The Geneva Strategy

  “You’re giving him a unibrow?” Ruby said.

  Maje nodded. “I learned the trick from an Irish Traveler I met in Sheffield. He said it helps to block those software programs that the police use to match your face from the CCTV photos.”

  “Facial recognition programs,” Smith said.

  “Exactly. My friend said they search here.” Maje waved her finger in a circle at the center of her face. “And they measure the distance between eyebrows. Usually I would put a lock of hair there, but yours is too short.” She sat back and handed Smith a mirror. A bearded, dark-haired man with heavy eyebrows and blazing-blue eyes stared back at him.

  “My eyes jump out.”

  “It’s the contrast of dark and light. You would need brown contact lenses to change them and my little bag of tricks doesn’t go that far,” Maje said.

  “What about some sunglasses?”

  Maje shook her head. “Not indoors. They’ll only make you look like you have something to hide. Now, here’s what you do. You drive into the station and onto the shuttle. When you leave the car you keep your hat on and your head bowed over your phone. Keep those eyes lowered. I know a family that works the tunnel. I’ll call ahead and give them your description. If they see anything that looks dicey at the entrance they’ll wave you off.”

  “And in Calais?”

  “The same only in reverse.”

  Maje stood. “I’ll be going now.”

  Smith stood with her, reached into his pocket, removed his wallet, and handed her one hundred pounds. “Thank you,” he said.

  Maje seemed pleased with the amount. “Be safe on your travels.” She patted Ruby on the arm and left. Ruby watched him with a somber look on her face.

  “Are you sure that you aren’t in trouble with the law?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll walk you to the car.”

  “Not a good idea. We might be picked up on camera.”

  “Don’t worry. The first thing we did when we came here was break them. There are no cameras. Let’s go.”

  Smith followed her out of the camper and they strolled side by side to his car. When they reached it he took out four hundred pounds, picked up her hand, and placed it in her palm. She looked down at the money then up at him and a flash of humor lit her eyes.

  “Aren’t you worried that someone will see this and think I’m running the Sexy Young Woman scam?”

  He smiled back. “I don’t care. It’s for you and the kids. Keep them in school.”

  Her smile fled. She reached up, grabbed his lapel, pulled him down, and kissed him full on the mouth, snaking her tongue between his lips in a slow caress. Despite all the danger around him he felt himself responding and he kissed her back. After a moment she stepped away and said something in her language.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “May you remain with God,” she said.

  “And you as well,” he replied. She nodded and he climbed into the car. The sun was rising as he drove away.

  45

  Smith was through the passport checkpoint and headed to the long, low-slung building that housed the car transport shuttle when a crowd of teenagers surrounded his car. The oldest of them, a boy of about eighteen, rapped on the driver’s-side window.

  “You Smith?” he said when Smith had lowered the window.

  “I am.”

  “Maje sent us. Don’t go in there. She said…”

  “—Let’s not have this conversation here. You climb in and send the others away.”

  The boy waved off the crowd and joined Smith in the car. Smith turned out of the line and idled in a far corner.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Pilar.”

  “Okay, what did you see?”

  “There’s a man walking around holding a picture of you and some woman and shoving it in the face of everyone he meets asking if they’ve seen you. He’s wearing a BTP uniform but I know them all and he ain’t one.”

  “What’s a BTP?”

  “British Transport Police.”

  “Maybe he’s a part-timer?”

  Pilar gave an emphatic shake of his head. “No way. He’s a fake. And the guy has the weirdest, deadest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  Smith gave Pilar forty pounds. “Get the others and leave here. Now. And don’t come back for a couple of days. You understand?”

  Pilar pocketed the money and nodded. “That’s no problem. I want to stay as far away from him as possible.” He was out of the car and gone.

  Smith turned the car and began a slow drive out of the transport area. In his rearview mirror he saw a man in uniform step out into the morning sun. In his hand he held a piece of paper. Smith didn’t stay to see any more, but instead reversed his commute and drove back onto the motorway toward Margate.

  His phone rang twenty minutes later. He let it go to voicemail. When he listened, he heard it was Russell. He called her back.

  “What happened?”

  “We’ve got trouble.” Smith listened while she laid out the facts that pointed toward a mole.

  “Who do you think you can trust?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. And Detmar is here and injured. Can you get back to us and prepare a field dressing for her?”

  “On my way,” Smith said. “Is it safe for you to retrieve some items from the center without detection? Would make the dressing easier.”

  “Yes. What do you need?” Smith listed the supplies for her and hit the motorway at the fastest speed he could without triggering a camera.

  After an hour of driving into the English countryside, he pulled to the side of the road and found Beckmann leaning against a black sedan, smoking. Russell stood next to him. Smith saw no sign of Detmar. Russell pushed off the car and came to greet him. He watched her face as she took in his newly acquired beard and unibrow.

  “That’s an interesting look. I hope the costume shop didn’t have a camera.”

  “It came courtesy of an actor’s makeup kit. Where’s Detmar?”

  “In the backseat.”

  “Is she stable?”

