by Andrew Gross
He took off in the opposite direction, Naomi running a stride behind. Toward Hyde Park, out of the quiet mews. How could this have happened? Everything had been tightly controlled. Only insiders knew. It was like with Thibault all over again. He just knew they had to get to that car before it disappeared into traffic. Or they’d never see the al-Bashir family again.
They shot around the corner. It led to a short residential row of Georgians that intersected Chesterfield on the diagonal. Mayfair Terrace. Hauck stopped, frantically tried to reconstruct the labyrinth of streets and squares and how they led back onto the main road. He realized he had only minutes. He pointed toward a street. “Down here!”
They ran down it, his pulse on overdrive, as if his own daughter was in that car.
Naomi took out her gun. She kept up stride for stride. They got to the end of the street. It led to two more streets, each splitting off in a different direction. Hauck had no idea where they led. He scanned both ways, trying to calculate where the Mercedes would have to intersect back with Park Lane.
Naomi looked in both directions, white with fear. “We can’t lose them, Ty!”
“Down here!” He chose left and prayed. The street was like a replica of Chesterfield Mews. More expensive homes. There was a fancy, small hotel across the street. Ahead of them a family stepped out on the sidewalk with a stroller. “Federal agents,” Naomi yelled, almost barreling into them as they ran by.
At the corner they both stopped, looked around in frustration. “Are you sure?”
“No,” he said. He scanned around frantically for some sign of the car. “I’m not sure!”
He didn’t see it! He knew they had only about a minute to find the car, maybe seconds, and then it would disappear into traffic. There could be dozens of black Mercedes SUVs around the city.
Without a read on the plates, they could be anywhere.
His heart was pounding.
His gaze turned to a small street that cut off on a diagonal in the direction of Park Lane, a church on the corner. His instincts said go. The bell was tolling. People milled around in front. Past them, Hauck could see that it seemed to connect with a larger street up ahead. He spotted traffic, people crossing by.
Naomi took off ahead of him. “Up here!”
This was going to be their one and only chance. He took off, praying what they saw up ahead was Park Lane. Praying even harder the Mercedes hadn’t gotten there first. He recalled how they had to weave around through the grid to get out of there earlier. Sweat was coming through his clothes, soaking him.
He caught up to Naomi as they neared the end. They both came to a stop, huffing. The lane fed into the main thoroughfare. Thank God. The Mercedes would have to have come through here. It had to wind around. That’s what they had done the day before. But there could have been many ways out of the mews.
“This is it!”
They got to the corner, praying they weren’t too late. Feverishly, they looked around in every direction.
Naomi shook her head in frustration. “I don’t see it! Damn it, where is it, Ty?”
Then, about a block ahead, he caught sight of the front grille of a black vehicle, about to turn, pulled up at a light.
It was his only option. He ran toward it.
The car turned onto Park Lane. A Mercedes SUV.
His heart sprang with hope. “There it is!”
He sprinted after it, praying it was the same vehicle. Naomi kept up a couple of lengths behind.
There was no sight of the Scotland Yard car. They ran into the middle of the busy street, dodging through traffic. A cabbie stopped and angrily blew his horn at Hauck.
The distance between them and the black Mercedes began to narrow. Please, be it, Hauck begged.
Park Lane was a bustling thoroughfare. Six lanes. People everywhere. Obstructing them.
Hyde Park was to their right. Up ahead, the Mercedes pulled up at an intersection. Onto Piccadilly. It had its signal on, about to turn. Piccadilly was a long, traffic-free straightaway.
This was their only chance.
Holding up his palms, knifing in between oncoming cars, Hauck ran across the street. His lungs were bursting now as he pursued as fast as he could.
Naomi stayed right with him. “Get there before it turns, Ty…”
Hauck ran through the middle of the crowded street, searching for a policeman but not seeing one. A car pulled out from behind the Mercedes’s lane and now they had a clear shot.
Thirty yards ahead.
Twenty. The vehicle in front of the Mercedes made its turn.
The Mercedes lurched. They were out of time.
Hauck heard Naomi’s voice shout from behind. “Get out of the way!” She stopped and kneeled into a shooting position. She had a clear shot, no pedestrians in front of them.
She extended her gun.
She squeezed off three quick shots, aiming for the Mercedes’s tires.
Two skidded off the asphalt; the third clanged uselessly into the underbelly of the vehicle.
None of them seemed to find its mark.
“Shit!”
Suddenly people everywhere began to scream.
The Mercedes’s tires screeched and the vehicle jerked into a sharp turn. It forced its way through the onrushing traffic. Hauck chased it in the oncoming lane, ten yards behind.
Five.
Damn it—it was turning. Naomi’s shots hadn’t struck home.
In his one last chance, just as the vehicle jolted forward, he dove.
He felt his hands scratch against the driver’s-side rear window, then make contact with the door. He clung desperately to hold on to the metal handle. He squeezed, trying to open it, his only hope.
The sonovabitch was locked.
The SUV sped up on Piccadilly, starting to pull away.
