Wizard favored the younger man with a rare smile. It was a small movement that twitched at the corners of his lips, but it was there—for those who knew what to look for.
Ron glanced around the dining room before leaning in and lowering his voice. “Spill it, Al. What are you working on?”
Wizard coughed, massaged his chest and said, “I suppose you heard about P. Arthur Fellows?”
A frown worked its way onto Ron’s face. “I heard. Hell of a way to go. Fellows was a good enough sort. Never would have pegged him for a pervert. I suppose you’re going to tell me it wasn’t an accident?”
Wizard shook his head. Like his smile, it was a small movement.
Ron leaned in more. “Murder?”
Wizard nodded once.
Hinson whistled and leaned back in his seat. “How do you know?”
Wizard hunched forward and propped both elbows on the table. “Something he was working on got him killed.”
“Well, you’ve lost me there, Al. Fellows was a strictly midlevel investigator. He wasn’t snooping anything worth killing over.”
Wizard just waited.
Hinson explored a molar with his tongue. “What have you got in exchange, Al?”
“Just the identity of Fellows’s killer.”
Hinson’s eyebrows went up. “Okay. I’ll bite.”
“Her name is Eliška Cermákova. She’s a Czech assassin wanted for half a dozen murders.”
“Have you got people on her?”
“I have a man in place,” Wizard said.
“One man?”
“One of my best,” Wizard told him. “What was Fellows working on?”
“He was investigating a series of supernotes.”
“What’s a supernote?” Wizard asked.
“A counterfeit bill so good it’s indistinguishable from the real thing.”
“If it’s indistinguishable, how did he tumble to it?”
“A genuine US banknote will have slight imperfections,” Hinson told him. “The money you have in your wallet isn’t perfect. Plates get old, ink tars up in the channels, paper shifts as it moves through the press. It all adds up to tiny inconsistences.
“The bills we found are perfect, and I mean perfect.” Hinson said. “No runs, no blurs, no ragged lines.”
“So this counterfeiter is making bills better than the ones the US government prints and that’s how you got onto it?”
Hinson inclined his head. “We’ve found three so far. We have no idea who’s printing them or how many more might be floating around the system. But Fellows wasn’t working the case anymore. He spotted the forgery and kicked it up the chain of command just two days before he turned up dead.”
“And you didn’t find that odd?” Wizard rasped.
“Of course we did.” Hinson waved a hand in the air. “We knew whoever killed Fellows was trying to cover their tracks. We want them to think they threw us off the trail. It’s easier to investigate if they don’t know we’re looking for them. Counterfeits as good as the ones we’re talking about get the full resources of the Secret Service.”
“What have you found out so far?”
Hinson shrugged his shoulders. “Talking to the wrong guy. I’m not on the task force.”
“Come on, Ron. I don’t believe that for a second. Even if you’re not, you keep your ear to the ground.”
Hinson turned his glass in clockwise circles, making damp rings on the tablecloth. “Not much, and that, in and of itself, is saying something. In order to print a bill of this quality, you need an intaglio press. They’re rare—only a few in existence—and we thought we knew where all of them were located.”
Wizard nodded. “Okay. What else?”
“You also need rag paper and specialized ink,” Hinson told him. “Neither is cheap and there are only a few manufactures in the whole world. Sale of the materials is highly regulated.”
“So you would have known if someone bought a large quantity of paper and ink?” Wizard asked.
“Without doubt,” said Hinson. “Besides that, you need printing plates. Whoever minted these bills knew what they were doing. They have access to materials and they’ve got an intaglio press—which tells us this is not some teenage anarchist working out of his parents’ basement. This is a full-scale operation, probably located somewhere in southern Europe judging by forensics.”
“Forensics?” Wizard questioned.
Hinson nodded. “Traces of saltwater on all three bills we’ve recovered came from the Adriatic Sea.”
Wizard scratched an eyebrow with one nicotine-stained fingertip. “So it’s possible there are more of these in circulation?”
“Not only is it possible,” said Hinson, “it’s probable. You don’t go to this kind of effort to print up a few Benjamins.”
“What’s the fallout from something like this?”
Hinson rocked his head side to side. “Depends on the depth of market penetration. A flood of indistinguishable counterfeit bills could, in theory, crash the dollar. But it would take billions in supernotes. That’s not to say it doesn’t have an impact. Counterfeiting is a serious problem, don’t get me wrong. It devalues the currency, disrupting markets and …”
Wizard was only half listening. He had stuck on the idea of crashing the dollar. Something inside his brain clicked. Hinson kept talking, but Wizard was twenty miles away, back in his office at Langley. He had spent countless hours staring at the wall, trying to fit the pieces together, looking for the missing link, searching for the piece that would finally complete the puzzle. Was this it? After all these years?
Chapter Thirty
Noble’s breath froze in his lungs. The muscles in his back turned to spring steel. He stood rooted to the spot, waiting for the knife to drive home. The assassin had him dead to rights, but instead of jamming the blade up under his ribs, she leaned in close and spoke German: “One wrong move and I’ll cut your liver in two.”
