The Bancroft Strategy

by Robert Ludlum

  No splinters. No wreckage. Nothing at all. Jared had succeeded in his aim: to conceal himself behind the freighter.

  Belknap knew the limits of his own nautical experience well enough not to try to pull up close to the freighter or approach its hazardous wake. Instead, he moved at an angle past it, in order to gain a sight line on the waters behind. Standing at the cockpit, Belknap swung the car-style steering wheel hard to the right while peering over the spray-fouled windshield.

  At last Belknap had the angle he had sought. The Liberian behemoth was a bulk carrier, he noticed; its cargo could be ore or orange juice, fertilizer or fuel. Once containerized, they all looked the same. The vessel itself was perhaps forty thousand deadweight tons and at least five hundred feet long. Now he could see to either side of it. He scanned the seas, glimmering and glinting in the overhead sun like desert sands, and felt something cold wash over him.

  Jared Rinehart—his friend, his foe—had disappeared.

  As Belknap returned to the marina, the roiling in his mind matched that of the ocean. Had Rinehart ever really been kidnapped in the first place? Had that, too, been an elaborate ruse?

  The anguishing suspicions returned. The idea that his best friend and soulmate—yes, Pollux to his Castor—was a traitor, a traitor, not least to him, was like a knife to the heart. For the thousandth time, he cast about for another explanation. He flashed back on Jared’s stricken face: the face of someone to whom Belknap was a threat. Why? Because Belknap could now see through the subterfuge—or was there some other reason? The questions surged and swelled and filled him with a nausea that battered at him like seasickness.

  Amid the turbulence was a single point of solace: the knowledge that Andrea was here. His watch told him that. His career had been short on companionship and long on isolation. It was one reason that Pollux had come to matter so much to him. Field agents were discouraged from putting down roots, and those who could not accustom themselves to loneliness never stayed the course. But one could tolerate a condition without welcoming it, and now, more than ever, he yearned for a reprieve, a respite. He glanced at his watch again.

  She would be in the room, waiting for him. He would be alone no longer.

  As he drove to the Livadhiotis Hotel Apartments, on Nikolaou Rossou, he had to force himself to pay attention to the road, the traffic, the other vehicles. His speed was determined not by the posted signs, but by what other drivers had established as normal, which was considerably faster. The hotel had been chosen not for its comfort, but for its proximity to the major roadways, and Belknap took in the various trucks and trailers that were headed either to the harbor or to the airport. There was a yellow-and-red DHL van, its driver with his hirsute arm out of the open window, as if propping up the roof. A green-and-white tanker with its long cylindrical cargo of liquid propane. A cement truck with its slowly rotating drum. A white, windowless Sky Café van.

  He felt his scalp prickle, and he glanced yet again at his watch. It was wrong to have let her come; he should have tried harder to dissuade her. He didn’t, because her mind was made up. Yet was it also because, on some level, he wanted her to come?

  The Livadhiotis Hotel Apartments had a large brown marquee with its name in mock stone-and-chisel–style lettering. The flags of nine nations, chosen apparently at random, projected out from the marquee in a failed attempt to signal some sort of international stature. Above the ground level were three floors with arched, almost semicircular windows. The rooms came with kitchenettes—that was what made them “apartments”—and the place had the familiar old-sponge smell of cheap housing in hot climates. A man in a motorized wheelchair barked a greeting when Todd Belknap entered. His vein-webbed face had a sheen that made Belknap think of the leaves of certain tropical plants. His hands were gnarled and powerful-looking. Something in his gaze seemed veiled, at once aggressive and furtive.

  But Belknap was in too great of a rush to dwell on the curled lip of the crippled hotel clerk. He collected his key—it was the old European system, the room key attached to a rubberized weight, and returned to the front desk when the guest left the building—and made his way to the room he had checked into that morning, one floor up. The elevator was slow and small; when he got out, the hall was dim. The hall lights were on a timer, he remembered: another cost-saving measure. Inside the room, the old-sponge smell grew stronger. He closed the door behind him. He saw Andrea’s bags on the floor near the veneer-on-fiberboard dresser and felt something like relief fluttering in his chest. She had been in his thoughts far more often than could be explained by the nature of his pursuits. Her fragrance, her hair, her soft, glowing skin: He had not been able to leave these things behind when he flew across the Atlantic.

