5:14 P.M. British Summer Time
HMP Belmarsh
Thamesmead, Southeast London
“There’s no way he could have gotten the names,” Norris spat desperately, anguish showing in his eyes. “Not from me—the drive was encrypted. I took precautions!”
The earnestness was almost pathetic, Phillip Greer thought, regarding the traitor with a cold, unsympathetic stare across the metal table. As though he expected that he could genuinely convince anyone that he hadn’t intended to betray his country, that this was all simply some kind of terrible mistake.
“You have to believe me, I didn’t want him to have those files.”
“Unless you were safe out of the country along with them, you mean,” Greer returned evenly, leaning back in his chair. “You would have gladly given them up, all those men and women. . .so long as it meant that you were free. But he tricked you, didn’t he? He took what he wanted and left you here to rot.”
“Yes, but there’s no way he could have gotten into them without me,” Norris shot back. “I didn’t write the key down, anywhere—not even in my flat. You have a leak, somewhere else—this wasn’t my doing, you must believe that.”
“He asked you for proof of the drive’s contents, surely?” Greer’s voice was quiet, his eyes impassive behind the thick glasses. Every fiber of his body yearned to reach across the table and strangle this man where he sat, but he suppressed the urge.
A quick, almost jerky nod—as if Greer were going somewhere Norris’ own psyche had refused to allow him to go.
“I pulled the files up for him—on the computer.”
“And you would have had to enter the key to do so. His computer or yours?”
Norris hesitated, pain and fear flickering across his pale face before he raised his manacled hands in a gesture of surrender. His voice barely above a whisper. “His.”
“And there you have it.”
6:17 P.M. Central European Summer Time
The abandoned industrial site
Charleroi, Belgium
The two cars pulled into the empty yard of the colliery not more than eighty meters from the nearest of the bikers—Harry’s eyes flickering up to the looming coal elevator a hundred and fifty meters to the west as he pushed the passenger door of the sedan open, stepping out.
If there were someone up there—and he wouldn’t have failed to post someone there, if he were running this op from the other side—he’d have a clear field of fire.
Even with the Guardian providing overwatch. . .he still wasn’t comfortable with any of this. He felt the CZ’s bulge against his hip, beneath the light jacket—his gaze shifting over to where Belkaïd’s men were emerging from the second vehicle, the foremost man retrieving a folding-stocked Chinese AK knock-off from behind the seat of the car—extending it back against his shoulder.
His mate appeared a moment later, carrying a similar Type 56-2, a second magazine taped to the first.
It wasn’t a reassuring sight—he’d seen plenty of the trafficker’s men over the previous couple weeks. In a fight, they’d more than likely ensure that their principals got cut down in the crossfire.
Blue on blue. Friendly fire. And just as dead, for all that.
Trading glances with Marwan, Harry moved into position behind Belkaïd and to the right, letting the young Algerian take the left flank as they walked out into the open—toward the small knot of bikers, clustered near the railroad tracks.
The distance closing with each stride—Harry’s eyes scanning the terrain, the abandoned buildings of the colliery, alert for threats in every shadowed corner—every potential sniper’s perch.
But there were far too many such places. Belkaïd had gone against his advice, even in this—now it remained to be seen whether they would all pay the price.
Like Reza. Harry’s face tightened, knowing he couldn’t allow himself to deal with that now. His. . .friend’s death, still far too surreal. For there was no other word to describe Reza. A friendship built upon lies, but a friendship, nevertheless.
Twenty meters now. “Salaam alaikum,” a voice greeted them unexpectedly, bringing them up short.
The man Harry had seen on the Guardian’s cameras detaching himself from the bikers who surrounded him—his arms outstretched as he came forward to greet them.
“You are a follower of the Prophet?” Belkaïd asked, clearly nonplussed. His voice wary.
A smile. The man was young—perhaps four or five years Harry’s junior, young and expensively dressed, his urbane appearance a sharp contrast with the rugged bikers that formed his escort.
But a man to be reckoned with—a lethal edge, barely concealed there beneath the polished facade. It might take another killer to recognize the killer in his eyes, but it was there, all the same—clear to Harry as though it had been engraven on his forehead.
He shook his head. “Non, but I believe any good relationship must begin with respect.”
The voice was Russian, Harry thought—his ear honed through long experience, even though the man’s French was nearly without flaw.
Russian, and. . .so very familiar, he realized with a sudden start—his eyes narrowing as they focused in on the younger man.
“You may call me ‘Grigoriy’,” he heard the man say, the words suddenly transporting him back to Baghdad, the late winter of ‘07, with a pair of Russian intelligence officers standing before him in the nearly deserted hotel restaurant of the Palestine, across the Tigris from the Green Zone.
A younger version of this man—then only in his mid-twenties. And Alexei Vasiliev.
5:25 P.M. British Summer Time
HMP Belmarsh
Thamesmead, Southeast London
“One final question,” Phillip Greer announced, closing the last of the folders before him and stacking it atop the others. Looking across the table at the weary, disconsolate figure sitting across from him, hands manacled in front of him.
