by Mark Greaney
If this had been anywhere else Jack would have thought someone had just tried to kill him, but this was Rome, the most dangerous city in Europe for pedestrians. This wasn’t an assassination attempt; it was just some asshole who didn’t know how to drive.
And this town was full of them.
“Son of a bitch,” Jack muttered under his breath, but he didn’t yell. OPSEC demanded he not reveal himself as American in the field unless it was necessary to do so.
He started walking again, and he thought about something he read when he was doing research for his work trip. A writer talking about the poor drivers in the Italian capital had remarked that Romans park their cars the way he would park his car if he had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on his lap.
Jack thought that line was as true as anything he’d ever read, and he wondered if Gerry would give him hazardous-duty pay for living here in central Rome for the month.
He smiled at his own joke—working for The Campus meant every day involved hazardous duty, and nobody got a bonus for danger.
He crossed over the Ponte Regina Margherita and ducked into a butcher shop he had noticed earlier in the week. He used his pidgin Italian to pick up a pair of fat rib eyes, cut to order by the owner himself. His mouth watered while the steaks were wrapped in paper, and after leaving the little shop he began to pick up the pace so he could hurry home, careful to keep a close eye on the motorists around him. It was nearly four p.m. and he imagined they wouldn’t eat for another three hours or so, but like all good things, he knew these steaks would be worth the wait.
Jack’s eyes roamed constantly while he thought. It was on probably the fiftieth such quick scan of the day, just before reaching the corner of Ferdinando di Savoia and Maria Adelaide, when he glanced at the reflection in a passing bus and noticed a man behind him in a leather jacket with his long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. The man wasn’t looking right at Jack, but something seemed familiar about him. Jack wasn’t certain he’d seen this person before—central Rome was full of men, many had long hair, and this guy didn’t look or act different from the norm—but something inside Jack triggered when he noticed the man.
Jack had long ago learned that the moment you think there is any chance whatsoever that someone might be following you, suddenly everyone looks suspicious. He had been living with this phenomenon for years, and over time he had trained himself to keep a cool head and a dispassionate, analytic eye scanning the world around him. He saw no one else in the area who piqued his senses, so he simply filed the man’s appearance in his mental database and kept walking.
But by the time he reached the large, open Piazza del Popolo, he was convinced something was wrong. He’d slowed down significantly a block before so he could window-shop. This wasn’t a countersurveillance ruse—a magnificent Breitling watch really did catch his eye in a shop window, and although he wouldn’t let himself go in and inquire as to the price, neither could he tear his eyes away from the big chronograph for nearly a minute.
When he made his way into the piazza a few moments later he glanced into the glass of another passing car and realized Mr. Ponytail was still behind him, at the exact same distance he was before.
Either this guy had managed to stumble across a distraction that lasted exactly as long as Jack had been looking at the watch, or else the man slowed down or stopped so that he did not overtake Ryan on the sidewalk.
Suddenly Jack knew he was being tailed. He had noticed during his last reflection check that the man had a small backpack over one shoulder, and he wondered what was inside.
Jack crossed the street and entered the piazza. A stage was being erected in the center—he assumed there would be some sort of open-air concert here this evening—but for now it was easy to walk across the cobblestones among the small crowd milling about.
Now everyone did look suspicious. A man sweeping the piazza, a young woman sitting on a scooter and talking on her cell phone, an ice cream vendor standing behind his cart and gazing Jack’s way.
Jack picked up the pace for a moment, then turned suddenly at another vendor’s cart and purchased a bottle of water. While he fished a few euro coins out of his pocket he glanced back to his left and saw Ponytail tying his shoe, his foot propped up on an iron bench.
Yep, he was most definitely a follower, and not much of one at that. It looked to Ryan as if this guy had trained in surveillance by watching shitty made-for-television movies.
Ryan thought if this guy was part of a crew, he was either the weakest link or else they would all be as obvious as he was. As he began to walk away from the vendor cart, sipping his bottled water, Jack scanned the crowd more intently, all the way south across the Piazza del Popolo.
It was a three-minute walk, his wrapped steaks in hand, and through it all Jack ID’d no one else who appeared to be interested in him.
He chanced a quick look behind him as he tossed the empty water bottle into the trash. Ponytail was still there, seventy-five feet or so back, and he looked away as Jack turned in his direction.
Jack’s body tensed, and his mind began working on the situation. He’d been compromised, and that was bad, but he was too in-the-moment to think of the ramifications this surveillance had on his operation at this point. Now it was just about slipping this character and getting back to the apartment.
He’d work out his next move after that.
It occurred to Jack that the best way to shake this incompetent flunky, if he was in fact alone, was to simply climb into a cab. Ponytail probably didn’t have wheels close by, he would have no way of knowing that Jack would be heading to the Popolo, so the likelihood that he’d staged a vehicle right here was next to none.
