Spycatcher

by Matthew Dunn

  Will sprinted toward the person before him, but before he could get there, the man spun to face him. As Will crashed into him, the man spun back in the other direction, grabbing one of Will’s arms. The maneuver sent Will straight down to the ground, where he was immediately kicked in the solar plexus by a hard boot. His lungs seized up. The man grabbed Will’s hand and wrenched his arm sideways, at the same time pulling back his leg to kick Will again. Will knew that he would not be able to survive another such blow. Although the movement caused almost intolerable pain on his arm, he swung a leg hard against the man’s only planted foot, causing him to lose balance and crash to the ground. Will pushed himself up and moved toward his assailant, but as he got closer, the man punched a heel against his shin, stopping him in his tracks. The attacker sprang upright, reaching into his jacket. He pulled out a knife and stood motionless for a moment, looking at Will.

  Both men were breathing deeply, their breath steaming in the icy air. Will looked at the knife, then at the man, then back at the knife. He knew he had to wait for the attack so that he could avoid the angle of the knife thrust in order to strike back. He also knew that he had only one chance of repelling such a strike.

  The attacker kept the knife quite still, but instead of going for the kill, he started moving slowly backward. Will looked away from the knife and toward its holder’s visage. The man was smiling. Then he turned and sprinted away from Will and the church.

  Will glanced toward Votivkirche and for the briefest of moments wondered whether he should pursue the man or go to help Roger. But he knew that he could not allow even one unit member to get out of the country alive, particularly now that they must have known they’d been set up. The death of this six-man unit would buy him the few hours he needed, but an escapee carrying a message back to his team members in Zagreb would scuttle Will’s plans for those men. He looked away from the church and decided that Roger would have to deal with his opponents on his own.

  Will sprinted. His quarry had left the church grounds and was running fast down Rooseveltplatz before heading east on Türkenstrasse toward the direction of the river Danube. He was now at least thirty meters ahead of Will and showed no signs of slowing. The man crossed the road and continued onward before disappearing down a side street. Will ran straight into the street and saw the man ahead of him again. He knew that at the end of this street was the busier Maria Theresien Strasse. He decided to try to take the man down before he reached that road. While still at full sprint, he eased his body out of his weighty overcoat and allowed it to fall to the ground. He instantly felt faster, and within moments he had reduced the distance between himself and his prey to just ten meters, although the intersection was now very close. But the man he was pursuing did not continue onward. Instead he slowed, stopped, and turned to walk right at Will. Like Will, he had clearly decided that matters would now be resolved in this dark, empty street.

  Will forced himself to a halt and saw that the man’s knife was out again, held low in his right hand. The man was walking rapidly and this time had no hint of a smile on his face. He moved to within a yard of Will’s body, thrusting the knife upward at his belly. Will jerked sideways and placed his right hand over the man’s wrist, simultaneously stepping closer and punching his left elbow into the man’s throat, forcing him to the ground. With his right hand, he twisted the man’s knife arm and bent his wrist backward, causing the knife to fall from his grip. He kicked the knife away, applying even greater pressure on his assailant’s wrist. The man writhed in pain and moaned loudly. Will held him in the lock for a moment before yanking harder on the wrist and dropping his body weight onto the man’s back. He wrapped his free left arm around the man’s neck and squeezed.

  “I truly regret that this has to happen,” he said as he did so.

  In two minutes the man’s legs stopped twitching and he was dead.

  Twenty-Seven

  Will was back in Zagreb. It was now 4:00 A.M. and very dark. It had been only four hours since he and Roger had killed six members of the Iranian hit team in Austria. His objective now was to kill the remaining members in Croatia.

  From his position under the illuminated streetlight Will watched the black BMW pull up to a stop alongside him.

  Laith exited the vehicle and walked up to him. “Roger’s not back in the country yet. I’ve got to change objectives and get on surveillance of Lana. You’re on your own with this one.” He handed Will the car’s keys, thrust hands into his coat pockets, and walked off.

  Will entered the vehicle, checking the map on the passenger seat beside him. He was on Vlahe Bukovca in the district of Zaprešić to the northwest of Zagreb, and he knew that he would need to move only a few hundred meters to spot his target on Pavla Lončara. He breathed deeply and swiveled to look at the vehicle’s backseat. In its center rested a Diemaco C8 Special Forces Weapon and two spare thirty-round magazine clips. He picked up the assault rifle and quickly checked over its mechanics before jamming the carbine between the passenger seat and the handbrake. He placed the spare clips into his outer coat pockets, switched off the interior light, and turned on the vehicle’s ignition and headlights. He drove casually forward.

  Within a few minutes, Will brought the car to a halt. He was on Pavla Lončara, and approximately one hundred meters ahead of him he could just see the house containing the Iranian hit team. Turning off his lights, he waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. All around him this residential street was still, dark, and quiet. The BMW’s performance engine idled silently.

