The Last Refuge (27 page)

The apartment belonged to the parents of Sara Massood. Paria’s VEVAK agents had thus far been unable to track her down. Paria had men at her building as well as at the Parliament building. A simple tap on the parents’ phone had enabled VEVAK to learn that Massood would be staying at her parents’ small apartment that night—fearing for her safety after the interrogation.

Massood’s parents, both in their sixties, sat petrified on a small, shabby sofa across from Paria, whose large frame spilled over the arms of the rocking chair. They had muttered nary a word since Paria and the two large VEVAK agents, both carrying machine guns, had knocked on the door then, when they’d cracked it to see who it was, pushed it in.

At a few minutes after 11:00
P.M.
, the sound of a key being inserted into the door lock caused Paria to look up from his catatonic stare at the silent TV. He nodded at one of the gunmen, then stood.

“Please don’t hurt her,” whispered Massood’s mother.

Paria ignored her.

The gunman ripped the door open.

Massood stood in the door frame, momentarily shocked, her mouth dropping open at the sight of the gunman, and behind him Paria.

Her mother let out a small yelp as she looked at her daughter’s face, her eyes solid red from the burst blood vessels and a bandage around her neck. Massood suddenly lurched backward to run away but a third gunman, who’d followed her up from the parking lot, was standing behind her, weapon aimed at her skull.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Paria.

Massood stepped inside as tears suddenly burst and started to flow down her cheeks.

Paria stepped forward, pulling the folded-up photo of Dewey from his chest pocket.

“What do you want from me?” she pleaded in a hoarse whisper.

He held out the photo of Dewey in front of Massood.

“Is this the man you saw in Odessa?” asked Paria.

She reached out and took the photo from him.

“Yes,” said Massood, nodding up and down as she stared at the photo of Dewey. “I would stake my life on it.”

36

UPPER PHILLIMORE GARDENS

KENSINGTON

LONDON, ENGLAND

At just after five o’clock in the morning, a dark green, old-model Saab moved slowly down Upper Phillimore Gardens, a quiet residential street in Kensington lined with brick mansions. The driver of the Saab, a nineteen-year-old Somali immigrant, stared at each of the houses as he drove slowly past. He stopped at each house for a brief moment, then tossed a
Times
newspaper from the passenger seat, trying to land each paper as high up on the wide granite steps as he could.

At number seven Upper Phillimore, a short, wiry man in a black bathrobe watched unnoticed from behind a first-story window as the Saab passed by. He noted the trajectory of the plastic-bagged newspaper as it lofted toward the top of the steps. A short burst of electronic beeps suddenly chimed faintly in the room; a sensor, indicating that something or someone had come into the airspace of the mansion, in this case, the newspaper. The beeping stopped as the motion of the paper stopped. The man sipped his coffee and watched as the Saab disappeared into the dark morning mist.

Rolf Borchardt was five feet four inches tall. His thinning brown hair was combed unnaturally, from the back to the front of his head, over his pasty skull, which was noticeable to everyone it seemed but Borchardt. Those who knew Borchardt found it hard to understand. Why not just admit that you are bald? they thought. Someone even joked that he couldn’t understand why a man with Borchardt’s vast wealth, who obviously cared enough about not wanting to appear bald to go through the effort of such an elaborate comb-over wouldn’t simply buy a toupee.

Those people didn’t understand Borchardt. The ones who did stayed away from him. If Borchardt appeared scrawny, short, weak, and clueless, professorial, clerkish, and distant, in fact he was precisely the opposite. Like everything else in his life, Borchardt’s hair was designed to effect; subterfuge, disharmony, the breaking of visual equilibrium, the desire to trigger, on a very primordial level, avoidance by strangers and underestimation by adversaries.

This man is Borchardt? The weapons dealer? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Borchardt stepped from his massive, crimson-walled library to the ornate front entrance atrium of his mansion. After Buckingham Palace, the eighty-foot-wide brick building was the largest home in Kensington. It was six stories high, and spread into the back twice as deep as any other home on Upper Phillimore. According to public records, in 2006 Borchardt paid exactly one hundred and twelve million dollars for the place, but that didn’t tell the true story. In fact, the building was worth far more than that amount. It wasn’t supposed to be for sale. The Saudi government had owned it; it had, in fact, served for more than fifty years as the Saudi embassy. But when the Saudis needed Borchardt for something, he happened to be looking for a home. So the Saudis got exactly six pounds of U-235, highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, and Borchardt got his 53,599-square-foot mansion on Upper Phillimore. It was no secret that the Saudis feared Iran’s nuclear program almost as much as Israel did. The uranium was purchased as insurance.

