“With what confidence?” Lay asked, favoring Kranemeyer with a shrewd glance.
“Low-to-medium,” the DCS admitted. “But Carter is always a cautious one. I knew Nichols a long time, David—whatever else he was, he was always a patriot. That he would have gone over to the other side. . .I find it very hard to believe.”
“As do I,” Lay replied heavily. “And I knew him longer than you. But tell me. . .as long as you’ve known him, could you ever have predicted his actions of the last eight months?”
And the answer to that was no, as both men knew.
“It’s immaterial anyway,” the DCIA said, not waiting for an answer to a question which had, in any case, been rhetorical. “He’s on video, beheading a French officer—there’s nothing we can do to minimize that or make it go away. Tell the French what they need to know—perhaps they can succeed where the Brits failed and take him down. Save us all a world of hurt.”
There was a curious tinge of bitterness in those last words, grief and anger intermixed.
“Is that what this is about? Taking him down?” Kranemeyer shook his head. “Because if it is. . .you’re just going to take all of us down with him.”
“No, that’s what he is going to do if no one stops him!” Lay spat, his face flushing with anger. “Do you not understand the stakes here?”
“I believe I do,” the DCS replied calmly. “We’re talking about willingly handing over to a foreign intelligence agency extremely sensitive information that would constitute a massive scandal if it were ever to become public, at the very time we’re immersed in a political fight for our lives. From where I sit, that looks very much like loading a gun and placing it in one’s own mouth.”
Lay swore again in exasperation. “And what’s your alternative?”
“I think we need to take a step back,” Kranemeyer said, rising to his feet. “Regroup. Face down one storm at a time. Nichols can wait—HPSCI can’t, and won’t. We need to survive right now, David, even if that means sweeping something like this under the rug. I can’t do it myself, not given those who already know—but you can. And you need to.”
“And if the French find out we knew, somehow, later?” There was indecision in Lay’s eyes, and Kranemeyer pressed his advantage, driving it home.
“Then we cross that bridge when we come to it. If we ever come to it. One storm at a time, David. One storm at a time. . .”
8:04 P.M. Central European Summer Time
Chateau-Thierry
Aisne Department, France
One could just make out the flowing waters of the Marne in the gathering twilight as the sedan sped out across the span, a last few rays of sunlight striking Harry in the face as he rested his hand on the open window, leaning back into the seat as Belkaïd’s man drove. They’d been in the car for several hours, driving southwest across France toward. . .another safehouse, apparently. A back-up location where Belkaïd had decided to move their base of operations after the “accident.”
The end of a beautiful summer day. That’s what it had been, he supposed, remembering the singing of the birds in the Ardennes woods. The way they had all gone silent, in the moment of death. As if they knew.
The blood cries out from the ground. Disturbing all of nature in its wake, silencing every song.
Where was this all going to end? He knew the answer to that, the truth of what he had told Belkaïd. Death.
And yet just how far could he bring himself to go? Each of these. . .murders—for that’s what they were—tearing at his very soul. First Reza, now Driss. Marwan, most of all—the only innocent.
He had allowed himself to get too close, to bond far too closely with these young men. He’d let his guard down, in his time of weakness—the wounds laying him low, leaving him desperate for help. For a reason to live.
And somehow, perversely, they had become that reason. . .despite himself. Despite all he knew. Finding that rarest, most intimate of things, a family, for the first time in so long.
But now. . .now it fell to him to tear that family apart, piece by piece. Burn it all down.
He closed his eyes, hearing the persistent beep from the back seat of the mobile game Yassin was playing on his phone. Like any other kid in his early twenties, amusing the boredom of the drive away.
Forcing himself to remember how it had felt to be forced to take Marwan’s life—how they had all rejoiced in his agony, every last one of them, in his screams in those final moments before the knife severed his vocal cords.
When Harry opened his eyes once more, his face had hardened into an implacable mask.
Set it ablaze. . .
9:25 P.M.
DSGSE Headquarters
Paris, France
The remains of Anaïs Brunet’s dinner had grown long cold on the cafeteria tray resting neglected to one side of her desk. Her brow furrowed as she worked over the latest reports from the Belgians.
Danloy’s people were canvassing south across Wallonia through the Ardennes toward the French border—seeking any information on the passage of the vehicles they had lost days before, but it was a cold trail and the VSSE simply didn’t have the manpower to pull it off.
Their counterparts in the Police Fédérale had gone to work rounding up Belkaïd’s known associates in Liège, but that had, likewise, yet to produce results.
And were unlikely to, she thought. The odds that a man like Belkaïd would have confided his plans for a terrorist attack in low-ranking members of his broader criminal organization were extremely low indeed.
As for the possibility that they had already crossed the border into France. . .Dubois assured her that he was pursuing every possible lead. And that was where it had to end—she had no statutory authority to assist with intelligence collection within the borders of the Republic, as helpless as that made her feel, knowing what could be coming.
Which left her with the man in the video. Ibrahim Abu Musab al-Almani—whatever his real name was, or had been, before Syria.
