Obscured by the crowd, none of Mumbai’s Central Railway Station’s grand colonial marble floor was visible. Dale shouldered his way through the tightly packed bodies with impatience, which the rest of the travelers seemed to lack. He bumped into more than one slow walker and found himself repeatedly apologizing, though few of them even seemed to notice.
Sliding his forearm over the gray head of a short old woman, he checked his watch, three o’clock: time to receive the message from Cerberus that would determine the meeting location.
It had been a hell of a day, having already taken him two hours to cross the sprawling town to get to the station. On finally arriving, he’d burned another fifteen minutes finding the men’s room and toilet indicated in Meth’s message.
There, sunk in the rusty water of the tank, wrapped in plastic, he’d retrieved a Glock 17 with four full magazines taped to the barrel, now reassuringly stowed in his backpack. But he’d also worried that whomever the Agency had sent to deposit it might be surveilling him now. The last thing he wanted after all of this trouble was to pick up a tail, even a nominally friendly one.
To shake it, he’d performed a lengthy SDR by buying a train ticket, hopping in and out of several overstuffed passenger cars, then reversing course through the station. He hadn’t seen anything suspicious, but just about anyone could have found cover in that bustling crowd.
Now, a little after three, he broke free of the station and found himself in an equally busy market lined by vendors in plywood stalls offering everything from food to electronics. Wandering up and down the aisles, he happened upon a knife merchant where he bought a six-inch blade with a leather-wrapped handle for the equivalent of ten bucks.
A few stalls down, he purchased another dhoti tunic and a khaki ball cap, thinking they might come in handy as a change of clothes. Last, he picked up an old-fashioned Zippo lighter with a tiger on it whose stripes had letters spelling B-O-M-B-A-Y. He bought that just because he thought it was cool.
He carved a niche of space for himself in a gap between stalls and removed his backpack, stuffing his things inside. He sat on the roots of a rubber tree and scanned the crowd, looking for a tail. When it felt safe, he retrieved his phone.
There it was. Cerberus had left his message. At last. They were to meet for the pickup in room 2501 of the Taj Lands End. Since Dale was a guest of the Taj himself, he knew the room number referred to the second tower, fifth floor.
Interesting, he thought.
He wondered if Cerberus had been at the Taj this entire time, quietly observing Dale. Thinking about it, he shook his head sorrowfully. One more insult to his professionalism.
But that was okay, he consoled himself. He was almost retired for good now. At the thought of his normal life, he snapped a picture of the colorful market under the high palm trees with his phone. He thought it might make a decent painting one day.
The Taj was about five miles from the market, not a long trip. But before he could get over there to set up, he had a few more things to figure out.
He strapped on his backpack and entered the crowd. He wandered up and down the busy street of quibbling merchants, scanning over the heads of the crowd. Eventually he found what he was looking for.
The vendor was selling paan, an Indian street food consisting of herbs and sweets wrapped in a betel leaf. Dale wasn’t interested in paan. He was interested in the yellow three-wheeled truck the vendor had parked next to the stall.
He walked up to the vehicle and inspected it. It was old and dented. Its blunt, scratched-up nose was draped with taffeta flowers on a string. A rusty but intact cargo area was covered with a stained canvas tarp. Good enough.
He stood in line for the paan. When it was his turn, he asked about the truck. A middle-aged man with a potbelly emerged from the booth, sensing opportunity. He was the vehicle’s owner and he spoke very good English.
It cost Dale six hundred American dollars when the bargaining was finished, probably twice what the vehicle was worth. He’d have paid five times as much.
Officially called an auto rickshaw, he drove his ungainly vehicle through the tangled streets, checking his phone frequently. It had begun to rain and the pockmarked streets oozed mud. He was happy to see the little yellow three-wheeler didn’t leak.
He parked it on the narrow street that stood between the Taj and a concrete boardwalk that ran along the high black rocks of the seashore. From here he had a good view of the Taj’s second tower, the one where he was supposed to meet Cerberus. The rain had thinned the crowd on the boardwalk; but since it was Mumbai, there was still a crowd.
Dale switched off the truck’s engine and sat waiting and watching. Looking up at the small balconies of the hotel, he wondered which of the rooms might be 2501. But he was soon distracted as he was enveloped by pedestrians on all sides. The people strolling around him paid him no heed. Perfect.
Between the walkers, he caught glimpses of the heaving sea beneath the rainy white sky. The tide had gone out. Several fifteen-foot canoes sat listing on the sand. Since the day’s catch was processed right there on the street, the whole place smelled of offal.
Satisfied he was unobserved, he studied Google Maps on his phone. He memorized the route he would take to the consulate, noting landmarks and detours in case he needed them. His plan was to have Cerberus and his family squeeze into the modest cargo bed and huddle beneath the tarp for their ride to freedom.
