Imminent Threat

by Jeff Gunhus

  The Clemsons were more than simply a surveillance team.

  From their location, they had a perfect line of sight across the Seine and into the main dining room of La Tour d’Argent. If Scarvan appeared inside the restaurant, they had the approval to take the shot.

  “Come in, Alpha,” came the call again.

  Mara smiled at the waiter and resisted the temptation to adjust her earpiece. If anyone was scanning for an operative, digging at her ear was a key giveaway.

  Young recruits always adjusted their earpiece, especially on first transmission. She wasn’t sure if it was some ingrained behavior from watching too many bad action movies or just natural instinct when a voice appeared from nowhere. Regardless, it was a good way to get caught.

  The waiter returned her smile, but in a withering way reserved only for French waiters. He left to care for his other tables.

  “Go Sky Two,” she said.

  “Targets have entered the building. Three tangos at entry. Heat signatures on four others on the top floor.”

  “Roger on seven tangos.”

  Mara sipped her espresso, her face turned toward the river and the hulking form of Notre Dame Cathedral. Just another tourist enjoying the time-honored tradition of whiling away time on the outdoor patio of a Parisian café. Her large dark sunglasses disguised the fact that her eyes were in constant motion, scanning each person who approached La Tour d’Argent. Scarvan had shown so far that he liked his kills to be personal. She didn’t think a long-range sniper shot was his style.

  But that was also before they had figured out what he was up to. Any operative worth their freight knew to adapt to changing circumstances. If Scarvan was aware he was being hunted now, then he might very well change his tactics.

  “Sky Two,” she whispered. “Do you have eyes on water traffic?”

  “That’s affirm,” came the reply.

  There was a faint indignation in the voice. As if insulted she’d think the surveillance team wouldn’t think to scan the river for threats. But Mara didn’t feel bad for asking. A river approach wouldn’t give a shooter the solid platform needed for a distance shot through tempered glass into a darkened room. Mara would have ruled it out for that very reason and there was a good chance the surveillance team had done the same.

  But none of them were Scarvan, so they needed to push their preconceived notions aside on what he might do.

  “Possible new arrival,” came the voice in her ear. Female this time. The other half of the Clemsons. “Approaching from the east.”

  Mara moved only her eyes to the left to catch the approach of two identical white Mercedes Benz SUVs.

  “Let’s see who’s joining the party,” Mara said, thinking it must be Ryker and his team.

  The SUVs pulled up in front of La Tour d’Argent and parked. No one got out for a full thirty seconds. That didn’t seem right.

  “Someone having second thoughts?” she whispered.

  Another thirty seconds.

  “Sky Two,” she said. “Any read on this?”

  No reply.

  Her eyes moved to the rented apartment across the river. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

  “Sky Two?” she said. “Sky One? Do you read?”

  Something was wrong. Communications weren’t infallible, but when this close and with perfect line of sight, there shouldn’t have been any issue.

  Just then, the doors of the front SUV opened. Three men in black suits exited, leaving the driver inside. Two took position by the rear right door and the third faced out to the street, scanning for threats.

  The rear door opened and a man exited. Marcus Ryker was one of the most recognizable men in the world. “The billionaire with the great hair” is what the tabloids called him. A favorite Ryker line in interviews when asked about the sobriquet was that he preferred being called the billionaire with flair.

  Beyond the tabloids and the playboy image he cultivated, Ryker had a genius mind and the business sense to use it. With him, his seemingly altruistic endeavors were always paired with a personal financial windfall.

  It was well known he met with all manner of businessmen and world leaders, even the unsavory ones. When asked about it, he always had a pithy answer about how even the wicked needed redemption. In fact, he’d had some success transforming erstwhile arms dealers into legitimate businesspeople and convincing despots to open their markets and rejoin the world community. The State Department hated his meddling, but the man got results.

  Still, it still felt odd that he would suddenly be in the middle of this.

  And what had happened to her backup?

  “Sky One, come in,” she said.

  This time, when no answer came, she followed her instincts and moved. If the Clemsons had been compromised, she wasn’t going to sit there in the open.

  She walked toward the restaurant and saw Ryker start to enter through the front doors, but then stop. He spun around, a phone to his ear.

  Mara could have sworn his eyes locked directly on her. As if the person on the phone had told him what to look for.

  A second later, he waved his hand in the air and everything happened in reverse.

  He climbed back into the SUV. As he slammed the door shut, the three-man team jogged to the lead vehicle. Even before the last door was shut, the SUV roared forward, cutting into traffic. The rear vehicle followed fast behind. They turned right and were gone.

  “Sky, Sky. Do you read, over?” Mara said, louder now that she was walking the street. “Did something happen upstairs?”

  It was Nora Clemson’s voice that came over the earpiece. She sounded far away, like her mic was across the room from her. “River,” she said. “On the river.”

  Mara sprinted across the street and leaned over the low stone barrier. The Seine was twenty feet below, bordered by a wide walkway. In the middle of the river was a small speedboat with a single man on it.

  Even from this distance, the man’s wild beard and lanky frame were impossible to miss.

  Scarvan.

