Full Force and Effect

24

The breach of Karel Skála’s apartment building on Krišt’anova Street in Prague took place at two p.m. It went smoothly; an old man exited the building just as Ryan and Caruso walked up the steps and they caught the door before it closed. Once inside, they moved to the right, sticking close to the wall, and then they stepped into the stairwell without anyone noticing them.

The stairs were empty at this time of the afternoon, so they came out onto the fifth floor, still undetected. They made their way down to Karel Skála’s door, and Ryan knocked while Dom sized up the lock.

After a second and third knock, Ryan nodded to Dom and stepped out of the way. While Dom dropped to his knees and began working on the lock, Ryan watched up the hallway, keeping his eyes trained on the stairwell. The elevator bank was closer than the stairs, but Jack knew he’d hear anyone coming via elevator long before the doors slid open. No, their main concern now was the possibility of a neighbor coming out of one of the five other apartments on this floor, or else the stairwell on the far end of the hallway flying open.

No words were exchanged between the two men. Ryan wanted to tell his cousin to hurry the fuck up, but he fought the urge. He knew Dom would defeat the lock faster than he could, so he forced himself to be patient.

Finally, Jack heard the click of the latch opening, and then he followed his cousin through the door.

The small entryway was dark and unremarkable, and this led to an equally dark hallway about twenty feet long. Halfway down on the right was an archway, and they found this led to a well-appointed living room. There was not a single light on in the small apartment, so Jack flipped on a lamp by a sofa so they could look around. Everything was neat and undisturbed.

Both men sniffed the air, trying to decide if anyone might be in the apartment, but neither man detected any particular smell.

They split up and did a quick but careful walk-through to make sure the place was unoccupied, then they met in the living room.

Dom spoke softly. “An office in back. No computer. Guest bedroom is empty as well.”

Jack said, “Master bedroom off the right here. Lot of junk lying around, it will take a little while to search this place. Let’s snoop around. I’ll start in the office. You start in the bedroom.” He then called Gavin. “Gavin, everything okay?”

Gavin Biery replied from his overwatch position: “All’s well outside.”

Jack reentered the master bedroom and looked for anything interesting out in the open, but that didn’t take long. Skála looked like he lived the life of a regular educated European male in his late twenties. There were clothes lying around, books and magazines on his bed, some cheap art on the wall. The guy obviously liked to play squash; there were racquets and other gear lying on a shelf, and a picture of Skála posing on a squash court and holding a trophy rested on his dresser, next to the small trophy itself.

Jack stepped into the master bathroom and went through the medicine cabinets, noted the man had what appeared to be a prescription to combat male pattern baldness, and a large bottle of over-the-counter medicine to treat an upset stomach.

On the other side of the apartment Dom combed through the office. He didn’t speak or read Czech so he couldn’t identify any of the papers or notes on Skála’s little desk, but nothing looked terribly interesting. He felt around under the desk, pulled out the drawers and looked for false compartments, and he searched behind the bookshelves of the small office. When he came up empty in this room he went into a guest room and checked under the bed, then stepped into the bathroom and started searching there.

In Skála’s bedroom Jack opened the closet and saw Skála had an impressive array of suits on one side, and on the far side, in the back of the closet, a long row of winter coats were pressed together tightly. Jack decided this would be a great place to hide a safe or anything else Skála wanted to keep hidden, so he began feeling around through the coats. While he searched for any sort of a safe or hidden door, Dom called from the kitchen.

“We can plant a bug in here, but we’ll just have to come back and get it if he doesn’t show up before we leave.”

Jack felt play in a board in the back wall of the closet. He yanked a few coats off the rod and dropped them to the floor to reveal a loose piece of wallboard a foot and a half wide and several feet tall. He started to pull on it, and while doing so, he said, “Hey, cuz. Check this out. I might have a—”

The large board peeled back easily, and behind it knelt a pale white man in his underwear. His eyes were red but wide, and he held a large metal object in his hand.

The man screamed and raised the metal object.

“What the—” Jack leapt back in surprise, which worked to his advantage, because the man jumped out from his hiding place swinging.

Jack rolled backward across the bed, ended up on his feet against the shelf with the squash equipment on it. The attacker came forward, leapt up on the bed, and raised the weapon high to swing it down. It was a brass lamp, big and heavy, and the man wielded it like a two-handed sword.

“Wait!” Ryan shouted, but the man swung again as he jumped off the bed. Ryan spun out of the way and felt the breeze as the brass lamp whipped by his face.

Ryan heard his cousin shout from the kitchen. “Jack?”

Ryan didn’t have time to answer. He stumbled back over the dresser as the man closed quickly, chasing Jack with the heavy blunt object. He swung again, but Jack managed to fall backward out of the bedroom and into the hall before the lamp connected.

He rolled to the left and shouted at the man again. This time he said, “Skála, wait!”

Dom Caruso turned into the hallway from the kitchen, his pistol already out of its Thunderwear holster. Skála swung at the gun before Caruso could fire, and the brass lamp in Skála’s hand clanged against the steel and polymer weapon, knocking it out of Caruso’s hand.

