The Last Refuge

by Ben Coes

  He wrapped a dish towel around his right hand. He stepped back to the mousetrap, reached down and picked it up. The metal bar at the trap’s front had been sharpened. Lifting it from the side, he saw the wet blood, covering the glinting steel that was as thin, as sharp, as a razor.

  Dropping the mousetrap, he pulled the newspaper gingerly from the plastic bag with his left hand, placed it down on the marble island. Nothing. No note, or other object. He flipped through the paper, page by page. He went quickly through the front section, then the business section. In the sports section, he suddenly saw handwriting. Scrawled across a woman’s leg in a beer advertisement, black handwriting:

  Queen’s Gate near park entrance, one hour, or next time it will be your head

  Borchardt wrapped bandages around each finger. Later, he would need stitches but right now he didn’t have the time.

  He scurried upstairs. In his bedroom, he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  “Yes,” came the voice, groggy.

  “Wake up,” said Borchardt.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “I’m meeting someone at Kensington Gardens in an hour. I need you to be there.”

  “What happened?”

  Borchardt explained the incident with the mousetrap, then read his bodyguard, an ex–KGB agent named Vlad Kellner, the note from the woman’s leg.

  “Why are you going?” asked Kellner after hearing the note. “We can construct a safety protocol within the hour. You stay at Phillimore and we can have this thing locked down by the time you finish putting your hair in place.”

  “Fuck you,” said Borchardt.

  “A little morning humor.”

  “You know how I feel,” said Borchardt. “I’m more afraid of living my life surrounded by guards and fences than I am of being shot in the head.”

  “So you want to meet this person, who just almost cut your fingers off?”

  “No, you stupid son of a bitch, I have no intention of meeting him,” said Borchardt impatiently. “I want you to kill him.”

  “Forty-five minutes to assemble a kill team?” asked Kellner, incredulous.

  “Yes!” barked Borchardt.

  “It’s clearly an individual,” said Kellner. “A rogue. Not someone you’ve dealt with. You’d already be dead.”

  “Can you bring Anna?”

  “Yes, fine. Where will you enter the park?”

  “Queen’s Gate.”

  Borchardt hung up the phone. He didn’t bother showering. He dressed quickly, a dark blue suit, no tie.

  Borchardt took the elevator to the basement. The lights in the darkened garage went on when he entered. He looked at the line of cars, chose the Bentley, started it up, then drove up the ramp, waiting for the automatic garage door to rise. He pulled out of the garage onto Upper Phillimore Gardens and sped toward Kensington Gardens.

  He didn’t notice the man seated in the backseat of the parked Mercedes across the street.

  * * *

  Borchardt drove quickly to Queen’s Gate and parked on Kensington Road. He waited, picked up his cell, called Kellner.

  “Are you there?”

  “No, not yet. Five minutes out.”

  Borchardt flipped his phone shut. He waited in the Bentley. Ten minutes later, he dialed again.

  “We’re here,” said Kellner. “Anna is reading a book left north of the gates. I’ll be walking a vector.”

  “Okay. I’m parked at the gates.”

  “Look, I’ve been thinking about this,” said Kellner. “Obviously, this knucklehead selected Queen’s Gate because it’s visible. Getting a clean shot off, leaving a body in the middle of the park. It’s, well—”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying what I just said,” said Kellner. “Getting a clean shot off will not be easy. Look around you.”

  From the front seat of the Bentley, Borchardt turned and ogled the gates surrounding Kensington Gardens. The sidewalks outside the park were beginning to get crowded; people walking to catch a bus or the tube to work; dog walkers, joggers, mothers and fathers pushing baby strollers.

  “Do the best you can.”

  “This is not an ideal environment,” persisted Kellner. “I don’t particularly feel like spending the rest of my life in prison. We should take the time to design something correctly.”

  “So should I ask him to reschedule?” asked Borchardt sarcastically. “What are you, a fucking imbecile? What is it about you Russians? You manage to be both lazy and stupid at the same time. It’s actually quite an accomplishment.”

  “We simply don’t show up,” said Kellner. “If it’s so fucking urgent, they will get back in touch with you.”

