Gun Metal Heart

by Dana Haynes

  Daria took several shots of the Aussies. The girl giggled and thanked Daria, and they insisted on getting her photo, too. Daria borrowed the girl’s large sunglasses and mugged wildly, so even if the vacation photos found their way into the hands of a border guard, Daria wouldn’t look terribly much like Daria.

  While flirting into the camera, cheek to cheek with a surfer boy with sun-dyed blond hair, Daria caught sight of the remnants of a large, two-block-long office building. It was six or seven stories high and designed with an austere, serious façade. Part of the surface remained but part had been sheared off and the upper floors demolished. It existed on both the north and south sides of a street with an articulated red trolley car running beneath what looked like the gaping maw of a former second-story skybridge, now missing. The grounds around the building were blocked off with tall, permanent walls, well graffitied.

  Large, round holes appeared on the fourth floor of the building.

  A memory clicked into place.

  The Australian girl brushed long dishwater dreadlocks over her shoulder and caught Daria’s glance. “What’s that?”

  Daria raked the oversized sunglasses up into her hair. She remembered her Midwestern accent. “The old Chinese embassy.”

  The younger guy, dark enough to be Aboriginal, snapped a gum bubble. “What happened to it, d’you think?”

  “Wow. I don’t know,” Daria said, thinking, Five American JDAM missiles. Fired from a very long way away and hitting a perfect bull’s-eye.

  She remembered the Americans blasting the Chinese embassy during the 1990s, and then apologizing over and over again for the obvious targeting error. We hit the Chinese? The American State Department had replied. Holy cow! Who knew?

  The airstrike had been something of a legend in Israeli intelligence circles. Everyone knew the Chinese were providing signal intelligence to Serbian paramilitary groups. And everyone knew that signal intelligence had dried up right after the “accidental” airstrike. The Americans had publicly wrung their hands in despair and high-fived each other in private.

  A jeep pulled up, and a soldier in green camouflage fatigues, a soft beret, and a white holster belt stepped out and moved directly between the Australians and the remains of the bombed-out embassy building. He did not smile. “Hallo. Are tourists? May I help?”

  Daria smiled shyly and stayed clustered with her new friends. She lowered the borrowed shades as she checked out the man’s PK machine gun. It was a Bulgarian Arsenal variant, an M6-1M. Inexpensive, but a fairly decent machine gun.

  The soldier was unhappy to see tourists snapping pictures of the embassy. The ruined building hadn’t been torn down after all these years in order to remind lawmakers of Western aggression. Not as a tourist stop.

  The blond surfer lad apologized and the soldier glowered but returned to his jeep. Daria reached for the sunglasses, but the girl snapped a picture of her before she could remove them.

  “They’re you,” she said, and popped a bright pink bubble with her gum. “Keep ’em.”

  The casual graciousness was touching. “I can’t. Thanks.”

  The blond boy tucked an arm into Daria’s. “Can’t turn down a gift. It’s bad luck, luv. Keep ’em.” He turned to the others. “Who wants beer?”

  The girl cheered.

  Daria hugged them good-bye and thanked the girl for the glasses. She sidled away, one eye still on the jeep, as well as on the soldiers she’d seen on roving patrol. The blocks around Parliament were teeming with military. That made an armed assault on government row unlikely.

  But the jagged round holes in the old and abandoned embassy were mute testimony to the power of an airstrike.

  * * *

  Two blocks south, John and Diego stood in front of the current U.S. embassy building. It occupied an entire block and looked more Victorian than John had anticipated. Diego turned to leave. He had no intention of entering this or any other government building.

  John checked in at the U.S. marine pillbox in the turnaround in front of the building, then was escorted inside. His false passport once again passed muster.

  The building was stout and had a tall, green, mansard roof, projected dormer windows, and decorative iron trim. John’s trained eye could locate the modern security features, such as the hydraulic rampart that could rise and block traffic and the concealed CCTV cameras.

  John asked to see Jay Kent and was told to wait amid the Serbians and Americans similarly waiting on church pew–style benches. The main room of the lobby maintained the building’s turn-of-the-century feel, with morbidly dark wood paneling on the lower six feet of wall and mottled cream paint above.

