Last Chance to Die

5



Kate listened to Vail’s shallow breathing and found it remarkable that he could sleep anywhere, and apparently under any circumstances. They had been watching the suspected safe house for a couple of hours, waiting for dark, and Vail, after giving her a nod that he was going to do so, had drifted off. She wondered how much sleep he’d actually had in the past two days. For the last half year, she had been back in Washington, away from him. Back to the daily dictates of organization and rules. Beyond all else, rules. So many, in fact, that following every one of them left not the slightest opportunity to get anything else done. But Vail was an outsider, someone who couldn’t exist in such an inertial state. He was about to commit a burglary that carried with it the potential of international consequences. It scared the hell out of her. She looked over at him sleeping and wondered why she couldn’t wait to be part of it.

As if sensing that the sun had finally set, Vail opened his eyes. He looked at the small house and said, “No lights. So far so good.”

“What if someone from the embassy came back out here and reset the alarm? If it was turned off in the first place?”

“Then I would assume we’ll hear some sort of loud noise or see flashing lights. There’s only one way to find out.”

“Did it ever occur to you that the Russians might have some sort of sensor that goes right into the embassy and isn’t connected to this alarm system?”

“That’s more than an hour away.”

“They could call the local police.”

“We’re FBI agents. We saw someone breaking in and went in after them. They must have heard us and gone out the back.”

“I don’t know how I could ever question you. Apparently this is another foolproof plan. I’m psyched. Dibs on the crowbar.”

“That’s what I like to see, Kate, some genuine enthusiasm.” Vail glanced at her feet. “I guess I should have told you to wear more sensible shoes.” He manipulated the map on the dashboard GPS to search the surrounding areas.

“Sensible shoes? At this moment my footwear choice is what you think may not have been well thought out?”

He pointed to the GPS screen. “I want to go through the woods behind the place and get in through a rear window or door.”

She reached over and removed the keys from the ignition. “Fortunately, I have my gym clothes in the trunk.” She got out and retrieved her running shoes.

As she put them on, Vail drove past the house and, then a quarter of a mile farther, turned onto a dirt road. A hundred yards later, he found a place on the shoulder wide enough to pull over and park. After taking a last look at the map on the screen, he asked, “Ready?”

“Let’s burgle.”

Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment, Vail led the way through the woods, which although heavily treed had little underbrush to navigate through. Ten minutes later they stood at the edge of a tree line looking at the back of the house. It was completely dark. The rear of the structure had no doors, but there were three identical windows. “Go knock on the door.”

“Of a Russian safe house. Shouldn’t I have a stack of Girl Scout cookies or be wearing a Brownie uniform?”

“This is no time for sexual fantasies. Tell them your car broke down and you need to call the auto club.”

“And why would someone as together as I am—discounting my shoes—not have a cell phone?” she asked. “Is that fantasy about me or Thin Mints?”

“Tell them it’s dead. You know, act like a ditz.”

“There are some subtle rewards to working with you, but I think my favorite part is the Taliban-level degradation.”

“I told you, save the dirty talk for later.”

Kate walked to the side door and knocked. When there was no answer, she pounded her fist on it loudly, glancing back at Vail. After a minute he stepped out of the cover of the trees and waved at her to come to the rear of the house. “Start trying all the windows. If he was going to leave the alarm off, maybe he left us a way in.”

The second window Kate tried slid open. “Over here.”

Vail came to her and lifted himself through the window. “Hold on while I look around.” She watched anxiously as the beam of his flashlight swept the room and then disappeared. When he came back, he offered her his hand. “All clear.”

Once inside, Kate asked, “What are we looking for?”

“Anything locked. Doors, cabinets, anything where Calculus could have secured whatever he left.”

“If he left anything. If we’re burglarizing the right place.”

Vail walked over to a window shade that was pulled down. He put his hand behind it and then stepped to the side so Kate could see. “One-way shades, just like at the observation post. We’re in the right place.”

“Then since we have only one flashlight, how about we pull all the shades down and turn on some lights?”

Vail flashed the beam around the room, trying to determine what kind of lighting the house was equipped with and if it could be seen from outside. He turned his flashlight up to the ceiling, examining the fixtures.

“What kind of bulbs are those?” Kate asked.

“Good question.” He pulled over a table and got up on it. He unscrewed the bulb. It was heavy and appeared to be filled with something black. He turned it upside down and felt the granules inside shift. He screwed it back in carefully.

When he got down, Kate said, “What is it?”

“I can’t be sure, but I think they were filled with gunpowder and then reassembled.”

“Gunpowder?”

“If you turn on the light switch, the electricity going through the element will set them off.”

“Why would they do that?”

“My guess is that Calculus did it.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. For now just stay close to me.”

