“Today, I speak as a confused friend,” Philip said. “And in this matter, I believe that our two countries have never been closer.”
Datsik chuckled. “Is not a high bar, is it?”
Philip laughed with him. “No,” he said. “Not a high bar at all. Please tell me what you can about last night.”
A pair of tractor trailers passed in tandem, causing the bridge deck to vibrate, and drowning out all sound. As the roar dopplered away, Datsik continued. “First, let me emphasize what I think you already know. You never should have played your silly game with the Chechen dogs.”
Philip shrugged. “As you might imagine, I don’t make those decisions. But the effort was not a waste. We very nearly found out quite a lot about their terrorist networks.”
“Very nearly worked,” Anton scoffed, “is a bureaucrat’s way of saying you failed.”
“In large measure because your government overreacted,” Philip countered. “Must we really have this conversation now? Neither one of us is a decision maker.”
Datsik backed off. “True enough,” he said. “As you Americans like to say, we are only pawns, yes?”
“Sometimes I feel more like the board the pawns play on.”
Datsik chuckled, but his eyes showed no humor. He looked out at the river, toward the lights of Old Town. “Things did not go well, as you know. We got our team in place on Morrow Road in Antwerp well in advance—”
“Were you there?”
Datsik paused, looked back at him. “I might have been.”
From the tone and the sly smile, Philip took that to mean yes.
“That Chechen pig was already there, waiting in the blue pickup truck that we had been told he would drive.”
“For the sake of clarity,” Philip interrupted. “Which Chechen pig are we talking about? Adam Dudaev?”
“Yes. Our team was in place at least one half hour before Dudaev arrived, and once he did arrive, he waited in place for twelve minutes, lights on, engine running, until another car arrived. This was, we assumed, the contact who would pass along the codes.”
“And who was that?” Philip said. Of all the intel to be gathered through this abortion of an op, that was the one bit of information that the United States needed most to know.
“I will get to that,” Datsik said. Always a natural storyteller, Datsik liked to take his time to build the tension. “We were cautious,” he continued. “We didn’t want to, as you like to say, jump the gun. One day you must tell me where that expression comes from. The two vehicles faced in opposite directions, so that the drivers could speak without getting out. This posed a problem for us because we did not know what the other vehicle would look like. We thought it unlikely that this could be just a chance encounter, but given the stakes, we needed to be certain. We kept waiting for them to pass something,” Datsik went on. “If they had done that, we’d have taken them both into custody, just as you asked.”
That was the third reminder that the assault team had been acting on a direct request from Philip’s bosses. Philip wondered if that was a hedge against some form of recording device — if, perhaps, Datsik was recording the conversation himself. “But…?” Philip prompted.
“They never had the chance. Two carloads of men with guns swooped down out of nowhere and opened fire. They were too trigger-happy, shooting too early, hitting the vehicles but not the people. Our team engaged the other shooters, and things went crazy.”
Philip felt a tug in his gut. No one else was supposed to know what was going down. This was another security breach of epic proportions. “Other shooters?”
“Other shooters. More Chechen pigs, we found out, after we searched their bodies.”
“Why would they be shooting at their own? Weren’t they getting what they wanted?”
Datsik gave a derisive chuckle. “Philip, my friend, perhaps you should spend more time trying to talk to dead men. It is an instructive exercise in frustration. In any event, those shooters lost, my shooters won. Is a good ending.”
“But what of Dudaev and the codes?”
A deep sigh. “Alas, in all of the confusion, he got away. Unlike his contact, who took two bullets to the head. He had no identification on him, but our people are working to identify him.”
“My boss will want the body,” Philip said.
“My bosses will tell your boss to kiss their asses. Your boss started this. You don’t get to write the rest of the script.”
“This was an FBI screwup,” Philip insisted. “My team had nothing to do with it.”
“We don’t care. One big government, one big screwup. The details don’t matter.”
Philip opened his mouth to pursue the issue, but decided that now was not the time. “So, Dudaev. What happened to him? Did he drive away with the codes?”
“We didn’t know at the time, but later we found out that yes, he did.”
“Did you follow him?”
Datsik cleared his throat. “In a manner of speaking, yes. We were not in a position to chase him — we were in positions away from our vehicles — but we knew where he would be going.”
“To our friends the Mitchells?”
“Your friends the Mitchells,” Datsik corrected.
The Russian had clearly missed the irony, and Philip chose not to correct him. As far as Philip’s bosses in Langley were concerned, they could all die a fiery death.
Datsik continued, “At this point, our team decided to eliminate all of them. We get the code, we kill people who want the code, and everything will be all right.”
A glimmer of hope grew in Philip’s mind. “So, that’s what you did?”
“Is what we almost did.”
“Ah, Christ.”
“Yes, was bad. Dudaev arrived at Mitchells’ house already wounded, I think. When we got there, he is already on floor bleeding. Maybe Mitchell shoot him, but I don’t think so. There is other shoot-out. Mitchell dies, Dudaev dies, but wife and boy get away along with their maid.” Datsik scowled and shot a look to Philip. “Why would they have maid?”
Philip fell silent as he ran the facts through his head. This could still have a happy ending. “But the codes,” he said. “You got the codes.”
Another sigh, this one deepest of all. “No codes,” he said. “We think maybe wife took them with her. What’s her name?”
“Sarah.”
“Yes, Sarah. We think she took codes with her. Sarah, maid, boy, codes, all gone. But she was shot and shot bad. Gut shot.” He pointed to a place high on his own abdomen. “Maybe not live.”
Philip’s mind raced. That happy ending was feeling further and further away. “Wait here,” he said.
Datsik recoiled. “Where are you going?”
Philip cupped the back of his own head with his hand and rubbed the lump that was a souvenir from a bar fight gone bad in his twenties. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I just need to think. I think better when I walk.”
“If walking makes people smart, someone must have been sitting on his ass when they came up with this Chechen missile idea,” Datsik teased.
Philip pretended not to hear.
Think this through, he told himself. It can’t be as dark as it seems. There has to be a way. Because if there wasn’t another way, the world — Philip’s world in particular — was going to be in a very, very bad place.
Philip walked slowly, unaware, really, that he was even walking. He thought through the logic. If this was an FBI operation, the logic had to be perfect, because Fibbies were that way, so buttoned-down and regulated that every one of them tied their shoes the same way.