The Spy House

by Matthew Dunn

  I grabbed a bottle of mineral water, threw my bag onto the bed, and slumped into a chair.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened. A man walked in, saw me, and exclaimed, “What the hell are you doing in my room?”

  I sipped my water, straight from the bottle. “Hello, Harry.”

  The man was of medium height, mid-sixties, part Albanian and part Norwegian; had been schooled at Winchester College, giving him excellent English; and was a millionaire and one of the most duplicitous and treacherous bastards I’d ever met. Somehow, I liked him, even though the scoundrel had nearly killed me four years ago.

  I’d not seen him since. “I note you still like to wear good clothes.”

  Harry’s hair was thinner and grayer than when I’d last seen him, but the businessman who sometimes dabbled in arms deals and turned a blind eye to business transactions that broke numerous international laws still looked like a wealthy playboy. He grinned, his teeth immaculate and sparkling white. “You like my room so much you decided to visit, Mr. Cochrane?”

  I nodded.

  “How did you get in?”

  “A cleaner gave me a universal key to all of the hotel’s rooms. She didn’t know she did. Probably right now she’s reporting it lost, so that hotel security can change the key codes and supply her with a new one.”

  “So, you are a thief.”

  “Did I ever pretend to you I was anything different?”

  I’d first met Harry in Sarajevo. Back then, he carried the MI6 code name Lace. He’d been introduced to me in a fish restaurant by my agency’s Head of Sarajevo Station. Without me knowing who’d pulled the trigger, after the meal Harry had shot our station chief dead. He then pretended to help me track down and neutralize an Iranian general who was planning a devastating attack against New York. Harry was clever, and very careful. So much so that I never suspected he was working for the general all along. It was only after I’d killed my target that I discovered Harry’s true role. But somewhere inside I suspect Harry is a good man. Halfway during our collaboration he’d had a change of heart and wanted to confess his duplicity to me. He never had the chance to do so because the general discovered his intentions and tried to kill him, forcing Harry into hiding. When I finally caught Harry, I put a gun to his head. He was convinced I was going to kill him. He told me at that moment that he wouldn’t blame me for doing so. I let him live.

  However, I still didn’t trust him one bit.

  “How did you know I’d be here?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s been a personal hobby of mine to keep track of you. You’ve been here for the last five months. Business in the region must keep you here, I guess.” I had taken the liberty of calling the hotel’s front desk earlier, pretending to be Harry and asking them if there was any mail for me. They said there was none, but if any arrived they’d make sure it was sent straight to my room. So I knew he was here.

  “I see.” Harry took a seat. “What do you want?”

  “Your help.”

  Harry laughed. “Are you serious? You want help from me, of all people?”

  “Yes. The way I figure it, you know you’re a dead man if you cross me ever again. If I use someone else to help me, that agreement isn’t necessarily valid.” I smiled. “And you have tremendous motivation to help me to the full extent of your abilities.”

  Harry’s eyes narrowed. “And what if I can’t help you, through no fault of mine?”

  I pointed at him. “You’ve been in Lebanon a long time. It’s not a wealthy country. So I’m wondering what could be here that would interest a man who usually chases the big bucks in more affluent parts of the world. Of course, there is one industry here that would pay out big time to someone with your connections and supply lines—the illicit arms industry.”

  Harry lit a cigarette, was silent.

  “But you know you’re playing a dangerous game. There are people out here who’d slit your throat if a deal went wrong; or they’d do that because they work for your competition and don’t want you here. You’re cognizant of that. This is your life. And that means you’ll have protection around you, maybe local guys or perhaps imported; either way, people who’ll watch your back. Some of them will be visible deterrents to would-be attackers; others will be invisible, watching you and your surroundings from the shadows, communicating to others on their team and to your protection detail. I’m interested in the invisibles.”

  Harry blew out smoke. “You want me to lend you some of my people?”

  “The ones who can’t be seen.”

  This didn’t please Harry. “While they’re working for you, they’re not watching me.”

  “I only need them for a few hours. During that time, you can stay in your room and keep your bodyguards in here with you, or at least very close by.”

  Harry drummed his fingers on a side table, seemingly trying to weigh his response. “If I agree to this, are we square? You have no further hold over me?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Harry. The last time I had the pleasure of working with you, not only was I very nearly killed, but also four thousand child musicians—alongside the wives of the heads of state of America, Britain, Iran, the Emirates, Syria, and Egypt—were nearly blown to pieces inside the Metropolitan Opera House. No. Borrowing a few of your men most certainly doesn’t make us square.”

  Harry smiled. “When you put it like that, I see your point.” His expression changed. “Nevertheless, I didn’t plant the bombs in the opera house. Nor did I know the full extent of what was being planned. In any case, you stopped the massacre.”

  “This is not a negotiation. It is a transaction that’s already been agreed. I need at least four, better still, six of your best men and women. You don’t tell them my name or anything about me. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a highly valued associate of yours. We’ll need communications equipment so that they can contact me if anything goes wrong. And make sure they’re armed.”

