Under Fire

12

Jack awoke to his sat phone buzzing on the night table beside the bed. He rolled over and checked the screen: Raymond Wellesley.

“Good morning, Raymond.”

“My apologies for waking you so early, Jack.”

“No problem. What can I do for you? I haven’t heard anything from Seth.”

“Nor us, sadly. Might you have time to meet this morning? Come by the apartment and I’ll have a hearty English breakfast for you.”

Wellesley was back to jovial British bobby. Did Wellesley’s use of “I’ll” mean Spellman wouldn’t be joining them? He hadn’t been at their last meeting, either. Did that mean something?

Jack had no intention of stepping onto Wellesley and Spellman’s turf. “I’m pressed for time today. Why don’t we meet at my hotel, around ten, in the lobby.” Though Jack hadn’t been back to the Parsian since the day of his kidnapping, he hoped they didn’t know that.

“Very good,” said Wellesley. “See you then.”

Despite her protests, Jack managed to persuade Ysabel to stay at the apartment and do some research. Ervaz had chosen the ground for their meeting, Nemin, so Jack wanted to know as much about the place as possible. Plus, he didn’t want to run the risk of having Wellesley or his people spot Ysabel.

Jack’s cab dropped him at the Parsian’s lobby at nine-thirty. He went to the front desk, asked if he had either any messages or visitors. He’d had neither. As it had the first time he’d seen it, Jack found the hotel’s lobby mildly astonishing, a gallery of khaki and ecru, from the tiled floors, to the row of columns running down the center, to the circular, lighted tray ceilings above. Seating areas with burgundy and brown wingback chairs bracketed by potted palms were strategically placed throughout the space.

Jack took the elevator up to his room, slid the key card, and stood at the threshold. You’re getting paranoid, Jack. Then again, after the last few days, the feeling was forgivable. He walked in, closed the door behind him. Aside from signs the maid had come in to clean, nothing appeared disturbed. His briefcase, which contained Tehran sightseeing brochures, nonconfidential Hendley documents, and Jack’s passport, looked untouched as well.

Jack pocketed his passport, but left the briefcase, then went back down to the lobby. He took a chair in a seating area facing the door. Wellesley arrived in a black Khodro Samand, Tehran’s version of a hired Lincoln Town Car, got out, and walked into the lobby.

“Jack, there you are,” Wellesley said, walking over, his hand extended.

Jack shook it. “Thanks for meeting me here. No Matt?”

“He’s otherwise engaged.”

Jack led Wellesley to the Parseh, the hotel’s twenty-four-hour café. The hostess gave them a booth in the back. A waitress promptly brought a carafe of coffee for Jack and a pot of tea for Wellesley, then took their orders. When she left, Jack said, “What can I do for you, Raymond?”

“You’re not ones for small talk, you Americans.”

“Sorry. I’ve got a busy day in front of me.”

“Very well. I’ll come to the point. A man was murdered outside Seth Gregory’s condominium the night before last.”

The statement took Jack by surprise; without missing a beat, he let the emotion show on his face, then replied, “Tell me it wasn’t Seth.”

“Jack, please, let’s not do this. You know as well as I do it wasn’t Seth. You were there. You saw the man die. Had I not put one of my men there, you would be in the city morgue alongside him. Tell me why you went to the park.”

“I got a text message from Seth saying he wanted to meet me. When I got there, it was this other man. He told me he was going to take me to Seth. We started across the street, then… You know the rest. Who was he?”

Wellesley shrugged, then asked, “Tell me this: Did he have an American accent?”

“Yes. Who sent him?” Jack asked.

“It’s very complicated.”

“Spellman?”

“Jack, please, I can’t answer that question.”

“Then tell me how you knew to send someone to Pardis,” said Jack.

“You’re in over your head, Jack. I told you once and now I’m telling you again: Leave it be. Go home.”

“You know I can’t do that. Tell me how you knew to send someone to Pardis,” he repeated.

“I had you followed.”

