by Sam Powers
“I don’t know what you are talking about, my friend. Would I be right in thinking you’re the ‘rogue American agent’ I keep hearing so much about? You are Joseph Brennan, are you not?”
“For the sake of argument…”
“Good. Then I know I am safe and do not have to tell you anything. You won’t harm me.”
“Tillo Bustamante thought the same,” Brennan said. “Look at how that turned out.”
From the backseat, Konyshenko let out a belly laugh. “This is not the cops you’re talking to, Mr. Brennan. I know full well that you did not shoot Bustamante; in fact, my sources say it was his own men which, if you knew him, you would understand.”
“Sure, but he talked plenty to me before they tagged him. If I could get the information out of him…”
“You’ll what? Drive me to some seedy motel room and shoot me full of sodium pentothal? Unreliable, at best. Then what? Say you get nothing? My men will be combing the city for you. Every road in and out, the airports, the train station, the ferry… No. You have no trump cards, Mr. Brennan. So I will tell you nothing and we shall see where it goes from here.”
Brennan was irritated. Konyshenko had guts; he didn’t doubt that. But without his information, they had no way of knowing where the nuke was headed or when it might arrive. “Look, millions of people could die…”
Konyshenko shrugged. “Millions of people die every year. What does it matter to you or me how they go about it?”
“But how well do you trust your partners, Dmitri? They seem fairly happy with the idea of getting rid of anyone standing in their way. That could include you, eventually.”
“Like I said, I am a careful man. I take precautions. Those who might have a motive, they know my character and would not dare.”
He had a dangerously high opinion of himself, Brennan decided. “What are you going to do when your involvement in this eventually gets out to the various intelligence agencies? Even if they can’t prove it publicly, they’ll demonize you privately, get your companies cut off, blacklisted.”
But the Russian seemed to have become disinterested in both the conversation and the ride. “What time is it?” he said, checking his watch. He was supposed to speak in ten minutes. “If I don’t arrive soon, they are going to … how you say… round out the cavalry. I have GPS locator on my phone.”
“Roll out. Or send out. But not round out.”
“Your Russian any good?”
“I get by,” Brennan replied in the language, perfectly.
“Good. Take me to the park, driver,” Konyshenko said contemptuously. “But I wouldn’t get out of the car, if I were you. My men will shoot you on sight.” Konyshenko’s cell phone began to buzz. “If I don’t answer that, they will begin scouring the city…”
Brennan turned a corner sharply. If he couldn’t get intel out of Konyshenko directly, he could leave him at his speech and perhaps get into his hotel room, tap his laptop. The park was coming up on their right, the band shell up and the seats filled. He pulled over quickly and tapped the intercom as they pulled over. “Get out.”
“Perhaps you should stay for my speech, Mr. Brennan. It’s very flowery and moving. Something for the little people.”
“I’ll pass. Get out.”
Brennan’s mind was ticking over, thinking of alternatives in case he couldn’t get into the Russian’s room. One immediately occurred: the same two bodyguards accompanied the Russian everywhere. If he wouldn’t talk and wasn’t frightened of the potential consequences, perhaps one of them would. It was just a matter of figuring out the right one. And if that didn’t work, he decided, he would have to pay a late-night visit to Konyshenko and see just how well he stood up to the interrogation cocktail – assuming he could get to him again. He could have just taken off with the Russian, but the last thing he needed was every Canadian cop for six hundred miles on his tail.
So first things first, he thought. Once the Russian had climbed out of the limo, Brennan sped away, then left the vehicle a couple of blocks from the park and went back on foot, covering the mile quickly. Konyshenko had not seen his face, and Brennan looked nondescript. If nothing else, catching the first few minutes of his speech would let Brennan figure out the rest of his security detail, and just how many men the Russian had brought with him to Vancouver.
