(3) find and kill the bastard—or bastards—who were trying to find and kill her. If she did that, if she was successful, if she could cut the head off the dog leading that vicious pack, she would live and get her life back.
It wasn’t even really a choice: she was going with Door Number Three.
“Boss? You okay?” Doc’s face was now a study in worry. His tone said that this wasn’t the first time he’d asked.
“I’m fine,” Bianca said. Not strictly true, but she was better. She could feel her body gearing up, her blood pumping, her muscles loosening, her senses sharpening. Preparing for a battle. “Send a reply—can’t undersell.”
Doc nodded, balanced the iPad in the crook of his arm and started to peck one-fingered at the virtual keyboard. “Can’t undersell?”
“That’s right.” She saw a couple of Junior Leaguers and their husbands bearing down on them. “Got it?”
Doc nodded.
“Then get out of eBay and go back to adding up bids.”
That’s all she had time to say before the necessity of making small talk was once again upon her.
But the message had been sent: C-U. See you.
At the Wynn Macau, at midnight in four days.
13
The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure—DGSE—was the French version of MI6 and the CIA. One year previously they had overseen the arrest in Paris of Phillippe Bergere, a high-end fence with connections throughout Europe. Bergere was currently housed in Le Centre de Detention de Muret, a prison in the Auvergne region of France, where he would be held for the next five years. The relative brevity of his sentence was due to the fact that he had agreed to cooperate with the DGSE and, by extension, other law-enforcement entities, in certain highly sensitive investigations.
One of those investigations was into the whereabouts of the notorious thief Traveler, who had subsequently been identified as Mason Thayer. Thieves, naturally, needed fences to dispose of stolen goods. Thayer had made use of Bergere’s services in that regard on multiple occasions.
As Bergere put it, “You have a rare diamond, an old masterpiece, an objet, everyone knows I am the best.”
Which was why Rogan, accompanied by DGSE agent Henri Moreau, a dour-faced, fifty-something Parisian in a tired brown suit, was at that moment seated in a folding metal chair drawn up to a bolted-to-the-floor metal table, in a blue-painted, concrete-walled room reserved for law enforcement visits to prisoners, quizzing Bergere about known associates of Thayer, as well as his possible whereabouts if he chose to lie low. The room smelled of tobacco smoke and old piss. It was cold. Heat cost money, and the French were very cost-conscious, especially in regards to their prisoners. A cheap fluorescent fixture overhead bathed the table in a squint-producing glare that reflected off the white paper in the notebook in which Moreau was jotting things down. The interrogation was being conducted in English, because Rogan, while passably conversant in French, didn’t want to miss any nuances. The urgency was growing: with the CIA involved in the case, the race was on. Whoever got to Thayer first would have custody, and the CIA did not willingly share. The material Thayer had collected, some of it light-years beyond highly classified and gathered over years, could not be allowed to disappear into the black hole of the US intelligence services, to be used as they saw fit. It was sensitive enough to set the agendas of the white-hat countries of the world back decades. Not coincidentally, it also, or so Rogan had inferred from what he had seen and been obliquely told, contained enough dirt on various governments, world leaders, powerful institutions and people to sink more than a few ships.
Finding Thayer was also, in his estimation, the quickest route to locating Sylvia. He didn’t know the reason behind the CIA’s sudden interest in her, but the interest was definitely there. Thayer was a world-class bad guy. He was her boss. Which begged the question: what was she? There was something Rogan didn’t know, obviously, but he wasn’t ready to bring her to Durand’s attention yet.
In any case, Hanes’s interest in Sylvia meant that he was interested, too.
“He is everywhere, he is nowhere, that one,” said Bergere, referring to Thayer. He was seventy years old, about five-eight and wiry, with thinning gray hair and wire-rimmed spectacles framing shrewd hazel eyes. His face was leathery from years spent in the sun, and he had the stained teeth of a longtime smoker. He wore a denim shirt over black beltless pants, because in France prisoners wore their own clothing with the only restriction being in regard to items such as belts, which could pose a danger.
