Tom Clancy Under Fire (11 page)

J
ACK’S ANSWER
to Gerry’s question was a simple one: All he needed for now was Gavin Biery and his expertise. Gerry agreed, but conditionally. One, Jack would keep John Clark closely updated; and two, any further requests that involved digging into CIA or SIS business must be preapproved by Hendley. Though a few people within the U.S. intelligence community—Mary Pat Foley, the current director of national intelligence, being the most prominent—knew about The Campus, Gerry tried to keep direct contact to a minimum.

Jack was relieved that one of his boss’s provisos hadn’t involved dispatching Clark, Ding Chavez, or Dominic Caruso to ride shotgun over him. He didn’t need hand-holding, and hadn’t for a long time, in fact.

“Thanks for bringing Gerry into the loop,” Gavin said over the phone. “I was getting nervous about all this.”

“No problem. Did he tear you a new one?” asked Jack.

“Nah. Just readjusted mine a bit. So I’ve got something for you. First, your old phone is clean. Whoever had it put some malware on it, this nifty little code that injected itself in the RTOS—”

“You’re giving me a headache, Gavin,” Jack said. “Bottom line, I can use the phone?”

“Yep. I ran a quick check on Hamrah Engineering. It’s headquartered in Baku; the e-mail you gave me belongs to its Archivan branch. Hamrah is a contractor—one of hundreds—attached to the Parsabad–Artezian railway project.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s a plan to run a rail line from northern Iran, through Azerbaijan, Dagestan, then into Ukraine. Moscow is pushing for a branch line in Georgia as well. The project’s been going on for twenty years, but half of that time on hold. About five years ago it restarted.”

“I’ll bet Georgia loves that idea.” Given Russian president Volodin’s aggression in Ukraine and Estonia, the last thing the government of Tbilisi wanted was a direct line from Russia to Georgia’s doorstep.

“Anyway, I’m still digging into Hamrah, but on the surface it seems to be what it is.”

“It isn’t. Or someone there isn’t.” Jack told him about the exchange he’d found between Yazdani and Farid Rasulov.

“I’ll be damned. You know that Gmail address you gave me, the one belonging to, what was the agent’s name, Ervaz?”

“Right.”

“That also links back to Hamrah. The alternate Gmail contact is listed as [email protected]—same as this Rasulov guy’s address.”

Ervaz and Farid Rasulov were the same person.

“Focus on Rasulov, see what you find,” said Jack. “Do the same for a guy named Suleiman Balkhi with a company called the Bayqara Group. They’re out of Mashhad.” Jack gave him Balkhi’s cell-phone number.

“I’m on it.”

Jack disconnected, then switched to his main phone and texted Seth:
IT’S JACK. URGENT. REPLY.

He waited, staring at the screen, hoping for a quick reply, but none came.

He came out of the bedroom and found Ysabel on the couch, her MacBook on her lap. Before making the call to The Campus, Jack had uploaded the photos he’d taken at Yazdani.

“Nothing so far,” she reported. “All of their accounting is done in-house, as is their banking. I haven’t found any financial connection to Hamrah. We did, however, hear back from Ervaz.”

“And?”

“He’s agreed to meet us. I haven’t replied yet.”

“Where and when?”

“Day after tomorrow, eight p.m., at a farmhouse outside Nemin. It’s about four hundred kilometers northwest of here, near the Azerbaijan border.”

“How near?”

“Eight kilometers or so.”

“And how far from Nemin to Archivan?”

Ysabel studied her laptop’s screen for a few seconds. “Twenty-eight.”

Jack did a quick conversion in his head: about five miles and twenty miles, respectively. It couldn’t be a coincidence Ervaz wanted to meet so close to the border and so close to Hamrah’s Archivan branch. Jack mentioned this to Ysabel.

“I agree,” she replied. “Okay, so, Balaclava Man used one of Yazdani’s vans to kidnap you, and Yazdani is under Farid Rasulov’s thumb, a man who shares the same e-mail address as Ervaz. Right so far?”

Jack nodded. “Go on.”

“So, ipso facto, Farid Rasulov, aka Ervaz, one of Seth’s own agents, is behind your kidnapping.”

If true, Jack thought, Seth had even bigger problems on his hands than Wellesley and Spellman hunting for him.

“And just to remind you, Jack, this is the man who wants to meet us in the dead of night in a village in the middle of nowhere,” said Ysabel.

“It’s all we’ve got. Reply to him. Tell him we’ll be there. Wait . . . Add a dollar sign at the end of the message.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Edinburgh, Scotland

Hoping to make up all the time they’d wasted building a movement pattern on the wrong Amy, Yegor had spent the previous twenty-four hours tailing the right target. Helen had sent Olik along, wary of how Roma might behave on a campus full of young women no better than whores whose fathers should have long ago killed them to restore honor to their families. Roma was not just an extremist, Helen had come to realize, but one who had little impulse control and even less fear of consequences. Sooner or later, he would get tired of taking orders from a woman. Helen only hoped this job would be over before that happened.

