A Death in Sweden (19 page)

“Speak of the Devil. Answer it. But put it on speaker.”

“What do I tell him?”

“The truth. That I’m here, that I’ve killed everyone, that I’m threatening to kill you.”

She nodded but looked confused, and answered the call, saying, “Hi, Bill, it’s Callie.”

“Hello, Callie. Is Eric away from his desk?”

“No, Bill, there’s been . . . an incident.”

There was an awkward and lengthy pause, and Dan could imagine Brabham signaling to someone else at his end.

Finally he said, “What kind of incident, Callie?”

“Dan Hendricks, he’s here right now. He’s killed everyone except me and Josh.” Dan waved the gun at her and she added, “And he’s threatening to kill us, Bill.” There was another pause, and in the end Callie said, “Bill?”

“Callie, is Hendricks listening in right now?”

She looked to Dan for guidance on how to respond and when he gave her a relaxed nod, she said, “Yeah, he’s here.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

It took her a moment to realize Brabham had ended the call. She looked at the phone, and Josh looked at her.

It was Josh who said, “What now?”

“We’re leaving, but we’ll be able to see exactly who comes to save you. Okay, Josh, stand up, put your hands out in front, then come over here.”

Josh followed him and Dan loaded up his arms with the lunch order. It would help conceal the fact that he was cuffed, but it was more than that—he suspected neither of them felt like eating right now, but it would be a long afternoon.

“Callie, stand up, put your phone on the desk.”

“I didn’t have it with me. It’s in my purse.”

“Okay, come over here, reach into Josh’s pocket, take his phone and put it on the desk.” She did as he said. “Good, now let’s go, Josh you’ll be in front. Callie, we’ll walk together.”

“Where are we going?”

“I know you’re a smart woman, observant . . .”

She looked annoyed with herself for not seeing it before, and said, “You’re in the building across the street.”

She had an air of defeat around her now, as if they’d come up against an unmatchable adversary, and he didn’t want to tell her the more startling truth, that complacency had done for them, that they’d believed themselves secure without ever properly thinking it through.

Dan had developed a reputation over the years, for tracking people down, for snatching people off the street, making them disappear. What he’d learned himself was that it didn’t take superhuman levels of skill or expertise, it just took being better than the opposition, and the opposition normally wasn’t that good. He wasn’t special, just above average and, so far, that had been enough.

Chapter Thirty-eight

They’d been in Dan’s lookout for nearly forty minutes, not talking at all, just looking across the street. A couple of times a car had come along outside and Callie had craned her neck and looked down before leaning back again in resignation. Josh had been resigned from the outset, and was leaning against the wall, with no apparent interest in what was happening with his colleagues or his office.

They’d been silent for so long that Callie jumped slightly at the sound of Dan’s voice as he said, “Brabham lives out at Zehlendorf, right?”

“Yeah, he does.”

“You been out there?”

She nodded and said, “It’s a big old villa on the shore of the Wannsee.”

“That’s great, but how long would you say, to drive from there to here?”

“I don’t know. I guess, a half hour, forty minutes, depending on traffic.”

“They’re not coming,” said Josh, sounding like someone in a trance.

She knew it, but didn’t want to acknowledge what it meant, and said, “They assumed they’d be too late to save us. They’re probably concentrating their resources on securing Bill’s place. It’s what I would have done.”

“No, it isn’t. I’ve known you about an hour, Callie, and I can tell you right now you would not have hung two people out to dry like that.” She was still in denial, so he said, “And answer me one other thing. He asked you if I was listening in, but he didn’t ask to speak to me, he didn’t ask what I wanted. Why do you think that was?”

“Okay, I wouldn’t have left two people like that, but I can understand why he did it. And I won’t decide until I have all the facts.”

He nodded, and stared at her for a second, before saying, “The guy you went with to get the lunch, was he your boyfriend?” She looked up at him, accusing, as if asking what business it was of his. He thought of Inger, telling him how he didn’t understand women, not really, and he had to hand it to her on that. “I don’t mean to pry. I just mean . . . I’m sorry I had to kill him.”