  John sat. Twenty minutes later a man with tight, curly brown hair, about John’s age, appeared. He wore a sedate tie, chinos, and a pale blue shirt. John smiled. Jay Kent had worn chinos and a pale blue shirt to school every day when they’d studied law together at Harvard.

  Kent held a Post-it note and peered around the waiting room. John rose and entered his line of sight.

  “Excuse … hey! John Broom! Whoa, dude!”

  Jay Kent pumped his hand.

  “Wow, man. Welcome to Serbia. I didn’t know … you guys were in town.”

  He meant CIA. Kent had lost track of John’s career, and John thought maybe he could use that.

  “We’re not. And I’m the guy you’re looking for.” He nodded to the Post-it note with the false name.

  Kent glanced at the note, then smiled. “Ah. Got it! Okay. C’mon back, amigo.”

  The offices in back were small and poorly ventilated. Jay Kent was the embassy public affairs counselor, a relatively low-level posting. He moved a video camera and several file folders out of a chair and nodded for John to sit. A cheap plastic fan was clipped to the office’s disheveled bookshelf and shoved warm, moist air around.

  “We don’t have a Company representative,” Kent apologized. “If you need a secure room, we’ll find you something.”

  John had known that there was no permanent CIA presence in the Belgrade embassy. The upper half of the Balkan peninsula was considered a quiet spot on earth, espionage-wise.

  They talked about Harvard Law a bit. John discovered that in the six or seven years since they’d seen each other face-to-face, Kent had been married, divorced, and married. He seemed to enjoy the life of a foreign service officer and didn’t sound too eager to move up the ladder.

  John asked about the office staff.

  Kent picked up a used baseball. He’d pitched in high school, and as an undergraduate, and he often fiddled absentmindedly with a baseball when he was thinking. He said, “We’re between ambassadors.”

  “Who’s deputy chief of mission?”

  “Allison Duffy.”

  Johns was mildly surprised. “She’s good. She’s not in Riyadh any more?”

  “No, we stole her away when Prague got our old DCM. You’re right about her: she’s a gamer.”

  He went on to name the USAID director, the chiefs for economics and consular affairs, and the attachés for defense, commerce, and agriculture. John asked about the defense attaché but didn’t recognize the name.

  John went fishing. “Anything big going on around here?”

  “Just the cocktail party. Which, I guess, is why the Company is here.”

  John maintained his poker face. “Tell me about it.”

  Kent focused on achieving a two-finger, split-seam grip on the baseball. He flexed his wrist, as if throwing in slow motion. “Croatia and Montenegro are here. Both foreign ministers. Slovenia arrives in about an hour. Deputy foreign minister. Ah, FYROM’s sending their foreign minister, I think.”

  FYROM was the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, a mouthful that had been negotiated with Greece, which had its own Macedonia.

  John thought about the situation. “So, all foreign ministers or deputies?”

  “No, I think Bosnia is sending a member of Parliament. One of the old guard from Sarajevo. You know how those guys are. They love
their grudges.”

  “Sounds like a big deal.”

  “We’ll have AJ-English taping. And State goes bat-shit crazy whenever they’re around.”

  Al Jazeera had gone from a jihadi-apologist minor cable player a decade earlier to a respected news media outlet. Al Jazeera English was challenging Sky News in Europe and CNN elsewhere. And, of course, the Qatar-based news agency would care about long-latent peace talks that involved Muslims in places like Bosnia and Kosovo.

  John’s mind was racing. “Sure. Who’s hosting from here?”

  “Acting foreign minister.”

  “Petrovic?”

  Kent leaned forward and scanned through a legal pad on his desk. “Ah, yeah. Dragan Petrovic. Newly appointed to the gig.”

  Petrovic was the man they’d been told might have connections to the White Scorpions. “Can I get myself invited to the cocktail party? Without any paper trail, of course.”

  “Of course! Hey, the Harvard Mafia’s gotta be good for something, amigo. You got a suit?”

  “Of course,” John lied.

