The Right Hand

by Derek Haas

  Marika sat up on the edge of her seat.

  “Now, you have to understand, I have no idea what he’s talking about. He might as well be speaking in Swahili. But I have a fifty-fifty chance of getting the answer right. And it’s not just a guess, you see, because I do know something about the man doing the asking. I know he’s the kind of man who is adept at lying. I know he’s more likely to tell a lie than the truth. If I’m going to guess, and I am, then I have to guess with the only information I have: that this man is a practiced deceiver. And so I guess…”

  “False!” Marika exclaimed.

  “‘False,’ I said.”

  Clay paused, leaving the story dangling until Marika couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “What happened? Were you right? Tell me!”

  Clay looked at her gravely, his eyes as serious as she’d ever seen them. “I had guessed…” He let the pause spread, his audience of one mesmerized.

  “Wrong!” he yelled, and flung his hand up from underneath the table, where he had his table knife stuck through his fingers and a copious amount of ketchup dripping from his hand.

  Marika shrieked and then burst into a fit of laughter that filled the whole room like a warm fire. Clay joined her, laughing hard himself, really letting go, and it was like a steam valve letting the pressure and the tension escape, and they continued laughing, drawing stares from the old Polish woman who stood next to the kitchen door, but they didn’t care. The laughter felt good; it felt right.

  He put his right hand flat on the table so the knife handle stood erect and the ketchup spread out and Marika laughed even harder.

  “You…you are a terrible man,” she said through the ripples of laughter.

  Clay shrugged as if to say, “I am what I am.”

  The old woman next to the kitchen frowned.

  Chapter Eleven

  THOUGH THE announcement had not yet been made, Michael Adams was already enjoying one of the perks of his new position as head of EurOps; most notably, he had access to every personnel file within Central Intelligence.

  He opened his laptop and performed the keystrokes necessary to pull up all of the information the Agency had about Dan Clausen, the head of District 1, headquartered in New York City. Adams hadn’t spent a lot of time with the man, an occasional Washington summoning, an occasional cyberchat, and Adams had regarded his counterpart warily by instinct—Clausen had a quick mind but a wasp’s disposition. Sting, sting, sting. Now the file on him filled in the details.

  Clausen had started in the field, a rarity among the district chiefs; in fact, he was probably the only one. Field agents were tools, weapons; analysts were the schemers, the strategists, the wielders of those weapons. They saw the big picture, had greater territories at stake, focused on the macro over the micro. Field agents were on missions; analysts worked campaigns. Adams knit his brows and kept reading.

  Clausen had operated in Eastern Europe and Asia, everywhere from Reykjavik to Tokyo. He was an adept killer, thief, actor, and planner, utilizing multiple covers, sometimes within the same city. He had distinguished himself on a variety of missions, and the DCI before Manning had brought him back to Langley and groomed him for a leadership position. He’d served as a deputy district head in Dallas and Seattle, and after September 11, 2001, had taken over the New York office, where he’d run District 1 for the last decade.

  Adams was actually astonished by Clausen’s rise. It was little wonder Clausen would expect EurOps for himself. His work in District 1, which covered pockets of Russia, Africa, and the Middle East, had been exemplary. He represented the best of both worlds: he ran campaigns as if they were missions, all-encompassing goals realized by pinpoint operations.

  Adams reviewed the top of the file once more. Clausen was a killer. Adams had ordered men’s deaths numerous times, but he had never killed anyone himself, with his bare hands, with a weapon. He wondered if he would have the nerve.

  Clausen had no family, either. No wife, no kids, and the file made no mention of his sex life, which seemed an oversight. Or maybe it had been expunged.

  Adams let his mind wander and return. He looked up at the clock. There were two hours until the meeting. They had reserved the conference room on the top floor of the Hotel Ambassador, overlooking Wenceslas Square.

  He planned to show up five minutes late so the others would already be seated and he wouldn’t have to pick his chair. He would try not to look at Clausen, lest he give away the purpose of the meeting. There would be plenty of time to judge Clausen’s reaction when Adams had finished speaking.

  His phone chirped and he looked at the number on the display. It was Laura, calling from their home line. He let it ring and go to voice mail. He wanted to keep his attention on the task at hand.

  He could always talk to her later.

  They arrived in Prague, tired and cramped but invigorated. The city spread before them like Oz. It was a gorgeous city, the hills, the river, the architecture. It more than made up for the stretch of abandoned warehouses, factories, and towns that littered the highway between Poland and Prague.

  One thing nagged at Clay, and he knew he should turn his mind to the problem, but he was reluctant to do so. He should find the nearest bus stop and drop Marika off there. She was free, she could disappear, he could give her enough money that she could climb on a train to Berlin or Rome or Brussels. She didn’t have papers, though, wouldn’t know how to acquire them or whom to trust to do it for her, and would she be preyed upon, pretty innocent that she was? She wanted to go to Disneyland, she wanted to find a Hungarian community in Los Angeles, and he would make sure it happened. No one else would do it for her, would see it through to the end; it was up to him. At least, that was what he told himself.