She relented a little and after a pause, she said, “Roommates. We shared an apartment, that was all. He was a good guy.”

“What about the team Brabham has out at the house?”

“The alpha team.”

Incredulous, Dan said, “The
alpha
team?”

“Bill’s idea of a joke.”

“How many are there?”

“Nine. No, four.”

“That’s quite a difference—nine, four—which is it?”

“There were nine. Jack Carlton was team leader, but he was hit, so was Rob Foster. Then Alex Robinson took over but he had to fly home yesterday—he needs an operation on his leg. You killed two in the office. That leaves four.”

“The guy who needs the operation, Alex Robinson?”

She nodded and said, “He got hit, shooting it out at Charlie Hamsun’s place.”

“When they were ambushed?” She nodded again, but looked less certain because of his tone. “It was just me and Charlie at Charlie Hamsun’s place, but it’s important you know this in case you’re ever unlucky enough to be in the field with this Robinson guy—he ran. He ran as soon as Jack got into trouble, didn’t even fire a bullet. Charlie hit him with a sniper round as he high-tailed it into the woods.”

Josh came out of his trance again, sounding angry and irritated as he said, “I knew that story was bullshit!”

“So, this alpha team, it was them who went after Charlie in Croatia?”

“Of course. After what had happened with Jack and Rob, four of them went.”

“Good, and what I need to know is whether all four were involved in torturing him, or just some of them, and I want names.”

She looked as if he was asking for the impossible, and said, “We don’t know who did what, we just know the mission was a success. And it was just the other day. With you running wild in France, we’ve been fighting to keep our heads above water.”

“I don’t buy it. These guys like to tell war stories. You heard all about how Jack Carlton and Rob Foster died. You’ve had two guys loafing around your office since yesterday, the rest of the team holed up at Brabham’s place. You’re telling me you still have no idea? That no one talked about how they killed the guy who killed Jack Carlton.”

She didn’t answer, but Josh was suddenly paying a lot more attention and he looked at her and said, “For God’s sake, Callie, just tell him.” He waited only a moment, and when she didn’t fill the pause, he turned to Dan and said, “Alex Robinson was shouting his mouth off about how he cut the big bastard up and shot him six times before killing him.”

Callie still didn’t speak, but he could see from her expression that it was true. It was a frustrating truth at that, because it meant the guy he most wanted to harm was safely out of reach in America. He wouldn’t stay out of reach forever, though.

“Thanks for telling me, Josh. And, Callie, I said you needed to watch your back if ever you worked with Robinson, but you don’t need to worry about that. In fact, you can just pass on a message to him—when you see him, let him know that whatever happens, whatever job he takes, the day will come when I track him down and make him pay for every one of those wounds he inflicted on my friend.”

Again, she didn’t respond but seemed to be turning something over in her mind, and a minute or so passed before she said, “Has it never occurred to you, Dan, that you’ve picked the wrong side? You assume Patrick White is a force for good here, that Bill Brabham is the bad guy. I might not agree with the way we’re going after assets that worked in good faith, but White was a maverick who left this agency in jeopardy. Now he’s jumped ship and is trying to take revenge on people like Bill.”

“You think Patrick White was a maverick? Callie, you wouldn’t believe some of the things Western intelligence agencies were doing ten years ago. There was stuff going on that even the people at WikiLeaks wouldn’t have believed. The thing is, though, you believe in it all because you believe in Bill Brabham.” He walked over to get one of the laptops and put it on the floor midway between her and Josh. “I’ll tell you something else—the only side I ever picked until now is my own. I’ve had a selfish life, but for the first time ever in these last few weeks, I have come down on one side, because I’ve learned what kind of person Bill Brabham is, and now I’ll show you too.”

