The Geneva Strategy

  When Smith came back around to the rental he found Beckmann arranging Warner in the backseat, draping his legs over Karl, who sat on one side. When Beckmann was finished he waved the dog into the backseat foot well.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Beckmann said.

  Smith got behind the wheel and Beckmann joined him in the front passenger seat. Smith started the car, bumped up from the side of the road to the asphalt, and began a slow acceleration. Within minutes they were on a rural road passing through the forest and half an hour after that were making their way through the small darkened towns between there and Berlin. Smith had stopped at the sole intersection of a small town when he felt Karl tap him on the shoulder. When Smith checked the rearview mirror Karl jerked his chin at the door.

  Smith stopped. Karl got out, gave a short whistle to the dog, and it followed, jumping onto the asphalt. Karl slammed the door shut and began a slow lumber toward a tavern a block away. When he reached it he opened a wooden screen door and waited for the dog to go in first before slamming it shut behind him with a gunshot report.

  “Do we wait for him?” Beckmann asked.

  Smith put the car in gear. “I don’t think he’s coming back. If he was he’d have left the dog with us.” Smith pulled away, once again taking care not to jostle the car too much.

  “Where are we headed?” Beckmann asked.

  “To an airstrip outside Berlin. I’ve got the coordinates on my phone. There are two planes waiting there. One to take Warner and one for us.”

  “And from there?” Beckmann asked.

  “To London. I’ve got a message from Klein. He says that they believe another victim is somewhere nearby and he’s contacted Howell to help.”

  They drove on for another thirty minutes. After two wrong turns Smith was relieved to see a large expanse open up in front of him that contained a tarmac and two Learjets. Smith drove up to the first and killed the engine. A man detached from the shadow of the first plane and began a stroll toward them. It was Peter Howell.

  22

  Howell approached the car from the side and Smith saw him peer in the backseat and take in the sight of Warner lying there, unconscious. He tapped on the window.

  “Smith, good to see you,” he said in his clipped British accent. Educated at Cambridge and Sandhurst, Howell was former MI6 and a brilliant linguist and strategist. He claimed that he was “retired” and for part of every year he remained holed up in the Sierras, but Smith suspected that he took missions far more often than anyone knew. Witty and urbane, he was adept at altering his appearance to blend into whatever surroundings he encountered. For the moment, though, he was wearing dark pants, a navy windbreaker jacket, and what looked like black running shoes on his feet. While a wiry man, he was also an excellent fighter and had prevailed against much heavier opponents.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you. They told us to hook up with you in London.”

  Howell shook his head. “I had to fly in over Germany anyway, and decided to meet you here so that I can brief you on the plane.” He leaned into the window. “Beckmann! I heard you were hobnobbing with the rich and famous in rehab.”

  Beckmann grinned. “That I was.”

  “I also heard that you lowered the facility’s success rate considerably.”

  This time Beckmann laughed. “As well as the quality of their clientele. Good to see you, Howell.”

  “Who’s in the back?”

  “The undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Defense,” Smith said.

  Howell raised an eyebrow. “So you found him. Excellent. There’s an official escort here to ferry him home. Three members of the DOD. One is very officious and bureaucratic.”

  Smith switched off the car. Warner was still unconscious.

  “Is he drugged?” Howell asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  Howell leaned in closer. “He’s been tortured in a unique fashion.”

  “How can you tell that from here?” Beckmann asked.

  Howell pointed at the soles of Warner’s feet. “Generally you beat the soles so as to leave the victim without marks. But in this case the soles were slashed as well. Perhaps they were afraid he’d run away?”

  “The torturer was a guy named Curry,” Smith said.

  “Ah, yes. The twisted Emil Curry. Once into a session he’s unable to proceed methodically.”

  “He’s dead,” Smith said.

  Howell raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Did you kill him?”

  Smith just nodded.

  Howell’s expression turned to one of satisfaction. “I doubt anyone will miss the bastard. But the fact that he was involved in Warner’s kidnapping bodes nothing good. He’s usually seen in the company of some of the worst this world has to offer. You’ve had a busy night.”

  Smith nodded again. He wasn’t about to dwell on the situation. He’d long ago come to terms with the strange and sometimes surreal nature of his work with Covert-One. Instead he reached into the backseat and began to maneuver Warner out. After ten minutes and with three of them assisting, they had Warner safely stretched out on a couch in the nearest Lear, where a deputy assistant from the DOD was fussing over him. While he did, Beckmann, Howell, and Smith boarded the other jet. They settled in while the plane taxied down the runway.

  “What did you want to brief us on?” Beckmann asked.

  “The situation in London. We learned that a DOD contractor in charge of the drone program may be held somewhere in the city. Perhaps even in the Mayfair neighborhood.”

  “Expensive. Not usually the type of place that you’d expect a terrorist cell to be found,” Smith said.

  Howell reached to a set of decanters secured in a cabinet against the plane’s wall and poured himself a shot of what looked to Smith like whiskey. He held the bottle up to both Smith and Beckmann. Smith nodded and Howell poured shots around. He replaced the decanter and held his glass up before him.

