Chapter 27
“Both of you, get off the plaza. Now,” the woman said. The voice was definitely Ingrid’s, but the face—the face was Beatriz Guerrero’s. Or a latex version of her.
“We had no idea,” said Lloyd.
“Of course you didn’t. You weren’t supposed to.” She glanced sideways as a man approached, a man Maggie recognized. It was Rodrigo Estrada.
“Our drone’s following the van,” said Rodrigo.
Ingrid nodded. “At least we’ve got that.”
“And we have photos of the man. We’re running his image through the database now.”
Confused, Lloyd looked at Rodrigo, then at Ingrid. “This whole thing—it was just an op?”
“And we walked right into it,” groaned Maggie.
She scanned the plaza and spotted a young man in blue jeans watching from a café.
And up on one of the balconies, a woman was staring down, a camera and telephoto in hand.
Both must be part of Rodrigo’s team, she thought. The ones she could spot, anyway.
“Get inside,” said Ingrid. “We’ll explain.”
“They’re not cleared for this,” said Rodrigo.
“We hardly have a choice. We have to tell them,” said Ingrid. “For better or worse, they’re part of it now.”
“I was never really in danger,” said Ingrid.
She had removed the black wig and the latex mask, and once again, she looked like herself.
But something had changed between her and Lloyd.
Even though the two of them sat side by side on the sofa in the hotel suite, even though Ingrid’s hand rested on her husband’s knee, Maggie could see a distance between the pair.
Doubt had come into their marriage, and the distrust was as real as a physical wall dividing them.
The presence of Rodrigo didn’t help. He loomed in the background, a silent and unsmiling observer watching from across the room.
Also watching were two men from the Argus team, both in their thirties, both fit and poker faced.
Clearly intelligence professionals, probably drawn from the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s paramilitary arm.
They’d all regrouped in this nearby hotel suite, which was serving as their base of operations.
Maps of Madrid were laid out on the dining table, the room’s coffee maker was gurgling with a fresh brew, and on the kitchenette countertop was the well-stocked makeup kit that had helped transform Ingrid into Beatriz Guerrero, a.k.a.
Zoya Larina. Scattered around the room, on tables and chairs, were backpacks and surveillance equipment, laptops and chargers.
The controlled chaos of a team in mid-operation.
An operation that had been forced to a halt while they processed this new complication, and what to do about it.
“Beatriz was never in any danger either,” said Ingrid.
“How were we supposed to know that?” said Lloyd.
“We saw that man moving in. He looked like he was going to shove you—or whoever you’re supposed to be—into that van.
And then you’d be gone. They’d drive you away to God knows where, and in a few days your body would be .
. .” Lloyd looked away and cleared his throat.
They didn’t need to see his face; they could hear the tears in his voice.
“Where is Beatriz?” said Maggie.
“She’s in a safe place. We relocated her, as soon as we learned—”
“That she’s on Moscow’s kill list?”
Ingrid glanced at Rodrigo. “You see? I told you this would happen.”
“What would happen?” asked Maggie.
“That you’d be on to us. That my friends weren’t born yesterday.”
“You could have saved us a lot of trouble by just telling us what you and Argus were up to.” Maggie turned to Rodrigo. “That was your Piper Seneca that picked up Ingrid, I believe.”
Rodrigo responded with a shrug, a smile. He’d cut an imposing figure when she’d first met him at the Stone Coast Conference, and he was just as imposing now, with his mane of silver-streaked black hair. Just by his air of command, he left no doubt who was in charge here.
“Since that kill list is hardly a secret to us, you might as well tell us when you learned about it,” she said.
“Moscow has always maintained an enemies list,” said Rodrigo.
“In just the last three years, at least fifty targets have been killed. They represent a wide range of people, from businessmen to journalists to political opponents, anyone who dared to challenge Russian leadership. Then a year ago, a new category of targets began getting killed: defectors, who should have been safe because they were living under new names, new identities, and their locations were known only to the Agency. The first was killed in London, where he’d been living quietly under an assumed name.
When his body turned up in the Thames, the Agency thought maybe he’d just had the bad luck of being spotted and recognized.
Then another defector was found tortured and killed in Rome.
He’d been living there for over twenty years, safely tucked away under a new identity.
How did he get exposed? Someone with access to classified CIA files was obviously feeding the info to Moscow. ”
“A mole,” said Maggie.