Kate and Vail moved from room to room, and he scanned each section of the ceiling with his flashlight. “The Russians spent some money upgrading this house.” He pointed with the beam of the flashlight. “See, they’ve got a sprinkler-system head in every room. Probably because their embassy is so far away. They didn’t want someone to be able to come in here and burn it down.”

“Like an ‘accidental’ fire started by a rival agency?”

“Pretty silly, huh? Can you imagine being that paranoid?” Vail walked along a short hallway into a room that looked like it was furnished and set up for meetings. He examined one wall closely, slowly sweeping his light across it. “There,” he said. “Do you see it?”

Kate stepped closer. “A pinhole camera.”

Vail patted the wall the camera was embedded in. “Did you notice how thick this wall is?”

“No.”

He led the way back into the room on the other side, and Kate said, “Now I see what you mean. It’s got to be four feet wide.”

Vail started checking the narrow panels that covered it. He tapped along the wall, looking for an access point. Using both hands, he pushed against each panel. The third one clicked open an inch or so. Behind it was a four-by-six-foot room that had been soundproofed. On a shelf were a series of audio and video recorders.

He could now see the pinhole camera attached to the interior of the wall, a lead running to a video recorder and then to a small monitor, so that the asset being paid off could be carefully watched and recorded as the event was occurring.

On the sidewall was a circuit-breaker box for the entire house. Vail guessed that it had existed before they built the narrow room around it. He turned on the DVD recorder and pressed the Eject button, but the carousel was empty. On top of the monitor was a plastic kitchen bowl that seemed out of place. Inside it was a sealed paper packet. Directly above it was another sprinkler head, presumably to protect the equipment should anything happen. Instead of taking the packet out, Vail picked up the bowl and examined the paper envelope without touching it.

“What’s that?” Kate asked.

Handwritten in the bottom right corner was the name “Ariadne.” Vail bent closer to it and held the flashlight at an angle so he could see the paper around the writing. He looked up at the sprinkler head again. “It’s good news and bad news. See if you can find a plastic bag somewhere, something big enough to carry this packet in.”

Kate wanted to ask Vail what he thought was inside the envelope, but she also wanted to spend as little time as possible inside the house. She hurried to the back, and Vail could hear her opening and closing drawers. She returned and handed him a torn plastic grocery bag. “This is all I could find. What is that?”

He picked up the packet, using the bag to grip it. “Something I suspect I don’t want touching my skin.” He flexed the packet. “It feels like a disc packed in powder.”

“Do you think Calculus left it?”

“I know he did.”

“How?”

Just then they heard a car pull up next to the house. “Go see what that is,” he told her while he carefully wrapped the envelope in the bag. Cautiously, Kate went to the window and peeked outside. “This can’t be good,” she said in a strained whisper.

“Who is it?”

“Best guess is the Russian embassy’s SWAT team. Three guys in cheap suits and bad haircuts, pulling down ski masks and carrying large black automatics.”

Vail reached over to the circuit-breaker box and threw all the switches to the “off” position. “Quick, go turn on all the light switches.”

“What?” Kate asked in an incredulous whisper.

“I’ve cut the power. Go!”

Vail headed in the opposite direction, flipping up wall switches. Just as the house door opened, they both had made it back to the concealed room, and Vail closed the panel door quietly. Kate drew her weapon and eased back the slide far enough to confirm that a round was in the chamber.

Even though the small room was soundproofed, they could hear the three men moving roughly through the house, occasionally calling out to one another in a foreign language. Their footsteps eventually slowed, and they started talking in lower tones. It sounded like they were now just outside the hidden room. Kate knew that if they were from the embassy, they would be aware of the room and would check it before leaving. A set of footsteps started toward them, and Vail wrapped his arms around Kate, pulling her over to the wall where the circuit breakers were located. He held her a little tighter and then flipped all the circuit breakers as fast as he could.

Instantly there was a series of explosions, and fire flashed under the panel door briefly. The men screamed and ran for the front door. Still holding Kate, Vail punched open the panel entrance and said, “Out the back window.” Suddenly the overhead sprinklers kicked on and soaked both of them as they ran to the rear of the house.

Kate reached the window, pulled it open, and climbed out. Vail followed her and closed it behind them. They hurried into the cover of the woods. The night air seemed twice as cold now that their hair and clothing were wet. As soon as they got into the car, Vail started it, revving the engine to boost the temperature. He went to the trunk and retrieved Kate’s sweat suit and then waited outside while she changed. When he finally climbed back in, he was shaking. Kate said, “Tell me that part again about how nothing can go wrong.”

