by Ward Larsen
“What is the name of the salon?”
“Chez Salma. This receptionist still goes there, and she mentioned something else—apparently the owner lets out two rooms above her shop.”
Hadad cursed inwardly—he’d let his dislike of Vasiliev cloud his vision. “Very well. I will investigate immediately.”
“I was thinking of going myself—” Vasiliev began.
“Absolutely not!” Hadad barked. If Kravchuk was at the salon, the last thing he wanted was a band of Russian intelligence thugs barging in. The phone remained silent, and Hadad began to have second thoughts. He knew the matter of the wayward interpreter was playing out far above either of their pay grades. For the sake of his career, he said, “I will call back as soon as we have her. But stay out of the way and let us handle it!”
Hadad rang off and made a call to the operations center. He was informed that two patrol units were nearby and could reach the address within minutes. “Order it! Tell them to seal off the building!”
He tore his coat from a hook and headed for the door.
* * *
Slaton grounded the bucket hard to the building, just below the frame of the window. Ludmilla Kravchuk pulled the window open like a damsel uncaging a lion in a circus show. She took a tentative step back, which was just as well—the first thing Slaton did was dump a body over the sill.
“What…?” Kravchuk stood wide-eyed, staring at the lifeless form on the floor. He was wearing the uniform of a municipal worker.
Slaton straddled the bucket and stepped into the room. He regarded Kravchuk and decided she looked very much like the pictures from Sorensen’s file. Solidly built, mid-forties, undeniably Slavic features. The only differences now were the natural results of stress. Deepened lines in her face, dark patches under her eyes, a hesitant posture.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “My name is David. I’ve been sent to get you out of here.”
“My message got through?” she asked, still seeming uncertain.
“Yes, the one you sent through the Czechs.”
She eyed him warily. “But you are not American.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, not bothering to argue otherwise.
“I’m an interpreter. Languages are my specialty, and your accent is Continental.” She looked expectantly out the window, and asked, “Are you alone?”
“For now, yes.”
He took in the room at a glance. It was the kind of shoebox lodging that might have had a dozen tenants in the last year. What little furniture he saw was mismatched, piecemeal acquisitions left behind by previous renters or salvaged from an alley. The paint on the walls was flaking in spots, tiny reveals of drab green beneath a ten-year-old spruce-up of beige. The scent of the salon was unmistakable—a chemical stew of hair dye, gel, and floral-scented shampoo.
Slaton dragged the unconscious man into a corner. Back at the window he glanced outside, then collected the rest of what was in the lift’s bucket—wrapped in an olive blanket like a sleeping toddler, one MP5 and one grenade launcher. He took a more careful look up and down the street. The man he’d taken out had a partner, and there was no telling how soon he would return. Some interval, he guessed, between retrieving a takeout lunch and addressing a call of nature. Slaton knew the two were freelancing, which was endemic throughout the region—municipal employees augmenting their inflation-racked paychecks by squeezing in private jobs. The man he’d overpowered was obviously the senior of the two. That being the case, the fact that the truck had moved slightly up the road, and was now apparently engaged in a new job would hardly be unusual.
The man’s disappearance, however, would be.
“Is he dead?” Kravchuk asked. Her English was effortless, only a mild accent.
“No,” he said truthfully, not speculating on his victim’s long-term prognosis. “Are you alone here?”
“Yes.”
“Is the front door locked?”
“Of course.”
“Is there any other way into the room?”
“No, except … the one you took.”
She was frozen, still staring at the man in the corner. He hadn’t stirred, but he seemed to be breathing. A goose egg on his skull had stopped bleeding. Slaton gave the interpreter his most reassuring smile. “Look, it’s going to be okay,” he said a second time.
She finally met his eyes and seemed to ratchet down a notch.
“He’s unconscious, but I don’t know for how long. I need to make sure he’s restrained.”
Slaton went to the kitchen and began rummaging through drawers. He came back with an electrical extension cord, a roll of packing tape, and a dishrag.
He rolled the man onto his stomach, wrenched his hands behind his back, and bound them with the electrical cord—a harsh irony, given his profession. The dishrag he taped over the man’s mouth as a gag, making sure he could still breathe through his nose. Slaton hurried to the only closet in sight, opened the door, and was happy to find it empty. He dragged the man over and shoved him inside, propping him in the corner in a sitting position—the best option to keep his airway open. His victim began to stir, emitting a low groan.
Slaton closed the door. Out of sight, out of mind.
He returned to the window, sided up to the frame, and peered outside. A police car had appeared directly below on the street. An officer was standing at the driver’s door talking on a mobile phone. Not good.
“We need to move,” he said, stripping off and discarding the yellow vest and hard hat he’d appropriated from the truck. He had already ditched his camo jacket, which wouldn’t have worked with the rest.
“Move?” she asked. “How?”
“I don’t know.”
Kravchuk seemed disappointed. She was probably expecting the imminent arrival of a black helicopter on the roof. Slaton only wished it were so easy. He also wished he could debrief Kravchuk right now, go over at least the basics of her story. There simply wasn’t time. Yet he did need to cover one thing.