  They chatted some more about their school days, and about idle gossip in State Department circles. John didn’t like lying to an old acquaintance, and he was beginning to sweat through his T-shirt.

  Kent walked him out and told him the shindig started at 8:00 P.M. John promised to return.

  He wasn’t outside thirty seconds before Diego ambled his way, head down, cowboy hat obscuring his face from the security cameras and Marines.

  They walked a block to a bar and ordered cold beers. The place was a little loud and seemed to cater to Western tourists. It was perfect for a sotto voce conversation. John told him about the cocktail party for high-ranking delegates from all of the former Yugoslavian republics.

  A trio of young Australians occupied the next booth and made enough noise to cover them. Diego leaned closer to John to speak. “Target?”

  “Could be. If the drones are here, and if the White Scorpions are looking for targets, that’s as good as any. More to the point, it’s the kind of thing that would draw Daria’s attention. We might have a chance of hooking up with her, even if the event isn’t a target.”

  One of the Aussies in the next booth hopped up with her knees on her bench and leaned over into John and Diego’s booth. She wore long dreads under a checkered scarf. She pointed to the ketchup bottle on their table. “D’you mind?”

  “Of course.” John handed it to her.

  The girl giggled the way only a well and truly stoned person can giggle in public. She returned to her compatriots.

  John mouthed words silently: I think she likes you!

  Diego flipped him the bird. He changed the subject. “So. Antic, huh?”

  John grinned. “Hmm?”

  The Mexican shrugged. “You said Bosnia’s sending a member of Parliament from Sarajevo. That’s the little dude we met in Sarajevo, right? Zoran Antic?”

  John blinked at the quiet man for a few seconds. Then spoke over the top of his beer, frozen halfway to his lips. “Son of a bitch.”

  Diego let a smile blink across his features but didn’t gloat that he’d made the connection John hadn’t.

  “Let’s just hope Daria’s doing as good as us. Yeah?”

  * * *

  Three blocks away another camouflaged Jeep pulled up to the curb, and a soldier in fatigues and a beret stepped out. He wore a white holster belt and carried a Russian PK machine gun.

  Daria had been walking on the sidewalk, making mental notes of the government buildings.

  This soldier was older than the last one. “Excuse,” he said in English. “May I help you?”

  Daria opted to pick up the Australian accent she’d just heard. “Yeah. Is this city hall?”

  The soldier adjusted the machine gun, which hung from a strap over his shoulder. “No. Is this way.” He pointed.

  Daria turned, noting that this man’s gun was an actual PK, not the cheaper Bulgarian Arsenal knockoff she’d noticed earlier.

  Before that thought had a chance to register, the soldier tucked a Taser hard against her back, just over her kidney. He pulled the trigger and Daria’s legs folded. She was unconscious before she hit the pavement.

  Two more men in fatigues and berets clamored out of the Jeep and picked her up. As they did so, both revealed white scorpion-shaped tattoos on their inner arms.

  Thirty-Three

  No mention of General Howard Cathcart and his special weapons procurement assignment would ever appear in the org charts for the U.S. armed forces. Nor would there be any mention of the budget for the transportation unit, which filed no flight plan, purchased no fuel, landed nowhere, but nonetheless dropped Cathcart off at the Belgrade airport using a civilian aircraft.

  As for the six Special Forces soldiers he brought with him? They were ghosts.

  Cathcart brought the strike team because he estimated the chances that the so-called Major Arcana was setting him up to be approximately 100 percent. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she planned to sell Cathcart the technology that would patch the software glitch that had allowed her to wrest control of the drones in Florence.

  Either she came through, and Cathcart’s men killed her. Or she was the duplicitous thief he assumed, and his team would still kill her.

  Howard Cathcart was ready either way.

  * * *

  Daria awoke in a warehouse. She sat restrained in a metal chair with white plastic flex-cuffs connecting her wrists to the iron arms of the chair and her ankles to the front legs. Her backpack and hoodie rested on a folding card table.