Caruso leapt back to avoid a second swing, but then he moved in quickly, got between the attacker and his weapon, and he slammed the man hard up against the wall of the hallway. The brass lamp clanged to the hardwood floor and Dom shoved the man again. The back of his head made violent contact with the wall. He slid down to the floor, dazed, and Dom stepped over him, fists balled and ready to break his jaw with a right cross.

Jack shouted, “No! Don’t hurt him. It’s Skála.”

Dom looked at the man’s face for a second, then he relaxed his hands, turned, and went to retrieve his pistol.

Jack stood up and looked down at the dazed man in his underwear. “You speak English?”

The Czech man was only twenty-eight, but his blond hair was wispy thin. His eyes were impossibly bloodshot, and he smelled like sweat and urine. Jack’s first impression was the man was some sort of a drug addict.

Skála nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“What the fuck were you doing in your closet?” Jack asked.

He coughed a few times. His throat sounded as dry as paper. “Hiding from you bastards.”

“How did you know we were here?”

This confused the man, it was plain to see. He rubbed his eyes. “You… Aren’t you with the North Koreans?”

Caruso holstered his pistol. He was pissed at losing his weapon in a fight with a man with more luck than training, and his anger was reflected in his voice. He snapped back, “Do we fucking look like we’re with the North Koreans?”

Jack added, “We’re American.”

Skála said, “So? The last American I talked to was working with the North Koreans.”

Hazelton, Jack thought, but he did not say it. Instead, he said, “We’re not with the North Koreans. Are they after you?”

Skála just nodded. He was still coming out of his daze, and he was plainly afraid.

Jack said, “We’re going to sit down in the living room and talk a minute. We have a man outside and we are in communication with him. He’ll tell us if anybody else shows up.”

This seemed to relax Skála a little. “I would very much like to have a beer,” he said.

While Dom went to the kitchen to get Skála a beer from the refrigerator, Jack went into the bedroom and looked at the little spider hole in the back of the closet. It was two feet wide and five feet tall and only a foot and a half deep, smaller than a casket and certainly just as dark.

The North Koreans had this guy spooked enough to virtually bury himself alive in his own home, and this realization chilled Ryan.

Inside the hole Ryan found Skála’s mobile phone and a laptop. There was a battery charger plugged into both devices. Jack took it all out and headed back for the living room. Here he found Dom standing with a beer in his hand. Skála was in the bathroom urinating, but Dom made him leave the door open so he could be sure he wasn’t trying to escape through the little window high in the wall.

When Skála finished in the bathroom, he came out and sat on his couch across from an archway that led to the hallway to the front door. Dom gave him his beer, then sat next to him. Jack sat in the chair on Skála’s left.

Jack asked, “How long have you been in your wall?”

The man looked down at his watch for a second, then he said. “Almost two and a half days. I came out at night for a few minutes to walk around and use the toilet.”

“Who are you hiding from?”

He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked, “Who are you?”

“A friend of ours met you at the airport. He wanted us to look you up.”

“What friend?”

“Colin Hazelton?”

Skála didn’t react to the name at all. Jack said, “Big American. Early sixties.”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “So… if you are friends with him — you are working with—”

Dom interrupted. “We told you we’re not with anybody. Somebody killed Hazelton. We think it might have been the North Koreans. We are here to find out why.”

“They killed him,” Skála said softly. He didn’t seem surprised, but the weight of the words affected him. He chugged a third of the bottle of beer. His terror was greater even than his exhaustion, and his hands trembled.

Jack said, “You gave Hazelton some documents.”

Skála nodded. “Yes. Five sets of papers. EU diplomatic passports and Czech travel authorizations.”

“You still have copies of them?”

“No. I deleted everything.” He shrugged. “Of course I did. I didn’t want to get caught with it.”

Jack winced in frustration. “Who were the people?”

“I don’t know. I was given photographs. I made everything else up.”

“Where were they from?”

“I don’t have any idea. I guess they are Americans, because the American was the one who paid me and picked up the documents.”

Jack shrugged. He wasn’t so sure. He asked, “And where were they going?”

Skála cocked his head. “North Korea. Of course. I created paperwork claiming them to be Czech diplomats traveling to the mission in Pyongyang.”

Jack said, “Somebody killed Hazelton in Vietnam and took the documents, but I don’t know who, and I don’t know why. I don’t even know if they made it to North Korea.”

Skála surprised Ryan by saying, “They made it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the North Koreans themselves came here, last week. They said they needed paperwork to get more people into North Korea. They offered big money. Said over time there would be dozens traveling. I tried to explain to them how dangerous it was for me. I almost got caught with the last batch of five I created. There was no way I would be able to pull off forging that many. But they wouldn’t listen. They got threatening. They were animals. I had no idea anything like this would happen.”

Dom snorted. “So when you agreed to work with the North Koreans you never imagined you might be working with the North Koreans?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes I work for an organization in the U.S. that needs forged EU passports.”

“Sharps Global Intelligence Partners?” Jack asked.