  “Why don’t you use people from your agency?”

  It was an obvious question. “Because they’re not at my disposal anymore.”

  There was a twinkle in Harry’s eye. “You’ve finally been booted out of the service?”

  “I’m not complaining. It gives me greater . . . latitude. Anyway, I wasn’t exactly sacked. It was by mutual arrangement.”

  Harry’s expression was mischievous. “You met a lovely lady and she decided it was time for you to be domesticated? No more running around, saving the world?”

  “No.”

  “You’re still single?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one will have you?”

  “You’d have to take a rather big census to get an answer to that.”

  “Poor, troubled Mr. Cochrane. Always alone.”

  I leaned forward, placed my hand on his, and put on my most insincere voice. “That’s not true, Harry. I’ve got good friends like you.” I released his hand and reclined back into my seat. “I need your team this afternoon.”

  “And what if I refuse?”

  I didn’t reply. Just stared at him.

  Rob Tanner dashed out of his office as he heard keys in the lock of Admiral Mason’s adjacent office. Mason was in the corridor. “Sir, I’ve been calling your cell.”

  “I was driving.” Mason entered his office. “And I have no time for those wireless earpiece things. They make people look like they’re talking to themselves.” He slung his coat over a chair. “Gives the impression they’re crazy.”

  “Admiral!” Tanner was breathing fast, his face flushed. “Please listen! The CIA called me this morning. It’s . . .”

  Mason was stock still. “Spit it out.”

  “It’s . . . Task Force S. Most of them, anyway. They’re dead. Murdered.”

  Mason stared at his employee. “Names.”

  “Alistair McCulloch, Patrick Bolte, Laith Dia, and Suzy Parks.”

  Mason was motionless, his expression stunned. “Details.”

  “McCullo
ch and Dia were shot outside Dia’s home. Parks was killed while sitting on her porch. Bolte was gunned down inside his home.”

  Mason sat behind his desk. “The killer or killers?”

  “No trace. The feds think it’s the work of one man.”

  “Security?”

  Tanner didn’t understand.

  Mason elaborated. “Has any of this reached the press?”

  “No. And it never will. The Agency has made sure of that. What should we do?”

  “We do nothing.”

  Tanner frowned. “Nothing?”

  “There’s nothing for us to do. The Bureau will do its job, with assistance from the Agency. We have no role to play.”

  “Shouldn’t we warn Cochrane?”

  “You know we can’t get hold of him. In any case”—Mason gazed out of the window, his mind racing—“it is probably for the best that he doesn’t know about this yet. I fear what it might do to him.”

  Compared to Harry’s hotel, the sixty-four-room Cavalier Hotel, on northern Beirut’s Abdel Baki Street, was more modest in size, though a perfectly presentable place to stay. Since Alistair had told me that I had to repay him anything I spent on my alias credit card, it also suited my budget. I handed the receptionist my Richard Oaks card and watched her swipe it through her bill payment machine. I imagined this was the first time she’d triggered a guest’s location to two assassins by doing so.

  I could have paid in cash. But that wasn’t part of my plan.

  “You wanted a room on the fifth floor, overlooking the street?”

  “That’s correct.” It’s what I’d asked for when I’d called and made the booking. And I’d also been adamant that it had to be one of only three specific rooms on that floor.

  The Lebanese woman beamed. “Mr. Oaks. I’m delighted to say that we can upgrade you for no extra charge to one of our suites on the eighth floor. They’re double the size of your room. We had a last-minute cancellation.”

  “Does the suite overlook Abdel Baki Street?”

  “No, sir. It will be a much quieter room for you.”

  “Then I’ll pass.” I smiled. “I’m on my own. I don’t need a big suite. Plus the street’s important to me. Hearing Beirut—day and night—makes me happy.”

  The receptionist looked puzzled, but said, “Oh, okay.”

  I went to my room. Ceiling-to-floor curtains covered the one set of windows that overlooked Abdel Baki. Soon, it would be very dangerous to open them. But for now I assessed that it was safe to briefly do so.

  Below me was a nondescript thoroughfare; on either side of the street, the majority of the buildings were midrise apartment blocks. I knew for a fact that in the building on the opposite side of the street, directly overlooking my room in the hotel, were five apartments that were empty and available to rent. Yesterday, I’d seen them advertised on the Internet and had called the realtors. After giving them a false name, I’d told them I was interested in renting one of the apartments. This morning I’d called them again, saying I was in town and would like to arrange viewings, providing the properties were still available. All of them were. I had no intention of renting any of them, but if I did, I’d have a perfect view of the spot where I was currently standing.

  I closed the curtains, took a shower, shaved, and dressed in jeans, a shirt, and hiking boots.

  In one hour, I was hoping to see the exact spot where Roger Koenig was killed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I stood at one end of the street where Gray Site was located and wished Admiral Mason had never concocted the idea to establish the intelligence complex. Something awful had happened there. It had made Roger turn on his colleagues. They reacted. All of them died in a place that might as well have been a locked-down prison.

