SIXTY-SIX
Keith Hulett, call sign Hades, had never demanded anything from his employer, but one hour earlier he had insisted on a face-to-face meeting with the man he knew as Tarik. It was hastily arranged for eight a.m. in the Volkspark Hasenheide, a small green space in Reuterkiez, near the American mercenary team’s safe house.
He’d notified Tarik, via text, about the failure of his small force to kill Annika Dittenhofer, due to the arrival of Court Gentry and some other shooters. Tarik had not expressed condolences for the deaths of all Hades’s men, nor had he given Hulett any further instructions; he just acknowledged the report, and agreed to the meet.
Tarik and his Emirati guards were already parked alongside a quiet park road when the man who called himself Hades arrived on foot, still wearing the filthy torn jeans he’d worn in the abandoned animal feed factory, and the same boots, though he’d changed out of his tunic into a green T-shirt, and he now wore a ball cap and carried a backpack over his shoulder.
Tarik sat in the back of a Mercedes S-Class, and two more E-Class Mercedes sedans were present, each with three security men standing outside them.
Hulett was frisked and disarmed of his SIG P226 pistol, his backpack was taken from him, and then he was ushered over to and inside the backseat next to Tarik.
As was his fashion, the Emirati intelligence chief didn’t seem to care about Hulett’s team. He opened with, “What about Annika Dittenhofer?”
“I already told you when I called. She got away. Gentry and some others, I don’t know how many, took her.”
Tarik showed nothing but displeasure. “Then why are you talking to me? What are you doing to find them?”
“What am I doing? Are you serious? My entire fucking team is off the table.”
“What does that mean, ‘off the table’?”
“Dead or unaccounted for, which, in this case, also means dead.”
“I can get you more men, but it will take a couple of days. In the meantime, my people are chasing down leads. When we have a target, we will call you, and you will go.”
Hulett just shook his head. “Fuck you. I’m done with this bullshit.”
“That is unfortunate to hear.”
Hulett looked at Tarik now, judging his next words carefully. “Gentry said you were planning something. That you didn’t have a green light from the Agency to even be running an op here in Berlin. That you’d duped me and my team into this bullshit. That true?”
Tarik sighed deeply now. “I would have thought that, with everything you’ve seen, you would know enough to not ask uncomfortable questions at this difficult time.”
“So that means yes.”
“No, actually, it means good-bye. Your services are no longer required.”
Tarik nodded towards the door to the Mercedes. Hulett fumed, then looked at the Emirati bodyguard in the front seat who was looking back at him. Then he looked at the driver in the rearview, and their eyes locked on each other.
Hulett recognized the stance these men had. Even though they were seated and no guns were visible, these two were ready to intervene if there were any threats to their protectee.
The American turned away and opened the car door, then climbed out slowly.
Outside the vehicle, with the door still open, he was handed his pack and his pistol back; the car door behind him was still open. He paused a moment, then spoke softly to himself. “Fuck it.” And he spun back around, pulling his pistol out of its holster as he did so.
The bodyguards were prepared for an attack on their principal, but their reactions were slower than Hulett’s action. One burly security man dove in front of the open car door, and another reached for the gun, but he wouldn’t have made it in time.
In the end, however, it didn’t matter.
A single gunshot cracked in the trees; Hulett spun towards the noise as his gun came up, but then he staggered back a step on the road.
A second gunshot sent him collapsing onto the little road.
Tarik’s bodyguards swept their guns in all directions now.
Haz Mirza propped his AK-47 against a tree, then walked out of the woods with his hands raised. The bodyguards knew who he was, and they knew he’d been lying in wait to kill Hulett when they left the scene, so they didn’t impede his advance.
Mirza stood over the body, examining him for a moment. He then turned his attention to Tarik inside the car.
“You shouldn’t get Americans to do your fighting for you. They can’t be trusted.”
Tarik nodded slowly. “You are right, of course.”
The young Iranian seemed emboldened at having killed. “You will see tonight what good fighters can do.”
Now the Emirati intelligence chief smiled. “I just saw what a good fighter can do. I am certain you all will be victorious tonight, inshallah.”
“Inshallah,” Mirza repeated with his hand on his breast.
He shut the Emirati’s door, then was directed to a nondescript Nissan two-door that was just now pulling up behind the three Mercedes vehicles. It would take him back to his safe house, where he would continue his lessons in operating the autonomous attack drones, then watch the loading of the devices into the truck before going through final instructions with his men.
Al-Habsi’s three-Mercedes motorcade left the park quickly; there had been no one around during the shooting, but the sound of the 7.62-millimeter round being fired from a short-barreled AK would have been heard by hundreds.
Only when they were clear of the scene did the driver speak to his boss. “Sir? The airport?”