  Mara reached for her Glock, feeling like she was moving in slow motion as her brain registered what she was seeing.

  Scarvan had a long cylinder on his shoulder. A targeting sight rested on top of it.

  He didn’t need his platform to be that steady.

  This was no precision shot he was taking.

  Mara had only grasped the butt of her gun when flames shot from the back end of the RPG.

  The rocket-propelled grenade tore through the air, leaving a trail of smoke behind it.

  Mara couldn’t help but turn to follow its trajectory.

  The RPG hit the bottom third of the window and disappeared inside. The window turned white as it cobwebbed in a million segments, but it held in place.

  But not for long.

  After a beat just long enough that Mara had thought the round could have been defective, the blast came.

  Every window simultaneously exploded outward. Torrents of fire burst from the opening, curling to the sky. Black smoke poured out as debris rained down onto the street. Drivers swerved, smashing into one another.

  Mara ripped her eyes away, swinging her gun back toward Scarvan.

  But he was already back behind the wheel of the boat, gassing it forward.

  Mara took aim and fired.

  She knew it was a ridiculous shot at that range, but she had to try.

  A few of the shots must have come close because he turned backward and looked in her direction. And then the son of a bitch waved.

  She ran back to the street where a middle-aged man was standing next to his running car, filming the carnage from the bomb on his phone. She pushed him aside, showing her gun so he wouldn’t try to stop her.

  The street followed the Seine. If she hurried, she could catch up to Scarvan.

  She surveyed the mess of stopped and crashed cars in front her. Impossible.

  Twisting the wheel to the right, she jumped the car onto the sidewalk, smashing aside the empty
café tables. She blared the horn and waved her hands for people to get out of her way.

  She gathered speed, sending chairs flying.

  Finally, she broke free.

  She raced across the bridge. Glancing to her right, she saw smoke streaming from the Airbnb apartment where the Clemsons had been. She assumed they were dead.

  A look to her left and she saw the speedboat in the distance, already past Notre Dame.

  Mara looked up just in time to slam on her brakes and avoid ramming into the line of police cars on the opposite side of the bridge.

  They were out of their vehicles, guns pointed in her direction. She looked over her shoulder and saw police swarming there, too.

  “Shit!” she said, hitting the steering wheel. She’d had her shot at stopping Scarvan and blown it.

  She threw her gun out the window and extended her hands. The last thing she wanted was to give some young whelp a reason to shoot her by mistake. All they knew was that they’d stopped a car fleeing the scene of a terrorist bombing. There was a good chance there were more than a few itchy trigger fingers in the group.

  As the Paris police approached her vehicle, shouting instructions, she thought through what she might have done differently.

  The Clemsons’ location had been too perfect, making it easy to find. If they’d been in place during the attack, Scarvan would be dead right now.

  Instead, her team and the man she needed as bait had been eliminated.

  But how? There wasn’t time for Scarvan to kill them and then get to the boat and into position.

  As Mara laid with her face to the asphalt street and allowed herself to be handcuffed and taken into custody, she realized how she’d underestimated Scarvan.

  She’d been smart enough to recognize he might change his tactics, adopting a long-range shot instead of the close quarters of his other kills.

  But she hadn’t thought he might change the fundamental modus operandi.

  Scarvan had acted as a lone wolf his entire career. But now he’d accepted help from the outside. Suddenly, he was even more dangerous.

  And she hadn’t thought that was possible.

  CHAPTER 25

  Scott clung to the armrest as the old Land Rover bounced over the rough road. The rocky terrain rose up on either side of them, covered in azaleas and scrub oak. They passed rows of well-tended grape vines. The monks may have given up on many of the amenities of modern life, but wine wasn’t one of them. Certainly, wine was needed for Holy Communion, but judging from the extent of the vineyard, Scott doubted the wine’s use stopped there.

  Thales Mitsopoulos had proven to be a man of few words. Scott’s questions during the first thirty minutes of their journey south had been met with single-word answers or a shrug of the shoulders. Either he was the most ill-informed man in the area, or he was under orders not to give him any information.

  Scott had a pretty good guess which it was.

  The Land Rover slammed into a pothole, bottoming out with a loud scrape of metal against rock. Fortunately, the vehicle was pretty near indestructible. Although it had its limits. Scott didn’t like the idea of having a long delay in his schedule if the car broke down.

  “Is your protective training better than your driving?” he asked.

  At least the comment brought a wry smile from the younger man. “I’d be able to handle you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Maybe if I was asleep,” Scott said. “And you had an army with you.”

  Instead of being offended, Thales loosened up. “Father Spiros told me you were a vain man.”

  “Did he? I’m surprised he knew anything about me.”

  “The Church knows things,” Thales said.

  “And what is it that you know?” Scott asked, grunting as the front wheel smashed against a rock, knocking them a foot to the left. “Besides how to hit every obstacle in the road.”

  Thales cast a sidelong look at him. Partially from the comment, but also sizing him up. Scott knew that look. It was someone deciding what to share. Or how best to lie.

  “I know they’re scared,” Thales said. “They fear this man, this shadow they talk about in whispers. Apostoli is what they call him.”