  “Andrea,” he called out. The bathroom door was open, the room dark. Where was she? Having a coffee at one of the nearby cafés, perhaps—adjusting to the time zone. The bedspread looked rumpled, as if she had stretched out on it to have a nap. Then his heart started to trip-hammer, swifter at comprehension than his head. The folded white paper on the small bedside table: It was a note.

  He picked it up, read it quickly, and was struck by a bolt of fear and fury. He forced himself to reread it more slowly. His stomach was a small, hard ball.

  Everything about it heightened his sense of dread. The paper was hotel stationery; the writing was in pencil. Both features would stymie any attempt at forensic scrutiny. Nor was the message worded as a kidnapping note. We have taken possession of the package, the note said. Enjoy your stay. Yet what truly made his blood freeze was its sign-off: GENESIS.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dear God! Had Jared Rinehart’s appearance been a ploy to distract him while the abduction had been orchestrated? Belknap’s horror turned into fury—fury, first, at himself. He had allowed this to happen to her. Yet his own anguish, his own gut-clutching guilt, was a luxury that he could not afford—that she could not afford.

  Think, dammit! He had to think.

  The abduction had to have been recent—which meant that every moment would count. It was an elementary calculation: The more time that was allowed to elapse after an abduction, the smaller the odds of recovery.

  The island of Cyprus had been cursed for decades, torn by strife and enmity and conflict, corruption, and intrigue. Yet it was, after all, an island. That circumstance, he dimly sensed, was the crucial one. The foremost priority of Andrea’s kidnappers would be to get her off the island. Larnaca was not the busiest harbor in Cyprus, but it was the site of the island’s busiest airport. What would you do? Belknap placed steel-rigid fingers on his scalp, forcing his mind to operate as theirs must have. Speed was the imperative. A conviction grew within him: They would have bundled her into an airplane. He breathed deeply, inhaling through his nostrils. Through the stale smells of mildew and cigarette smoke, the citrus and bergamot notes of her cologne were was still detectable. She had been here very recently. She was on the island still. He had to go with his best guess and pursue it as hard, as fast, as he could.

  He blinked, and suddenly he knew. The windowless Sky Café van: It was out of place. Airline foodstuffs and provisions were always trucked in early in the morning, before the regular schedule of departures began. Yet the van was on the highway bound toward the airport in the middle of the afternoon. It was wrong, as wrong as a FedEx man making deliveries then. He remembered how his scalp had prickled, his subconscious mind picking up on the anomaly. Now needles of apprehension jabbed at him.

  Andrea had been in that van.

  Larnaca International Airport was only a few miles away, to the west. He had to get there as soon as he could. A few seconds could make all the difference. There was not a moment to lose.

  He bounded down the stairs, taking them three or four at a time, and ran through the deserted entrance hall. The man in the motorized wheelchair had vanished, as he expected. He climbed into his Land Rover and started up the engine even before he slammed the door. Now, tires squealing, he turned onto the road tha
t led to the airport, heedless of the eighty-kilometer speed limit, veering around slower-moving vehicles. Larnaca’s airport had the highest ratio of private jets to public carriers of any international airport in the world. It was this fact that told Belknap what he needed to know. Whizzing past a sprawling desalination facility, the blue tanks and white tubes of an industrial alembic, he veered into the exit ramp to the airport, where, a minute later, he swerved around the Queen’s building and the flight-connection center, a tall rectangular structure of darkened glass and dun-colored stone, LARNAKA AIRPORT spelled out in blocky blue letters. Thirty international airlines and thirty chartered airlines were served, but Belknap was interested in neither. He needed to go past the main buildings and toward the fourth terminal. He pulled up to the smaller building, tires skidding, and raced inside. The floors were overpolished stone tile, a pattern of beige and coral, and his rubber-soled moccasins maintained their grip as he ran past the usual duty-free stores, the words “duty” and “free” separated by the airport’s pyramidal seal, bottles of wine gleaming beneath icy-bright fluorescents. He darted around columns covered with small blue square tiles. The terminal was a blur of gates and check-in stations, and lackadaisical security guards who made unexcited noises of remonstration, for a man racing madly about was assumed to be a passenger afraid of missing his plane. He peered through the large plate-glass wall of a waiting area that faced the runway, and saw a Gulfstream G550 on the runway. A private plane, obviously, though capable of long-distance flight. On the tail, the small but unmistakable logo of Stavros Maritime—three intersecting circles around a star, turquoise against yellow. The engines were already fired up, the plane prepared for taxi and takeoff.