  He stayed like this for thirty minutes, observing the house. He placed a hand on the assault rifle and decided that now was the time to walk into the house and kill its contents. He was about to open the car door when he suddenly froze.

  Two upstairs lights came on almost simultaneously in the house. Will frowned. He reached down to the car’s automatic gearshift and waited. Within twenty seconds the front door opened and a man ran out to a vehicle parked directly by the building. The man opened the driver’s-side door and then all other doors. Will knew that their car’s engine would now be running. Something must have unsettled them at this early hour. He concluded that the team had contingency plans in place in case they did not hear from the six men who’d followed him into Austria. He decided that the men leaving the house were extremely professional and extremely dangerous.

  After five seconds another man ran out and took position by the front passenger door. He looked around the street and held one hand close to his body, then nodded toward the entrance of the house, whereupon two other men emerged from its door. One of them walked around the back of the car to the other passenger door. Once the other man had entered the car, it moved forward quickly.

  Will shifted into drive option and followed them without headlights and at an even distance of 150 meters. As their car turned right onto Maršala Tita and out of sight, Will switched on his headlights. He paused at the Maršala Tita junction and allowed another random vehicle to cross in front of him, then turned onto the road and followed his target from behind the secondary vehicle. Within moments the secondary vehicle turned left onto Pere Devčć a and disappeared to wherever it was going. Will looked ahead, frowning. His target vehicle’s taillights were rapidly moving away from him. The car sped onward to the Sava River and its parallel-running road, Aleja Bologne.

  “Fuck.” Will pressed his foot hard on the accelerator. He knew that his target was aware that something was wrong. They could have spotted him, but Will thought it was unlikely, as a pair of headlights behind a car in Zagreb suggested nothing. More likely, he decided, the occupants of the car had concluded that they were in severe potential threat from anything around them. He took the turn onto Aleja Bologne at high speed and knew that he would now be seen as a visible threat to the car ahead of him. He cursed again.

  His quarry was dashing along the Aleja Bologne toward the epicenter of Croatia and one of the most heavil
y armed police districts in Central Europe. His target was drawing him toward a place where an attack would be futile. But Will knew that he was still eight kilometers away from that place, and therefore he had time to make a decision to abort his quest or to continue and commit to the attack before it was too late. He made his decision.

  Judging by the speed of his own vehicle, Will believed that his target was now traveling at nearly 190 kilometers an hour. He dearly hoped that the vehicle he was driving was faster than the car ahead of him. He pressed the BMW’s accelerator down to the floor and watched the road-straddling lamps beside him blur into one continuous line of light. He changed lanes so that he was driving on the left-hand side of the road, heading straight toward oncoming traffic. He careered up to his target and yanked his steering wheel down to the right, causing his car to collide with the Iranians’ vehicle. Both cars immediately veered away from the road toward buildings. Will swung his wheel left and accelerated again before braking hard. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw his target perform what must have been a handbrake turn in order to face the opposite direction. Will swore. Whoever the men were, they were clearly well trained and most likely Qods Force.

  He stopped his car, grabbed his rifle, and got out. A loud screech accompanied the spinning tires of the target car as it sped away. He raised the C8 and shot twice at both rear wheels. The car slumped and spun slightly left and right before stopping. It was about a hundred meters away from him. Will lifted his carbine’s sight toward the rear window of the vehicle. A door immediately opened, and one of the men shot in his direction six times. Will ignored the bullets and stepped forward to send three rapid rounds toward the shooter. They hit the man in the chest and face and dropped him to the ground. The other men jumped out of the vehicle and moved back to shelter behind their car. Will sent further controlled bursts of fire toward them. He heard them shouting, but in a measured and disciplined manner. Then they became silent. Will stopped in the road, moving his gun’s sight to the left and right of the vehicle ahead of him. Another car drove toward the stationary target car and slowed suddenly. It was clearly not hostile, but Will couldn’t afford his targets to have any more shields to use as cover when firing back at him. He sent a long burst of bullets into the second car’s engine block, which immediately stopped the vehicle a sufficient distance from his opponents. The men remained static behind their vehicle.

  Will took another step forward and fired again at nothing to the left and right of the vehicle, then quickly replaced the gun’s magazine clip. The action must have been anticipated or heard by his opponents, since one of the men momentarily showed himself just as Will jammed tight his new clip of bullets. Will instantly fired his fresh rounds at the man, causing him to fall away from the vehicle. The man was not dead, and he lifted his own handgun toward his assailant. Will hesitated for the tiniest of moments, then shot him in the head.

  One of the remaining two men aimed his handgun in Will’s direction without exposing any of his body. He fired once. The bullet was easily wide of its mark, but Will fired back. Cars were braking to a standstill behind him, and he hoped they were innocent bystanders rather than armed police-response vehicles. He could not dare to look, though, as the men before him would use even a split second to kill him. He decided he had a maximum of one minute left to resolve the standoff. He heard sirens in the distance and from different locations. He decided he now had seconds.