The park was busy, a banner near the entry declaring Russia-Canada Friendship Day; there were free hot dogs and soft drinks for kids, which had brought out families, and Brennan figured there had to be at least a hundred people in the temporary seating ahead of the stage. The deputy mayor looked sharp in a dark blue suit with a red club tie. He was talking about how important it was for businessmen like Dimtri Konyshenko to support the youth of the city, occasionally greeted with polite applause as the speech wound on. Konyshenko was seated in the first of the row of temporary chairs next to the podium, his arms folded, looking bored. One guard was seated next to him, two more were at the corners of the stage and two more were at the back of the stage, in the shadows.
That meant five, maybe six men. If he couldn’t find anything in the room, he’d need to figure out which guard was most likely to talk to him, to crack under pressure. In the meantime, Brennan had about an hour at most to go back to Konyshenko’s room and search it, see if he could leave ears behind.
The asset was not happy. The assignment was off plan, a wrench thrown into the works. He had no stake in the target; there was no honor in this one; he was just told it was a tactical necessity.
It wouldn’t keep him from completing the mission, of course. He was a good soldier, the best. Orders that seemed vaguely motivated were nothing new to him. But he had begun to realize, with the coming of middle age, that shutting out the questions had become harder.
Not that it mattered, he thought as he surveyed the target area from the apartment balcony. In the living room, the home owner was bound and gagged by the sofa. She had a wedding ring on and there were pictures around of her husband and kids, so he wasn’t worried about her; she’d be discovered sometime reasonably quickly. He’d worn a mask when he forced his way into the apartment and she hadn’t taken long to deal with.
Then he’d taken the rifle case out to the balcony and set up quickly. He was higher up that he’d initially liked; but his plan to shoot from the bridge had been thwarted when he realized his line of sight was cut off by the back of the tent. He knew he’d have a more difficult time adjusting for wind from on high but compared to the foothills and mountains in Afghanistan, it wasn’t much of a challenge.
Soon, he was sure, he would be given the greenlight to go back overseas, to hunt down the remaining two committee members. It wasn’t enough that the ACF was effectively finished, that the men involved were scurrying like rats to save their reputations. They still had to die.
For Sarah.
He hadn’t thought about her in a long time, he realized. He felt a pang of guilt; was it all worth it, if he didn’t keep her in his memory? She would have been thirty-one that summer, a fact his handler had reiterated back in France, weeks earlier, when he’d shown a hint of doubt. She’d wanted kids, a family of her own. Her fiancée, Mitch, had been a great guy, almost like a brother to him. They would have had great kids, been the best parents.
He swung the barrel slowly across the target zone. His target was on a slight angle to him, which was perfect, but still sitting; occasionally, the man next to him would lean forward or sway into the firing path slightly, forcing the asset to wait until the target uncrossed his arms and rose.
Showtime.
37./
It had taken Brennan less than five minutes to get to the hotel, and even fewer to steal a pass card from one of the staff. Then he’d approached the front desk, where an amiable young woman had been more than willing to help him.
“Yes, I’d like to call up to a room: 1540, for Dmitri Konyshenko.”
She dialed the room and someone answered. A moment later the hotel staffer hung up the phone. “That
’s definitely the wrong room…”
“Oh hell,” Brennan said. “Secretary must have copied it down wrong.”
“What did you say the name was?”
“Konyshenko. He’ll be in a suite.”
She checked the registry online. “Yes, he’s in…” she paused for a second, “… 1604. Your secretary wasn’t even close.”
“Good help is very hard to find,” he said.
The receptionist rang the room. “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no answer.”
Brennan took on a puzzled look. “Well I could have sworn she said… no, doesn’t matter. Is there a bar here? Maybe I can wait for an hour or so. He’s visiting from abroad and we haven’t talked in a long time. I’d rather not miss him.”
“Absolutely!” she said. “Mulligan’s is just around the corner from the south of the lobby, if you take a right immediately after you come through the front doors.”
“Much obliged,” Brennan said, tipping an imaginary hat to her. He headed in that direction, waiting until she was busy with the next customer before turning quickly on his heel and moving for the elevators.
