“So what’s my role?”
“To do exactly what I say.”
“Okay, I’ll just be in the back of the plane. You let me know when you want to bite my head off again. I’ll come running like a good little mate.”
Shaw grabbed her arm. She was whirling to slug him when he said, “I’m sorry.”
She froze with her fist only a few inches from his chin. She lowered her hand. “Okay.” But her tone was one of bewilderment rather than conciliation.
Shaw seemed to sense what she was thinking. “Look, I didn’t want you to come on this thing. I just thought it was too risky. Kuchin almost got you once.”
“I volunteered. But if you didn’t want me to come, why am I here?”
“You heard Mallory. You don’t come then he goes public.”
“Oh come off it, there’s no way you believed that. He was bluffing.” She watched him closely. “But you knew that, didn’t you? You knew it was an empty threat. You just didn’t want me to get hurt.”
“People around me tend to get hurt, Reggie. Really hurt.”
“Then, again, why am I here?”
“I guess Frank took the threat seriously. He insisted that you come along.”
She eyed the plans on the table. “I won’t be dead weight, Shaw. I’ll do everything I can to be an asset.”
“I appreciate that. But—”
“You see, I don’t want you to get hurt either.”
“My safety shouldn’t be your concern.”
“But it is. I’ve got your back. Do you have mine?”
“Yes.”
“Then please understand this. If it comes down to me living or Kuchin dying, tell the monster I’ll see him in hell. Do not miss him, Shaw. Do not. Even if it means I don’t make it back. Will you promise me that?”
Shaw didn’t answer.
CHAPTER
86
THE TRUCK backed into the loading dock behind the high-rise building. Work orders were duly scanned and proper signatures obtained. The two big boxes were offloaded and placed inside the dock’s storage area. The manifest said that inside were some antiques belonging to a resident in the building who was away for the summer. The crates were to be stored and opened only when the owner returned.
A few hours later the loading dock was locked up and the supervisor and his crew left. Thirty more minutes passed before a side of one of the crates collapsed outward and Shaw emerged. Using a small focused beam light he went over to the second crate and helped Reggie out of her hiding place.
They were both dressed in black and had various pieces of equipment hanging off their belts.
“You ready to hit it?” Shaw whispered.
She nodded.
He clipped on a headset, powered it up, and said, “You there, Frank?”
“Copy that. Have your partner give us the video feed.”
Frank had flown in separately from England to set up the support they needed to break into Kuchin’s penthouse.
Shaw nodded at Reggie and she slipped a strap around her chest at the center of which was a round dial roughly three inches across with a glass lens. She flipped a switch on its side and a red light popped on.
Shaw said into the headset, “You good?”
“Roger that. Video is live. Proceed to target area.”
The elevator security was defeated by a cloned card Shaw inserted in the slot.
Frank’s voice once more came over the headset. “The building’s video surveillance is on a monitored loop but we’ve remotely frozen the security cameras in the delivery elevator and outside Kuchin’s penthouse. The elevator isn’t typically used after hours and the guards won’t expect any change on that camera or outside Kuchin’s place since he’s out of town. But they do make periodic rounds. The next one is sixty minutes from now. After that you’re on your own.”
They took the elevator to the top floor. The doors opened to reveal a small entry foyer with a steel door and a security pad mounted on the wall next to this portal. Shaw looked in the corner at the surveillance camera and waved, though he muttered under his breath a little prayer that Frank had indeed managed to freeze the feed. He motioned Reggie to video the security pad.
“Got the picture?” asked Shaw into his headset. “It’s a retina recognition system like our research said.”
“Got it. Have her stand closer so we can get a better look and confirm the manufacturer.”
Shaw motioned for Reggie to stand immediately in front of the retina-reader bubble.
“Okay, we’re good,” said Frank. “Get the laser ready, Shaw. We cut the juice to the building in five seconds. There’s a backup battery for the security system, but we’re sending a calibrated power spike right behind the power cut that’ll burn that backup out. But we have to turn the power back on quickly or it’ll trigger an emergency response.”
“Understood.”
Shaw pulled the laser from a holder on his belt and pointed it straight at the retina reader.