Al-Habsi nodded. This had been a terrible start to the morning of what he was certain would be the best day of his life. He had planned on being right here in Berlin when it all happened tonight, ready to run to the Americans with evidence that the attack had been orchestrated from the Iranian embassy in southwestern Berlin, but the fact that Annika Dittenhofer had somehow escaped with the Gray Man meant that, until Rudolf Spangler himself tracked her down and somehow killed her, al-Habsi was not safe here.
Still, there was some reason for optimism. Mirza had helped him kill the last of the American mercenary force. Dead men tell no tales, al-Habsi well knew.
Mirza and his force of prison inmates would all die eventually, as well, which was fine with Mirza and great with al-Habsi.
Sultan al-Habsi knew Spangler would not talk. The German was as corrupt as they came, and the instant he realized he had been an accessory to a savage terrorist attack that started a war, he wouldn’t say a word. Still, al-Habsi would have him killed, sooner or later, just to prevent any chance of a deathbed confession from the self-aggrandizing old spymaster years down the road.
Annika Dittenhofer and Court Gentry were the last true dangers, so Sultan al-Habsi would go home to safety for now.
It was no matter. He could watch his triumph on television wherever he was, because the operation he’d conceived and overseen here in Berlin was about to be the only news story on Earth. And then, when it was all over, he could run breathlessly to Matthew Hanley with the proof that this had been no rogue attack but rather a carefully orchestrated official Iranian initiative.
Matt Hanley had just stepped out of the bathroom from his morning shower when he heard several car doors shutting in front of the rural home he was using as a safe house. He put his watch on, a Tag Heuer Monaco, and saw it was only seven a.m. He’d scheduled no meetings first thing today, and the guard force switched out at six a.m., so he had no idea who had just arrived.
He headed for the door as he buttoned the cuffs on his dress shirt, but had only made it halfway across the floor when he heard footsteps outside in the hallway.
As soon as the knock came he said, “Chris?”
Chris Travers opened the door. The Ground Branch team leader and the rest of his men were serving as Hanley’s bodyguards as cover for their trip to Germany, so Hanley knew Travers would be the first to alert him if there was any trouble.
“Deputy Director. You have a visitor.”
“An unannounced visitor? The hell I do. Tell them to make an appointment.”
Instantly, Matt Hanley could see that Travers was uncomfortable, and that sent his stomach into a nose dive. “Who is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s Ambassador Sedgwick.”
“Son of a bitch.” Hanley had hoped to avoid the American ambassador to Germany learning that he was here in town.
“He’s in the library. He seems . . . a little . . . annoyed, sir.”
“A little?” Hanley asked dubiously.
“More than a little.”
“Right. I’m on my way.”
Two minutes later Hanley was still yanking on his gray flannel suit coat as the door to the library was opened for him.
Sedgwick and POTUS had been fellow Yalies, law partners, golfing buddies, even brothers-in-law for a time when POTUS’s brother married Sedgwick’s sister, and even the disintegration of the marriage didn’t blunt the friendship between the two.
Hanley had it on good authority that Sedgwick had been given one of the most coveted ambassadorships in the world by his friend the president to bolster his international relations credentials because he was being groomed to be secretary of state when the current secretary retired at the end of the year.
Hanley walked into the room with a smile on his face, but he knew it wasn’t going to improve the mood of the heavyset Kentuckian standing in front of the darkened fireplace.
“Mr. Ambassador. So nice of you to—”
“Don’t start shit with me. That way, I won’t have to tell you to cut the shit.”
Hanley extended a hand for a shake, giving himself about a fifty percent chance of reciprocity from Ryan Sedgwick. The ambassador did take his hand unenthusiastically, but his eyes conveyed nothing but malevolence.
As did his mouth.
Sedgwick said, “I learn the deputy director for operations of the CI-fucking-A is holed up in an Agency safe house in my town. I know you guys don’t play by any rules of courtesy, but I do not like surprises. In fact, I often find them suspicious.”
“I am here personally chasing down some intelligence related to the attack the other day.”
“Without your station notifying the ambassador of your visit?”
“Didn’t want to trouble you. Due to some sensitive matters, I didn’t even want to involve Berlin station more than I had to. Me calling in on the embassy would have been a distraction for everyone.”
The two men sat down on comfortable sofas. Coffee was brought for them; Hanley hadn’t had his first cup of the day so he drank greedily while Sedgwick just looked at him.
Finally the ambassador said, “Well . . . you’re here. I know you’re here, so your plan to keep this from me is out the window. Might as well tell me what you’re doing.”
“We are concerned there will be another attempt on the embassy.”
“By who?”
“We believe it to be an Iranian Quds Force terrorist named Haz Mirza.”
