Kitabı oku: «Sidney Sheldon’s Reckless», sayfa 2
CHAPTER THREE
HUNTER DREXEL PRESSED THE RADIO AGAINST his ear and listened intently. The voice of the BBC World Service newsreader crackled through the darkness.
“As concern grows for the welfare of kidnapped American journalist Hunter Drexel, a minute’s silence was held today at Sandhurst Military Academy in Berkshire in memory of Captain Robert Daley, whose brutal murder last week at the hands of terror group 99 shocked the world.”
Hunter thought, So now they’re terror group 99. He laughed bitterly. Funny how one little murder changes everything.
Two weeks ago the BBC couldn’t get enough of Group 99. Like the rest of the world’s media, they’d fawned over the Robin Hood Hackers like groupies at a One Direction concert.
Then again, was Hunter really any better than the rest of them? After all, he’d misjudged Group 99 too.
At the time he was kidnapped he’d been working on a freelance article about corruption in the global fracking business. He’d been particularly interested in the billions of dollars flowing between the United States, Russia and China, and the secretive way in which drilling contracts were awarded, with oil giants in all three countries splitting obscene profits. Handshake deals were being thrashed out in Houston, Moscow and Beijing that blatantly contravened international trade law. Back then Hunter had seen Group 99 as an ally, as opposed to the rampant corruption in the energy business as he was. Ironically, he’d been on his way to meet Cameron Crewe, founder and owner of Crewe Inc. and one of fracking’s very few “good guys,” at Crewe’s Moscow office when he was dragged into an alleyway, chloroformed and bundled into the boot of a Mercedes town car, not by Kremlin thugs but by the very people he’d believed were on his side.
He remembered little of the long journey to the cabin. He changed cars at least once. There was also a short helicopter ride. And then he was here. A few days later Bob Daley showed up, and was introduced as Hunter’s “roommate.” It was all very civilized. Warm beds, a radio, reasonable meals and, to Hunter’s delight, a pack of cards. He could survive without freedom if he had to. Even sex was a luxury he could learn to live without. But a life without poker wasn’t worth living. He and Bob would play daily, often for hours at a stretch, betting with pebbles like a couple of kids. If it hadn’t been for the armed guards outside the cabin, Hunter might have believed himself taking part in some sort of student prank, or even a reality TV show. Even the guards looked halfhearted and a bit embarrassed, as if they knew the joke had gone too far but weren’t quite sure how to back out without losing face.
Except for Apollo.
Hunter hated using the stupid Greek codename. It was so pretentious. But as it was the only name he had for the bastard who had shot Bob, it would have to do. Apollo was always different. Angrier, surlier, more self-important than the others. Hunter had identified him early on as a bully and a nasty piece of work. But never in a million years had he thought Apollo was intent on murder.
Bob’s execution had left the entire camp in a profound state of shock. It wasn’t just Hunter. The other guards seemed genuinely horrified by what had happened. People were crying. Vomiting. But no one had the gumption to face down Apollo.
This was it. The new reality.
They were all in it up to their necks.
The radio signal was fading. Hunter twiddled the knob desperately, looking for something, anything, to distract him from his fear. He’d been in dangerous situations before in his journalistic career. He’d been shot at in Aleppo and Baghdad, and narrowly escaped a helicopter crash in Eastern Ukraine. But in a war zone you had adrenaline to keep you going. There was no time for fear. It was easy to be brave.
Here, in the silence of the cabin, with nothing but his friend’s empty bed and his own fevered thoughts for company, fear squatted over Hunter like a giant, black toad. It crushed the breath from his body and the hope from his soul.
They’re going to kill me.
They’re going to kill me and bury me in the forest, next to Bob.
In the beginning, in the days and hours after Bob’s death, Hunter had dared to hope. Someone will find me. They’ll all be looking now. The Brits. The Americans. Someone will come and rescue me.
But as the days passed and no one came, hope died.
Hunter’s radio crackled loudly, then the signal dropped completely. Reluctantly, he crawled back under his covers and tried to sleep. It was impossible. His limbs ached with exhaustion but his brain was on speed. Images flew at him like bullets.
His mother in her Chicago apartment, beside herself with worry in her tatty chair.
His most recent lover, Fiona from the New York Times, screaming at him for two-timing her the day he left for Moscow. “I hope one of Putin’s thugs catches you and beats you to death with a crowbar. Asshole!”
Bob Daley, making some stupid wisecrack the night before he made the video.
