‘The guy’s name was Soma Kertész. He was in his fifties, from a small village in Hungary, and he’d never been out of the country until he was offered a construction job in Canada. He had no wife or children, but he had a brother, much younger. Soma thought he’d be able to bring his brother to Canada where he would have opportunities Soma never had. But Soma ended up living in a basement with five other men, all of them trapped into working for rent and meals. Not only weren’t they paid any cash, they were intimidated into applying for social assistance. They didn’t see any of that money either.’
Lacroix paused, taking a sip of water.
‘Soma managed to escape once.’ Lacroix looked towards Schett. ‘He stopped a cop, but Soma didn’t speak English or French. No one understood what he was saying, so Soma went back to the basement.’
Lacroix shifted his gaze back to Adler. ‘A few months later the RCMP raided the house. Soma testified, helped convict some of the people who’d exploited him, but he never really got over what had happened to him. He struggled to find work, drank too much, was in and out of shelters. And then he gave up. Just lay down and waited for the hopelessness to end. Saddest thing I’d ever heard. There wasn’t much of a funeral. A homeless guy with a dog, and me, and Kai Degen.’
‘Why was Kai there?’ Adler asked.
‘He’d been in Vancouver visiting someone he knew from his days in the military. He read about Soma’s story in a newspaper.’ Lacroix looked at Schett. ‘Empathy. Gets the better of all of us at some point.’ Lacroix sipped more water. ‘Anyway, we got talking. Kai’s ideas for making money from K&R consultancy sounded interesting. Certainly better than organising train rides for VIPs.’ He glugged down the last of the water. ‘Anything else?’ He sniffed at an armpit. ‘I’m starting to offend myself.’
Adler, Manz and Schett stepped into the lift opposite Lacroix’s apartment door.
‘Is annoying cop a variation of bad cop?’ asked Adler.
Schett shrugged. ‘We make use of what gifts we’re given.’ He pressed the button for the ground floor. ‘Works though. You got answers to everything you asked. Although I have a feeling Lacroix was holding something back.’
‘Agreed.’ Adler glanced at Manz. ‘However that could just be caution rooted in loyalty.’
Scepticism scrunched Manz’s face.
Adler turned to Schett. ‘Can you arrange surveillance of Lacroix? Just one man. Someone inexperienced.’
‘Why do you want—’
‘Because,’ said Manz, ‘Lacroix will be less likely to spot me after he’s ditched your man.’
‘And in the meantime,’ Adler said to Schett, ‘you and I will meet up with Buzek and Haas.’ Adler checked his phone. ‘According to your colleagues, two gyms list Kai Degen as a member. And there are a number of cafés I know he frequents. We’ll swing by each of them.’
‘You don’t think it will be that easy do you?’
‘Probably not. But he has to be somewhere.’
Degen slipped into a room at the rear of the Hofburg Palace. The room was used as an office by the Austrian National Library, but its regular occupant was on a two-week walking holiday in South Tyrol. Through careful distribution of envelopes padded with purple euro notes, Degen had arranged for the room to be redecorated that week, with the work scheduled to commence the following day.
Degen pulled a chair from the dustsheet-covered furniture grouped in the centre of the room and placed it next to a window. Trees obscured much of the Burggarten below, but circles of backpackers cross-legged on the grass or couples holding hands as they meandered along the edge of the kidney-shaped pond or tourists taking photos of the statues were of no interest to Degen. His attention was reserved for the Palmenhaus terrace, which, with a higher elevation than the rest of the park, provided an acceptable field of fire.
The first sniper rifle Degen had trained with had been the Steyr SSG 69 bolt-action. The first of many. For this job he had chosen a TTR-700 Takedown. He began slotting the components together.
4. BRIEFING, BEER & BULLETS
‘Not worth a bucket of warm piss.’
The non sequitur froze Feiersinger mid-report. Was the Federal Chancellor critiquing Feiersinger, the information Feiersinger was providing, or just the day so far?
