unlit.

“We don't have the time or the resources to get rid of them,” Will replied. “But it is essential that the Iranians know nothing about the assault. When it's done, Lana will take a route back to her hotel that will draw her Iranian watchers and any of their colleagues away from the scene. She'll then check out of her hotel, head to the airport, and travel on to Sarajevo.”

“Does she know anything about our plans?”

“She suspects that Megiddo has put someone, or even several people, around her, but she doesn't know about our team or the DGSE team, and she certainly doesn't know anything about what we're going to do. She has of course asked me why she needed to come to Prague and why she needs to make this specific walk, and I've told her she'll have her answers when I next see her.” He shook his head. “I will, however, give her no such answers.”

He rose from his seat. “Gentlemen, I suggest you spend the next fifteen minutes mentally preparing yourselves, because after that we need to move into position.” He walked to the far corner of the room and replenished his mug with more coffee. As he did so, Roger moved next to him.

The CIA man spoke very quietly. “
Are
we authorized to do this?”

Will looked at Laith, Ben, and Julian and saw that they were in discussion and out of earshot. He looked at Roger. “You have
my
authority.”

Roger's eyes narrowed. “What about Patrick's authority?”

“He's back in Washington right now, so that he can calm some waters. He doesn't need to be bothered with this.”

Roger stared at Will for a long moment. “We're going to be attacking a Western ally. If something goes wrong and we're caught, the repercussions on us will be terrible.”

Will nodded. “I know.”

W
ill was on Týnská, and he could see no one else on the street. The place was partially lit with streetlamps, and he sat on a bench beneath one of them so that he was easily visible. He rubbed his gloved hands together and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a bottle of Becherovka. He then unscrewed the bottle's cap and poured some of the alcoholic liquid over his jeans and coat and exposed face. Taking a swig from the bottle, he felt its contents burn down his throat. He placed the now half-full bottle by his side, pressed a number on his secreted cell phone, and said, “I'm here.”

Within seconds Will heard Roger's voice in his earpiece. “Good. We're all in position. In five minutes our lady should be at the place.”

Will stretched his legs out before him and crossed his feet. The temperature was well below freezing, although the streets were free of ice and snow. He breathed slowly and watched his breath turn to steam in the shadowy air. He began to gently hum a tune, caressing the base of the bottle of bitters.

“One minute until she's there. Radio silence from now on, so earpieces stowed away.” Roger's voice was quiet and calm.

Will kept humming as he casually removed his Bluetooth device and dropped it into his pocket. He visualized Lana's route from her hotel, taking her to where she would now be and then to where she had to be in less than sixty seconds. That place had been carefully chosen by Roger to be the intersection of V Kolkovně and Dlouhá. Roger had reasoned that if she was there, then he could accurately pinpoint to the nearest twenty meters where each member of the DGSE team should be positioned and by extension where his own team should be waiting. Will knew that right now Ben was five hundred meters away from him on Vězeňská to the north, that Laith was on Haštalská to the northeast, that Roger was somewhere on Kostečná to the west, and that Julian was following Lana. Will also knew that Roger had chosen to position Lana in the intersection because it had five exits; the Iranians would have to move in very close to her in order not to lose her to one of these routes. Will again lifted the bottle to his lips and tilted it back, but this time he prevented any of the liquid from entering his mouth. He hummed his tune a little louder so that its sound echoed off the nearby building walls, and as he did so, he moved his head slightly left and right to observe the street.

He saw the man. At first he was merely an almost shapeless variation of the darkness at the end of the street, but as Will moved his vision in a figure-eight motion around the shape, his eyes adjusted and he knew that it was him. The man was walking slowly along the street and toward Will's location. He was alone, his hands thrust into coat pockets and his head bowed low. Will tightened his grip around the bottle and took another pretend swig of its contents. He closed his eyes for a while and stretched the muscles in his legs and back.

When he opened his eyes again, the man was nearer. Will held the bottle in his lap. He hummed some more, laughed a little, and took a genuine swig of the Czech liquor. The man kept walking at the same pace. Then, as he came to within twenty meters of Will, he started crossing the street toward the opposite pavement. Will breathed in deeply and laughed again.

“You want a drink?” Will said the words loudly and with a slur.

The man said nothing and went on walking until he was directly across from Will.

“Hey, you want a drink?”

The man walked on.

