Walker nodded distractedly. “I really did need to go to the toilet.” And he stepped out through the door.
Terry Walker returned to his office suite moments later, followed by the Canadian security man. Limonov barely looked up as he entered the office, but Kozlov followed him from the reception area.
Standing in the doorway, Kozlov barked, “What took you so long?”
“I was in the loo. You figure it out.”
The Russian stepped forward quickly and grabbed the small Australian by the back of his neck. He squeezed tightly. “What were you doing?”
“Do I have to fucking spell it out for you?”
Kozlov turned to the Canadian. “Were you with him in the toilet?”
“No, but I searched it, and I stayed just outside.”
Kozlov pointed to their prisoner. “Search him. Search every inch of his body.” He turned away, stormed out into the hall toward the bathroom. As he moved he drew his gun and held it down by his leg.
The security men pushed Terry Walker against the wall roughly, unsure what the problem was, but unquestioning in their compliance to their client. As men lifted Walker’s shirt and yanked down his pants, he looked toward the door to the hallway, terrified Kozlov would find the American in the bathroom. His stomach clenched and he wondered if he would pass out from the terror.
Walker turned to Limonov. The Russian was typing an e-mail on his notebook computer, barely paying attention. The Australian said, “Your friend is completely mental, you must know that.”
Limonov did not look up from his work. “He’s not my friend, but otherwise you are correct.”
Kozlov opened the door to the office again, looked to the two men who were finishing stripping Walker down. He had holstered his weapon. “Anything?”
“He’s clean, boss.”
As Walker put his clothes back on, Kozlov pointed to the security officer who’d escorted Walker to the bathroom. “From now on you stand with him in the bathroom at all times. Is that clear?”
The Canadian contractor said, “Whatever you say, sir.”
Kozlov went back into the little lobby of the office and sat down on the sofa.
Limonov called out to Walker, “Time for another trade, Terry.”
It had taken Clark almost an hour to defeat security cameras and pick locks in the building early this morning, and he wouldn’t have been able to manage it without Gavin Biery’s help from Alexandria. And now that he was finished with his meeting, he would have to wait hours more, till the end of the business day, before he could get out of here.
He knelt in the back of a janitor’s closet, just twenty-five feet from the bathroom and deeper in the building. He’d brought with him two bottles of water and a Snickers bar, not really expecting to spend the entire day inside the building, but wanting to be lightly equipped if he had to. But Gavin had texted him not long after he arrived, letting him know that two security guards had shown up in the front lobby, and he could find no escape route visible on the hacked CCTV that looked clear.
Even this wouldn’t have been a problem if this office building received clients like most every other office building in the world. But Gavin had been reporting throughout the day that this was the deadest commercial space he’d ever watched during its hours of operation. Other than the people who worked there, virtually no one had come or gone.
Clark settled in for the long wait, and then he sent a text to Gavin and another to Jack, telling them both what he had just learned. He might have to sit here for another three hours before he could return to his boat, but that didn’t mean his two colleagues couldn’t work remotely to start looking into the kidnapping.
He didn’t really know what they would be able to accomplish up there, but Clark liked his chances, whenever he did get out of here. If the Walkers were on a boat and the boat was still here in the BVIs, Clark knew exactly where he needed to start his hunt to find them.
47
Chavez, Caruso, and Herkus Zarkus stood on the roof of a high school assembly hall in the town of Pabradė, looking out to the east at the Belarusan border in the distance. They took pictures of the farmland between their position and the border from three different points of the roof, pleasing the men greatly because they got to check three more objectives off their list without having to load up the vehicle and drive to a new location each time.
The two Americans were now more convinced than ever that the work they were doing was in support of a military defense of Lithuania. It seemed odd to them that the director of national intelligence would be the one sending them here, or that they would go at all, as the Defense Department had its own intelligence service that normally did these sorts of things.
Still, Dom Caruso and Ding Chavez weren’t complaining about the technical collection work. It gave them the opportunity to get a feel for the area.
Dom had joked dryly earlier, when he was certain Herkus was out of earshot, that the work they did now might help CIA operations behind the “New Iron Curtain” in the future. Both men knew the ground they walked on could easily be Russian territory in a matter of days, just as the ground they walked on in the Crimea a year earlier was now as much a part of Russia as was Red Square.
They finished their precision imagery, climbed down off the roof of the high school, and waved thanks to a really confused but compliant building supervisor.
As they were packing up the van to go to the next location, the phone in Chavez’s pocket chirped.
“Chavez.”
“This is Greg Donlin, Branyon’s PPA.”
Chavez remembered meeting CoS Pete Branyon’s personal protection agent the week before when the chief of station dropped in on their safe house. “Hey, Greg. You doing okay?”
“I remember you guys offered to help us out in your downtime. I’m hoping that offer still stands.”
“Of course it does. We don’t normally knock off till the light gets too bad to work, usually around seven or so. But if you’re in a jam we can make an exception.”
“This would be at five p.m. Branyon needs to go east this evening, to meet with an agent in a village called Tabariškės. It’s about a half-mile, tops, from the Belarusan border.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. I have tried to dissuade him from his decision, but he says it’s vital. His network in that area is reporting more Little Green Men sightings. He wants to meet with them in person to see what we’re dealing with here.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Might be, but we had a NOC in Tabariškės last night, and he reported it was all clear. We’re not too worried about the town, but the drive down has us a little concerned. Lithuanian police and military presence is light on the road there, it’s just too far off the main highway, and the cops and soldiers around here are stretched thin enough as it is.”
Chavez said, “We’d be happy to escort you guys down, but, as you know, we don’t have any weapons.”
“I’ll fix that. If you come along I’ll hook you up with some bang sticks. One thing, though. Branyon doesn’t want you in Tabariškės village. He is worried about compromising people in his network with strangers showing up. He asks that you guys just follow us down, find a place to park to the west of town, and then wait for us to call and let you know we’re en route back toward Vilnius.”
Chavez asked, “Do you feel safe being Branyon’s only security man while he walks around in this town by the border?”
“Hell, no, I don’t. I’d roll in with an Abrams tank if I was calling the shots, but I’m not.”