  They rented a room in a touristy hotel away from the bridge. Clay needed to go out, but he sat Marika down first.

  “If anything happens to me and I don’t come back, if you sit here for more than twenty-four hours without seeing me, then you need to dial the number 011-020-661-3992 and ask for a man named Andrew Stedding. You tell him you are Marika Csontos, you are all alone, and you need his help….”

  “Nothing will happen—”

  “011-020-661-3992. Say it.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “011-020-661-3992. Say it.”

  “Why are you being so ugly?”

  “Because it’s important.”

  “011-020-661-3992.”

  “Again!”

  “011-020-661-3992.”

  “And ask for whom?”

  “Andrew Stedding.”

  “And tell him what?”

  “That the Right Hand is dead,” she said.

  He blinked once, then again, and slowly nodded. “That’s right.”

  She got up, went into the bathroom, and slammed the door so it rattled on its hinges.

  He bought a prepaid mobile from a cluttered electronics store and walked to the middle of the St. Charles Bridge. It seemed as good a place as any. The ability to laser in on phone calls and mobilize forces and have a predator drone in the air always played well in movies but took a bit more time in the real world. Not much, but enough. Besides, Stedding would break his own neck to cover for him, as any good handler would. At least, Clay hoped that was the case.

  Stedding didn’t wait for pleasantries to be exchanged. “Where are you?”

  “Prague.”

  “What the fuck are you doing there?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “Dammit.”

  “How fast can you make it?”

  “Two hours. I’m in Paris. I thought you might run here.”

  “I’m not running, Steddy. I need your help.”

  “What are you caught up in?”

  “What have you heard?” It was a favorite tactic of both of theirs, to answer a question with a question.

  “The version going around the Agency and the State Department is that you shot up the dignitaries bringing Nelson to
the exchange….”

  “They weren’t dignitaries. They were FSB.”

  “They’re saying you killed Nelson in the process.”

  “One of them got a lucky shot off. They were torturing him long before I got there, by the looks of him.”

  “They’re saying State is furious.”

  “If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job correctly.”

  “The Director is personally covering for you, for the program, and he’s told State to bugger off.”

  “You heard that?”

  “I did.”

  “Two hours, then?”

  “Yes. Where?”

  “East end of the St. Charles Bridge.”

  “In plain sight, eh?”

  “The best way to hide.”

  “See you then.”

  “And Steddy—don’t tell anyone you’re coming. I’m serious.”

  “Okay.”

  The line fell silent. Clay stared down at the water as it rolled underneath him, the current picking up silt and detritus from the bottom of the river and depositing it in another location, far away.

  He waited out the time by flitting in and out of various hotels, looking for the telltale signs of Agency presence—black town cars or SUVs parked near side or back doors, guys in suits near elevators, groups looking more at people entering or exiting the lobby than at each other. He covered a quarter of the city, but he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It didn’t matter; mostly, he was getting the lay of the land, reacquainting himself with Prague. It had been years since he’d been there, and though he prided himself on his internal compass, it helped to scout for nooks and crannies that might come into play at an opportune time. He noted a parking lot, a hardware store, a side street that led to the train tracks. He clocked where a couple of small boats were moored on the river, where a cafe had a back door opening to a different street, where a footpath offered three different forks down three different avenues. He cleared his mind and focused on the work.

  Stedding arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time. He wore his frown like a favorite accessory, put on whenever he traveled. It occurred to Clay that he knew nothing about Stedding’s family—whether he had one or not. He had never asked. He wanted to believe it was because of the Agency’s unwritten protocol; the less you know about your associates, the better it is for both of you professionally. He hoped he wasn’t so far under as to make the answer the alternative—that he just didn’t care.

  “All right, Clay. Time to tell me why you’re here, why I’m here, and why you haven’t done one damn thing right since you left London.”

  “This is why it’s better no one checks up on me. That way no one gets disappointed.”

  “They’re checking now. Trust me.”

  “Did you know the six district heads are here in Prague as we speak?”

  Stedding pursed his lips, so Clay pressed forward.

  “One of them, Adams, is going to get punched by Russian Intelligence working in concert with a flipped American district head code-named Snow Wolf.”

  He could see Stedding’s temperature rise as easily as if he’d been looking at a thermometer.

  “I need you to find out where they’re meeting, and I need guns, pistols, ammo, whatever you can get me, but none of this Czech and Russian shit. I’m lucky I actually hit anyone back at the border.”

  “What happened at the bord— Never mind. The girl told you all this?”

  “Yes, which reminds me, I also need papers for her and a plane ticket to Los Angeles, plus some cash, enough to get her started on a new life….”

  “Anything else?” Stedding asked, his voice dripping with perturbation.

  “Disneyland tickets too much? Forget that, papers, ticket, and money are fine.”

  “Why don’t I just call an alert and clear everyone out of Prague? Especially Adams. Michael Adams, by the way, the head of District Two.”

  “Ahh, then it was my old handler.”

  “Why no alert?”

