"Wait. And hope we get a break."
THEYdid, twenty minutes later, as they rounded a bend in the river and pulled into the town of Raul Valc. Again Fisher saw the Mercedes' brake lights flash a few times, but this time the turn was done slowly and evenly. A hundred yards back, Fisher could see the Mercedes had stopped at a gas station/convenience store.
"Drive past," Fisher ordered, and Vesa complied.
When the lights of the convenience store disappeared behind them, Fisher said, "Turn right here. Stop." Fisher reached up, toggled off the dome light, and opened his door. He climbed out and pushed his seat back into its fully reclined position. To Vesa he said, "Get back on the highway and keep heading north. Stay five miles under the speed limit. When the Mercedes passes you, wait until it's out of sight, then turn around and come back for me."
"And if they don't pass me? If they take another road?"
"I'll try to let you know. If it happens, get back as fast as possible. Go on, now."
Fisher slammed the door and started walking back to the convenience store.
HEhad no plan and no time to come up with one, so he kept walking, trusting his training and his experience to recognize an opportunity.
The lights of the convenience store appeared ahead. Ten feet before the sidewalk ended at the driveway, Fisher remembered his cap. He took it off and tossed it into the bushes, then turned into the parking lot. He jammed his hands into his coat pockets, hunched his shoulders, and loosened his gait, letting his right foot slap unevenly on the asphalt. The Mercedes was beside one of the pumps. One bodyguard stood pumping gas. The other stood just inside the store's front door. Qaderi was nowhere to be seen.
Fisher could feel two sets of eyes on him, but he ignored them and kept walking, head down, until he reached the door, which he pulled open weakly. He shuffled past the bodyguard and headed toward the self-serve soda pop area. He bumped into a candy bar display and turned to set it straight; in the corner of his eye he saw the guard had turned toward him. His suit coat was unbuttoned and both hands were clasped at his belt. It was a classic ready-gun-hand pose, but Fisher couldn't be sure if the man was armed or simply stood that way out of habit.
Fisher lifted a cup from the stack, stuck it beneath the ice chute, then the soda machine. Somewhere at the rear of the store came the sound of a door opening, then closing. Footsteps clicked on the linoleum. Fisher didn't look up. He took his half-filled cup and shambled to the counter, where he dumped out a handful of euro coins, mumbled something incoherent, then turned and headed for the door. Qaderi was coming down the aisle toward him. Fisher ducked his head and sipped at the straw. The bodyguard took a step toward Fisher, simultaneously blocking and slowing down his principal. To his credit, Qaderi reacted as a good client, taking the hint and pausing behind his guard, who watched until Fisher had pushed through the door and turned right down the sidewalk, past a stack of bundled firewood.
Now,Fisher thought. He stopped and plopped down on the curb, knees bent and shoulders hunched as he brought his soda straw to his lips. Directly across from him, twenty feet away, was the Mercedes. The second bodyguard stood at the hood of the car. Fisher waited for the guard to look away, then pulled the SC from his waistband and tucked the barrel between his left thigh and the sidewalk, with the butt hidden by his leg.
He heard the ding of the convenience-store door opening. Qaderi and his guard appeared in the corner of his eye.
Transitions were the most dangerous times for VIPs and, as a result, the time when bodyguards are at their most alert. While moving from a car to a building and back again was when most assassination attempts took place. Qaderi's two man detail had a lot of open space to scan, and Fisher's presence had complicated matters. Was this disheveled idiot with the soda what he seemed or something more? If the latter, was he working alone or with someone else, a gunman who was hoping the bodyguards would fixate on Fisher and make a mistake? All of these questions and more were racing through their heads as Qaderi headed for the car. Both men were in full scan mode now--heads rotating as they checked angles and fields of fire and blind spots and the soda drinker sitting on the curb. . . .
Qaderi's guard reached the Mercedes three steps ahead of his principal and opened the rear door. The guard looked up, glanced at Fisher, then away, scanning the rest of the parking lot. Fisher flicked his eyes to the guard standing at the hood of the car. The man was looking over his shoulder, checking the street side.
Now.
Fisher dropped his right hand down, behind the soda cup, grasped the butt of the SC, drew it, and raised the barrel. He fired.
The dart was moving too fast for him to track its course, but decades of range time and combat missions, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of expended ammunition, told him the shot had struck home: the lower seat cushion just above the door's inner kick panel.
Fisher let the gun dangle, twisting his wrist so the SC was again hidden by his thigh. He raised the straw to his lips and took a slurp and waited for the guards or Qaderi to react. They didn't. Qaderi ducked inside the Mercedes and sat down. The guard slammed the door shut and got into the front seat. Five seconds later the driver was behind the wheel and the Mercedes was pulling out.
"THEbots are live and tracking," Grimsdottir said four hours later. With no safe house within Fisher's vicinity, she was once again calling on a pay phone. Fisher had found a cheap hotel on Sibiu's outskirts, and then sent Vesa back to Bucharest. "Qaderi is in the air and headed east. We'll know more in a few hours."
"That's good news."
"How did Vesa do?"
"You might want take a closer look at him, Grim. He's got good instincts, and he's cooler under fire than he thinks he is."
He recounted their tailing of Qaderi's Mercedes from Bucharest to the convenience store in Raul Valc, Fisher's tagging of Qaderi, and Vesa's return forty minutes later.
"I'll give it some thought. What's your plan?"
"I've got an old, not-so-good friend in Odessa--Adrik Ivanov. He used to be a medic in the Russian army. He's got a gambling problem, or at least he did a couple years ago. I doubt that's changed. He'd roll his own grand-mother for ten bucks and turn me in for even less. If you got a tip that I showed up on his doorstep asking for medical treatment, would Kovac buy it?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Give it a few hours, then call in Hansen and his team and brief them. Keep it sketchy for now. I'll move tomorrow morning and let you know the particulars. I need to get Hansen someplace I can handle him."
29
ODESSA, UKRAINE
FISHER'SCarpatair flight landed at one thirty the next afternoon, and Fisher went through his now-familiar routine of renting a car and driving to the local DHL office to pick up his equipment box. He then drove to Ivanov's last known address, a duplex near the Tairov cemetery. A woman working in a tiny garden in front told Fisher that Ivanov spent most of his leisure hours at a pub near the Chornoye More hotel. Initially suspicious, she warmed to Fisher as he asked her questions about her garden--the soil, pests, and the best time to plant tomatoes. In short order he discovered that Ivanov had added alcoholism to his list of vices and that he worked as a night watchman at a LUKOIL warehouse annex at the city's northern industrial docks. Fisher thanked the lady and followed her directions to Ivanov's pub, where he parked outside and waited.