by James Lepore
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“We have been watching two Russian couples who are here on work visas.”
“Why?”
“We don’t think they are Russian.”
“Why?”
“We profile, and we have a facial scanner at the airport that tells us generally where people have their roots. Their blood roots.”
“Did they come up as Chechan?”
“Yes.”
“Why are they here?”
“They are members of Russia’s delegation to the UN’s Human Rights Council. The fall council session is underway here.”
“What have they been doing?”
“Nothing. Working, having dinner out.”
“Visitors?”
“They live in a high-rise, so no. We have a few pictures of them out with friends. I’ll send them to you.”
“What about the street entrance, the lobby, the elevators?”
“Nothing. We have lots of pictures, which we’ve run through our computers as well as Europol’s, but no matches, no one on our radar or even close.”
“I’d like the whole file.”
“Of course.” Kovarik nodded to his assistant, who nodded back.
Chris had risen early to swim in the penthouse’s pool, first calling Max to arrange this meeting with Stefan Kovarik, who was ostensibly the owner of an English language school in the office building behind the Europa, but in reality worked for SIS, the Czech equivalent of the CIA. His associate, a teacher at the school, had just swept the penthouse for bugs. Chris was dressed casually, in tan slacks and a lightweight navy blue sweater over a snow-white collared shirt. His black hair was still wet from his swim and shower, a morning ritual, an ablution of sorts that he tried to perform wherever he was in the world.
They were sitting, Chris and Max facing Kovarik and his assistant, in a quiet room off of Chris’s study that had a view straight down the café- and hotel-lined Vaclavske Namesti to the Wenceslas Monument and the National Museum. The famous square and the broad avenue were nearly empty. A lone street cleaner and a couple of waiters setting outdoor tables for early coffee drinkers and tourists were going about their business, their deliberate movements accentuating rather than marring the stillness. In the pink early morning air, there hovered the spirits—their presence felt by all Czechs as a chill down the spine—of the crowds of people that had animated, and immortalized, the square with cries of freedom in November, 1989.
“Is anything happening in the square on the eleventh?” Chris asked.
“The national museum has been closed,” Kovarik replied, “undergoing an extensive renovation. The ribbon-cutting for the reopening is that day and there is an American exhibition that will debut.”
“What time?”
“One p.m.”
“Who will cut the ribbon?”
“President Klaus. I believe Mrs. Clinton will be present.”
All were silent as this sunk in.
“What exactly is the intelligence that the Russians have?” Kovarik asked.
“I don’t know,” Chris replied. “I was told that when I arrived in Prague I was to call a certain number to arrange a meeting.”
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I have been invited to a reception for the new Iranian ambassador at the Russian Embassy on Friday night. I assume someone will approach me.”
“The Jiri Popper House,” Kovarik said. “His daughter is suing to get it back.”
“I wish her luck,” Chris said. He knew the history of Jiri Popper, the wealthy Jewish businessman, whose elegant mansion in the leafy Bubenic section of Prague had been confiscated by the Germans in the war and the Russians afterward. He had met Popper’s daughter, Lisbeth, at a reception in New York in 2009 and later donated to her legal fund.
“Tell me, Mr. Massi,” Kovarik went on, “on what basis would you be invited to this reception?”
“I deliver crude oil all over the Mediterranean. I have Russian clients.”
Kovarik, with short sandy hair, young for a man in such a position, no more than thirty-five, turned to his left to look down at Wenceslas Square. Turning back, he pulled a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter from a front pocket of his sport jacket. “May I?”
“Yes, be my guest,” Chris answered.
The Czech intelligence agent tapped a cigarette from the pack, a Murad, with thin blue stripes above the filter, lit it, inhaled, and blew out the chalky gray smoke. “I do not understand,” he said, “why the Kremlin feels the need for you to be involved.”
“I don’t either,” Chris said, “but I plan on finding out.”
“Shall I contact them?”
“No, I suggest we wait.”
“Have you dealt with the Russians on this level?” Kovarik asked.
“No.”
“Do they have a reason to want to harm you?”
“Not that I know of.”
Neither of these answers was true, but Chris did not want Kovarik to know more about him than was absolutely necessary. He knew more than enough already.
“I take it you’ve done this kind of thing before, Mr. Massi.”
“I have.”
“I can’t help you inside the Russian embassy.”
“Max will be with me.”
“Does it occur to you that you are the target? Or that you are being set up for something?”
“Yes.”
“But you have no idea why.”
“Correct.”
“Of course I don’t believe you.”
“I understand. It is your job to distrust people.”
“And to protect my country. If you live through your evening at the Popper House…”
“Yes?”
“You must report directly to me. I am now responsible for this operation.”
