She looked up at him. “Didn’t you put that tracker thingy on his car last night?”
He nodded, sitting down on the bed in his underwear. “But we gotta keep close to him.” He looked at the sandwich in disgust. “This must be two hours old. Would you hit the Coke machine so I can wash this shit down?”
She dipped the tiny brush back into the red bottle. “Gimme a sec.”
He dropped the sandwich back into the bag and got up. “Gonna get dressed in case he rolls out soon.”
She sat blowing on the nail for a moment, and then took a dollar from his wallet and went out the door.
Ryder was watching through a thin crack in the curtains when Sarahi stepped out, looking directly toward his room. “Paranoid, my ass!” he said, taking a folding knife from inside the waistband of his jeans and thumbing open the three-inch black tanto blade.
He watched as she made her way toward the Coke machine in the corner where the hotel made an L shape at the halfway point between their rooms. He waited until she took the can from the machine and started back before slipping out and moving swiftly after her. She was still blowing on her finger when he caught up to her just outside the room.
She glanced back at him and let out a startled gasp, dropping the Coke as he swiped expertly at the side of her neck with the knife. The tip of the scalpel-sharp blade caught her carotid artery, and he swept past her up the walk as though nothing had happened.
At first Sarahi didn’t realize she was even cut; she simply stood there with her hand over her beating heart watching Ryder walk away, but then she realized she was gushing blood from the left side of her neck, and she started screaming bloody murder.
Crosswhite jerked open the door to see her standing there spurting blood all over herself. “Holy Jesus!” He pulled her into the room and sat her down in a chair, snatching a towel from the floor and pressing it to the side of her neck. “Hold that tight, baby!”
He grabbed the phone and punched 0 with a bloody finger to get the front desk. “Call 911! Room 14 — arterial bleed!”
He dropped the phone and clamped his hand back over the towel, pressing as tightly as he could. “Hang on, baby! They’re comin’! They’re comin’!”
“Please don’t let me die,” she begged, her strength beginning to fade. “Please, don’t let me die, Danny!”
“Shhh,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Relax, baby, relax. We gotta slow your heart down. You gotta keep calm.”
When the paramedics appeared in the doorway fifteen minutes later with their latex gloves and boxes of equipment, he was still standing there beside the chair clutching her lifeless, blood-soaked body against him, a thousand-yard stare in his eyes.
“Jesus,” one of the medics murmured.
Crosswhite blinked once, his gaze sliding into focus as he looked at them. “There’s nothin’ you guys can do here. Never was.”
18
Pope was getting into the back of a black government sedan at CIA headquarters when he received a text message from Daniel Crosswhite: “Detained by police. Have temporarily lost contact with target.” He sighed and slipped the phone into his coat pocket. It had begun to rain, and the air was turning cold.
“Keep your eyes open, Lieutenant,” he said casually. “There exists the off chance of an attempt on my life. I wouldn’t want you hit in the cross fire.”
The marine driver looked at him in the mirror. “We’ll deal with it, sir.”
Pope was a tall man in his midsixties with soft blue eyes and a head of thick white hair. “Sorry to put you in harm’s way.”
“That’s where marines belong, sir.”
Pope settled into the seat as they pulled out of the parking deck. They drove across the CIA campus, turning onto George Washington Memorial Parkway and heading south along the Potomac River toward the District of Columbia. The GWM was a scenic highway of four lanes with a wide, grassy median separating northbound and southbound traffic. The trees of Fort Marcy National Park were only beginning to bud, and Pope caught glimpses of the river as he rode along, trying to discern in his own mind whether Gil was still alive. There had been no further contact with him since they were cut off the day before, and the murder of the Messina cops was all over the Italian news.
He wondered how much to tell the president. The commander in chief was entitled to a certain degree of plausible deniability, but it was possible that Gil had been killed and that his body might soon be identified. There would be no evidence that Gil was working for the US government, but, regardless, his identification would cause some friction at the executive level.
The satellite phone rang inside his coat, and he answered it quickly, hoping it would be Gil.
“Pope here.”
“Hello, Robert.” It was Vladimir Federov of the GRU. “Have you heard from your man on Sicily?”
“No,” Pope replied. “Have you heard from yours?”
“I’m sorry to say we have not,” Federov said. “But there is good news. There have been no arrests, and their bodies have not been found.”
“Any word on who killed the Maltese sailors?”
“Our people in Rome have concluded that it was Kovalenko,” Federov said. “Also, they have verified that someone in the CIA’s Rome office has been helping him with his logistics — someone named Walton.”
“Good old Ben Walton,” Pope said, a piece of the puzzle falling into place. “That fits.” He had recently reviewed a dossier on the now deceased Captain Miller of the Palinouros in which Walton’s name was mentioned numerous times. Both men were former US Navy. “Walton’s the agent who tipped us on Yeshevsky, the imposter Dokka Umarov, transshipping from the Greek tanker to the Palinouros. Which leads me to conclude that our man in Athens — an agent named Max Steiner — must also be working with Kovalenko. It was Steiner who tipped us that Yeshevsky was boarding the tanker.”
“How do you plan to deal with them?” Federov asked.
“I’m going to have to give that some thought,” Pope said, brushing a speck of lint from the knee of his corduroy slacks. “I’m on my way to meet with the president now.”
“Here is something else you may wish to consider,” Federov added. “We now have cause to believe the real Dokka Umarov sent Yeshevsky to Paris to meet with Al Qaeda, to strike a deal with them for an insurgency — probably posing as the actual Umarov. Such a display of apparent bravado would be convincing to Al Qaeda — considering the distance between Paris and the safety of the Caucasus.”
“Do you think Umarov still intends to hit the pipeline?”
“Personally, I have no doubt.”
Pope needed to know exactly what kinds of resources the GRU could put forth in southern Europe. “Do your people have anyone else available to help Shannon and Dragunov while they’re stuck in the Med?”
There was a slight pause before Federov replied. “Not immediately; not with the necessary skills and intelligence clearances. Dragunov and his men were brought in special.”
“Which leaves the ball in my court,” Pope said. “Okay then. But if I can get them off of Sicily and back to mainland Europe, you can cover their transportation to Georgia?”
“That I can do,” Federov promised. “But we must first verify they are still alive.”
“Well, you said no bodies and no arrests. That’s good enough for me. For now, though, you’re probably right. We have to wait for one of them to make contact.”
Pope was off the line a few moments later, tucking the phone into his coat. “I trust there’s no need to tell you that conversation was top secret, Lieutenant?”