The villa was a terra-cotta-colored property with a flat roof and a curved balcony on the upper floor, built ten or fifteen meters back from the street. But they could see little because of the high wall and gates that ran across the entire frontage.
“Looks like a nice, unobtrusive, typical government worker’s villa,” Haroon said. It definitely didn’t look luxurious, but it was well maintained and had been painted relatively recently.
“Keep going,” Jayne said. “Let’s not advertise that we’re checking it out.”
Omar accelerated slightly and continued to the end of the street, which led into the chaos of Qala-e-Fatullah Road, a busy main artery almost two kilometers long that led northwest of the city center.
Jayne sent a text message to Johnson to update him on the latest development with the operation to tail Javed. She realized immediately it was going to be difficult to monitor the property without ringing alarm bells in the area. They had had the same problem with Javed’s house on Street Ten.
There were few people walking up and down it. Any parked vehicle would immediately arouse suspicions, and there was nowhere for someone mounting a surveillance operation to wait unobtrusively. No cafés or restaurants or even a seated area or park. The only thing that offered the slightest cover were a few spindly trees along the curb.
“If we know Javed isn’t in his office, you and Omar will just have to do occasional drive pasts,” Jayne said. “It’s not exactly a great surveillance operation, I know.”
Haroon groaned. “It’s amateurish.”
“I know,” Jayne said. “But tell me how we can do better, given we have no resources?”
Haroon shrugged, but she knew he was correct. It was a fifteen-minute, three-kilometer journey by car from Jayne’s villa to Javed’s house. Omar and Haroon couldn’t check out the house more than once or twice an hour without being obvious. That left such large windows of time during which Javed could move in and out unseen that it really was almost a waste of time.
But there seemed little option. Unlike a CIA or MI6 station chief, they just didn’t have people whom they could call upon to mount an effective operation. It crossed Jayne’s mind that she could exchange her hijab for a burkha to cover her face and surveil the street on foot, but that might be a high-risk strategy if someone worked out what was going on.
There was a very high chance of kidnap or of being killed if the Taliban or another insurgent group was tipped off that a Westerner was operating on the street. Indeed, two German women had been kidnapped and tortured in that same area the previous year. One had been shot dead, and the other had been extremely fortunate to have been eventually released alive.
“Is there anyone you can think of locally who could do this job on foot for us?” Jayne asked Haroon.
“I’ve spoken to a few people,” Haroon said. “Unfortunately there’s nobody I know in Kabul who’s capable of doing the job. At least, nobody I’d trust 100 percent.”
Monday, June 10, 2013
Brooklyn, New York
At six o’clock, Brooklyn Bridge Park was thronged with tourists who were shooting photographs of the skyscrapers across the East River. Obliging them, the western sky behind Lower Manhattan had remained cloudless and deep blue all day.
By contrast, Johnson was anything but relaxed. He sat, occasionally tugging at the old bullet wound at the top of his right ear, on a large rectangular block of granite outside the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory on the corner of Old Fulton and Furman Streets.
The sheer number of people in the park and its surroundings meant it was going to be difficult to pick out their targets. That was clearly why this location and time had been chosen.
Johnson had decided to stay out in the open, wearing a black baseball cap, a gray T-shirt under his lightweight blue linen jacket, and blue chinos. He felt that at least now he could contribute something rather than put all control in the hands of others. Vic had decided likewise and was standing smoking a cigarette across the other side of Old Fulton Street, outside the restaurant Shake Shack, almost under the bridge itself.
Dover had placed four FBI surveillance specialists in the park, all of them dressed as typical tourists. One was in the grassy area in the center. Another was on the strip of concrete that ran between the bushes and the East River. A third was on the side farthest away from the river, next to the building site, and the fourth at the northern end near to the ferry pier.
Meanwhile, Dover himself was camped out in the black FBI 4x4 that was parked farther along Furman Street, controlling operations. He had placed four other FBI vehicles in nearby streets and, having reluctantly informed the New York Police Department’s special operations team, there were also four of their units within four blocks.
The entire surveillance team had seen a series of different photographs of both Donnerstein and Zilleman. The unknown person, of course, was the third man, the owner of the New York–based burner phone.
Johnson subtly pushed his Beretta farther down into his belt, beneath his jacket. He kept a careful eye on the passersby. As his watch ticked around to ten past six, he could feel his adrenaline levels rising and consciously calmed himself. He needed a clear head. This was the scheduled meeting time.
There was nobody in sight who matched either Zilleman or Donnerstein’s description. Forty yards to his right, near the entrance to Pier One, Johnson could see one of the feds tying his shoelaces while glancing up at three men smoking and laughing together.
Then suddenly, from behind a small clump of trees next to the Bargemusic boat, Johnson saw a man emerge. It was Zilleman, wearing a tie and with his top shirt button undone, no jacket, and gray trousers.
Zilleman walked briskly along the broad sidewalk, no more than six or seven yards to Johnson’s right, and up to the crosswalk next to the traffic lights. He paused as several cars went by, until the green pedestrian light showed, and then he strode across.