Will stood up, grabbed the neck of his bottle, and lurched across the road toward the man. “Just trying to be polite. No need to fucking ignore me.”

The man kept walking. He was of medium build, but Will could tell from his posture that he would be very strong. Will staggered after him until he was within two meters of the man's back.

“I said there's no need to ignore me. Just want to share my goodwill.”

The man turned, took one step forward, and punched the flat of his hand against Will's chest. The force of the impact was so powerful and precise that it lifted Will's two-hundred-pound body into the air and backward. As he crashed to the pavement, his bottle smashed around him, and he lay for a moment, trying to breathe. The man turned to continue his journey with the same steady pace. Will brushed glass off his coat, pushed himself up onto his feet, and cursed loudly.

The man continued onward, and Will smiled. This was the moment he'd been waiting for. He sprinted forward, thrust his left hand into the small of the man's back to grab a bunch of his coat and the belt underneath it, smashed his right elbow upward into the man's jawbone, and thrust up and backward so that both of them were in the air. As they fell back, Will twisted the man's body so that it was beneath him and falling headfirst toward the sidewalk. He held his elbow in position, and as they landed on the ground, the man's neck snapped instantly from the impact. He was dead.

Will rummaged through the man's pockets and took his wallet, passport, cell phone, and all other materials that might show his identity. He knew that police would still be able to trace the dead body, but the things he'd removed would, he hoped, delay identification by a few hours. The light around him was bad, so he switched on a small flashlight to examine the man's passport. He frowned, swung the light at the dead man's face, then back at the details in the passport.

“Oh, dear God, no.”

Thirty-Four

W
ill turned away from his view of the snow-carpeted Sarajevo and looked at Roger. The two men were standing in the lounge area of a superior suite at the Radon Plaza Hotel.

“I was a kid when I joined the French Foreign Legion,” Will said. “It was very tough at the beginning, but there was a slightly older guy who had joined up with me and took me under his wing to help me get through training. That man became a friend and later served with me in the GCP. Last night I killed him.”

Roger took a step forward toward him, then stopped. “You had no way of knowing it was your friend. You barely saw his face.”

Will walked to a chair, sat down, and dropped his head into his hands.

“Will?”

Will looked up at Roger. He tried to put memories of his dead friend out of his mind. But he still remembered how, seventeen years earlier, the man had smiled as he showed the eighteen-year-old Legionnaire Cochrane how to shine the buttons on his uniform, polish his parade boots, and avoid getting ruthless punishment from the NCOs in their barracks. Will tried to focus. He had to—for the sake of Roger and his men, for the sake of Lana, for the sake of his mission to capture his father's murderer, for the sake of the mission to stop an atrocity, for the sake of everything. He breathed in deeply and asked, “How do you intend to deploy us tomorrow?”

Roger looked at him for a moment before nodding once. “Ben's our best driver, so he'll be in the vehicle. The rest of us will be on foot. What about our weapons?”

“I'm collecting them from Harry today. The exfiltration plan?”

“All set.”

“Good.”

Given Roger's expertise in these matters, Will had asked him to construct a plan to extract Megiddo from Sarajevo once he'd been captured. Roger had considered a number of different options, including going over Bosnia's land borders, escaping via air, and the option of the sea. But Will had made it clear that they did not have the use of American or British facilities, and that therefore ruled out some of Roger's ideas that included the use of military vehicles such as helicopters, freight aircraft, and submarines. The only thing they did have was American and British money.

Roger had therefore decided on the most viable option. Megiddo would be captured and taken to a vacation rental home approximately thirteen kilometers outside the town of Konjic, which itself was almost fifty kilometers southeast of Sarajevo. The house was secluded on the edge of Jablaničko Lake in a wooded, mountainous area and could hold six people if required to. Will, Roger, and Julian would take Megiddo onward from Konjic to Bosnia's only seaside town, Neum on the Adriatic coast. Laith and Ben would not travel with them on this leg but instead would take conventional transport out of the country and travel to the United Kingdom. The remaining team, however, would leave the country on a chartered yacht. Megiddo would be stowed away in the yacht's hull. The captain of the vessel, who ran a popular tourist charter business, was well known to Roger. As a sideline he was also a smuggler of heroin, among other things. Illegal human cargo would not bother him at all.