Norris had been awake for a long time—day and night losing all meaning in this place. Less than three weeks and the normally lean analyst had already lost weight, his face sunken and white.
“Was Alec MacCallum involved in your plotting with Arthur Colville?”
Or did you set him up, Greer thought, leaving the second part of his question deliberately unasked. His team had already reopened the investigation, uncovering “irregularities” they had missed the first time around, so certain they had their man.
Certitude. Certain damnation, in this business—a trap, so easy to fall into. He knew he would never forgive himself for any of this, to the end of his life.
“What can you give me if I answer your questions?” Norris asked, raising his head to look at Greer. Still clinging to whatever little scraps of leverage he had left—like a man falling off a cliff, desperately clawing to grasp any possible ledge on the way down. “If I would be willing to testify?”
But every ledge was crumbling to powder, and the fall. . .was bottomless, even if he didn’t know it yet.
“Nothing,” the CI spook replied flatly, reaching up with a single finger to push his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “But it might be as close as you’ll come to redemption, this side of hell.”
A long pause, before Norris bowed his head, unable to look Greer in the eye. His hands clasped before him, as if in prayer. Surrender.
“He’s innocent.”
6:26 P.M. Central European Summer Time
The abandoned industrial site
Charleroi, Belgium
Harry felt an icy fist close around his heart, his mind racing—seeking an exit and finding each of them closed off in turn. Knowing he was a dead man if the recognition were mutual.
It had been nearly a decade, a decade that had changed and aged him far more than he could ever have imagined, and even yet. . .it wasn’t impossible that the memory would still be there, as strong for the Russian as it was for himself.
For that meeting had proved the beginning of a confrontation which
hadn’t marked the highest point in either of their careers. A confrontation which had ended in an exchange of gunfire, a man’s life forever changed by the Russian’s bullets. Grigoriy’s own life, nearly ending at Harry’s hand—a rifle grenade falling just short of its target on that desolate road in Anbar.
But there was nowhere to run, nothing for it but to face it down—to walk straight into the fire, as he had so many times before in his life. The CZ seeming to tremble beneath his jacket as he heard Belkaïd respond, “Who are you, and what did you want with Said?”
“Who I am,” the younger man responded, “is far less important than what I am prepared to offer. I had a deal with your colleague, and while I regret his untimely death. . .I see no reason for my deal to die with him.”
A deal. Between a jihadist—and Russian intelligence, Harry thought, his pulse quickening. The chill in his heart growing ever colder. For he was as sure as he had ever been of anything that “Grigoriy” was still with the FSB, now as then, back there in Iraq.
“What kind of deal?”
“We may not share the same God,” Grigoriy went on, reminding Harry ever more of his mentor in that moment. Alexei, you taught him well. “But we share the same enemy. And that will have to be enough. You desire war against the West? I’m here to help you wage it.”
Chapter 23
7:01 P.M. Central European Summer Time
Ambassade de France
Brussels, Belgium
It had been a long day, Armand Césaire thought, eyeing regretfully the as-yet-untouched glass of wine that sat about a foot away from the laptop at one end of the long conference table.
A day which had begun far too soon with the call not long after one in the morning from his counterparts at the Belgian security services, the explosion outside Liège filtering its way through their chain of command—triggering alarms as it went.
“Certainement. I understand that, director,” he nodded, Brunet’s face visible on the screen of the laptop—the camera aimed at his own face. “But I am afraid that the political pressures here may be growing far too strong.”
He had spent nearly the entire day at the VSSE’s headquarters, a small, nondescript building on the other side of the city. Watching as the mood turned away from initial alarm to cold resolution. In a city—a country—already rocked by repeated jihadist attacks, they would not let this happen again.
No matter what it took.
And so now here he was, sitting in a hastily-cleared conference room in the building from which his legend indicated he worked on a daily basis, explaining the situation to his real superiors back in Paris.
“Danloy mentioned nothing of this when I was with him earlier this morning.”
“I am not entirely sure it is the decision of the administrateur général,” Césaire returned flatly. “Yesterday this was the sole province of security professionals. Today, it has become the domain of the media.”
And they had both been in this business long enough to know what that meant.
“In light of the greater perceived eminence of the threat, OCAM has raised the threat level to three and the Belgians are pushing to put direct, physical surveillance on Gamal Belkaïd and any other members of the Molenbeek cell which can be located. Perhaps even move on the cell directly, to take them down.”
Disaster. The end of all their plans.
“This was intended to be a long-term operation, Armand,” Brunet replied after a long moment. “An in-depth penetration of the jihadist networks in Belgium. If they take the cell down now, we lose that. And if they establish direct surveillance. . .we risk losing our officer.”
And this is why we should never have read in a foreign service, Césaire wanted to say, his dark features an impassive mask, concealing the emotions roiling beneath its surface. LYSANDER’s face, still vivid in his mind’s eye. If his fellow officer died now, it would be his responsibility and his alone. Before God.
