The Locker (20 page)

forty

“George Paperas is dead.”
She let Vaslik have the worst news first. It would prepare him best for what came next; after that anything might seem possible.

“You'd better sit down.” He pointed to a chair and handed her a coffee. She thought she noticed a tiny tremor on the surface of the drink. “Tell me what happened.”

She relayed what her father had told her, certain that Slik would check the details for himself. He listened carefully, a frown clouding his face when she mentioned the two men he'd seen following Paperas from the pub.

“I know the CIA doesn't get great press,” he murmured, “but it doesn't make them responsible for every unexplained death.”

“Maybe not. But there are other pointers.”

“Really? Like what?”

She hesitated, using the coffee to gain time, organise her thoughts. Now she was here, facing him, nothing seemed as certain or as compelling as it had back at the pub. What if Vaslik laughed her back out onto the street? As an experienced investigator he'd have every right, because from his viewpoint the few scrappy bits of “evidence“ she'd assembled were at best lame, at worst, pathetic.

She put down the coffee and started talking, laying out everything she knew or suspected. She began with Helen Stephenson's appearance, her possible nationality and her part in making Tiggi Sgornik's effects disappear; the obvious professionalism of the bugging exercise carried out on the Hardman house; the surveillance and failed snatch on Nancy near the supermarket—both involving Stephenson; the interest in George Paperas which had probably begun with her own meeting with the charity consultant. That brought her to Aron's comments about Tiggi, her thoughts about the language of the kidnap note and the napkin from the Mount Street Deli.

All through her talk, Vaslik had remained expressionless, letting her speak. Even the
American-sounding
connection hadn't raised a glimmer of movement. But the last one brought a look of incredulity to his face. “You're serious? You think a napkin points to this being …
what—a CIA plot?” He gave a bark of laughter. “Jesus, Ruth—can you hear yourself? Next you'll be saying they're running this out of Grosvenor Square and Tiggi is actually a Polish graduate and CIA officer! That's a hell of a stretch.”

She stared at him, surprised by the passion in his voice. Slik the obelisk, the unemotional, reserved former cop, who took a slap in the face from a furious Nancy without a flinch, suddenly transformed.

“Hey—I know it's shaky, OK?” she countered with just as much passion, but feeling the colour rise in her cheeks at the possibility that he might be right, that she had slipped into the realm of fantasy. “If you have anything better, let me have it.”

It was a weak gambit, but it was all she had left. If Slik didn't go with her on this, at least enough to consider it as a possibility, she was lost. She might as well shut up shop and go home.

To her surprise he sighed and shook his head. “No. I don't.” It seemed to deflate him, and she recognised how difficult it must have been for him to admit it. It gave her the confidence to tell him about the results of her talk with Mr. Khouri at the Mamoun restaurant.

“Christ,” he ventured, when she finished. “That's something else she never told us.”

“I know. But I'm wondering if she even knew, like so much else in this case. It explains how Hardman managed to move around such a wide region. Arabic's not the only language, but coupled with English it would certainly help in a lot of the areas he visited.”

“I guess.”

“So where do we go from here?”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “About the Arabic thing, I don't know. It's not my field. But about the CIA connection, I guess I can make a phone call … ask a couple of questions. It might not get me anywhere, though.”

“Ask who—the CIA?”

“No, not them. I don't know anybody at Langley and I doubt they'd even talk to me. But I can ask around, see if anybody has heard anything.”

“Won't that be risky?”

“Not if I'm careful.”

She waited, but he said nothing else. She stood up suddenly feeling the length of the day. Or maybe it was the wine earlier. “Thanks for the coffee. I'll see you in the morning.”

Vaslik saw Ruth out, then turned and thought about the theory she had laid out. It was wild, he knew that; it was a scenario off the silver screen, full of imagination and colour, with exotic women and shadowy followers and a kidnapped child.

And a voice on the phone that he couldn't get out of his head. A voice that shouldn't have been there.

He took a short walk to clear his mind, one eye on his
back-trail
to check if he was being followed. Ingrained habits didn't die out that easy. If anything, you made damned sure that you didn't get careless even if you had a lot on your mind.

Half an hour later he was back inside.

And that worried him.