  “Apostoli?” Scott repeated. “Is that what they call Scarvan?”

  Thales shrugged. “I don’t know that name. Only Apostoli. They fear what he will do. That they will be blamed.”

  Scott understood. If it were true that Scarvan had used Mt. Athos as a base for over two decades, there would be a major investigation into how that happened once the dust settled. Right now, the havoc he’d wrought was limited to the inner circles of the intelligence community. If that extended to assassinations of world leaders, then the gloves would come off. There’d be Interpol, FBI, and Secret Service crawling all over Mt. Athos within hours. And there’d be hell to pay.

  “Apostoli,” Scott said. “That’s Greek for apostle. If Scarvan was the apostle, then who was he following?”

  “Who do you think I’m taking you to see?” Thales asked. “Enough talking. Besides, we’re almost there.”

  Scott leaned forward to look out of the front windshield. Nothing in the landscape had changed to make him think they’d reached their destination. He’d expected to see one of the twenty monasteries located on the isthmus, but there was nothing but more rugged terrain.

  Still, Thales pulled the Land Rover to the side of the barely discernible dirt road and turned off the engine.

  Scott considered for a second that Thales was playing him for a fool, but he spotted a narrow trail leading through the rocks toward the sea cliff. He followed his guide’s lead and climbed out of the car.

  He was greeted with the smell of salt spray in the air along with the faint reek of fish and seaweed. Gulls cried out overhead, drifting on the updrafts coming off the cliffs. A quick scan in all directions confirmed what Scott suspected: not another sign of human activity anywhere nearby. A perfect place to be alone to talk to God. Or to hide from international intelligence agencies that wanted you dead.

  Thales wasted no time with small talk. He removed his suit jacket and left it in the car. His shoulder holster holding his Glock on full display.

  They picked their way along the path, walking in a slanted angle along the water’s edge while slowly drawing closer to the cliff. It was ten minutes before Thales came to a stop.

  “There,” he said. “If there are answers to be had, this is where they will be.”

  Scott climbed up the small rise to stand by Thales. Their vantage point allowed them to see a half-moon bay made up of craggy cliffs and a stone beach being mercilessly beat by angry waves. Perched against the cliff face were four structures that varied from ten to twenty feet off the ground. Made of the same rock as the beach, they blended in as part of the landscape, their corrugated metal roofs the only thing that made them stick out.

  “This is where Scarvan lived?” Scott asked.

  “If Apostoli is the same man as this Scarvan you’re talking about, then yes. That’s what I’m told.”

  Scott tried to imagine the assassin in such a place. The hardship of such a life would mean nothing to the man, and the isolation would have been the perfect place to hide out. But for over twenty years? It made no sense.

  “How many people live in these huts?” Scott asked.

  “They’re called sketes,” Thales said, picking his way carefully down a stone path to the rocky beach below. “One man in each during the old days. A monk would live there in isolation, often for his entire life. In fact, some of them become so infirm they can’t make the journey down the ladder, so they stay in the skete for years without leaving. The other monks tend to their needs until their death. Then there’s a scramble for who will occupy the skete next. Especially if the prior occupant was a particularly holy man.”

  “Why is that?” Scott asked, slipping on a rock before regaining his balance.

  “Once a monk dies, he often requests his bones to remain in the sket
e. These relics help guide the new occupant on their journey and search for God.”

  Scott grimaced but he knew better than to be surprised. After all, he’d been in churches throughout Europe where treasured relics were no more than a knuckle bone or a femur purported to be from one saint or another.

  He didn’t understand the draw of religion, but he was all too aware of the power it had on many. The greatest atrocities he’d seen had been done in the name of God. Then again, so had many of the greatest kindnesses and acts of self-sacrifice.

  On balance, he thought the amount of evil far exceeded the good done, but that was just his bias. He’d seen more bloodshed than most, but perhaps been farther away from the good done as well.

  “Stop,” came a voice from above. “What do you want?”

  Scott squinted, with the sun directly above them. They were completely exposed but there was no way to avoid it. If the voice belonged to someone working with Scarvan, they had a clear shot.

  “Are you Urgo?” Thales asked.

  “I am. What’s it to you?”

  “My name is Thales Mitsopoulos. This man is here to speak with Father Spiros.”

  “He’s not to be disturbed today,” the man named Urgo yelled. “Come back tomorrow.”

  Scott stepped forward but Thales held up a hand to let him handle it.

  “We are here on the command of Father Gregorio. We will be respectful of Father Spiros’s time.”

  The mention of Father Gregorio had an immediate effect. Urgo climbed across a rocky ledge that looked too narrow to support a mountain goat, let alone a person, then climbed onto a rickety wooden platform held up by fraying ropes. He flipped a lever and the platform descended, the rope clicking through a pulley suspended above. He jumped the last four feet and landed next to them.

  He was an odd-looking man, squat and ugly with a rash covering half his face and neck. His hair grew in patches, making him look like a dog with mange. As bizarre as his appearance was, he looked Scott and Thales over like they were from a different world.

  “How do I know you are who you say you are?” he finally said.