“On my mark,” said Frank. “Five… four… three…”
Right after the count of one the power to the building vanished and they were in complete darkness inside the enclosed foyer. The red power light on the retina reader went out. Shaw powered up the laser and pointed it right at the reader. The red beam shot into the glass disc, filling it with a reflected crimson color. A moment later the power came back on.
The door clicked open.
Reggie looked at Shaw as he put the laser away. He said, “Little flaw in this particular system we discovered awhile back. Power off, power on, and in that millisecond of start-up it’ll read a laser point set at a specific frequency as if it were an authorized retina.”
“Pretty cool,” she said with admiration.
“Well, it’s not really a flaw.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we have a good working relationship with some major security hardware firms. We do some stuff for them from time to time and they leave back doors like this for us.”
Reggie shook her head while Shaw pulled the steel door all the way open. “Fifty-nine minutes and counting. Let’s get to it.”
Shaw slipped a miniaturized laminated set of floor plans from his pocket and looked at them using a low-power penlight. “Keep away from the windows,” he advised. “Just in case Kuchin has real eyeballs on the place from another building. Even without any lights on we could be seen with the right surveillance equipment.”
“Too bad.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to check out the views.”
They searched quickly but methodically, and on their bellies when they had to get close to the window line. After thirty minutes they had found nothing helpful.
They stood in the middle of Kuchin’s bedroom. Reggie looked disappointed, but Shaw seemed curious.
“What is it?” she finally asked, noting his puzzled look.
“I used the laser to mark out the square footage of the place as we went along, but according to these plans we’re about fifteen hundred square feet short.”
“How can that be?”
Shaw spent five minutes pacing off parameters. “Center core is off,” he finally said.
“What does that mean?”
“That means there’s some hidden space in the interior block of this penthouse and it’s too big just to be the HVAC equipment. That’s usually in the ceiling in places like this anyway.”
After some more searching they reached the end of the hall and stared at the elaborate built-in cabinet there. “Why do I think that thing’s set on a pivot?” said Shaw to Reggie. “You see it, Frank?” he said into his headset.
“Yeah. I’m with you. We got less than thirty minutes. Start poking around.”
Four minutes later, a twist of a knob in a counterclockwise motion by Reggie made the entry code panel pop out. Shaw pulled a spray canister from his belt and shot it over the panel. Then he hit it with a blue light, which revealed fingerprints on certain numbe
r keys. “Got the four digits,” he said. He attached a small device to the panel’s wiring and turned it on. He looked up at Reggie. “Knowing which four digits are part of the code cuts the combination possibilities way down.”
“Yeah, that I know. Then you just have to find out the order of the numbers,” she said. “And you manage that with a full numbers assault.”
The numbers 4-6-9-7 froze on the screen and the wall cabinet clicked open, revealing a darkened space beyond.
“So let’s go see what Mr. Kuchin is hiding in here,” he said.
CHAPTER
87
KUCHIN WAS SITTING in a chair in his hotel room. His strategy had not worked. His men had searched the perimeter from the inside out and there was no trace of Katie James. They were all still posted at these positions, but Pascal’s last communication had been discouraging. They had simply run out of places to look. The woman had either gone underground in the city somewhere or else she had left. Nether possibility was palatable to the Ukrainian.
He took out a small kit, filled a syringe with his special concoction, and shot it into one of his veins. Normally this would give him at least a momentary rush of euphoria, of invincibility. He swore it made him think more clearly too, which he desperately needed at this moment.
Yet nothing happened. Well, something did occur. He felt even more depressed. He threw the empty syringe across the room, where it struck a wall and broke. The last time Fedir Kuchin had suffered defeat was back in the Ukraine, when he had been forced to fake his death and flee his homeland one step ahead of the masses that would take their revenge on his years of terror. At least they would call it terror. He would call it something else. His duty. His job. Perhaps his destiny.
Though he lived the good life of a successful westernized capitalist now, where personal liberties were highly prized, Kuchin, in his heart, would forever believe that only a select few should rule all others. And the way one accomplished that was with selectively and effectively used power. Most people were only capable of being followers. Even in the West only a few ever rose to riches and leadership positions. In his command back in Ukraine Kuchin could pick out, within five minutes of meeting them, those of his men who would forever be sheep and those few who would be the shepherds. And he had never been wrong.
