The Prince of Risk

68

Alex climbed out of the car, stumbling and unsteady. A few deep breaths restored her strength but did little to lessen the pounding in her skull. She had a concussion. Her cheek was tender to the touch, and she could feel her eye swelling. She needed distance, room to make sense of her predicament.

She took stock of her surroundings. Rain had given way to scattered clouds and sun. She counted three other cars in the lot. All were parked a ways away. For the time being, she saw no one nearby, but that would change soon. A truck rattled along the main road, and then she was alone, with only the whipping wind and her own labored breathing to keep her company.

Alex looked back at the car. Salt sat slumped at the wheel. He was very bloody, and she knew she must think fast in case a policeman drove past. There was no question of running. She’d killed a man. She was a law enforcement officer. On or off duty, she wouldn’t try to escape her actions.

Alex returned to the car.

There was no running, but there was still work to be done.

She slid into the passenger seat and searched Salt’s person. She found his wallet in his coat pocket. In three minutes she’d made a note of every credit card he possessed, as well as his driver’s license number and social insurance card. He carried £500 in cash. No pictures. Only a few old business cards listing him as founder/CEO of GRAIL.

Salt kept his phone in his trouser pocket. She scrolled through his recent calls, eager to learn who he’d contacted after receiving the tip-off from Chris Rees-Jones. Salt was nothing if not efficient. Each call was listed for her. The call from GRAIL was followed by a call to the U.S. embassy. The call lasted three minutes. Salt was canny. He was smart enough to use the main number and have the call forwarded to his contact. Still, it would be no problem to learn that person’s name.

Alex was more interested in finding out who Salt’s source at the embassy had phoned at the FBI at 5:15 a.m. New York time. She reasoned it had to be someone close to her, maybe even someone in CT.

The next call was to his solicitor. The third was to someone named Skinner. No last name attached. Duration, fourteen minutes. Some weighty matters to discuss, no doubt. It took her a moment to recognize the country code. South Africa.

And then a call to Jerry at Olympic Travel. Duration, three minutes. She could hear Salt’s gruff voice in her head: “Get me out of here, now.” It made sense that he had an exit strategy on the shelf. Alex guessed that Brazil, with its flimsy extradition regulations, would be Salt’s refuge of choice. Or was it South Africa? A visit to his friend Skinner?

She opened the e-mail application. One unread message from Olympic Travel. A first-class seat on a flight to Rio de Janeiro for nine that evening, booked under the name George Penrose. Alex was right about Brazil.

Several innocuous messages followed from friends, confirming a golf date, dinner at the club, and then a missive from a woman named Regina asking if he’d been “a naughty boy and required punishment from his mum.” To which Salt had replied, “Very naughty.”

Alex rolled her eyes. Englishmen.

And then an e-mail from “BeaufoySLT.” The message ran to one line. It was at once familiar and cryptic. “The Eagle Has Landed. Gott mit uns.”

The full address was BeaufoySLT@orange.sa. “Sa” for South Africa. Message sent at 3:33 Greenwich Mean Time, 9:33 Eastern Standard Time.

Was BeaufoySLT from South Africa Salt’s friend Skinner?

Alex looked away, the hackles on her neck standing at attention. She needed no translation to know what the message meant. The Eagle Has Landed. Gott mit uns. The bad guys were in the States.

This was happening now.

The phone rang. The incoming call was from C. Rees-Jones. Alex knew better than to answer. It was imperative that the woman know nothing about Salt’s death. She let the call roll to voice mail. She waited until the message was complete, then listened.

“Jim. It’s me. You’ve really got us scared. We’ve decided to go to our solicitors this afternoon. We have to get in front of this. Whoever you’re working with, I am pleading with you to call it off. Do you hear? You’ve lost your mind. Call me. Now.”

Alex listened to the message again. Rees-Jones was right to be flipping out. Her business, not to mention her life as a free woman, was at stake. She was smart to be proactive. She wasn’t so smart to have worked with James Salt.

Opening her purse, Alex snatched the mesh bag holding her electronic toys and plucked out the small rectangular unit she called the vacuum. She freed the SIM card from Salt’s phone and inserted it into the vacuum’s slot. Thirty seconds later the vacuum had copied the SIM card’s data to its own internal memory. Alex returned the SIM card to Salt’s phone, then slipped the phone back into Salt’s pocket. She wouldn’t want anyone accusing her of tampering with the evidence.

Alex popped the trunk. Inside was a beautiful set of golf clubs and, tucked to one side, an even more beautiful calfskin briefcase. The case was locked, so she borrowed Salt’s thrusting knife and broke it open. So much for tampering with evidence. Inside it were files and more files. A vial of cocaine. Condoms. A container of barbiturates. Salt wasn’t lying. He really had been a naughty boy.

And there beneath a legal pad, one crisp white envelope addressed to Mr. George Penrose from the Bank of Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Against every rule, she removed the letter with her bare hands. It was a computer-generated confirmation of deposit into his account in the amount of one million British pounds paid by Excelsior Holdings of Curaçao N.V.

The smoking gun.

And the map leading to Salt’s “old friend.”

Alex closed the trunk, then placed the briefcase on the passenger seat. She checked her watch. It was one-thirty. Seven-thirty at home. She grabbed her cell phone, mustering her courage. Where was her picture of J. Edgar Hoover when she needed it? She counted to three, then placed the call.

“You’re up early,” said Janet McVeigh.

“Actually, I’ve been up quite a while,” said Alex.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Not exactly. I’m in London.”

A period of silence followed. For once Alex appreciated McVeigh’s ability to hold her temper. “Go ahead,” she said finally.