‘That’s what John Nance Garner said about the office of Vice President of the United States of America,’ added the Federal Chancellor.
Feiersinger’s brow crinkled.
‘A frustrated former Vice President,’ the Federal Chancellor explained.
Ah.
‘Waiting for the President to die. That’s the Vice President’s job. Loitering about, waiting for an assassination. Or a resignation. Or medical incapacity. Or impeachment and conviction.’
Feiersinger kept his expression blank. It was prudent not to engage the Federal Chancellor when he was info-dumping. For the Federal Chancellor, knowledge wasn’t just power, it was a comfort, and regurgitating information was the Federal Chancellor’s blue blanket. It was best just to listen.
‘After Inauguration Day the Vice President smiles, joshes with journalists and turns up at the funerals of world figures not important enough to warrant interrupting the schedule of the Leader of the Free World. And that is it. That’s the Vice President’s job.’
Actually, there was one other duty: the casting vote in the (rare) event of stalemate in the Senate. But Feiersinger kept that to himself. Being the smartest person in the room often necessitated intellectual camouflage.
‘A missing Vice President isn’t that big a deal,’ continued the Federal Chancellor. ‘If there should be a sudden vacancy in the Oval Office, there are a dozen-plus alternates to thrust free-world-leadership upon.’
Feiersinger knew this: next notch down was the Speaker of the House, then the Senate President pro tempore, with members of the cabinet filling the places below that.
The Federal Chancellor shook his head slowly, then said, ‘Kidnapping the US Vice President achieves nothing. Unless we count political figures around the globe condemning the act, handing the US government a huge injection of sympathy and de facto increased tolerance of it throwing its weight about. Almost worth setting it up themselves.’ The Federal Chancellor paused. ‘They wouldn’t, would they?’
Feiersinger shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘For a short-lived shower of crocodile tears? Too risky.’ That scenario had been the first Feiersinger had considered. And quickly rejected. Though it would explain why the US Secret Service hadn’t lost any men.
The mug’s mass seemed to shrink. But it was just a fleeting optical illusion caused by the ceramic crunching inwards as it smashed into the wall. Shards sprayed outwards. Some skittered along a desk and dropped to the floor, some pinged against the back of the desk’s monitor, and a larger chunk, with the handle still intact and attached, clunked onto the keyboard. Dregs of coffee slithered down the wall as four female embassy staff gaped at Daniel Calhoun. The US Secret Service special agent glared at the debris and growled, ‘Goddamn Krauts.’
Special Agent James Kang sat back down in the chair he had shot out of when Calhoun’s mug had smashed into the wall. ‘Krauts are Germans, not Austrians.’
The pedantry prompted a glower from Calhoun.
Kang shrugged. ‘Sorry, don’t know any pejoratives for Austrians.’
Calhoun looked towards the embassy workers as though expecting suggestions, but all he got was a frown, two blank expressions and a pair of averted eyes. He turned back to Kang and muttered, ‘Pretty sure the press will come up with some.’
‘Don’t think so. The locals did everything we asked them to. Ranger was taken on our watch. It’s the Service that’s going to take it up the ass.’
Calhoun knew this, but he suppressed his brief twinge of remorse.
‘However,’ Kang said, ‘that doesn’t mean Homeland won’t try shifting the blame to the strudel-munchers.’
Calhoun gave Kang a narrow smile. They would have to work on those p
ejoratives.
‘Motherfuckers!’
‘Tsk-tsk Mister Vice President. I expected you to be more urbane. On the chat show circuit you always seem so … polished.’
‘Untie me and I’ll polish your fucking face with my fists,’ the Vice President roared through the black fabric hanging over his face.