  In the rearview mirror, Borchardt spied the entrance gates in the distance.

  “Stop complaining. Unless you kill the queen, I should be able to get you sprung from a British prison. That’s if they catch you, which, of course, they won’t.”

  “That’s reassuring. Anna has the Nikon. If she can get a clean shot, she will take it. Me too. But if she can’t, she’ll take some photos.”

  Borchardt flipped the phone shut. He shook his head. He wasn’t good at this part of it. His world, his professional world, existed largely on the computer. The most important part of his job, the critical, objective assessments of weapons and weapons systems, was conducted by a field team of more than two hundred men and women who worked, secretly, for Borchardt. He had spent his life building this network of covert freelancers and highly compensated experts, and he dealt with them for the most part virtually. He didn’t like people. He didn’t like what occurred when he was forced to coexist with people nearby and visible.

  Borchardt’s fingers throbbed in pain. He didn’t like pain, not at all. The bandage on the middle finger had a small dot of red where the blood was seeping through. As soon as possible, he would need sutures to fix the deep gashes.

  He went to look at his watch, then realized he’d forgotten to put it on. He glanced down at the clock on the dashboard of the Bentley. It was five minutes before he was due to meet the son of a bitch who had sliced his fingers open. He climbed from the car, walking casually toward Queen’s Gate. He consciously tried to keep his head calm and still. His eyes, however, darted about, wild with curiosity and paranoia. At Queen’s Gate, he stepped left and went into the park, which was crowded with people. Christ, he thought. Kellner was right.

  Okay, so he would meet the man. Or was it a woman? Whatever, he would meet the person who’d nearly sliced his fingers clean off, find out what the hell they wanted. Anna could snap a few photos. Kellner would get one of his contacts in Kiev to run the photo. Kellner could organize a proper hit, do it right. He would get extra protection for a week or two, until it was done.

  Borchardt walked to a kiosk inside Kensington Gardens and purchased a small cup of green tea. He glanced left. Benches lined the edge of the grass meadow for as far as the eye could see. They were crowded with people, sitting and reading. On the fourth bench, he saw Anna—tall, gangly Anna, like a librarian on steroids. She sat, reading a book, one of three people on the bench.

  Borchardt stood near the entrance and sipped his tea. He finished the cup. At least half an hour passed. He paced from one side of the park’s large entrance to the other. He felt perspiration beginning to wet his underarms. He removed his suit coat. He went and sat on a bench near the entrance. What had happened? On the woman’s leg, he’d written one hour, but perhaps he thought Borchardt wouldn’t retrieve the paper so early. In fact, now that he considered it, what did “one hour” actually mean? One hour from when exactly? Would he be forced to wait at Kensington Gardens all day? Fuck that.

  An hour turned into two, then three. Finally, at nine o’clock, Borchardt stood. He glanced at Anna, then exited the park. He walked to the Bentley. A bright orange slip of paper was tucked into the right windshield wiper; a ticket.

  “Fuckhead,” he muttered as he removed it, and threw it to the pavement, then climbed
in the large sedan. He put the keys in the ignition, then started the Bentley.

  “Hi, Rolf,” came the voice from the backseat.

  Borchardt practically jumped from his seat. He lurched his head violently around, his comb-over came flying off his head as he did so.

  “Christ, you scared me,” yelled Borchardt at Kellner seated in the backseat.

  “Sorry,” said Kellner. “At least I didn’t wait until you were driving.”

  Borchardt shook his head, then leaned against the steering wheel.

  “I practically had a heart attack. How the hell did you get inside the car?”

  “You left it unlocked,” said Kellner. He lit a cigarette, then opened the window.

  After a few minutes, a tall, severe-looking woman with a broad forehead and long, brown hair climbed into the front seat of the car. Anna, Kellner’s assistant. She said nothing.

  Borchardt pushed the car out into traffic.

  “Let’s go back and look at the note,” said Kellner, a hint of exasperation in his voice. “The mousetrap. Maybe it was a prank, yes? Some kid from down the block.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Borchardt. “Some little teenage prankster who almost severed my fingers off, Vlad.”