Rogan said, “When you met with Agee—” Adrian Agee was the name Bergere had known Thayer by “—tell me how it would happen.”
Bergere took a long pull on the cigarette, which was one of a carton that Moreau, whose history with this informant was why he was there with Rogan, had brought him, and let the smoke curl out of his nose.
“He would come into my shop—” as a cover for his actual means of earning a living, Bergere had owned a bicycle repair shop in the Rue des Écoles in Paris “—and we would go into the back room. He would tell me what he wished to dispose of, the price he wanted and show me pictures. Then he would go away. When I had a buyer, I would notify him.”
“How?” Rogan asked.
“A blue bicycle in my shop window. That directed him to take a certain course of action upon which we had previously agreed.”
“Tell him,” Moreau directed. Bergere looked wary. Moreau added, “You know Ghyslaine has already been brought on board.”
“I do not like to inform on my friends,” Bergere said with dignity. “And Ghyslaine—she is beautiful, n’est ce pas? I had hopes there, once.”
“If you help us, you will be out before you know it,” Moreau said. “Then you may once again pursue your hopes with la belle Ghyslaine.” He shoved a foil ashtray toward Bergere as the ash trembling on the end of his cigarette grew dangerously long. “Tell him.”
Bergere knocked the ash off his cigarette. “When he saw the bicycle, Agee would visit a certain street fair, purchase some paintings there, very low price, then have those paintings conveyed to Ghyslaine.”
“Ghyslaine owns the Galerie d’or,” Moreau put in.
Rogan knew it for one of the most respected art galleries in Paris. He nodded.
“Packed in with the paintings would be the items Agee wished to move,” Bergere continued. “Ghyslaine would purchase the street paintings, worth very little, for the sum agreed upon for the items. She would issue a check, all proper, all—how you say?—aboveboard, to Agee for the paintings, you understand, with no one to raise an eyebrow because who are we, any of us, to put a value on art? Ghyslaine would then pass the items on to the buyer, and Agee would deposit his check in the bank, c’est ça.”
Rogan spent no more than a couple of seconds admiring the efficiency of the money-laundering operation.
“What bank?” he asked.
Agee shrugged.
Moreau said, “Banque Martin Maurel. The money would disappear as soon as it hit the account. Tracing it has proved impossible so far.”
Rogan knew exactly how impossible Thayer’s finances were proving to trace. There was a whole team on it.
“What do you know about Agee? Family, things he liked to do, places he liked to visit, hobbies?” Rogan tried a different angle.
“I know nothing of that. I think maybe he is an American, because he once asked where he could get a decent hamburger, and, I ask you, who eats such things?”
Since Thayer’s nationality was already established, that information was useless. Rogan gave Bergere a sudden sharp look. Was the Frenchman deliberately fulfilling his end of the agreement by revealing things investigators already knew? Because the only other thing he had revealed—the money-laundering scheme—had been known to Moreau and was useless to Rogan.
“If you were able to give me information that
helped me find Agee, I could arrange for your release as soon as the information panned out,” Rogan said.
Bergere looked at him steadily—he knows something, Rogan thought—then glanced at Moreau for confirmation.
Moreau shrugged and nodded. “It’s true. He could.”
“I want it in writing,” Bergere said. “Un contrat. A contract.”
“That can happen,” Rogan said. “If the information is good.”
“I want the contract first.”
Rogan gave him a measuring look, then reached for the pad of paper Moreau was using and held out his hand for the loan of Moreau’s pen. When Moreau passed it over, Rogan scribbled, If information from Phillippe Bergere results in the discovery of the whereabouts of the man known as Adrian Agee, he will have discharged his obligation under his sentence and will be entitled to immediate release from detention. He then signed his name with a flourish, tore the sheet of paper from the pad and slid it across the table to Bergere.
