CHAPTER 19
Cotton caught a glimpse of the old man sweeping past in the quick current of the canal. More shots came his way, which kept him pinned in the side tunnel.
But he had to move. And fast.
So he leaped into the water.
Freezing. So cold it momentarily sucked his breath away.
The drainage channel was also surprisingly deep.
He could not stand. The current rushed him along.
He inhaled a deep breath and propelled himself forward with broad strokes, trying to find Lars Olsson.
The chilly water grabbed at his body and sucked him under.
He swept his arms out and in, swimming hard.
Eventually this water had to emerge somewhere.
Which probably meant the inlet that surrounded Stockholm’s old town.
Its levels were obviously high and active thanks to all the rain.
He pushed off the rough rock wall.
If the cold was affecting him, what was it doing to the old man’s body?
He again pivoted off the side and swam with the torrent. His right biceps began to cramp. Suddenly he was not in a partially lit open channel any longer. The spillway entered a closed tunnel, the blackness absolute.
He found a foothold and wedged a knee, bracing himself against the pressure, which threatened to spit him along.
He needed a breath and resisted with all his strength from being swept ahead, heading upward and finding a nose-width sliver of air between the water and the rock at the top of the channel.
Reality hit him. He was enclosed. Totally.
Trapped in water.
Don’t think about that.
His mind reduced to its most basic function, that of keeping the body alive and the brain focused.
He dropped beneath the surface. No way to swim back the way he’d come.
The current was too strong. Keep calm. Think.
He worked his way back to the surface and managed another long sniff of air.
Careful not to choke. That could be fatal.
No choice. Go forward. Use the current. But how long was this tunnel?
He grabbed for the walls, pressed harder, and searched for a grip finding none.
He moved back toward the surface, but no air pocket existed.
His lungs burned, teeth chattering from the cold.
He fought the rising panic of his phobia and struggled to gain control of his limbs.
Then, a break. Light leaked down from the surface. Had the tunnel ended?
He pushed upward and broke the surface.
Yes. He was out. Thank God.
He searched and found a hold in the rock wall.
A good one this time that provided leverage.
He leaped up and planted his right hand on the upper ledge.
Then his left. He pulled himself out of the water, chilled to the bone.
His arms shook, rivulets of water dripping from his face, clothes soaked.
A sour smell lingered in his nostrils. He raked a hand across the stubble on his face.
Dammit. Lars Olsson was gone. Probably out into open water by now.
He checked his pocket. His cell phone was still there.
Magellan Billet issued and totally water- and pressure-proof.
His hands, feet, and face were cold past pain and into numbness.
The muscles in his shoulders and thighs felt as though they were hauling huge chunks of stone.
He shook his head.
Somebody was way ahead of them. They, whoever they were, knew his name, and they’d readied a trap.
The intelligence leak was so accurate that the real Lars had been taken and a substitute dropped in place, ready and waiting.
Like that Volvo back out on the street. Its driver had known he and Stephanie would be there. This wasn’t a leak. It was a gusher.
Cassiopeia? Was she in jeopardy?
And Stephanie?
He inhaled more of the rank odor, stretched his cramped limbs, then rose to his feet.
He had to get out of here.
Stephanie typed in the access code that Koger had provided and opened the encrypted flash drive.
She’d asked for the FBI’s classified file on John Westlake.
A quick perusal revealed little she did not already know.
Surprisingly, though, she learned that the initial intel source had also revealed other sleepers across Europe, but their identities had been kept secret.
Surely the idea had been to use them to send more false intelligence back to Russia in a one-way ticket to confusion.
But there was no indication what, if anything, had been done.
She was back at the hotel. A moderately priced establishment not far from the elegant Grand H?tel. Cotton was off working for information. Cassiopeia was with Westlake, wherever that might be.
For the moment all was fine.
She found her cell phone and called Koger.
“I appreciate the information,” she told him.
“We’re here to serve.”
“I need to know what happened after Operation Ghost Stories ended. The file says there were other sleepers who were not arrested.”
“I wondered the same thing. So I found out.”
“I’m listening.”
“There were a lot of dead people in its wake.”
“Those sleepers?”
“Yep. Moscow discovered, or already knew, that we knew about them and eliminated the conduits.”
“That did not raise red flags.”
“Plenty. But the trail went cold All dead ends. Literally. Westlake was sent into exile, and everyone moved on.”
“And now he’s back, along with more SVR agents. I’ll be in touch, if I need more.”
“I can hardly wait.”
She ended the call.
They needed to switch from defense to offense.
But they still did not have the ball. In fact, they didn’t even know where the damn thing was located on the playing field.
Seeing Westlake again had brought back a lot of bad memories.
Reading the file only reinforced those. She felt empathy for Princess Lysa.
From all past appearances she’d genuinely cared for Westlake.
Nothing she’d ever heard nor witnessed had telegraphed problems. But of course, she’d only been around them on a handful of occasions, always with others present, and people could, as her mother liked to say, put on a show.
True, the evidence of Westlake’s duplicity was weak.
But doubt was not uncommon in the intelligence business.
Suspicions were many times the only thing you had to work with, but more often than not, those hunches meant the difference between life and death.
When in doubt, go with your gut.
That was advice she’d been given long ago, when she first organized the Magellan Billet. And she’d passed that advice along to all of her agents.
Here? Something was nagging her gut.
Big time.
Earlier, she’d watched Westlake with a fresh eye.
Plenty of time had elapsed since their last encounter, but old self-protective reflexes were coming back to life.
She kept telling herself that Westlake was, at a minimum, an accomplished liar.
He’d repeatedly beat a polygraph. But that had not said much.
They simply did not work, beyond measuring someone’s initial reaction to a particular question.
Were they lying? Impossible to know. The best liars were skilled at blending a careful measure of fact and fiction.
Just enough to make you believe. Still, when Westlake had said those two words—an apology—earlier, a chord was struck.
She’d hoped a rereading of the FBI’s file might refresh her recollection and quell the pangs of doubt that now rattled in her head.
But to no avail.
All she could do now was wait.
And see what Cassiopeia learned.