Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  But it was done. He’d gambled—gambled and. . .the result was yet to be seen, he realized, only too well. The dice, still in the air. Yet to land on the table.

  The roulette wheel, still spinning in the hands of the croupier. Fate.

  But he’d bought time, whatever else he’d done. Bought time and sowed suspicion. Marwan’s supplier was dead, and after this—no one else would be doing business with Marwan. If he had even made it off the island alive, Harry thought—realizing that he had no idea if any of them had gotten away.

  Not that it mattered, just now. There would be time enough to concern himself with that later. They would find him, or he would find them. If the police didn’t first.

  He closed his eyes, shutting out the world around him—his fellow commuters—remembering the look on Said’s face as the knife had gone in, burying itself in his flesh. Shock. Pain. Betrayal.

  Agony.

  He removed his right hand from his pocket, staring at the outstretched fingers. Realizing that they were trembling, ever so slightly.

  Get a grip.

  Killing a man was different up close—when your blood was cold, when you could look into his eyes. When you had no other choice, but to do so.

  He hadn’t taken a life in nearly two months—since that dark afternoon, standing in Arthur Colville’s study. Blood and brains dripping off the painting of Trafalgar on the wall.

  Perhaps he had even dared to believe that might be the end. That life, forever behind him—at long last.

  But wherever he went, Death pursued him like a shadow. Echoes of Samuel Han’s voice, that night in Vegas.

  He hadn’t been wrong.

  Harry checked his watch once more. Five minutes. And then he’d be on the bus. Away.

  Buying more time, for himself. And for everyone his young “friends” had intended to harm.

  “Ibrahim!” he heard someone call out—his head snapping up to see Driss hurrying toward him, off the street. The Belgian businesswoman at his side looking up from her phone at the hail.

  It took everything within him to keep his face from betraying him in that moment—his mind warning him of danger. Threat.

  “My brother,” he greeted, embracing his friend fiercely. Drawing him close.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d find you here,” the young man began, the words spilling out of him. Nerves. “Marwan and Yassin, they–”

  Harry cut him off with a look, glancing at the woman before consulting his watch. “The bus will be here in three minutes—there will be time enough to talk when we’re aboard.”

  “A bus—we’re going back to Brussels?”

  “No,” Harry replied, shaking his head. “France.”

  4:03 P.M. British Summer Time

  Trafalgar Square

  London

  “Lord Horatio Nelson,” Alexei Vasiliev intoned solemnly, staring up at the sandstone statue surmounting the column more than fifty meters above him—a representation of the admiral in his Royal Navy uniform, his empty sleeve pinned to the front of his jacket. He didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge the man standing behind him as he continued, “Our man was obsessed with him. England’s one-armed, one-eyed hero. You know, it is said that at the Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson raised his spyglass to his blind eye to defy an order, saying he ‘had a right to be blind sometimes.’ Interesting concept, that. . .a right to be blind. One would think–”

  “I didn’t come here for a history lesson, Alexei Mikhailovich,” the man behind him rasped impatiently. His English, faintly accented—echoes of their mother country in his voice. The Rodina.

  “I know you didn’t, Valeriy,” Alexei replied, turning then, a peculiar smile playing across his thin lips as he faced Valeriy Kudrin, the SVR rezident in London. The summer breeze toying with his silver hair. “Perhaps by the time you are my age, you will have learned that the only effective way to fight one’s enemies is to understand them. And one does not understand a people without learning their history.”

  “You had some reason for requesting this meeting, I trust?” Kudrin went on, as if he hadn’t heard. Or simply refused to, Alexei thought, gazing at the younger man critically. Kudrin was at least twenty years his junior, the next generation of Russian intelligence officer.

  The first too young to have been a part of the service during those dark years at the end of the Cold War.

  And yet here he was—the London rezident. And to the extent that Vasiliev answered to anyone in this country, it was to him.

  He held Kudrin’s gaze for another long moment before nodding. “I met with our asset this morning, in Hampstead Heath.”

  “So I was informed,” the rezident responded, still unsmiling—his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. “What does he want?”

  “A new life,” Vasiliev said, his voice rich with irony. “Safe passage out of the country, to a destination of his choosing. A new identity.”

  Kudrin laughed for the first time, shaking his head. “That’s ridiculous. You told him ‘no’, of course?”

  Another smile.

  “You would so easily throw away a valuable asset, would you, Valera?” Vasiliev asked, purposefully using the diminutive of the man’s name. “There is so very much you have yet to learn. I asked, instead, what he had to offer us.”

  That got Kudrin’s attention.

  “And?” he demanded, visibly biting back his anger at Vasiliev’s insolence.

  “And he’s prepared to give us the UK’s network in Moscow. Nearly three dozen names—names of the men and women who have betrayed the Rodina. If we get him out.”

  “Then let’s get him out.”