Will and Roger had analyzed the risks they would face at every stage of the extraction. They had decided that the point of highest vulnerability would be between exiting from Neum and reaching Italian waters. Their destination was the English Channel, but Will had decided that if they were seized anywhere outside the Bosnian and Herzegovinian jurisdiction, he would have no other option than to escalate matters by involving their premiers to plead their release on the basis of a mutual Western intelligence imperative. He hoped, however, to avoid such a requirement. He liked the idea of quietly sailing into one of England's ports with his prize.

“What about the meeting itself?” he asked Roger now.

“Lana needs to give us a visible thumbs-up or thumbs-down. I suggest that we have her place her handbag on the coffee table if the man is Megiddo and on the floor if it's not him. Can you confirm to me now that that will be the signal?”

“I can confirm. Handbag on the table if it's him.”

“Good. Now, what happens when the meeting is over? If it's him, she needs to get the hell out of Dodge. She must go straight to the airport and get on the next flight to Paris. She must not go back to her hotel. She'll be safe on the route from the meeting to the airport because it's all built up, and once she's at the airport, there are too many armed cops for the Iranians to do anything silly. If it's not him, then where will she go?”

“Back to her room in the Holiday Inn for a debrief by me.”

“All right. We know that all seven Iranians are now in Sarajevo. They're still rotating their numbers on Lana, but obviously the full team will be out to play tomorrow. And I'm betting they'll be armed.”

Will shook his head. “It should never have had to come to this.” He looked straight at Roger. “What kind of men would place an innocent woman into the epicenter of a circle of danger and potential death?”

Roger grabbed Will's arm with unexpected force. “
We
are not that kind of men.
We
did not want this.
You
did not want this. But here we both are doing what we have to, even if we hate our job. Stay focused, Will. We all need you more than ever right now.”

Will sighed and nodded. “What are the next steps?”

“Depends on what the man does. If he goes on foot, we follow him on foot. If in a vehicle, then Ben will be on him. It depends which route, but if we're lucky—and I stress lucky—Ben may be able to pick one of us up while he's on the tail. Objective: pin Megiddo down to one location. Then we improvise.”

Will frowned at Roger. “You improvise? You have no prior plans?”

“How can we? All is good if he goes to the HBF building. If it's there, we have an attack plan. But will it be? It could be a hotel, could be a house or an apartment building, could be inner city, outer city, or just about anywhere.” Roger had been ticking off the possibilities on his fingers. “We get him in one location and then we improvise. But we improvise with speed and accuracy.”

What he said made sense to Will. The team would have to react to whatever circumstances they faced. “Okay, Roger. Where do I fit in?”

Roger considered the question. “You can't be too close to Lana, because you may be recognized by the Iranians. But you've got to be on the ground with us, because Megiddo's exit from café to fixed location to our assault and extraction could take place within thirty minutes, start to finish. Then it will be directly on to the house in Konjic. You need to be with us, but you can't take an active role in surveillance of the meeting.”

Will wasn't happy, but he knew that Roger's assessment was correct. Nevertheless, he would dearly like to have seen the moment when Lana placed her handbag on the table to indicate that his quest was near its end.

Roger rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Well, there's nothing more that can be said right now. I need to get back to watch Lana. Are you seeing her before the meeting?”

“I need to see her tonight.”

“Okay.” He looked at Will with an expression that was both stern and understanding. “When this is over, we can examine our consciences. But right now I've got to stop a woman from being attacked or worse, and you've got to capture a mass murderer. For the moment let's just focus on that.”

T
wo stationary vehicles were parked on the side of the otherwise deserted hilltop road. Will drove up behind them and pulled to a stop. He flashed his lights and exited the car. The vehicle in front of him was an S-Class Mercedes that contained one man. The other was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Will could see four men inside the SUV. He walked through deep snow to get to the first vehicle and banged his fist on its trunk.

Harry got out of the car and grinned. “You're always creeping up on me from behind, Charles. You don't have a knife on you this time, though, do you?”

Will smiled and shook the man's hand.

Harry nodded at him. “So things must be coming to a head if you need my equipment now.”

“I hope so.”

Harry looked away in the direction of Sarajevo city beneath them. His smile slowly receded, and he remained still for a while before turning back to Will. “I guess that means I have no further value to you?”

“I doubt that. Our paths will cross again.”

