Jack walked east on the narrow pedestrian lane past the Orthodox church, then turned left for half a block until he bumped into the wider pedestrian street, Ferhadija. It was lined on either side with restaurants and shops, with quite a few wares on tables and stands along the walkway. Jack wandered along with the crowds of tourists, stopping occasionally to inspect a few places, half looking for presents for his mother and younger siblings, half conducting an SDR—surveillance detection route. Kolak had said he wouldn’t put a tail on him, but Jack wasn’t exactly the trusting type. The incident with the Romanian woman still had him on edge as well.
Most of the wares Jack found in the shops were touristy knickknacks: gauzy scarves, bronze teapots, postcards, beaded purses. He checked the labels, expecting to see MADE IN CHINA stamped everywhere, but in this part of the world, Turkey had the corner on cheap stuff.
A few minutes later he found himself back at the fountain on the corner of the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, where people were still lapping up the cool water with their cupped hands. There were more hijabs and fully covered women here, and bearded men in traditional garb, than he’d seen anywhere else in the city.
He walked past the open gate of the mosque grounds and caught a glance of men and women segregated on either side of the elevated, rug-covered porch, praying on the outside. Still others in the courtyard were washing their feet before putting their shoes in the tall cubbies farther up. Clearly there were more tourists than worshippers entering the compound. A large knot of Russians wearing earphones listened to their guide yammering into a microphone, leading them through the gate. Jack followed them in.
The same smooth, tightly fitted stones on the walkway led him into the wide but modest courtyard. As a Catholic, Jack wasn’t completely sure how he felt about this place. The men and women praying up front seemed sincere enough, and God alone knew when Jack had last been in a church to pray.
On the other hand, he thought about the long and troubled history between his faith and theirs, a history too often characterized by blood and death. The European Crusades were a counterattack against the invading Islamic armies that swept throughout the Middle East and deep into the heart of Europe.
But that was ancient history, as a sign nailed to a tree in the courtyard confirmed. The sign displayed a stylized drone with a red slash through it, wordlessly proclaiming: “No drones.”
Jack smiled at the anachronism and headed back out of the gate toward his destination.
32
Jack crossed through the pigeon-jammed and tourist-crowded square of the Sebilj, an eighteenth-century wooden fountain, beautifully carved and topped with a metal dome like a mosque. He waited at the light for the sea of cars and buses to pass before crossing the street and back out into the bustling part of town. He walked past eclectic styles of buildings: some Western European–inspired, others more Mediterranean, and still others unremarkably modern and utilitarian. Sadly, most were marred by graffiti.
He followed his Google Maps directions until he reached a bus-wide alley and turned in, walking past a few storefronts and restaurants to a courtyard and the glass doors of the building he was searching for: the Happy Times! Balkan Tours office.
A bell hanging on the door tinkled as Jack entered the tiny lobby. A young woman with dirty-blond hair stood behind the counter, glasses perched on her nose. She glanced up from a book she was reading at the sound of the bell.
Could it be her?
“Dober dan,” the woman said. Smile lines radiated against her soft brown eyes.
Nope. Not her.
“Are you here for the two-o’clock tour?” she asked.
“Afraid not. I’m here to see Aida Curić.”
The woman frowned. “I’m sorry. She is not here at the moment.”
“Is there a way I can reach her? It’s important.”
Her frown hardened. “Excuse me, please.”
The woman disappeared behind a closed door and shut it behind her. Jack heard muffled voices. A moment later, it swung open and a man appeared. He was short and athletically built, with sparkling, dark eyes and an infectious, bearded smile.
“May I help you, sir?” Emir asked.
“I’m looking for Aida Curić.”
“She is not here at the moment. Is there something I can help you with? Arrange a private tour, perhaps?”
“No, nothing like that. I’d just like to speak with her.”
“What do you want to talk to her about, may I ask?”
“It’s private.”
Emir’s eyes narrowed like a cobra’s just before a strike, his smile frozen.
“She’s not here today, but I can leave a message for her.”
“When will she be back?”
“I don’t know.”
Jack wasn’t sure why this guy had his back up, but he figured he’d better change tactics. He pulled out his wallet and handed him a business card. “Honestly, it’s no big deal. I leave town tomorrow. A friend of mine asked me to look her up and to give her a letter.”
Emir studied the card. “You can leave the letter with me if you like.”
Jack forced a smile. “I appreciate that. It’s just that I have to make sure it’s really her. That’s why I need to meet her.”
“I will give her your card and your message. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, but thanks for your time.”
The sparkling shine returned to Emir’s eyes.
“Of course. We are here for you, anytime.”
Jack could feel the smaller man’s gaze boring into the back of his skull as he headed out the door.
“Swing and a miss,” Jack whispered to himself. Number five of twenty-three was probably a no-hitter. Time to push on.
He pulled out his phone to call the next Aida on the list, hoping for the best.
TRIESTE, ITALY
Dom called ahead to Lisanne after forwarding Iliescu’s address to her, a hotel in Trieste, asking her to book a room for Adara and him at the same place, ideally on the same floor as the Romanian’s.