Rodrigo nodded. “You can understand why secrecy is crucial. If this mole gets wind that he’s now being watched, he’ll go dark and slip away to someplace we can’t reach him.
But if he thinks he’s still safe, he’ll keep leaking info to Moscow.
He won’t realize he’s being monitored. The intel from his communications is worth gold.
Not only does it reveal what he’s telling Moscow; it also reveals who in Moscow he’s talking to. ”
“So this mole has already been identified,” said Maggie.
“Did I say that?”
“You didn’t need to. You pulled Beatriz Guerrero and Willem Dekker to safety, which means you knew they’d already been exposed.”
“Years ago, when Dmitry—Dekker—defected in Italy, I was his handler,” said Ingrid. “I recognized Dmitry at once when Rodrigo sent me his photo from the kill list. I knew it was only a matter of time before the Russians came after him.”
“Moscow’s kill list offered us interesting opportunities,” said Rodrigo.
“We knew which targets they’d be coming after, and we could set out a staked goat to tempt the killers.
” He looked at Ingrid. “Or what looks like a staked goat. When the assassins show up, we close in. The hunters become the hunted.” He paused. “That was the plan, anyway.”
“You made my wife the staked goat,” said Lloyd.
“That wasn’t Rodrigo’s idea,” said Ingrid. “It was mine.”
“Don’t try to defend him!”
“But it’s true,” said Rodrigo. “This was Ingrid’s show. The planning, the setup. Right down to the location of our operatives.”
Lloyd stared at Ingrid. “You made yourself the target?”
“It had to be me,” said Ingrid. “I’m the right height and the right weight to pass as Beatriz. This is the kind of thing I used to do, Lloyd.”
“And she’s still good at it,” added Rodrigo.
“So don’t blame it on anyone else,” said Ingrid. “Once I understood the stakes, I jumped in with both feet.”
“It’s a risky game you’re playing,” said Maggie. “I can’t believe the Agency agreed to it.”
“Officially, they haven’t,” said Rodrigo. “That’s where Argus comes in.”
“The Agency hired you?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Come on. We both know it’s the CIA.”
“Again, I’m not at liberty to say. Our secrecy agreement is ironclad.”
“That’s why I couldn’t talk about it,” said Ingrid.
“Even with your own husband?” said Lloyd.
“That,” said Rodrigo, “you can blame on me.”
Lloyd glared at him. “Oh, I do.”
Rodrigo shrugged. “It’s just business. Our client demands confidentiality. I deliver the goods, and no one ever knows who hired us.”
“And how much do they pay you for this?” said Lloyd.
“I have no complaints.” He looked at his two younger colleagues, who’d been silently listening.
“Retired intelligence professionals are in demand. We have specialized knowledge, an unusual skill set. Worldwide contacts. These are valuable assets, especially when so many government agencies are paralyzed due to pesky things like international law. This situation needed quick and decisive action. Our client is deeply rattled by these assassinations.”
“We should all be rattled,” said Ingrid. “If Russian defectors are being killed, it means we can’t be trusted to keep them safe. It means every potential defector will think twice before coming to us.”
“You should have told me,” said Lloyd.
“She couldn’t,” said Rodrigo.
“But I’m her husband!” Lloyd turned to Ingrid. “Or am I now just an inconvenience?”
“I tried to keep you out of it for your own safety,” said Ingrid.
Lloyd laughed. “And it almost got me killed.”
“That’s what Maggie was supposed to prevent.” Ingrid turned to Maggie. “I was relying on you.”
Lloyd looked at Maggie, then back at Ingrid. “What do you mean, relying on her?”
“Ingrid asked me to keep you safe,” Maggie admitted.
“When did she ask you this?”
“It was a text message.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I asked her not to,” said Ingrid.
“Well. It seems I can’t trust anyone. Not my wife. Not my best friends.” Lloyd lurched to his feet and started toward the door. There he halted and turned to face Rodrigo. “If you let anything happen to Ingrid, I swear I’ll—”
“I get the message,” said Rodrigo.
“Lloyd?” said Ingrid. “Where are you going?”
“To get some fresh air!” He walked out.
“Give him time,” said Rodrigo. “He’ll calm down.”
Ingrid rose to her feet. “This can’t wait,” she said, and followed Lloyd out of the suite.
There was a long silence in the room.
“Well,” Maggie finally said. “When do I get to hear the truth?”
“I haven’t lied about anything.”
