Antonija Nad was a former member of the Special Operations Battalion in the Croatia armed services. The BSD, as it was known, focused on airborne assault and behind-enemy-lines combat. It was one of the most respected special forces units in the world. It was also one of only two European forces that allowed women to fight in specialized units. She’d resigned from the Croatia military a year ago to work for PROTEC, a security firm based in London.
He had guessed correctly. She had to work for Petrov.
Storm checked the time. By now, Showers and Nad would have exited Heathrow. He walked to the airport’s rental counters to get a car and an hour later pulled up outside the London Marriott Hotel Park Lane across from Hyde Park. Storm never understood why Americans booked rooms in American hotels when they traveled overseas. It was like eating McDonald’s in Paris. But someone in the government, who had arranged the tickets and hotels, had gotten them adjoining rooms there.
Because Showers was still being briefed at Scotland Yard, she hadn’t checked in. Storm decided to find a room elsewhere. He drove through the neighborhood until he spotted a cozy bed-and-breakfast a few blocks from the hotel. The grandmotherly owner at the antique reception desk said one room was available, which he rented with cash. Jones had warned him to not trust anyone. He was taking his advice.
The flat was on the second floor of what used to be a high-end Hyde Park row house, with huge rooms. But that had been when the sun never set on the Union Jack. Since then, the building had been divided into small units barely bigger than a double bed. He’d stayed in worse. It was clean and had Internet access. Best of all, no one would know he was here.
Before he’d left Langley, Storm had collected crime scene photographs taken by the FBI. Taking a seat at an oak desk from the 1850s that faced his room’s street window, he sorted through the photos, stopping when he reached a batch that had been taken on the roof of the Capitol Police headquarters, where the sniper had hidden.
The shooter had used a bag of sugar to support the barrel of the 9.8-pound Dragunov rifle. The bag was a readily available prop that no one would consider suspicious if he was seen carrying it. The Dragunov was a gun that could easily be disassembled and hidden in a briefcase.
The Dragunov’s barrel had been equipped with a flash suppressor to help hide the shooter’s location. But it didn’t have a silencer. This meant the sniper had not been worried about the sound of the gunshot.
Like all professionals, the assassin had known that there would be two actual sounds when he pulled the trigger. The sound from the initial bang — the muzzle blast — would be masked by the noisy, rush hour street traffic around the headquarters building. The second sound would be the sonic crack that a bullet makes as it flies through the air. The bullet would create a sonic wave behind it as it sped forward. Anyone hearing the crack would look forward in the same direction as the bullet was going, not backward where it had come from. There was no need for him to use a silencer. Only the muzzle flash mattered, especially at dusk.
Storm looked at snapshots of the Dirksen Building taken from the sniper’s viewpoint. The distance was roughly four hundred yards, or the length of four football fields, the equivalent of 1200 feet. Storm knew the Dragunov was most effective between 600 meters and 1300 meters, or 1,970 feet and 4,270 feet, which meant the fatal shot actually had been taken much closer than during combat. It would have been an easy shot for a skilled marksman.
He turned to a photo of the Dragunov and examined the weapon. Ordinarily, the rifle’s stock was wood with a hole cut out of its center to make the gun lighter. Someone had modified the rifle in the photo by attaching a shorter, solid wooden stock to it. Why?
He tucked the photos away, stretched out on the bed, and used the remote to turn on a television hanging from the ceiling. He flipped channels until he found the BBC’s twenty-four-hour newscast. Agent Showers suddenly appeared on the screen with a uniformed bobby on one side and a man identified as a Scotland Yard detective on her other. The announcer said:
“The FBI has sent one of its agents to London to interview Russian oligarch Ivan Petrov as part of its investigation into the recent murder of United States Senator Thurston Windslow. The senator was slain in his Washington, D.C., office on Capitol Hill by a sniper who remains at large. The agent, April Showers, refused to comment, but sources tell the BBC that the FBI considers Petrov to be a ‘person of interest’ because of his close relationship with the slain senator.”
As he and Showers had both feared, someone at Scotland Yard had tipped off the British press about their arrival. Showers was paying a price for playing by the rules.
CHAPTER NINE
he cell phone that Jones had given him rang shortly after 12 P.M. London time, waking him from a short power nap.
“We’ve been invited to have tea with Ivan Petrov,” Showers said.
“He must have been impressed with your BBC appearance.”
“Did you rent a car?” she asked, ignoring his comment. “It’ll take us about two hours to get to the Duke of Madison’s estate outside of Gloucester.”
“Your buddies at Scotland Yard didn’t offer to drive us?”
“Are you going to rub that in all day?”
“Probably,” he replied. “I’ll meet you outside the hotel in ten minutes.”
“I can just knock on your door when I’m ready,” she said. “We’re in adjoining rooms, aren’t we?”
“I’m out sightseeing. I’ll pick you up at the front entrance.”
For a moment, Storm wondered if he was being too paranoid. Maybe he was overreacting because of Tangiers. But he couldn’t help himself. While he was in England, he could not afford to let down his guard. The older man sitting in Hyde Park on a bench reading the Times was not really reading the Times. The woman behind him when he was on the sidewalk was not really walking her dog. “Trust no one,” Jones had said. It was his mantra.
He’d rented a Vauxhall Insignia because the German-made car, which was similar to a Buick Regal, was as common in England as a Honda in the U.S. It wouldn’t draw attention. After Showers’s BBC debut, of course, their arrival was hardly a secret.
Showers exited the hotel dressed in an attractive gray pantsuit, carrying a light jacket and her briefcase. Storm had entered the address of the Duke of Madison’s estate into the Vauxhall’s onboard GPS. He glanced at the rearview mirror as he began weaving through London’s congested streets. Eventually, they reached the M-40, the main thoroughfare that would take them west to Gloucester. About four miles outside of London, Storm spotted a black Mercedes-Benz lurking two cars behind them.
“What did you learn at Scotland Yard?” he asked.
“They told me Petrov was having financial problems. The Russians have frozen most of his fortune in Moscow.”
Storm focused on watching the Mercedes. Showers read through a briefing paper about Petrov. When the voice in the GPS warned that the car was only a mile from the exit that would take them to the Duke of Madison’s estate, Storm suddenly pressed on the brakes and brought the Vauxhall to a crawl. Angry drivers honked and swerved around them. At first, the driver of the Mercedes slowed down, too, but then he realized that Storm was testing him. It would be obvious that the Mercedes was tailing the Vauxhall if it also came to a crawl.
As the Mercedes sped up, Showers looked up from her paperwork. “I noticed them, too, when we first left London. Nice work.”