Pleased with this simple exfil plan, he dug out the Glock and seated home a magazine. With a round chambered, he shoved the pistol in his waistband and stuck the spare mags in a cargo pocket on his thigh. In the other pocket, he jammed his new knife. Tossing on his backpack, he left the little truck and walked up the street toward the Taj.
The condescending doorman looked away as he entered, remembering him but not approving of him.
“I think I have him,” Oleg said into his Bluetooth.
He was sitting at a table covered in beer steins with two other Spetz operatives. They were at the lobby bar, which had two tiers of seating. Oleg and his team were on the upper, close to the taps.
“Description?” asked Maria.
She was out of sight around the corner, covering the elevators, pretending to window-shop. They’d been at it all day, shifting positions, coming and going. There had been no sign of Dale. They were beginning to think they’d missed him, though he hadn’t popped up anywhere else on the Interpol feed.
Oleg glanced down at the picture of Dale that he kept on his phone. He compared it to the man coming through the lobby.
“It’s him,” he said quietly in English. “He’s coming your way, toward the elevators. He’s in a dirty tan Indian peasant shirt, wearing a black backpack. He looks darker than the surveillance photos. Bearded.”
“Got it,” Maria said. “I’ll tail him to his room.”
She touched her phone, hanging it up, and hovered near the elevator bank.
Dale walked across the lobby’s tiled floor, aware that people were looking at him. He knew he looked rough—that had been the idea. But he didn’t like that it attracted attention here in the Taj.
His eyes ran over the lobby. Other than rude glances here and there, things looked normal. There were perhaps fifty or sixty people either walking around the shops or sitting at the tiered bar. He noticed three fit white guys drinking beer up by the counter.
One seemed to glance at him, but only briefly, not unlike some of the others. Dale didn’t like the idea of a military-age male checking him out, but he let it go. He remembered the Taj had a reputation for hosting cricket teams, the national obsession. The Aussies were in town, according to a promotional sign for the match in the lobby. The three men were wearing Aussie team colors and polo shirts. Those guys could have been either players or fans, he told himself.
As a precaution, he ducked down to tie his shoe, looking at the beer-drinking Aussies in the reflection of a shopwindow. One of them was looking his way, but not obviously. He seemed to be on the phone. Probably paranoid, he told himself. He stood up and continued through the lobby.
When he made it to the elevator bank, there was a good-looking blonde hanging around one of the fashion shops, hovering just inside, close to the entrance to the store. Dale couldn’t help but notice; she was a rare beauty. Her hair was swept back and up. She was tall and slender with flawless makeup. Statuesque, her posture was set off pleasantly in a pants suit that looked expensive.
But she was alone, which seemed odd. And there was something about her shoes. She wore more functional shoes than he would have expected. That didn’t quite fit unless she worked here somehow. Yet she was looking at merchandise, shopping for overpriced sportswear, not working.
When he pressed the up button on the wall between the elevator doors, he could see through the reflection in the black glass surround that she was now standing a few paces behind him.
He turned and glanced at her, sure to keep his face neutral, trying to look past her toward the lobby. She smiled at him. Wow. Gorgeous.
He didn’t like it. It was off. A woman like her would never smile at a guy like him: smeared, smelly, unkempt, shifty.
He glanced at his watch and made a gesture as though he’d just remembered something. He turned back toward the lobby and walked away.
He heard the elevator bell. The blonde continued into it, walking through the open doors. Once he saw them close, he circled back and found a heavy push door that led to the concrete stairs.
Five floors to go. He decided to run them.
Maria rode the elevator to the second floor. She’d lost communications with Oleg when she was in the elevator. She called him immediately when she stepped out.
“I think he got spooked,” she said, irritated with herself. Why had she smiled at him? Stupid. “He ducked away from the elevators when I got on. Do you have him?”
“He didn’t come back this way,” said Oleg. “It’s the only exit.”
“Right. You stay there. He must have gone for the stairs. Make sure Dmitry has eyes on the street out front. Is the drone up?”
“Yes. He said he’s got an aerial of all four sides. If Dale comes out, we’ll see him. You think he made you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, running toward the stairwell. “I couldn’t tell. But why else would he peel off like that?”
“Perhaps a standard evasion route. Anyway, we’ll keep the exit covered here and the street watched by the drone. It’ll be all right. At least we know he’s in the building.”
Maria stood listening in the stairwell landing. She could hear footsteps somewhere above her, running upward. She paused for two seconds just to take it in. The runner made a lot of noise. She thought she could hear the sound of what might have been a backpack shuffling up and down. Then the runner went through a door and everything went quiet.
Dale.
Thinking of what he’d done to Vasily and Leo six weeks back, she started running up the stairs after him. He had a lead of at least three floors. She couldn’t be sure, but she guessed he’d gone out of the stairwell on the fifth. In case she was wrong, she decided to hold back calling Oleg. She should positively ID Dale first; if she was wrong and sent the team into the stairs, she risked losing her target through the lobby exit.
