Donovan sat in the lap of luxury. He was surrounded by thirteen, plush, empty Gulfstream II seats – all empty because he had to get to Brussels fast. The CIA didn’t sweat seats when sweating a major terrorist attack.
The Gulfstream, racing across the Atlantic at 40,000 feet, was branded MedPharms Inc. In fact, it was a Company aircraft, part of a CIA fleet that many around Washington referred to as Spook Air.
This same Gulfstream had flown rendition flights of terrorist prisoners to countries where interrogators were unencumbered by things like laws and the Geneva Convention.
In Brussels, Donovan and his friend, Jean de Waha, had to finalize the security details for each G8 event.
He sipped his second scotch as his agency safe phone rang.
“Rourke.”
“Madigan. You en route to Brussels?”
“Maccabee Singh just gave me her translation.”
“Great. What’d it say?”
“It confirms that Katill is heading to Brussels or is already there, and is being paid fifty million dollars or euros to kill the G8 leaders. This is a credible, major threat.”
“Funded by big money. Rogue state money maybe.”
“Very possibly. Hang on, Donovan, I have an urgent call.”
As the director put him on hold, Donovan thought about how little they knew about Katill. The terrorist-assassin had left scores of bodies throughout Europe for years, but no trace of himself. No fingerprints, no voiceprints, no DNA, and only one grainy photo several years old.
Director Madigan came back on. “Bob in Munich just intercepted another message with what looks like Sumerian pictographs.”
“Where’d he intercept it?”
“Dusseldorf. When he heard we’re interested in pictographs, he faxed it over. I’ll get it to Maccabee Singh.”
“Good idea.”
“But we’re damned lucky, Donovan!”
“I know. She can translate Sumerian!”
“Yeah that, but we’re also lucky because the Verizon guy fixed her phones this morning.”
Donovan spilled his scotch. “Did you say Verizon?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I saw a Comcast phone bill on Singh’s desk!”
Director Madigan paused, cleared his throat. “You think the Verizon guy’s dirty?”
“I think he probably bugged her phone!”
Madigan cleared his throat. “So they know she just translated the message.”
Donovan’s heart pounded. “She’s in danger!”
“I’ll call her – ”
“No, They’ll hear! I’ll call her cell phone.”
“Do it!” Director Madigan said. “You have any agents near her?”
Donovan had to think. “One guy maybe six minutes away.”
“Send him. I’ll send people too.”
They hung up. Donovan pulled out a scrap of paper with Maccabee’s cell phone number and dialed.
The phone rang and he was bounced into voice mail. He left her a ‘get out of the apartment fast’ message. Then he called Special Agent Pete Carvell, a smart, tough, case officer at the Plaza Hotel. No answer. He tried Pete’s pager and waited, gulping more scotch as he stared down at the Atlantic waves.
Seconds later, Carvell phoned him back. Donovan explained and Carvell raced off toward her apartment.
As Donovan hung up, the Gulfstream dipped, then hit heavy turbulence. Some of his second double scotch spilled on his tray. He wiped it up and started to ask the steward for a refill. Then he paused and stared at his glass.
He’d been drinking too damn much. His nasty little secret. The heavy drinking started right after Emma’s murder and tended to get heavier when things came down hard on him. Things like the death of Benny Ahrens, and the death of Sohan Singh, and the lack of time he was spending with Tish, and now, the concern he had for Maccabee. He had to ease up on the sauce. Especially in the next few days.
He pushed the glass away.
The phone rang. He checked Caller ID. Director Madigan.
“Verizon sent no one to her apartment building today or this month.”
Donovan tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
“Where’s your case officer?”
“Maybe… four minutes away.”
They hung up. Donovan turned and stared down at the waves curling atop the ocean seven miles below. He realized he had one more option. The apartment phone. Even though it was probably tapped, he could tell her to leave immediately. Maybe she could get out before they got to her.
He dialed the number. No one answered.
Maccabee wiped perspiration from her eyes as she jogged on the treadmill in the exercise room off her father’s bedroom. She thought of the many hours her father had jogged on this treadmill, how his doctor told him he was in excellent shape, had no serious health problems, and would probably live into his nineties.
Then came the bullet.
She hoped the running would ease her stress a bit. She cranked up her pace and the volume on her iPod earphones and listened to Addicted to Love. She liked the song, even though it always reminded her that she’d once been addicted to love.
Love lost!
His name was Andrew. Four weeks before their wedding, he disappeared from her life.
Like her father just disappeared. She still couldn’t believe he was dead. She would miss him terribly. Her daily chats with him. His guidance, his encouragement, his suggestions, his warnings. He was the kindest man she’d ever known. He would want her to help Donovan, but also to be safe.
She was helping Donovan. And she was safe, since only Director Madigan and Donovan knew she was translating.
She thought she heard the apartment phone ringing. But then she always thought the phone was ringing when iPod music was pounding in her ears.
* * *
Milan Slavitch stepped into the empty hall of the fifth floor. Classy building. Thick, plush carpeting. Oil paintings in gold frames. Fancy chandeliers. The place smelled rich.
Sometimes he wondered how he would have turned out if he’d grown up in fancy joint like this… instead of the Orphanage From Hell in Sarajevo.
