Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 12

Tracking Sacha Baseyev wasn’t easy. Nicholas had done an amazing job. He had begun by searching all of the CCTV footage around the neighborhood where Salah Abaaoud kept his love nest. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, until he added an additional layer to his search.

He next pulled the footage from around Salah’s home and the clinic. His assumption was that the killer would have conducted cursory surveillance before making his move. His assumption was correct. But Nicholas had almost missed him.

He was running a series of algorithms in the background of his search. One was an emerging piece of biometric technology called gait recognition, which measured how subjects walk.

Baseyev was indeed a pro. He had altered everything about his appearance. The man watching the clinic was unrecognizable from the assassin who entered the apartment building. Even the walks were different. But it was the walk that had turned out to be Baseyev’s undoing.

Faking how you walked was one thing. Faking it consistently was something entirely different. Gait recognition technology was able to spot even the smallest changes. It was also able to look for patterns. If you were captured on camera with an inconsistent walk, it flagged you. That was how Nicholas realized the two figures he had spotted were one and the same.

He had tracked a disguised Sacha Baseyev to a mid-sized hotel in downtown Brussels. When Baseyev emerged on camera hours later, he was dressed in a Lufthansa uniform and accompanied by five other flight attendants.

They placed their luggage in a minibus and were driven to the airport. Baseyev moved through security with the other flight crew, was in and out of a couple of shops, and boarded a plane for Frankfurt.

When the plane landed, Nicholas was able to reacquire the passengers and the other flight attendants, but not Baseyev. He had disappeared.

People didn’t just disappear, especially not at a major international airport like Frankfurt. At least not without help. And so, Nicholas had dug in.

Posing as a flight attendant was excellent cover. It was better than posing as a businessman. Flight attendants often received expedited screening, could hide in plain sight, and were viewed by airport staff everywhere as “one of us.”

When the United States had learned of Baseyev’s existence, there’d been no mention of his cover. It was possible that the Russian intelligence defector hadn’t known. Or that the cover had been established later.

As far as Nicholas was concerned, it didn’t matter. He was onto him. He wouldn’t stop until the noose was pulled so tight that Sacha Baseyev couldn’t breathe.

To begin, he needed a name. He watched the Brussels airport footage again. Baseyev had bought something in one of the shops before boarding his plane. He had paid with a credit card. It took Nicholas less than ten minutes to get inside their system.

The assassin appeared to have a sweet tooth. He had purchased six bars of Belgian chocolate with a Visa card. The unassuming name on the card was Peter Roth.

With that name, he was able to set his sights on Belgium’s customs and immigration database. Two hours later, he had a full scan of Peter Roth’s German passport. Then he went to work on Lufthansa’s systems.

Lufthansa owned one of the largest passenger airline fleets in the world. They served nearly 200 destinations across 78 countries worldwide. Each year, they transported more than 100 million passengers.

Over 100,000 people worked for Lufthansa. Four of them were named Peter Roth. All were based out of Frankfurt, Lufthansa’s main hub of operations.

Once Nicholas had access to the employee files and their photos, he was able to narrow the four Peter Roths to the exact one they wanted — Sacha Baseyev. The noose had just tightened.

He appeared to be very part-time and flew only a handful of routes, mostly international.

What income Baseyev did earn from Lufthansa was direct-deposited into an account in Frankfurt. The address he gave as his residence was a match with five other Lufthansa employees. Nicholas passed it on to Harvath.

It was a crash pad, or “stew zoo,” as it used to be called. Having dated a string of Scandinavian Airlines flight attendants as a SEAL, Harvath had been in and out of several of them.

It was a house or an apartment rented by a group of flight attendants who either didn’t live in the city their flights were based out of, or who traveled so much they wanted to save money by spreading the rent across multiple roommates.

For Baseyev, though, it would have helped layer his cover and function as a quasi safe house.

According to Lufthansa’s scheduling system, he didn’t have another flight on the books until next month. Was he hiding out in the apartment until then? There was only one way to find out.

Parking his car at the end of the block, Harvath turned off the ignition and popped the trunk.