“You said you had a recording of a meeting between the presidents.”
“Yes.” Ludmilla led him to the tiny kitchen table. There Slaton saw a disassembled shoe. Its heel was detached but remained connected to the rest by a wire. He picked it up carefully. A circuit board and tiny memory card had been artfully crafted into the one-inch block heel.
“I was given these shoes,” she said. “They told me to wear them to the meeting. I had no idea they contained a recording device—not until I arrived here.”
“Are you sure it worked? Have you checked what’s on the card?”
“No. I wanted to, but I’m not very good at that kind of thing.”
Slaton picked up the shoe. He ripped the heel free, separating the circuitry and SD card—the rest, he was sure, was nothing more than a microphone which was of little intelligence value. He stuffed the heel into the hip pocket of his cargo pants.
Ludmilla looked at him suspiciously.
“It makes more sense for me to keep it,” he said. “If we get separated, you have a first-hand account of the meeting. I’ll have the recording. It doubles our chance of getting the information out.”
He knew his math was dubious, and the question of why they might get separated he left unaddressed. All the same, the logic seemed to quell her reservations.
More commotion outside, tires scrubbing over asphalt.
“Why did you choose this place?” he asked sharply.
“What do you mean?”
She sensed his urgency but seemed confused. It struck Slaton that the challenges in his situation were mounting—and very quickly. The police could arrive en masse at any moment. Kravchuk wasn’t in a good frame of mind. He noticed she was wearing a pair of running shoes, which seemed oddly appropriate, even if they didn’t match the sedate dress she was wearing. She suddenly seemed to gain confidence.
“The owner of the salon is an old friend,” she said. “I recalled that she rented out rooms above her shop … it w
as the safest place I could think of.”
He considered it. “How did you get to be friends with a stylist in Damascus?”
“I was a regular customer when I was posted here at the embassy.”
“Is she making you pay for the room?” he asked, wanting to establish the depth of their friendship.
“She took some money, yes. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t—”
“Does she have a car?”
“I don’t know. She used to, but that was years ago.”
Slaton did his best to recall the satellite images of the building. He remembered an alley behind the salon, a few cars parked among the trash bins and debris. Unfortunately, the aspect of Sorensen’s overheads had been limited. He hadn’t been able to confirm points of entry into the building.
“Does the salon have a back door?”
“Yes. I checked myself after Salma closed on the first night. It’s through the storage room at the base of the stairs.”
Slaton was encouraged—not only for the fact that there was a back door, but because Kravchuk was showing a few instincts after all.
He pulled a thick wad of Syrian pounds from his pocket, cut it, and put half in her hand. “Here’s what I need you to do…”
TWENTY-NINE
Ludmilla rushed downstairs and found Salma in the middle of a balayage. Her assistant, Malika, was sweeping up beneath another stylist’s chair. Naji was sitting quietly on a tiny wooden stool in the corner—he was looking at a Dr. Seuss book, holding it upside down.
Ludmilla approached her friend with an urgency she didn’t have to manufacture. “Salma, I need a favor. It’s very important.”
The highlighting brush paused.
“One of my old friends from the embassy has fallen ill. She lives across town, and I may need to take her to the hospital. If you still have your car, I’d very much like to borrow it.”
Before Salma could answer, Ludmilla discreetly held out the cash Slaton had given her. Salma looked at the cash, then outside. A police car was visible through the wide shopfront window. She looked back at Ludmilla skeptically.
Ludmilla tried to think of something credible to say. Nothing came to mind.
Salma left her customer, nodding for Ludmilla to follow. At the back of the shop, near the stairs, Salma said, “A friend called me this morning, the owner of a salon a few streets away. She said the police had come by. They asked her if she’d ever had a woman customer from the Russian embassy.”
Ludmilla remained silent.
“Of course, she told them no. But she remembered that I had once mentioned a regular who was Russian.”
Ludmilla asked cautiously, “Did you tell her I was here?”
Salma looked at Naji who was now running a plastic car up the wall. Watching him with a vacant gaze, she said in a whisper, “I never told you how his father died.”
“No … you didn’t.”
“The army conscripted Adil two years ago. They said if he could drive a bus for the city, he could drive one for the army just as well. He was forty-three years old, a peaceable man. He tried to get out of it, but of course they didn’t listen. The Alawites gave him a uniform, and two days later he was transporting soldiers from one battle to the next. He did what they asked for six months. Then one Saturday morning, outside Aleppo, Adil drove straight over a bomb that had been buried in the road. He was the only one on the bus.”
Ludmilla could think of nothing to say.
Salma ignored the cash. “I still have the car.” She went to a nearby counter and pulled a key from a drawer. “Where will you go?”
Ludmilla hesitated, then said, “I’m not sure. There is a man upstairs, an American. He has come to help me get out of the country.”
Salma straightened. “An American? In your room? But how did he—”
“Please, there’s no time to explain!” Ludmilla looked plaintively at the front window. The police car sat like an omen.
