| |
SATURDAY MORNING, LAYNIE awoke in her third Montreal hotel. She decided to check in with Christor in case he had further information for her.
It was nearing 6:00 a.m. in Montreal. The time in Stockholm was six hours ahead, almost noon. Perhaps, because of the weekend, the hotel’s business center would be unoccupied. As for Christor—he took his laptop home each weekend, but Laynie could not anticipate the plans he and Klara had for the day.
Will he answer when I call?
Laynie threw on jeans and a T-shirt, pulled her hair up into a ponytail, and put on her baseball cap. She grabbed her purse and a newspaper, then used the back stairs to reach the ground floor. When she reached the business center, she paused outside the open door to scope out the room and its occupants. A harried man sat at one of the three computers, but he was not alone. Three young children romped about the room, bored and out of sorts.
“When will you be done, Daddy?” the oldest one, a girl, asked him. “You said we were going to have breakfast and then you would take us to a park. You promised pancakes.”
“I did and we will have pancakes, Chelsea, but I also said that I must answer these emails first. Please be patient.”
“But I’m hungry!” another child wailed.
Laynie withdrew and scanned the hall, looking for an out-of-the-way place to wait. She spotted a bench seat in an alcove not far down the hall. She sat down on it, crossed her legs, and unfolded the newspaper, using its open pages to hide her face.
Twenty long minutes passed before the man—herding his kids before him—left the business center. Laynie immediately made for the room. She sat down at a terminal that faced away from the doorway.
She withdrew the CD-ROM case, inserted the unmarked disc, and ran the program that bypassed the computer system’s administrative restrictions. Then she copied the VoIP software installation code from the CD and clicked the executable file to install the program.
She glanced at the clock. After seven, meaning after one in the afternoon in Stockholm. Laynie slipped on the headphones and dialed Christor’s laptop.
The call rang and rang. Christor picked up.
“Laynie!” His voice was a whisper. “Hold on, please.”
A few moments later, he was back, typing rather than speaking. “Locked in bathroom. Don’t want Klara to know I’m on a call.”
OPSEC. Operational security. Also, what Klara didn’t know couldn’t get her into trouble with Marstead.
Laynie typed, “Good. Anything new?”
“Yes. Important call between Alvarsson and D.C. superior. Listen now.”
Laynie waited for the recorded call to come through her headphones.
First, she heard the scree and static of an encrypted call syncing up. Then she heard the voices.
“Alvarsson here.”
“Mr. Alvarsson, Jack Wolfe calling from Headquarters.”
Jack Wolfe? Laynie didn’t recognize the name.
Apparently, Alvarsson recognized it. Laynie may as well have been in Alvarsson’s office, watching his change of demeanor and body language, so clearly did they translate through his next words.
“Yes, sir. How can I help you, Director Wolfe?”
Director Wolfe? Not on any Marstead org chart Laynie had ever seen. He had to be much higher up the food chain.
But how high?
“I’m calling with regards to Linnéa Olander.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Let me begin by saying that I am in possession of Olander’s file—her excellent record in clandestine services and the abundance of valuable intel she’s provided during her tenure. Her time in place in her most recent assignment—undercover with that Russian narcissist, Petroff—is an assignment deserving hazard pay if any assignment does.
“I also have her letter of some five months past expressing her emotional and mental fatigue—her letter requesting that she be deactivated before she, in essence, cracked and compromised the entire Marstead organization to the Russians. Finally, I’m looking at a resignation letter, a letter written in response to our denial of her deactivation?”
“Yes, sir.”
The intensity of Wolfe’s voice rose.
“Well, what I want to know, Mr. Alvarsson, is why in the bloody blue blazes you left this exceptional asset hanging out to dry with no option left to her but to threaten our organization with exposure if we did not extract her safely from the field? And more than that? I want to know who gave the order to retire this agent.”
Laynie heard Alvarsson swallow.
“I can assure you, sir, that the order did not come from me nor did I relish implementing it. Linnéa Olander is one of the finest, most talented assets I’ve had the pleasure of working with.”
“You’re saying Saunders refused her request. That Saunders gave the order.”
“Sir, whether the order originated with him or not, I cannot say. I can only tell you that it came through him and that I followed the chain of command.”
“What a *bleeping* waste of an exceptional agent and a *blank blank* demonstration of poor personnel management!”
Laynie listened to dead air for a long, tense moment before a much calmer Wolfe said, “Let me take this opportunity to inform you that your supervisor—soon to be former supervisor—Marcus Saunders, will, as of tomorrow, be ‘promoted’ to a position where he can do much less damage. Do you take my point, Mr. Alvarsson?”
“Yes, sir. I do, sir.”
“I hope you understand where incompetence, gross negligence, and self-promotion will take you in this organization. It’s my conclusion that Saunders put his career and his own upward mobility above the well-being and longevity of our agent and forced her to keep producing intel well beyond her capacity to do so because she made him look good.
“I will not tolerate handlers who sacrifice our agents to promote themselves, Alvarsson—and I won’t stand on bureaucratic red tape to weed out those who abuse the men and women of our human intelligence gathering network.”