It took him a minute to set it up using the phone and the laptop, and as much as he knew what he was doing, he felt oddly uncomfortable with Josh watching him, as if the tech guy was about to tell him he was doing something wrong.

Once the footage from the security tape started playing, he turned it back to face them.

“This footage was taken outside a bank in Paris fourteen years ago. In a minute you’ll see two people walk into view, a man and a nineteen-year-old student named Sabine Merel. That name mean anything to you?” They both shook their heads while keeping their eyes on the screen. “How strange that Bill would never mention that.”

Dan wasn’t looking at the screen, but he could see from their expressions that the couple had appeared. Callie in particular looked slightly sick, as if she sensed already what would happen. Dan could tell too, when Brabham and Sabine had disappeared into the alley.

“The man you just saw tried to rape that student at a party a week or so before this, a party at the US Ambassador’s residence. She made the mistake of threatening to tell the police, and she didn’t even mean it, she just wanted him to back off and leave her alone. What he’s doing now while you look at that blank screen is punching her in the face, knocking out her teeth, kneeling so violently on her back that it breaks her ribs, and then waiting for her to regain consciousness before strangling her with her own scarf. Then he’ll rob her and pull her clothes off to make it look like . . . something else.” He turned the screen to face him again, and said casually, “I’ll fast forward because all of that takes him about twenty minutes. I’ll go to the point where he comes out of the alley.” He found the right point and put it on pause, just as Gaston Bergeron had done for them. He turned the screen back to them then.

“Fuck.” Callie covered her mouth, her eyes darting about as if not wanting to actually look at the screen. Josh didn’t seem to recognize the guy, but then Callie dropped her hand, her voice little more than a whisper as she said, “It’s Harry Brabham.”

Finally, Josh did a double take, looking at Dan as he said, “The congressman?”

“The very same. And let me tell you, Bill Brabham has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep this secret, including the murder of a leading French intelligence official.”

Josh looked at Callie and pointed at the screen, saying, “Do you know this guy?”

“I met him, once.” She looked ready to say something else, but didn’t, and Dan suspected she was less than surprised to discover the guy had a dark side.

“While we’re at it, Callie. You said you handled the external assets. Did you order Matty Hellström to kill someone in Stockholm last week?”

She looked surprised and said, “Mattias Hellström? No. He’s on the list—we have a rule against using anyone on the list.”

“There’s a surprise. So Bill Brabham, or someone he trusts more than you, contracted Matty and promised him he’d be back in the fold if he did the job, a promise they obviously had no intention of keeping. The target was Patrick White, who was in Stockholm to meet me. And you’d think it might be risky to order the death of a senior official at the ODNI but, of course, Bill was being driven by fear.” He tapped the top of the laptop screen. “Because he had a feeling we were onto this.”

Once more, she appeared to take in what he said, but was thinking it through, working out how plausible it all was and what it meant, and when she spoke again, she said, “If you have this tape, I presume Patrick White and the ODNI also now have it, and he’ll use that to shut down Bill Brabham’s operation. But that still leaves a big question.”

“Which is?”

“Why are you doing this? Why did you kill all those people before, why are you . . . whatever it is you’re planning to do next? If this tape is genuine, you didn’t need to kill anybody.”

She was right, there was no doubting that. If he was convinced that this tape would be enough to close down both Brabham and his program, there was no need to kill anyone because the dot wouldn’t be on him anymore. He’d been around long enough to know it didn’t always work like that, but he’d be lying to himself if he suggested that was his main motivation.

“What I’m planning to do tonight is go out to Zehlendorf, kill
the A Team
, and . . . well, I haven’t decided about Brabham yet. Maybe I’d rather hurt him some other way. As for my motivation, it’s mixed—you’ll find that’s often the case with freelancers. But I’d say the biggest part of it’s revenge, for what they did to my friends, Charlie most of all, and for what they want to do to me.”

“Revenge is empty, Mr. Hendricks, you must know that.”