Slavitch remembered that cesspool every day, the sewer smells, the rats crawling into his bed at night, the same rats who’d eaten some toes off screaming two-year-old Josif while the fat supervisor, Gernisa, drank his vodka in the next room. The same Gernisa who’d raped eleven-year-old Anna until she committed suicide five years later.
But Slavitch helped Gernisa pay for his sins. Slavitch remembered fondly the night he swung the crowbar into Gernisa’s fat head over and over until it looked like a steamroller ran over it.
The elevator dinged open and Slavitch ducked into a small alcove. A man got off and walked the opposite direction. But then he stopped in the hall and talked on his cell phone. Finally, two minutes later the guy entered an apartment.
Slavitch walked down to Singh’s door. He smiled when he saw the lock had not been changed. Quickly, he inserted the same key he’d used the other night. He pulled out his silenced Beretta, opened the door and stepped inside. He looked toward the study where he’d greased her old man. No one there. No TV on. Maybe she’d gone out. If so, he’d just wait for her.
Then he heard something. A machine running, shoes hitting a hard surface. A treadmill maybe.
He turned and walked toward the sound. He looked into the master bedroom and heard someone in an adjoining room, running. He glimpsed the shadow of a female jogger. Young and curvaceous.
Just the way he liked them.
* * *
Agent Pete Carvell slammed on his Chevy brakes and blasted his horn at the stalled Allied Van Lines semi-trailer blocking all traffic at Columbus Circle. Carvell drove his Impala up onto the sidewalk and raced ahead. Two hundred yards later, he was blocked again, this time by construction scaffolding.
“SHIT!” he shouted as he jumped out and sprinted down Central Park West.
He heard a traffic cop shouting for him to come back and move his car.
He kept running. Her apartment was still several blocks ahead.
* * *
Milan Slavitch stepped into the bedroom, walked over and peeked through the door of the exercise room. A wall mirror gave him a partial view of her. Nice, long legs, gleaming with perspiration. Real wraparounds. Nice melons, too. Nice everything. Her smooth, tawny skin reminded him of Hala, a seventeen-year-old hooker he had his way with one night in Kosovo.
Slavitch’s gaze crept slowly down Maccabee Singh’s firm, glistening body.
He felt himself getting aroused.
Hey, nobody said he couldn’t have some fun.
* * *
Pete Carvell sprinted into the lobby of the apartment building and flashed his ID badge at the confused concierge.
“Singh apartment?”
“Fifth floor, 502.”
Carvell hurried to the elevator, pushed the button and saw the car was up on Eleven.
Cursing his luck, he ran to the stairwell.
He took out his Glock, ran up the steps two at a time, and moments later, gasping for breath, yanked open the door to the fifth floor. He dashed down to 502 and turned the knob. Unlocked. Bad sign.
He moved into the foyer and looked around. No one.
Then he saw it. A large shoe imprint on a plush carpet. To the left, he heard a machine running. He moved silently toward the sound, trying to hush his breathing. He peered through the crack in the bedroom door.
No one.
Then a long thin shadow inched across the wall.
The shadow of a handgun with suppressor.
Carvell spun into the bedroom, surprising a large, thick-shouldered man standing beside the door to the exercise room. The man swung his gun around toward Carvell.
“Drop it NOW!” Carvell shouted.
“Yeah, yeah, okay!”
Then, with amazing speed, the big man leapt sideways and fired off two shots as Carvell dove beside the bed. The bullets missed Carvell by inches and split off chunks of the wooden bedpost.
Carvell crawled to the far end of the bed, leaned out and fired twice. The first bullet entered the man’s left eye, the second, his heart area. The big man froze, swayed a bit, then collapsed to the floor.
Keeping his gun on the man, Carvell reached down and yanked the Beretta from his fingers and then a small pistol from an ankle holster. The man’s remaining eye was locked open. Carvell couldn’t detect a pulse. He was gone. And so was any chance of learning who sent him here, or who was behind this attempt.
Carvell stepped over the large pool of blood and moved to the door of the exercise room. The treadmill was still running, but there was no sight of Maccabee.
“Ms. Singh?”
Silence.
“Ma’am, if you’re in there, you’re safe now. I’m Agent Pete Carvell. I work with Donovan Rourke. He realized your phones were tapped and you were in danger right after you phoned Director Madigan. Are you okay?”
No response.
“Ma’am… ?”
Then a faint whisper, “Yes.”
“It’s safe now.”
She stepped tentatively from the exercise room, glanced down at the bloody body and turned away.
Carvell could see she was frightened and shaky. He eased her from the bedroom to a chair in the foyer.
“Is he the Verizon man you saw this morning?”
She nodded.
“We should leave. Others may show up when he fails to report in.”
“Give me a minute….”
* * *
Maccabee shut her bedroom door and leaned against it, her body trembling faster than her pulse. A man had been seconds from murdering her… and would have if Donovan hadn’t put it all together.
Donovan was right. She was in a game of life and death. A game she was not prepared for. Should she get out now? Leave this to the professionals?
Or should she help with the translations her father gave his life for?
She sat on the side of the bed as her eyes filled with tears.