Yes, the West was the part of the world where there was opportunity for all. Kuchin could only sneer at this. He had been a leader in his homeland and he had become a leader here. A follower over there would be merely a follower over here. Sheep didn’t change because they were given opportunities.
And yet will I now be defeated again?
He could not stay here indefinitely. He could not keep his men here much longer without arousing suspicion. Washington, D.C., was perhaps the world’s most closely guarded city. There were policemen, spies, federal agents—probing, peering eyes everywhere. If they were looking for Kuchin he might be playing right into their hands. And yet if he left this city without Katie James he had nothing. He would be beaten. It was a guaranteed fate.
He grabbed a remote and turned on the TV. The news was on. The lead story was trouble in Afghanistan for the Americans and their allies. This both made him smile and also conjured up bitter memories of his own country’s devastating defeat in that ancient land.
The woman reporting on this story, he noted, was around fifty. Not the young, long-legged, and often bottle blondes who typically read off the teleprompter and had never been near the war zones they were “reporting” on. Her statements were succinct, informed, and told Kuchin in a short few moments that she knew what she was talking about. He assumed that Katie James, though she was younger and prettier than this woman, had these same attributes. From what he’d read of her background she had certainly been to every global hot spot in the last fifteen years. No teleprompter for her.
He refocused on the TV. Kuchin was anxious to see in more detail what sort of trouble the Americans were in. At least it would take him away from his own problems for a few moments. He had no inkling it would lead to the solution of at least one of those problems.
“This is Roberta McCormick reporting live from Kabul,” said the woman on the screen as she closed out her segment.
The name froze for an instant in Kuchin’s mind.
Roberta McCormick?
He leapt from his chair and raced across the room to where his soft-sided briefcase lay on the desk. He flipped it open and found the list.
On here were the names and addresses of the people who lived in D.C. who were known colleagues of Katie James. Kuchin had his men covering two of the residences because their owners were out of the country. The other two were supposedly in town and thus Kuchin had not allocated any surveillance at those places. He ran his eye down to the last name.
Roberta McCormick. She was supposed to be home but she was in Kabul, thousands of miles away. He had just seen that for himself. She lived in Georgetown, up near R Street, which was just outside the perimeter that Kuchin had set for his men. Her husband had passed away, her children were grown. She lived alone.
But perhaps her home was not empty right now.
CHAPTER
88
MY GOD,” exclaimed Reggie as she and Shaw looked at the interior of the room.
Shaw said, “I feel like I just stepped back in time to the middle of the cold war.”
The lights had come on automatically when they walked into the room.
“Holy shit!” said Frank over the headset. He had seen what they were seeing through the feed from the camera strapped to Reggie’s chest. “This guy has issues.”
“You think?” said Shaw as he looked around at the Soviet flag, the old lockers, the battered desk, and the file cabinets. “Reggie, sweep the room so Frank can record it all on the camera.”
She did so, getting as close to as many objects as she could.
Shaw opened one of the lockers and saw the uniform that Kuchin had worn while with the KGB. He next searched the file cabinets and took out documents showing some of the atrocities that the man had exacted on innocent men, women, and children. Reggie captured all of this with her camera.
And then they found the film reel and projector. It took a few minutes to set up. As the film ran Shaw and Reggie said nothing. Not even Frank muttered a word. Finally, Reggie hit the off switch. “I can’t watch anymore,” she said as the face of the dead child faded on the screen.
When Shaw looked over at her he saw the tears in the woman’s eyes. He put the projector away but slipped the film reel in his bag.
“We need to see anything else, Frank?” he said.
When Frank answered his voice was strained. “No, good to go.”
* * *
A couple of minutes later, Shaw and Reggie were walking down the streets of Montreal. A car picked them up and took them to a low-rise office building about a half mile away. Frank was waiting for them there.
They all sat in silence for a few moments, staring down at their hands.
Shaw looked up. “Okay, this confirms a lot. The guy is a psycho—not that we ever doubted that.”
“But what did we find that might help us get to him?” asked Reggie.
Shaw looked over at Frank. “Alan Rice?”
“The plane came back from France. That we know. It landed at the airport in Montreal. Neither Rice nor Kuchin were on it. And Rice is not at his home or office or any other place we can find. He’s either dead or more likely laying low. To go any further than that we would have to involve the local authorities, and we don’t want to go there. At least not yet. Might actually make matters worse.”