The night before Apollo blew his brains out.
Would they make him record a video too? Would Bobby’s bloodstains still be on the camera lens?
No!
A cold prickle of terror crept over him, like needles in the skin.
I have to get out of here!
Hunter sat bolt upright, gasping for breath, struggling to control his bowels. Please, God, help me! Show me the way out of this.
He hadn’t realized until this moment quite how desperately he didn’t want to die. Perhaps because this was the moment when he knew for certain that he was going to. Any rescue mission would have happened by now.
No one knows where I am.
No one’s coming.
And really, why should they come? Hunter Drexel had never felt or shown any particular loyalty to his homeland. What right did he have to expect loyalty in return?
Hunter had never understood the concept of patriotism. Allegiance to a country, or an ideology, was utterly baffling to him. People like Group 99, who devoted their entire lives to a cause, fascinated him. Why? Hunter Drexel saw the world only in terms of people. Individuals. People mattered. Ideas did not. Hunter had more in common with Group 99’s worldview and political beliefs than he did with Bob Daley’s. Yet Bob was a good person. And Apollo, or whatever his real name was, was a bad person. In the end, that was all that mattered, not the labels that either man lived under:
Soldier.
Radical.
Terrorist.
Spy.
They were nothing but empty words.
If Hunter Drexel identified himself as anything, it was as a journalist. Writing meant something. The truth meant something. That was about as ideological as Hunter got.
He looked around the wooden cabin that had been his home for the last few months and tried to slow his breathing. The heavy wooden door was wedged shut with a split tree trunk and armed guards took shifts outside. Since Bob’s death two solid iron bars had been nailed across the window. Beyond it lay miles of impenetrable forest, an army of tall, darkly swaying pines above a thick white blanket of snow. In their wilder moments of fantasy, Hunter and Bob had concocted escape plans. All were insanely risky, preposterous really. The kind of thing that would work in a cartoon. And all involved two people. Alone, escape was quite impossible. The only way out of here was the one that Bob Daley had already taken.
Hunter lay back, not calm exactly, but past the hyperventilating stage. Acceptance, that was the key. Letting go. But how did one accept one’s own death?
His mind drifted to a story he’d heard on the radio yesterday, about the Greek prince who’d hung himself at Sandhurst. Achileas. It sounded like one of the stupid names Group 99 gave themselves. There was much hand-wringing about the boy’s death and an “official inquiry” had been launched.
As ever, it was the human side of the story that gripped Hunter.
Here was a young man with everything to live for, yet who had chosen to die.
Perhaps if Hunter could understand that impulse, the impulse that drove a young prince to embrace death like a lover, he would feel less afraid?
Slowly, Hunter Drexel drifted into a fitful sleep.
THE NOISE WAS A LOW BUZZ at first. Like insects swarming.
But then it got louder. The unmistakable whir of chopper blades.
“Dimitri.” One of Hunter’s guards grabbed the shoulder of his companion, shaking him awake. “Listen.”
The other guard slowly struggled out of sleep. Like Dimitri he was only nineteen. Both boys were French. This time last year they’d been studying computer science in Paris. They’d joined Group 99 for a lark, because a lot of their friends were doing it, and because they loosely supported the idea of taking the world’s super-rich down a peg or two. Neither of them quite knew how they’d ended up in a Bratislavan forest, freezing their tits off and armed with machine guns.
By the time they got to their feet, strobe lights filled the sky. The whole camp was bathed in blinding light. Then the first shots rang out.
“Shit!” Dimitri started to cry. “What do we do?”
Already the helicopters were so loud, it was hard to hear one another.
“Run!” yelled his friend.
Dimitri ran. He heard shots behind him and saw his friend fall to the forest floor. He kept going. His legs felt like jelly, as if all the strength had been sucked out of them.
The camp was a horseshoe of canvas tents clustered around the cabin. There were also two breeze-block structures, one used as a weapons store, and one as a control center, complete with a generator, satellite phone and specially customized laptop. The second structure was closest. Dimitri staggered toward it. All around him, group members were emerging from their tents, bleary-eyed with panic. Some waved guns around, but others were unarmed. Atlas and Kronos, two German lads had their hands in the air. Dimitri watched in horror as they were mown down anyway in a hail of bullets, their limbs flailing grotesquely like dancing puppets as they died.
Then something hit him from behind. Not a bullet or a stone. It was a gust of wind, so powerful it blew him off his feet. The choppers had landed. Suddenly all was chaos, light and noise. American voices were shouting. “ON THE GROUND! GET DOWN!”