  Russell nodded. “I think so. She thinks the bullet went right through her side. We were waiting for you. Half a mile from here is a second CIA safe house. Empty. No staff and a lockbox that will provide the keys.”

  “I thought you were concerned about a mole.”

  “I am, so I won’t call it in until the last minute. Whoever the mole is he’ll have no lead time to get someone there. At least, not right away. With any luck we’ll be able to use it as an operating theater for you for an hour at least before we have to leave.”

  “Not ideal, but let’s go. I’ll follow.”

  The road ended at the entrance of a modest, two-story house with a pitched roof and the air of a second home closed for the season. Russell punched in a code at the gate and the lock buzzed and sprang open. She walked the fence wide to allow Beckmann and Smith to drive through. Russell headed to the front door while Beckmann came around to the sedan’s passenger side. Detmar emerged, leaning heavily on him with her arm flung over his neck. She wore loose-fitting men’s sweatpants and a men’s white undershirt that hiked up on the side where she clung to Beckmann. The cotton flapped in the slight breeze, revealing a large piece of gauze wrapped around her waist. Without her cocktail attire and makeup and in the baggy, oversized clothes she looked less sophisticated and more vulnerable. Her skin was pale and her face set in pain. She spotted him and gave a wan smile.

  “We meet again. Did you burn the tires?”

  “Yes sir,” he said. She rewarded him with a slightly wider smile and he walked to her free side and held her up while they ascended a short two steps into the house. The interior was a standard split with a living and dining area on one side, a small home office on the other, a stairwell in front to the right that led upstairs, and a hall down the center that presumably led to the back of the house.

  “No stairs. It’ll hurt too much,” Detmar said. r />
  They kept moving down the hall. It opened into a large room with a kitchen on one side, a breakfast nook in a bay window overlooking the backyard, and a family seating area opposite with a couch, a chair, and a cocktail table facing a television and media center.

  “Let’s go to the couch,” Smith said. “Russell, can you look in the bathroom for some towels? We’ll put them underneath her to protect it from blood.” Russell jogged back through the hall and he heard her feet on the carpeted stairs. A minute or two later she returned and placed a large white bath towel on the couch. They lowered Detmar onto it and Smith heard her sigh in relief.

  Smith unwound the gauze, which was sticky with blood. When he reached the end it clung to the wound and he heard Detmar’s sharp intake of breath.

  “Sorry, but this has to come off.” She nodded and he worked the gauze free.

  An examination showed that the bullet had not entered her torso at the front and exited the back as she thought, but instead had nicked the fleshy part of her waist. There was a lot of blood, but if they kept the wound clean he expected her to make a full recovery. While Smith worked to clean the wound with antiseptic he thought of Arden’s comment that Detmar was a point of connection between the two of them. He watched the time as he worked, ever aware that they were racing against the clock. He covered the wound with a breathable bandage and rewrapped it lightly with another long strip of gauze.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said. She nodded. “And I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you some questions.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Beckmann turn from his post at a back window to look at them.

  Detmar’s attention focused. “Okay. Can you help me sit up? This sounds serious and I’d rather answer from an upright position.”

  Smith assisted her to a sitting position and Russell walked over and handed her a glass of water.

  “Who assigned you the embassy party detail?”

  “My supervisor at the CIA.”

  “Here in England?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m a member of the joint CIA-NSA project at Croughton.”

  “I was just there,” Russell said. “Do you work for Scariano on the drone program?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m with the SCS.”

  “What’s that?” Smith asked.

  “The Special Collection Services. We manage the covert surveillance and collect information for the Stateroom program. I was in charge of the Saudi embassy.”

  “Who else knows about Stateroom?”

  Detmar took a sip of water.

  “Well, the NSA heads, of course, and the CIA. Probably the director of national intelligence, since they do the president’s daily briefing.”

  “Was your attendance at the cocktail party a routine procedure?”

  “No. We were there in case Katherine Arden changed her mind and decided to attend.”

  Smith exchanged a glance with Russell. “What’s so interesting about Arden? I mean, beyond her crusade for human rights.”

  “I’m actually not sure. I just got the word that she was to be watched at all times. The directive came from NSA central headquarters in Fort Meade, which was unusual because we generally operate with a fair amount of independence.”

  “Who sent the directive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Beckmann stepped closer. “Have you heard of any intel that would give us assistance in finding Nick Rendel?”

  “I don’t know that name.”

  “How can you not? He’s one of the kidnapped Department of Defense officials that the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and CIA are all racing to find. I would think Croughton would have been put on notice at the very least, because he’s intimately involved with the drone program.”

  “Out of Croughton?”

  “No. Out of Nevada.”

  She shook her head. “You presume too much. We have our small pocket of the intelligence world and we focus on that exclusively. We spy on embassies, tap phones, and implement drone strikes out of Djibouti. We don’t run search-and-rescue missions.”

  Smith watched Detmar closely. Officers were trained in how to give safe answers to probing interrogations, but he thought that she was actually telling the truth. She was assigned to a party to watch a certain person and so she went. In the distance he heard a buzzing noise. Russell pulled out her weapon and went to the bay window to watch the yard.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A drone,” Russell said. “Looks like our mole found us already.”