  “To success in our next mission.”

  They touched their glasses and Smith took a sip, welcoming the burn that cleared his throat and went a long way to sharpening his mind.

  “And what mission is that?” he asked.

  “To infiltrate and free Mr. Rendel from one of the most visible and guarded buildings in London without creating an international incident.”

  Smith didn’t like the sound of that. “And what building would that be?”

  “The Saudi embassy,” Howell said.

  23

  Russell sat in the main ready room at RAF Croughton, a military base forty miles north of Oxford in Northamptonshire that the Brits allowed the United States to use for a broad swath of covert activities. The U.S. had been using Croughton as a base for its Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program operated out of Djibouti for a few years, but only recently had its role been expanded to include secure communications and spying for the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency. Russell watched a live-feed onboard video from a drone launched from Djibouti traveling to Yemen.

  “What’s its capacity?” Russell asked. Next to her stood George Scariano, a CIA officer in charge of the DOD forces at Croughton.

  “It’s an older-model Reaper. Four Hellfire missiles.”

  “Blast radius?”

  He grimaced. “That remains a problem. It can be as large as twenty yards and the shrapnel can go even farther. If you fire four in a pattern you can take out an entire city block, easy. Collateral damage can be extensive. We’ve been taking heat from the international human rights community for the civilian deaths.”

  “Are you going to fire?”

  “Yes, but we’re just watching for the moment because under the administration’s new rules the CIA can’t target to kill. Only the military can do that, so we’re linked to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and they’ll give any orders required.”

  Russell watched the grainy video feed. Several people dressed in black, some with guns slung over their shoulders, were walking toward a tented encampment. As t
he drone grew closer she saw all six of them glance up at the sky.

  “Can they hear it?”

  “Yes. It makes a buzzing noise. In Pakistan they call them machar, which means ‘mosquitoes.’”

  The men began running toward the encampment. The image moved to home in on them and then she saw the flash of a missile launch. Seconds later all that was left of the encampment was a massive pit of burning fire. Clouds of dark smoke roiled into the air. The drone flew on.

  Russell had killed more times than she cared to remember and had never hesitated to tear apart any attacker who threatened her. She had been beaten, shot at, knifed, and had set off plastic explosives that detonated entire warehouses. She was a warrior herself, and so she was surprised at the visceral, sick feeling that she felt at seeing the drone strike. The complete annihilation of an entire encampment, with all the people inside, within seconds, seemed surreal. She stared at the screen and struggled with her emotions. Scariano glanced at her with a sympathetic expression.

  “From the look on your face I take it that you’ve never witnessed a drone strike before?”

  Russell shook her head, unwilling to speak in case the shake in her voice would reveal her inner turmoil.

  Scariano rubbed his forehead. “I’ve seen it so many times that I’m afraid its impact has been deadened. Which, frankly, worries me more than a little. Nowadays it’s only when I see the strike through the eyes of a newcomer that I realize how sick and twisted it is. I just keep reminding myself that those guys on the ground wouldn’t hesitate to kill droves of innocent civilians in their quest for vengeance.”

  “It’s like watching a first-person shooter video game. It doesn’t seem real,” Russell said.

  He nodded. “That’s exactly the problem. I’ve got guys that will pull the trigger without any emotion. I worry that they could be convinced to wipe out entire villages without a thought. When I chide them they tell me that snipers and World War Two bombers did the same thing.”

  Russell shook her head. There was no real comparison between the two forms of war. “It’s not the same. Both the bomber and the sniper are near the field of battle and both have some skin in the game, and I mean that literally. But here? Nothing. They sit in this windowless room in the bucolic English countryside and kill people on live screen while drinking coffee.”

  Scariano sighed. “I only hope that we don’t strike without cause. I presume, though, that you’re not here to discuss the ethics of drone warfare, are you?”

  “I’m here because MI6 believes that there may be an American citizen being held in the Saudi embassy. We think they’re preparing to rendition him to the Middle East for interrogation.”

  “Rendition him? So they’re taking a page from our playbook and kidnapping people to send them elsewhere?”

  Russell liked Scariano and his blunt assessment of the situation. No false patriotism or hypocritical bluster. She tried to respond in kind.

  “Given all the condemnation we’ve taken for the program I’m surprised that they’d try it as well. Keeping the targets in an embassy cloaked with diplomatic immunity, though, is an elegant twist.”

  “I suppose that we’ve asked them nicely to return him?”

  “Yes. We quietly met with them and told them that we’d had some intelligence pointing to a possible missing person being kept at the embassy and requested the right to search the premises. Our request was met with flat denials and faked outrage. I know that the NSA operates out of this air base for the Stateroom program and I thought you could help me.”

  “Our embassy surveillance operation,” Scariano said.

  “Exactly. I was wondering if we’ve seen any more information about the supposed hostage. MI6 suspects but can’t confirm that someone is actually there.”

  Scariano waved her over to a second bank of computers staffed by several personnel, all wearing headphones and all typing madly.

  “What are they listening to?” Russell asked.

  “Transmissions from Stateroom-targeted embassies throughout Europe.”