The attack on the motorcade had been dizzyingly fast: a blur of bangs, smoke, shouts, calm instructions and rushed manhandling. The Vice President had no idea when, but at some point the heaving and the dragging ceased to be by the Secret Service. All he knew was he’d been passed from dark-suit to dark-suit as familiar faces contorted and fell away. And then, alarmingly, incomprehensibly, thick black material had blocked his vision. His fight-or-flight-dazed brain had scrambled for an explanation. Was this protocol? How did this help? Was there a chemical threat? Was it protection from flash blindness? But he hadn’t voiced a query or a protest. He had complied. He had trusted, letting himself be bundled to wherever he was now. And that docile submission was the core of his rage.
He gave the hood over his head a few more frenzied shakes. His jerking efforts were as futile as his attempts to break free from the cable ties holding his hands behind his back had been; his wrists were stinging from the bite of the hard plastic. He slumped back into the metal-framed chair, silently fuming.
‘Calm cooperation is much better Mister Vice President.’ The voice was male, calm and confident. The perfect English carried the faintest hint of a European accent, but one so slight the Vice President couldn’t pin it down. ‘Do you really think it’s wise to try to take off the hood?’
He grunted. But the voice had a point. For now, he was better off not seeing faces.
And he needed to calm himself. Anger would lead to poor decisions; he’d already been foolish in threatening his captors. He needed to dial down the fury and gather information, because sooner or later he would be released and debriefed by the Secret Service. He looked forward to that debriefing. And to the meetings he planned to have with the CIA, the NSA, or whoever else it would take to see these cocksuckers waterboarded to hell.
Footsteps.
He crooked his head, following the sounds, noting the echo of each step on a hard floor.
Feiersinger drummed his fingers at the side of the paperwork on his desk; the habit peeved his manicurist but it helped him think. He scowled at the notes he’d brought back from his meeting with the Federal Chancellor. Nothing. Nothing useful. Degen’s apartment appeared to have been unlived in for some time; the report from the Jagdkommando team had described it as the Mary Celeste with soft furnishings. Suspicious. But only just. Adler had speculated that, as Degen’s line of work involved denying ruthless and violent people considerable sums of money, it was likely Degen had made enemies, and that the apartment could be a decoy, as much a precaution as Degen’s careful management of his communications.
Degen’s Canadian associate didn’t seem to be much of a lead either. All Lucas Lacroix had done since the police had been surveilling him was to tour the city looking for a Felber bakery that hadn’t sold out of Mohnstrudel. Exasperatingly innocent behaviour.
Feiersinger sighed. Crisis control and damage limitation: that was his thing. But this situation was infinitely more taxing than a seedy political scandal or a natural disaster. It was easy to identify courses of action and establish solid responses to those scenarios. But this situation was different: too little information, too many variables, too much guesswork.
All routes in and out of Vienna had been closed almost immediately following the attack on the American motorcade. People were now being allowed to trickle through checkpoints, but security was tight. Security advisers—Feiersinger couldn’t quite bring himself to label them experts—agreed that the Vice President was almost certainly still within the city. But where? The Federal Police had uncovered nothing. And the Americans were as starved of clues as the Austrian authorities. That’s if the Americans were really sharing everything.
The kidnapping of the Vice President was part of a White House plot to sabotage the European Union. It was revenge by Opus Dei for the exposure of a gay subculture within the Catholic Church. It was an unusually bold abduction by the Greys. It was a hoax to promote an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster. There had been a deluge of wingnut conspiracy theories, and the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the USA were compelled to wade through the irrational and illogical clutter. Just in case.
The Austrians had confirmed the jpeg image of the kidnapped Vice President had been emailed to a number of US news outlets from a laptop—which turned out to be stolen—that had been abandoned at the tourist office in the centre of Vienna, and the email had been sent using the tourist office’s free WiFi. Apart from the attached image, the email had contained just three words: Demands to follow. Since then there had been an absence of credible claims of responsibility.
Various theories were sifted from the brainstorming sessions that took place shortly after the event. The job of assessing those theories, including a few of the wingnut ideas, had been farmed out to a number of agencies. The Baltimore field office of the FBI had been assigned the task of investigating the notion that the Vice President had been abducted to prevent him breaking a tied vote in the Senate.