•   •   •

YEGOR AND OLIK
returned mid-afternoon, pulled through the double garage doors, and shut off the engine. Helen walked down from the apartment, shut the doors, and met Yegor as he climbed out of the driver’s seat.

“She’s got a late class today, a lab in the Sanderson Building that goes until eight-fifty. She takes the number twenty-two bus back to Pollock Halls. From Sanderson to the bus stand, four minutes.”

Olik said, “We followed the bus twice. From Sanderson to Pollock, between ten and twelve minutes. At night, probably a bit less than that.”

“You’re sure about this?”

Olik nodded.

“And the route from the bus stop to Chancellors Court?”

Yegor answered, “Fifty meters on a narrow path with plenty of trees.”

“Vehicle access?”

“A hundred meters directly north of Pollock, Duddingston Low Road. It heads directly east. Eight minutes after we leave, we’ll be in Joppa. This will work, Helen. We should do it. Tonight.”

Helen thought for a few moments, then nodded. “Olik, go upstairs and start packing our things. Tell Roma to start cleaning; I don’t want a trace of us, or the girl, left behind.”

“Right.”

Olik trotted up the stairs. Once he was out of earshot, Helen whispered to Yegor, “Watch Roma tonight.”

“You had another run-in with him?”

“Just watch him.”

•   •   •

AT EIGHT-TEN P.M.
with the sun almost fully set, they left the garage, Yegor behind the wheel, Helen beside him, and Roma and Olik in the rear seats.

Before leaving the garage Olik had made sure the drug had taken effect and Amelia was sleeping soundly in the garage’s bathroom, her gag and bonds secure. Once they had the real target in hand and they were clear of Edinburgh, Helen would place an anonymous call to the police and give them Amelia’s location. The girl’s jaw would heal, as would, eventually, the trauma of what had happened to her. It was better than Roma’s solution, Helen told herself.

As she’d instructed, Yegor drove them east to Portobello Bay, then north into Joppa, then Duddingston, where they spent fifteen minutes driving the narrow and winding streets. Yegor and Olik were right, she decided. If the worst happened and they failed to get cleanly away after taking the girl, they could get lost in one of these villages, which might buy them enough time to make their way to the safe house.
Maybe,
she thought.

At eight forty-five she told Yegor to head for the campus.

•   •   •

WITH YEGOR DRIVING
slightly under the speed limit, they reached the entrance to the campus, Holyrood Park Road, at 9:00. Helen instructed Yegor to pass it and pull onto the darkened shoulder and shut off the headlights. From the glove box Helen pulled a spray can of synthetic snow they’d picked up at a dollar store. She got out, walked to the front of the van, sprayed the front license plate, then the rear one, then climbed back into the van.

Yegor pulled out, then U-turned onto Holyrood Park Road.

Helen could see Chancellors Court silhouetted against the night sky out Yegor’s window behind a screen of trees. Almost all the top-floor windows were lit, some of the curtains open, but most of them closed.

“Her room is on the second floor, third from the right corner,” Yegor said.

Helen saw it; the window was dark.

“She’ll be on the bus by now,” Olik said softly from the backseat.

“Show me where she gets off,” Helen told Yegor.

He reached the intersection and turned left.

“The stand’s up ahead on your side,” Yegor said.

Three people, all carrying book bags or backpacks, were waiting in the dimly lit stand.
Waiting for the number twenty-two,
Helen thought. She checked her watch: 9:02.

“The path she’ll take is directly across from the stand. Coming up on my side now.”

“Good,” Helen replied. “That will work. Turn right up here.”

Yegor passed the bus stand and turned into the parking lot. Out her window, Helen saw a sign that read
ROYAL
COMMONWEALTH
POOL
. She told Yegor to pull up to the curb, then turned around in her seat. “Olik, pick her up at the bus stand and follow her down the path. Don’t crowd her. Text me when she’s on her way. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Olik climbed out and shut the door behind him.

“Back to Pollock,” Helen told Yegor.

He made a U-turn, then turned left, heading back the way they’d come, then right onto Holyrood. Helen checked her watch again: 9:04. “Slow down, Yegor.”

She didn’t want them sitting in the Chancellors Court parking lot for more than three minutes. The one variable they hadn’t accounted for was the routes and timing of the university’s security patrols. If one happened by at the wrong time, Helen would have no choice but to call it off.

Yegor turned into the Pollock parking lot. Helen craned her neck, looking for pedestrians and parked, occupied cars; there was one of these sitting in front of the lobby to Chancellors Court, some thirty meters away, headlights off and a trickle of exhaust illuminated by the lobby’s interior lights. Helen could see no one inside the car. For now. They had to assume the owner would be back soon. She felt her heart rate increase.