He flashed on the majestic neoclassical villa facing the park, where many of England’s grandest citizens made their homes. The blue and white frieze over the architrave. The white pillars and cream-colored walls. The marksmen would have to be perched behind the balusters. True? No, another lie. He would have been dead by now.
“You’re not using your head, sport,” he said. “A sniper on the balustrade would have already taken me out. He’d also be visually exposed to the crew repairing the roofs on Cumberland Terrace. You considered the position, and rejected it.” Once more, he cuffed her hard, and she staggered back a few steps. “Two strikes. One more, I kill you.”
She lowered her head. “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said under her breath.
“Got anyone stationed by Park Road?”
A beat. She knew he knew; prevarication would be pointless. “Ehrenhalt’s on the minaret,” she admitted.
He nodded. “And who’s enfilading to your left?”
“Take my range finder,” she said. “You don’t trust me, you can see for yourself. Marksman B is in position three hundred yards northwest.” It was a low brick structure that housed telecom equipment. “He’s on top. The height’s not optimal: that’s why he hasn’t been able to get any good shots yet. But if you had tried to leave via the Jubilee Gate, you’d be a dead man. There are men on foot on Baker Street, Gloucester Street, and York Terrace Way. Strollers with Glocks. Two sharpshooters have a complete review of Regent’s Canal. And there’s a man on the roof of Regent’s College. We were hoping you’d try to use it as shelter. Within two hundred yards, all of us are X-circle accurate—headshot accurate.”
We were hoping you’d try to use it as shelter. He almost had.
Janson mapped out in his head the vertices she had specified: they made sense. It was how he would have designed the operation.
Keeping the gun securely in one hand, he looked through her Swarovski 12 × 50 dual range finder scope. The concrete bunker she’d mentioned was exactly the sort of structure that dotted the urban landscape, that people saw without seeing. A good position. Was there really someone there? It was mostly obscured through the leafy canopies, but a few centimeters of concrete were visible. A sniper? He dialed up the magnification until he saw—something. A glove? Part of a boot? It was impossible to say.
“You’re coming with me,” Janson announced abruptly, grabbing the sniper’s wrist. With every lingering moment, the team of marksmen would begin to reevaluate probabilities: if they decided that he had left the purview of their axial sight lines, they would reposition, and that would change the ground rules altogether.
“I get it,” she said. “It’s just like at the Hamas encampment in Syria, near Qael-Gita. You took one of the sentries hostage, forced him to divulge the location of another one, repeated the process, had the perimeter defenses peeled off in less than twenty minutes.”
“Who the hell have you been talking to?” Janson said, taken aback. Those operational details were not widely known, even within the organization.
“Oh, you’d be surprised the things I know about you,” she said.
He strode down the greenway, dragging her along with him. Her footsteps were noisy, deliberately so. “Soundlessly,” he said. “Or I’ll start to think you’re not cooperating.”
Immediately, her footfalls grew careful, picking out landing spots, avoiding leaves and twigs; she had been trained in how to move quietly: every member of her team would have received such training.
As they grew nearer to the boundary of Regent’s Park, the noise of traffic and the smell of exhaust drifted toward them. They were in the heart of London, a greensward established almost two centuries before and preserved, lovingly, every year since. Would the carefully trimmed grass end up soaked with his blood?
They approached the concrete bunker, and Janson placed a finger on his lips. “Not a sound,” he said. The Beretta remained loosely gripped in his hand.
Now he stooped down, and signaled her to do the same. Atop the low brick structure, the marksman was, he could now see, in prone position, the fore end of his rifle supported by his left hand. No sniper ever let the barrel rest on anything; it distorted the resonance, affecting the shot. He was a picture of complete concentration, peering through the scope, using his left elbow as a pivot as he moved the field of view slightly. His shoulders were level, the rifle butt close to his shoulder pocket. The rifle itself rested in the V of his left thumb and forefinger, its weight resting on the palm. Perfect position.
“Victor!” the woman called out suddenly.
The gunman jerked at the sound, swiveled his rifle around, and squeezed off a shot, wildly. Janson leaped to one side, lifting the woman with him. Then he somersaulted toward the bunker and, with a lightning-fast motion, seized the gun by the barrel and jerked it out of the marksman’s grasp. As the man hurriedly reached for his side arm, Janson swung the scoped rifle like a bat, connecting with the man’s head. He slumped forward, prone as before but now unconscious.
The woman propelled herself with all her coiled force toward Janson’s gun hand. She wanted the Beretta—it would change everything. At the last fraction of a second, Janson dodged her outstretched arms. She seized his wet jacket instead, and hammered her knee toward his groin. As he torqued his pelvis back defensively, she flexed her wrist into a slap block, and sent the Beretta flying through the air.
Both took a few steps back.
The woman assumed the classic military stance: her left arm was out and perpendicular to her body, a barrier to a rush. A blade struck at the arm would hit only skin and glance off bone; the major muscles, arteries, and tendons were on the side facing inward, protected from attack. Her right arm was extended straight down, and held a small knife; it had been boot-holstered, and he had not even seen her draw it. She was good, faster and more agile than he was.