Special Agent Grace Breckinridge stared at her screen, gnawing at her bottom lip.
‘You should have said you were hungry. I’d have brought muffins.’ Grinning, Special Agent Oliver Jamieson set down his partner’s Venti with steamed low-fat, triple-shot, something, something, something. As always he’d had to write down her order. Breckinridge, originally from Seattle, had a sense of a right to coffee that made the National Rifle Association seem laid-back. The first few times Jamieson had scribbled down Breckinridge’s beverage-du-jour—she never seemed to have the same combination—she had rolled her eyes. He’d let the silent admonishment of his sub-par coffee-culture-cool go for a while, but eventually he’d felt compelled to point out that the B in FBI didn’t stand for Barista. She’d laughed. He’d asked if she wanted to have a real drink some time. She’d taken a rain check. A lot of coffee later, it was still un-cashed. But it hadn’t been a no.
Breckinridge glanced at Jamieson long enough to respond to his muffin quip by sticking out her tongue. Eyes back on her monitor, she wiggled a finger at his desk. ‘Some interesting stuff.’
Popping the lid off his flat latte, Jamieson sat. Slurped. And studied the information Breckinridge had found while he’d been at the coffee shop.
In the event of the Vice President not being available to break a stalemate in the Senate, that duty fell to the President pro tempore (habitually the longest serving senator in the majority party), and the current incumbent and the VP shared so many political views and stances that the President pro tempore voting in exactly the same way as the VP was the surest of sure bets. This made the tied-vote motive weak, but it had to be checked out.
Breckinridge and Jamieson had trawled the various bills due to be debated and voted on in the Senate, plus those at the time-consuming committee stages. As none would effect a change in foreign policy, they were focusing on those bills that would result in the handing out of multi-million dollar contracts. The smart bet was on a terrorist organisation being behind the kidnap, but Breckinridge had a hunch it was about money. Jamieson was happy to follow her lead. The abduction had been executed by a well-trained and well-resourced team. That didn’t come cheap. It made sense that someone may be looking for a return on their investment.
‘Gathering an off the book black ops team is relatively easy,’ said Diether Adler. ‘If you have the funds and if you’re familiar with that particular outside-your-world world.’
‘Outside my world.’ Feiersinger said. ‘You live in a different world from me?’
Adler shrugged.
Yes, I suppose so, thought Feiersinger. He had called the Jagdkommando team leader back to Ballhausplatz in the hope of augmenting the limited information availabl
e to him with some professional perspective. He nodded for Adler to continue.
‘Your team will be predominately late-thirties to mid-forties.’
‘Really?’
Adler nodded. ‘Special forces elite troops have a shelf life, and many want to extend the time between their best before and use by dates.’
‘Like European professional soccer players heading to North American teams,’ said Feiersinger.
Adler smiled. ‘If you like. Whatever physical edge your team members have lost will be off-set by their experience and skills. Your team will be drawn from a particular area of the former black ops gene pool best described as morally ambiguous. Add that ethical flexibility to the fact they will be acutely aware of the few good years between active service retirement and common sense retirement, and their sole motivation will be money. The more you offer, the more risks they’ll be willing to take. And your team will almost certainly be multi-national.’
Rikki De Witte (ex-Korps Commandotroepen) had allowed his team to be assembled in the same room just twice. The first gathering had been above a bar in Enschede, and De Witte had sourced beers from the countries of each of the team: Everyone had been polite about the locally brewed Grolsch. No one much liked Carlsberg Elephant, not even Kolinkar Øster (ex-Jægerkorpset) who insisted Denmark had better beers to offer, though Werner Fuchs (ex-Kommando Spezialkräfte) had chuckled snootily at that while supping the Kölsch from his native Cologne. And Leif Vikström (ex-Fallskärmsjägarna) had delighted Alojzy Zawadzki (ex-GROM) by admitting he preferred the Polish Żywiec to the Swedish Norrlands Guld.
The Hunting Command (Grey Areas Triptych Book 1) Page 3