Skála nodded. “Yes. They are the ones who came to me. I thought this would be the same as ever, but the man wanted the North Korean letters as well. I was surprised. I thought it was just for some cover story, I didn’t think they actually would be traveling there. The American paid me twice my normal rate, so I agreed.”

“This was Hazelton?”

“No. Another man. An Englishman. Thirties. Very polite. A pleasure to work with.”

“Then what happened?”

“The day before I had them ready he called me. He’d taken ill, something he ate, he said, so another man from his company would meet me at the airport to collect them. I was told to package them up in a way he could not see the contents. This man was your friend. The big American. He took the documents and left.

“I thought that was the end of it. Then North Koreans from the embassy here came, and they told me if I didn’t agree to work with them they would kill me. I agreed, but said I needed to wait a day before getting access to the passport-printing equipment. I used that day to hide.”

“Why didn’t you run away? Why stay here?”

“I wanted to run. Of course. But I couldn’t think of any place I could go without using friends for help. I was afraid of involving anyone else. They would have learned about the forgery. Anyway, I thought the North Koreans would give up after a day or two.”

“But they didn’t, did they?”

“They came back, two nights ago. I was in my hiding place. I know it was them, I heard their voices. Of course I don’t speak their language, but they sounded like the same men. They were here for a long time, but they didn’t find me.”

Ryan looked around the room. “Wait. They were in your apartment?”

“Yes, all over.”

He and Dom exchanged a look.

Skála saw the look. “What?”

Dom just said, “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

Jack stood back up. “They might have left a listening device. Something that would let them know if you came back.” He turned away from Skála and called Biery. “Gav. We still okay out there?”

Biery replied confidently. “Quiet as a tomb.”

“Okay,” Ryan replied. “We’ll be moving in five minutes. Eyes peeled.”

“Roger.”

Seconds later, in the office building on nearby Baranova Street, Gavin Biery launched out of his chair. A knock at the door to the office made him jump up and spin around.

He didn’t answer at first. He sat back down and willed whoever it was to go away, because he had a job to do and didn’t want to let the guys down.

Another knock.

He started to call Jack and Dom back, but he stopped himself. He would just ignore the knocking. He had wanted to be involved in fieldwork, after all; he couldn’t let Dom and Jack know he spooked every time someone rapped on the door.

Another set of knocks came, but he focused his attention through the binoculars at the street below Skála’s apartment to make sure nothing was going on.

He heard the rattling of keys now, and a key sliding into the lock of the door. He figured it was just the superintendent of the building, a woman named Gretta. She’d come by once before, and shaken her keys like that. He leapt to his feet and ran to the door. Even though Jack had placed a rubber door stopper to keep the door closed, Gavin figured if Gretta couldn’t get in she’d immediately start making problems. On his way through the kitchen, though, he picked up a steak knife, just in case, and slid it under the cuff of his shirt.

Just as he did so the door opened and he saw Gretta entering alone. She was an older woman, she’d walked the men through the property when they arrived the day before, and he knew she was no threat. Under her arm he saw a square air filter.

The woman didn’t speak English, but she was nice enough. With hand gestures and smiles she indicated what she wanted to do, and Gavin followed her through the large open office. When she wasn’t looking he pulled the knife from the cuff of his shirt and placed it on a desk, then he quickly caught up with her.

The space in the corner of the big room where the Campus men had set up their surveillance was hidden from the rest of the room by stacked desks, but the heavyset American also positioned his body between his hide site and the woman while she opened the heating unit in a back utility closet.

Soon she was finished and she headed for the kitchen and the exit with Gavin carefully walking alongside her. As she walked she looked around with some curiosity, Gavin noticed, but he imagined she was just wondering what the hell the Americans were doing here in the space. There was nothing on any of the desks, and other than a few water bottles and groceries in the kitchen and the one tenant walking oddly close to her, there was no sign of any activity in the unit.

At the door, Gretta turned to try to communicate with Gavin. Normally he would have been helpful and done his part to bridge the language gap, but he knew he had to get back to his overwatch, so he just stood there, silent and more than a little annoyed-looking.

Eventually, she gave up. With a frustrated smile she said, “Everything okay?”

“Yes. Okay, Gretta. Everything is very okay. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she said, and Gavin closed the door inches from her smiling face. He turned and ran through the warehouse office, made it back around the desks and to his overwatch and looked into the binoculars mounted on the tripod.

Thankfully, he saw no movement at the front of the apartment on Krišt’anova. He blew out a long sigh that was interrupted two-thirds of the way through when he gasped.

Wait.

A gray van was parked in the parking lot next to the apartment. Gavin had been looking at this same area for most of the past day. That van definitely had not been there before. He squinted into the binos and through the windshield of the van he could see a lone man behind the wheel.

This didn’t look good.

He connected with Ryan by hitting his PTT button in his pocket.

“Ryan?”

He heard someone push their own transmit button, but immediately he heard a shout in his headset. It was the unmistakable voice of Jack Ryan, Jr. “Gun!”

The muffled thump of a gunshot followed a heartbeat later.