Countdown to Midnight

Nine

Skoblin watched the man he’d failed to kill at Kitzbühel come out of the embassy. The stranger had company with him this time, the Israeli military attaché. His eyes narrowed. Tamir was known to be a high-ranking IDF spy as a well as a soldier. Monitoring his activities had been one of the surveillance team’s highest priorities.

He thought fast. Voronin’s current orders left no room for discretion. He and his men were expected to immediately eliminate the enemy agent who’d met with Khavari. Until now, accomplishing this task had seemed relatively straightforward, if not entirely risk-free.

Skoblin had planned to carry out the hit using a “box group”—one motorcycle rider and a pair of Syndicate operatives in a separate car. The technique was time-tested and uncomplicated: wait until the intended target’s vehicle was stuck behind traffic at a red light, and then pin him in from behind with the Syndicate-driven car. Once that was done, their motorcyclist would simply pull up beside the stopped car and open fire with a concealed Steyr 9mm machine pistol at point-blank range. A messy and very public method of assassination to be sure, but one that was also very certain. And in all the ensuing confusion and chaos, the gunman should easily be able to evade any immediate pursuit, ditch his motorcycle, and get clear. All of the vehicles Skoblin and his men were using had been thoroughly “sanitized,” stripped of any serial numbers that would identify their real owners. None could be traced back to the Raven Syndicate.

But now they had clear confirmation that Khavari’s contact was an IDF military intelligence agent run by Dov Tamir. So, Skoblin wondered, wouldn’t it be wiser to first try to find out how deeply the Israelis had already penetrated MIDNIGHT’s security? And perhaps even learn more about Jerusalem’s next planned moves? True, making a snatch off Vienna’s streets would be more complicated than a quick hit, but it could be done. Anyway, he thought coldly, he could always put a bullet in the back of the Israeli spy’s head once they’d squeezed him dry. Considering the inconvenience the bastard had already caused them, that would be a pleasure.

“The package is on the move,” one of his watchers radioed. “Heading west on Anton-Frank-Gasse.”

Skoblin grimaced. He needed time to persuade the Syndicate’s Moscow headquarters to approve an attempt to kidnap this man, rather than simply gunning him down. For now, he decided to set his chosen hit team in motion, but to hold off on giving them the kill order until he heard back from Voronin.

Quickly, he studied the detailed city map open on his laptop. Fortunately, the streets around Israel’s embassy were all one-way, which made it much easier to discreetly vector his men onto the enemy agent’s tail. He keyed his mike. “Dispatch to Uber One-Five. Pick up your next customer near Sternwarterstrasse.”

“Understood, Dispatch,” Yuri Linnik, the driver of the “box” car he’d designated, replied immediately. Like Skoblin, Linnik and his partner Zaitsev were ex-Spetsnaz officers who’d been recruited into the Raven Syndicate. They were using a silver BMW with a phony Uber windshield sticker. With Zaitsev posing as a passenger, this was an excellent cover. Uber cars were a common sight in Vienna.

“Flower Delivery, this is Dispatch,” Skoblin continued, calling the Syndicate motorcycle rider waiting along a nearby side street. “Tag Uber One. Your customer wants uncut roses.”

“Copy that,” the rider said curtly, acknowledging the coded directive to join Linnik and Zaitsev in following the enemy agent, but to wait for further orders before carrying out the planned attack. Dmitri Fadeyev was a veteran of the GRU’s special assassination force, Unit 29155, with several high-profile kills to his credit. “I have Uber One-Five and the customer in sight. Joining the parade now.”

Skoblin checked the digital map on his laptop. The icons representing his box group’s car and motorcycle were in motion — falling in behind the target’s sky-blue Skoda sedan as it turned right onto another narrow street two blocks north of Israel’s embassy. That suggested Tamir’s man might be headed east, toward Vienna’s Innere Stadt, the old city.

Thinking hard, he lit another cigarette. Linnik, Zaitsev, and Fadeyev shouldn’t have much trouble keeping the enemy agent in sight on those more congested streets… but why take chances? He decided to add one more element to the force he’d assembled. Swiftly, he issued new instructions to an operative posted on a rooftop about a kilometer away. In moments, another icon began moving on his map. This one marked the position of the surveillance team’s miniature aerial drone.