Bergere looked at it. “Is this authentique?”
Moreau shrugged. “Whether it is or not, you have my word that it will be so.”
“Mine, too,” Rogan said.
Bergere squinted at him suspiciously. “I do not know you.”
Moreau said, “The matter is urgent. There is no time for avocats.”
Rogan reached across the table to tap the piece of paper he’d just passed over. “This is the best you’re going to do.”
Bergere pursed his lips.
“Ah, bah. I will trust you, then.” He looked from Moreau to Rogan. “There is one thing—Agee, he is a gambler. He goes to the big casinos, the best ones, two, three times a year. I have friends who have seen him, who have told me this. They said that he was lucky and usually won.”
“What friends?” Moreau asked.
Bergere smiled and shook his head.
“Do you know which casinos?” Rogan asked. The news was of value: casinos had surveillance cameras, security staff, records of payouts. If what Bergere said was true, there would be a trail. A trail that could possibly be followed.
“That’s all I know.” Bergere sounded suddenly grumpy, like he feared he had said too much.
Rogan stayed for another half an hour, doing his best to pry any other nuggets of information from Bergere, but if the man knew anything else that might be of use he wasn’t giving it up.
In the end Rogan walked out of the prison with Moreau, thanked him for his help, got in his car and drove away.
He then immediately got on his encrypted phone to place a call to Durand. He reported the tip he’d gotten from Bergere, and requested the activation of eyes on the ground—the network of local informers that spies cultivated in every major city in the world—in all the gambling meccas: Las Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City, Monaco, Singapore, and the big daddy of them all, Macau. He suggested that they go with something like a discreet sweep by, say, “tax authorities,” to check the casinos’ surveillance footage and payout books and get the names and personal information of winners over the last few years. Photos of Thayer should be passed around in those locales, and rewards offered for a sighting. Lesser gambling destinations would be targeted, too.
It was a broad net, but it was a net, which was more than they’d had before. The only thing to do was to wait to see if anything got caught in it.
* * *
In a white Audi parked in the visitors’ lot of Le Centre de Detention de Muret, Brian Lesce observed Rogan exit the prison, shake hands with Moreau and drive off. The twenty-six-year-old American picked up his encrypted phone and placed a call.
“He’s just left,” Lesce said. He was a newly minted case officer, part of the CIA’s human intelligence—HUMINT—sector: average height and weight, blue eyes, brown buzz cut, boyishly handsome face. For the past six months he’d been stationed in Lyon, and his usual job involved conducting routine espionage on designated French politicians. He’d been pulled from that task to form one of the surveillance teams that had been assigned to follow Rogan since shortly after his meeting with Interpol’s Durand.
“Somebody picking him up?” Steve Hanes sounded impatient. Hanes was SOG, Special Operations Group. SOG was the most secretive special operations force in the United States. An offshoot of the CIA’s Special Activities Division—SAD—it was almost unknown to the public. When the covert shit hit the really big fan, SOG was who they called. Lesce didn’t know what Hanes’s assignment was—the classification level was way above his pay grade—but he knew it had to be big. And for the purposes of said assignment, Hanes was his boss.
“Raney’s waiting right outside the prison,” Lesce replied.
Hanes didn’t even acknowledge that. Instead he asked, “Who’d Rogan meet with?”
“Henri Moreau from DGSE—”
“I know that,” Hanes interrupted. “Who did they talk to inside the prison?”
“Oh,” Lesce said. He really hated what he had to say next. “I don’t know.”
“You—don’t—know.” Hanes’s tone was scathing. “Well, get in there and find out. I want to know who they met with and what was said. Now.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Lesce was still shaken from the bawling out Hanes had given him over the length of time it had taken him to get the requested information, and Hanes, who was in Hamburg, Germany, following a lead, was on his encrypted phone to Greg Wafford, deputy director of the National Clandestine Service, which oversaw SOG.
