Near Dark

by Brad Thor

  Scouring the lot for weapons, the French teens picked up whatever they could find—rocks, sticks, broken bottles, even broken pieces of concrete—and dabbed at their bloody wounds with dirty hands and tee-shirts as they prepared to finish off their victim.

  Standing his ground, the young Arab smiled and beckoned them forward with his razor.

  The leader of the mob had been cut badly enough that he had dropped back. Now, a new leader had taken over. After giving his colleagues a few instructions, he turned to face their opponent.

  If the skinny, brown-skinned teen was frightened, he gave no indication. His face retained its inscrutable visage. His apparent calm must have been terrifying for his enemies.

  Nevertheless, the French teens mustered their courage and came at him from multiple angles.

  Once more, the Arab spun and slipped their strikes, like an experienced surfer allowing a wave to pass overhead. What he didn’t do this time, though, was strike back. He allowed them all to pass by unscathed. Nekrasov sat riveted, fascinated by the spectacle of it all.

  The young Arab had them exactly where he wanted them. He could have ended the fight right there, but instead he had danced away from their attack and had allowed them all to move right by without consequence.

  The only explanation was that he enjoyed toying with them; that he enjoyed flaunting his superior skills.

  At some point, though, he was going to have to bring things to a close. That’s what Nikolai wanted to watch. Unfortunately, it never came.

  From a building nearby, an old woman leaned out her third-story window and shouted that she had called the police. The French teens froze. The threat, if real, presented a problem. It also presented an opportunity.

  Judging by the looks of them, these were neither local honor students nor altar boys. These were rough young men. It was likely they’d all had run-ins with law enforcement—possibly multiple times. If the cops were on their way and they didn’t disperse, who knew what kind of trouble they could be in. This was the “problem” part.

  The “opportunity” part was that they had been handed an excuse to flee, before the Arab could finish them off. Later, they could buck themselves up and soothe their wounded egos by claiming that if it wasn’t for the old lady calling the cops, they would have finished off the Arab and left him in a bloody heap.

  And so, like a murmuration of starlings, they turned together and fled down a narrow alley.

  Discretion being the better part of valor, the Arab turned in the opposite direction, and ran as well.

  To Nikolai’s amusement, he was headed right toward him. Rolling down the Bentley’s window, the Russian beckoned the boy over.

  Wary of the myriad of wealthy sexual predators who trolled the Riviera, the teen approached the expensive car cautiously.

  “That was quite impressive,” said Nekrasov. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

  “From my brother,” the young Arab said, the pride evident in his voice.

  “Sounds like someone I might be interested in hiring. Where can I find him?”

  “Clairvaux.”

  Nekrasov knew the high-security prison well. Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin—who had helped to establish socialism in France—had been housed there, as well as the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal. It was not a nice place and was reserved for some of the most serious criminals in France.

  “What does your father do?” the Russian asked.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She cleans the houses of rich people like you.”

  Nekrasov smiled. The boy was fearless and also highly intelligent. He reminded him of himself at that age.

  “Do you work? Go to school?”

  The teen shrugged. “Work, yes. School, sometimes.”

  “Do you want a better job?” the Russian asked.

  “You don’t even know what I do.”

  “I don’t care. I’m giving you one chance. Take it or leave it. Do you want a better job?”

  The young man nodded.

  Removing his business card, Nekrasov wrote something on the back. “What’s your name?”

  “Beni.”

  “Come by the hotel Friday,” he said as he handed the card out the window. “You’re not a guest, so make sure to use the service entrance.”

  It wasn’t meant as an insult and Beni didn’t take it as such. Rich people, in his experience, were simply direct.

  Pocketing the card, he stepped back as the man gave a command in Russian and the driver pulled away from the curb.

  He stood watching until the huge car turned a corner and disappeared from view. Then he did the same, calmly making his way down the nearest side street. He doubted the cops were coming. If they had actually been on their way, he would have already begun hearing the staccato, high-pitched wail of their klaxons. Besides, they had better things to do than break up groups of teenagers fighting. Nice was awash in drugs, gambling, human trafficking, and organized crime—industries he suspected his new benefactor was all too familiar with.

  In the back of the Bentley, Nekrasov’s thoughts should have returned to Eva and her oncology appointment. But they didn’t. Instead, his mind was focused on a bigger problem.

  He had fronted one hundred million dollars to activate the most lucrative murder-for-hire contract in history. His assumption had been that by opening it up to multiple assassins, the rush would be on to kill the target as quickly as possible and be the first to claim the prize.

  The contract, though, was still open. The target had yet to be taken out. He was not happy. In fact, the more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

  By the time Valery had brought the Bentley to a stop in front of the Centre Antoine Lacassagne, Nekrasov knew what he had to do.

  It was time to start letting people know what would happen if he didn’t soon see results.

  CHAPTER 20

  VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

  Sølvi Kolstad hadn’t been to the Baltics in a long time—and for good reason. The last time she’d run an operation here, she had almost been killed.

