Rules of Vengeance

66

Charles Graves returned to his office in a state of agitation. He slid behind his desk and rang his assistant. “Get me Delacroix in Paris,” he said, asking to be connected to his opposite number at the SDEC. “If he’s at home, wake him up. It’s an emergency.”

“Right away, sir.”

Graves put the phone down and loosened his tie. He felt uncomfortable, and not a little embarrassed at having to wake his colleague with so little information. He might as well shout that a tsunami was coming, but he didn’t know precisely where along the French coast.

There were over seventy nuclear installations in France. Kempa suspected that the attack might take place against one of the newer facilities. That lowered the number to ten-if he was correct. An evacuation order would cause panic. France would never shut down its power grid on the basis of a rumor. Pride, as well as pragmatism, would force the French to brazen it out.

The phone rang and Graves picked up. “Bonsoir, Bertrand,” he said.

“Pardon me, sir, but it’s Den Baxter, ERT.”

“Yes, Mr. Baxter, how can I help?”

“We caught a break. Rather a large one, actually. We found a piece of the circuit board from the phone used to detonate the bomb. My men and I were able to establish the make and model and to track down where it was sold.”

“Do you have a number?” asked Graves.

“Three, actually, sir. The buyer purchased three SIM cards at the point of sale.”

“Go ahead, Inspector Baxter.” With his heart lodged firmly in this throat, Graves dutifully wrote down each number.

Three phone numbers. They constituted the motherlode and also his last chance. Graves ran his eyes over the numbers, wishing he felt more confident. It was a simple question of backtracking, leapfrogging from one number to the next by tracing the call history. Best case, it would yield a web of accomplices leading back to the person who had planned the operation, either Sergei Shvets or one of his deputies. Worst case (and more likely), the numbers would constitute a closed loop, with each number having contacted only the other two numbers Graves possessed.

Graves called the security office of Vodafone. He was friendly with several of the men who worked there, and was pleased when a former messmate from the SAS came onto the line. Graves gave his friend the three numbers and requested a complete call history for each, with a specific charge to check if any had either placed or received a call two days earlier at 11:12 GMT.

The response came quickly. The first number had received but a single call in its entire working life. That call was logged precisely at 11:12 GMT. Moreover, the number had since been declared technically out of operation. For “technically out of operation,” read: blown to smithereens. Graves made a star next to it. This number belonged to the phone used to detonate the bomb.

The second number on Graves’s list corresponded to the SIM card that had placed that call. To place it in an operational context, it was the bomber’s phone. This was the phone that the CCTV cameras on Victoria Street captured Emma Ransom holding at the time of the detonation.

“How much activity on this one?” Graves asked.

“Plenty. Forty or fifty calls.”

Graves was surprised. “Where to?”

“London. Rome. Dublin. Moscow. Nice. Sochi.”

“Hold it there. Did you say Moscow?”

“Several to Russia. A few placed to a cell number in Moscow four days ago. Another to Sochi the day of the bombing.”

There it was. Confirmation that David Kempa had been telling the truth. Graves had no doubt but that Emma was contacting her controller, be it Sergei Shvets or another high-ranking hood inside the FSB. “Can you get me GPS coordinates pinpointing the locations of both parties for all those calls?”

“Right down to the city block.”

“Do it.”

“What about any calls to Paris?”

“I count four made to a landline inside the Paris area code.”

“A landline? You’re sure?”

The response was a curt “Hold while I get the address.”

Graves drummed his fingers on the desk, confused. Continuing to make calls with a SIM card used in a bombing-a card purchased precisely because it was nearly untraceable-constituted a flagrant breach of protocol. It reeked of carelessness and amateurism, and did not for a moment fit with the sophisticated operation mounted to steal the IAEA’s computer codes.

“The number is registered to a G. Bahrani at 84 Rue Jean Mathieu.” There was a pause, then the man’s voice notched up a tone and fairly bristled with anxiety. “Charles, you there? Wait a sec. Jesus… okay, we got it.”

“What is it?” demanded Graves.

“We have a real-time call being placed to that address from one of the SIM cards you mentioned. The two parties are connected at this moment.”

It had to be Emma Ransom, thought Graves. “Can you listen in?”

“Negative. I don’t have that capability.”

Graves swallowed his frustration. “Where’s the initiating call coming from?”

“I can’t tell that either. The call is running on France Télécom’s towers, so the incoming signal has to be located in Paris or somewhere nearby. Hold on a sec… the call was just terminated. Duration: thirty-one seconds.”

“Get on to France Télécom. Ask them to compile a full list of all calls to that number and see how quickly they can isolate the caller’s location. I’ll have a warrant signed out by lunch. It’s about the Victoria bombing. Top priority.”

“Right away.”

“Oh, and what about the last number I gave you?”

“That one? Virgin. Never used.”

Graves suddenly had a terrible premonition. Not used yet. “Can you shut down that number? You know, deactivate it, so that it doesn’t work?”

“I’m pretty sure that the boys in tech services can. It’ll take some time to run the number through the system.”

“How long?”

“Noon, latest.”

Another twelve hours. Not good, but better than nothing. “Many thanks. I owe you.” Graves hung up and rang Kate Ford. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Èze. Searching the house Ransom ran to.”

“Whom does it belong to?”

“Officially it’s the property of a small corporation called VOR S.A. The company registry lists a single director. His name is Serge Simenon.”

“Serge Simenon. Sergei Shvets. Same initials, similar name. What do you think?”

“What are you talking about?”

Graves updated Kate Ford on his meeting with the Russian spy Kempa, as well as the information he’d received from Vodafone. “The cell is active, and its base of operations is in Paris.”

“My God.”

“Have you found anything there that ties into Russia?”

“There’s a trove of papers in the office written in Cyrillic and a few CDs by Russian singers. Coincidence?”

“No way. Do you still have the jet?”

“On the runway at Nice.”

“How soon can you get to Paris?”

“Three or four hours, if I hightail it. What are you planning?”

“A raid,” said Graves. “We go in at first light.”