  Russell raised an eyebrow. “I presume that doesn’t include our allies.”

  Scariano didn’t answer, but instead indicated a screen to the far right. “That one is focusing on a Saudi diplomat. We’ve been unable to bug the embassy, but we’ve targeted the junior staff and he’s one.”

  “Heard anything that might help me out?”

  Scariano tapped the officer on the shoulder and the man removed his headset.

  “Tresome, this is Randi Russell, CIA. She’s looking into a possible hostage scenario at the Saudi embassy in London. You got anything interesting for her?”

  Tresome leaned back in his swivel chair. “Only that this guy, Ali Awahil, has been negotiating a large pharmaceutical purchase and he’s arranging to make an announcement to be given at an upcoming conference on international standards for the approval of new drugs.”

  “Where’s the conference?”

  “Geneva in two days.”

  “And the pharmaceutical purchase?”

  “Some sort of cognitive enhancement drug. Nothing illegal that we can determine.”

  “No talk of strange activity inside the embassy?”

  Tresome rocked his hand back and forth. “There is one thing. Awahil seems to believe that a member of the diplomatic corps has been poisoned and he’s pointing fingers at the CIA and a fake vaccine program. He said that Iran is involved as well.”

  “They always point their fingers at Iran,” Scariano said “Their mutual hatred ensures that whatever happens, one will blame the other.”

  “Agreed, but the fact that he’s also targeting the CIA is new and a measure of their unhappiness with the recent thawing of relations between the U.S. and Iran. And every time he talks about it he claims that they’ve caught the perpetrator and they’ve flown in a professional interrogator—you should read that as torturer—to gain a confession and that he was carrying out his questioning somewhere close. The other guy asked if it was at a safe house and he replied that it was the safest there was in London. Said no other country could touch it.”

  “That certainly describes a building cloaked in diplomatic immunity,” Russell said.

  “Your guy specialize in poison?” Scariano asked Russell.

  “No. He’s a mid-level software tech in the drone program stateside.”

  Scariano frowned. “Does he have access to passwords?”

  “I hate to say it, but yes. I understand that they’ve been changed as a precaution.”

  Scariano pointed at the screens across the room. “Let’s just hope changing them is enough. Can you imagine the destruction if a drone carrying missiles targeted civilian towns?”

  After having just witnessed the drone strike, Russell didn’t want to consider the possibility.

  “It would be devastating. But is this vague information enough to justify a search-and-rescue mission on the Saudi embassy? What if they’re truly hammering some terrorist that poisoned their diplomat? Torture is wrong, to be sure, but I’m not sure it justifies us going in guns blasting. And if we find him and claim outrage we’ll look like hypocrites after our own rendition activities.”

  Scariano snorted. “You’d better not ignore it. If there’s even a chance that they’re holding a drone software guy you can be sure they’re working on him to hack the system. Problem is, I don’t see how the CIA could run a mission to get him. Going into Pakistan to get bin Laden was one thing; he was in a private home. If a CIA operative was caught infiltrating an embassy building the outcry would be enormous.”

  At this comment Russell laughed out loud. “You just told me we’re bugging the hell out of them! So basically we’ve already infiltrated them.”

  Scariano grinned. “I told you that we’ve tried to bug them. We’ve only been successful at a handful of embassies worldwide, and most of those are located in New York. This particular embassy has eluded our microphones. But running a mission inside an embassy using a government-s
anctioned CIA crew? That’s not a good idea.”

  The crew won’t be governmentally sanctioned, Russell thought. Instead she changed the focus. “What I can’t figure out is to what end? The Saudis don’t love us, this I know, but they’re not our worst enemy by far. What could they have to gain by angering one of their biggest buyers of oil?”

  Tresome looked up from the screen. “I can answer that. They’re furious that we’ve opened a dialogue with Iran. It’s the first time in thirty years that we have, and the Saudis want us to stop. What better way to sour the talks than to redirect a U.S. drone to strike at an Iranian town? Problem solved.”

  And a new, devastating war begun, Russell thought.

  24

  Darkanin watched Yang on his computer monitor as the other man gave a series of explanations about the upcoming hack of the U.S. drone program. When he was finished, Darkanin took a sip of his cognac.

  “So can you do it or not?” Darkanin asked.

  Yang frowned. Or at least Darkanin thought he did. Yang’s inscrutability when under pressure was a quality that Darkanin would have loved to cultivate for himself.

  “You’ve only given me half of the required passwords. The other half is missing.”

  Darkanin nodded. “You knew that going in. My partner told us from the beginning that no one person had the complete key to access as an administrator. The full password lies with several people.”

  “So kidnap the rest.”

  Darkanin shook his head. “That’s impossible. I understood that if you received a portion of the access codes you would be able to hack the rest. Was I wrong? Or was that little show you gave me in Shanghai just that? A show?”

  Yang inhaled deeply, which was the only indication Darkanin had that he was angry.

  “Not at all. That was surveillance footage and proof that we can hack into the basic video functions. What the passwords will get us, though, is the ability to actually navigate the drones. Take over the dashboard and block the military pilots completely.”