The plan had been to take him in his room and, just as she’d done to Kuznetsov, torture him into the truth of his mission. But Kuznetsov was a soft little bureaucrat. Dale was a veteran CIA operative. She and her men had packed significant firepower.
However it went down, Dale was a dead man. Since all of this was taking place in a neutral country where they were all working in nonofficial cover, a kill was well within the rules.
Dale was near positive the blonde was bad news. When he made it to the fourth floor, he sprinted down the hall, found the stairwell on the opposite end of the building and climbed it to the fifth floor. The room was at the other end of it.
He thought of his first brush with surveillance on this op. It had been Russian, back at his home. The blonde could have been a Russian; the Aussies at the bar could have been Russian. It fit with what he knew of their tactics. If they were indeed on his ass, he’d at least have to evade long enough to get to Cerberus and figure something else out.
He made it to the door, puffing hard, and pounded with his fist. He heard the same door he’d just used from the stairwell click open at the far end of the carpeted hall. But at the same time, the door to room 2501 opened.
A well-dressed dark-haired woman in her mid-fifties stood in the hotel room threshold. She wore a black skirt, a purplish blouse, and a patterned scarf around her neck. He entered and immediately shut the door as quietly as he could. Before saying anything to the woman in the room, he threw the bolt and pressed his eye to the peephole. He could see nothing. But that didn’t mean much.
He turned to her. “I presume you’re Mrs. . . .”
“Rahimi,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Nadia Rahimi.” She spoke halting English.
Rahimi. Dale finally had a name. But no Cerberus. He looked past her, alarmed to see an empty room. There was only one suitcase. “Where is your husband?”
“He’s not here. He told me to know your identity before I say.”
What the fuck is this? Dale turned back to the peephole. Still nothing in the hall. “What? Where is he, lady?”
“He not here. He say I know you identity . . .” Her hands smoothed her skirt. She took a deep breath and switched to Farsi. “I’m supposed to ask you a verification question: what drugs do I take?”
Dale stood there blinking. He sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. He answered in English. “Your husband is seriously not here? Where is he?”
She had a deep voice for a woman. She tried her English again. “He serious that I know you—”
“Shit, lady!” Dale stood up. “I don’t really remember.”
He took a deep breath, switched back to Farsi. It would take all day in broken English.
“The medicine was for multiple sclerosis. You’ve had it for at least five years. I think we changed it a couple of times as it got better. . . . We . . .” He ran his hands through his long hair, exasperated, his Farsi rusty. Back to English. “We don’t have time for this shit. We’re in danger.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice tightening, seeing the evident distress on his face. “We go.”
The room phone rang. “Don’t pick that up!” he yelled at her. “I need to speak to your husband now. Where is he?”
“Iran,” she said. She reached into her purse. The phone continued to ring. She added in Farsi, “He said he would be coming when he was ready. He said to give you this.”
A sealed envelope. Dale tore it open. A few sentences in English on a single folded page and a USB stick. The page said:
Mr. Reza,
Meet my wife, Nadia. When she is safe, I will leave Iran, but not before. You are to get her to America and prove to me that she is not in danger and that she has full protected-residency status. You at least owe me this. On the USB stick, I have devised some code you can use to communicate with me. But I will not respond to anything else until I see that she is safe. In the meantime, I have closed off access to the SCADA systems to your people. I will reopen them only when I know she is safe, not before. I trust you to deliver her. I have told her that you are to be trusted. I will be in touch in the future with another package that you will find very valuable, much better than my previous work. It will end everything. Thank you.
The room’s phone finally stopped ringing. Dale shoved the USB stick into a cargo pocket. He loosed his backpack from his shoulders and dug out the tiger Zippo. He went to the sink and lit the letter on fire. While it burned, he walked past the woman and approached the large sliding-glass window at the other end of the room, then threw the curtains open. There was a view of the sea, the boardwalk, the swirl of people walking. He could see his little yellow truck parked down below, parting the steady stream.
“You look a little scruffier than the picture he gave me,” the woman said in Farsi, attempting to put this strange man at ease. “But I still recognize you. You are Persian? You have a good Persian name and you speak our language. What do we do now?”
He ignored her, thinking through his options. There weren’t many. He was stuck in this room. He thought the best thing might just be to spend a few hours holed up here and then sneak out later somehow, as long as he could get past those Russians. From his fifth-floor view, he studied the driveways that led up to the hotel from the boardwalk, wondering if there was a way to access them unseen.
As he looked, a black object the size of a basketball moved sideways across the window from his left to his right in a buzzing blur.
He leapt back.
The black object swung back and stalled into a swaying hover just outside the room.
Dale threw the curtains closed.
“What is that?” the woman asked. The buzz outside the window was steady and loud.
“Drone. We have to get out of here. Now.”