Within three minutes of arriving in the apartment, the paramedics were yelling for the police to make a pathway through the dozen or so people standing around so they could get by and back down to their unit.
Jack stood to the side for most of this, but he helped clear out some space in the living room for Ysabel’s stretcher to pass.
Jack started to walk out the door behind the paramedics and the stretcher, but one of the policemen stopped him. He said, “We’ll take you to the hospital, but we have questions.”
“Ask me on the way.” Jack wanted to rush to be by Ysabel’s side, but he also wanted a few minutes to think about his story.
“One moment first. Do you have identification?”
Ryan handed over his actual passport, because he was not traveling undercover here. The police officer looked it over quickly, showing no recognition of the name. “What is the woman’s name?”
“Ysabel. Ysabel Kashani.”
“American, as well?”
“No, Iranian.”
The cop looked up at Ryan. After a moment he said, “This is your apartment?”
“I am renting it, just for a week or two. Did you find the men outside of the apartment?”
“The men? There was just one man. In the elevator.”
Shit, thought Jack. The two less wounded goons managed to get out of the building before the police arrived. Still, at least they had picked up one of the men.
“How is he?”
“He’s dead. Did you shoot him?”
“Me? No, of course not. I was on the phone with Ysabel when she was attacked. I raced over here and found the men outside. Then I found her.” Jack could not have admitted shooting someone without getting detained for a long time. Even if he could convince them he’d taken a weapon from one of the attackers, he knew it would take longer to sort out than he wanted to spend as a guest of the Luxembourg police.
The police officer didn’t seem to buy his story. “There are cameras down in the lobby and in the elevators. One on each floor. We’ll see what happened.”
Jack nodded, then said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Two cops stood outside the bathroom while Jack stumbled in. They were obviously suspicious of him still, though not enough to search him.
In the bathroom he turned the water on, faked a few hacks, then he pulled out his phone and dialed a mobile number in Alexandria, Virginia. Jack held his breath, hoping the man who owned the phone would answer quickly.
To his relief, he heard a voice. “Gavin Biery.”
Ryan hacked loudly again, then whispered, “It’s Ryan. Listen carefully. Five Place de Clairefontaine, I need the security cam footage of the last hour removed from the drive. You have five minutes, tops.”
“How many things can I do for you at one time, Ryan? Hack this art gallery, hack this lawyer, tail this aircraft, erase these cameras. You don’t think I have anything else going on?”
“I just killed a man. The police have me and they are about to watch the footage.”
The pause was short. “Holy shit! I’m on it, Ryan.” He hung up the phone.
Jack hung up as well, flushed the toilet, and left the bathroom.
There was a moment of confusion in the apartment while the police worked out who was going where and with whom, and men started to lock down the crime scene. Violent crime in Luxembourg was rare, rare enough that Jack saw the police weren’t defaulting to any real standard procedure. There was a lot of talking and even a little arguing, all of it in German. Jack took advantage of the moment to go into the kitchen and get a glass of water, and while he did so he saw Ysabel’s purse lying on the counter, its contents strewn all around it.
He ignored the contents and concentrated on the bag itself, began feeling around in the material quickly.
In ten seconds he found it, feeling a small, hard shape in the leather in a place where he could find no button or zipper. He pinched at the material for a moment more, then pulled out a one-inch-long pin with a small black head.
He knew what this was, and he knew how it got there.
32
By the time Jack’s police minders got him to the hospital it had been worked out by the authorities that the man in their control was the son of the U.S. President. Jack explained he was in town working for his company, Hendley Associates, doing some forensic accounting on some potential acquisitions for the private equity firm. Ysabel was a friend who had just arrived for a visit, and she’d obviously stumbled onto a robbery in progress.
The police weren’t sure about anything other than the fact that this crime made their tiny nation look bad, especially because of the high-profile friend of the victim.
The police immediately became deferential to him, but Jack imagined they would change their tune quickly if the handgun at the crime scene was found and dusted for prints, and he refused to give his up.
He wanted to be long gone by then.
Ysabel had been given an MRI to check her head, neck, and torso for any internal injuries. Jack had only just arrived when a doctor came out of an exam room, introduced himself to Jack as a neurosurgeon, and told him that Ysabel was a lucky woman, considering all she’d been through, but she wasn’t out of the woods just yet. A small fracture in a cervical vertebra meant she would need immediate surgery.
Jack went pale. “You are telling me she has a broken neck.”
The doctor gave a sympathetic shrug. “It is something we can repair. There is no damage to her spinal cord.” He patted Jack on the arm. “A one-level cervical fusion is an extremely common procedure. Trust us, Mr. Ryan, we will take good care of her.”
Jack wasn’t next of kin, and the doctors knew this. They were going ahead with the surgery despite any reservations he had. Jack just nodded distantly and sat back down, staring off into space.
He thought about everything he and Ysabel had experienced together over the past month. He felt sick with the thought that after the events in Dagestan that nearly killed them both, he had led her headlong into even more danger.
Ryan’s mobile buzzed in his pocket, bringing him back to the present. He pulled it out distractedly, looked down, and saw the call coming in was from Clark. He launched out of the chair and began to walk away from Ysabel’s room. “Please tell me Gavin got the camera feeds.”
“He did. I just watched the entire event, including you taking out three hostiles. Obviously, I don’t have the context I need to understand what the hell is happening over there.”
“Neither do I, to tell you the truth.”
“Are you secure now?”
“Yeah. I mean, I think so. Might have to slip the police at some point, but they don’t seem too interested in me, considering. I don’t think they have much of a plan to deal with a big gun battle around here. I get the feeling it never happens.”
“How is Ysabel? I saw her removed on a stretcher.”
“They say she’ll live, but she’s being taken in for surgery on her neck.”
“Christ. I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, you need to take it from the top, tell me everything you know.” He paused for a beat, then said, “And I need you to do it right now.”
Jack told him what had happened, and although he had no idea who was responsible, he let Clark know this looked like it could have been related to the work they were doing in Rome. He said, “It’s obvious by the fact they were asking her about me that she wasn’t the real target. I was.”
Clark said, “Any idea how they found your place?”
Ryan said, “Yeah. They used Ysabel to find the location. I found a GPS tracker in her purse. It’s the size of a pushpin. Top-flight tech.”