Hauck held on, one hand on the handle, his other groping for the luggage rack above. His feet dangled against the pavement as he was dragged along. He caught a view of the startled family inside—Marty, his wife—suddenly realizing what was happening to them. Screaming at the driver. Somehow Hauck had to pry the door open.
He had to stop this car.
The vehicle picked up speed and wove between lanes in an effort to shake him off. If he could just get his other hand on the luggage rack, he could stay on. Someone would have to see them. A policeman. See what was going on.
Stop them.
His heart bursting through his chest, he lunged with both hands for the rack. The Mercedes lurched to the side with a jerk. He tried to pull himself up, every muscle in his body straining. Hold it, Ty…Now, just a second more…
The SUV jerked to the right. His fingers slid off. No…
He hit the road, screaming inside.
The Mercedes accelerated sharply along the straightaway, no traffic to obstruct it now.
Helpless, Hauck watched it drive away, prone. He sank his head against his arm, mashing his fist into the road.
The frightened face of al-Bashir’s youngest son looked back through the darkened window as it sped away.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Empty, dejected, Hauck found his way back to Naomi, who was waiting, ashen faced, at the corner of the park.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He wiped off his clothes and looked at his hands, which were imprinted with deep, red marks from his attempt to hold on to the car.
Her eyes glistened with tears of blame and disbelief, and she gritted her teeth. “We lost them, Ty.”
“Not entirely. I got the plates. HZ-36PAB. We can track them.” London had the most advanced network of street surveillance cameras in the world. That gave a ray of hope. One might pick them up.
Suddenly, they heard the clamor of sirens wailing everywhere. Police vans screeched to a halt around them. Uniformed security personnel ran up, weapons drawn.
“Here’s trouble,” Hauck said.
They both put up their hands, Naomi flashing her ID, identifying herself as a U.S. government agent.
“Get down on your knees!” a security agent in riot gear shouted in her face, thrusting a submachine gun at them. “Put your hands in the air!”
“We’re United States government agents,” Naomi declared, getting down, holding up her ID. Hauck did the same. Police were screaming at them like they were terrorists and he understood. Lights flashed everywhere. On the sidewalks, a ring of bystanders had formed. “We were chasing a suspect who kidnapped a government witness—”
“Put up your hands!”
It took a full ten minutes and two phone calls to the authorities before they finally let them go.
Naomi pulled out her cell and frantically called her contact at MI5. He said a full alert for the black Mercedes was already under way. Ten minutes too late, she read him the plate number.
Then she called her boss at Treasury. It was four in the morning back in DC. He seemed to be waiting. She desperately pushed back her hair and, pacing, gave him the bad news. Hauck could almost hear him barking through the phone. He could feel Naomi’s bitter frustration.
“How the hell could anyone have known, Rob? How?”
Finally, she said she’d keep him informed. They clicked off, and for a second, all Naomi could do was just stand there numbly, the hopelessness of the situation becoming clear. Al-Bashir was gone. He had been their last real lead. Without him they had nothing—nothing to tie in Hassani. All the elation of what minutes before had seemed a successful completion to their mission had now turned into anguish and self-reproach.
“Maybe the cameras will pick them up,” Hauck said, putting his arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her.
She spun out of his grasp, slapping her palm with force against a nearby light post. Staring out at the police lights, the gathered crowd, the long straightaway that led away from the park, she shook her head in rage. “They’re gone, Ty…”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
By the time they made it back to al-Bashir’s town house, a throng of police and investigative officials were already on the scene.
The housekeeper let them in.
Over half an hour had passed. There had been no report of any sightings of the Mercedes. That wasn’t a good sign. Hauck knew whoever had taken them would have had a plan. They would have known the security cam situation better than anyone. Even if the vehicle turned up, the more time elapsed, the less it boded well for the al-Bashirs.
Naomi did her best to hold it together and oversee the scene. But inside, Hauck saw, she was dying. She was on the phone back to DC, to British security. They had set up a coordinated local command—traffic police, Scotland Yard. The counterterrorism unit, SO15. Every passing minute throbbed with tension. It only made their likely fate more clear.
At some point, the grim finality setting in, Naomi stepped outside. She was a desk agent, not a field supervisor; this was her big case, and the pressure of losing the al-Bashirs, seeing them whisked away in front of their eyes, even being party to it, was a hard one to take. Even for a seasoned agent.
Hauck gave her a few moments alone, then went out after her. He found her on the landing, staring blankly at the square, her eyes moist and her fists clenched. She tapped them against the limestone railing in frustration.
“They were my responsibility, Ty.”
He went up and put his hand on her shoulder. “No, it was al-Bashir who was responsible for whatever happened to him, not you. He was a dead man the minute he got into bed with these people. You did everything you could.”
“I keep seeing that kid,” she said, her teeth clenched. “It’s like that one in Iraq all over again. Looking back at us through the rear window. You saw it too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Hauck said. He pulled her toward him and she sank against his chest. “I saw it.”
“He was mine to protect, Ty. That kid didn’t do anything wrong. They were mine.”
