Chapter 30
Around the same time Stone and Commander Choi set out to question the surviving Amanda Jae crew members, Leonid Bronsky quietly slipped into the U.S. as part of a bus tour group, crossing from Canada into Michigan, just south of Lake Huron.
At the first stateside stop, he exited the bus and found the used Honda Accord he’d arranged to be waiting for him. It was far from the luxury vehicle he preferred, but it had the advantage of being forgettable. That was more important at the moment.
Three hours later, the Honda had been ditched in a Detroit Metropolitan Airport parking lot, and Bronsky was on a flight to New York, using a forged Argentinean passport.
Upon landing, he took a cab into Manhattan, where he checked into the InterContinental Hotel, this time pretending to be a businessman from Estonia.
The last time he’d checked his email was before his flight. There were no new messages then. Now, however, there was one from Pryce, telling him he had more information to pass on.
Bronsky made the call.
“Hello?” Pryce answered tentatively.
“Where are you?”
“I-in my office.”
“For God’s sake! Go for a walk. I’ll call in ten minutes.”
Bronsky hung up. No wonder MI6 had never given Pryce a field job. The man was clueless when it came to spycraft.
After exactly ten minutes, Bronsky called him back.
“What about now?” he asked.
“I don’t understand the question,” Pryce said.
“Are you an imbecile? Your location!”
“Oh, right. Um, I’m at the park beyond the train station.”
Bronsky was very familiar with the area around MI6 and knew Pryce was referring to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
“No one followed you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so or they didn’t?”
“Uh, they didn’t. No one would suspect me of anything.”
That was true, Bronsky knew, and was a large factor as to why the Russian had chosen to turn Pryce into an asset.
Pryce breathed hard into the phone. Bronsky guessed he was walking at a brisk pace.
“Slow down,” he said.
“What?”
“The faster you walk, the more attention you’ll draw.”
“Right, right.”
After a moment, Pryce’s breaths evened out.
“So, what’s this information you have for me?” Bronsky asked.
“I checked CCTV footage in the area of Dame Felicity’s house from the day of the bombing.”
“I thought you’d already established the car left the house that evening, just like it was reported on TV.”
“I’m not talking about in the evening. I’m talking about earlier. Eight hours earlier to be exact.”
“You have my attention.”
“At that time, a vehicle owned by James Hall arrived at her place and parked in the garage. Ten minutes later, it left again. There were two people in the car, but the only one I could identify was Acting Chief Hall. Well, I guess he wasn’t acting chief at that moment, just assistant—”
“Do you know where it went?” Bronsky cut in.
“Uh, CCTV footage showed the vehicle driving to an airfield frequented by private jets. Unfortunately, all airport footage that would have shown where the car went and who exited it has been erased.”
“Erased?”
“Correct. There’s footage from an hour before and an hour after, but the time block in between is missing.”
Bronsky smiled.
Hall’s passenger had to be Dame Felicity, probably off to some clandestine meeting. The trip that ended up saving her life.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“It is. I thought you’d want to know.”
“I would be happier if you told me where she is now.”
“I have no idea,” Pryce said, as if surprised by the suggestion.
“Then you have some work to do, don’t you?”
“How am I supposed to—”
Bronsky hung up.
He had no expectations that Pryce would be able to uncover Felicity’s whereabouts. Bronsky was already ten steps ahead of him in that regard. But it never hurt to keep a source on his toes.
His next call was to Richter.
Bronsky had tasked him with coordinating the surveillance of Barrington’s homes in L.A. and Maine.
“Yes?” the man answered.
“It’s Mr. Drake,” Bronsky said, using the name he’d given him.
“I was just going to call you.”
“With good news?”
“I think so. L.A. was a bust. No one was using the lawyer’s place there. But Maine’s another story.”
“Go on.”
“His place is on an island and backs up to the water. The guy I sent up there went by it on a boat. He didn’t see your target, but he did see two people patrolling the grounds who looked like skilled security.”
“That’s got to be where she is,” Bronsky said, certain of it.
“As soon as you give the word, I can send my guy in to take care of her.”
“By himself?”
“He’s very good at what he does.”
“Her security will be top-notch.”
“Doesn’t matter. He can handle it. But if you’d feel more comfortable, I can send some backup. It’ll cost you, though.”
“Money is not important,” Bronsky said. It actually was very important as he was getting low on his personal funds, but it would be worth it. And besides, once his superiors at the SVR learned what he’d done, he was sure they would be happy to reimburse the costs.
“All right. I can have them up there by later tonight. They can do it while she’s sleeping.”
“Not tonight,” Bronsky said.
“Is there a problem I need to know about?”
“I want to check the place out myself first. I can give your people the green light directly when I’m satisfied.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m the one paying the bills, aren’t I?”