A light flashed on her desk and she reached over, pressing a button to hear her secretary’s voice. “Madame le directeur, there is a man to see you. He—”
“Oui,” Brunet replied shortly, not waiting to hear anything further. “Send him in.”
The door opened a moment later to admit a small, slightly built man in his mid-forties, dressed in jeans and a light sports jacket.
“Monsieur Vautrin,” she began, gesturing to a chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat, si’l vous plait.”
He took it without a word, crossing one leg over the other—hands clasped in his lap. Staring at her with dove-gray eyes, deceptively soft—almost feminine. He was the kind of man who could have been lost in any crowd, his face one you would forget within minutes of seeing it.
Just another man. So easy to have underestimated him, if she hadn’t been so familiar with his file.
“I trust your drive here was uneventful,” she began, almost apologetically. “I regret not having reached you until after you left the Fort.”
He shrugged. “Ça ne fait rien.” It doesn’t matter. “My wife is used to this—my son is in his second year of université, and has even less to do with me than he did as an adolescent.”
An ironic smile creased his face as though that had seemed impossible. Once.
A wife and a child. And the facade completes itself, Brunet mused, finding it difficult, somehow, to reconcile the placid family man before her with the reality of what she knew. For Emile Vautrin was no ordinary man.
In the late ‘90s, he’d been a para with the 8e RPIMa—the storied 8th Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment—playing cat-and-mouse games with Serbian armor to force them into the open where they could be destroyed by NATO airpower. A dangerous game, but he and his fellow paras had played it and won.
From there he had gone to Cote D’Ivoire as part of Operation Unicorn, before finding himself in the late ‘00s serving with the ISAF coalition in Afghanistan. And he’d been there on that late August day
in the Uzbin Valley when the French had found themselves in the middle of a Taliban ambush.
Brunet had seen the classified after-action reports following Uzbin—knew the reality of what had happened in that valley, whatever the French government had chosen to tell the public. And she also knew that, if not for Vautrin’s battlefield leadership, they would have suffered even heavier casualties.
Which was why when he’d been transitioned back to France, to convalesce from his wounds, the DGSE had reached out, recruiting him for a role in the Division Action, the direct action arm of the service, based out of the old Fort Noisy-le-Sec in Seine-Saint-Denis, the eastern suburbs of Paris.
And that’s where he had remained, ever since, taking the fight directly to the enemies of France around the world with a lethality no one who passed the slight, unassuming man on the street would have ever dreamed he could possess.
All of which made him perfect for his job.
She turned her monitor around until it faced him, the video of Daniel Mahrez’s. . .death displayed on-screen. “I want you to watch something. The man in the chair is—was—one of ours.”
And she sat there, shuddering despite herself at the sound of Daniel’s agony—watching Vautrin’s face, the softness vanishing from his eyes as the video continued.
He waited until it had finished, the curtain falling on the final macabre act of the play before he turned to face her. “What is it that you want from me?”
“I want you to identify his executioner. Find him. And then kill him.”
Chapter 33
8:57 A.M. Central European Summer Time, August 5th
DGSE Headquarters
Paris, France
“This way, monsieur.” Daniel Vukovic reached up, pinning his visitor badge to the breast pocket of his shirt as the young woman guided him along the corridor, pausing finally outside a door marked Crisis Room 4.
She knocked briefly, and then opened the door, holding it open as he entered, his eyes meeting Brunet’s at the end of the long conference table.
“Good morning, Daniel, you’re just in time. Please, have a seat.”
He took the indicated chair, smiling briefly in thanks as an aide handed over his briefing folder. Heavily redacted compared to the one Brunet held, no doubt, but that was the way of cooperation between allies. His own, anything but full—as he had so recently been reminded.
The screen at the other end of the table was still dark, unexpectedly so. “We’re still waiting on Danloy,” Brunet said, as if in answer to his unspoken question. “Tell me, Daniel. . .was your Agency able to find any matches on the voice from the beheading video?”
He had been expecting the question, but somehow she still managed to take him off-guard. A fresh reminder to never underestimate this woman.
Vukovic lifted his head to look her in the eye. “No. We found nothing. I’m sorry.”
9:35 A.M.
Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis
Suburbs of Paris
“And there it is,” Harry breathed, bending down to tie a shoelace which wasn’t loose—Yassin jogging in place beside him as both men stared through the trees lining the Rue Ahmed Boughera El Ouafi, the massive outline of the Stade de France looming against the skyline, barely a couple hundred meters in front of them.
The target. Harry felt his pulse quicken at the sight, old instincts rising once more to the fore. It was hard to suppress them, even now. The feeling that he was back in the game, that this was yet another mission. Another target, like so many, all through the years.
It was at his insistence that they were here, in the commune of Saint-Denis, conducting a pre-mission reconnaissance of the stadium. He, Yassin, Aryn, and. . .a minder, Belkaïd’s drone pilot, Faouzi. The only one of them yet who had flown the actual Guardian drones they would use in the attack, given how abruptly their training in the Ardennes had been cut short by Driss’ death.
His murder.