  “I have already begun making the arrangements with Moscow,” Vasiliev responded, watching Kudrin’s face fall at the words. You didn’t actually think, Valera, that I was going to allow you to steal the credit for something this big, did you? So young, so foolish. “And they have instructed you to place your personnel at my disposal.”

  “Good,” Kudrin said, mastering himself with an effort. Nearly choking on the sentence which followed. “You have done well, Alexei Mikhailovich. Once we have him out of the UK, we’ll be prepared to shutter British operations in Moscow—permanently. Smert shpionam.”

  Vasiliev smiled, nodding.

  Death to spies. . .

  5:09 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  The United States Embassy

  Paris, France

  “. . .of course, Cara,” Daniel Vukovic responded, his cellphone tucked against his ear as he sifted through the papers on his desk. “I should be home in another hour—those reservations are fine. Yes, it will be good to see Greg and Jess again—it’s been years. That was when we were still living in Herndon, wasn’t it?”

  A ding from his computer struck the station chief’s ear and he shifted the phone to his other hand, listening to his wife absently as he reached over to open the incoming e-mail.

  It was Brunet. There was nothing in the body of the e-mail except a link, to a news article in Dutch. He opened it in his browser, a chill running through his body—recognizing the first word. Liège.

  “I’m going to have to call you back, honey,” he said, cutting his wife off in mid-sentence. “Yes, yes–keep the reservations—I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  He pocketed his cellphone, pasting the news article into Google Translate as he reached for the secure line—dialing a number.

  “What am I looking at here, Anaïs?” he asked when the other end of the line was picked up.

  “There was a shooting earlier this afternoon on the Outremeuse,” she replied, her voice brittle. “It’s an island in the Meuse River, in the heart of Liège. One man is dead—another two are in police custody. Local news is reporting that they are ‘Middle Eastern’.”

  Vukovic swore softly, staring at the windowless wall of his office. This was how it always went.

  Control was a pretense in field operations—an illusion, nothing more. If you believed anything else, you were lying to your
self.

  He took a deep breath.“Do we believe this to be connected to our operation?”

  “We’re reaching out to our counterparts in the VSSE,” Brunet replied, referencing the Belgian security service. “We’ll see what they’re able—or willing–to give us. But the timing is right. We have to assume the worst.”

  The worst. The station chief shook his head. And that was very bad indeed.

  “Then there’s been no contact from LYSANDER?”

  “None.”

  8:05 P.M.

  Residence ULB – Nelson Mandela

  Solbosch Campus, Brussels

  “Leave the apartment—leave Molenbeek at once. We have been compromised. You have to get out.”

  Reza ran his hand anxiously over the bearded lower half of his face, Ibrahim’s words running on repeat through his mind as he paced back and forth on the sidewalk, glancing up at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles’ dormitory rising above him, the rays of the fading sun still glinting off its upper stories.

  Come on, he thought, cursing softly beneath his breath as he checked his phone once again for the fifth time in as many minutes. Where was she?

  There had been genuine alarm in the older man’s voice. Alarm and. . .anger, Reza realized, remembering his own next words. “Yassin—is my brother all right?”

  “Just get out, Reza. Get out now,” had been al-Almani’s only answer—the call ending without another word.

  Panicked, he’d found himself staring at an empty screen—redialing immediately only to hear it ring. And ring. And ring.

  Dead.

  He’d tried Yassin’s mobile then, only to hear it buzzing against the kitchen counter—left behind when he’d departed for Liège.

  No way to contact any of them. Cut off. No way to do anything but run. As Ibrahim had warned.

  But he wouldn’t do so alone.

  He heard the door open behind him, finally—turned to see Nora coming toward him, dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting top, her hijab arranged haphazardly around her head, as if she had thrown it on just before coming out.

  “What’s going on, Reza?” she asked, her face shadowed in the glow of the streetlight above their heads.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed, looking helplessly around him—the cars passing them on the street, headlights washing over the two of them as they stood together in the gathering gloom. “I just know that I need to leave Brussels.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. Now.”

  “Are you in trouble, Reza?”

  “I don’t know,” he said again, honestly enough, taking a step closer to her, wrapping his arm around her waist—pulling her to him. Looking down into her eyes, her lips only inches from his own. “I only know that I want you to come with me. I need you to come with me.”

  “But I can’t do that,” she protested, shaking her head, “I have classes this week—an exam I have to prepare for.”

  “And what will that matter, Nora? What will any of that matter at the end of your life, when what you have done is weighed in the balances? And what we have done in Allah’s struggle will be all that matters.”

  His face softened as he reached down, cupping her face in his hands—their lips meeting in a desperate, passionate kiss. “Please come with me. . .”

  7:26 P.M. British Summer Time

  Wembley Central Station

  London Underground

  The train’s doors shut behind Phillip Greer as he stepped onto the platform, checking his phone for messages as he glanced down toward the open end of the above-ground station—glimpsing the light rain still falling without.

  His wife had taken to the technology more readily than he had, but with one child now married and another still in university, it was a necessary evil.