Salma’s gaze fell to Naji. After a prolonged silence, she said, “I will give you my car. But I want something in return…”
* * *
Slaton realized his run of luck had ended when the third police car arrived.
The first hadn’t moved—it was parked not far behind the Ural. Two more had appeared up the street to the right, and now four uniformed officers were huddled in an impromptu conference. One was talking on his mobile.
Slaton turned away from the window and glanced hopefully at the door behind him. Kravchuk was supposed to retrieve him once she’d gotten the keys to the car—assuming there was a car. How long had she been gone? Five minutes? Six? He wanted to keep an eye on the situation outside, but time was becoming critical.
He looked again to the street. The Ural was directly across from the window, no more than a hundred feet away. The nearest police car was twenty feet behind it, the other two fifty yards farther back. He leaned tentatively out the window, just far enough to survey the street in both directions. He spotted more trouble on the right, two big sedans lacing through traffic.
He looked again at the door, willing it to open.
The little group of policemen remained in their huddle, like a group of referees trying to agree on a call. All of a sudden, one seemed to notice the cherry picker with its bucket grounded to the window above the salon.
Time was up.
Slaton reached down and selected his weapon. He’d brought both the MP5 and the rocket launcher, hoping to use neither but keeping his options open. Now his hand was being forced. He prepped the rocket launcher, and was arcing it toward the window when he heard hard steps on the stairs.
Too heavy and quick to be Kravchuk’s?
He immediately switched to the MP5 and trained it across the room. The door burst open. Ludmilla appeared, completely out of breath. As if not realizing she was looking down the barrel of a gun, she said, “We can go now!”
Had she come ten seconds sooner, they might have done just that.
* * *
“There is the building, just ahead!” said Inspector Hadad’s driver.
Hadad was in the back seat of the leading sedan, another unmarked unit behind them. He cursed when he saw the scene. Three patrol cars were parked along the street in front of the salon. He’d wanted to contain the building quickly, but now he realized he should have told the uniforms to stay out of sight.
“Stop!” Hadad shouted.
The driver complied.
Hadad got out and stood in the street for a moment to take in the scene. He saw the salon’s front door, its streetside window. One of the black-and-whites was parked directly across the street. He also saw the mouth of an alley behind. He cursed under his breath and got back in the car.
“There is an alley in back!” he said. “We must contain every escape!”
He used the radio to send the trailing car ahead to cover the back. It quickly shot past toward the top of the alley.
Altogether, there were seven men in the two unmarked sedans. All were so focused on the front entrance and the alley that no one gave a second thought to the truck from the Ministry of Electricity parked next to the building, its lift extended to an open second-floor window.
Also ignored: the military troop carrier, flying a Hezbollah flag, that was parked diagonally across the street.
THIRTY
“Salma’s car is in the alley!” Ludmilla said. “But we must hurry—the police are outside!”
Slaton didn’t bother to explain that he was intimately aware of the tactical picture. There was an impulse to stand down and egress. The ride they needed was waiting. A clean escape in hand.
One last look outside changed his mind.
The sedans were very close, and multiple silhouettes inside confirmed they were delivering trouble: men presumably more formidably armed, and better trained, than the street cops outside.
As if to prove the point, both sedans skidded to a hard stop. The back door of one opened and a man stepped out to survey the situation. Slaton
edged away from the window, but kept watching. The man was thin and agile, his eyes alert behind wire-framed glasses. He wasted little time with his evaluation, soon disappearing back into the car. Moments later, certainly after coordinating by radio, the trailing car leapfrogged ahead. It slowed enough to climb a curb and bypass traffic, the dark shape of the driver mirroring every jolt. The other sedan didn’t move.
Slaton knew immediately what was happening—one car was advancing to block the alley, while the other remained in front. A textbook move for secret police the world over. The second car swerved amid traffic, the engine revving. In a matter of seconds, it would pass the Ural. A few beats later, the car would blockade the alley—all before he and Ludmilla could even get downstairs.
Their best avenue of escape was about to be shut down.
“Go down and start the car!” he shouted. “I’ll be right behind you!”
Thankfully, Kravchuk disappeared without a word.
Slaton lifted the rocket launcher a second time. As he scanned outside he saw the policemen on the sidewalk, but no bystanders in the immediate area. This made his calculus even easier.
He rotated the grip into place and flipped up the optical sight. He’d chosen the M-model for its larger thermobaric warhead—twelve pounds of high-explosives that packed the same punch as a 155mm artillery shell.
The inaptness of the weapon didn’t escape him. Slaton was a highly trained sniper, virtually peerless when it came to precision shooting. This was anything but. The system in his hands had an effective range of six hundred yards, but was essentially a point and shoot weapon. No wires or lasers. No guidance of any kind. Only ballistics and Kentucky windage. He looked at the scene through the window and decided it hardly mattered. With his target no more than forty yards away, the recommended minimum range was of greater concern—the distance at which an unprotected shooter risked fragging himself.