  46

  Beckmann joined Russell at the window.

  “You sure it’s a drone? Could be a kid flying a radio-controlled plane.”

  “Could be, but I doubt it. We’re only a few miles from Croughton and they run a drone program.”

  “No, they don’t,” Detmar said from the couch. “At least not here. As I said, they operate in conjunction with our base in Djibouti.”

  “Agreed, but what’s to stop them from flying drones here? Do they have any?”

  Detmar tried to rise and Smith helped her up. “They have several, of all sizes. But they’re not supposed to fly them, just repair them.” She leaned on Smith.

  “Maybe they’re testing a repair,” Beckmann said.

  “Not this far from base. Airspace rules don’t allow it.”

  The buzzing noise grew louder. Smith felt his anxiety rising as the sound increased. He had an overwhelming feeling of dread.

  “Is anybody else concerned that we’re holed up in a safe house that could be targeted by a mole and we hear the unprecedented sound of an incoming drone?”

  “Let’s get away from the window,” Russell said. She and Beckmann joined Smith and Detmar in the center of the room. Beckmann removed his gun from its holster. Russell looked at her watch. “We’ve been here thirty-two minutes. Fast work.”

  “There’s no way it’s a drone from Croughton,” Detmar said. “New CIA rules since the whistleblower leaks don’t allow the agency to use drones in civilian airspace or in targeted assassinations.”

  “Well, someone didn’t get the memo,” Smith said. “Let’s go. Back to the car.”

  Before they could move, an object the shape and size of a sewer cover came into view over the tops of the trees at the end of the yard. Smith could see the guns mounted at the base. Russell dove over the couch as it fired and the back window shattered. The drone shot upward out of the line of sight. Beckmann hustled down the hallway.

  “I’ll shoot while you guys head to the car. When you get there drive the hell out of here,” he said.

  Smith pulled Detmar’s hand over his neck, yanked the bloody towel off the couch, and hauled her toward the front door with Russell right behind them, walking backward and watching for another glimpse of the drone. He heard the buzzing noise from somewhere overhead and stopped in the hall entrance. Beckmann waved them backward and began a slow walk to the door. The buzzing increased and he dodged into the living area. Gunshots cracked and the sidelight windows around the front door broke as bullets flew through them.

  “Back into the family room,” Russell said. Detmar removed her arm from around Smith’s neck.

  “I’m okay to run. Just stay close in case we have to climb.” They reassembled in the family room.

  “Hide behind the side of that couch,” Russell said and Detmar did as she was told. Beckmann backed into the room.

  “How many bullets did Lawrence have in his belly-mounted magazine? Do you remember?” he asked Russell.

  “Four. But his motor was small and he ran on batteries, so he had limited capacity both to hover and fire. This drone seems to be larger.”

  Beckmann stood at the bay window’s edge watching the sky above him.

  “Detmar, do you have any idea of the flight time of the drones at Croughton? The small ones?”

  “Forty-five minutes at the outside before they needed a recharge. And none of them were equipped w
ith more than twelve rounds. More and they became too heavy.”

  Russell consulted her watch. “I don’t hear it anymore and it’s been circling us for almost twelve minutes. I presume that it took ten to fly here and requires at least ten to fly back. We should try to make a run for the cars again.”

  “It’s a risk,” Beckmann said. “But I agree. Let’s not wait here for the next one to arrive.”

  Detmar wrapped her hands around the arm of the couch and pulled herself upright. Smith stepped up next to her and held out his hand, but she waved him off. She limped toward the front door, where Beckmann was waiting. Smith grabbed Russell’s arm as she walked past, holding her in place.

  “Wait a moment,” he said in a low voice.

  Russell nodded.

  “I think you need to isolate Detmar. Keep her out of the loop.”

  Russell flicked a glance at Detmar’s back before responding. “You think she’s funneling information to the mole?”

  “I’m not sure, but Arden identified her as the point of intersection between Arden and me.”

  “Okay, that’s interesting. Any others?”

  “Darkanin. The CEO of Bancor Pharma.”

  “Big difference between the relative power of those two players. Bancor retains massive military government contracts. They provide most of the medicines and personnel at our bases worldwide. Taking out a relatively minor CIA officer in an obscure position seems to be far too minor a play for them. And to what end? She’s a non-entity.”

  “I agree. Detmar is expendable, but she also has a direct link to the CIA and potentially all of our movements. We need to split up and someone needs to keep an eye on her. Misdirect her.”

  “Are you coming?” Beckmann’s voice held a note of impatience.

  “We split up and whoever goes with her draws the short straw. Either she finds a way to call them for help or she never was the informer, but now the mole knows that she’s with us and has seen too much. Either way, the one minding her is at greater risk.”

  Smith saw the logic in Russell’s thinking. “Then we keep her close and watch her. No access to phones or any other devices.” Russell nodded and jogged up to Beckmann.