Borchardt was regarded by intelligence agencies and governments around the world as one of the top weapons dealers in the world. In point of fact, he was, by revenue, number of transactions, and by the hard-to-calculate metric of weapons quality and rarity, by far the most powerful weapons dealer in the world.

Borchardt was a man without morals or allies. He dealt with the United States, Britain, Germany, Israel, and just about every other democratic government. He was involved in a very high percentage of deals involving Russia and China. Borchardt also, just as easily, dealt with rogues such as Iran, Somalia, North Korea, and Cuba. He even sold weapons to terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and even Al-Qaeda, though he refused to sell them anything more powerful than guns. His logic was selfish rather than moral. The last thing Borchardt wanted to see, as his Gulfstream 200 took off from Heathrow, was the sight of a Stinger surface-to-air missile smoking through the air toward his plane.

The reason legitimate governments dealt with Borchardt, despite the fact that he sold weapons to rogues and terrorists, was because they had to. And if Borchardt were to somehow cease to exist, everyone in the complex framework of shady deals knew the ramifications would be severe. For more than two decades, to every London station chief from the CIA, Mossad, KGB, and others, Borchardt had made it crystal clear; I will retire someday and when I do, so will my records. But if I die before then, the front page of every newspaper in the world will tell the story of our dealings for many, many years to come.

Borchardt opened the twelve-foot-tall glass and iron door at the front of the mansion, stepped to the front stoop, reached down to pick up that morning’s copy of the
Times
. He stepped back inside, shut the door, walked through the front atrium to the large kitchen. He placed his empty coffee cup down on the marble counter of the kitchen’s square center island. He reached into the plastic to pull the paper out. As he did so, he heard a momentary click, then, as his mind raced to process the sound, felt a sudden, sharp, painful stinging sensation. He ripped his hand out of the paper. Dangling from the end of his index and middle fingers, a mousetrap clutched his fingers.

“Fuck!”
he screamed, frantically shaking his hand to release the trap.
“Fuck! Fuck! Goddamn it! Fuck!”

But the trap would not release. He saw that blood now coursed from the tops of the two fingers, and his shaking the trap only made the steel bar dig deeper. He reached down with his free hand, pulled the bar up, released his fingers, then hurled the trap against the white marble floor.

“Goddamn it!”
he yelled again.

Borchardt stepped around the blood, walked to the sink, turned on the water. He rinsed the cuts on his fingers, examining them; the small steel bar had cut his fingers straight down, almost to the bone. His mind raced.
Who the fuck would do this?
Anger boiled up like mercury.

“Control yourself,” he said aloud to no one.

He wrapped a dish towel around his right hand. He stepped back to the mousetrap, reached down and picked it up. The metal bar at the trap’s front had been sharpened. Lifting it from the side, he saw the wet blood, covering the glinting steel that was as thin, as sharp, as a razor.

Dropping the mousetrap, he pulled the newspaper gingerly from the plastic bag with his left hand, placed it down on the marble island. Nothing. No note, or other object. He flipped through the paper, page by page. He went quickly through the front section, then the business section. In the sports section, he suddenly saw handwriting. Scrawled across a woman’s leg in a beer advertisement, black handwriting:

Queen’s Gate near park entrance, one hour, or next time it will be your head

Borchardt wrapped bandages around each finger. Later, he would need stitches but right now he didn’t have the time.

He scurried upstairs. In his bedroom, he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Yes,” came the voice, groggy.

“Wake up,” said Borchardt.

“Yes, what is it?”

“I’m meeting someone at Kensington Gardens in an hour. I need you to be there.”

“What happened?”

Borchardt explained the incident with the mousetrap, then read his bodyguard, an ex–KGB agent named Vlad Kellner, the note from the woman’s leg.

“Why are you going?” asked Kellner after hearing the note. “We can construct a safety protocol within the hour. You stay at Phillimore and we can have this thing locked down by the time you finish putting your hair in place.”

