“Outstanding,” said Kurt Vermulen.
That evening, Alix Petrova met the FSB agent who was her Washington handler on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“The assignment is proceeding as planned,” she said. “Vermulen is clearly infatuated. He has asked me to go with him on a trip to Europe. He is telling everyone, including me, that he is taking an extended vacation, but I am certain that there is more to it than that.”
She handed over a plain white envelope.
“The itinerary for the first three weeks is in there, including flight numbers and hotels. It should not be difficult to arrange meetings and drops at any of the places we will be visiting.”
“Excellent,” said her handler. “So, what is he like, this General Vermulen?”
“If you want to know,” she replied, “he is a very fine man. I like him, which only makes me despise myself even more for what I am doing to him.”
The handler raised an eyebrow.
“I think I will leave that last observation out of my report to the deputy director.”
“No,” said Alix, “please don’t. It will make her happy to think that I am suffering.”
30
A week later, Kurt Vermulen was in Amsterdam. He’d given the woman he knew as Natalia Morley the day off. Now he was standing on a piece of scrubland down by the docks, where weeds grew between the boats pulled up onto the shore, and an old barge rusted in the water at the end of the plot. He was about to put a face to a name he’d known for a decade or more, an old Defense Intelligence Agency case file transformed into a live human being.
A car turned off the road, drove past him, and pulled up about fifteen yards beyond. A thin man in a black suit, lank hair falling over the collar, emerged, smoking a cigarette. He threw the stub onto the damp, gravelly earth and crushed it with his heel, immediately lit another, then walked toward Vermulen. They didn’t bother to shake hands.
“Jonny Koolhaas?” asked Vermulen.
The man shrugged. He angled his head and blew a plume of smoke into the air, away from Vermulen, still looking at him from the corner of his eye.
“So what do you want?”
“A supplier of untraceable weapons and equipment, accessible at short notice. I’ll need pistols, submachine guns, grenades, plastique. Nothing fancy. Also vehicles. Untraceable, of course.”
“And why would a respectable American officer want all that?”
There was a glint of amusement in Koolhaas’s eye. It always pleased him to watch upright, law-abiding citizens having to trade in his criminal world.
“Well, perhaps you will tell me when it is over,” he said, when Vermulen had not answered. “But yes, I can arrange for those goods to be available at any time.”
“That’s good. Does your network cover Eastern Europe?”
“I have associates in the East, yes.”
“How about the former Yugoslavia?”
Koolhaas stubbed out the cigarette.
“Possibly, yes.”
The following day, Vermulen transferred the first installment of Koolhaas’s payment to an account in the Dutch Antilles. Natalia Morley had accompanied him to the bank, where he made the transfer.
He took her arm as they walked away.
She didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he was making progress.
Another three days had passed, and they were taking their places in the magnificent white-and-gold horseshoe of boxes that rings the auditorium of the State Opera House, Vienna. The performance that night was Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Vermulen, however, hadn’t come for the music.
Vienna was the city where Pavel Novak conducted his business, trading people, weapons, and information. It was no coincidence at all that Vermulen and Alix happened to bump into Novak and his wife, Ludmilla, in the bar before the performance. After introductions had been made, while the ladies were complimenting each other on their dresses, Novak stepped close to Vermulen and spoke into his ear, the way you do when you’re middle-aged and it’s getting harder to make out what someone’s saying over a background roar of conversation. Or when you’re passing on secrets about weapons of mass destruction.
“The sale of documents has been confirmed. The vendor is a Georgian, Bagrat Baladze. He is paranoid, out of his depth. He refuses to put his goods in a bank, insists on having them in his possession at all times. He is also terrified that another, bigger gangster will find out what he has and take it from him. So I have arranged for him to go into hiding at a series of locations while the sale is arranged. In four weeks’ time, he will arrive at a converted farmhouse in the South of France. That will be your best opportunity. I will give you exact details nearer the time…”
Novak glanced back at the ladies with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.
“You are a lucky man, Kurt. I love my Ludmilla, of course. But to have a woman like that in my bed, well… I envy you.”
Vermulen shook his head.
“No need-she’s not in my bed.”
“You’re joking!”
“Kid you not…”
He gave Novak a hearty pat on the back.
“But believe me, pal, I’m working on it.”
In the first interval, Alix walked to the nearest ladies’ room. A line had already formed. In front of Alix stood a silver-haired Viennese matron, plumped up by a lifetime of chocolate cakes and whipped cream. Alix gave her a polite smile, then took up her position, idly looking around at the operagoers in their dinner jackets and evening gowns.
She was wearing a simple, floor-length column of pearl-colored satin, with a matching sequined evening purse in her hand. Suddenly, something or someone caught her eye. Her eyes lit up and she turned to wave, lifting the hand that held the purse, just at the exact moment that a slender brunette in her early forties, her cheeks hollow with dieting and nervous energy, arrived in the line behind her. Alix’s arm swept into the woman, whose own bag, a silver metallic-leather clutch, was knocked to the floor. It was a total accident, but Alix was overwhelmed by embarrassment. As the other woman hissed with irritation, she dropped to the red carpet, picked up the clutch, which had fallen open, and, having snapped it shut, returned it to its infuriated owner.
“I’m so sorry,” Alix said, her eyes pleading for forgiveness. “I really didn’t mean to-”
She was met by a volley of incomprehensible German insults that had the portly matron, her ears burning, barely suppressing a squeal of delighted horror: Here was a story to tell her companions when she got back to her seat! Then the brunette turned on her stiletto heel and stalked off in search of a more civilized place to pee.
But Maria Rostova, whose diplomatic accreditation listed her as a first secretary in the trade and investment section of the Russian Federation Embassy, Vienna, did not stop when she came to the next facility. Instead, she went down the stairs and out through the magnificent arched loggia to the Opernring outside. A car pulled up as she reached the side of the road. Rostova got in and, as the car moved away, opened her bag. She rummaged around inside it and removed a small tube of rolled-up paper, about the size of a cigarette, stuck in place by a small square of adhesive tape. She prized open the tape and unrolled the tube, which revealed a page torn from a onetime code pad, covered in rows of numbers written in three-digit groups.
Rostova put the paper back in her bag, then took out a mobile phone and dialed a Moscow number. When she got through she simply said, “I have this week’s delivery.”
31
It was shortly before five-thirty in the afternoon and Clément Marchand was about to leave his office at the Montagny-Dumas Clinic when he received a call from a man with a Russian accent. Marchand was informed that his wife was being held hostage. By way of confirmation, the receiver was held up to her face just long enough for him to be certain that the few sobbed words he heard had come from his Marianne.