Because if Ruth was right and George Paperas
had
been targeted for surveillance, whether by the CIA or an outside organisation, it followed that Ruth would be on the watch list, too. He knew the way these things worked, probably better than she did. Just because she hadn't seen anybody didn't mean they weren't there. The old paranoia joke was closer to the truth than people knew.

He worked it through, knocking aside his own objections with cool logic. Surveillance and monitoring of activities was all about discovering connections; find a person of interest, and that person would lead to another and another, like links in a long chain. You checked each link to see where the next connection lay, because that was the way these things worked out. Degrees of separation wasn't simply a wild notion first proposed by a twentieth century Hungarian author, or later given colour by a Hollywood actor; it was real and it worked.

All you had to do was find the links. Simple.

The trouble was, pros in the intelligence and security world knew the theory of old; they had polished it, improved on it and made it their life's work to isolate themselves from such connections wherever they could. It was their key to survival. And they were very good at it.

He just had to hope he could be better.

forty-one

He picked up his
cell phone and ran through the list of contacts until he found the one he wanted. This was quite possibly the stupidest thing he'd ever considered doing. But there was no way round it. If he did nothing, he'd spend the rest of his days wondering what he had become part of. He would also, by inaction, be allowing Ruth Gonzales to stumble into something she would be unable to identify or handle. As adept as she had proved herself at unwrapping puzzles, if she was correct in her theorising she was about to walk into a big, black hole.

He checked the time and made a quick calculation of the time difference, then dialled a number. The man he was calling was a senior analyst with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) headquarters in Washington. Eric LaGuardo was responsible for advising on analytics to a range of agencies, but specifically Homeland Security. He also held a training position with FLETC, which was where Vaslik had met him.

The two men had struck up a strong friendship, in spite of Eric being a
self-confessed
alpha-geek
, whereas Vaslik was anything but. But Vaslik had taught Eric to shoot on the training range, which had cemented the bond in a way nothing else would have, and allowed the geek to feel he had a touch of the Action Man about him.

He checked the time. Eric worked unpredictable hours, but when he wasn't at his desk he had a call divert to his cell phone in case he had to go in urgently. Part of his brief was to sift the constant flow of information, rumour and data that flowed across his desk, and providing reports to his superiors.

“Eric LaGuardo is at his desk. Wassup?” The response was flip, a sign that Eric knew the call was not from anyone on the VIP list.

Vaslik identified himself, and the two spent a few moments catching up. Then Eric said, “I'm guessing this isn't a call to suggest a fishing weekend, right?”

Vaslik immediately felt guilty. He was bringing an element of risk to his friend, which he didn't want to do. But he could see no way round it. “Yeah … that's right. I need some information. But you don't have to if you don't want.”

“Are you kidding?” A shuffle noise and the creak of a chair being relieved of its burden. His voice went soft. “I'm going quietly nuts here. If I see another analysis request, I might just shoot somebody. It's not like they ever take notice of what I say, except when it suits them. Right, keep talking, man, I'm heading for the ground floor where I can talk.”

Vaslik waited while Eric continued talking about nothing in particular, occasionally breaking off to mumble a “hiya” to somebody in passing. Then his voice took on an echo and he explained, “OK, I'm in a conference room which I happen to know is not bugged, because this is where my boss comes when she wants to talk dirty with her old man. What's on your mind?”

Vaslik told him nothing about the Hardmans, even by name. The less Eric knew about that the better. All he said was that he was involved in an operation involving a possible kidnap attempt in Europe, and that the CIA might have a peripheral interest. Eric had once applied to Langley for a position, but had been turned down on grounds of “unsuitability for post.” They had never specified what this amounted to precisely, only that it probably meant he mixed with the wrong people.

His response to mention of the
ultra-secretive
agency was predictably terse.

“That bunch of limp dicks? It can only be something nasty, then. How can I help, buddy—does it involve guns? I've been putting in some heavy hours on the range, you know? My grouping's getting pretty darned tight, I have to say.”

Vaslik smiled. Eric was keen. He had to give him that. “Glad to hear it. This is just a rumour, nothing else. But I'm looking to see if there's any truth in it. It could have ripples. It's important, Eric—you'd be doing me a big favour. But be careful, right?”

