Stefan Krauss had done exactly what he’d told himself he would not do. It was bold, but it was reckless. Predictable, perhaps, but maybe so insane as to seem not so. He found himself doubting himself at every decision, something he had not done for a long time.
Is this obsession? he wondered. If so, it was a foreign feeling, one he did not much care for.
He had flown to the United States using his American alias. He had rented a car from the Enterprise at Dulles under the name of Patrick McIlhenney. He had driven the car here, to the home that was owned by Maria Johansson, now deceased, and by Reid Lawson, also known as Agent Zero, and it was here that Krauss had been parked for the last two and a half hours.
He would never be able to use this alias again. He would have to bury Patrick McIlhenney. Which was a shame; Krauss enjoyed playing the part of an ordinary American imbecile. He found people warmed to the persona easily.
The house itself was as ordinary as his alter ego. One story, simple, with blue shutters and a fenced-in yard. Hard to believe this was the home of Agent Zero. So hard to believe that he did not want to go inside. So he had sat there, in his rented car, and watched. There were no signs of life from outside. No vehicles in the driveway. It did not seem like anyone was home.
It was so… normal, just so unremarkable that Krauss did not want to go inside. Except he did want to go inside, some part of him did, because it would afford him a unique window into his quarry. He wanted to see how Agent Zero lived. Because from out here, parked just outside this painfully average place, he could not help but feel that he had pegged the man completely wrong.
What had he expected? A mansion? A posh loft? A fortress? Anything but this, really.
Krauss had made only one stop between the airport and here, to a military surplus store, where he had purchased two knives and a lock-pick set. He would not buy a gun for obvious reasons—he did not have the time and did not want a background check performed on Patrick McIlhenney. Perhaps he could have contacted someone, or had Dutchman do it, and procured a gun. But he had already told himself it would not be a bullet that ended Zero’s life, and he planned to stick to that.
Besides, two knives and a lock-pick set did not require identification. It was as easy and trifling as buying a sweater or a bunch of bananas.
At last Krauss got out of the car. He’d waited there long enough and was mostly certain no one was home. He walked up to the front door as casually as if he was going to ring the bell. He even mimed the action, for the sake of any neighbors who might be watching.
Lock-picking was an art that required patience. It was, he had found, not a particularly difficult thing to learn, at least not on a technical level. It was the patience required that made it so hard for many. Krauss slipped the small kit from his pocket and took out two picks, one flat and narrow with teeth on its end like a dull key, and a second with an L-shaped tip. He blocked the locks themselves with his body so that no one would see what he was doing, and he fit the picks into the tumbler.
He did not glance down at what he was doing; he did not crouch and inspect the locks. That would be useless anyway; it was not as if he could see inside them. Instead he navigated by feel alone, and he stood and kept his head up so that to anyone watching it might seem as if he was just patiently waiting for someone to answer the door.
The pick with the jagged edge he raked gently along the pins, back and forth slowly, while the L-shaped pick worked above it, at each individual pin, until one by one they fell into place. It was not fast work, and it was, admittedly, tedious, but at last the pins fell and a quick twist of both picks opened the deadbolt.
Krauss slipped the picks back into his pocket and this time retrieved one of the two knives. One was a folding tactical knife, commonly called a lockback, with a wide and wickedly sharp blade. The second, the one he reached for now, was a stiletto, a long narrow blade that was sharpened on both sides. The knife was a close cousin to the switchblade, but just enough removed to skirt the laws in the state of Virginia that forbade buying, selling, or furnishing that type of knife.
Stefan Krauss licked his dry lips, and then he twisted the doorknob and pushed into the house.
The first thing that struck him was the scent of… what was that, exactly? It was a feminine scent, like perfume, or floral deodorant, maybe even laundry detergent. No, he realized, it was all three and more, the mingled scents of an overpowering female presence in this house.
The second thing that struck him was the beep of the security system from a wall-mounted panel to his right, warning him that if he did not input a code the alarm would sound.
Krauss stepped to it in one stride. He pried the plastic cover from the panel with the tip of the stiletto, tugged one wire loose, and then flattened the blade against two metal leads, connecting them.
It took him only four seconds, and the system stopped beeping. Krauss shook his head as he replaced the cover. He’d expected better from Zero.