“I know I broke the rules. You can fire me later. Right now there’s a lot you need to know. I was right about Lambert’s ties to GRAIL. The company was involved in hiring him and twenty-nine others. Not directly, but it provided introductions to Major James Salt, the officer who ran Executive Outcomes alongside Trevor Manning. Salt also played a large part in the Comoros raid. I’m e-mailing you a recording between Salt and Chris Rees-Jones, GRAIL’s director. This conversation took place ten minutes after I met with Rees-Jones and asked her about Lambert. I bugged her office during our meeting, so there’s only one side to the conversation, but it’s enough.”

McVeigh’s diplomacy deserted her. “How did you-”

“Let me finish. As I said, Salt hired thirty men and women and sent them to a training compound in Namibia. Six of the recruits washed out. Lambert’s dead. That leaves twenty-three. It’s my guess they were the ones who came through Mexico City two nights ago.”

“So you spoke with Salt, too?” McVeigh’s anger was laced with a grudging admiration.

“I tracked him down to his club in London and interrogated him in his vehicle.”

“Voluntary or coerced?”

“Somewhere in between. I asked him a few questions. He tried to kill me. I shot him. He’s dead.”

Alex looked at her reflection in the window. Her hair was disheveled. She was bleeding from the nose, and her eye was starting to look like an eggplant. “Jan? You there?”

“You killed Salt?”

“Yes.”

“Let me get this clear-and I’m talking to you as your supervisor and as AD of the New York office, not as a fellow investigator. You disobeyed my express orders not to return to work. Also against my express orders, you traveled to London. I imagine I should be thankful that you didn’t hijack one of the Bureau’s jets. You conducted an illegal surveillance operation in a foreign country, then you killed a person of interest during the course of a hostile interrogation.”

“He pulled a gun and discharged his weapon twice in an effort to kill me. When I disarmed him, he attempted to stab me instead.”

“Are you all right?”

“Except for a black eye, yes. Thank you for asking.”

“You’re in trouble, Alex. You know that?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. We’ll deal with that side of things when you get back. Did you get any useful information out of this escapade at all?”

“A confirmation of deposit from Salt’s account at the Bank of Vaduz, Liechtenstein, in the amount of one million pounds from an Excelsior Holdings of Curaçao. My guess is that that’s who is bankrolling this whole thing. Find out who’s behind Excelsior and we find out who’s pulling all the strings.”

“Good luck with that. Between Liechtenstein and Curaçao, we’ll be lucky to have a call returned three months from now.”

Alex had other ideas, but kept them to herself. “There was also an e-mail on his phone sent last night at nine your time from someone named Beaufoy. South African e-mail address. It read, ‘The Eagle Has Landed. Gott mitt uns.’”

“And that means?”

“You know what it means.”

“No, I don’t. And neither do you.”

“Bullshit. You’ll know when you hear the tape. I’m going to contact a friend of mine at Five and tell him what happened. I don’t want to end up in jail for the next week. You might want to brief the director. I imagine the shit’s going to hit the fan pretty good.”

“Alex-”

“Listen to the tape.” Alex hung up before McVeigh could scream at her. She felt faint and paced back and forth until the blood returned to her head. The concussion was worse than she thought. She crossed her fingers that McVeigh would see things her way and vote with her badge instead of her rulebook.

Alex called her colleague at MI-5 and explained about her visit to GRAIL and the interrogation of James Salt. He told her to drive Salt’s car to an address in Kensington not far from Five’s headquarters on the River Thames.

“What about Scotland Yard?” she asked.

“Who? Now move it.”

Alex checked the surroundings. She noted a couple walking beneath some trees fifty yards away. She turned full-circle. No one else was nearby.

Corpses were heavy and ungainly. It required all of her strength to shift Salt to the passenger seat. When she slid behind the wheel, she noted that her clothing was matted with Salt’s blood. She buttoned her blazer and raised the collar to camouflage as much of it as possible.

Alex fired the engine, then spun the car in a one-eighty and left the park.

McVeigh called back five minutes later. “You haven’t contacted GRAIL again, have you?”

The anger was gone from her voice. It was operational McVeigh speaking. Alex had her reprieve. “Chris Rees-Jones called Salt a few minutes ago, but I didn’t answer. I listened to the message. Apparently she’s considering going to the company’s solicitors to admit her part in this thing before it blows up even further.”

“Good. I’ve spoken to Five. They’ve agreed to take your evidence to a magistrate straightaway. Between what’s happened on our turf and what happened over there, he should be able to obtain a warrant to storm GRAIL’s offices and Salt’s home.”

“Nice,” said Alex. The British didn’t mess around when it came to thwarting terrorist attacks. If a corner needed to be cut, so be it. They’d glue it back in place afterward.

“We’re pulling the director out of a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill to deal with this,” continued McVeigh. “It’s clear he’ll have to go to the British PM. That means the president will have to be read in. You’re really putting the special relationship to the test.”

“Jan, I need a favor. About that South African e-mail address. Salt called someone named Skinner with a South African phone number immediately after talking to GRAIL.” Alex read off the number. “Give that to the boys in Tech. See if they can ping it, find out where Mr. Skinner is. If my hunch is correct, we’re not going to like the answer.”

“We’ll need a warrant for that.”

“The tape should do the trick.”

“You’re pushing things, kid.”

“Salt has a contact in the embassy here. He knew I wasn’t in England on official assignment.” Alex read off Salt’s number and gave the exact time of the call. “Trace it and let’s find out who he has on the payroll at the embassy and who his contact called in the Bureau.”

“Any ideas?”

“Someone in our office. Guarantee it.”