He said, “You had me followed, or you and Spellman had me followed?”

Wellesley hesitated, then said, “The former. As I said, it’s very—”

“Complicated. I know.”

“I can’t make you stay out of this, Jack, and I can’t force you to go home. Instead, do me a favor, if you would: Keep me informed. Night before last didn’t have to happen. You could have easily died on that street. If that had happened your father would have been looking for someone’s head on a pike — mine, specifically — and he’d damn well get it.”

“You’re telling me to leave it to the professionals?”

“That’s my strong recommendation.”

When Jack walked into Ysabel’s apartment, she called from the seating area, “The police called. They found my Range Rover. You didn’t tell me you were going to torch it, Jack.”

“Sorry.”

She shrugged. “Insurance will cover it.”

Jack sat down on the couch and recounted for her the meeting with Wellesley. She said, “How much of that do you believe? Could they have been following us?”

“I don’t think so, but it’s possible. But if they’ve known all along what we’ve been up to, why didn’t they roll us up?”

“Either way, I think we can safely assume one or the other lured you to the condo.”

“Or both. Spellman and Wellesley could still be working together, and Wellesley’s just playing mind games. Hell, for all we know, Balaclava’s murder could have been designed to scare us off.”

“It’s a very cold thing to kill one of your own men.”

“Or an ally’s man,” Jack added. “I think last night was proof of that.”

Ysabel let out an exasperated sigh, leaned her head back, and wriggled her fingers through her hair. “This is enough to give me a migraine.”

“Me, too. Let’s break it down. Come on.”

They walked to the dining room table and sat down.

Jack said, “Okay, this is what we know, or can reasonably assume.”

He started writing on the notepad:

Jack stopped writing and studied the points. He frowned and shook his head.

“What?” Ysabel asked.

“I don’t know. I’m missing something. I can’t put my finger on it.”

“It will come to you. But Jack, let’s make sure we don’t gloss over the last one. Tomorrow night, the man we’re meeting in the middle of nowhere is behind your kidnapping.”

Hoping Wellesley would assume he was neither stupid enough nor bold enough to go back to the Pardis condo, Jack did just that. After walking a surveillance circuit through Mellat Park and then the side streets bordering the condo, he walked into the lobby, used the key Ysabel had given him to open the inner door, then took the elevator up to Seth’s floor, where he got off and walked down the hall. He felt the reassuring heft of the nine-millimeter in his jacket pocket. So far, his experiences at Seth’s two residences had been bad, one ambush/kidnapping and one sniper attack. He hoped the third time would be the charm.

He put on his gloves, then slid the key into the lock, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. He drew the nine-millimeter, then went from room to room, clearing each in turn, before returning to the front room.

This apartment was the exact opposite of Seth’s bolt-hole, lavishly furnished with thick carpet, leather couches and chairs, Persian tapestries, and a gourmet kitchen in stainless steel.

Jack caught a whiff of something in the air. Copper, he thought. He knew the odor. He felt a hollowness fill his belly. God, no, he thought. Bathroom tubs, he thought. He hadn’t checked the—

He strode down the hall to the guest bathroom, then jerked back the shower curtain. The tub was empty. He headed for Seth’s master-suite tub and swept open its curtain, the rings rattling on the bar above.

He found himself staring into a pair of milky eyes.

Floating in the half-full bathtub was the body of David Weaver. There was a ragged, golfball-sized hole three inches above his left eyebrow. Someone had put a bullet in the back of his head.

Who? The body showed little sign of decay; Jack guessed he’d died around the same time as Balaclava. The two men that had kidnapped him from Seth’s bolt-hole were now dead. Wellesley had taken credit for killing the sniper. Did he mean Weaver?

There was virtually no blood in the tub’s water, and Jack saw no signs of blood anywhere else in the apartment, and with a head wound like Weaver’s, the place would’ve been a slaughterhouse. That left one possibility.

Jack left the apartment, walked the four flights to the top floor, and wandered around for a few minutes before finding the roof’s access door. Jack opened it and stepped outside.