Johnson stood and made to follow, but then he noticed Zilleman briefly and quickly raise his right hand, as if waving at someone. As he did so, the rear door of a gray BMW 7 series sedan parked on the other side of the street, just beyond the traffic lights, swung open, and a man stepped out, carrying a briefcase.
Despite the man’s baseball hat, pulled down over graying hair, and a black polo shirt instead of his customary collar and tie, Johnson immediately recognized him as Kurt Donnerstein. There was no mistaking the muscular shape of his shoulders on top of a thickset frame and the perma-tan. Donnerstein walked without a pause in Johnson’s direction, arriving at the far side of the crosswalk at exactly the same time as Zilleman.
Where are the goddamn feds?
Both men appeared to give each other a cursory greeting, then cut right at the other side of the crosswalk, heading east along Furman Street next to a five-story block of what looked like apartments. But after about fifteen yards, they stopped in front of a short flight of five steps that led up to a red door, which had a painted sign above it reading 8 Old Fulton Street.
At that moment, the red door swung sharply open, and a white-haired man emerged onto the top step, his face unsmiling, eyes darting around.
That was when Johnson felt his jaw drop what felt like five feet in shock. The man who had come out of the apartment building had a white mop of hair and was wearing a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses. The glasses confused Johnson for a second, but the angular physique and craggy face were stunningly familiar.
It was Robert Watson.
He beckoned Zilleman and Donnerstein up the steps. After they had gone inside, Watson glanced up and down Furman Street, pausing for a few seconds and appearing to look and listen carefully, almost tangibly testing the atmosphere.
The old fox is checking out the street, Johnson immediately said to himself. But what the hell was he doing back in the States, and how did he get in, given the warrants out for his arrest?
Johnson’s mind flashed straight back to the old photograph from 1988 of Watson and Donnerstein to
gether with the Stinger missiles in Afghanistan.
Then Watson swiftly followed the others, pulling the door closed behind him.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Brooklyn, New York
“They’ve gone in?” Dover said, his tone reedy and tense.
Johnson pushed the cell phone tighter to his ear so he could hear against the noisy street background. “Yes. Gone into the apartment building on the corner. Number eight. Red door.”
“Shit, what the hell are my guys doing?” Dover said.
Johnson held back from saying he had been asking himself the same question.
“All three of them have gone in?” Dover continued.
“No. One was in there already—he let the other two in. You probably know of him—Robert Watson, ex-CIA?”
“I know the Watson case,” Dover said.
“He was my old boss.”
“Shit. What’s he doing here? Okay, wait where you are. Best if I send two of my guys into the apartment, especially if Watson’s going to recognize you.”
“Agreed,” Johnson said, reflexively touching his Beretta beneath his jacket. He had decided to phone Dover rather than go to the FBI 4x4, just in case Watson was watching.
“Is there a doorman?” Dover asked.
“Don’t know. I’ll go take a look,” Johnson said. “Hang on the line.”
He pulled his cap farther down his face and strolled over the crosswalk, forcing himself to move slowly. Keeping his phone clamped to his left ear, which helped hide his face from the apartment building, he walked closer to the door. There was a line of doorbells running down the left side of the frame. The top one was marked Concierge.
“Yes, there’s a doorman,” Johnson muttered into the phone.
“Good. Move away from there,” Dover said. “Go back where you were. Two guys coming in now.” He ended the call.
Johnson started to backtrack, but then he had an immediate thought. Whatever Watson’s role was, if he was holding a covert meeting with a US cabinet member, Johnson’s instinct was that he would have identified an escape route from the building in case the meeting was compromised.
If so, where was it? Johnson decided to check the front and other side of the building first, so he was out of the way of the FBI as they went in.
He made his way back along Furman Street toward the corner with Old Fulton Street, past five apartment windows at basement level, all with heavily barred windows.
Above his head, a black metal fire escape staircase was bolted to the brickwork, providing a way out at all five floor levels. Johnson briefly turned around. There was another matching fire escape at the other end of the building as well. He cursed quietly to himself. This was clearly a very old building with a myriad of possible exits.
Johnson turned right at the corner and walked along the front of the building. There was no entrance here, just apartment windows across the frontage, interspersed with stone pillars. On the far side of the building was a parking lot at the front, packed seven deep with cars, and a flat-roofed parking garage behind them.
Johnson stopped briefly. He could follow Dover’s instruction and return to where he had been across the street. But all his instincts went against that. Almost without thinking about it, he continued around the block, taking a right turn onto Everit Street, only another twenty yards farther on. It seemed to make sense to check out the side and rear of the building as well.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Monday, June 10, 2013
Brooklyn, New York
The feeling Watson picked up from a glance up and down Furman Street when he let EIGER and Zilleman into the building just wasn’t right. It was almost a sixth sense that he had developed over decades working in an environment built around surveillance, countersurveillance, lies, and subterfuge at the CIA.
Although he had not worked the street for years, Watson had been one of the Agency’s slickest operators in his time: a survivor of some of the toughest tasks handed out by Langley, putting him up against the Russians, the Iranians, and the Israelis, among others. It was a capability that remained finely honed, even now that he was a couple of weeks past his sixty-seventh birthday. It was innate.