Dimitri screamed, a child’s wail of terror. Then suddenly, arms were around him, under his shoulders, dragging him into the control center.
“You’re OK.” Apollo’s voice was firm and calm. Dimitri clung to him like a life raft.
“They’re going to kill us!” the boy screamed.
“No they’re not. We’re going to kill them.”
Dimitri watched as Apollo pulled the pin out of the hand grenade with his teeth and lobbed it toward the men who had just killed his friends. As they were blown into the air, their legs came off.
“Here.” Apollo handed him a grenade. “Aim for the choppers.”
INSIDE THE CABIN HUNTER DREXEL COWERED under a table.
The noise of the Chinooks was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.
They’re here! They found me!
Even the gunfire, the all too familiar pap pap pap pap of machine guns he remembered from Iraq and Syria sounded soothing to his ears, like a lullaby, or a mother’s voice.
Boom! The cabin door didn’t so much open as explode, shards of wood flying everywhere. Smoke filled the room in seconds, disorienting him. Hunter’s ears were ringing and his eyes stung. He heard voices, shouts, but everything was muffled, as if he were hearing them under water. He waited for someone to come in, a soldier or even one of his captors, but no one did. Crawling on his belly, Hunter began feeling his way towards the space where the cabin door used to be.
Outside, he quickly got his bearings back. Stars up. Snow down. The Americans—presumably?—were mostly in front of him and to the right, directly facing the camp. To his left, what was left of Group 99 had taken up position in the two breeze-block buildings and were firing back. Gunshots flashed in the blackness like fireflies. Occasionally a strobe or flare would illuminate everything. Then you could see men running. Hunter watched as three of the American soldiers were gunned down just feet in front of him. His captors were clearly not giving up without a fight.
A whimpering sound to his left, like a wounded animal made him turn around.
“Help me!”
Crawling towards the sound, Hunter found the English boy codenamed Perseus sprawled out in the snow. Hunter had a particular soft spot for Perseus with his skinny, chicken legs, cockney accent and thick, dorky glasses. Hunter had nicknamed him “Nerdeus.” They often played poker together. The boy was good.
Now he lay helplessly on the cold ground, his eyes wide with shock. A deep crimson stain surrounded him. Glancing down Hunter saw that both his lower legs had been blown off.
“Am I going to die?” he sobbed.
“No,” Hunter lied, lying down next to him.
“I can’t feel my legs.”
“It’s the cold,” said Hunter. “And the shock. You’ll be fine.”
Perseus’s eyes opened and closed. It wouldn’t be long now.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never meant for … all this.”
“I know that,” said Hunter. “It’s not your fault. What’s your name? Your real name.”
The boy’s teeth chattered. “J-James.”
“Where are you from, James?”
“Hackney.”
“Hackney. OK.” Hunter stroked his hair. “What’s it like in Hackney?”
The boy’s eyes closed.
“Do you have any brothers and sisters, James? James?”
He let out one, long, fractured breath and was still.
Hunter felt his eyes well up with tears and his body fill with anger.
Not anger. Rage.
James was his friend. He was just a fucking kid.
“NO!” He started to scream, all the pent-up fear of the last few days erupting out of him in one wild, animal howl of fury and loss. In that moment he didn’t care if he died. Not at all. Stroking James’s cold, dead forehead tenderly, he stood up and ran toward the light of the Chinooks.
That’s when it happened.
One of the helicopters exploded, sending a fireball hundreds of feet high shooting into the air like a comet. Hunter watched it in shock. It dawned on him then that the Americans might actually lose this battle. This wasn’t the clean rescue they’d intended. It was all going wrong. Soldiers were dying. Group 99 were fighting back, fighting for their lives.
Hunter kept running, because really, what else was there to do? He would run until something happened to stop him. Until his legs blew off like James’s, or a bullet ripped through his skull like Bob Daley’s, or until he was free to write the truth about what had happened tonight. The truth about everything.
The lights grew brighter. Blinding. Hunter thought he was past Group 99’s control center now but he wasn’t sure. Just then a second Chinook roared back into life, its blades turning full pelt just a few yards from where Hunter was standing. Hunter watched camouflaged men leap into it one by one as it hovered just inches above the ground. Bullets flew over his head. Then, right in front of him, a hand reached out in the carnage.
“Get in!”