  She blew tendrils of black hair away from her eyes and thought: If you wake up once in a warehouse in bondage, it’s just bad luck. Do it twice and it suggests some lifestyle changes. Three or more, and it’s time to admit you have a problem.

  The tall blonde crouched before her. Behind her, two beefy Slavic men stood. One held a device that looked like a cobbled-together power strip with cables and duct tape.

  The blonde reached out and gently slid a tendril of hair behind Daria’s ear. “Hi!”

  Daria opted to buy time. She spoke in English. “One question.” Her eyes glided down to the woman’s jacket. “Valentino?”

  “Yes!” The blonde squeezed Daria’s thigh. “I got it in Brussels, but on sale for … wait for it … five hundred euros!”

  Daria said, “Oh, my God!”

  “I know! Right?”

  Daria looked down at herself and noted round, white adhesive bandages on the insides of her elbows and the insides of her knees. Beneath the bandages were something the general size and shape of macaroni noodles.

  She tested her wrist restraints. The cuffs were tight enough to hold her but not tight enough to cut off circulation.

  “I’ve longed to meet you, honey bunch. That shit you pulled with the Ulster Irish in Los Angeles? That was golden! Also: Calendar? Wow.”

  The blonde’s intelligence was unsettlingly precise. Daria glanced around the darkened warehouse, trying not to think about the adhesive pads on her elbows and knees.

  “Calendar?”

  Viorica glanced over her shoulder at the Slav hitters. She spoke, but more softly. “He was good. He was my competition. We were always up for the same contracts. Not for nothing, but your putting him out of the game was most appreciated.”

  Daria had learned to pay attention to what people didn’t say just as much as what they did say. It was impressive that Viorica knew about the incidents in Los Angeles and Montana. But they were hardly Daria’s most recent adventure.

  She took a shot in the dark. “And of course you know Asher Sahar.”

  The transformation was dramatic, despite being slow. The blonde’s smile evaporated, the sparkle in those unsettling silver eyes dimmed.

  She reached out and touched Daria’s jaw gently with one knuckle. “Not as well as you,” she whispered.

  It was possible for the strange woman to know that Daria had stopped Asher Sahar’s plot last November. But it wa
s exceedingly unlikely she could have known that Daria and Asher had been orphans together in the Gaza Strip and were the only true family either had ever known.

  The list of people who could have told Viorica all this was short.

  Asher Sahar was on the list.

  A heaviness seemed to invade the woman’s lovely face. Her shoulders slumped under the jacket. But snap! The effect disappeared just like that, like a soap bubble popping or a conjurer’s cards whisked away.

  “Good times!”

  The flex-cuffs around her ankles kept Daria’s legs apart. They also allowed her to raise her legs straight up about six inches. Daria did so now, using her right hand to hitch up her right boot, then her left hand to hitch her left boot. She shook her head, black hair flying. She said, “Do I look all right? This next part’s dramatic, I assume.”

  The blonde levered herself to her full height; considerable in the studded boots with four-inch heels. “Yummy. Kostic?”

  The men behind her were Skorpjo for sure. Both were thick-necked, thick-bellied thugs; soldiers gone to seed. Both wore the white forearm tattoos. One was large and the other was damned large. The first held the cobbled-together power strip. He motioned toward his own elbows, and again Daria was reminded of the round adhesives on her joints.

  “Squibs. Yes?” the mustached man said.

  “Dunno that word, love.”

  Viorica said, “For Christ’s sake, she’s never even seen The Birds. Explain it to her.” She switched to Serbian and turned to the large, laconic man. “Lazarevic, get the other one, please.”

  The silent mammoth rumbled out of the room.

  The man with the mustache sucked down the last of a cigarette, dropped it, and ground it out with his heel. His shirt was flecked with ash. “You enjoy American movies? Bruce Willis, hero, is running. Always. Bad guys fire bullets. But they don’t hit Bruce Willis. They hit walls, they hit street.”

  There was something rehearsed about the speech. Daria paid attention with only a portion of her mind. She also willed herself to forget about the connection between Viorica and Asher. She considered the power strip that had been lashed-up to make a remote control. Getting that out of the big man’s hands seemed like priority number one.