He closed and locked the door behind him, and still holding the knife, he made his way slowly down the foyer. It was very clean, white tile beneath his boots. The foyer emptied into a kitchen. In one direction, a living room; in the other, a dining room and a hall. Down the hall was a bathroom, a girl’s bedroom, and a master suite.
Krauss stood at the threshold of the largest bedroom. The bed was unmade. There were two closets, one with a full-length mirror affixed to the door. Hers, he was certain, by virtue not only of the mirror but of it being the larger of the two.
He would not enter this room. There was a sanctity to it that he would not disturb. No, sanctity wasn’t the right word. Peace? Perhaps.
The woman from the beach, Maria Johansson, she would never step foot in this room again. She would never sleep in that bed, or wear those clothes. This was not remorse or guilt on his part; those words would imply that he had done something wrong, and she had thrown herself in front of his blade. These were just facts.
And then the lock turned in the front door.
Stefan Krauss slipped away from the doorway quickly and returned to the kitchen. He heard someone entering the home, closing the door behind them and locking it again.
There was another door behind him. A closet? He quietly pulled it open to reveal stairs. A basement. In the foyer, he could hear the newcomer jabbing at the security keypad, which would not beep now that Krauss had disarmed it.
“Huh?” It was a man’s voice, confusion in his tone over the inert keypad.
Krauss positioned himself on the top step leading down to the basement and pulled the door closed behind him, leaving it open just the tiniest sliver, as heavy footfalls thudded on the tile.
A moment later he saw the man. He was burly, large, with a bushy beard and a trucker’s cap. He paused in the kitchen, right in view of Stefan Krauss, and he called out.
“Sara? Mischa?” The man moved out of Krauss’s view. “Anyone home?”
His grip tightened around the knife. He was not here to kill anyone but Zero, and to do so would be folly. There would be a body, which meant evidence that he was there. His target was Zero; killing this man would ruin yet another chance.
But if the man discovered him, he would have no choice.
The footfalls returned after checking the other rooms. They paused, but Krauss could not see the man through the sliver of open doorway.
“Guess no one’s home,” the man grunted.
He was right on the other side of the door. Mere inches away.
“Sara?” he called. “You down there?”
The door moved slightly. Krauss held the knife near his waist, the blade ready to launch forward…
A cell phone rang. The door stopped moving, open about four inches. The ringing stopped and the voice said, “Yeah. Todd?”
Krauss flattened himself against the wall, obscured by the shadows as much as possible.
“Jesus,” the man said somberly. “Are you all right? Okay. No, you did the right thing.”
A pause. And then: “What’s in Turkey?”
Krauss could not hear the other person speaking, but he knew what was in Turkey. Specifically, in Ankara.
It seemed as if Agent Zero was hunting his benefactors.
They would talk.
And he would know.
“All right, here’s what we do,” said the bearded man as he stepped away from the basement door. “Run down the Gulfstream’s call sign with every airport in Turkey. Once we find it, have the local PD lock it down. Have Penny keep an eye out for chatter on stolen vehicles. And flag his passport and ID. Reid Lawson—he has no other alias to go by right now. We may still have a few friends in the area; I’ll make a couple of calls. But under no circumstances do we involve Shaw and the agency, got it? Good. Keep me posted.”
The man sighed heavily. “Zero,” he murmured. “The hell are you doing.” Then he retreated down the foyer, and a few moments later the front door closed after him.
Krauss folded the stiletto and put it in his pocket. He emerged from his hiding place but remained still and silent until he heard the rumbling truck engine fade.
Zero was not even in the country. He had not returned after Nassau. Instead he had somehow ascertained the location of the safehouse in Ankara and was headed there. Or was already there. Or had been and gone.
Regardless of which it was, Al Najjar was certainly a dead man. But before being a dead man, he would talk. Zero would make him talk, and then he would know that Stefan Krauss was not only alive but had killed the woman on the beach.
There was a certain irony to be enjoyed that had Zero simply come home, they might be facing one another now. But Krauss could not enjoy it, found no satisfaction in it, because his target was not here.
But he would be. Eventually Zero would have to come home. His friends did not want to involve their own agency for some reason, which meant they were protecting him from whatever crimes he was committing abroad. If they were able to see to it that Zero returned safely, Krauss would have another chance.
He would just have to find a place to lie low until then.