The American soldier was leaning out of the Chinook, reaching for Hunter’s hand. He was younger than Hunter, but confident, his words a command, not a request.
Hunter hesitated, a rabbit in the headlights.
He thought about the story that had gotten him kidnapped in the first place.
About the truth, the unpalatable truth, that so many people wanted to suppress.
Once he got into that helicopter, would he ever be able to tell it? Would he ever complete his mission?
He looked behind him. Scores of corpses littered the charred remnants of the camp that had been his world for the last few months. It had all happened in minutes. Bad men and good men and naïve young boys lay slaughtered like cattle. Just like poor Bob Daley had been slaughtered.
And now a confident young American was holding out his hand, offering Hunter a way out. It was what he’d been praying for.
Get in!
Hunter Drexel looked his rescuer gratefully in the eye.
Then he turned and ran off into the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘HE RAN’?”
President Jim Havers held the phone away from his ear in disbelief.
“He ran, sir,” General Teddy MacNamee repeated. “Drexel refused to get into the helicopter.”
There was a long silence.
“Fuck,” said the president.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘HE RAN’?”
The British prime minister rubbed her eyes blearily.
“I don’t know how many other ways to say it, Julia,” the President of the United States snapped. “He wouldn’t get in the chopper. He ran into the fucking forest. We’re screwed.”
Julia Cabot thought, You mean you’re screwed, Jim.
Her mind raced as she tried to figure out the best way to play this.
“I’ve already had the Bratislavan president on the line, screaming blue murder,” President Havers ranted on. “The UN secretary General’s asked me for a statement as a matter of urgency.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing yet.”
“What will you tell him?”
“That Drexel wasn’t there. He’d been moved. But that they successfully took out a bunch of terrorists.”
“Good,” Julia Cabot said.
“I can count on your support?”
“Of course, Jim. Always.”
President Havers exhaled. “Thank you, Julia. We need a joint intelligence meeting. To figure out where we go from here.”
“Agreed.”
“How soon can your guys be in Washington?”
“I think, under the circumstances, Jim, it makes more sense for your guys to come to London. Don’t you?”
Julia Cabot smiled. It felt good to have the upper hand with the Americans for once. Right now she was the only friend Jim Havers had in the world and he knew it. She must play her cards for all they were worth.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jim Havers said gruffly.
“Wonderful.” Julia Cabot hung up.
EXACTLY ONE WEEK LATER, FOUR MEN sat around a table in Whitehall, eyeing one another warily.
“Good of you to come, gentlemen.” Jamie MacIntosh rolled up his shirtsleeves and leaned forward, smiling amiably at his American counterparts. “I know you must both have had a difficult week.”
“That’s an understatement.” Greg Walton of the CIA looked desperately tired. He resented being summoned to London, especially at a time when his beloved agency was being ripped to shreds by Congress back home. But he made an effort at politeness. Unlike his FBI colleague, Milton Buck.
“I hope you have something important to add to this operation,” Buck snarled at Jamie MacIntosh. “Because frankly we don’t have time to waste on handholding you Brits.”
Sitting beside Jamie MacIntosh, Frank Dorrien stiffened. “Well, quite,” he said sardonically. “After the mess you made of what should have been a perfectly simple rescue mission, based on our entirely accurate intelligence, I imagine you want to devote as many man-hours as possible to training your own men. Heaven knows they need it.”
Milton Buck looked like he was ready to throw a punch.
“All right, that’s enough.” Jamie MacIntosh glared at Frank Dorrien. “None of us have time for chest beating. Let’s leave that to the politicians. We’re here to combine our resources and share information on Group 99 and that’s what we’re going to do. Why don’t I start?”
Greg Walton leaned back in his chair. “Great. What have you got?”
“For starters, we’ve got a name for Captain Daley’s killer.”
Walton and Buck looked at one another in shock. “Seriously?”
Frank Dorrien pushed a file across the table.
In the top left-hand corner was a photograph of a handsome, dark-skinned man with a strong jaw, long aquiline nose, and hooded, distrustful eyes. There was a detached air about him and a certain watchful hauteur, like a bird of prey.
“Alexis Argyros,” Jamie MacIntosh announced. “Codenamed Apollo. One of Group 99’s founder members and a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work. Grew up in foster care in Athens. Possibly abused. A high school dropout but brilliant with computers and obsessed with violent video games from his early teens. Hates women. Sadist. Narcissist. All this is from his social worker’s reports.”
“Criminal record?” Greg Walton asked.
