PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Donovan climbed the concrete steps of the apartment building—a three-floor quadplex—that sat a ten-minute walk from where the car bomb had obliterated the café. On his shoulder was a nylon duffel bag that would have pushed the weight and size limits at an airport check-in counter.
Headquarters had rented a two-bedroom apartment through an online booking agency using new identities and credit cards backstopped by Blackbriar. Their flights from Cairo to Prague—with a four-hour stopover in Bucharest—had been painful. At least it had been for him. While Helen sat in roomy business-class comfort with free drinks, legroom, and passable food, Donovan was crammed into a cheap, backbreaking economy seat with his knees crushed against the seat in front of him.
Donovan knocked on the apartment’s door. There was the click of a dead bolt followed by the rattle of a chain lock being removed, and the door opened. Donovan stepped into the apartment and placed the duffel bag in the middle of the floor.
“How was it?” Helen asked. “You got everything we need?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s the cool thing about operating in a city in which Blackbriar has set up a weapons cache.”
“Show me.”
Donovan unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out a pair of CZ 75 pistols with hip holsters, two SureFire suppressors, and six sixteen-round magazines.
Helen picked up one of the pistols. She inserted her finger into the magazine well to make sure it was empty, racked the slide, pulled the trigger. Satisfied the mechanism worked fine, she slammed a full magazine into the pistol and racked the slide to chamber a round.
“What else do you have?” she asked.
Donovan placed two hand grenades, two incendiary devices, and two MP5SDs—an MP5 with an integrated suppressor—and six thirty-round magazines next to the duffel. The communications and audio and visual surveillance gear came next, including two new earbuds.
“What about transportation?” Helen asked while she inserted a fully charged earbud into her ear canal.
“BMW X5 parked in an interior garage a two-minute walk from here,” Donovan said, handing her a set of keys. “These are the spare keys for the weapons cache and the X5.”
Helen dropped the keys into her jeans pocket and said, “Come here. I’ll show you the pictures I took while you were out shopping.”
They spent the next fifteen minutes looking at photos of the area where the bomb had detonated.
“I spoke to a bookstore owner who lives in the neighborhood close to the café,” Helen said. “She said that her uncle is with the Czech police, and he believes there were five people killed by the blast and at least twice as many injured. The lady told me one of the injured folks is a reporter who works at the Hospodářské Noviny, a Czech newspaper headquartered a few steps away from the café.”
“That doesn’t sound unusual,” Donovan said. “The reporter was probably out for lunch or a coffee break.”
“For sure. I’m not disputing that, but the Hospodářské Noviny issued a statement that named the journalist as one Andrej Burian, one of their star reporters.”
Donovan, who was installing a tactical light on his MP5SD, stopped what he was doing and tried to remember if he had heard the name before, because it certainly rang a bell.
“The name sounds vaguely familiar,” he said.
“In journalistic circles, Burian made a name for himself as part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project consortium,” Helen said. “I checked him out, and he’s been involved in a number of high-profile investigations implicating politicians, bankers, and government organizations.”
Donovan scowled. In recent years, investigative journalists had lifted the lid on scandals of gigantic proportions, often accurately reporting about major corruption activities within a government’s highest level, but Donovan had also seen the other side of the coin when entire intelligence operations had to be scrapped because reporters had divulged information that should never have been shared with the public.
Had Andrej Burian simply taken a walk and gone out to grab a muffin or chocolate chip cookie at his favorite café, or had he been on his way to question John Dixon about his affiliation with an American black ops unit? Then again, maybe he was looking at this the wrong way. Was it possible that it was Dixon who had contacted the reporter? To talk about Treadstone?
Shit.
Helen’s expression told Donovan she’d reached the same conclusion.
“I think paying Burian a quick visit at the hospital should be our first step,” he said. “You know if he’s healthy enough to have visitors?”
“I think so. He’s been tweeting nonstop for the last hour.”
“How do you want to play this?” he asked. “Journalists or FBI?”
“Definitely FBI,” Helen replied without hesitation. “A reporter like Andrej Burian will recognize another journalist when he sees one, and I mean no offense, but you look like anything but a reporter, Donovan.”
Donovan chuckled as he fitted the sling on his MP5SD. “Agreed. Anyway, getting credentials from a US news organization isn’t easily done on short notice.”
He dug into the duffel bag and took out two leather FBI credential cases. He opened the first one, looked at the photo, and handed it to Helen.
“These are much easier to acquire,” he said. “Bring back any memories?”
Helen took a moment to look at the badge and credentials.
“Holy shit,” she muttered. “That looks and feels like the real thing.”
“Because it is,” Donovan said. “The legal attaché, heck, sometimes even the CIA station chief, keep blank credentials and original badges of different agencies at the embassy.”
“I didn’t know that. How’s that even legal?”
Donovan looked at her funny while checking the spring tension on one of the MP5SD magazines with his thumb. “You’re kidding, right?”
Helen shook her head. “Old habits,” she said, pocketing the credentials. “I assume these credentials are backstopped, too?”
“If they made it to the weapons cache, you bet they are. One of the NOCs probably dropped them off. I did it a few times myself when I was in Paris.”
Donovan cringed at the realization he’d just shared something that could potentially open a can of worms, or at least a torrent of questions from Helen.
“Tell me about Paris,” Helen said, as if she were asking about his weekend. “I’ve never really been, but I heard it’s beautiful, especially in the spring. Is that true?”
Donovan forced a smile. “Maybe later. For now, let’s concentrate on what we need to do to get to that Czech reporter.”
“Right. We’ll circle back, though. As for our friend Andrej, here’s what I think we should do.”