  Borchardt paused.

  “Am I inconveniencing you, Vlad?” Borchardt asked, looking into the rearview mirror.

  “No, Rolf. Come on. What’s that for?”

  “How much did I pay you last year? Three million euros? Four? To do what? You let me know if I should just drop you off right here. You miserable Ukrainian—”

  “Estonian.”

  “Estonian, Ukrainian, who the fuck cares, you’re all the same. You miserable Estonian fuckface douche bag. I mean, ex-agents, looking to bodyguard billionaires, are so hard to find. I’ll have a rat’s nest full of them by lunchtime.”

  “Whatever you want to do, Rolf,” said Kellner, calmly puffing his Dunhill in the backseat.

  Borchardt drove in silence for several minutes. Finally, he spoke.

  “So what happened?” asked Borchardt.

  “He didn’t show up,” said Kellner.

  “Gee, you think?” Borchardt shook his head. “Or he did show up, mark me, and is now following us. Or he saw you or Anna and got scared.”

  “He already knows where you live, so he wouldn’t need to follow. I doubt he marked Anna or me. But maybe you’re right. Who knows. We’ll go back and look at it. Maybe we ask Trudeau to look at it.”

  “Maybe,” said Borchardt, beginning to calm.

  He pulled onto Upper Phillimore Gardens. At his mansion, he turned into the brick driveway that sloped down beneath the enormous building. He pressed the door opener and the door moved quickly up. Borchardt moved down the driveway into the garage, then parked as the garage door slid back down behind them.

  They climbed into the building’s elevator. Anna pressed the button for the first floor. The elevator climbed, then came to a smooth stop on the first floor. Borchardt exited the elevator first, followed by Kellner and Anna.

  They walked from the elevator, off the main entrance foyer, down the hallway toward the kitchen. From the hallway, Borchardt could see the plume of blood, now dried, spread in the middle of the kitchen, next to the island, the size of a large pancake. The mousetrap sat in the middle of the puddle, on its side. Borchardt entered the large kitchen, followed by Kellner and Anna. Kellner and Anna entered the large, sunlit room. The three crossed the kitchen, eyeing the bloody scene on the floor. Kellner looked somewhat uninterested as he stood above the bloody scene. He reached for his box of Dunhills.

  “Welcome home,” came a voice from behind them, to the right, in the corner of the kitchen.

  The three heads rotated, in shock.

  He held a handgun in each hand, suppressors jutting out from the barrels, aimed calmly at them. The weapons were held by a man in a red Puma T-shirt, face brown from the sun, short hair, handsome, stubble, eyes as blue as the ocean.

  Anna, ex–French intelligence, wheeled her torso, and grabbed her Para-Ordnance P12 .45 caliber from a leather holster beneath her left armpit, swinging the weapon around. Before her arm could complete its arc, he fired the weapon in his right hand. The bullet struck her forehead and kicked her backward. She tumbled onto the white marble floor, which was now littered in skull, brains, and blood.

  Before Kellner could do anything, the man pulsed the trigger from the other weapon. This slug hit Kellner in the middle of his forehead and sent the large Estonian lurching back. Borchardt’s bodyguard landed in a contorted heap on his side.

  Borchardt stood motionless, looking at the stranger in his kitchen.

  The man held Borchardt within the frame of both weapons now. For several seconds, Borchardt just stared at him. He looked calm, even serene. His blue eyes were icy, as serious as any he’d ever seen.

  Borchardt glanced down to his right side, then his left, at the two corpses on his kitchen floor, blood rioted across the room, then back to the man. The accent: American.

  “What do you want?” asked Borchardt.

  “Payment.”

  “For what?”

  “The debt you owe me.”

  The man nodded at the marble counter behind Borchardt.

  Borchardt turned. Next to the newspaper was a manila folder. Borchardt looked back at the man, who stared blankly back. Borchardt stepped over Kellner’s body to the marble island. He glanced behind him at the gunman, who still hadn’t moved. He kept the weapons trained on him. Borchardt reached down. He opened the manila folder.