He nodded and smiled at her, and it summed up how far removed they were from each other, that Callie thought a stock truth like that would be enough to give him second thoughts.

Chapter Thirty-nine

He didn’t say any more about his plans for a while after that. Instead, he released Josh from the cuffs and encouraged them to eat. Callie was reluctant at first, perhaps because the lunch order reminded her too much of what had happened, and the death of the guy who’d walked with her every day to get it, who’d shared her apartment.

In the end, she did eat, and a little while later she looked at Dan and said, “You should eat something too.”

He took a ham baguette, and noticed Callie glance at it with an unavoidable recognition, knowing whose order it was that Dan was eating. Afterwards, he escorted them both to the bathroom on that floor, letting one in at a time, keeping the gun on the other.

Then they went and sat again. Dan kept his eye on the building across the street, though no one ever turned up, and even Callie had now given up on looking out.

It was beginning to get dark when Josh said, “Mr. Hendricks . . .”

“You can call me Dan if you prefer.”

“Okay, thanks.” Callie looked at Josh in annoyance, as if to ask what he was thanking him for. “It’s just, I wondered, if you’re going out to Bill’s place. Are you . . . are you planning on taking us with you?”

“He can’t do that, Josh. We’d give him away or get in the way.” She stared directly at Dan, that same challenging and resolute stare he’d first seen up in the office. “He’s gonna kill us. It’s the only thing he can do.”

Dan shook his head, bemused, and said, “You’ve spent too much time with the wrong kind of people. I said I wouldn’t kill you, and unless you give me a reason, I won’t.” He looked at Josh who, conversely, was desperate to believe in him. “I have another set of cuffs. It won’t be comfortable but I’ll cuff you to the railings out on the top of the landing there.” He’d checked them while they were each in the bathroom, the ornate metalwork was sturdy enough and fixed well into the stone floor. “I’ll write a note and put it in my jacket, in case things don’t work out, telling them that the two of you are here.”

It was obvious that Callie still couldn’t make up her mind about Dan or this whole situation, but his final comment seemed to throw her more than anything else he’d said. It struck Dan as the most natural thing in the world, that he should make sure they weren’t left to starve to death in an empty building if he got killed, but she looked touched by the gesture.

“Dan, you still don’t have to do this.”

He smiled at her and said, “But I’m going to. And now I need to ask you both some questions.” Her face darkened again, as if she suspected she’d been lured into a trap. “Where will they be, these four guys?”

“There’s a lodge, but he might only have . . .”

“Josh, shut your mouth!”

Josh looked at her, defiant, as if to remind her that she wasn’t his senior officer or, even if she had been, she wasn’t anymore, and he was deliberate as he said again, “There’s a lodge, but he might only have one guy in there if he’s down to four. Maybe two, and one of them will walk the grounds every now and then. The other two will be in the house—they hang around the kitchen most of the time, but maybe not tonight.”

“Good. Is his wife there, other family, staff?”

“Staff won’t be there in the evening. And his wife’s away. They’ve just had a new grandson . . .”

Callie added, to no one in particular, “Harry’s second, born two weeks ago.”

At first he thought she was challenging him, but he guessed she was aware of the irony, that Harry Brabham was building a happy family for himself.

“How long till they wait for backup from the Berlin station?”

Callie answered, saying, “He probably called it in as soon as I spoke to him on the phone.”

She was trying to put him off going, but Josh laughed and said, “I doubt it. It would be the last resort. And I’m talking the absolute last resort. We don’t officially exist, or at least, not here in Berlin. Bill sent someone home in the summer because he went out for a drink with someone from the embassy. He’ll barricade the place, but he won’t call for backup, not unless he’s the last man standing.”

“What kind of surveillance does he have in place?”

“Motion sensors on the perimeter, cameras with night vision. There’s nothing you can do about the motion sensors but they’ve been erratic ever since he moved in there, so they ignore them a lot of the time—maybe not tonight, though. The cameras . . .” Josh weighed something up, then nodded to himself and said, “If it would help, I can show you how to knock them out for ten minutes—there’s a flaw in the way the computer runs them.”