  Andrea was inside. It hit him with the force of certainty.

  He turned around, darted past one of the blue-tiled columns, and crashed into one of the uniformed security guards.

  “I’m so sorry!” Belknap said, making vigorous apologetic gestures. The guard was angry, but he also knew it was hazardous to alienate the sort of VIPs who frequented the terminal. He took refuge in his native tongue, cursing the American in Greek. He did not notice that he had been relieved of his walkie-talkie, the small two-way radio that hooked onto his nylon belt.

  Pretending to be winded, Belknap wandered to a payphone, in a row of them across from one of the check-in stations. He dialed the number of the airport, asked to be connected to the air-traffic controllers. In a low, guttural voice, he spoke to the man who finally answered. “The aircraft on the runway at Terminal Four contains a bomb,” he said. “High explosives. Altimeter charge. Expect a further communication.” He clicked off.

  Now he made two more phone calls, to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s offices in Nicosia, the country’s capital, which was now the last divided capital in the world. Carefully employing certain codewords and professional abbreviations, he conveyed an unambiguous message. The Gulfstream about to depart from Larnaca contained a large shipment of Turkish heroin, a shipment that was ultimately on its way to the United States.

  Belknap could not be sure which would respond the fastest, the ATC or the DEA, but either would immediately order the grounding of the aircraft. He glanced at his watch. Though the DEA had its offices in the capital, he knew that it employed a small detail that was stationed at the Larnaca airport. How long would it take to mobilize it? He took out a handkerchief and discreetly wiped down the telephone receiver.

  He looked at the Gulfstream; the plume of hot air from the engines, visible only from the distortions it produced in the scene behind it, was diminishing. The pilot had been ordered to power down. Two minutes passed. Three minutes. A fast-moving van with a collapsible ramp on its roof pulled up to the jet, joined swiftly by another one. Next, a canvas-topped truck pulled up, filled with Cypriot military policemen. Others—their garb told Belknap they were American DEA agents—joined them. The Cyprus authorities had pledged full cooperation with the United States on matters of drug enforcement, and, as a beneficiary of American military, security, and financial assistance, Cyprus had to at least appear to honor the pledge.

  Now Belknap raced down to a steel door that led onto the tarmac, flashed a plastic ID card at the guard. “DEA,” he grunted. He jerked a thumb toward the activities outside, pushed at the steel gate bar, and made his way toward the scrum of officers that surrounded the Gulfstream. It should have been the last place that an interloper like himself should show his face, but he knew from experience that an interagency massing like this was easy to penetrate. It was like crashing a wedding; everyone would assume that you belonged to the other family. Besides, nobody ever suspected the presence of a sheep at a gathering of wolves: The plethora of armed and uniformed law-enforcement people seemed to assure that no outsider would dare join them.

  Belknap turned to one of the men he had identified as DEA. “Bowers, State,” he said. Meaning: a member of the U.S. State Department, or an American operative with a cover job supplied by that department. It hardly mattered which assumption was made. The man he spoke to wore a khaki-colored shirt with a round patch at the shoulder, U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT lettered across the top, DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY curving up the bottom. A stylized rendition of an eagle flying against a blue sky over a curved section of the green earth. The man wore a pin that identified him as a special agent.

  “You know the bird belongs to Nikos Stavros?” Belknap asked.

  The American just shrugged, head-pointed to another American, obviously his superior.