“We’d better keep moving,” he said, straightening—his eyes never still as he scanned their environment. There were no cameras visible, but it was so hard to ever be sure, these days. Miniaturization technology advancing by leaps and bounds with each passing year—light-years beyond anything he had faced when he had first entered the field, shortly before 9/11.
Nothing like tech to make a man feel old, he thought, his shoes pounding against the pavement once again as he set the pace, hard and punishing, his lungs protesting against the exertion—his side still not fully healed from its wounds.
But he was almost there. Almost back. And his time for recovery was running out.
His mind passed to Belkaïd and all thoughts of his injury passed away, his face darkening in the mid-morning sun, rivulets of sweat staining his thin shirt. For the needs of this “mission”—the need, in reality, to prove his own commitment to the Algerian—only formed a part of his reason for this morning trip in from their new-found base on the outskirts of Coulommiers, about an hour east of Paris.
The rendezvous with the Russians to take delivery of the promised weapons would be happening within the hour, and he wanted to be as far away from another meeting with “Grigoriy” as he could possibly get. Was it recognition he had glimpsed in the Russian’s eyes, there in the yard of the abandoned colliery, the week before?
Impossible to know. Iraq had been years ago—a lot of water under that particular bridge. But if he had recognized the FSB man from a single encounter. . .
It was a risk he couldn’t afford to take.
10:21 A.M.
The Fountainebleau Forest, near Le Bois du Mée
Seine-et-Marne Department, France
It was hot, even in the shade—the cover of the trees overhead offering little protection from the humidity of the French summer. Grigoriy Kolesnikov stirred restlessly against the wheel of the parked semi-trailer, staring down the desolate side road. Off in the distance, one could just make out the traffic passing on the main highway, a car every minute or two—sometimes a handful together.
Busy enough. He raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, the gesture lifting his shirt to expose the holstered M&P Compact on his hip.
He would far rather have been back in Russia in the summer, enjoying himself in the capital in those few short, halcyon months before the Moscow cold returned once more, inevitable as death.
But there was the mission, and that came first, as ever. He saw the car, then, turning off onto their road.
He reached up, hammering his left fist against the door of the articulated cabin, the noise of the movie stopping abruptly from within, followed almost immediately by the sound of Maxim’s phone hitting the truck’s dash.
“Wake up, Nikolai Timofeyevich,” Kolesnikov ordered brusquely, glancing up as the biker’s head came popping out the open window of the cabin. “We have company.”
Quite a bit of company, he thought, eyeing the end of the road as a second and then a third car joined the first, all three vehicles shimmering in the lines of heat rising off the pavement as they approached.
Here’s hoping Maxim was up to this job. He hadn’t wanted to be saddled with the Night Wolves again, but the discovery that their leader had been a truck driver—that he retained an active C license in the EU—had been all the Centre needed to hear.
The lead cars slid to a stop fifty meters away, Kolesnikov’s eyes narrowing as they fanned out to block both lanes of traffic. Treachery? It seemed unlikely—this was a gift, after all.
And perhaps, for that reason, itself suspect.
He lowered his hand to his waist, not far from the holstered semiautomatic—glancing back over his shoulder to where their bikes were parked, almost out of sight beneath the trees. Maybe a thirty-meter run. He’d take his chances, if it came to that.
If Maxim didn’t make it. . .pity.
As Kolesnikov watched, Gamal Belkaïd emerged from the third, furthermost car—walking forward along the road, flanked by his bodyguards. An impressive figure, even at his age—exuding that
aura of command which all true leaders have.
That presence, which brooks no disobedience. It would be almost a shame to have to kill him when all this was over, the Russian reflected. But he’d promised himself that he would. For Sasha.
For all the memories of a brother torn from him, by criminals like this man.
“Salaam alaikum, Grigoriy,” the Algerian greeted him as they approached, reaching out to embrace him—his arms wrapping around Kolesnikov’s shoulders, the two men kissing briefly on both cheeks.
The kiss of Judas, Kolesnikov thought, briefly tapping the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir beneath his sweat-stained shirt as they disengaged. There was no justice in this moment, but there would be. Soon enough. At his own hand.
The Algerian smiled, his dark eyes scanning the semi-trailer. “Is this everything?”
A nod, as Kolesnikov scanned the faces of the men Belkaïd had brought with him. They weren’t the same men who had accompanied the Algerian to the colliery.
“You can look for yourself,” he said, turning to lead the way to the back of the trailer, Belkaïd following behind. Reaching up to unlatch the door—rolling it up to reveal the contents.
The Algerian ordered one of his men up into the trailer to inspect the shipment, standing back with Kolesnikov as the man picked his way through the footlockers of weapons and explosives.
“The men who came with you to the colliery,” the Russian said finally, unable to ignore longer the feeling that had been gnawing at him for days. “They’re not with you today.”
He saw Belkaïd stiffen momentarily at the implicit question, before recovering. “My organization is a large one, as I’m sure you understand. I have many men.”
But he was lying now, as his initial reaction had made clear. Interesting. And there was a reason he had asked the question. . .
“The older man,” Kolesnikov went on after a moment’s pause. “I know him, from somewhere. . .I couldn’t place it.”
Presence of Mine Enemies Page 50