“The guy behind that pissant attack the day before yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sedgwick laughed angrily. “It takes a transcontinental trip by the DDO to tell me something I can read on Twitter? Everybody knows the ringleader of those Iranian terrorists is still on the loose. And everyone knows there was intel collected . . . by the Germans, I might add, indicating a follow-up attack on the embassy.”
“That’s correct. We do expect this next attempt to be much more robust. Perhaps the first was simply a misdirection.”
Sedgwick waved his hand in the air like he didn’t believe, or didn’t care. “Tell that to the terrorists our Marines killed. Four of Mirza’s men are dead. Three more have been arrested. The intel I read is that Mirza only had nine to begin with. The other two degenerates are probably in a brothel in Hamburg trying to get off one last time before the federal polizei find them and throw them into prison.”
“Our intelligence suggests—”
Sedgwick wasn’t having any of it. “What intelligence? Intelligence that was so inconsequential that you came here without telling my office, without calling in on Berlin station? Come on, Hanley. I’m not an idiot. You don’t want me to know what you are doing here because you know I will put a stop to it. Ever since your CIA was busted spying on Germany, in Germany, you’ve been told to watch yourselves. POTUS doesn’t want to deal with another dustup like that.
“You know my relationship with POTUS; you know there is no one more closely tied to him in all of the government, so you sneak your ass over here so I don’t know that you are running some sort of an operation in Berlin that—”
Sedgwick kept talking, but Hanley stopped listening. As he sat there, something suddenly occurred to him. The ambassador was right.
The single most important symbol of American power in Berlin, in Germany, hell, perhaps in all of Europe, was Ryan Sedgwick.
Hanley kept quiet, kept listening, kept nodding along to the man telling him what a bunch of corrupt cowboys the CIA were, but he couldn’t even hear the man, because inside his brain alarm bells clanged so loud he thought his temples might burst.
Matthew Hanley had found Haz Mirza’s target. Sultan al-Habsi’s target.
Hanley didn’t know how, when, or where, but Mirza was coming after Sedgwick. Al-Habsi would know that nothing on earth would draw the United States into war with Iran more assuredly than assassinating the president’s friend and top political lieutenant.
Hanley finally interrupted; Sedgwick was saying something about the Agency’s “runaway budget.”
“Mr. Ambassador, we are working hard to assist the Germans with the Mirza investigation, but in the meantime, I think you should stay inside the embassy until this threat passes.”
“You just said there was another attack planned on the embassy. You want me there when it happens, is that it? That’s cute, Hanley. POTUS will love knowing you tried putting his former campaign chairman in the bull’s-eye for the attack.”
“I’d prefer you back in Washington, to be honest. But if you are going to stay in Germany, I think it would be best if you stayed in a place that was protected by a company of Marine guards, instead of home, or out to dinner, or driving from place to place.”
Sedgwick waved that annoying hand in the air yet again, dismissing all Hanley had just said. “I can’t stay at the embassy. I have things to do.”
“May I ask what is more important than your safety?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. I will be safe wherever I go, especially now. My security has been doubled. Armored motorcades, the whole shebang. These days I don’t know if I’m driving the streets of Berlin or the streets of Mogadishu, since the CIA has done such a piss-poor job protecting American interests.
“And to answer your question about what is so important, I am hosting an art exhibit at the residence tonight. There will be dozens, hell, I don’t know, hundreds of security there. It will be fine. I’m not worried about one idiot with a suicide vest; what I am worried about is the corruption of American diplomatic relations that I see when the deputy director of the CIA sneaks onto my turf to try to undermine—”
Yet again, Hanley tuned out and interrupted.
“This might be impudent of me to ask, Mr. Ambassador, but could I possibly attend your event tonight?”
Sedgwick had stopped talking, and now he looked at Hanley not like he was the devil incarnate but as if he were an idiot. He stood, shook his head in disbelief, and said, “Get out of my town. If you want to come back, notify my office. Don’t skulk around like you are some old Cold War spy.”
Ambassador Sedgwick left the library without another word. Hanley knew the courteous thing to do would be to escort the ambo to his motorcade outside, but he let him find his own way out. One call by Sedgwick to the president and Hanley would be a fifty-eight-year-old ex-spook looking for a new profession, and Hanley knew that call might well happen no matter what he did in the next day or two in Berlin. Still, he knew he had to ignore Sedgwick, stay here in Berlin, and then find, fix, and finish Haz Mirza.
Hanley had assets in place, he had lines into some intelligence about the plot and the players, and now, he felt reasonably sure, he had the time and location of the attack.
He knew what he needed to do. He needed to either keep Mirza away from Finkenstrasse tonight, or he needed Travers, Gentry, and Hightower to be there when it all went down.
He pulled out his phone and called Suzanne Brewer. He’d have her contact Romantic and get them here for a face-to-face chat. Hanley wished Anthem were in town still, too, but he understood her reasons for running.