If he lunged forward, her posture made it clear, she would peel his arm with her blade: an effective counter. And straight from the manual.
She was well trained, which, oddly, reassured him. He choreographed the next ten seconds in his head, preparing a counter-response to her probable actions. The fact that she was well trained was her weakness. He knew what she would do because he knew what she had been taught. He had taught enough people those very maneuvers. But after twenty-five years in the field, he had a far richer repertory of moves, of experiences, of reflexes. It would make all the difference.
“My poppa used to tell me, ‘Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight,’” she said. “Don’t know about that. I was never the worse for having a backup blade.” She gripped the knife handle like a fiddle bow, loosely but firmly; she was obviously somebody who knew how to wield it with slashing force.
Suddenly, he fell forward, grabbing her extended arm; she raised her knife hand, as he had predicted, and he delivered a crushing blow to its wrist. The median nerve was vulnerable about an inch from the heel of her hand; his precisely directed blow caused her knife hand to open involuntarily.
Now he grabbed the weapon she had released—yet at the same moment, her other hand shot out toward his shoulder. She dug her thumb deep into his trapezius muscle, jolting the nerves that ran beneath and temporarily paralyzing his arm and shoulder. A bolt of agony shot through the area. Her fighting stance was awesome, the triumph of training over instinct. Now he swept his foot toward her right knee, causing intense pain and destabilizing her footing. She toppled backward, but his own leg sweep wrong-footed him, and he ended up falling on top of her.
He could feel the heat of her sweaty body beneath him, feel her muscles tense as she squirmed and thrashed like a practiced wrestler. With his powerful thighs, he pinned her legs down, but her arms were capable of doing him serious damage. He could feel her striking at his brachial plexus, the bundle of nerves that reached from the top of his shoulder to the vertebrae of his neck. He hammered his elbows outward, and pinned her arms to the ground, relying on his greater weight and brute strength.
> Her face, inches from his, was contorted in rage and, so it seemed, disgust with herself for having allowed him to gain the stronger position.
He saw the muscles of her neck flex, saw she intended to break his nose by butting with her forehead, and pressed his forehead to her own, immobilizing it. Her breath was warm against his face.
“You really want to kill me, don’t you,” Janson said, almost with amusement. It was not a question.
“Shit, no,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “This is just foreplay as far as I’m concerned.” Struggling mightily, she thrashed beneath him, and he only barely maintained his position.
“So what did they tell you? About me?”
She inhaled and exhaled heavily for a few moments, catching her breath. “You’re a rogue,” she said. “Somebody who’s betrayed everything that ever mattered in his life, somebody who murdered for money. Lowest kind of dirtbag there is.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit’s what you are. Double-crossed everything and everybody you could. Sold out the agency, sold out your country. Good agents are dead because of you.”
“That right? They say why I went bad?”
“You fucking snapped, or maybe you were always a piece of shit. Don’t matter. Every day you live is a day when our lives are in danger.”
“That’s what they told you?”
“It’s the truth,” she spat. Another writhing attempt to throw him off her passed through her body like a powerful shudder. “Shit,” she said. “At least you don’t have bad breath. I should be grateful for that, huh? So what’s on the agenda? You gonna kill me, or is it just gonna be a lot of dry humping?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “A sharp cookie like you—you believe everything they tell you?” He grunted. “No shame in it. I did once.” Their foreheads were still pressed together, nose to nose, mouth to mouth: the strange and unsettling intimacy of lethal combatants.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You got another story? I’m listening. Can’t do anything else.” But she made another convulsive effort to shake him.
“Try this on. I was set up. I served in Consular Operations for over two decades. Look, you seem to know a lot about me. Ask yourself if what they’ve told you about me really fits the picture.”
She said nothing for a moment. “Give me something real,” she said. “If you didn’t do what they say you did, give me something to show you’re telling me the truth. I realize I’m not in any position to negotiate. I just want to know.”
For the first time, she spoke without hostility or japery. Was it something in his own voice that gave her pause, that made her wonder if he was the villain she’d been told he was?
He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding next to hers: again, an odd, unwanted intimacy. He felt her relax beneath him.
“OK,” she said. “Get offa me. I ain’t gonna rear, ain’t gonna run—I know you’d get to the rifle first. I’m just going to listen.”
He made sure her body was completely slack and then—a crucial decision, a moment of trust in the midst of deadly combat—rolled off her in a quick movement. He had a destination in mind: the Beretta, now nestled under a nearby ash tree. He grabbed it and stowed it in his front waistband.
Looking wobbly and uncertain, the woman rose to her feet. Then she smiled coolly. “Is that a gun in your pocket, or—”
“It’s a gun in my pocket,” he said, cutting her off. “Let me tell you something. I was once like you. A weapon. Aimed and discharged by someone else. I thought I had an autonomous intelligence, made my own decisions. The truth was otherwise: I was a weapon in the hands of another.”
“That’s just a bunch of word music as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “I’m into specifics, not generalities.”
“Fine.” He took a deep breath, dredging up an old memory. “A penetration identified in Stockholm … .”