With his feet crunching on the gravel, he crossed the roof to the southwest corner and looked over the edge. He had a direct line of sight around the edge of the nearest tree, then down onto Rajaei Boulevard, where Balaclava had gone down. Jack raised his arms to simulate holding a rifle, his far index finger as the barrel. He nodded. This was the spot.

Jack stepped directly backward to maintain the sight line, and began scanning the roof. He would find no shell casings, he knew, but if this was where Weaver had died, there might be something. Using the toe of his boot, he began raking the gravel aside.

There.

He stopped and knelt, shoveling gravel with his hands until he’d uncovered a circle three feet in diameter. A patch of the exposed tarpaper was discolored a pale yellow. Jack leaned over and sniffed. He wrinkled his nose. Bleach. In the middle of the patch was a bullet hole. Jack took the pen from his pocket and poked it into the hole but felt nothing.

He put it together in his head: Seconds after Weaver shoots Balaclava, someone kills Weaver himself, then collects the rifle, the shell casings, the spent round embedded in the tarpaper, and Weaver’s corpse, then goes down to Seth’s apartment, puts the body in the tub, then returns to the roof to dump bleach on the blood pool — all while the police sirens are converging on the area. Had this man sat inside Seth’s condo while the police did their door-to-door, or had he calmly left, rifle hidden under his coat?

Whatever the answer, Jack now knew he was dealing with one ice-cold, and well-trained, operator.

Their safe house, a rental cottage on Pettycur Bay, was less than ideal, with a cottage close on their left, but it did have three things Helen had demanded for the operation: a basement, a garage for their van, and a landlord who took cash and considered a handshake better than a contract. Helen had told the old man she would be attending the university next year for her postgraduate degree in art history and that she wanted to spend the summer getting to know the area along with three of her fellow students. The landlord had simply nodded, smiled, and taken the cash.

With any luck, Helen planned to be gone before the next month’s rent was due.

“He’s a bull,” Yegor said, emerging into the kitchen from the basement stairs. Just before the door swung shut behind him, Helen could hear muffled, angry cries from below. “If he keeps this up we’ll need chains. You would think he’d be exhausted by now. I know I am.”

“Leave him. No one can hear him.”

Almost seven hours had passed since they’d trundled the boy and Amy into the van.

After leaving the campus, Yegor had driven the route as he’d practiced several times before, heading directly north to Leith, where he pulled over to wipe the synthetic snow from the license plates before turning onto the coast road. Thirty minutes later they crossed Forth Road Bridge and were headed up the coast, rapidly putting miles between them and Edinburgh.

In the backseat, Olik had sat with headphones pressed to his ears, listening for signs of alarm from either the university security force or the local police. All was quiet. That wouldn’t last, Helen knew. Whoever had slid open that curtain back at Chancellors Court had seen something. Whether it had been alarming enough to call the authorities, only time would tell.

Yegor limped to the sink and splashed some water over his face. He gingerly touched the top of his left ear and winced. In going to the ground with “the bull,” Yegor’s ear had been smashed against the pavement, and the left side of his rib cage was on fire, from either a break or a deep bruise.

“I’ll see to those in a bit,” Helen said. “Sit, I’m making eggs.”

Olik came down the stairs and joined Yegor at the table. In the front room Helen could hear the strains of giggling and vaudevillian music. Roma had found a cartoon network. The man was worrying Helen, more so than before. He was no longer sullen, but simply withdrawn, speaking only when spoken to, and then only in curt replies. This hadn’t gone unnoticed by Yegor and Olik, Helen was sure.

“How’s the girl?” Helen asked Olik.

“Sleeping. I gave her something.”

“I want you to check on her every fifteen minutes. The same with the boy, Yegor.”

Yegor nodded.

Olik asked, “What’s our next step?”

Helen checked her watch. It was almost four a.m. here, so almost seven in Kizlyar. “I’ll make the call in four hours.”