  It was midafternoon, and the street was bustling with pedestrians and traffic. Harry’s team were somewhere ahead of me. Perhaps one of them was hiding in one of the many tenement blocks on either side of the street; others might have been on foot in the souk that ran for two hundred yards along the side of the road; maybe a couple of them were in a stationary vehicle, ready to drive fast or disembark on foot if the need arose. I didn’t know and didn’t need to. Their job was to watch me and my surroundings from whichever location made most sense. But I hated not knowing the identities and capabilities of the people I was entrusting my safety to. And though they were probably good at what they did, they weren’t full-time agency operators. They were freelancers.

  Then again, these days so was I.

  I heard a woman’s voice in my earpiece. “So far we’ve got nothing unusual. Proceed.”

  I started walking. The derelict house above Gray Site was approximately three hundred yards away on the right side of the road. Patrick had given me the grid reference of its location after he’d visited me in Scotland. I’d studied maps of Beirut and had decided the only way I could get in and out of the site unnoticed was to do so at night. But that left me exposed. If one or both of the men who’d assaulted me in London were watching the site through thermal imagery, they could knock me off my feet before I could do anything about it. So I’d concluded that I had to visit the site during the day, and to do that I needed help.

  I turned up the volume of my communications kit, because the noise around me was getting louder as I walked onward. People were talking fast. Men and women in the souk were calling out to passersby, telling them about the fine silks and spices that were on offer today. And people driving in the crawling traffic seemed to be permanently leaning on their horns.

  As I reached the souk, I heard one of Harry’s male surveillance specialists say, “Too many people here.”

  The woman who’d told me to proceed said, “Just watch for oddballs.”

  Oddballs? It was difficult to comprehend to whom she was referring. Perhaps two Caucasian men carrying guns.

  “Stop,” ordered the woman.

  I did so.

  “Just want to check movement.” Movement that might include one or more persons close to me also stopping. “Nothing unusual,” she added after ten seconds. “Carry on.”

  I reached the end of the souk. My destination was fifty yards away. I could see it now—a house that looked incongruous amid the rather ugly apartment blocks. No doubt once it had been regal and would have been the family home of a local dignitary, a high-ranking professional, or a wealthy businessman. Artillery shells had changed all that. It was so badly damaged that it was beyond repair, and nobody had bothered to do anything with the place. I was surprised it hadn’t been pulled down to make room for more tenements. Perhaps it was left here as a reminder to local residents that they were all in range of Israel’s heavy weapons.

  “Keep walking,” the female observer said in a calm voice. “I’m close to you.”

  I did as she said, while wondering whether she suspected there was a direct threat to my life. I hadn’t told Harry about the sniper and the blond man who’d tried to stick a knife in me. I hoped she hadn’t concluded this was merely a precautionary exercise.

  “Team: anything?” the woman asked. Clearly, she was their leader.

  Five men in turn replied that they’d seen nothing to arouse their suspicions.

  She said to me, “You’re good to go. We’ll be static outside, spread apart along the street. Two of my men will be close to the house. Let me know when you’re about to leave.”

  I walked into the first floor of the large house. The floor was as big as a medium-sized warehouse. The ceiling was intact, but most of the outer walls had big holes in them. Clearly, the area had once been partitioned into separate rooms—visible were raggedy edges of inner walls, but those walls had crumbled when the shells struck the building. The floor was just dust and earth; either it had been destroyed or, more likely, it had been expensive marble and locals had ripped it up to sell. The walls were covered with grafitti, and empty Coke and beer cans surrounded the remnants of small fires. No doubt it was a hangout for kids. I looked through the large holes in th
e outer walls toward the street. I could see cars passing and people walking by, but no one seemed to be looking into the building. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care if they saw me in this place.

  There were two sets of stairs: one would have previously allowed the homeowners to access the second floor. That floor was now inaccessible to all but the most adventurous and reckless, because most of the steps had been blown apart, leaving a treacherous drop if one got one’s footing wrong. Another set of steps led down a narrow corridor. They were made of solid stone and were intact. It was the way down to Gray Site.

  Since I’d been tasked on this investigation, I’d frequently anticipated this moment. It looked how I imagined it to look—exciting to a child who wanted to explore creepy places, dull and ugly to an adult. But what was at the base of the stairs would grip the attention of anyone who knew what it had once been and what had happened here. I walked down the steps.

  At the bottom was a single doorway. Everything beyond it was in complete darkness. I switched on a flashlight to see ahead. Part of the bombproof steel door that had been installed by the CIA techie I’d interrogated was still attached to hinges and locks; the majority of it was lying on the corridor floor beyond, burned away from its surrounds by blowtorches. Its steel was at least three inches thick, and would take four strong men to lift it; somebody had used a spray can to inscribe Arabic words on its visible side: A nasnās lives here. Be very careful.