“They’re looking for Thayer hard,” Hanes said. “In my opinion, finding Thayer’s our best bet for finding her.”
“I agree.” Wafford was speaking from his office in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “So find him. Question him. Use him to find her. Use whatever means you need to use to find her. She has to be liquidated. They both have to be liquidated. We’ve got to get this behind us.”
“I understand,” Hanes said. “I’m employing every available resource. I’ll get it done.”
14
Three days later, Bianca stepped off the jetfoil and walked into Macau’s crowded Cotai Terminal. There was no sight line for a sniper inside the terminal, and it was doubtful that any seasoned operative would risk using a pistol where he would be sure to be caught, but another kind of attack—by, say, knife or even blow-dart—wasn’t out of the question even with the amount of security present in the warehouse-like building. Shielded by oversize sunglasses, her eyes were constantly on the move, assessing possible threats. The tension in her shoulders from semiexpecting an attempt on her life at any moment was giving her a stiff neck. The chin-length brown wig she was wearing had long, uneven bangs and provided an acceptable degree of coverage from the overhead cameras, but it also gripped her head like a vise. She wasn’t prone to headaches, but she was getting one.
Takeaway: trying to stay alive was no walk in the park.
She’d embarked from the Hong Kong–Macau Ferry Terminal, having landed at Hong Kong International Airport earlier in the day. The ride across the Pearl River Delta had taken about fifty-five minutes. It was a little blustery, but the temperature was a mild 63 degrees Fahrenheit and there was no rain. A thin golden haze hung over the Macau Peninsula, appropriate considering its status as the number one gambling destination in the world. That the haze was actually smog and the golden color was due to the setting sun hitting it only slightly diminished its dazzling effect.
The modern city with its skyline of many high-rises and the towering, needle-topped monolith that was Macau Tower felt familiar, if not precisely welcoming. She’d visited often over the years. This time she’d spent the better part of two days getting there. To be safe, she’d chosen to travel by a circuitous route, and in the process she’d lost a day. In Savannah it would be 7:19 p.m. on Monday. In Macau it was 7:19 a.m. on Tuesday. The meeting with Mason was scheduled for midnight the following day.
Doc was with her, but not by her choice. He’d been sitting in her hallway with his duffel bag when she’d left her condo at 4:00 a.m. Sunday, and flatly refused to let her go without him.
“You might need backup,” he’d insisted after she’d ordered him to get lost as he followed her down the stairs to her car. “You know, in case you get—” his voice dropped to an ominous whisper “—attacked.”
“What are you going to do, spam them to death?”
“Hey, I can do things—” he was starting to huff and puff as they reached the fourth floor, making his words come out in uneven bursts “—other things. Not just computer stuff.” They reached the parking garage. He took a deep, wheezy breath and continued, “I can use a gun.”
Bianca made a rude sound. “God help us both if our lives ever depend on that.”
“Not...nice.” He was still wheezing as they reached her car. Bianca was distracted, but not so distracted that she wasn’t busy checking out the parking garage for possible assailants. Her roller bag was already in the trunk, carried down the night before so that she wouldn’t have to make an ungodly racket on the stairs at four in the morning. “I can be a lookout, okay? Or maybe you’ll need somebody to be the muscle.”
She made another rude sound. “Right. Forget it.”
Dropping to a prone position, she looked under the car. She wasn’t expecting to find one, but—bombs happen.
“You doing push-ups now?” Doc asked in a surprised tone above her.
She rolled her eyes and got to her feet to frown at him. “I appreciate the thought, I really do,” she told him. “Your loyalty means a lot. But these are serious people, and they’re seriously out to kill me. If you’re with me, they won’t hesitate to kill you, too.”
Doc shrugged. “Hey, we all have to die sometime, right? But maybe if I’m with you we can both hold it off a little longer, you know what I mean?”
The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller Page 14