  “Because I don’t know who Snow Wolf is. If you want to blow it up and save Adams, that’s your decision. But I think we’re better off dangling him as bait and finding out which district head has claws. Otherwise, Snow Wolf goes to ground and maybe we get another twenty years of our business being their business.”

  Stedding rocked back and forth on his heels. He pulled out a handkerchief and spat into it. “I see your point.”

  “If I can save him, I will.”

  “I know you will. Okay. Where will you be in two hours?”

  “Meet me at the train station. Track six.”

  Stedding walked away. Clay thought about telling him to be careful, but what good would it do? He resolved to ask Stedding about his family the next time they were together.

  It was a test, simple as that. The Director hadn’t come to personally deliver the news because he wanted to see how Adams handled it, along with whatever fallout might come. It always seemed astounding that there was as much politics in the Agency as in the executive branch. No matter, he was ready. They would find him formidable or they would find themselves retired. He would make sure of it.

  Adams left his room and walked the hallway to the bank of elevators running up the spine of the hotel. He absently pressed the up arrow, his mind elsewhere. He was thinking about espresso and that admonishment from Alan Fourticq regarding Dan Clausen.

  He had no way of knowing there were multiple killers already in the building.

  The elevator was empty, and he stepped inside and pressed eleven. The car stopped short on the fourth floor, and the doors opened to reveal Clausen. The man’s lupine eyes sized Adams up as he stepped inside.

  “Michael.”

  “Dan.”

  They stepped to the back of the car almost simultaneously and watched the digital numbers climb. After a moment, Clausen spoke.

  “You know why we’ve been summoned to Prague?”

  Adams thought about lying; he was certainly practiced in the art, but most likely Clausen already knew the answer to his question and was testing him.

  “Yes.”

  Clausen’s eyebrows arched. “Manning didn’t tell me a damn thing.”

  “It’s the nature of the beast.”

  “So what the hell is—”

  The elevator car settled, the doors opened, and the conference room beckoned, interrupting his counterpart’s question. Everyone was already seated. Clausen looked as if he wanted to finish the conversation before they stepped out, but Adams was tired of this particular dance. Fuck him, he could wait like the rest of them. Adams passed the four dark-suited men guarding the door and stepped into the room.

  There were two chairs vacant. Adams chose the one just to the right of Fourticq, before Clausen could beat him to it.

  Stedding hadn’t shown up on time, and he was always on time. Clay felt his heart rate accelerate and forced it to calm. He’d give his handler ten minutes. It had been a difficult task on the shortest of notices, and maybe Steddy just needed a bit more of the clock to gather his intelligence.

  Clay watched the entrance to the station but couldn’t pick out Stedding’s figure in the crowd. The place was teeming with people as trains from all over Europe arrived and departed at fifteen-minute intervals.

  A Gypsy woman approached and thrust a clipboard toward his face. “Sign, please?” she said in Czech, but Clay waved her away. “Sign please, sir,” she repeated, but Clay gave her his coldest glare and wagged his finger, saying “No, no,” and the woman clucked her tongue before moving on.

  His eyes found the big clock on the platform post. Five more minutes. Then where to look? He could walk toward the bridge and hope that—

  The sound of an ambulance siren neared the station and echoed throughout the edifice. Pedestrians at the entrance pivoted and moved to gawk at something outside the doors, some accident. Police sirens joined the ambulance, a full choir of emergency alarms.

  Oh, God, Clay thought. He walke
d briskly toward the crowd, quickening his pace to just short of an out-and-out sprint.

  Bright sunlight spilled from the sky and threw him off-balance; it had been overcast an hour ago. He shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand just as the ambulance reached the scene, asserting itself through the semicircle of forty people. A woman shrieked and left the crowd, covering her mouth.

  Clay pushed his way forward and saw Stedding lying on his back, half off and half on the curb, bleeding profusely from gunshot wounds to the stomach and chest. Clay forgot his cover, forgot his training, forgot everything and dropped to his knees, pushing the Czech paramedics out of the way. He cradled Stedding in his arms—and somehow the older man’s eyes found his and focused. Police arrived on the scene, and one of them, in his hurry to size up the situation, accidentally kicked a black duffel on the ground near the wounded man. Four pistols spilled out, another woman shrieked, and the police and crowd started chattering in Czech at the same time, voices rising as if someone had spun a volume dial on a stereo.

  Stedding pulled his mouth up to Clay’s ear and whispered one word, “Ambassador,” and then his eyes shifted away.

  Clay stood, his handler gone. They’d worked together for three years, but that had ended today, in the sun-baked street outside the Praha Hlavní Nádraží train station. A policeman grabbed Clay’s shoulder, but he shook it off and yelled, “This man needs help!” in English. “Ambulance! Ambulance! Help this man!” he continued to shout, until the police mistook him for the concerned and horrified bystander he pretended to be. The officers pressed past him to examine the body at the same time as the paramedics.

  Clay took a few steps backward, until the crowd enveloped him and he could scurry away. At last, slipping around the corner, he broke into a sprint.