  It should have been easy. A foreign diplomat, with information valuable to Norway, wanted to make a trade. In exchange for a list of Norwegian diplomats who were actively being recruited by his government’s intelligence service, the man wanted to be smuggled out of Lithuania, along with his family, and given a new life in Norway.

  Carl Pedersen had put Sølvi in charge. It had been her first major operation and from the word go, everything had gone wrong.

  For starters, the diplomat was a sexist. He had refused to work with a woman, especially one who, at the time, appeared so young and inexperienced. As soon as Sølvi was introduced as his handler, he had threatened to call off the deal.

  “You dictate the terms of the relationship,” Carl had instructed her, “or they do. You never want it to be them. Always make sure it’s you.”

  She tried everything she could think of, but nothing would change the diplomat’s mind. Finally, Carl had encouraged her to call the man’s bluff and cut off all contact.

  The gambit worked. Within only a couple of days, the man finally came around. Multiple hurdles, though, had still remained.

  One of the biggest sticking points was whether the diplomat’s intelligence was authentic. His story jibed with bits and pieces of information the NIS had picked up over the prior year, but the man refused to say how he had come across it. What’s worse, he refused to provide any solid evidence of his claim, nor a plan for how he would secure a copy of the list. Everything, he stated, would be handed over, once he and his family were safely in Norway.

  Sølvi didn’t need to be told that it was a lousy deal. Instead, unauthorized, she had gone out on a limb and had made a counteroffer. Once he had provided evidence of his claim, she would get the diplomat’s family to Norway. Then, once he had produced the actual list, she would arrange for him to follow.

  When she reported back to C
arl the new agreement, he had done two things. First, he had complimented her. Then, he asked how she planned on getting the diplomat’s family out of Lithuania. To her credit, she had come up with an excellent ruse. Norway would invite a range of diplomats and their families, from several of the embassies in Lithuania, on an all-expense-paid energy, tourism, and climate delegation.

  As part of the arrangement, the diplomat’s family would leave Vilnius with the rest of the guests. It would be up to him to come up with a legitimate excuse as to why he would be a day late in joining the delegation. If he tried to show up at the airport with his family having not honored his end of the agreement, a problem with his passport would materialize in order to bar his travel. Sølvi, though, didn’t think it would come to that. The diplomat was desperate to leave his country and start over in Norway.

  It took some arm-twisting, but the Norwegian government eventually came around and agreed not only to host, but more importantly to pay for the delegation and the visit around the north of Norway.

  On the appointed day, the diplomat drove his family to the airport and saw them off. Later that night, he met with Sølvi and presented both the list and the underlying intelligence files for each person on it—all of which she copied and transmitted to Carl for verification.

  When word came back that everything was in order, Sølvi informed the diplomat that he had been cleared to travel to Norway and join his family. The man was overjoyed.

  After entreating him to act normal and get a good night’s sleep, she wished him safe travels.

  “You’re not taking me to the plane tomorrow?” he had asked.

  “Absolutely not,” she had replied. “You delayed a trip with your wife and kids. The last thing you want is to be seen with some strange woman. That goes double if anyone from your intelligence service is watching you.”

  “Watching me? Why would they be watching me?”

  She had been speaking candidly, but it had spooked him. It was important to calm him down. “You have nothing to worry about. Nobody is watching you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” he asked, growing more tense with each passing exchange.

  “Think of Norway,” she replied, trying to soothe him. “You and your family are going to have a wonderful life there. Keep your mind focused on that and everything will be okay.”

  “How do you know we’ll be safe?” he asked, his anxiety still getting the better of him.

  “We talked about this. No one will know you are in Norway. A trail of evidence will show that you had arranged for a car to meet you at the delegation hotel and that it drove you and your family to a private airfield. There, a private jet was waiting, which flew all of you to South Africa. Outside Cape Town your trail will go cold, except for a few conflicting rumors that a foreign family was trying to figure out how to quietly get to Botswana. Or was it Namibia? No, wait. I think the family was trying to get into Zimbabwe.”

  It had taken a lot of handholding, but she felt she had gotten him to the right point. All he had to do was get through the night and get to the airport the next morning.

  When the time came for him to leave his apartment building, she was sitting in her car, watching, from a half block down. He never appeared.

  A million things raced through her mind. Had he overslept? Was he sick? Hungover? Had he suffered a heart attack? A stroke? What the hell was going on?

  She waited for as long as she could and then gave in to the character trait that killed the cat. She had to know why the diplomat hadn’t left.

  Locking her car, she walked casually up the street, pretending to be engrossed in her phone.

  They had established a way to signal each other through Instagram. Based on what she could see, he hadn’t been active since they had spoken yesterday. Something was definitely up. He should have logged onto his account before doing anything else this morning. He hadn’t.