  “Bowers,” Belknap repeated. “State. We got the notification same time as you. A twenty-three-five.” That was the bureaucratic designation for an urgent-action summons. “Just here to observe.”

  “McGee. The Cyps stormed it a minute ago.” The American had cowlicked blond hair, small ears that jutted out, and a band of red across forehead, cheeks, and nose—the way a man who stands outside a lot gets sunburned. “They got a message about explosives, some altimeter rig.” The sound of barking dogs emerged from the cabin. The door had been opened and a ramp had been extended and latched onto it.

  “We were told it was a transshipment of heroin.” Belknap looked bored, unfriendly. He knew that nothing was more likely to excite suspicion than a display of friendliness, an ingratiating air. Internal-affairs officers always gave themselves away by their cordiality.

  “It’s probably a few kilos of bullshit,” the blond American said, with a border-state half-drawl. “But we’ll see, right?” A testing glance.

  “You will,” Belknap replied. “I’m not hanging around here all afternoon. You got registration info on the craft?”

  The man paused a beat too long. “Pending.”

  “Pending?” Belknap gave him a look. “If I wanted smoke blown up my ass, I’d get out my ass-bong.”

  The DEA man laughed. “Well, it’s no big mystery, is it?”

  “You’ve confirmed Stavros, is all I’m asking. How about the pilot?”

  “Pilot’s a full-time Stavros employee, too,” the DEA man said, nodding. “And here he comes now.”

  Frogmarched by two well-armed Cypriot agents, the pilot made his way down the aluminum stairs, protesting vociferously.

  Belknap took out the walkie-talkie and spoke into dead air: “Bowers here. Call it confirmed that pilot belongs to Stavros.” A bit of theater for the American, McGee.

  The blond DEA man conferred briefly with one of the Cypriots, then turned back to Belknap. “No drugs yet. But a drugged-up passenger.”

  Belknap looked up to see the small dazed figure of a semiconscious woman, half-escorted and half-dragged by two powerful Cypriot policemen.

  It was Andrea.

  Thank God! She seemed intact, unmarked, though her eyes drooped, her limbs were slack. Opiate intoxication by all indications. A debilitating state but a rapidly reversible one.

  On the tarmac near the green military vehicle, the pilot was professing bewilderment, ignorance. Yet Belknap had no doubt that he was acting on orders from Nikos
Stavros.

  Nikos Stavros—who must have been acting on orders from someone else.

  “I wonder who that is,” McGee said, glancing at the stuporous Andrea.

  “You don’t know? We do. A Yank, from Connecticut. We get first dibs on her. Pilot’s all yours.”

  “You can’t big-foot us,” McGee groused. It was as much as a concession.

  Belknap did not reply to him, but he spoke into the walkie-talkie again: “Taking the girl into custody. We’ll pass her back to DEA-Nicosia in a few.” He paused, pretended to be listening through earbuds. “No big,” he said. “Let’s show the DEA boys just how efficient we can be. May need a medic.”

  Taking advantage of the confusion of the moment, he approached Andrea and took her from the Cypriot policemen, seizing her by both elbows, his movements brusque and professional-seeming. The other members of the DEA would look to McGee to complain if there was cause to, and the Cypriots had been instructed to defer, operationally, to the Americans.

  “I’ll call you when I fill out the F-83,” Belknap said to McGee. “Any discrepancies and the computer spits it right now.” He spoke in a tone that disguised his exertion, the fact that he was bearing most of her weight. Moments later, he had walked her to one of the electric carts that had ferried some of the military policemen to the plane. The driver, a blunt-featured Cypriot, was obviously accustomed to taking orders; Belknap sat down on the rear bench beside Andrea, and gave the driver his instructions in curt, simple terms.

  The driver turned and looked at Belknap, and if he were seeking authorization in his granite-faced countenance, he evidently found it. The electric cart rolled off.

  Belknap felt her pulse, which was slow. Her breathing was shallow but regular. She had been drugged; she had not been poisoned.

  He directed the driver to his black Land Rover and enlisted his help in transferring her to the backseat. Then he dismissed the man with a casual salute.