He could picture the man now. Blunt, pudgy features, a soft-in-the-middle, sedentary soul. And scared, so scared. Dark smudges under his eyes spoke of sleeplessness and exhaustion. Through Janson’s scope, those features formed a rictus of anxiety; the subject made quiet popping noises with his lips, an absurd, nervous tic. Why so scared, if this was a typical contact? He had seen such contacts, men going about their business, making a dead drop, the twentieth or thirtieth dead drop of the year, with a bored and vacant expression. This man’s face was different—filled with self-loathing and fear. And when the Swede turned toward the other man, the putative Russian contact, his face read not greed or gratitude but repugnance.
“Stockholm,” she said. “May of 1983. You witnessed the subject make contact with the KGB control, and took him out. For a nonspecialist, it was a pretty neat shot: from an apartment rooftop to a park bench two blocks away.”
“Stop the tape,” he said. Her knowledge of these things was unnerving. “You’ve described it as I did in my report. Yet how did I know he was a penetration agent? I’d been told he was. And the KGB agent? I recognized the face, but that, too, was a datum I’d been provided with by operations control. What if it were wrong?”
“You mean he wasn’t KGB.”
“In fact, he was. Sergei Kuzmin was his name. But the man who met with him was frightened, blackmailed into the meeting. He had no interest in providing the KGB with anything useful. He was going to try to persuade the man that he had nothing further to offer, that his diplomatic rank was too low to make him a valuable asset. He was going to tell him to buzz off, damn the consequences.”
“How do you know?”
“I spoke to his wife. That wasn’t part of my mission instructions.”
“That’s so random, man. And how did you know she spoke the truth?”
“I just did,” he responded, shrugging. It was not a question that a highly experienced field agent would have to ask. “Tutored intuition, call it. It’s not a hundred percent reliable—but accurate enough.”
“How come this wasn’t part of your report?”
“Because it wasn’t news to those who designed the mission,” he said coldly. “The planners had another game in mind. Two objectives, both fulfilled. One, to send a message to any other member of the diplomatic forces that entanglement with the enemy could carry a steep price. I was just ringing up the sale.”
“Two objectives, you said. The other?”
“The young Swede had already given dossiers to the KGB. By killing him, we conveyed the message that the information leak was taken seriously—that valuable information had been transferred. In fact, it was planted. Carefully designed disinformation. But it became validated by the man’s blood, and KGB analysts bought it.”
“So that was a win, too.”
“Yes, within narrowly defined parameters. Kuzmin actually got a promotion out of the whole thing. Pull the camera back, though, and you ask another question: Did it matter? The KGB was misled in this particular, but with what ultimate consequences, if any? And was it worth the man’s life? He had a wife. Had he lived, they would have had children, probably grandchildren. Decades of Christmases and glögg and skiing vacations and—” Janson broke off. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make heavy weather of this. None of it will make much sense to you, not at your age. But there are instances when your instructions amount to a web of lies. And in some cases, the person giving you the instructions is perfectly unaware of that fact. I expect that’s the case here.”
“Jesus,” she said softly. “No, I do understand. I do. You’re telling me they had you take this guy out—without ever letting you in on the real reasons for the job.”
“They had me kill Kuzmin’s contact as part of a manipulation. And one of the people being manipulated was me. What a directive specifies and what a directive signifies are two different things.”
“Jesus, this is making my head swim worse than any goddamn sucker punch.”
“I don’t mean to confuse you. Just to make you think.”
“Comes to the same thing,” she said.
“But why? Why would they target you?”
“You think I haven’t been asking myself that?”
“You were a legend in Consular Operations, especially among the younger people. You’ve got no idea, Janson. No idea how demoralizing it was when they told us you’d turned traitor. They’d never do that on a whim.”
“On a whim? No, that’s not how it works. Most people lie to save themselves, or better themselves, anyway. Maybe they claim credit for an idea that wasn’t really theirs. Or they shift blame from themselves to another. Or they luck out, somehow, and let on that the outcome was the result of skill. That’s not the kind of lie that worries me. The kind of lie that worries me is the ‘noble lie.’ The lie spread for higher purposes. The sacrifice of small men for larger ends.” He spoke bitterly. “The liars who lie in the interest of the greater good, or what they decree to be that greater good.”
“Whoa,” she said. She made a whizzing noise, passed a hand over her head like a discus. “You’re losing me. If somebody’s scapegoating you, they’ve got to have a good reason.”
“What they believe to be a good reason. A good reason that might strike others of us as an administrative convenience.”
“Lookit,” she said. “Earlier, you said something about your profile. That happens to be something I know a lot about. Well, you’re right, now that you say it. Something about the story doesn’t make sense. Either you weren’t as good as you were supposed to have been or you’re not as bad as they’re saying you are.” She took a step closer to him.
“Let me ask you something. Does Lambda have operational authorization from Whitehall?”
“Wasn’t time to cross the diplomatic t’s. It’s all extraterritorial.”
“I see,” Janson said. “Then you’ve got a decision to make.”
“But our directive …”