Harry smiled, although the look was doubtful. He walked to the rear of his car, opened the trunk, and pulled out a duffel bag that he swung toward Will. “This is what you asked for. SIG Sauer handguns with silencers, ammunition, Motorola walkie-talkies, and an HK417 sniper rifle.”

Will took the bag. “How much do I owe you for this?”

Harry rubbed a hand against his chin thoughtfully. He said, “I tell you what: just stay in touch. That will be compensation enough.”

Will nodded toward the Jeep and its four passengers. “I'll let you know when you no longer need protection.”

“Good, because I've never been the type of man to hide behind others.”

Will swung the bag onto his back. “I can see that. But I can also see that you've reached a stage in your life where you feel you may need others around you.”

Harry seemed to be considering this. “You could be right. But I've carved out a life for myself that cannot readily embrace the possibility of friendships.”

Will smiled. “You carved out a life for yourself that's too close to the shadows of your past. Why not move on?”

Harry shrugged. “To where?”

Will started to answer, then stopped. He thought for a moment. He decided that Harry needed his help to face a better future. He decided that Harry needed help to take the final steps on his road to redemption. He looked at the old man. “You already have wealth, so therefore I can't reward you with money for what you've done to help me. And I am most certainly the wrong man for friendship. But what if I could give you something that would help you have fresh surroundings, something that even a man of your standing could not get?” Will could see that the man was listening. “What would you say if I could obtain a legitimate United States passport for you?”

Harry laughed. “Since when does the U.S. Immigration Service hand out passports to men who are supposed to be war criminals?”

“They don't and won't. But I'm fairly sure that I can get the U.S. president to personally authorize one.”

The man moved closer to Will. “The president would absolve me of my sins?”

Will chuckled softly. “Even presidents can't absolve sins.” He followed Harry's gaze toward the now peaceful but once blood-drenched city below them. “But they can change the course of events. You don't need to be here anymore, Harry. You don't need to be trapped with your past. That passport would give you a new beginning if you wish for one.” He turned to look Harry in the eye. “I saw that you were capable of redemption. But I gave you a severe warning in case you strayed from that journey. You heeded my warning. And as a result I am willing to give you a new life.”

Harry reached out and shook Will's hand with a strong grip. And Will pretended not to notice that the aging man's eyes had begun to water.

R
ather than sit in one of the other chairs, Lana had positioned herself on the sofa next to him. She was dressed in jeans and a loose V-neck sweater. Her feet were bare, and Will could see that she had decided not to wear a bra. Her hair was loose and glossy, and she had applied makeup, but not too much. She held a vodka tonic, and he could smell her Guerlain perfume.

She looked nervous. “I have packed my things.”

“I forgot to mention that you'll need to leave everything. Bring only your passport tomorrow.”

“Then you will just need to take me shopping when I get home.” She smiled, but her words sounded forced.

“I thought you'd say that.” He smiled and nodded. “I've never taken a woman shopping before.” He watched Lana for a while and then said, “Are you sure you still want to go through with this?”

Her expression turned sharp. “Of course.” She took a gulp of her drink. She looked away for a moment before regarding Will with an expression that was no longer hostile but instead confused. “It's just . . . the closer I get to him, the more the memories of him become real again, the stronger the hate I have for him becomes.” When she next lifted the glass to her lips, her hand was shaking. “I don't want hate to consume me again. I do want to have what you said about me in Paris—to have other things to live for.”

Will nodded. “When this is over, you'll have everything to live for.”

Lana set down her drink and stared at it. She turned to Will. “Make me lose the hate. Make me have those other things.”

She placed her hand on the back of Will's head, pulled him to her, and kissed him fully on the lips. She smoothed her fingers against his face and whispered, “Let's not wait until this is over.” She kissed him again, with increased passion.

Will desperately wanted their embrace to last forever, desperately wanted to lift her up and carry her to the bed, desperately wanted to make love to her and afterward lie next to her and hold her in his arms. Lana's embrace felt so good, so loving, so passionate, so tender, and yet so forceful. It felt right, and at this moment Will knew that with Lana he could face his fears, could love without being terrified of loss or weakness or mere normality and take those first steps toward a different life.

But he also knew that they had to wait, that it would be very wrong to do anything now, that he had to stay strong and in control of himself and his emotions, that the dangers of the mission required all these things from him.

He placed his hand over Lana's fingers and gently drew away from her. He loathed himself for doing so, even though he knew it was the right thing to do.