Skoblin nodded to himself in satisfaction. Boxed in from above and behind, the man they were after was as good as dead or captured. Now it was just a matter of waiting for Voronin to make up his mind about which of those two fates it was to be.

Nick Flynn glanced up at his rearview mirror. Both the BMW and the motorcycle he’d spotted earlier were still behind him, lagging back a little to keep a couple of other cars or trucks between them. The guys tailing him were good. If he hadn’t known beforehand what to expect, he might have missed them completely.

Carefully, he turned left onto another one-way street heading east. In this part of Vienna, most roads ran in only one direction — a direction that usually reversed at the beginning of each new block. It was effectively impossible to drive in a straight line for very long. Getting anywhere meant zig-zagging through the district, turning right and then left and then right and left again just to make any progress at all.

Flynn smiled ruefully. This street layout might have been tailor-made to make it difficult for anyone to speed… or to shake off an unwanted tail. Maybe that was just as well, he thought. It definitely made it easier for him to play the role he’d been assigned in today’s little drama, wriggling like a fat, dumb worm. At least for a little while longer.

Elevated train tracks crossed the road ahead. Carried on arches of stone and brick, they ran north and south right through the heart of Austria’s capital city. And beyond the tracks, he could see the twin stone towers of a neo-Gothic-style church soaring nearly three hundred feet above the ground.

Unhurriedly, Flynn made another turn, this time onto a broad avenue. Six lanes divided by a tree-lined median carried traffic in both directions. This was a belt road which marked the border between the Währing District and the rest of the city. He tapped the Skoda’s turn signal and moved over to the leftmost lane. Behind him, the BMW and motorcycle did the same.

A light ahead turned red.

Flynn slowed to a stop behind a large white Volkswagen cargo van. He kept his eyes fixed on the Skoda’s rearview mirror. If these guys were going to jump him, this was exactly the kind of setup they’d be looking for. If either the BMW or that motorcycle made a move to come up alongside him, he figured he’d only have a couple of seconds at most to decide how to react. With his left hand, he gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. His right hand slid inside his unzipped jacket and touched the butt of the compact Glock 19 he was carrying in a shoulder holster.

The light turned green.

Flynn breathed out again. He turned left to cross under the elevated railway line and drive southeast on Währinger Strasse. A single lane of traffic ran in each direction, separated by two sets of rails set in the pavement down the center of the street. Hundreds of electrified trams were a major component of Vienna’s public transportation system, and one of the city’s nearly thirty tram lines ran along this road.

He saw the BMW appear again a couple of car lengths behind him, followed a second or two later by the motorcycle. So far, so good. But the timing from here on out was going to be tight. Really tight.

Flynn passed a large white building that housed the Vienna Volksoper, the People’s Opera, with high arched windows above a street-side portico. Several hundred yards behind him now, he caught sight of a red-and-white tram as it turned onto Währinger Strasse. Right on schedule, he thought with satisfaction.

He passed a small park on the right with its trees standing bare and forlorn under the gray cloud-covered sky. Off to the left, another big structure loomed — part of the University of Vienna. He deliberately slowed down just a little to let the trailing BMW and motorcycle close up a bit. For the moment, it was vital that they stay on his tail.

Just past the university building, Flynn took a sharp left, curving around onto a one-way street that led almost straight back in the direction he’d just come. He tapped the gas pedal, speeding up again. A slight smile crossed his face when he caught sight of both of his persistent followers hurrying around the bend after him. Right now, he’d bet they were starting to sweat. This narrow road ran straight to the American embassy. And whatever unpleasantness they had planned for him would be a complete nonstarter if he pulled in and parked under the watchful gaze of the embassy’s U.S. Marine guards.

But instead of continuing on toward the embassy, he made another left turn to drive back toward Währinger Strasse on a side street that paralleled the northern side of the massive university building. It was exactly the sort of precautionary circling maneuver anyone checking to see if he were being tailed would make. Both the BMW and the motorcycle reacted by slowing down a little and dropping back a few yards.

Flynn headed on down the little road. Dozens of cars, most belonging to faculty members, were parked in angled spots on the left. At this time of day, every place was taken. Here we go, he realized, feeling his pulse accelerate. He flashed his headlights once.

In response to his signal, a dark green Audi four-door sedan backed out of its parking place near the end of the block and drove away. It turned the corner at the intersection and disappeared.