Even as he was still speaking, Callie had looked at him with consternation, and she said now, “Josh, what are you doing? If you help him in any way, you’re breaking the law, you’re probably committing treason.”

“You think?” She didn’t respond, and he pointed at the laptop and said, “You think he faked that tape?” Again, she didn’t answer. “Exactly. You wanna report me, Callie, you go ahead, but I know I’m doing the right thing. Because we’ve been helping them sweep people like Dan here under the carpet, but you know what, who’s to say in five years they won’t be trying to sweep us under it?”

“There are things here that need to be answered, but if you help him, I will report you.”

Josh stared at her for a few seconds, then turned to Dan and said, “You could probably breach it without this, but I can set it up on one of your laptops there. Basically, if someone with an authorized code—someone like me—reports a malfunction on the surveillance system, the thing does a full check on itself, and after ten minutes it’ll confirm that there’s no malfunction. But here’s the thing—mother of all fuck-ups—the system shuts down all its elements and brings them back online one by one to check them, but it brings the cameras on last. So for nearly ten minutes, no cameras.”

“You can set it up so that I can hit it just before I go in there?”

“Of course. You just hit the Enter key when you’re ready to go.”

“Good. Set it up.”

Josh pulled the laptop over in front of him. Dan thought of telling him to restrict his activities to what they’d just discussed, not to try contacting anyone else, but he could tell Josh was on side now. Callie wasn’t, and it was for all the right reasons, but she was still wrong. She was staring at Josh with utter disbelief.

She could tell Dan was staring at her in turn, but she showed no acknowledgement and said only to Josh, “Aiding and abetting in the murder of four CIA officers. As well as treason, I really hope you’re calling this right, Josh, because you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison if you’re not.”

Dan said, “Even if he ends up on the wrong side, I guess for Josh to face the consequences, someone would have to report what he’s done here. That’s not me.”

Josh looked up from what he was doing and met Callie’s eyes, asking her the question.

“No, I’m not making promises like that. Not until I know all the facts.”

Dan saw that as promising for some reason, a sign that she was wavering, but Josh looked blasé now and said, “I’ll take my chances. I know I’m doing the right thing.” He looked up at Dan. “I’ll be straight, I don’t know that you’re doing the right thing, but I know I am. I always had an idea Brabham was rotten.”

Dan smiled in acknowledgement. Callie shook her head, as if unsure how any of it had come to this.

“Okay, this is ready to go. Hit the Enter key and within thirty seconds the cameras will be down and out for nearly ten minutes.”

“Good, thanks. You said one of the guys walks the grounds. About how often?”

“On a normal night, every hour, maybe. Tonight, I’d guess every half hour.”

Dan looked to the window. It was dark outside now.

“I’m heading off now. I’ll have to cuff you, like I said, so you better both have a bathroom break.” They stood, and he looked at Callie, seeing more than ever, in the way she carried herself, that she could be dangerous if she had a mind to be. “Callie, despite everything, I like you, I like that you’ve held your ground, even though I think you’re wrong. Now you might be thinking this is your last opportunity to stop me, so I’ll warn you again—if you try anything, I’ll kill you. You have to believe me on that.”

Her eyes were fierce as she said, “Why wouldn’t I believe you? It’s the only thing you’ve said for which I’ve got incontrovertible evidence.”

He showed them to the bathroom, then cuffed them to the railings at the top of the stairs. He put his bag together again, being careful to lay the primed laptop on top of everything else.

He stopped on the stairs before heading down, and looked at them, nodding another acknowledgement to Josh. Then he said to Callie, “There is one other thing I said that you know to be true.” She raised her eyebrows, giving him nothing. “I said I wouldn’t kill you if I didn’t have to.”

And with that he walked down the stairs and out into the cold Berlin night.