“I want to know why you dragged Ingrid into this.”
Rodrigo shot a meaningful glance at his two men. They both nodded and quietly left the room, closing the door behind them.
“I should never underestimate any friend of Ingrid’s,” Rodrigo said.
“I’ve known her for nearly forty years. I find it odd that she never once talked about you.”
“I’m disappointed. But not surprised.”
“Things ended badly between you, I take it?”
“She chose Lloyd. I gallantly bowed out.”
A choice between Lloyd and this dark-eyed panther of a man would not have been easy for most women. Age hadn’t dimmed Rodrigo’s magnetism, and he still moved with the energy and purpose of a much younger man.
“Here it is, years later, and you pop back into her life,” said Maggie. “You wiggle your finger and she comes running.”
“The situation is far more complicated than that. This isn’t about our, um, previous attachment. Although the spark is definitely still there.”
“Then what is this about?”
“A mission that went badly wrong. And a chance for us to finally make things right.”
“This was in France?”
Rodrigo paused. “You know about it?”
“Not the details. But when operatives die in action, we hear about it. I know there was an attack on a safe house. I know we lost two men.”
He nodded. “It was a lightning attack. Coordinated. Brutal. The two colleagues we lost, Simon and Gordon, were just starting their careers. Young men, with families. We had to attend their funerals, comfort their wives. We learned later, after our team was debriefed about the fiasco, that the Agency source who betrayed us managed to slip away to Moscow. Our contacts there told us he was rewarded with a luxury apartment. At least, what qualifies as a luxury apartment in Moscow. He spent the rest of his life in comfort, untouchable.”
“He’s dead?”
Rodrigo nodded. “Three years ago. Cancer.”
“Which puts him beyond reach. So how, exactly, can you make things right?”
Rodrigo didn’t answer immediately. He went to the window and gazed down at the plaza below.
The afternoon light was fading, and against the autumnal glow, he was a commanding silhouette, lean and broad shouldered.
“He wasn’t the only one who escaped,” he said quietly. “There was also the fifth man.”
“What fifth man?”
“We call him that because we don’t know his name. I wasn’t even sure he really existed, even though Ingrid swore there were five men who attacked the safe house that day. Then she told me about the murder of the hotel waitress.”
“Karen O’Brien? What does she have to do with this?”
“It was the way she was killed. Stabbed in the left eye with a stiletto, the way Gordon was killed in France.”
“But that’s not the way Maslov was killed.”
“No, we think Maslov’s murder was meant to look natural, because an assassination on US soil would have stirred up a diplomatic hornet’s nest. Polonium poisoning is a difficult diagnosis.
In 2006, when Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium, his doctors thought he’d picked up a bacterial infection.
It took weeks for them to make the correct diagnosis, and that was in a major London hospital.
In Maine, the doctors never would have thought of polonium.
Except that something went wrong with this perfect murder. ”
“Karen O’Brien.”
Rodrigo nodded. “The waitress must have seen something, and the killer had to eliminate her, quickly and silently. When Ingrid saw the stiletto in that woman’s left eye, she immediately thought of how our colleague Gordon was killed, in France.
She recognized the fifth man’s signature.
But why would a Russian assassin be in Maine? The answer had to be Maslov.”
“And that’s why she joined you? As a chance to catch this fifth man?”
“After all these years, we may have a shot at him. We now know who’s on Moscow’s kill list. We just have to watch and wait for the killers to show up.”
“You think this fifth man will walk into your trap.”
“Eventually. Maybe.”
“Ingrid could have been killed today.”
“We had it all under control. At least we did.”
Until we blundered in, thought Maggie. She sank back in the armchair, suddenly drained.
The past few days of uncertainty, of feeling responsible for Lloyd’s safety, had finally caught up with her.
She longed to be home on her farm. Longed to walk into Declan’s arms. Perhaps Ingrid and Rodrigo still enjoyed the heady rush of adrenaline that came with their former careers, but it had lost its appeal for Maggie.
She knew all too well that a thrilling adrenaline rush often ended in sorrow.
“I’ll leave you and Ingrid to deal with the aftermath,” she said, and stood up. “I’m going home.”
“What about Lloyd?”
“He’s in your hands now. I did what Ingrid asked me to do: I kept an eye on him. She’ll have to decide what happens next.”
“But we still have a job to do.”
“Don’t we all?” she said, and walked out the door.