Without hesitating, Flynn pulled straight into the now-empty spot, killed the Skoda’s engine, and hopped out. He didn’t bother wasting time locking the car. Nothing inside would tie it to him or to the Quartet Directorate. Instead, he ran to the intersection. There, taking advantage of a momentary break in the traffic, he darted south across Währinger Strasse. Horns blared in sharp protest, but he ignored them.

About fifty yards away, the tram he’d seen earlier was just arriving at its next scheduled stop. Brakes squealed shrilly as it slowed and then came to rest. Doors whooshed open. He gritted his teeth, lowered his head and ran even faster.

With a final burst of speed, Flynn jumped aboard the last car just as the doors closed. Frantically, he grabbed a railing next to the door to keep from colliding with the elderly woman who’d gotten on just ahead of him. She glared at him in outrage. “Entschuldigen Sie, gnädige Frau. Ich bin in Eile,” he apologized. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m in a hurry.”

“So viel liegt auf der Hand, junger Mann!” she said tartly. “That much is rather obvious, young man!” With a dismissive sniff, she turned away and moved down the aisle toward an empty seat.

Great, Flynn thought wryly. This was one more chapter to add to his planned magnum opus, How Not to Win Friends and Influence People in Foreign Countries. He glanced back through the tram’s rear window as it pulled away. The silver BMW that had been following him had braked to a halt at the intersection he’d just sprinted across — apparently unwilling to make an illegal left-hand turn in front of so many witnesses, especially with a police patrol car parked near the tram stop. As he watched, it turned right instead and accelerated away up the street.

He smiled to himself. By the time that BMW managed to make a U-turn in this traffic, it would be stuck blocks behind the moving tram.

The motorcycle rider tailing him was bolder. Risking a traffic ticket, he revved his engine and sped across the street to slot in behind the tram. He got lucky. Either the cops weren’t looking in his direction, or they’d simply decided the biker’s illegal turn wasn’t worth making a fuss over.

Flynn shrugged. One down. And another to go.

Watching the situation unfold both on his digital map and in real time video from the drone flying overhead, Skoblin snarled a litany of obscenities. Linnik and Zaitsev were out of the picture for now.

A new message from Voronin popped up on the side of his laptop’s screen: capture request denied. execute your original orders.

Skoblin stared at the decrypted message in disbelief. Moscow’s timing was impeccably bad. A minute ago, it would have been relatively easy to carry out a simple assassination. Now, with two members of his kill team completely out of position and still headed in the wrong direction, it would be much harder. Furiously, he clicked his mike. “Fadeyev! Do you have a shot at the target?” he demanded.

“Maybe,” the other man’s voice said over the purring roar of his motorcycle engine. “But it wouldn’t be clean. I’d hit a lot of other people on the tram.”

“Der’mo. Shit,” Skoblin muttered. The ex-GRU assassin’s assessment was undoubtedly correct. Firing a long burst of 9mm rounds into the back of the tram would be certain to kill or wound many of its passengers — turning what was supposed to be a carefully targeted hit into a major terrorist incident. And though Voronin wouldn’t shed any tears over the deaths of innocents, he’d be furious if Skoblin and his team triggered a high-profile international counterterrorist investigation that could threaten the Raven Syndicate’s operations. “Hold off for now,” he ordered. “But stick with that tram. The line ends at the Schottentor, so this bastard will have to get off there.”

“He could be making for the U-bahn,” Fadeyev warned. “There’s an entrance to the U2 line at the station.”

Mother of God, Skoblin thought. The other man was right. He’d counted on their drone to keep the enemy agent in sight even if he managed to evade all his other tails. That wouldn’t be possible if the man switched to Vienna’s subway system. They would lose him completely. He felt cold. Voronin would never overlook a failure of that magnitude. He leaned forward. “Listen closely, Dmitri. If he makes a break for the U-bahn, you dump that goddamned motorcycle and stick with him.”

“Got it.” There was a brief pause. “And then?”

Skoblin gritted his teeth. “He can’t ride the fucking subway forever. So the moment, he’s back out in the open, you take your first clear shot and put him down. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” Fadeyev acknowledged calmly.

Skoblin sat back, glowering at the drone’s eye view of the red-and-white tram as it squealed and rattled toward the end of Währinger Strasse. This situation was quickly spinning out of his control.