Rules of Vengeance

37

“Five days. We don’t know where, when, or how. Only that Robert Russell suspected an impending attack of some kind at a nuclear plant and that he was the nearest thing we have to a seer.” Charles Graves walked briskly across the tarmac toward the waiting aircraft, hands buried in his pockets. A fitful wind blew off the ocean, flinging sea spume into the air. It was nearly two in the afternoon, and despite a clear sky and brilliant sun, the air was chill.

“I do know one thing,” said Kate.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve been wrong all along.”

“About what exactly?”

“Everything.”

Graves pulled up. “I’ll grant you we’ve been a step behind, but I wouldn’t say we’ve been wrong.”

“Really? Then tell me this: who was Emma Ransom after? Ivanov or Mischa Dibner?”

“Ivanov, obviously. And I have a car bomb packed with twenty kilos of grade-A Semtex to prove it.”

“But didn’t Russell think the attack was going to be against Mischa Dibner? I mean, she was the one he’d spoken to about it.”

“His intelligence was incomplete. Happens all the time. He missed one this time. So what?”

“What if we’re both wrong? Remember the clue ‘Victoria Bear’? Maybe that was the target. The Department of Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform. That’s where the UK Safeguards Office is housed and where the emergency meeting with the IAEA was scheduled to take place.”

“And Interior Minister Ivanov? How do you explain his timely arrival at the scene?”

“I can’t,” said Kate. “I’m not there yet. Let’s stay with Mischa. She was inside the building at the time of the blast, but she didn’t stay there. She couldn’t have done.”

Graves nodded, his eyes saying that he was beginning to see where Kate was headed. “How so?”

“The law. In case of a blast or a terrorist act, the law calls for the mandatory evacuation of government buildings in the vicinity. You saw Victoria Street five minutes after the car went up.”

“A bloody debacle. Looked as if half London worked inside those buildings.”

“Exactly. And I’m willing to wager that Mischa and her team from the IAEA were among them.”

“Do we know that for certain?” Graves was no longer doubting, but playing devil’s advocate.

“No.” Kate spoke slowly and with great care. She was walking on quicksand and she knew it. “What if Emma Ransom just wanted to force Mischa and her team out of the building?”

“And the attack on Ivanov was the means to do it?”

“Precisely.”

“Which means there must have been something pretty valuable inside that she wanted to get her hands on.”

“Something that Mischa and her team from the IAEA had brought with them.”

Graves pulled his cell phone from his jacket and placed a call. “Get me Major Evans, Department K.”

Kate stayed at Graves’s side. Department K of MI5 was in charge of protective security for all government offices in the British capital.

“Hello, Blackie. Charlie Graves. Listen, I’ve got you on my cell’s speaker. A bit windy here, so if you could speak up, it would help. I’m with DCI Kate Ford of the Met. We’re tracking down a lead on yesterday’s bombing. Quick question. Anything odd come up during or after the evacuation of our people at One Victoria Street? Department of Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform? Theft of some kind?”

“You could say that,” came a clipped upper-crust voice. “All hell’s breaking loose down here. During the evacuation someone got into the offices of the nuclear safeguards people and nicked some high-grade stuff.”

“Can you give me some more detail?”

“Officially some briefcases and travel bags were lifted from a meeting room on the third floor.”

“Did they belong to the team from the International Atomic Energy Agency?”

“How the devil did you know? The meeting was supposed to be very hush-hush.”

“Go on, Blackie. What was in those briefcases?”

“Take me off speaker,” said Evans.

Graves deactivated the speaker. Kate watched with alarm as his face grew taut. He thanked his colleague and hung up.

“What is it?” demanded Kate. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No one gives a damn about the briefcases and travel bags that went missing. It’s what was inside them. Someone made off with several laptops belonging to the members of the IAEA’s Safety and Security Division.”

“Emma Ransom.”

“Who else?”

“So why the concern? Precisely what was in the laptops?”

Graves swallowed hard and fixed her with a doleful gaze. “Bloody everything.”