Tears dampened his shirt. He squeezed her close. Hauck, whose own dreams were haunted by many such faces and scenes, did his best to make her feel it was okay. He remembered how she had told him about the boy with the open chest in Iraq, who she tried so hard to breathe life back into after the ambush. He stroked the back of her hair.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffed back guilty tears. “I know this isn’t exactly out of the procedure manual. I’ve been in combat, for chrissakes…”
“Don’t worry about the manual,” Hauck said, letting her stay. “It’s in my manual. It’s okay.”
Finally, Naomi pulled back and looked up at him, nodding.
“You’re still in charge.” He winked. “With me.”
She smiled a bit and cleared her throat. “Thanks.” She turned back to the house and wiped away the tears. “There’s got to be something here…Al-Bashir took his computer. But he had to leave something behind.” She seemed to say it more out of a need to believe it than out of any actual hope. She sucked in a deep breath. “I have to do something, Ty.”
“I know.”
They went back inside. The lavish house was decorated as if money was no object. Beautiful moldings. Ornate rugs. Polished antique tables. Each room bore the mark of the family that had just disappeared. Naomi kept checking her watch, calling central command, hoping they’d hear some word.
It was like the SUV had just disappeared.
More in desperation than anything, they both started searching throughout the house. The dining room on the second floor, with a view of the park. There was a modern media room. A huge Sony screen built into the walnut bookshelves. Reminders of the family were everywhere—photos, clothing they had elected not to take, the kids’ games and toys.
While Hauck spoke with one of the inspectors, Naomi found the investment manager’s study. The large cherry desk was piled high with fund brochures, old copies of the Financial Times and Forbes. Reams of annual reports and analysts’ opinions. Naomi was able to access his desktop computer. The password was simple. Sheera. Mostly, what was there was all personal. Gmail messaging and various investment sites. She reconstructed a history of al-Bashir’s most recent Google searches. Wine buying, travel sites. All perfectly legit. Naomi pushed away from the desk in frustration.
Whatever al-Bashir had that might have incriminated Hassani was lost on his laptop.
It had been an hour now. No word. She searched the drawers for some kind of flash drive, anything he might have downloaded that could’ve been left behind.
Nothing. Her heart beat with the realization that now there was not much hope. Desperate, she leafed randomly through the piles of papers stacked about.
Again, nothing.
Nothing related to Thibault or Hassani or Ascot. Nothing on Donovan or Glassman. Or on any matter connected to al-Bashir’s involvement in the case.
She wheeled back from the desk, riddled with anger. She’d felt so close to making a case against Hassani—al-Bashir had basically admitted it! Now, how would she make him answer for what he’d done? Six people were dead. Now you could add to the list the al-Bashirs. Never before had she wanted to prove something as badly as she wanted to implicate Hassani. She felt the same sense of drive and intensity as when she’d seen her brother in the hospital after he lost both his legs and she enlisted herself the very next day.
Find something, Naomi. Find something! It’s here…
Within hours, British government agents would be plowing through every inch of this room. Every sliver of RAM on his computers. She got up and walked around. It’s here. I feel it. Her blood was hot with blame. This was her case. She had felt the whole thing from the start. Now she had screwed up. She didn’t want to lose it. Not now.
She spotted a kid’s Transformer on the carpet. Sadly, Naomi picked it up. She held the toy in her hand, her mind flashing through a hundred scenarios. Out of answers, she sank back on al-Bashir’s couch.
She put the toy on the glass coffee table.
Something met her eye.
It hit home immediately, a spark of hope, recognition, firing up inside. C
an’t be.
She reached forward. There was a stack of art and coffee table books on the glass tabletop. One was from the New Tate Museum. Another was on the Gauguin and Picasso exhibition from a couple of years ago. Naomi had seen it in DC.
But it was the third book, underneath, that, like some kind of superconducting magnet, held her stare.
Yes, it can.
Naomi removed it from the pile. It was a travel book, about a destination the al-Bashirs might have once visited.
The thing was, she had seen the very same destination just two days before.
On the ski-lift ticket at Dani Thibault’s farmhouse. In Serbia.
She fixed on the cover. A snowcapped mountain rising from a valley bathed in amber light. It couldn’t be a coincidence. At this stage, there were no coincidences. Her heart started to beat like crazy. She had found it. She had found the link that bound them together.
Gstaad.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Naomi motioned Hauck inside with a concealed wave, closing the door behind him. She showed him what she had found.
“Two days ago,” she explained. Her voice was hushed yet driven with renewed emotion. “In Thibault’s farmhouse. I didn’t think it meant anything. Just one of the things I found searching through his possessions. A ski-lift ticket.” Naomi’s eyes twinkled. “To Gstaad.”
“Okay.” Hauck nodded, picking up the book and staring at the cover.
“It’s a ski resort,” Naomi said. “In Switzerland.”
“I know it’s a ski resort,” Hauck replied.
“Sorry. Just check out what’s inside.”
He leafed through the glossy pages. It was filled with scenic photos of ski runs, the snow-covered mountains in winter, and in summer, the picturesque village. He found a bookmark inside. On the highlighted page, one side had a description of one of the resort’s most treacherous runs, the Chute; the other had a shot of beautiful people in expensive ski clothes sunning themselves on a deck at lunch. At a fashionable restaurant, high on the mountain.