She pressed up against him, shielding the knife with her body, and steered Noble past a sea of gawking men—eyes glued to the stage—to the private rooms. She said, “Keep a smile on your face.”
Noble moved on autopilot. His arms were pinned to his sides and his knees didn’t want to bend. It’s tough to look natural with a knife in your back. He kept expecting someone to see the blade and shout, but they pushed through a beaded curtain without anyone noticing and into a dimly lit hall with cubbies on either side shielded by privacy curtains.
“All the way to the end,” the assassin ordered.
Noble allowed himself to be herded along on legs that felt like wooden oars. They reached the end of the hall. The assassin kicked the curtain aside to be sure the cubby was empty before shoving Noble inside. A small sofa crammed up the space. The only other furnishing was a blacklight poster of a nude woman in the throes of ecstasy. The assassin crowded in behind him and Noble made his move.
He used his forearm to bat the knife aside and tried to lock up her wrist. They struggled for control of the weapon. The assassin drove an elbow into the side of Noble’s head and fairy lights exploded in his vision. She followed up with a knee. She was going for his groin, but Noble turned at the last second and took the blow on his hip instead. A grunt of pain ripped from his throat. The tight space didn’t give him any room to maneuver and the assassin was a bobcat. Noble was playing nice because she was a girl and the part of him raised in Western culture still believed there was never any reason to hit a woman. But if he was going to walk away from this without getting carved up, he had to fight dirty.
He got both hands around her wrist and then used a headbutt. It was a desperate gamble, but it worked. It rocked her head back on her neck. She let out a startled gasp that was more surprise than pain. Noble swept her feet out from under her with a kick and used his weight to wrestle her to the sofa. She went down kicking and thrashing. Noble pinned her, jammed a knee in her stomach, and pressed down until her face turned red. A vein throbbed in her forehead.
Even struggli
ng for breath, she still wasn’t ready to give up. She tried to force the switchblade up to Noble’s throat. He had the weight advantage and slowly bent her wrist until the knifepoint was under her chin. It was no easy feat. Even on top and with forty extra pounds on her, the assassin made him work for it. He was breathing heavy by the time he got the knife pressed under her chin, the point dimpling her pale white flesh. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Let it go.”
There was a long moment when Noble thought she would go on struggling and he’d have to ram the knife home. She finally ran out of oxygen. Her eyes rolled up in her head and her muscles relaxed. Her fingers slowly uncurled. Noble didn’t dare let go of her wrists. Instead he used his teeth to pluck the switchblade from her open palm. He turned his head to the side and spat the weapon onto the floor before relaxing some of the pressure on her abdomen.
She sucked air and gasped out, “You’re American?”
“That’s right,” Noble told her. He adjusted his hold, got both of her wrists clasped in his right hand, and took out his phone with his left hand. “Say cheese.”
She shot a bird as Noble snapped a picture.
“Now let’s talk about who hired you to kill a Secret Service agent and why,” Noble said.
Before she could answer, they heard voices in the hall.
Chapter Thirty-One
The dancer led her customer by the hand along the dimly lit hall. He was a grossly overweight Russian with wiry hairs growing from his nose. He smelled like cabbage, but he was a regular and he had money to burn. The girls called him Hippo—never to his face, of course. To his face he was always Sweetie or Honey. After dropping a couple grand in the club, Hippo would take one of the girls to a nearby hotel where he would fork over another grand for what usually amounted to fifteen minutes of work. The lucky girl—or unlucky depending on your point of view—got to keep half. The other half went to management. Most of the girls didn’t mind. It paid their rent for the month. Tonight, it seemed Celeste was going to be the lucky girl. She pushed aside the curtain and was surprised to find someone in her booth.
A blonde girl in skimpy shorts was straddling a customer. Her hips moved to the steady beat of the pounding bassline. The customer had one hand around the back of her neck. The other hand was lost from view. Celeste had never seen the girl before. She must be new. Girls came and went all the time. Some of them found a rich businessman eager to save them from the life. Others just vanished after a while and new girls showed up to take their place. There were always more girls ready to try their luck at dancing. It was easier than working and generally paid better. What they didn’t know was that dancing eventually led to prostitution, and if they didn’t have a drug problem before they started dancing, they would have one after they started turning tricks. It was only a matter of time.
“This is my booth,” Celeste said in Czech.
Without stopping, the blonde looked over her shoulder and said, “Do you mind?”
Celeste huffed, threw the curtain closed and led Hippo to another stall.
Noble sat on the couch with the switchblade knife tucked under Cermákova’s chin. His left hand cupped the back of her neck. He could slit her throat with a flick of his wrist. She straddled his lap and went on grinding even after the curtain fell shut.
“We haven’t got long,” she said in English. “She’ll complain to management that someone else is in her booth.”
“Then you’d better start talking,” Noble said, ignoring the way her hips pressed up against him. “Who hired you to kill Fellows and why?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Eliška told him. “First they threatened me and then they tried to have me killed.”
“Who was your contact?” Noble said. It was an effort to keep his mind on the questions and off her body. She was trying to distract him and doing a good job. Noble said, “Who paid you the money?”
“An American. I don’t know his name, but I managed to get a picture of him. A friend in military intelligence tracked him down.”
