‘Poor old Mayakovsky. Always in the wrong place. You should have been at the Bourse trying to save your son.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Too bad you’ll never have that reunion. Ten-thirty and—.’ He snapped his fingers in the air. ‘Au revoir, Paris.’
89
New York City
It was twenty minutes since Whistler had put in a call to Langley and he was still on hold. The CIA operative supposedly in charge of Homeland Security Liaison had called in sick and no one had been called to deputise.
‘So much for joined-up intelligence,’ Whistler said to the Vivaldi coming out of his cell phone.
The person who did pick up had to go away and double-check Whistler’s credentials before routing him to a department called Asset Registry. He asked a dreamy-sounding woman called Cheryl for available background on asset codename Solomon and was told that it wasn’t available ‘at this time’.
‘What time would it be available then, Cheryl?’
She snorted. ‘Like never. You don’t have the clearance, Hon.’
Whistler had had enough of being given the run-around. Blackburn had thrown down the gauntlet. What would Whistler say if Blackburn had something? How would it feel to be the one who dismissed him? He often thought of those guys who chose not to follow up on the suspicious trainee pilots who went on to down the Twin Towers. Would he have done the same? Would he want to live with that?
So Whistler did something that was bound to earn him a reprimand. He called Senator Douglis’s office and asked to speak to him. To his amazement he was put straight through.
‘Sir, I’m the agent detailed to follow up on Sergeant Blackburn.’
‘Very good to hear from you, Agent Whistler. How can I help?’
Whistler told him the gist and the Senator said he’d get right on to it. Three minutes later his cellphone chirped. It was the Deputy Director of Homeland Security, a man he had never met.
‘Whistler, you trying to get yourself fired?’
‘Sir, I’d rather be fired for trying to get a question answered than be the one who didn’t ask the question.’
Half an hour passed. Whistler took Blackburn a cup of coffee.
‘I want you to know that I just put my career on the line because of you.’
Blackburn didn’t respond. He was too busy experiencing the first cup of coffee he’d had since this whole nightmare started.
Another half an hour passed and three men he had never seen before came in, accompanied by Whistler’s immediate boss, Dumphrey, red-faced and still in his golfing kit. All three had the same grim expression. The shortest and baldest one carried a large ring binder of ID photos.
‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
‘This better be worth it, Whistler, or you are in so much shit.’ whispered Dumphrey.
90
Paris
‘Okay, okay, okay. Just give me a minute, gentlemen.’
Bulganov was discovering depths of humility he didn’t know he had.
‘Gentlemen, I apologise. We are Russian. We are an excitable people. When we have our falling out — it can be bad. Thank the Lord God no one was armed — thanks to your rigorous security. If you wish me to get the Interior Minister on the phone I will make a personal apology right now.’
The hint that Bulganov had friends in high places stalled them for a moment. But Officer Giraud, Senior Airport Security Officer at Charles De Gaulle, wasn’t one to have rank pulled on him by some fat cat Russian oligarch.
Giraud ignored Bulganov for the moment. He was giving Dima a close look. The man was a mess. He appeared to have dust in his hair. There was a faint smell of urine. He had examined the Iranian passport, heard Bulganov’s quick-witted account of him being a fugitive from the regime. And he wasn’t convinced. Besides, he thought he had seen this face somewhere. He would have to check.
Dima was silently cursing himself for the futile attack on Solomon. Another mistake. He was unravelling. But crowding out all coherent thought was what Solomon had just told him.
He wouldn’t have given up on the Bourse because of the security. Solomon never gave up on anything. Either he had already placed the bomb before the guard was doubled or he had gone in there as part of the guard.
Bulganov was still trying to negotiate.
‘If you would consider, on this occasion making an exception and releasing my man back into my custody, I will be forever indebted to you. .’
Giraud was taking no notice. He was looking at a mugshot image on his iPhone. His eyes suddenly widened. ‘Dima Mayakovsky. You are coming with us.’
91
New York City
The one in charge of the ring binder was Gordon, from the CIA’s New York office. Smaller and fatter than Whistler, but oozing the natural superiority of Langley’s finest.
‘Gentlemen, if you would stand away from the desk when I open the binder, thank you. These are classified images. I don’t need to remind you this is a highly unusual situation we find ourselves in, showing photos of CIA assets to a felon.’
Whistler heard his boss let out an indignant sigh before complying.
Gordon placed the binder on the table in front of Blackburn. They all watched as he turned the pages. There were fifty mug shots in the binder. Blackburn took his time. Despite the coffee, whatever they had sedated him with was still coursing through his system, weighing down his eyelids. He recalled Harker’s turbanned executioner. He remembered the face on the bank security screen. Solomon, the name Al Bashir had uttered with his dying breath. He turned the pages, examining each face one by one.
One of the Homeland guys sighed and glanced at his watch. He was going to take his time. He was going to get this right if it was the last useful thing he ever did.
92
Paris
Nine-thirty. They cuffed Dima and put him in the back of the Renault, between two airport security officers. A third officer sat up front beside the driver. The sun was up. The downtown expressway was filling with rush hour traffic that grudgingly parted at the sound of the siren. Dima closed his eyes. All the better to concentrate. Less than an hour. Solomon had planted the device — or his people had. It could be anywhere in the building. It would have been smuggled in disguised as — what? Some kind of delivery — a container, a box. Something that no one would be surprised by.
Was there more that Rossin knew? If there was, Kroll would find it. The Cargotrak van — had it been used to deliver the bomb to the Bourse? Bernard, Syco, Ramon. How much did they know?
They were headed into the centre. The Eiffel Tower came into view, they tore round the Arc de Triomphe, weaving through the traffic. The driver was enjoying himself. One of the toughs next to Dima told him to ease up, but he didn’t. Dima kept very still, didn’t complain or protest. Always a challenge to keep your guard up when your quarry goes passive. He was saving himself for the right moment. None of them had seatbelts on. That was useful. He had spotted the driver’s firearm in a holster under his right armpit. He watched the road for a moment, when they were closing in on another vehicle. There needed to be some impact. A truck, laden with building materials. Dima took a deep breath to oxygenate himself before putting all the force he could muster into his legs. Lunging forward, he threw his cuffed wrists over the driver’s head and with his knee against the seat he yanked the cuff chain tight, moving his hands back and forth to grind the chain into the man’s neck as he tensed his neck muscles to resist. The driver’s head snapped back and his hands left the wheel. The two guards each side of Dima clawed at him, but a microsecond later the Peugeot ploughed into the truck.