“Oh yes. Petty theft, vandalism, arson. Two years in youth custody for rape. And he was suspected in a hideous case of animal cruelty where a cat and kittens were burned alive.”
“You only get two years for rape?” Greg Walton asked.
“The Greeks can’t afford to run their prisons,” Jamie MacIntosh said matter-of-factly. “Not since austerity. Anyway, we believe Argyros was the man who pulled the trigger in Daley’s execution video. He was running the camp you raided, and his star is on the rise within Group 99. For months now he’s been trying to steer the group towards more violent methods, battling against the moderate elements within 99. Argyros appeals to disaffected young males in the same way that the jihadist groups groomed boys in the west after the Syrian war. He offers them a purpose and a sense of belonging, wraps it all up in a pretty parcel of social justice—”
“And then murders people,” Greg Walton interrupted.
“Precisely. We are fearful that Captain Daley’s death may mark the beginning of a new era of global terror. It’s an enormous pity you didn’t kill Argyros when you had the chance.”
“How do you know we didn’t?” Greg Walton asked.
This time Frank Dorrien answered.
“Because we’ve picked up internet traffic between Apollo and an unknown contact in the US Alexis Argyros is alive and well and he’s out there looking for Drexel, just like we are. Make no mistake. Group 99 want Hunter Drexel dead.”
“And you know all this how?” Milton Buck demanded sourly. A stocky, handsome, middle-aged man with dark hair and what ought to have been a pleasing face, Buck successfully concealed whatever charms he may have had beneath a thick veneer of arrogance.
“Our methods are none of your concern,” Frank Dorrien snapped back. “We’re here to share intelligence, not tell you how we came by it. Now, what do you have for us?”
Milton Buck looked at Greg Walton, who nodded his approval. Buck pulled out an old-fashioned Dictaphone voice recorder and put it on the table.
“While you’ve been unmasking the monkey,” the FBI man sneered, “we’ve been focused on the organ grinder.”
Jamie MacIntosh sighed. He was starting to find Milton Buck’s posturing deeply irritating.
“Your man Apollo may have pulled the trigger,” Buck went on, “but he was following orders from above.”
He pressed PLAY. A woman’s voice filled the room. It was American, educated, soft and low and the sound quality was excellent, as if she were sitting right there with them.
“Is everything ready?”
A man’s voice answered. “Yes. Everything has been done as you instructed.”
“And I will see it on live feed, correct?”
“Correct. You’ll be right there with us. Don’t worry.”
“Good.” The woman’s smile was audible. “Have him deliver the speech first.”
“Of course. As we agreed.”
“And at nine p.m. New York time precisely, you will shoot him in the head.”
“Yes, Althea.”
Milton Buck hit STOP and smiled smugly.
“That, gentleman, was the authorization for Captain Daley’s execution. The woman on that tape, who goes by the codename Althea, is the real brains behind Group 99. We’ve been tracking her for the last eighteen months.”
“We already knew about Althea,” Jamie MacIntosh said dismissively, to the FBI man’s visible annoyance.
“But you didn’t know she’d directly ordered Daley’s assassination. Did you?” Greg Walton countered.
“No,” Jamie admitted. “What else have you got on her? An ID?”
“Not yet,” Greg Walton admitted, a little uncomfortably.
“You’ve been tracking this person for eighteen months and you still don’t know who she is?” Frank Dorrien asked, disbelievingly. “What do you know?”
“We know she channels funds to Group 99 through a complicated network of offshore accounts that we’ve mapped extensively,” Milton Buck snapped.
“We have some unconfirmed physical data,” Greg Walton added more calmly. “Witnesses at various banks and hotels we believe she’s used have suggested she’s tall, physically attractive and dark haired.”
“Well that narrows it down,” Frank Dorrien muttered sarcastically.
Milton Buck looked as if he were about to spontaneously combust.
“We know she orchestrated the attack on the CIA systems and the blackout of the stock exchange servers on Wall Street two years ago,” he snarled. “We know she personally arranged the kidnap and murder of one of your men, General Dorrien. All in all I’d say we know a hell of a lot more than you.”
“How long have you had this recording?” Jamie MacIntosh asked.
Greg Walton shot Milton Buck a warning look but it was too late.
“Three weeks,” Buck said smugly. “I played this to the president the day after Daley was killed.”
A muscle on Jamie’s jaw twitched. “Three weeks. And nobody thought to share this information with us sooner?”