On the sixteenth floor he was doubly cautious, checking the entire level for guards or hindrances before using the stolen swipe card to enter. The suite was palatial – an apartment, really, with three separate bedrooms and a large sitting room, complete with one of the two wrap-around balconies that crowned the hotel.
There was a laptop on the desk in the large bedroom but he left it alone; breaking its password protection would take too long, and guys like Konyshenko always protected their technology. He considered the fixtures in the room, the lamps and the phone. But the Russian would be moving on in a few days, so that wouldn’t help.
He noticed the standup closet. He opened it, and a variety of Konyshenko’s suits were hanging inside. Eddie had loaned Brennan a handful of small bugs, and he planted them under each lapel of the four suits, close enough for good pickup even through the cloth, but unlikely to be detected.
In all, he’d been in the hotel for less than fifteen minutes; he noticed the safe in the bottom of the closet. He probably had enough time …
Brennan headed quickly to the bathroom and retrieved a small paper cup. He went back to the miniature safe and placed the cup against the lock mechanism, then placed his ear against the cup, using it to barely amplify the sound of the tumblers clicking over as he slowly went through each number on the combination dial, looking for the slightly louder “thunk” that would accompany the lock mechanism slotting into place. The grand French doors to the balcony, combined with the altitude, rendered the room silent.
The lock ‘thunked’ a third time; Brennan cautiously pulled back the safe door. There were passports, airline tickets, vaccination certificate books.
And a key.
Brennan stared at it. It was for a locker, doubtless. It even looked familiar. An airport? He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen the key before; but it was one of those vague recollections, drifting on the edge of memory.
He put the key into his pocket then closed the safe. Between it and the information he’d gather from Konyshenko over the following few days, he knew he’d have real leverage, on a source who might actually know where the nuke was.
After closing the safe, he wiped down everything he’d touched with a wet hotel towel. Through the French doors he noticed how impossibly blue the sky seemed. On a whim, he opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony.
Down below, the street scene was chaotic. People were honking horns, trying to cut in and out of lanes to the point that traffic was snarled. Brennan heard multiple sirens. A news chopper flew overhead at low altitude, heading towards the waterfront. He felt ill at ease. Something big was going on.
He quickly left the balcony and closed the door behind him, then headed back out of the room and towards the elevators.
A few blocks away at George Wainborn Park, panic had set in. People were fleeing the area in the hundreds, knocking each other down even as they tried to make it to the street, scattering temporary chairs.
The initial gunshot had been the barest crack of a sound, as the asset was some four hundred yards away, as well as several stories up. The bullet had sheared off a chunk of Dmitri Konyshenko’s right frontal lobe, spraying the deputy mayor with gore and blood as the instantly dead Russian’s body slumped to the stage. There was a split-second pause before a woman near the front screamed and everyone began to scatter. To make matters worse, one of Konyshenko’s bodyguards overreacted to movement from the corner of one eye, unloading his pistol in the fleeing crowd’s direction when he thought he saw a man carrying something.
The police response was lightning quick, even by Canadian standards, a pair of cars on scene within a couple of minutes, thanks to a phone call tip from the asset’s handlers, with suggestions they check both the park and hotel, and be on the lookout for a rogue American agent named Joseph Brennan.
Had Brennan known it, he might have realized that while he was taking an elevator to the lobby, a tactical assault team was taking the other car to the sixteenth floor to intercept him. The rest were stationed in the lobby, in case of just such a circumstance, and when the elevator doors dinged open, Brennan found himself immediately pinned down by officers in a crossfire position.
“Joseph Brennan, this is the Vancouver police. Lie down on the ground with your hands behind your back.”
Whoever tipped the police to his presence had managed to get them there in the exact window during which he was searching the room, which meant he was either under constant surveillance – unlikely, at best – or they’d expected him to go to the room while Konyshenko was speaking.