Watson had noted a 4x4 with blackened windows farther down Furman Street that hadn’t been there earlier in the evening. A woman directly across the street was sitting on a concrete post, smoking, staring at him. A man in a suit was being slightly over-demonstrative in checking his watch. In the other direction, a man wearing a black baseball cap sitting on a block of granite had been on the phone, looking everywhere but in his direction and definitely avoiding eye contact.
Too many possibilities, and although they might all be “casuals,” as the Agency’s surveillance team called them, on the other hand they might not be. Watson’s gut feeling was that they all weren’t casual. But he didn’t have time to check them out.
One thing was for sure: the vibe he was getting from the street outside wasn’t the calm, serene one he had picked up earlier that day or in the whole time he’d been there, for that matter.
He asked himself the question he always used to carefully ask when preparing to meet one of his assets while still with the CIA. Should I abort? Then he asked himself, would I have aborted when I was at the Agency? And the answer buzzing in his head this time was yes. The problem here, though, was that it was too late. EIGER and Zilleman were already in the building.
Watson led them along the corridor and up a wooden staircase to his second-floor apartment.
The apartment looked out over Furman Street, the East River, and the Brooklyn Bridge at the west side of the building and over the narrow one-way Doughty Street, no more than an alley, at the rear.
“Take a seat, gentlemen,” Watson said, indicating toward the sofa and two matching black leather armchairs in the center of the living room. The apartment had twelve-foot-high ceilings, exposed beams and brickwork, and wooden floors, giving it a classic loft look.
Watson was determined to retain a calm demeanor, even though his mind was now racing. “Make yourselves comfortable. I just need to go get some papers from the bedroom,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He walked down a short corridor into the adjoining bedroom and edged up to the window, which looked out over the rear of the property. Now he could clearly see the black 4x4 parked on Furman Street. A man dressed in black clothing was bent down at the driver’s side of the vehicle, talking to whoever was inside. Then he stood up sharply, turned, and headed back along the street toward the apartment entrance.
Shit. Watson felt a wave of adrenaline shoot through him. This did not look good.
He quickly gauged angles and lines of sight from Doughty Street to the 4x4. He could get some cover. Then he looked the other way, left of the giant sash window. The drop down to the ground below his second-floor window was at least twelve feet, a nonstarter. But there was a flat roof three feet away, positioned a little lower than the window and set up as a roof garden with a table, chairs, and potted plants.
From that roof a spiral metal fire escape led down into a small courtyard at street level. But the courtyard had a solid wooden door built into an eight-foot wall, that led to the street. There was no guarantee the door would open, Watson figured. It might be better to step from the roof garden onto the top of the wall that enclosed the courtyard and from there drop down onto Doughty Street.
It briefly crossed Watson’s mind that his aging legs and ankles might not be up to all this, but he felt he had little option. He then weighed up taking Donnerstein and Zilleman with him but ruled it out. A United States cabinet member like Donnerstein would look far more suspicious if spotted climbing out of a window and down a fire escape onto a street than he would if caught in an apartment with an investment company boss. Likewise, Zilleman had little to run away from. Watson, on the other hand, with a fugitive tag on him, had everything to lose—most of all his freedom.
If he could just get into the street, whic
h was quiet and secluded and out of eyeline of the black 4x4, he could get to his Golf, which was only a couple of minutes' swift walk away.
It was time to decide. Stay or go. And Watson made a decision. He picked up his passport and wallet, which were lying on the bedside table, and pocketed them. He hesitated, grabbed two pepper spray canisters from a plastic bag on the floor, and stuffed one in each pocket. Then he unclipped the sash window and raised it.
As an afterthought, he went back and took a manual shaving razor from a bag on the bed and pushed that into his pocket as well. He climbed with some agility for a man of his age onto the window ledge, held onto the window frame, and then, without any hesitation, made a jump onto the flat roof, grabbing hold of a railing that ran right round the outside of it at waist height. He swung his legs over the rail and headed straight to the rear of the roof.
There Watson climbed over the railing again, grabbed an overhanging tree branch for stability, and stepped down onto the foot-wide boundary wall that was just below. He moved gingerly into a sitting position, his feet dangling down the outside of the wall, and then turned so he could hold onto the roof tiles that topped the wall. Watson gradually lowered himself so he only had a jump down of perhaps three feet.
A second later, wincing at a sharp pain he had felt in his right knee when he had landed, he was on the blacktop surface of Doughty Street and walking up it toward his parked car.
Watson crossed the junction where Doughty met Everit Street, but then, a hundred yards ahead of him, he spotted a man wearing dark clothing leaning against a black car, his arms folded.
It might have been nothing, but Watson decided instantly to divert right along Everit Street and then head to his car down Vine Street, which ran eastward, parallel to Doughty Street, a block farther on.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Brooklyn, New York
Johnson turned down Everit Street, scanning the eastern-facing side of the 8 Old Fulton Street building as he did so.
Stalin's Final Sting Page 26