“Of course.”
“You will have no choice in the matter. I say this with respect.”
“I understand. Will you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Keep an eye on Dravic. Tell me where he’s staying.”
Kovarik thought this over, then nodded, and said, “Yes, of course.”
“Thank you,” Chris said. “Please keep Max informed.”
The Czech intelligence agent nodded again, then said, “In the meantime I am going to pick up our Chechan love birds. Time is too short for anything else.”
Chris would have strung out—and intensified—the surveillance, but time was very short. In four days, the American Secretary of State and the Czech president could be killed, on sacred ground no less, with perhaps hundreds of collateral losses, a dagger plunged into the heart of Prague, of the Czech people. If the Chechan couples were professionals, it could take several days—possibly longer, possibly never—to get any useful information out of them. “Show them Dravic’s picture,” Chris said.
“I will, and I will run it through our system. Have you?”
“Yes. Nothing.”
“Until now.”
“Yes,” Chris said, “until now.”
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
“I don’t see anything,” Max French said.
“I don’t either,” Chris Massi replied.
Chris had bid Max stay behind after Kovarik and his assistant left. They were still in the same chairs, but leaning over the coffee table in front of them, staring at another eight-by-ten photograph of Marko Dravic in the lounge of the National Hotel in Moscow. On the right side of this picture was a slightly blurry woman in a black, strapless cocktail dress turning a corner. Just half of her appeared, the rear right. Her black hair was worn up, revealing a diamond earring on her right ear and the back of a glittering diamond necklace at her throat. Max had a magnifying glas
s in his hand, which he now put down. “That doesn’t mean it’s not there,” he said. “But not to worry, the Company could tell us in a few seconds.”
“I don’t want them involved.”
“Why? If she’s GRU or SVR, they’ll have a file on her, or they’ll open one.”
“Talk to Matt. Ask him to get his friend Diego Lopez to do it.”
“Chris…”
“They’ll ruin her.”
“You have other ideas.”
“I do.”
“Like what?”
“That will be up to her.”
Max nodded.
“Offer to help with the Chechans’s interrogation,” Chris said.
“Don’t insist?”
“No. I’ve insulted Kovarik enough. They’re good at it anyway, better than us maybe.”
“Anything else?”
“Send Kovarik’s surveillance file to Costa. There may be a match. He has the Moscow pictures and the boat pictures.”
“Do you want a copy?”
“Yes, and you look at it carefully, too.”
“You put a GPS tag on Dravic’s yacht?”
“Yes, it’s tagged. Costa’s people will watch him on shore.”
“Someday you’ll have to tell me about Costa. There’s nothing he can’t do or get done.”
Chris smiled, remembering the night in Athens seven years ago, Costa lying in a gutter, two men in leather jackets standing over him, pistols pointed at his head. “I will,” Chris said, “when you need to know. Just like you’ll tell me about yourself, the real Max French, when I need to know.”
Now Max smiled, thinking of his secrets, including the pictures in his wallet. “I’ve been out with Tess,” he said, pausing just a beat before continuing, “walking around Prague. She’s restless, and nervous about Arizona.”
“What would you do if it were your daughter?” Chris asked.
“I’d have killed Dravic.”
Chris did not respond.
“But I assume,” said Max.
“Assume what?”
“That you’re waiting.”
“Yes, I’m waiting. I’d like to find out who he works for first, who started all this, who had me in mind, and why. Then I’ll take care Mr. Dravic, or you will for me.”
31.
Prague, September 3, 2012, 8:00 a.m.
“Do you know what quantum entanglement encryption is, Matt?” Max French asked.
“No.”
“It’s an encryption system based on quantum mechanics.”
“Quantum mechanics?”
“Do you know what that is?”
“It’s a mathematical description of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter.”
“Christ, you do know.”
“It’s the end of the line for physics, Max. After quantum mechanics there’s God, and scientists don’t want to go there. They’d go insane.”
“Your father said you were smart.”
“Did he?”
“He said you were smart and dumb at the same time, like he was at your age.”
“I guess that’s a compliment.”
“It is, believe me. Here, go to this website.” Max handed Matt a small piece of notepaper with a web address and a password written on it. “Put in the password. Download the software. Then send your friend Diego the image. There’s a phone app there too. Download it.”
“How does it work?”
“If there’s an auditor, he gets some kind of believable spam, like a recipe for bread or a picture of a Maserati.”
“Is there a footprint? I mean Diego…”
“No, no cyber trail. It’s completely locked down. It’s all we use, email and cell phone, totally secure.”
“If there’s an auditor, can you track him?”
“No but we’re working on it.”
“Okay. Where’s the image?”