“I wasn’t trying to argue with you. If that’s what you want, we’ll make it happen. My guy’s name is Andre Parker. I’ll text you his contact info.”
Felicity’s phone rang.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Felicity, it’s James,” the current acting chief of MI6 said. “There’s been a development.”
Since her funeral on Saturday, a small team of trusted MI6 agents had been keeping an eye on Gordon Pryce. Using a directional mic, they’d picked up his end of a phone conversation that had just occurred.
During the call, Pryce had told his contact about Felicity’s trip to the airport on the day she had supposedly died. The CCTV footage he had found had originally been removed right after Felicity departed the country. Over the previous weekend, it had been restored so that Pryce might find it.
“They didn’t tap in and hear the whole conversation?” she asked when he finished.
“The caller was using a specialized app that scrambled the connection.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Quite.”
“Perhaps Mr. Pryce himself can tell you who he was talking to and what was said.”
“I thought you might say that. Call you back soon.”
Gordon Pryce returned to his office in a daze from his conversation with Bronsky. How in the world was he supposed to find out where Dame Felicity was?
He’d been lucky enough to figure out she’d left the country on the morning of the bombing. But he didn’t even know where to start searching for her current location.
Needing to clear his mind, he tried focusing on the work he’d been doing prior to Bronsky’s call—reviewing transcripts of a phone conversation between diplomats from two nations on the U.K. watch list.
Analyzing nuances and looking for subtext that revealed what the discussion was really about was the kind of work he loved.
But try as he might, the words swirled on the page and made no sense at all.
He was about to get up to fetch a cup of tea when his boss opened his door.
“Sorry to disturb you, Gordon,” David Wills said. “But do you have a moment?”
“Well, I’m kind of in the middle of—”
Wills smiled. “I’m sure whatever it is can wait. This shouldn’t take long.”
“If you insist.”
“Thank you.”
As was procedure, Pryce closed the file and signed off his computer before rising and following his boss down the hall.
Instead of going to Wills’s office, Wills led him to the elevators and pressed the Down button.
Pryce’s brow furrowed. “What’s this about?”
“Not here,” Wills whispered.
This was a reasonable reply, given the nature of the secrets they dealt with, but it didn’t ease Pryce’s confusion.
The elevator arrived, and they stepped in. Wills pushed the button marked B3.
Pryce had only been down to that level once in all his years at MI6, and that was when his first boss had been giving him a tour of the facility when he’d been hired.
One half of the floor was split between weapons storage and an indoor firing range.
The other half contained several “dead” rooms—rooms that were built to be as impervious to surveillance as they could be.
It was one of these to which Pryce was led.
When they stepped inside, Pryce nearly tripped over his own feet. On the other side of the rectangular table in the middle of the room sat James Hall, the acting chief of MI6. Pryce had never said more than hello to the man in all his years on the job.
Hall smiled and stood. “Mr. Pryce, thank you for coming.” He motioned to the single chair across from him. “Please, have a seat.”
A chill ran down Pryce’s back as he did as the acting chief instructed.
“Thank you, Mr. Wills,” Hall said. “I think that will be all for now.”
Wills shut the door on his way out, leaving Pryce and Hall alone.
“So, Gordon.” Hall paused. “I can call you Gordon, can’t I?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Ah, good. Now, Gordon, I’m hoping you can help me with something.”
“Happy to do whatever you need, sir.”
“Excellent. Exactly the response I would expect.” The acting chief leaned forward conspiratorially. “It seems we have a mole.”
Pryce tried to keep the panic off his face. “Mole, sir?”
“Someone’s leaking information to persons unfriendly to us.”
“That’s…”
“Shocking?”
“Yes, shocking.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Finding this person has become top priority.”
“As it should,” Pryce said.
“Glad you agree. So, I can count on your help in doing so?”
“Of course.”
The knot in Pryce’s gut eased just a bit as he began to think that not only was he not under suspicion, but he was being asked to help find the mole. If he played it right, he could keep the hunt from ever veering in his direction.
“Thank you, Gordon. I appreciate that.” The acting chief leaned back. “I’m sure with your help we can wrap this up in an efficient manner.”
“Just tell me what you’d like me to do.”
Hall smiled. “Very simple. Tell me who your contact is, and everything you’ve told him.”
The blood drained from Pryce’s face. “I’m sorry?”
“Let’s not play games, shall we? You passed on a conversation Stone Barrington had with someone, who you assumed was Dame Felicity, to whoever you are helping.”
“Dame Felicity is d-d-dead,” Pryce said with no conviction.
“Dame Felicity is very much alive. What she is not, however, is staying at Barrington’s house on Key West. Nor was she ever there.”
“Oh, shit,” Pryce mumbled to himself.
“Oh, shit, indeed.”