Ryan walked to the curb of the street ringing the piazza, watched the cavalcade of small Italian cars whip around, each driver seeming to have his own idea about both the speed limit and the location of the lane markers, and he picked out a taxi approaching in the closest lane. He waited until it was a reasonable distance away at the speed it was traveling, then he held out his hand.
The cab driver whipped his little Fiat over to the curb and came to a stop. Behind him scooters and cars slammed on their brakes.
Jack jumped into the back and the cab lurched forward again.
• • •
Chavez and Caruso had finished a meal of schnitzel, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes, washing it all down with a couple of beers. There was no rule about drinking on the job at The Campus; the operatives were supposed to maintain their cover for status and cover for action at all times, and sometimes that meant downing a drink or two while working surveillance. It was part of adapting to the surroundings, and while the men knew better than to overindulge, they also knew better than to draw attention to themselves.
While they sat, Dom kept an eye out through the doors to the compartment containing Morozov and the young brunette female he seemed to be chaperoning into Germany. She’d made one run to the bathroom and Caruso had taken a picture of her. He’d sent it to The Campus so the analysts could run it through facial recognition, but she didn’t turn up in any of the criminal databases.
Caruso and Chavez were talking over their surveillance options for when they arrived in Berlin when the train passed out of Poland and into Germany at the town of Frankfurt an der Oder. There was no scheduled stop here at the border; both Germany and Poland were in Europe’s Schengen Area, a collection of twenty-six nations with common visa requirements and no passport controls between the nations.
So the two Americans looked out the window in surprise when the train began to slow.
Ding went to the counter to order a coffee while a voice over the train’s PA system, broadcast in several languages, announced that German customs police would be making a quick pass through the train with dogs.
When he sat back down with his coffee, Dom said, “Must be because of the Lithuania thing.”
“Right,” agreed Chavez. “They don’t know how much C-4 those ecoterrorists used to blow up that ship. Might be enough left over to take down the Reichstag or something.”
Here in the dining car, Caruso was seated facing the first-class area, and back over Chavez’s left shoulder he had a clear view of the door to Morozov’s compartment, plus their own compartment farther on. He saw no activity from Morozov or the girl. Over Dom’s right shoulder Ding could see into the open second-class cabin. There, many members of the Ukrainian soccer team had gotten up to look out the window, and once the train came to a full stop, six officers in the Bundespolizei, the German Federal Police, entered with two Belgian Malinois on leashes. One of the dog handlers and two officers made a right, deeper into the train, and the other three turned toward the forward three cars. Quickly Chavez realized these were not customs officers, as the train conductor said; nor were they just making a simple pass down the length of the train. Instead, they were taking their time, asking to see everyone’s passport.
Chavez said, “They are doing a full immigration check.”
The train began to roll again.
Caruso chuckled. “I hope Morozov has his papers in order. It would be a shame to see him frog-marched out of here.”
Chavez smiled, too, but not for long. “Hey, are these Ukrainians starting to look a little squirrelly to you?”
Caruso turned to look back over his shoulder, and he saw what Chavez noticed. Several members of the soccer team, including one of the coaches, were constantly looking back over their shoulders at the three approaching officers. “Yeah,” he said. “These guys have something to hide.”
But when the police arrived at them, one of the coaches pulled a stack of passports out of a vinyl messenger bag and handed them over to the officers. One man looked them over quickly while the dogs sniffed around the young men. Both Dom and Ding saw continued evidence of nervousness in the players, but after matching each passport with a face, the Bundespolizei officer handed the documents back to the coach of the team, and the three moved on toward the dining car.
Caruso said, “Wonder if they have performance enhancers in their luggage in the racks above them. They were scared they’d get searched.”
Chavez said, “They are amateurs. It’s probably weed.”
The two Campus operatives produced their documents when the trio of armed officers arrived at their table. Dom noticed one of the men carried an HK MP5 submachine gun on his chest, and all three, including the female dog handler, wore big Glock 17 pistols on their belts in retention holsters.
“Gibt es ein Problem?” Chavez asked the officers. Is there a problem?
“Not at all,” the female officer replied in English, after their documents were returned to them.
Chavez had hoped for a little more information, but he wasn’t surprised the German police weren’t terribly forthcoming with an explanation about what was going on.
The three cops and their dog moved through the vestibule and into first class, and now Caruso focused on Morozov’s compartment, visible through the glass window in the vestibule doors. When the police arrived they opened the door and stood in the hall outside the compartment. The dog sniffed around inside for a moment, then returned; he seemed utterly uninterested in his work and ready to move on. Caruso could see the passports the two inside the compartment handed over to the police. They were both burgundy in color, which meant they could have been Russian, but there were also lots of other countries, even here in Europe, that used the same color.
One of the passports was returned quickly, but the other was checked for a long time. Caruso slowly got the impression that something wasn’t right. Dom could tell one of the three officers was asking a series of questions to one of the people in the compartment, presumably the Russian spy.
Chavez was facing the opposite direction, so Caruso kept him informed. “Looks like Morozov is getting the third degree.”
