Matthew Dunn - Slingshot

“No.”

Silence. “It had better be worth my time.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“To do what?”

“We need to meet the in-country head from your organization.”

“Okay. I’ll get the meeting set up through the normal channels.”

“No. It’s imperative you set it up yourself. No one else must know.”

Silence for seven seconds. “Give me a call back in thirty minutes and I’ll give you details.” He repeated, “What’s this about?”

Will smiled. “It’s about unblocking crap.”

At four the next morning, Will was in a taxi heading toward the airport. He felt tired and knew that he’d have to get some sleep on the flight, but right now his mind was too active to allow him to rest.

Understanding Rubner’s role was key. Will suspected that once Rubner had been given Lenka Yevtushenko’s name, he had been involved in coercing the Russian to steal the paper from the SVR. But Langley was blocking Will accessing information on Rubner, so his plan was now to approach someone who almost certainly would have been a customer of Rubner’s CIA intelligence reports, intelligence that could indicate whether Will’s suspicion that Rubner had been manipulating his CIA handlers for his own ends was correct.

And one of the biggest customers of all would have been the CIA Head of Tel Aviv Station.

Mikhail watched Will check in at the El Al desk. He frowned, having no idea why the MI6 officer was travelling to Israel, as it was highly unlikely that Schreiber was in the Middle East. In any case, this presented him with a problem. If the MI6 officer obtained information in Israel that could pinpoint Schreiber, he’d relay that information to his men in the Auguststrasse safe house, who’d then immediately deploy. Stuck in Israel, Mikhail would have no chance to follow them. But he would also be taking a huge gamble if he let the officer out of his sight.

He made a decision.

Kronos sat in a cafe in the arrivals section of the Frankfurt airport, studying the people who were exiting passport control as well as those who were moving across the concourse. He ignored most individuals, instead focusing only on those who were dressed in the uniforms of pilots. He’d discounted all of the thirty-two pilots he’d seen during the last five hours, as only four of them had been wearing the insignia of the Dutch carrier KLM, and they’d been no good to him as it was clear they were about to fly out of the airport. He needed a Dutch pilot who’d landed and was about to go off duty.

He took a sip of his coffee, checked his watch, and casually flicked through the pages of Die Welt while occasionally glancing over the top of the newspaper. Wearing an expensive suit and overcoat, and with an attache case by his feet, he looked like every other businessman who was traveling through the place. If challenged by airport security, he would explain that he was waiting for a colleague whose flight had been delayed. Every thirty minutes, he’d checked the arrivals board to update his knowledge of flight arrival times. Currently, there were seven flights that weren’t running on schedule. He also knew exactly what time every KLM carrier was due to arrive.

One of them had landed thirty minutes ago from Amsterdam Schiphol. Its pilots would soon be walking into view.

He’d thought through every possibility. The pilots could use private vehicles to exit the airport before he had a chance to follow them, could use taxis but not declare their destination until out of earshot within the vehicle, could be met by loved ones or KLM limousine drivers who’d whisk them away without declaring where they were going, or could get changed into civilian clothes in a secure part of the airport and then use a hidden exit. That didn’t matter, because he was prepared to wait here all day and night until a Dutch pilot walked up to the external taxi rank and announced his destination to the driver. When that happened, Kronos would be standing right behind the man and would hail the next available taxi to take him to the same location.

Most likely it would be a hotel. He hoped so, because hotel rooms were easy to break in to.

But it didn’t matter if it was somewhere else.

Among many talents, Kronos was adept at burgling the most secure complexes.

Four men walked into view.

Kronos kept his paper motionless as he fixed his gaze on them.

All were wearing KLM pilot uniforms.

They walked across the concourse, past a group of teenage girls who gave them admiring glances while giggling and nudging each other, then stopped and shook hands. Three of them walked off but not in the direction of the main exit.

They were no good to him.

The fourth pulled his trolley suitcase behind him as he moved toward the exit. The blond man looked to be in his early thirties, and the slight smile on his face suggested he was happy to be in Germany.

The assassin folded up his newspaper, placed cash on the table to pay for his coffee, grabbed his attache case, and followed the pilot toward the taxi rank.

Will drove his hired Jeep south, away from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport. Soon he was on Highway 6, heading toward the Negev Desert. Around him were lush fields of grass, and the temperature was in the mid-seventies; it was nothing like the harsh winter he was used to in Europe.

Ninety minutes later he was circumventing the functional-looking city of Beersheba. Ahead of him was the stunning desert. He stopped the car in a small Bedouin village, directly outside a cafe that contained a couple of men smoking hookahs. Sitting at one of the outside tables, he ordered tea from a waiter and looked around. On the opposite side of the dusty street, two young girls who’d been playing were now watching him, fiddling with their long black hair. The men in the cafe were also staring at him while they smoked. Even though Will was dressed in jeans, boots, and an open-neck shirt, he knew he looked out of place.

That didn’t matter.

What did was the location of the village.

The Arab waiter brought his drink and placed it on the table, next to Will’s car keys. In Hebrew, he asked, “You lost?”

Will smiled, pretended to look embarrassed. “English.”

The waiter repeated the question in English.

Will shook his head and replied, “Tourist.” He nodded toward the desert. “Desert trekking. Thirsty work.”

A woman came out of a house and ushered the two girls inside. The waiter said, “They think you’re an Israeli cop. They’re frightened.”

As the waiter returned to the inside of the cafe, Will took a sip of the sweet tea and tried to relax. The aromatic smell of the hookah tobacco wafted across his table and prompted brief memories. He recalled walking through a vibrant and bustling Moroccan souk one evening, following one of his Syrian agents, who was unaware of his presence and was heading to a covert meeting with an Iranian intelligence officer; sitting in a cafe similar to this one, in Cairo, scouring the buildings opposite to spot the man who’d planted a bomb in the cafe and was waiting for the right moment to blow it apart and kill the men who were sitting three tables away from him; drinking tea in a Bedouin tent with a Jordanian tribal leader who believed he could help Will negotiate the release of an American aid worker who’d been captured by a gang of criminals with affiliations to an Al Qaeda cell; and eating dates and baklava with a stunning Lebanese woman who told him that she was falling for him, when in fact Will knew she wanted to put a bullet in his head.

He lifted the tea to his mouth, then froze. A sedan car was driving along the street, two men inside. The car slowed down and stopped forty yards away. The driver remained in the vehicle; the passenger got out and walked quickly along the street toward the cafe. He was dressed like Will, looked European or Israeli, and was wearing shades. The car turned in the street and drove off in the direction it had come from. By the time it had disappeared from view, the passenger was only a few yards from Will’s table. Will stayed still as the man walked right alongside his table, scooped up his car keys, kept walking, entered Will’s Jeep, and drove off. Two seconds later, an SUV entered the street, driving fast. Will placed cash on the table to pay for his tea, watched the vehicle draw closer, waited, then stood and jogged to the street. The SUV slowed to walking pace, a door opened, the vehicle came alongside Will, and he grabbed the open door and jumped inside. Immediately the vehicle accelerated fast, causing Will to lurch backward into the seat.