“You know me. Give me a few minutes and I'll get back to you.”

“That quick?”

“Sure. I've got a bunch of data and a new program to filter out key words
super-fast
. It can crunch stuff in nanoseconds that would have taken hours just a few months ago. Later.” He rang off without waiting for a goodbye.

Vaslik waited, the tension chewing at his patience as he pictured Eric flicking away at the keyboard and sending out electronic ripples into the vast system that was US intelligence. Pray God he didn't get cocky and trip an internal alarm; otherwise he'd have a heavy squad knocking down his door in seconds.

Eventually his phone rang. This time Eric sounded serious.

“Uh, Andy? There's nothing about planned abductions; I mean, none of the groups we're currently monitoring are into that stuff unless it's random or
spur-of
-
the-moment
, like somebody goofs and goes somewhere they shouldn't. Journalists, for example—they're always getting picked up.”

“Aid workers?”

“Them, too, sure. But they mostly get turned loose after some posturing. There's no mileage or money in aid, and the backlash can be
counter-productive
. However … hell, I'm not sure I should be telling you this.”

“What? Eric?”

“OK, but you never heard this from me, right?”

“You have my word.”

“Right. I don't know if this is your thing, but the only abduction—although they wouldn't call it that—is some talk on the wires about a team being put together to execute a lift on a major terrorist cheese. There's no name attached, nor a
time-frame
. But it's got the feel of something big, like there was with Bin Laden, you know what I mean?”

Vaslik knew. Targeting a terrorist leader carried its own energy and excitement, no matter how secret it was supposed to be nor how restricted they had made the
need-to
-know list. But those in the right places invariably picked up on the vibrations surrounding a planned major
target-and
-acquisition operation, like there had been with the al Qaeda leader, and waited eagerly to see whose name emerged from the hat—or in his case, some remote building—usually courtesy of CNN with dramatic camera footage and screaming headlines.

He felt a surge of disappointment. This wasn't what he was looking for. Such an op wouldn't be in Europe, but in some dusty backwater
location hundreds of miles to the southeast, with Predator drones high in the sky looking down on the unsuspecting target, and the special ops snatch squad nearby waiting for the green light.

“Nothing about a child?”

“Wha—a child? No. No. It's an
anti-terror
thing. There's even a code name for the intended target. They're calling him ‘Boxer.'” He gave a bark of derision. “Christ, who thinks of these names, huh? Anyway, it's a guy, that's all I can tell you. Probably some skinny dude in a turban and a dress, right? You'll have to watch the news—if they catch him.”

“OK, forget it. Thanks, Eric. I owe you.”

“You do that. Don't forget me if you hear of any juicy employment opportunities, right? I could do with a change of direction. Oh, hang on, wait. There's more coming in.” There was a rustle of a keyboard in the background. “Wow.
God-damn
!”

“What?” Vaslik felt Eric's excitement level all the way down the phone, the geek learning
first-hand
something that nobody else would yet know. “Eric?”

“Forget what I said about the news. There won't be any. Hang on, lemme read—” Eric sounded awestruck. “Fuuuuuck!”

“What?”

“This just came in. The team I was just talking about? There's a question on jurisdiction been kicked up by a senate committee who got wind of the op. They're thought to be black ops. Nothing to do with us … but they're already operational and in the field, ready to go. Sorry, man—this sounds ultra
high-spec
with a
five-star
and above rating. Not what you were looking for at all.”

Vaslik was intrigued in spite of himself. Any pro would be. Five stars was very high level indeed. “So who are they?”

A furious tapping of keys. “According to this, from a stringer who watches stuff in that part of the world, they're … wow again. How about that? They're never too far from the crazy stuff, are they? You gotta hand it to them.”

“Eric,
who
?”

“Oh, sorry. According to this source, they're a mixed contract black ops team … but mostly Israeli.”

Seconds after putting down his phone, it rang. Probably Eric with second thoughts about using agency resources on his behalf. He didn't blame him.

“Mr. Vaslik. Are you safe to talk?”

He stared at the screen. It wasn't Eric. Number withheld. But he knew exactly who it was from the extended pronunciation of his name.

Rear Admiral Drybeck.

“Yes, sir.”