“I know, madame le directeur. But you will have to convince Danloy. And his masters.”
8:09 P.M.
The van
European Route E42, Wallonia, Belgium
“I can give you what you need. Whatever you need. You need only to ask.”
And the reasons for Lahcen’s confidence seemed suddenly clear, Harry thought, staring out the window of the van into the gathering darkness as they merged with traffic, flowing eastbound along the E42.
No wonder he had seemed assured of his ability to procure heavier weapons—with the support, whether he knew it or not, of Russian intelligence.
Destabilization. The ultimate goal of all “active measures”, no doubt Russia’s agenda in this, as in so many of its other operations in Europe stretching back across the decades.
But even so. . .to think of the Kremlin going so far as to finance and supply terrorists within Western Europe—that staggered him. The threat here, far more dangerous than he had even begun to suspect.
Far more difficult to handle.
He was in over his head and he knew it, just as surely as he knew there was no way out. No exit.
Just as surely as he knew, as the van sped on into the night, that if he couldn’t find one, people were going to die. Far too many of them.
Chapter 24
8:07 A.M. Central European Summer Time, July 30th
The warehouse
Liège, Belgium
“No,” Harry heard himself say, raising his voice over the murmur of voices surrounding him. “The risks are far too great.”
The murmur died away suddenly, every eye in the small office suddenly focused on him. Gamal Belkaïd’s gaze locking with his own.
“I disagree.”
“You have no way of knowing who you’re even dealing with here,” Harry spat back. “You can’t begin to think that you’ll be able to control every situation as carefully as you did tonight. And what happens when you can’t? What then? One slip, and we all end up in prison. All of us.”
“Does that thought frighten you, Ibrahim?” Belkaïd extended the clenched fist of his right hand sideways toward Harry, skin stretched tight over bone, revealing the small tattoo, five dots arranged in a pattern like that on a die, inked into the leathery skin.
Un homme entre quatre murs—the man between four walls. The prisoner.
Somewhere, at some point, Belkaïd had done hard time. Not surprising for someone in his line of work—one didn’t become a crime boss starting at the top. And even so. . .
“It does,” Harry replied, staring him in the eye. “In Syria, all those months, the thought of dying on the battlefield held no terrors for me. The thought of being taken, of it all ending in the dungeon of a nusayri prison, prevented from ever giving my life in martyrdom—that terrified me. We’re so close to being able to launch an attack, here in the West. To jeopardize all that, for the illusory aid of a kuffar, is utter folly.”
“But are we?” Marwan’s voice, pulling Harry’s attention away from Belkaïd.
“Are we what?”
“Are we really ‘so close’?” There was a skeptical light in the young man’s eyes, the danger only too evident as he once more maneuvered for position. “Two days ago, we had explosives, but no target. Then those explosives killed Reza—nearly killed me, as well. And now we have no explosives, or target either. That doesn’t seem ‘close’ to me.”
“God has provided us with the men,” Harry replied, his tone a stern rebuke. Wishing for the thousandth time that the explosion had done its intended work. “He will also provide the means, insh’allah.”
“Perhaps He has,” the young Algerian returned evenly, refusing to back down. The implication of his words only too clear, an unanswerable challenge.
“I am making inquiries,” Belkaïd said, before Harry could respond, “throughout my own networks. If this ‘Grigoriy’ is truly mafiya, they will know. And then we will act.”
And you’ll find the legend has been back-stopped from here to the Volga, Harry thought, recognizing the de
termination in the trafficker’s eyes. The futility of arguing against it. Because that’s how Russian intelligence works. . .
9:49 A.M.
Place Charles de Gaulle
Paris, France
“We marched into this city, triumphant, when this arch was nothing more than its foundations.” Kolesnikov glanced at his phone, checking the fitness app as he stooped down in the welcome shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, recalling his mentor’s words on their first visit to Paris together, more than a decade before. Remembering the passion, the fire in the older man’s voice. The pride. “Russian troops, encamped upon the Champs-Élysées. A vanquished Talleyrand, handing over the key to Paris to Tsar Alexander. An abdicated Bonaparte, melting away into exile on Elba. The zenith of Russian power in the West.”
Vasiliev had always loved his history.
It was that rare, defiant pride that had drawn him to the older man from the beginning, he remembered, rubbing sweaty palms against the legs of his jogging shorts. Pride in a humbled, but once-great nation. A Russia which could be made great once again.
“We dictated terms to the great powers of Europe that April, at the point of a thousand bayonets. And one day, we will do so again.”
Perhaps that began here, Kolesnikov thought, straightening—his heart still beating fast from the run.
He had made the hand-off in a shopping mall on the western bank of the Seine, his written report on the previous night’s meet—a report he’d spent the entire night awake typing up—encrypted and passed along to a cut-out who would in turn deliver it to an officer working under official cover at the Embassy of the Russian Federation on the Boulevard Lannes.
His assessment of the men they were dealing with. Gamal Belkaïd. . .and the others, the men Belkaïd had chosen to bring with him.
Presence of Mine Enemies Page 38