“I guess I’ll be sleeping in the van,” Midas said with a wink after Dom hung up.
“We won’t be spending the night. Just need the room reservation for cover. Besides, you Ranger guys are tough. I’d bet a night in a van wouldn’t be the worst place you ever slept.”
“Not by a long shot,” Midas said, and laughed.
Dom directed the retired colonel to take them back to the FBO hangar and the Gulfstream. The airport was on the way to the city center, where the hotel was located. Besides the pistols and ammo they had stored in well-hidden shielded storage lockers, the Hendley Associates aircraft possessed several hidden items of particular use on field ops. Dom needed to grab one of them, and he called ahead to Lisanne to retrieve it. When they arrived, Lisanne greeted them at the hangar door.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I did a little research,” Lisanne said. “You’re in luck. Your hotel uses Onity locks.”
“Damn lucky.”
“I downloaded Gavin’s Onity program into the Arduino microcontroller. It’s ready to go.”
“Thanks.”
Dom shouted a greeting to the two Gulfstream pilots on the way to the cabin ladder. First Officer Chester “Country” Hicks and the captain, Helen Reid, were cleaning up at the open sink in the maintenance bay after performing a thorough inspection of the aircraft.
“Where to next?” Reid asked.
“No telling where or when,” Dom said. “I hope you guys brought a deck of playing cards.”
Hicks laughed. “Never leave home without ’em.”
Dom followed Lisanne into the cabin. The item Dom had requested sat on the polished rosewood table in a plastic case about the size of a paperback, along with three holstered SIG Sauer P938 Micro-Compact nine-millimeter pistols and extra mags. The
single-stacked, 6 + 1 SIGs were built for concealed carry, not combat operations, but were handy enough in a pinch. Better a peashooter in the pocket than a .45 in the truck, his twin brother, Brian, had always said.
Where did that come from? Dom asked himself. Man, he missed that guy. Dead for too many years.
Dom snatched up the plastic case Lisanne had retrieved but passed on the weapons.
“I’m not expecting any trouble. Besides, if we get pulled over for any reason, we’ll be on the dry-pasta-and-tap-water diet for the next five years if we’re caught with those things.”
“I thought you Italians liked pasta,” Adara said.
“I do, with candlelight and violins in a fine restaurant, not in some graybar hotel.”
“Your call,” Lisanne said. “Just giving you options. One more thing.” She pulled out two wheeled suitcases and set them in the aisle.
“For the two of you. If you’re checking in, you need to look the part.”
“Good thinking.” Dom checked his watch. “We gotta roll.”
* * *
—
Midas parked the van on a side street just off the wide and stately Piazza Unità d’Italia, near the small boutique hotel.
Dom and Adara showed their passports to the vivacious thirtysomething Italian woman behind the counter, the spray of freckles on her pretty face a perfect complement to her mop of brown curly hair tied off in a fashionable pink bow. In flawless English she gave them instructions about their room and informed them about the magnificent buffet breakfast available tomorrow morning. Dom’s mouth watered as she described it, saddened to know he wouldn’t have the chance to partake. As they left the lobby, they heard the woman on the phone chatting in crisp German.
Unfortunately, their room was booked two floors above Iliescu’s, but at this time of day, and with the perfect weather, nobody seemed to be around anyway. Inside the small but well-appointed room, Dom broke open the small plastic case and removed Gavin’s device, slipping it into his coat pocket.
Moments later, with Adara standing guard, Dom gently knocked on Iliescu’s door. No response. Good.
He removed the device from his pocket and slipped the socket connector into the magnetic lock’s DC rechargeable power socket, and in less than a second the Arduino microcontroller, loaded with Gavin’s capture software, grabbed the lock’s own stored key code and opened it.
“Voilà,” Dom said, pushing the door open with his shirtsleeve to avoid leaving prints. He was careful to leave the multilingual “Do Not Disturb” door hanger in place as well. He nodded to Adara. “After you.”
Adara brushed past him and into Iliescu’s room as Dom pocketed the lock-picking device and shut the door quietly behind them. He wasn’t sure if the hotel monitored the door locks of its guests to keep track of room occupancy for the maid service. He hoped not.
Judging by the condition of the room, he thought it had been ransacked. Empty liquor bottles, unmade bed, dirty clothes on the floor. But apparently Iliescu was just a slob.
“I’ll check the bathroom and closets,” Adara said, snapping on a pair of gloves.
Dom was pulling on his gloves, too, nodding at the bedposts. “Note the silk ropes affixed to each bedpost, counselor.” He pointed at a collection of male prosthetics on the nightstand. “And for your edification, please observe—”
“Gross. Let’s get on with it. I’m getting the willies.”
“So did she, apparently.” Dom smiled.
“Double gross.”
Fifteen minutes later, they had scoured every corner, drawer, shelf, and container.
Nothing.
No weapons, no electronics, no clues.
“Not even a secret decoder ring,” Dom said.
“Now what?”