“They got there fifteen minutes after us, so they didn’t come from D.C. That leaves a distinct possibility that Calculus is talking. They must have come here to retrieve the disc.” Vail turned the car around and headed back toward the highway.

“Then why would they come with ski masks and guns drawn?” she asked.

“If Calculus talked, he had to tell them that he’d left a clue for us. Maybe they were just being overly cautious in case we were there.”

“Well, they’ll know we were there now that we tried to blow up the place.”

“Especially when they don’t find the disc,” Vail said. “That’s why we have to get this package processed as quickly as possible. I assume you can have someone from the lab meet us as soon as we get back.”

“What kind of examination are you talking about?”

“Chemical.”

They pulled onto the highway, and Kate adjusted the heater. “Okay, now that we have time, what’s with the packet? ‘Good news and bad.’ What did you mean? And how did you know that Calculus left it?”

“The first clue was the gunpowder in the lights. Since he’s an engineer, Calculus would have known that as an antipersonnel mine it would inflict just minor wounds, because the only projectiles would have been the bulb’s glass, which would have broken into very small fragments.”

“Then why would he rig them?”

“Besides the explosion and the flying glass, what else happened?”

“The fireball from the explosion, which would probably have caught some things on fire if it hadn’t been for the sprinklers.”

“Exactly, the sprinklers. That was his purpose. When I saw the bowl directly under the heads in that hidden room, it didn’t seem right. The ink on the outside of the packet had caused the paper to deteriorate slightly. I think it’s made of water-soluble paper, so when it got wet, it would expose whatever powder is inside to more water. I think his intention was for us to destroy the disc.”

“Why would he direct us to the disc and then want to destroy it?”

“If he was still here to work with us on the list, he would have told us about the booby-trapped lights and the powder. But he put them in place so if the Russians somehow got onto him, we would hopefully beat them to the disc and unwittingly destroy it so they would have no proof against him. And if the Russians got there first, and he didn’t tell them about the lights, they would destroy it.”

“How’s a plastic disc going to be destroyed by water?”

“There’s also the powder. Did you have high-school chemistry?”

“No.”

“I think it’s potassium, which when exposed to water has a violent chemical reaction. It would have turned the disc into liquid plastic. That was the bad news, but since we got it without any damage, that leaves the good news.”

“Which is?” she asked.

“That he wrote the name ‘Ariadne’ on it.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s from Greek mythology. She was the lover of Theseus, who volunteered to kill the Minotaur, a creature that was part man and part bull. It was kept in this complex maze from which it would have been impossible for Theseus to escape after killing it. So Ariadne gave him a golden cord to find his way out. In Logic, there’s a process referred to as Ariadne’s thread. It’s used to describe the solving of a problem that has a number of ways to proceed.”

“So that means what?”

“I’m hoping Calculus’s choice of ‘Ariadne’ means there’s a subtle set of clues for us to follow from mole to mole.”

“But he wanted to sell each name to us, one at a time. Why would he link them all together with the possibility of our being able to find them on our own?”

“Let’s not forget he tried to get us to destroy the first clue and any others that might have evolved from it so the Russians couldn’t retrieve them to use against him. We weren’t supposed to come out of that house with the disc unless he was controlling the situation. Again, it’s like the maze: Even if you killed the Minotaur, your punishment was that you’d never be able to find your way out. And as far as why he would provide a link from one to the others, he’s a smart guy, probably smarter than his pay grade.

“Most spies have one thing in common,” he continued. “They believe they’re underpromoted and underappreciated. They have contempt for everyone around them. Maybe he put the link in there to prove how much smarter he is than everyone else—the Russians because he’s selling their secrets under their noses and the FBI because we had the answer and didn’t realize it. Probably after he’d led us to the moles one by one, he would have exposed how they were all linked together, thereby proving how inept we are. It’s like some serial killers. They’re compelled to send solid but subtle clues to the newspaper and the authorities as to their real identity. And when they’re caught by some other means, the media will look at the clues and say, ‘How could the police not have figured it out?’ Then, even after they’re caught, they have eternal revenge against the legal system by letting everyone second-guess the cops’ inability to decode the ‘obvious.’ It’s all about control and ego.”

“Maybe he was hoping that if something went wrong and we were able to follow the string on our own, we’d do the honorable thing and send the money off to Chicago?” Kate said.

“Actually, that’s a more pragmatic analysis than mine. This is America—maybe he thought we would do the right thing.”

“So if there is a cord, not only will we have evidence on that disc of Pollock’s spying, there’ll also be a lead to the next mole.”

“Unless I’m wrong.”

She adjusted the heat vent so the air blew directly on her soaking hair and started running her fingers through it, trying to dry it. “Don’t be absurd. You, wrong? That hasn’t happened, for . . . what? Almost fifteen minutes?”