  Walking past the apartment building, she kept a casual watch for anything out of the ordinary—stray figures in doorways, occupied parked cars, or anything else that might signal some sort of surveillance. She didn’t see anything. As far as she could tell, the street was clean.

  Against her better instincts, and with no team to back her up, she had decided to check out his apartment.

  It was an old building. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to break into. As it turned out, that hadn’t been necessary.

  In their push to get to work, a stream of residents had been pouring out. None of them even bothered looking behind them to make sure the lobby door had closed and locked shut. All Sølvi had to do was stand nearby and wait. When the next person exited, she slipped inside.

  The diplomat lived on the third floor. Shunning the elevator, she took the stairs, making sure to be as quiet as possible.

  She could hear the sounds of a struggle coming from inside the apartment before she had even arrived at the door at the end of the hall.

  While the NIS had issued her a firearm, Carl had told her to leave it in Oslo. Any weapon she carried abroad should never be traceable—and whenever possible, should always be standard issue of a foreign, hostile government. For her work in the Baltics, he had recommended several types of pistols. He had then handed her an envelope with a thousand U.S. dollars and the name of a black-market arms dealer he trusted.

  Based on what the man had available at the time, she had selected a Russian-made Pistolet Besshumnyy, which translated to “Pistol Silent” in English, and was also known as a “PB” for short.

  A Soviet design from the late 1960s, it was still in service and manufactured by Kalashnikov—Russia’s largest arms manufacturer. Built for the 9x18mm Makarov round, it used an integral suppressor, which consisted of two parts. This meant that the PB could be easily concealed. The pistol, with half its suppressor already attached, could be placed in one coat pocket—the remaining half in another.

  It took minimal training to become adept at rapidly drawing, assembling, and firing the weapon. Sølvi had practiced the routine so many times that she could do it in her sleep. By the time she was halfway down the hall, she had already put it together.

  She had never been inside the diplomat’s apartment. The handful of times they had met, it had always been in an NIS safe house on the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital. She had no way of knowing how it was laid out. If it was like most of the other apartments of its age she had seen in Vilnius, the door would open onto a corridor leading to a living room, dining room, and kitchen. Along the way, there’d be a bathroom and, likely, two bedrooms.

  Stopping at the door, she steadied her breathing and listened. All she could hear were thuds and angry, muffled voices.

  She would have given a year’s pay for a sack full of flashbangs. Making entry without some sort of distraction device was doubling the danger she was about to encounter. The only way this could possibly work was if she maintained the element of surprise.

  Reaching down, she tried the door handle. It was locked.

  Think, she said to herself.

  All the old buildings, at least the nice ones like this, had an on-site superintendent. Such a person would have keys to each apartment. But by the time she found the superintendent, it could be too late. She needed to get inside that unit now. The only question was how.

  If her diplomat was being beaten, the people doing the beating were going to be on edge—suspicious of every sound they heard—even a simple knock at the door.

  That gave her an idea. The key was to be anything but simple.

  CHAPTER 21

  When foreign missions selected residences for their diplomats, they did so with the cooperation of the host country. In addition to the quality of the dwelling and the safety of the neighborhood, one of the biggest considerations was the ability for local police, fire, and EMS to quickly respond to any calls. All diplomats and their addresses would be flagged in the emergency response database.

  What Sølvi wanted to do was to
pound on the door like an angry neighbor, demanding to know what all the noise was about. But that would have destroyed her element of surprise. Whoever was inside could go silent and just choose to ignore her, hoping she’d go away.

  She could have called in a robbery, a fire, or a medical event, but if Vilnius first responders were like those in most major European cities, they were seven to ten minutes away. If she wanted to waste that kind of time, she would have already begun looking for the superintendent. Besides, there was no guarantee that if she sent the cops or fire department in, that she’d be able to peel her diplomat away.

  She needed to stack the odds in her favor. Looking at the solid wooden door and its carved iron lock once more, that’s when it had hit her.

  The building reminded her of the one in which she had lived in Paris as an au pair. From its façade, to the cage elevator, marble staircase, and hallways they were practically identical. She hoped the attic space was as well.

  Measuring her paces back down the hall, she found a utility door, and was able to open it with a single kick. Behind it, was a set of wooden “servant’s stairs” that led up to the attic area under the roof.

  It was dusty, scattered with boxes and other junk that must have belonged to the superintendent or the property owner, and ran the length of the building—just like the one she knew from Paris. From the north end of the building to the south, a plank walkway traversed the exposed, hand-hewn joists.

  Retracing her steps, she picked up things along the way she thought might be helpful and kept moving until she was standing right above where the diplomat’s apartment should be.

  There, careful not to cause anything to creak, she knelt down and listened. Lowering her head between two of the beams she was able to pick up the same muffled noises she had heard downstairs in the hallway. All she needed to do now was to zero in on her entry point.

  Between two different sets of joists, spaced many meters apart, she located the mounting hardware for two separate chandeliers. Living room and dining room, she figured.