  Nothing. He returned the phone to the pocket of his jacket, even as a form materialized at his shoulder through the crowd.

  “Keep walking,” Litvinov’s voice admonished unexpectedly, startling him. Had he been on the train? “We don’t have much time.”

  He hadn’t seen the SVR man in the carriage, but if he had been waiting. . .it would mean the Russians knew more about his personal habits than he cared for them to. Far more.

  “What are you doing here, Dmitri?” It took all of his training to keep him from looking at the Russian as the two men walked together down the platform toward the exit—commuters moving with the flow of the foot traffic.

  “If what you said is true,” the Russian officer began, placing a heavy stress on the first word, “then I too am in danger.”

  “In what manner?” Greer asked, his eyes scanning the station—looking everywhere except at his newfound companion. Searching for other officers, for any sign that he might be walking into a trap.

  Attempting to reactivate an asset was not without with attendant risks. And with Vasiliev involved, all the normal rules were off the table.

  “If I am being locked out of an operation of this magnitude,” the Russian continued, his voice low, “it can only mean that I am no longer trusted. That my own betrayal is known. . .or suspected. I want out.”

  Greer winced. The man might be right—and it might just as easily be explained by Moscow’s desire for compartmentalization. But a quick, sidelong glance at Dmitri’s face told him there would be no convincing him of that. The Russian had made up his mind.

  And there was the danger of HUMINT. . .you could never forget that you were dealing with people, not pieces. People with their own fears and dreams. If you were clever, a good case officer could make use of those elements—attempt to mold them to their will.

  But the results were nothing if not unpredictable.

  “I’m afraid that’s not on the table, Dmitri,” he responded, telling the Russian officer only what he surely already knew. “You’re no longer our asset—not officially. We would need something more.”

  A brief, barely perceptible nod as the two men moved out into the open, the crowd beginning to part its separate ways now—droplets of rain falling on Greer’s bare head. Not much time left.

  “And that’s why I’m here. I am willing to make. . .inquiries, regarding the presence of Alexei Mikhailovich. But I need a reason for doing so, a source. I need an asset—inside British intelligence.”

  Chapter 12

  5:38 A.M. Central European Summer Time, July 8th

  A hostel

  Reims, France

  The sun was just beginning to come up as Harry stepped out onto the patio of the youth hostel, its rays striking him in the face as he turned, facing deliberately southeast, toward Mecca. Nearly three thousand miles away.

  Never closer than in this moment.

  He stooped, laying out a bath towel on the brick of the patio to serve as his prayer mat, his lips moving silently as he recited the words of the sura beneath his breath.

  “It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces towards east or west; but it is righteousness—to believe in God and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book, and the Messengers. . .”

  Righteousness. That had so little to do with him, Harry thought, straightening—the brick already warm beneath his bare feet. Far too much blood, all through the years, staining his hands.

  As it had the previous day. His own belief. . .washed away in its crimson tide.

  He closed his eyes, raising his open hands above his shoulders, palms forward, reciting the words of the takbir.

  God is the greatest.

  He had been the only one prepared for the chaos of the previous day—the only one who knew what was coming, his decision made back in the kitchen of the Harraks’ Molenbeek apartment.

  But just because you knew, didn’t mean you were ready—didn’t mean you could ever truly prepare for that moment, when you reached out your hand. . .and extinguished another life.

  He lowered his arms, crossing them in front of his stomach, his right hand over his left, eyes fixed in front of him as he began to recite the opening chapter of the Qur’an from me
mory. “Bismillaahir rahmaanir raheem, Alhamdullilah. . .”

  Now all that remained was to deal with the aftermath. Phase V. Ever the most unpredictable aspect of any op.

  Marwan had gotten away from the island clean, more was the pity. Or at least so Driss had thought, relaying the story to him on the bus. The two young men, pushing their way together through the panicked crowd of tourists streaming over the bridges from the island.

  But Yassin. . .Yassin had been wounded, struck by a bullet in the flurry of fire as they’d tried to break contact. His lips continued to move in the words of the du’a, but he never heard them, gazing forward with unseeing eyes.

  Yassin. He could still remember the look in the young man’s eyes, that night in the club. “He wanted to come after you—to kill you. We took the gun away from him.”

  The boy had saved his life that night—there was no getting around it. No escaping the burden of that.

  No matter how much he might want to. No matter how desperately he knew what needed to be done.

  His focus returned to his prayers, gun-metal blue eyes staring impassively into the dawn as he repeated the takbir once more.

  “Allahu akbar.”

  6:14 A.M.

  DGSE Headquarters

  Paris

  All the king’s horses, Anaïs Brunet thought, looking around the conference table at her team, a pen poised delicately between the fingers of her right hand, just above a notepad already half covered. All the king’s men.

  That was what every morning at this job felt like—trying to put the world back together again.

  Knowing that it would have fallen apart once more by the next morning.