Dom glanced around the room and thought of another tasteless joke, but the serious look on Adara’s face told him to cool his jets. They were a committed, fun-loving couple when they weren’t at work, but out in the field she was all business. That was part of their deal. Her work ethic was just one of the reasons she got promoted to field operative from the position Lisanne now occupied so skillfully.
Instead he offered, “Let’s get back to our room and call Gavin. Maybe he’s got an idea.”
* * *
—
Back in their room, Dom and Adara called Midas, then the three of them jumped on a conference call with Gavin and Gerry on Adara’s encrypted phone. Dom laid out the dead-end situation they now found themselves in.
“Gavin, I had this crazy idea. You pulled up Iliescu’s flight schedule, so we know the cities she’s been to. Any chance we could collate a list of those cities from the last year with a list of unsolved killings and suicides that occurred within seven days of her arrival?”
“Yeah, sure. But it would take a while. Problem is, people die every day in big cities. Even if we placed her in temporal proximity to some of those deaths, we wouldn’t know which ones she might be connected to. We’d be pushing on a string.”
They batted around several more ideas, all of them leading to more dead ends. It was possible to trace Iliescu’s movements, but that didn’t get them closer to linking her to the Iron Syndicate, or to the reason for the attempt on Jack’s life.
Exasperated, Midas asked Gerry, “You said we had some intel from MI6 on the Iron Syndicate. Some guy on the board of a company connected to those jokers?”
“That’s right.”
“Any chance we can get hold of that guy? Shake his tree a little bit?”
“There’s too big of a chance we’d be pissing into the Brits’ punch bowl,” Gerry said. “Who knows where their investigation is or how they got that intel. We might be compromising one of their sources.”
“So how about we read them in on what’s going on? Get them to shoulder some of this weight?”
“Technically, MI6 doesn’t know we exist, so I’d have to go through official channels. Mary Pat Foley, most likely. But if Gavin’s right, the Brits don’t know anything more than we do at this point, and blowing this thing up into an international incident without anything to go on is only going to cause more problems without solving any of them.”
“Why not just order Jack back home? At least we can protect him here,” Gavin asked.
“Jack’s due to fly back tomorrow anyway. He’s pretty good about protecting himself. Besides, he’s determined to finish what he’s started.”
“And even if we get him home, there’s no way to keep Jack safe short of locking him up,” Dom said. “And that ain’t gonna happen.”
Midas chimed in again. “What we need is the long-term solution: find these Iron Syndicate bastards and take them out.”
“Agreed,” Gerry said. “Easier said than done for an enemy we can’t identify or locate or, in fact, confirm even exists.
“Gavin, is there any way you can take that list of known cities Iliescu has visited, and try to figure out some kind of pattern of movement? Maybe she’s on a circuit, making regular stops at certain times of the year? Coordinate that with her bank deposits? That sort of thing.”
“It’s worth a try. I’ll get right on it.”
“And I’ll keep thinking about the MI6 piece. There might be something to that. I just need to figure out what it is and how to go about it.”
“What about us?” Dom asked. “What can we do?”
“Sit tight, put up your feet. We won’t be sending you back out until tomorrow at the earliest. Trieste is a beautiful little city. Go enjoy it. I’ll be in touch.”
The conference call ended. Dom reached into his pocket and handed the key card to Midas. “You keep the room. We’ll take the van and grab the others and find somewhere to stay.”
Midas shoved the key card back into Dom’s hand. “No way, kid. You two relax. Uncle Midas will take care of the rest.”
Adara started to protest, but Midas cut her off.
“I know. You’re both pros. But tonight, you’re off duty. So take advantage of it while you can. In our line of work, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.”
33
PANČEVO, SERBIA
Serbian troopers fast-roped from the Mil Mi-8 “Hip” single-rotor helicopter hovering low over the ministry building as the gunfire chattered throughout the seven floors beneath.
The chopper roared away as the last pair of boots hit the roof. On the street below, the first captives emerged from the front entrance, prodded forward by short-barreled AKS-74Us of the civilian-clad Serbian special ops fighters.
The captain in charge of the building assault radioed in over the speakers on the observation deck. “Objective achieved, Colonel!”
Lieutenant Colonel Maksimović, the commander of the Serbian 63rd Parachute Battalion, picked up his comms. “Well done, Captain. Congratulate your boys for me. We’ll muster in fifteen minutes for a debrief, and prep the exercise again.”
“Yes, sir!”
The tall Serbian colonel was genuinely pleased. The exercise couldn’t have gone any better. That was fortunate, given the two Russian officers standing next to him watching the live video feeds.
Colonel Smolov, HoRF—Hero of the Russian Federation—commanded the Russian 45th Guards VDV (Airborne) Detached Spetsnaz Brigade. A distinguished combat veteran, Smolov was also in charge of the Slavic Sword and Shield training exercise today.
As part of the Special Brigade of the Serbian Army, the 63rd was one of the elite Serbian Spetsnaz units, a mirror image of the Russian 45th Guards. Not only was the Russian commander a personal hero of the Serbian colonel, but the Serbian’s future military career depended upon today’s evaluation by Smolov.