Echo of War

11

“Never mind,” the stranger told Tanner. “Not here.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it to Tanner. “Your cheek is bleeding.”

The stranger knelt beside one of the unconscious Germans, pulled back his sleeve, studied the skin briefly, then dropped the arm and started frisking him. Tanner and Cahil searched the others but found nothing — no IDs, no credit cards, no paperwork. A few feet away, the man whose wrist Tanner had broken groaned and began crawling away. The stranger placed a foot between the man’s shoulder blades and shoved him down.

“Bewegen Sie nicht!” he ordered. He heel-kicked the man in the back of the head and he went limp.

In the distance came the wail of police sirens.

“Follow me,” the stranger said, and took off jogging.

Tanner and Cahil exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed.

He led them southeast through the streets, moving confidently through the alleys and empty courtyards. Twice they ducked into the shadows as police cars swept past, blue strobes flashing. After twenty minutes’ travel they reached the Hotel du Louvre on Rue des Marins.

He led them through a back entrance and down the hall to his room. Once inside, he tossed the keys onto the credenza, opened the liquor cabinet, and poured himself two fingers of bourbon, took a gulp. He dropped into an armchair beside the window. “Help yourself,” he said.

“No, thanks,” Tanner replied.

In better light, Tanner realized their rescuer’s hair was not blond, but white. The man was in his mid-forties. His face showed a week’s worth of stubble and his eyes were bloodshot. As he lifted the glass to his lips, his hand trembled. Whoever their rescuer was, he was on the edge of exhaustion.

“The truth is,” the man said, “you didn’t look like you needed help, but I figured what the hell. It seemed like the thing to do.” He gave a weak, almost manic, chuckle. “Sit down, sit down.”

Tanner and Cahil sat on the edge of the bed.

“So, who the hell are you?” the man asked.

“We’re friends of Susanna’s,” Tanner replied.

“Not just friends. Friends would’ve talked to the police, friends don’t wander around Paris’s nastiest neighborhood; friends don’t serve themselves up to four German knuckle-draggers hoping to find a lead. Friends, maybe, but that ain’t all you are. You’re on the job, aren’t you?”

“After a fashion.”

“Yeah, who? DEA? Nah, you don’t look it.”

Interesting, Tanner thought. The tone of the question sounded exclusionary. He’s not DEA, either. Who then? “We know her father,” Briggs said. “He’s worried about her.”

The man gave another chuckle. “Yeah? Well, he can join the club. What do I call you? No, forget it … I don’t wanna know.” He took another gulp of bourbon. “You can call me Jim. Okay, so we’re all looking for Susanna. How’d you end up here?”

“Something we found in Susanna’s apartment. What about you?”

“I picked you up in the Pigalle.” Jim noted Cahil’s frown and said, “Don’t feel bad. I’ve been here for two years. I’ve learned how to blend in. I’d been staking out her neighborhood, seeing if she’d turn up. Instead, you guys did. It was the only lead I’d gotten for a week, so I followed you.”

“You already had a hotel here,” Cahil stated.

“Susanna had mentioned St Malo before, so I came here last week, but couldn’t find her. I hopped the TGV back to Paris. I had something I wanted to try.”

“What?” Tanner asked.

“Nope. Your turn. You guys are damned resourceful for concerned friends. What’s your story.”

Tanner thought it over. It seemed unlikely they knew anything Jim didn’t. Maybe some good faith on their part would break down the wall.

He gave Jim the same pitch he’d given Slavin: Susanna’s assignment with the FCI, her alias, her code name, the flurry of coded radio traffic between Paris and Washington around the time of her disappearance. “And now I’m getting the feeling she wasn’t DEA.”

“I didn’t say that”

“You implied it”

“Big leap.”

“It’s all we’ve got Look, we don’t know where she is, you don’t know where she is. Maybe between the three of us, we can do what none of us has been able to do alone.”

Jim exhaled heavily, then tugged at his lip with his thumb and index finger. He got up, refilled his glass, and plopped back down in the chair. “Jesus, I’m tired. You know? Really tired.”

“I can see that,” Tanner replied. “Jim, sometimes you’ve got to trust somebody — sometimes you’ve got to make that leap. That’s what I’m asking you to do.” Tanner waited until Jim met his gaze. “You can trust us.”

Jim squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “Okay … yeah, okay. I guess you could say I’m her … supervisor.”

Closer, Tanner thought, then went with a hunch: “Case officer, you mean.” Jim simply stared at him. He’s CIA... a goddamned CIA case officer. They had stumbled into a CIA operation buried within a DEA operation. Wheels within wheels. Briggs said, “Are you telling me Susanna was moonlighting?”

“Yeah. For a good cause, believe me. You have no idea.”

“Give me an idea.”

“You know who those four Germans were?”

Cahil said, “Cohorts of Stephan’s?”

“Jesus, how’d you—”

“A couple friends we met in the Pigalle.”

“Yeah, I saw them: Trixie and Sabine. Susanna mentioned them a couple of times.”

“What about the Germans?” Tanner asked. “What were you looking for under his sleeve?”

“A tattoo — a wolf’s head superimposed on a parachute canopy. You know it?”

“I know it. Spetsialnoye Nazranie.”

Jim nodded. “Spetsnaz.”

Cahil groaned. “Oh, boy.”

Spetsnaz soldiers — literally, “troops of special purpose”—were the cream of the Russian special forces community. Trained and commanded by the GRU, the intelligence branch of the General Staff, Spetsnaz were trained in weapons handling, tracking and camouflage, surveillance techniques, hand-to-hand combat, sabotage and demolitions, prisoner interrogation, and combat swimming. Tanner had encountered his share of Spetsnaz on both friendly and unfriendly terms. Of the two, he preferred the former. They were superbly trained, ruthless, and dedicated.