  He took measured side steps to the left while holding the rear of the vehicle in his sight. The new angle exposed one of the men, who was looking straight at Will with his handgun leveled directly at Will’s body. Will moved slightly as he and the man simultaneously fired at each other. Will felt a bullet brush over his shoulder and saw the man who had fired it slump down dead. He sprinted forward and reached the target vehicle just as the last man rolled out before him, ready to engage in combat. It was an extremely brave act, since the man would have known that he could be exposing himself to a hail of automatic gunfire. But Will was now right by him and instead swung the butt of his rifle upward into the man’s face. He immediately jabbed the rifle’s muzzle into the man’s ribs. The man was incapacitated but conscious. Will looked at him and raised his gun. For the briefest of moments, he wanted to leave the brave man alive, just turn and walk away. But he knew he could not allow the man to live.

  He shot him.

  Twenty-Eight

  Will stood on the hillside looking down at Zagreb. It was nearly midday, and a bright blue sky shone over the snow-clad city.

  Roger walked up to him and stood by his side. “I got in this morning.”

  Will nodded but did not look at the man. “You’ve received an update from Laith?”

  “I have. He told me what you did to the remaining members of the hit squad.”

  Will rubbed a hand over facial stubble. “Has Laith disposed of the vehicle and weapon?”

  “Don’t worry about that. None of us can be linked to what happened. But we’ve got to tread very carefully now. The Croatian police will be on high alert, and in all probability they’ll soon link what happened here with what happened in Austria.”

  Will exhaled slowly. “Megiddo should have Lana’s letter now. It should give him a new perspective on her. It should stop him from making extreme attempts against me.” He studied Roger. The man looked exhausted. “But that does not mean we can slow down. I need one of your men to go to Sarajevo and watch the Human Benevolence Foundation building and the movements of its occupants.”

  “Sure. I’ll send Julian Garces. The man can be a ghost when it comes to surveillance.”

  “Good. Julian’s got twenty-four hours to understand everything about the exterior of that building, because tomorrow night he’s going to watch my back while I burgle the HBF place.”

  At 1:00 A.M. Will was on rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie in Paris. He turned into the side street containing Lana’s house and pulled out an envelope while standing at her front door. He knew that he could have mailed the envelope or sent it by courier, but he’d wanted to deliver it in person. He took out a pen and addressed the envelope to Lana’s mother, then pushed the package containing thirty thousand CIA dollars and nothing else through the mail slot.

  He stepped back and looked at the house door. All around him was silent.

  He thought about Lana’s mother. He wondered if she was sleeping. Or maybe she was lying awake, hoping for her daughter’s return.

  He closed his eyes and allowed his worst recollection to come searing into his mind.

  The teenage Will Cochrane threw his school bag onto the kitchen table, smiled nervously, and called to his mother. No response. He heard nothing.

  He kept going as he wondered if his mother would hug him when she read his school report and saw that his exam grades would take him to England and Cambridge University. He wondered if she would cook him his favorite meal of roast chicken. He wondered if she would even allow him a small glass of wine as she sometimes did these days.

  He entered the living room.

  The four men looked at Will but did not move much when they saw him. Instead they remained standing and glanced at his bound and gagged mother before looking back at him. One of them smiled and spoke.

  “Where is the money?”

  Will felt sick, giddy, and overwhelmingly confused. He looked at his mother. Tape had been wrapped around her head and body. She was sitting on a chair, her eyes rolling in their sockets. He had never seen a human being look so ill and so odd.

  “Where is the money, boy?”

  He looked at his sister. She was curled into a ball on the floor, sobbing. One of the men had a large-booted foot planted on her head.

  Will looked at the man who spoke and answered him with a voice that did not seem his own.

  “What money?”

  The men laughed loudly and then went silent. Their spokesman pointed a finger at Will.
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  “Big houses like this mean big money.”

  Will shook his head and felt as if he’d done something wrong. He tried to make his voice strong and measured, but instead he just blurted the truth.

  “We have no money. This house belongs to the government. My daddy used to work for them before he died. All the rich people around here know that we have nothing.”

  Two of the men laughed again, but two of them did not. The spokesman was one of those who remained impassive and suddenly looked very scary. He took a step toward Will.

  “Find us money, or we’ll kill your mother and your sister.”

  Will looked at his mother. Her eyes were now closed, and her head had slumped down. He called to her.

  “Mother?”

  The scary man’s eyes widened.

  “She can’t breathe. The clock is ticking, boy.”

  Will felt a burning sensation in his brain and eyes and knew that it was the sensation that preceded tears. He looked at all the men. Even though Will was easily as tall as they were, they looked so big and strong and like nothing else he had seen.

  He slowed his breathing. He saw his mother starting to twitch. He wanted to run to her. Words came from him without any evident thought behind them.

  “I’ve told you the truth. But we have some cash in a drawer. If I get it for you, will you help my mother?”