fifty-five

Ruth stopped walking. They were out on an open street, with nobody within earshot. She wondered what she was about to hear.

“Go on. Yours or ours?”

He explained, relating the phone conversations with Drybeck, the threats and the call to Washington yesterday evening that had told him what he had begun to suspect. He admitted that a tiny part of him still wasn’t sure he believed it.

She listened carefully, wondering how much he was leaving out. She still didn’t know him well enough to trust him completely, but she had a feeling he wasn’t being entirely open.

“I’m guessing this Drybeck is higher up the pole than your pal Eric. How come you know him?”

“I don’t, not really. He’s a Washington power player and sits on at least one security committee.” He hesitated. “That’s all I know for now. I’ll tell you more later.”

She leaned towards him, sensing he was being evasive. “Bullshit. You’ve been acting strange right from the start of this job, Slik. Actually, forget that—Andrei. Is Vaslik even your real name or is that a load of bullshit, too? The Russian family background and the balalaika crap—real or not?”

“It’s real.”

“Great. Pity I’m not sure if I believe you or not. You’ve had me fooled, you know that? But then, it’s not too hard to pull the wool over my eyes, is it? I’m just an ex-cop, whereas you’re—what are you really—CIA? FBI? One of those black ops departments run out of a Washington brownstone with a budget the size of our national debt?”

“I’m what I said, which is freelance. It was after I got the job with Cruxys that I was contacted by Homeland Security. I was asked to be on standby while I was here in London. There was no threat to you, Cruxys or your country; I was told it was purely a watching brief and to be ready to give whatever assistance I could if requested. I was misled. I didn’t know Drybeck had gone rogue.”

Ruth said nothing, so he continued.

“The DHS is now one of the biggest departments of the federal system. They work with other agencies and sometimes wires get crossed—which is kind of what happened here.”

“Well, that’s OK, then.” Her tone was brutally cutting and made him wince. “Did somebody not get the memo?”

“Something like that. Nobody will admit to it publicly, but there’s a lot of competition and rivalry between departments and agencies. Sometimes bad choices get made trying to do the right thing.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” Ruth muttered savagely. “So the right hand doesn’t know when the left hand is stabbing itself up the arse. That’s no excuse. How long have you been in on this?”

“Not as long as you think.” He raised a hand to stop her and continued quickly, “Let me go right back to the beginning. A few days after arriving here I got a call from the DHS. I knew the woman who rang me; she told me they might need my help if anything came up.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes. It was a stand-by call, that’s all.”

“And you, of course, told her to get lost. You already have a job in the private sector; you’re no longer on the US government payroll.”

“No, I didn’t do that. Would you?” When Ruth didn’t say anything he carried on. “I thought she was talking about a terrorist attack, something big aimed at a major target.” He took a deep breath. “I asked and was told it might be a kidnap attempt on an important American. I thought they’d jumped on my credentials as a specialist.” He gave a bitter smile. “I didn’t think we’d be the ones actually running the kidnap.”

“It was a rogue group—Grant said so.”

“Same thing; it was done on our behalf.”

“And the rendition of Michael Hardman? Did you know about that, too?”

“Of course not. How could I?”

“But you said nothing, even when you knew Beth had been taken—even when we were running all over the place looking for her and her mother was going mad.”

“I wanted to, Ruthie—”

“Don’t call me that! You don’t get to call me that.”

He blinked at the forcefulness in her voice, and looked for a moment as if he might turn and walk away. But he said, “I couldn’t tell you. As soon as we began working together I could see how it was going to end, but I was in a bind.” He looked up at the sky. “You’re relentless, you know that. You don’t fucking stop. Nobody counted on that.”

It was the first time she’d heard him swear. “What do you mean?”

“You’re on the case and you dig and dig; you rip things open and never stop thinking things through.” He turned away then back again. “Christ, I was told I’d have a partner who hadn’t done this kind of stuff before, so I could lead the investigation, control the flow of events. But that didn’t happen because you didn’t allow it. You took this thing by the balls and ran with it.”

“You thought we were a bunch of hicks, is that it? Is that how we’re seen by you and your people?”

“No. Not at all. There are guys I’ve worked with who would have obeyed orders; taken whatever intel they could get on this and closed it down, stuck it in a file and passed it to a higher pay grade for action. In other words, they’d have done the minimum, the obvious. But you didn’t. You continued digging because it’s what you do. You got too close.”

“I’m sorry for being such a disappointment.”

He blew out air. “All I could do was follow and hope you didn’t run into the others.”

“Others?”

“The kidnap team; the ones waiting to take down Hardman when he came in.”

“What would they have done if he had come in?”

“I think you saw what they were capable of. I don’t even want to think about it. They were out of control, that’s all I know.”

Ruth breathed deeply, not willing to let it go. “I may be a former cop but I can read body language like anyone else. I knew there was something deeper going on.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Crap. That napkin you picked up from the O.P. across from the Hardman place: I know that deli—it’s just round the corner from the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. You took it away as if you wanted to hide something. Want to tell me why?”

He breathed deeply, then said, “As soon as I saw it I knew what you’d think. What are the chances? We already knew there was some kind of American angle, and a napkin from a deli right near the embassy? It was too much. I admit I jumped to the same conclusion and wanted time to look into it. I shouldn’t have done it but I did. I’m sorry.”

“And?”

“And in the end it was meaningless. I had no way of checking. What if the neighbour next to the observation house worked near the deli? We’d be chasing our tails for nothing. It was a dead end.”

“Now you’re talking like a cop.”

“Just like you. And know there’s a point where evidence fails to become proof. That’s where I got to. Then this came up.”

“You still haven’t told me where your chat went. Or is that a big fat secret?”

Vaslik nodded and pulled a wry face. “I told him Hardman’s here in London.”

“You did what?” She stared at him. “What the hell for?”

“Because it’s the only chance we have of getting Beth back. They will bring her, I’m certain of it. It was the one condition I threw in and an easy one for Drybeck’s people to deal with.”

“And what if it goes wrong?”

“It could do that anyway. They could lose patience and simply kill Beth like they did the nanny.”

“We don’t know that for sure. It could have been a mugging gone wrong.” But even as she said it, she knew in her heart that Tiggi Sgornik would never have been walking the streets by herself and fallen prey to a random mugger. She would have stayed with Beth. The fact was, she had undoubtedly been an asset who’d become unreliable, even threatening. The fact that she had a label stitched inside her clothing pointed to her amateur status compared to the others in the group.

And amateurs were never fully trusted.

He sensed her doubts. “They’re getting desperate. They’ll get to a point where they will cut their losses and get out of town. We’d never know what happened. This way we have a slim chance of getting Beth back.”

“Us and whose army?”

“Just us. The guys running this are ex-military pros; they’ll spot other pros in seconds.”

“But they know our faces—Clarisse saw to that.”

“True enough,” he conceded. “And Drybeck will have fed them our backgrounds. But that’s where we might have an edge.”

“How?”

“Drybeck’s an arrogant prick and former military. He’ll have told them we’re simply ex-cops, so no contest. They’ll see us as easy meat.”

She chewed it over, trying to decide whether to believe him or not. He had a point, though, about the way seasoned pros looked down on ordinary cops. But it was mention of Beth that was the decider. “OK. You’re on. But don’t bullshit me again, Slik. I need you to trust me, too.”

Her phone buzzed, interrupting further discussion. It was Richard Aston.

“Can you come in?” he asked. “We need to talk—urgently.”

“On our way.” She cut the connection and said to Vaslik, “Something’s up. I’m wanted back at base. And don’t think about bunking off—you’re coming with me.”