The latter made more sense; he recalled the scene of panic on the street from the balcony, seen from above. There was no way that had anything to do with him. He thought about the Russian-Canadian Friendship ceremony, the way it was set up to have the Russian speaking at a dais. Brennan got a sinking feeling he’d been in the same position just a few weeks before, when the sniper had taken out Boris Miskin.
He’d been set up again. And this time, the police had arrived before he could flee.
He raised both hands sheepishly then said in the halting, wavering French of a frightened man: “I don’t understand; could you speak slower?”
One of the officers was bilingual and repeated the order in French. Brennan approached the pair to the right of the elevator car, towards the lobby.
“Isn’t this guy supposed to be American?” one said, as his partner withdrew a plastic wrist restraint tie from his pocket.
“Yeah,” the other said, as he took Brennan’s left arm from his head and placed it behind his back. “Fits the description though…”
He had to act quickly. Once he was in custody, the chances of getting free were slim-to-none. As the officer moved his arm behind him, Brennan kicked hard at the side of the man’s knee, the joint dislocating. The second officer took a half-step forward as his colleagues screamed; Brennan shoved the first cop towards him, then as he struggled to support his colleague’s weight, slid the man’s pistol from its holster, moving quickly behind him, one arm around the man’s throat, the gun to his head. Brennan had to take a chance that there were no snipers in the lobby, or a hostage gambit was out of the question.
“We’re going to be moving with the trigger half-depressed,” he said loudly. “Anyone thinks they have a shot, consider the odds of my pistol going off in the process.” The lobby was deathly quiet, and a half-dozen tactical officers rose from cover positions.
He knew they’d have every exit covered and the adjacent streets blocked off; he backed towards the staff door behind the front desk, the officer walking with him.
“Just be cool, buddy,” the cop said. “Nobody wants to get hurt here.”
He opened the door and took them through. On the other side, a long, nondescript corridor with a dull red carpet ran past several offices, to a door with an emergency ‘Exit’ sign above it.
“You can probably let me go now,” the cop said. “I think you’re clear.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Brennan said. He didn’t like risking the man’s life, but he had to bank that none of his law enforcement colleagues would be stupid enough to put a friendly in harm’s way. There was no other way out. He pushed the steel door mechanism bar with his back and the emergency door opened behind them. He turned both of their bodies as they left the building, so that his hostage was facing the lot behind the hotel. There were three police cruisers, which Brennan had counted on. He only had one chance to get to one of the cars; outside, they doubtless did have sharpshooters, ready to switch him off if given an inch of leeway.
He took the hostage forward and down the steps, careful to crouch slightly behind him, to cut off any angle for a shot. He knew there could be a sniper on the hotel roof proper, which is why he had to move them quickly, the two men shuffling towards the cruiser. “Back away! Everyone back away or I’ll kill him,” he said.
The officers around the car backed off. “Open the driver’s door,” Brennan told the hostage. “Carefully now.”
The officer complied. Brennan turned them both so that his own back was to the car then sat down on the edge of the seat. He started the car, put it into reverse. “Now we’re going to start backing up, very, very slowly, towards the end of the alley,” he told the hostage. “If you don’t keep up or you try to pull away from the door, I’ll have to shoot you. And believe me, I’m just as good with my left as my right.”
He slowly released the brake and the car began to roll backwards, door open, the hostage walking beside the door. When they were into the alley proper and two walls towered up on each side, Brennan stepped on the brake again. Once the car had stopped he gave the officer a swift push on the backside with his left foot, so that he was well away from the car, then stepped on the gas, backing out at high speed; the other officers had radioed the situation ahead, and a pair of cruisers came out of nowhere from either side of the alley, trying to block it off, shut it down like an impromptu pair of gates. The cruiser smashed against the corners of each, pushing the other cars out of the way in a shower of glass and plastic as Brennan reversed it into the street, turning in a wide arc so that he was facing the right way in traffic.
