And then, louder than all that had gone before, silence.
Seven seconds had passed.
Graves walked to the woman. She was dead, effectively sawed in half by the shotgun’s vicious barrage. He noted that a single bullet had pierced the center of her forehead. It was not Emma Ransom.
He walked into the bedroom.
A man lay facedown on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him. He was dressed in a gray suit; his hair was the color of steel wool. It’s him, thought Graves. Shvets.
“Turn him over,” he said.
A policeman rolled the body over and Graves swore very loudly.
At first glance, the man was of Middle Eastern extraction. He let loose with a violent protest in the suddenly familiar language. It was Farsi.
“He says they’re Iranian diplomats,” translated Graves. “You can find their passports in the bedroom.”
A moment later another policeman emerged from the back room, clutching two diplomatic passports from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Graves opened the first. It identified the holder as Pasha Gozhi and stated that he was attached to the Foreign Ministry. “Mr. Gozhi,” he said, “what are you doing with a crate of machine guns and plastic explosives in your apartment?”
“I wish to see the ambassador,” he said. “I have diplomatic immunity.
You have no right to break in. Where is my wife? Anisha! Are you all right?”
Graves looked at Kate. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “We’re royally screwed.”
Kate placed a hand on his arm. “Maybe we’ll get that reading on the location of the phone call Emma Ransom placed last night.”
“Yeah,” said Graves, without hope. “Maybe.”
71
From his flat on the fourth floor of a building half a block away, Sergei Shvets watched in horror as the Black Panthers of the French RAID prepared to assault the Iranian safe house he’d used two nights earlier. There was no time to wonder how they had found it. A leak. A slip-up. A spy nestled close to his breast. A postmortem of the operation would locate the source. Right now, there was only time to act. Time to ensure that his months of careful planning did not result in unmitigated disaster. Reaching for his phone, he dialed a number to be used by him and him alone.
“What is it, Papi?” asked Emma Ransom.
“Where are you?”
“Inside the CPF. We’re cutting it close. There was an extra security presence at the main gate.”
“We had to expect as much once the Brits discovered the real reason for the bombing.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Nothing for you to concern yourself with. Just hurry and get the job done as quickly as possible. I’ll be waiting at the airport.”
“Keep the engines running.”
“You have my word. Now go.”
Shvets hung up the phone and scrambled into the bedroom, where he gathered his clothing and stuffed it into his overnight bag. Using a damp cloth, he rubbed down the lamps, light switches, the television remote control, and any appliances in the kitchen he might have touched. Satisfied that the flat was clean, he put on his coat, slipped his pistol into his waist holster, and put on his jacket. He checked his watch. It was nearly six-thirty Just then there came an eruption of gunfire from outside, a succession of bangs that crackled like a cap gun. Shvets hurried to the window. The uniforms were nowhere in sight, and a crowd had gathered on the corner. There was a burst of machine-gun fire, and a window shattered on the upper floor of the apartment building. People screamed as the glass rained down. Smoke escaped the window and drifted into the sky. Picking up his bag in one hand and his phone in the other, he headed to the front door.
“Yuri,” he said, calling the pilot. “Get the plane fueled and ready for takeoff. I’ll be there in an hour… Yes, I know it’s early.” He opened the door. “There’s been a change of-” Shvets stopped in midsentence. “Jesus Christ,” he said, looking at the man standing a foot away and pointing a pistol squarely at his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Hang up.”
Jonathan Ransom pressed the pistol against the heavyset man’s forehead and shoved him back into the apartment.
The man thumbed the off button hard enough to break it. “Where’s Alex?” he asked, with a heavy Russian accent.
“Dead.” Jonathan closed the door and put his back against it. “You’re Shvets?”
“Call me Papi. Lara does. Or would you prefer it if I called her Emma?”
“Call her whatever you want. I saw the file. Now turn around and walk into the living room. Sit down on the couch. Hands on your legs where I can see them.”
Shvets turned and walked into a sparsely furnished corner room with large picture windows. “You’ve become quite the professional,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I learned from the best.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Spacibo.”
“Fuck you, too.”
Shvets lowered himself onto the couch, placing his hands squarely on his legs. “Happy?”
“Great,” said Jonathan distractedly, his attention drawn to the hive of police vehicles jamming the street four stories below and the swarm of uniforms buzzing among them. He’d jumped from one hornet’s nest to another. “Why are the police down there?” he asked.
“They think that your wife and I are in the building on the corner,” said Shvets.
“Where is she?”
“Not there. You needn’t worry.”
Jonathan looked back at Shvets, wincing as pain radiated across his upper back and neck. Once the police had started banging down the door in Èze, he’d quickly come to the conclusion that there was no other way out than to fake his own death. It had worked for Emma, he’d reasoned. Why not him?
Jury-rigging the Peugeot to drive without him wasn’t a problem. He’d set cruise control at a hundred, hauled the dead Russian’s body into his seat, then opened the door and bailed out. Landing on the macadam road was another matter. He’d done his best to drop and roll, but somewhere between the drop and the roll, he’d impacted squarely on his left shoulder, resulting in a partial dislocation and, he suspected, a hairline fracture of the collarbone. It was raw, undistilled anger that had driven him to his feet and propelled his first uncertain, excruciating steps down the hillside. It was over, he’d told himself again and again as his shoulder cried out and his elbows bled. He was done being screwed with.