“Here.” Max handed Matt a CD.
“And where exactly is this birthmark?”
“Her right shoulder.”
“OK.”
“Time is short, Matt.”
Matt nodded and watched Max let himself out of the hotel room. Then he slipped the CD into his laptop and opened the photograph. As he was looking at it, Anna, naked, with a towel on her head, came out of the bathroom and peered over his shoulder.
“You can’t see her face,” she said.
“No.”
“Who is the man?”
“His name is Marko Dravic. He’s the one who kidnapped Tess. But it’s the woman that’s important.”
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Anna woke up with a start that night. She didn’t know why. Had she been dreaming?
She and Matt and Tess were staying in a suite on the same floor as Chris Massi’s penthouse at the Europa. It had the same view as the penthouse. She went to the window and pulled the curtains open and looked down at Prague. Yes, she had been dreaming—the same recurring dream of her father standing in the snow, ax in hand, looking up at her as she stood at her bedroom window. The same rush of fear that always woke her up. But tonight Mr. Blond Man appeared for the first time ever, his face clear and bright and hard as stone in the winter morning sunlight, her first dream ever of him.
She gazed at the lights of Prague. She had been right. He was down there someplace, someplace close. She returned to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Matt,” she said, shaking him, knowing now why Joseph Massi, Sr. had chosen Wall Storage to hide his two million dollars, why she had married Skip Cavanagh, why she had shot him, why she had returned to Prague. Matt turned toward her and looked at her.
“What?” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I’m okay.”
“What is it?”
“I have to speak to your father.”
32.
Prague, September 4, 2012, 6:00 a.m.
The eight men who entered the lobby of the Vinice Residence Towers on Ruska Street looked and acted like commercial air conditioning servicemen. BUDOVICE HVAC was emblazoned in flowing script above the pocket of their navy blue work shirts, and they arrived in bright white vans with the same markings on all sides. As a precaution, earlier that morning, one of them made his way to the roof of the twenty-five story building and disabled the three commercial air handlers that pumped cold or hot air into the tower’s two hundred apartments.
The doorman had been told to come in late, the lobby was empty and the ride on the elevator was uneventful. On the way up they pulled their Glock 22s from their tool bags and screwed on silencers. On the twentieth floor, four went to apartment 210 and four to 214. Both doors blew up from within when they shot at the locks, killing four of the servicemen, two at each door. A few minutes passed while the survivors called for help and removed the bodies of their colleagues. When they entered the apartments, they found a man and a woman dead in each one. Small leather pouches worn on the necks of each gave off a bitter almond smell and autopsies done later confirmed death from cyanide poisoning.
33.
Prague, September 4, 2012, 5:00 p.m.
“I talked to Kovarik,” Max said. “He thinks they kept the doors rigged whenever they were home.”
“That’s a lot of trouble.”
“They’d rather be dead than tortured.”
“Any matches anywhere?” Chris asked.
“One print on one finger matched with an Iranian who had been at Gitmo and released. The other three Kovarik is pretty sure were Caucasus Emirate people.”
“Any intel?” Chris said. “There must have been computers, cell phones.”
“The cell phones and emails they had been surveilling all along,” Max replied. “They’re opening up the devices now. They don’t expect to find much.”
“What’s Kovarik’s take
?”
“He thinks the operation will be aborted.”
“Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Max answered. “Kovarik has let it out that there was a survivor. The thinking is, if they tried to use a new team, the operation could still be traced to its source through him. They can’t take that risk, the puppeteers.”
“That makes sense, if this was routine insanity.”
“You don’t think it is?”
“No. Getting me involved makes it different.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Max said. “Kovarik has no other leads.”
“I assume the security at the ribbon cutting will be at a very high level.”
“Are you kidding?” Max replied. “Crazy high. I mean, Hillary Clinton?”
“There’s no one else in the city that they know of?”
“No. No leads.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”
“They’re gone by now.”
Chris and Max were in the penthouse’s living room, sipping coffee. Sunlight was beginning to stream in through the wall-to-ceiling windows behind them, Prague to awaken to another day. On the glass table, next to the silver coffee service, lay an eight-by-ten color photograph of a woman’s shoulder. Max picked it up. “What about her?” he said.
“I’m seeing her later. We’re having dinner.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“Double agents are a tricky business, Chris. But you know that.”
“I do, but I can’t pass up the opportunity. And her mission will be very narrowly defined.”
“What?”
“To find one man for me who I believe is embedded somewhere in the Kremlin.”
34.
Prague, September 4, 2012, 10:00 p.m.
“Nicolei was disappointed he was not invited. He finds you fascinating.”
“I needed to speak to you alone, but he actually can help us.”
“Help us?”
