He went out for a smoke and looked around the foggy valley. It was a perfect hiding spot. He was in one of the most remote mountain regions in Europe, and having driven through the EU from Paris under an identity no one could trace, there was no way anyone would have tracked him here. He was sure he had gotten out before anyone would have known he was missing. He had communicated only through a private e-mail address with his mother. Franko Kostavic had disappeared fifteen years ago. And if it did somehow come out, if some old-timer recognized his face and put it together, in his family’s old village, surrounded by friends who felt the same way, he would be celebrated as a hero for what he’d done in the war, not turned in.
But it wasn’t the police or the U.S. government he was primarily worried about. No…
On his way there, in Germany, he had stopped and e-mailed the man who had recruited him at a designated cyber address. Thibault wrote that the trail of money he had received and recordings he had made of their communications were in the secure possession of a lawyer in Switzerland with instructions to share it with the U.S. government should Thibault not be around to call in and instruct him not to every six months. A simple plan, he had to admit, but a safe one. All he wanted was his freedom in return for what he had done. His silence was guaranteed.
Ultimately, Thibault knew, there were places he could go where no one would ever find him and new aliases he could adopt. Just like he had done before. He possessed all the funds he would ever need. He knew how to sniff out people, vulnerable people. The instinct came to him like the scent of a hare to a hound.
His only regret was that he couldn’t get even with Merrill. To make her pay for her betrayal. That was driving him nuts. She was a horny little bitch and his only amusement now was the knowledge that he had let free urges from deep inside her she would not so easily satisfy with someone else.
Unfortunately, the thought of her brought his own physical urges to the surface. Up there, what prospects could there be? Filthy barmaids or mountainous old farmer’s wives. He was used to having the most desirable women in the world. Maybe he would go into Novi Pazar. No one knew him there. There were places he could go. Women found him instantly attractive. He knew he radiated something mysterious to them, a side he had played up his whole life. Using women had never been a difficult thing for him.
The stupid old Bahraini had said it. It was his dick that would get him into trouble.
Yes, he was going crazy there. So be it, Thibault thought. He stared up at the hills. It was like he felt someone watching him, but he knew that was impossible. They’d held in secrets for centuries.
He stamped out his cigarette. His was just one more.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
They watched Thibault for another day from the same hillside, perched high on the ridge. Naomi snapped several photos. Thibault. His car. Its plates. She sent them immediately back to Washington.
They deliberated about what to do.
Thibault never strayed far from the cottage. Once or twice he came out for a smoke or to bring in wood from a shack, as the nights were still cool. Once he took a short walk along a nearby brook. The next day, Maria Radisovic came back around noon. This time Hauck and Naomi were there ahead of her. She brought along a suitcase that seemed stuffed with clothes, and Thibault came out of the farmhouse and took it in for her. He puffed on a cigar and stamped it into the ground. Before going in, he gazed around the secluded valley-almost directly at the spot where he and Naomi were located, making Hauck duck back. It was almost as if Thibault had sensed someone was watching him.
Then he went back inside.
The options they faced were complicated. They could arrest Thibault themselves, but that would mean bringing in the Serbian police. Anything else would be unlawful. Which no one wanted. That would only create a public legal battle over extradition. Without a formal treaty and with local lawyers dragging it out, a thing like that could go on forever. And once the government became aware Thibault was actually Kostavic, who knew how that would play out? They might lose whatever negotiating leverage they had.
The next best option was something more clandestine. Bring in professionals. Call in a team that could subdue Thibault, disable him, and sneak him out of the country across the border with Romania or even Macedonia. Back into U.S. hands. The new international antiterrorist accords gave them broad powers. But apprehending a Serb in his home country, doing a covert abduction in a friendly state-that would never fly. That wasn’t exactly part of the current U.S. presidential administration’s foreign policy theme.
They had found him. But time was running out and they felt their viable options slowly drifting away.
“What’s the goal here?” Hauck asked atop the ridge, swigging water as the day grew hot and long.
He had come to a decision on his own.
“Apprehend him,” Naomi said. “Find out what he knows.”
“You can always apprehend him. We know what car he’s driving, what name he’s traveling under. You can always petition the local government to hand him over. Whatever the case, he’ll be facing serious charges here. And you’ll know where he is.”
Naomi stared at him quizzically. “So where are you heading, Ty?”
“You want to find out where this leads, right? What’s important is discovering what’s behind those murders?”
She nodded, going along.
“What we need to do is get inside that farmhouse.”
He turned and focused back on the house, not elaborating further. He could see Naomi weighing what he’d said in her mind. She wasn’t a field agent. She worked behind a desk. Her job was to fit together the threads of financial conspiracy and assess the threat. In the army, she’d been an investigator. Going in there, on the fly, without the backing of her bosses in DC, like some kind of operative-that definitely wasn’t the way careers were made in Washington. She’d be crossing a huge line.
Some time later, after Hauck figured she’d stowed the idea away as a bad one, she turned. “How do we do that?” she asked.
Hauck grinned. He’d been waiting for her to reply, “Over my dead body!”
“Thibault’s used to being a public person. He’s going to have to leave that farmhouse sometime.”
She sat back against the ledge and nodded, not so much in agreement as in coming to grips with the idea. Finally she replied, without turning, “Anyway, if anyone’s going in that farmhouse, it’s going to be me. I know what I’m looking for.”
He waited a moment. “You ever done anything like that before?”
She looked at him without answering.
“I’m just saying, this isn’t exactly music theory at Princeton, Naomi.”
“Any more than it’s handing out traffic tickets in Greenwich.” Her glare suggested there wouldn’t be much negotiating on this.
“Okay.” Hauck turned back to the binoculars, suppressing a smile.
Naomi said, “I thought this was just about your friend. The one who was murdered. You don’t have to do this either. We found Thibault.”
“What can I tell you?” Hauck said. “I’m learning to multitask.”
Now she was the one hiding her smile.
They watched a little longer. Hauck’s cell phone began to vibrate. It was Steve Chrisafoulis, he noticed, relieved it wasn’t Annie.
“Steve.”
“Where am I catching you?” the detective asked. The reception made it sound as if he was a block away.
“Just doing a bit of house-hunting,” Hauck said, rolling a few yards down the rise. He’d have liked to hear the guy’s reaction if he divulged he was on a hilltop in frigging Serbia.
“House-hunting…? We got something interesting back on James Merced. You remember your skating partner?”
“Yeah, Steve, I recall. I’m listening.”
“Turns out he came back stateside after receiving a get-out-of-jail card from Iraq. Seemed he had a few social problems with the enlisted women over there. Harassment. Assault. Attempted rape…They gave him a less-than-honorable discharge.”