“We’re sharing it with you now,” Greg Walton said.
Frank Dorrien slammed his fist down hard on the table. Everybody’s water glasses shook.
“It’s not bloody good enough!” he roared. “Daley was one of ours. With allies like you, who needs enemies?”
“Frank.” Jamie MacIntosh put a hand on the old soldier’s arm, but Dorrien shrugged it off angrily.
“No, Jamie. This is a farce! Here we are spoon-feeding the Americans valuable intelligence, detailed intelligence, actually providing them with the exact location of their hostage. And all the while they’re sitting on vital information about Bob Daley’s killer? It’s unacceptable.”
Buck leaned forward aggressively.
“And just who are you to tell us what’s acceptable, General? Has it occurred to you that maybe we didn’t trust the British with this intelligence? After all, your men have been dropping like flies lately.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Think about it. First a Greek royal dies on your watch, General,” Buck said accusingly, “a young man who just happens to be a personal friend of Captain Daley. Then, only days later, Daley himself is killed, which let’s just say is out of character for Group 99, up to this point. Now, you may say there’s no connection between those two events—”
“Of course there’s no connection!” Frank Dorrien scoffed. “Prince Achileas died by suicide.”
Milton Buck raised an eyebrow. “Did he? Because the other possibility is that Group 99 have someone embedded within the British military. Maybe someone at Sandhurst, or in the upper echelons of the MOD—also the subject of a Group 99 attack, if you remember.”
“As were the CIA!” Dorrien shouted back. “Prince Achileas was gay. The man hung himself out of shame, you cretin.”
“What did you call me?” Buck got to his feet.
“That. Is. ENOUGH.” Greg Walton finally lost his temper. “Sit down, Milton. NOW.”
Greg was the senior man here. He hadn’t flown thousands of miles to watch his FBI colleague and General Dorrien go at each other like a pair of ill-disciplined dogs.
There was also something about the tone the general used to talk about the Greek Prince that put Greg Walton’s back up. Greg was also a homosexual. He found the general’s lack of compassion for the dead boy both distasteful and disturbing.
“Whatever has happened in the past, in terms of sharing information, has happened,” he said, looking from Buck to Dorrien and back again. “From now on we have direct orders from the White House and Downing Street to cooperate fully with one another and that’s what we’re going to do. This is a joint operation. So if either of you have a problem with that, I suggest you get over it. Now.”
Frank Dorrien looked to Jamie MacIntosh for support but there was none forthcoming. He shot a last look of loathing at Milton Buck and sat back in his chair, sullen but compliant. Buck did the same.
“Good. Now, as it happens we do have one other important development to share with you,” Greg Walton went on. “Have either of you ever heard of an individual named Tracy Whitney?”
Frank Dorrien noticed the way Milton Buck tensed up at the mere mention of this name.
“Never heard of her,” he said.
“Tracy Whitney the con artist?” Jamie MacIntosh frowned.
“Con artist, jewel thief, computer wizard, cat burglar,” Greg Walton elaborated. “Miss Whitney’s résumé is a long and varied one.”
“That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. We thought she was dead,” said Jamie. He explained to Frank Dorrien how, along with her partner Jeff Stevens, Tracy Whitney had been suspected of a swath of daring crimes across Europe a decade ago, conning the corrupt rich out of millions of dollars in jewelry and fine art, and even extracting a grandmaster from the Prado in Madrid. But neither Interpol nor the CIA nor MI5 had ever been able to prove a case against her. “I dread to think the man-hours and money we wasted trying to outsmart that woman.” He sounded almost nostalgic. “But then, overnight it seemed, she vanished and that was that. Jeff Stevens is still knocking around in London I believe, but he seems to be retired.” Jamie turned back to Greg Walton. “I’m baffled as to what Tracy Whitney can possibly have to do with all this.”
“So are we,” Greg admitted. “The day after the failed raid in Bratislava, we received an encrypted message at Langley from Althea in which she referenced Tracy Whitney.”
“More than referenced,” Milton Buck jumped in. “The two women clearly knew each other.”
“What did the message say?” Jamie MacIntosh asked.
“It was a taunt, basically,” Walton replied. “‘You guys will never catch me. I’m going to outsmart you just like Tracy Whitney did. I’ll bet you Tracy could find me. Why don’t you have Agent Buck call her in …’ That kind of stuff. She clearly knew Tracy, but it was more than that. She knew the agency’s history with Tracy. She knew that Agent Buck had had dealings with her.”
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