  Inside the folder was a black-and-white photograph. It was a surveillance photo, taken from a distance with a telescopic lens. It showed the head and shoulders of a soldier: good-looking, young. A small American flag patch on the chest placed the soldier’s nationality. He wore a military uniform. In his right hand, he held an M60, pointed up at the sky. Thick stripes of eye black ran beneath the soldier’s eyes. He had short-cropped hair, a sharp nose. The soldier stared straight ahead, laserlike, past the camera, a look that even the surveillance photo was able to capture in its raw aspect: danger.

  It came back to him now. Was it two years ago? Such a small deal. He shook his head.

  “Ring any bells?” asked the stranger.

  “Yes,” said Borchardt quietly. “Aswan Fortuna wanted to know who killed his son. I remember.”

  “That photo cost a lot of lives,” said the man. “Including Fortuna’s.”

  Borchardt nodded.

  “So I heard,” he whispered.

  “The way I see it, you owe me.”

  Borchardt put the photo down. He turned around, faced the stranger.

  “Yes, I do,” said Borchardt. He nodded, managing to look the gunman in the eyes. “I owe you more than a favor.”

  The man stood, motionless, not moving. He studied Borchardt for more than a minute.

  “I never got your name,” said Borchardt. “Fortuna would have paid double for it. My contact wouldn’t give it to me.”

  “Andreas,” said the man, his arms still crossed, his weapons still pointed menacingly at Borchardt’s head. “Dewey Andreas.”

  “So now you get your revenge, yes?” asked Borchardt.

  “I’m not looking for revenge,” said Dewey. “Frankly, I don’t care whether you live or die. If you help me, you’ll live. It’s that simple.”

  “I understand.”

  “Look under the photo,” said Dewey.

  Borchardt turned back to the folder and flipped the photo to the side. Beneath it, another photo, this one of the Iranian nuclear bomb.

  Borchardt stared at the photograph for several seconds.

  “Whose is it?” he asked.

  “Iran’s,” said Dewey.

  “What do you want?” he asked quietly.

  “A replica. Exactly the same.”

  “I need to know precisely how big it is.”

  “Eight feet, eight inches,” said Dewey. “It weighs four and a half tons.”

  “
How soon?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Borchardt lifted the photo and looked at it closely.

  “Do you see the writing on the side of the bomb?” Dewey asked.

  “Persian,” Borchardt noted. “Goodbye Tel Aviv.”

  “I want something a little different,” said Dewey. “Can you do that?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Borchardt, “whatever you like, Mr. Andreas.”

  A dull mechanical thud interrupted Borchardt as Dewey fired the Colt in his left hand. Borchardt lurched back, but felt nothing, then realized he hadn’t been hit. His eyes moved down and he saw specks of material from his coat floating in the air, toward the ground. He looked behind him and picked up the neat hole in the wood of the island, where the bullet had settled after passing through the linen of his blazer, near his waist.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because I want you to understand something, Rolf. If you fuck with me again, you’ll get a bullet in the head.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Borchardt. “And not because of your threats. I’ll do it because I owe you one. But afterward, we’re even.”

  Dewey stared at Borchardt.

  “It will be down and dirty,” said Borchardt. “Where do you want it delivered?”

  “I’ll call you,” said Dewey.

  Dewey holstered one of his weapons beneath his left armpit as Tacoma entered the kitchen.

  “You done?” asked Dewey.

  Tacoma nodded.

  “One more thing,” said Dewey, turning to Borchardt. “There’s a bomb in your house, remote detonator. I’ll tell you where it is when we’re done.”

  37

  MINISTRY OF INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

  TEHRAN

  Paria walked into the conference room. Inside, half a dozen senior staffers from the Ministry of Intelligence were waiting.

  Paria’s adrenaline was coursing through him, keeping him in a state of near fury. The facts were presenting themselves only gradually, in bits and pieces and fragments. It had started with the mention of Qassou by the professor at Tehran University. Then came the deaths of the VEVAK S7 and the Quds commanders in Odessa.

  Now the plot was beginning to take shape, its vague outlines were becoming more sharp and defined. Qassou was working on something with an American. And not just any American.