“Fuck you,” said Borchardt.

“A little morning humor.”

“You know how I feel,” said Borchardt. “I’m more afraid of living my life surrounded by guards and fences than I am of being shot in the head.”

“So you want to meet this person, who just almost cut your fingers off?”

“No, you stupid son of a bitch, I have no intention of meeting him,” said Borchardt impatiently. “I want you to kill him.”

“Forty-five minutes to assemble a kill team?” asked Kellner, incredulous.

“Yes!” barked Borchardt.

“It’s clearly an individual,” said Kellner. “A rogue. Not someone you’ve dealt with. You’d already be dead.”

“Can you bring Anna?”

“Yes, fine. Where will you enter the park?”

“Queen’s Gate.”

Borchardt hung up the phone. He didn’t bother showering. He dressed quickly, a dark blue suit, no tie.

Borchardt took the elevator to the basement. The lights in the darkened garage went on when he entered. He looked at the line of cars, chose the Bentley, started it up, then drove up the ramp, waiting for the automatic garage door to rise. He pulled out of the garage onto Upper Phillimore Gardens and sped toward Kensington Gardens.

He didn’t notice the man seated in the backseat of the parked Mercedes across the street.

*   *   *

Borchardt drove quickly to Queen’s Gate and parked on Kensington Road. He waited, picked up his cell, called Kellner.

“Are you there?”

“No, not yet. Five minutes out.”

Borchardt flipped his phone shut. He waited in the Bentley. Ten minutes later, he dialed again.

“We’re here,” said Kellner. “Anna is reading a book left north of the gates. I’ll be walking a vector.”

“Okay. I’m parked at the gates.”

“Look, I’ve been thinking about this,” said Kellner. “Obviously, this knucklehead selected Queen’s Gate because it’s visible. Getting a clean shot off, leaving a body in the middle of the park. It’s, well—”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying what I just said,” said Kellner. “Getting a clean shot off will not be easy. Look around you.”

From the front seat of the Bentley, Borchardt turned and ogled the gates surrounding Kensington Gardens. The sidewalks outside the park were beginning to get crowded; people walking to catch a bus or the tube to work; dog walkers, joggers, mothers and fathers pushing baby strollers.

“Do the best you can.”

“This is not an ideal environment,” persisted Kellner. “I don’t particularly feel like spending the rest of my life in prison. We should take the time to design something correctly.”

“So should I ask him to reschedule?” asked Borchardt sarcastically. “What are you, a fucking imbecile? What is it about you Russians? You manage to be both lazy and stupid at the same time. It’s actually quite an accomplishment.”

“We simply don’t show up,” said Kellner. “If it’s so fucking urgent, they will get back in touch with you.”

In the rearview mirror, Borchardt spied the entrance gates in the distance.

“Stop complaining. Unless you kill the queen, I should be able to get you sprung from a British prison. That’s if they catch you, which, of course, they won’t.”

“That’s reassuring. Anna has the Nikon. If she can get a clean shot, she will take it. Me too. But if she can’t, she’ll take some photos.”

Borchardt flipped the phone shut. He shook his head. He wasn’t good at this part of it. His world, his professional world, existed largely on the computer. The most important part of his job, the critical, objective assessments of weapons and weapons systems, was conducted by a field team of more than two hundred men and women who worked, secretly, for Borchardt. He had spent his life building this network of covert freelancers and highly compensated experts, and he dealt with them for the most part virtually. He didn’t like people. He didn’t like what occurred when he was forced to coexist with people nearby and visible.

Borchardt’s fingers throbbed in pain. He didn’t like pain, not at all. The bandage on the middle finger had a small dot of red where the blood was seeping through. As soon as possible, he would need sutures to fix the deep gashes.

He went to look at his watch, then realized he’d forgotten to put it on. He glanced down at the clock on the dashboard of the Bentley. It was five minutes before he was due to meet the son of a bitch who had sliced his fingers open. He climbed from the car, walking casually toward Queen’s Gate. He consciously tried to keep his head calm and still. His eyes, however, darted about, wild with curiosity and paranoia. At Queen’s Gate, he stepped left and went into the park, which was crowded with people. Christ, he thought. Kellner was right.