In the early eighties there had been rumors that the GRU, anticipating a major ground war in Europe, had started expanding the Spetsnaz program and were recruiting soldiers from all corners of the Soviet bloc for inclusion in divisions that had thus far been restricted to native Russian troops.

If the mystery man named Stephan and the four Germans from the Black Boar were Spetsnaz, Tanner’s search had just taken a disturbing tack. What in god’s name had Susanna gotten herself into?

“All four — five, including Stephan — are from the same unit,” Jim said.

“Present tense?” Cahil asked.

“Past. They’re freelance now.”

“Maybe you better tell us the whole story,” Tanner said.

“Right. It started about ten months ago. Susanna was on a—”

Behind Jim, the window shade bulged inward slightly. Tanner caught the scent of cigarette smoke. Backlit by the streetlamps, a man-shaped silhouette filled the shade.

Cahil saw it: “Light!”

Tanner leapt forward, reached for the table lamp.

Jim looked around. “What’s—”

There was a deafening roar. The shade blew inward. The lamp exploded. Tanner dove for the ground. The back of Jim’s head dissolved in a halo of blood. His face frozen in an expression of confusion, Jim toppled face-first onto the carpet.

“You okay?” Cahil called from the floor.

“Yeah, you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tanner craned his neck upward. The window was empty.

From the street, voices began shouting. “Faites attention … Au secours,police!”

“We’ve gotta go, Briggs.”

Tanner thought he saw a brief flicker of movement in Jim’s dead eyes, then nothing. The man was gone. Briggs tore his gaze away and looked around. Did we touch anything?”

“No, no, we’re okay. Come on!”

Tanner pushed himself upright and ran for the door.

They left the way they’d come in, sprinted across the street and into the adjoining alley. As they came out the other end, a police car screeched around the corner and slowed beside them.

“Hotel Louvre! Un homme avec un fusil!” Tanner yelled in French, pointing.

The officer in the passenger seat nodded and the car sped away.

They slowed their pace to a stroll and headed northwest toward the Bastion and Porte St. Pierre, one of the main gates on the seaward side. Once outside the gate, they walked to Chaussee Boulevard and hailed a taxi.

Tanner focused on putting some distance between themselves and the murder scene. He ordered the driver to take them to Quai Solidor a few miles down the coast. Once there, they walked five blocks to the ferry terminal, where they bought a pair of tickets for Dinard, St. Malo’s sister city across the Rance Estuary. Forty minutes later they disembarked, walked downtown, and checked into a discount hostel.

With the door shut and locked behind them, Tanner plopped down on the bed, flipped open his cell phone, and dialed. It was shortly before ten P.M. in Washington. Oaken was awake, watching CNN.

He said, “You’re up late, or is it early?”

“Feels like both,” Tanner replied. “I need a conference with you and Leland.”

“Now?”

“No, office.” What he had to report was best said over a secure line. “I’ll find a pay phone and call you. How long do you need?”

“One hour.”

Tanner found the hostel’s lobby deserted. The house phones were of the traditional European style, each an enclosed cubicle with a glass door. Tanner sat down on the bench, closed the door, then reached up and twisted loose the fluorescent bulb before it could sputter to life. He dialed the long-distance prefix, swiped his credit card, then waited through sixty seconds of clicks as the call was routed first to the U.S., then to Fort Meade, where Holystone’s secure encrypted lines were maintained. There was a brief squelch as the call was electronically scrubbed. The line started ringing.

Dutcher answered: “Holystone.”

“It’s me. Sorry for waking you.”

“No problem. I was tinkering.” Dutcher’s hobby was restoring antique pocket watches.

“Which one?”

“German, circa 1750.”

“Sun and moon flyback?” Tanner asked.

“That’s the one. Actually, you saved its life. I was about ready to take a hammer to it. What’ve you got?”

“A mystery,” Briggs replied, then recounted his and Cahil’s movements since leaving Paris, ending with their meeting of the mysterious Jim and his murder. “I think Langley just lost one of its own.”

“You suspect the Germans?”

“Unless he had other involvements we don’t know about. The timing is too coincidental.”

“Could they have followed you to the hotel?”

“When we left they were all semi-unconscious. They might have come around before the police got there, but they were in no shape for pursuit.”

“If so, it means they were on to Jim before you met him,” Oaken said.

“I agree,” said Dutcher. “Are you safe?”

“So far,” Tanner said. “We’re going to move again after I hang up.”

“Good. I’ve got some calls to make. Give me ninety minutes, then call back.”

They left the hostel, hailed a taxi back to the TGV station and recovered their duffels.

In the distance, from within the walls of the intramuros, Tanner could still hear the warble of sirens. They saw no gendarmie in the station, however, which meant the authorities were still trying to sort out what had happened at the Hotel du Louvre and the Black Boar. A connection would be made, of course.

Petty crime in St. Malo was rare; assault and murder would set the town ablaze. While their departure from the hostel had been clean, the Black Boar was another matter. They had to assume their descriptions would soon be circulating. With any luck, one or all of the Germans would be detained for Jim’s murder, perhaps averting a manhunt beyond St. Malo. Until that was confirmed, however, they would assume the worst.

As Cahil waited outside, Briggs went to the station’s gift shop, bought a short-brimmed fedora and a pair of nonprescription reading glasses, then proceeded to the Avis counter. He rented a Renault using his backup credit card and passport, then proceeded to the car.

He pulled to the curb and Cahil climbed in. On the eastern horizon they could see the faint glow of sunlight. “Remember the panhandler from the train?” Cahil asked. “The girl?”

“Yes.”

“Look in your rearview mirror.”

Tanner did so. Standing at the curb, staring after them, was the magenta-haired girl. As Briggs watched, she turned away and walked back inside the station.