“This friend have a name?” Noble asked.
“Miklos,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet him this afternoon at the train station. I want the man who hired me just as much as you. When I find him, I’ll find out who is pulling his strings. Let me go and I’ll share the information with you.”
Noble managed a humorless laugh. “Nice try. We’ll go together.”
She stopped grinding and climbed off him. “Okay, American, we’ll do it your way. What do I call you?”
“Jake.”
“Jake,” she said, testing the word in her mouth. “Short for Jakob.”
She gave the name a Czech inflection. It came out sounding like Yakob.
“Close enough.”
“Eliška Cermákova,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Jakob.”
“Forgive me if I don’t shake hands,” Noble said.
She motioned to her skimpy outfit. “How do you propose we get out of here?”
“Walk out like we own the place,” Noble told her. He took her by the elbow, tucked the switchblade knife against her ribcage and led her out through the busy club, ignoring curious looks from the rest of the men gathered around the stage.
Chapter Thirty-Two
By noon Gwen and Ezra were both fast asleep. It was Gwen’s turn on the sofa. She was stretched out with a stack of papers on her lap. Ezra was on the floor with his back against the sofa and his head resting against Gwen’s thigh. A file lay open on his lap. The only sounds were buzzing fluorescents, the hum from the air vent, and Ezra’s snores. Empty food cartons littered the tables and the computer screens glowed in silence.
Ezra would have gone right on sleeping but an electronic chirp cut through the fog of dreams. He snorted, smacked his lips, and peered stupidly at the monitor. It was another minute before his mind made sense of what he was seeing. He pushed a hand through his hair in an effort to clear out the cobwebs and elbowed Gwen. “Hey, take a look at this.”
“Am I late for class?” She sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Check it out.” Ezra pointed to the computer screen.
“Were you asleep?” Gwen asked.
“No,” Ezra lied, trying to banish the sleep from his voice. “Course not. Don’t be silly.”
She gave him a skeptical look, swung her legs off the sofa and lurched over to her station. On the screen was a picture of Eliška Cermákova. The assassin was flicking off the camera. Gwen pinged the location of the text. “Looks like Noble found her. They’re in Wenceslas Square.”
Ezra said, “She looks dangerous.”
A cold hatred burned in Cermákova’s eyes. It was easy to see why they called her the Angel of Death. She was both Beauty and the Beast: a deadly woman with an angel’s face. Gwen wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that stare. It made her shiver. She said, “Should I call him?”
“No,” said Ezra. “Let him call us.”
It was hard to make out much from the picture. The assassin’s head and shoulders filled most of the frame. They could see her bare shoulders and her hand, middle finger extended, but that was all.
Ezra cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “Is she wearing clothes?”
Gwen squinted. “I don’t think so.”
Ezra made a curious sound at the back of his throat.
“Guys are such perverts,” Gwen said shook her head. She wondered why it bothered her so much. She wasn’t interested in a relationship with Ezra. So what if he ogled other women? What if he met someone? Gwen thought. Started a relationship? The idea left her confused and anxious. She decided to focus on work instead. She said, “He’s made contact. We can only assume he has her in custody.”
“Or she has him,” Ezra quipped.
Gwen ignored the wisecrack. “We need to organize an extraction. Find out what personnel we have in the area capable of smuggling a person out of the country.”
Ezra used his computer to bring up a list of assets in Pra
gue and the area around the Czech Republic. He shook his head. “Surprisingly little. We have assets in Hungary with military experience and field agents in Germany skilled in extraction, but no one close.”
Gwen pinched her bottom lip between thumb and forefinger. “Think Noble can extract her on his own?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
They were busy discussing the details when Wizard came through the door. He was dressed in his usual dark suit and polished wingtips. His gray was hair combed straight back. He snatched the cigarette from his mouth and breathed smoke. “What’s the latest?”
“Noble made contact,” Gwen told him and motioned to the picture on screen. “But we’re having trouble putting together an extraction team. Quite frankly, sir, it’s going to be difficult—if not impossible—to get her out of the country.”
Wizard blew smoke. “That may not be necessary.”
“Sir?” Gwen asked.
Wizard frowned, rubbed two fingers against his chest and then reached in his jacket for a bottle of pills. He shook a pair into his open palm, tossed them back, and dry-swallowed. Ezra and Gwen waited. Wizard cleared his throat and rubbed at his chest, like he was waiting to see if his heart would stop. When it was clear he wasn’t going into cardiac arrest, Wizard said, “Noble’s capable of a field interrogation.”
“What about after?” Gwen said. “She’s wanted for murder. We can’t just turn her loose.”
Wizard held her gaze without comment. A cold weight settled over the room. Ezra and Gwen exchanged a look. What Wizard was suggesting amounted to murder. Despite their best efforts to keep their heads down and fly under the radar, they had found themselves in another operation without congressional oversight. These type missions eventually came in to the light. When they did, people lost their jobs.
The phone rang and Gwen snatched it up. “Goodman and Associates. How may I direct your call?”
“It’s me,” Noble’s voice came on the line. “Go secure.”
Noble Sanction Page 11