Chavez did not look back. “That’s weird. You’d think the FSB could at least send their man out into the field with clean papers.”
“Dumbasses,” Dom muttered with a little grin.
“Don’t get too excited, ’mano. If they take him off the train, we just wasted a trip.”
“We can follow the girl.”
Chavez shrugged. For all he knew this was Morozov’s daughter and they were on their way for a vacation in the art galleries of Berlin.
A minute later the other three police and their dog passed through the dining car, went through the vestibule to first class, and joined the others, all standing in the hall.
“Damn,” Caruso said now. “They are taking him off.” He could see the police motion for someone to come out of the compartment, and he assumed it was the Russian spy. But to his surprise he saw the brunette female escorted out of the little room.
For a moment Caruso caught a glimpse of Morozov as he leaned out of the compartment, trying to talk to the police, but they weren’t listening to him. Instead, they began walking the girl toward the exit of the first-class cabin. One of the cops pulled out his radio, presumably to order the conductor to stop at the next station.
Morozov turned and walked toward Dom and Ding, passing them in the dining car without a glance. Dom could see an intensity on the man’s face that worried him.
“Where’s he going?” Chavez asked.
He got his answer quickly. The Russian FSB man rushed into the second-class cabin, walked right up to the coach of the soccer team, and leaned in close to his ear.
Chavez said, “Oh shit. What does this mean?”
Caruso turned and his eyes went wide. “I guess it means the amateur soccer team is a professional security team, and Morozov has himself a dozen goons.”
The soccer team stood as one and began to reach for their luggage, which was all positioned on the racks high above their heads. Morozov moved back through the dining car, passed Dom and Ding again without looking at them, and continued into his compartment, where he closed the door. The six police farther down the car, standing around the woman by the exit, didn’t even notice he’d left his compartment.
Dom saw all this, but Ding wasn’t looking. Instead, he had his eyes on the Ukrainians. They’d all slung bags over their shoulders, placed their hands inside the unzipped bags, and they were flooding toward the dining car.
Chavez said, “These dudes are packing. They are going to try to get the girl back.”
Caruso said, “And we’re unarmed.”
Chavez lifted a dirty steak knife off the table and hid it under the cuff of his suit coat.
Caruso gave Chavez a look. “You’re going to engage a dozen armed dudes with a steak knife?”
“No. I’m going to engage one armed dude with a steak knife, and then I’m going to engage eleven armed dudes with a gun.”
Dom grabbed his own knife, wiped some sauce from it with his napkin, and hid it in the cuff of his jacket.
7
Domingo Chavez knew he wasn’t breaching his cover by staring at the men in black storming up through the dining car toward the police. It would have looked completely inauthentic to continue drinking his coffee with his eyes on his empty lunch plate while a dozen men with intense faces marched by in single file, every one of them holding something hidden inside a gym bag. So he stared, tried to ID who they were and how far they were willing to go with this. Quick eye contact with Dom, then an almost imperceptible nod, passed on the message that these men were the real deal; they looked willing to kill some police to keep this mystery woman out of the hands of German authorities, and Dom and Ding had to keep this from happening.
After the first ten men passed the table, then went through the vestibule door, the last two turned around in the dining car by the door, drew black automatic pistols from their bags, and covered the dining car and second-class car beyond. This put their eyes right
on Dom and Ding, a dozen feet ahead of them on their right. They held their guns low in front of their bodies.
Chavez instantly realized these men were well trained, otherwise all dozen would have just attacked the known threat, and they wouldn’t have set up a rear guard for any other potential threats.
Still, both Caruso and Chavez saw that they were within a dozen feet of the pair of armed men, close enough to engage. They just needed to act with speed, surprise, and violence of action, and they could even the odds of this one-sided contest.
As the door to the vestibule between the dining car and the first-class car closed, Dom raised his hands and began to stand in the aisle, drawing the attention of both men.
“Don’t shoot! Just tell us what is going—”
Ding Chavez spun low out of the chair with his coffee cup in his hand and flicked the steaming liquid out and up toward the faces of the men. He took one step to square his body with the gunmen standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the door, and he launched himself forward. Both pistols rose toward the motion, but the hot coffee in their eyes caused them to flinch and recoil before they could aim. Chavez slammed into the midsections of both men, sending them back hard onto the floor. One man banged his head against the door and dropped his pistol, and the other man’s gun hand was pushed high to his right by Chavez’s left shoulder. A shot rang out in his first-class cabin just as Caruso arrived, leaping through the air over Chavez’s prostrate form, then landing, his knees slamming onto the chests of both men. One man drew a folding knife from the pocket of his tracksuit and clicked it open, but Ding stabbed him through the heart with his steak knife, ending him instantly. The second man still had his pistol in his hand, but a hailstorm of punches from Dom onto the man’s nose and jaw rendered him senseless quickly.
By then, sustained gunfire from first class shattered the glass window of the vestibule door just over both Americans’ heads.