“Yes, sir. Er, no sir.”
Wolfe coughed into the phone. “You have new orders. I am directing you to bring her in peaceably.”
“That is good news, sir. However, the order doesn’t alleviate the threat her sudden disappearance has created on the Russians’ side of the equation. Furthermore, acquainted with her abilities as I am, it’s my opinion that bringing her in, uh, peaceably, will prove as difficult as retiring her. She’s on the offensive now, sir.”
“Reach out to her. Talk to those who have known her best. Have them pass the word to her that we have agreed to give her exactly what she asked for. We will bring her in from the field and bring her here to the States. We’ll debrief her and find a suitable use for her somewhere while she rests, recuperates, and receives treatment for PTSD or whatever else she may require.”
“That might work, sir—like I said, if we can find her to make that offer—and if we get to her before the Russians do.”
“Actually, we know she safely reached Canada.”
“Sir?”
“Did you read about the fifth plane the terrorists planned to weaponize? The one inbound from London?”
“The plane the two sky marshals saved from hijackers?”
“One sky marshal, Alvarsson. One sky marshal and one Marstead agent.”
“The female sky marshal. You’re saying that was Olander?”
“Yes. She managed to get away from the plane after it was diverted to New Brunswick. That upset the Canadians and our FBI friends to no end, but we intervened and called them off. Our people managed to trace Olander’s escape from Moncton to Montreal. We are, at present, looking for her there.
“When our people do find her and make contact, their orders are to give her assurances that we’ll deactivate her peaceably and without prejudice, with a desk job waiting for her if she wants it.”
“I understand, sir.”
The call ended, leaving Laynie angry and skeptical. She leaned over the keyboard, considering what she’d heard. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Christor, because she did. It was Marstead she no longer trusted.
Who is this mysterious figure, this Jack Wolfe? Why have I never heard of him? Is he real? Or . . . have they uncovered Christor’s method of bugging Alvarsson’s calls? Was this call a ploy? Is it an elaborate gambit of dezinformatsiya—the type of disinformation I often fed Petroff?
She typed, “Can I believe it?”
He typed back, “I’m with Reagan on this. Trust but verify.”
“Right.” Like I could verify anything Marstead said or did.
“One more thing. Received letter from your sister. Uploaded image file to chat room.”
Laynie’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t go online and read it now, not without leaving a trail on the hotel’s computer.
I’ll need to buy a laptop somewhere along the road after I leave Montreal.
And now that she knew Marstead was breathing down her neck, she needed to move. Again.
“Thank you, my friend.”
Laynie returned to her room and packed. Shortly before checkout time, she wheeled her suitcase to the elevator, got off at the second floor, and walked down to the ground level.
An hour later, she was ensconced in what she hoped was her last Montreal hotel.
SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN the same day, Zakhar pulled over on the outskirts of Montreal and slept two hours. When he woke, he made necessary preparations before beginning his hunt.
First, he dismantled, cleaned, and oiled his gun, then reassembled it. Took off his overcoat and put the gun and silencer into its deep pockets. Removed one of Moreau’s shirts from its hanger and put it on, choosing a tie to go with it. Added the blazer and slid Moreau’s cred pack into the blazer’s breast pocket.
At a gas station, he purchased a detailed map of Montreal. He drove to a restaurant, ordered breakfast, and used the restroom to wash up and finger-comb his damp hair.
“Good,” he told his reflection. “You are Lieutenant Paul Moreau.”
Zakhar ate alone in a corner booth, studying the map and outlining in pencil a search grid of downtown Montreal. He proposed a long and arduous day for himself, but he was ready and willing. He drove to the starting point on his grid, then up and down each street, noting the hotels and whether they fit his parameters—large, multi-floored lodgings with room service and other amenities. Hotels where Linnéa Olander would be but one face among many.
He parked in front of the first large hotel he encountered, flashing his credentials and demanding that the valet watch his car. He approached the front desk.
“Good morning,” he said in French. “Lieutenant Moreau, Canada Customs and Revenue. I am looking for this woman.” He laid on the counter three the glossy photos of Linnéa Olander, photographs he’d carried with him from Russia.
“No, I do not recognize her,” the clerk replied. Another clerk agreed.
He queried as many staff members as he could approach in five minutes, watching their facial responses carefully.
“Thank you for your time.”
He didn’t care how long it took or how wearying the process. He was energized and strangely confident that he would find her. From eight in the morning until one in the afternoon, he worked his grid, one hotel after another—but only those hotels that matched his criteria. He had covered nine such hotels and checked fifteen blocks off his grid in this manner.
He broke for a quick lunch, then returned to work. He hadn’t tired of the tedium. Finding the woman was an obsession he gave himself to gladly, convinced the reward would be well worth his efforts.
From 1:45 until dark he continued on, becoming more comfortable in his role as Lieutenant Paul Moreau and more adept at his inquiries. He had crossed nineteen more blocks off his grid before he stopped for the night. He checked into the last hotel whose staff he questioned, ate a large dinner, and went directly to bed.
