Matthew Dunn - Spycatcher

He rose from his seat. “Gentlemen, I suggest you spend the next fifteen minutes mentally preparing yourselves, because after that we need to move into position.” He walked to the far corner of the room and replenished his mug with more coffee. As he did so, Roger moved next to him.

The CIA man spoke very quietly. “ Are we authorized to do this?”

Will looked at Laith, Ben, and Julian and saw that they were in discussion and out of earshot. He looked at Roger. “You have my authority.”

Roger’s eyes narrowed. “What about Patrick’s authority?”

“He’s back in Washington right now, so that he can calm some waters. He doesn’t need to be bothered with this.”

Roger stared at Will for a long moment. “We’re going to be attacking a Western ally. If something goes wrong and we’re caught, the repercussions on us will be terrible.”

Will nodded. “I know.”

Will was on Tynska, and he could see no one else on the street. The place was partially lit with streetlamps, and he sat on a bench beneath one of them so that he was easily visible. He rubbed his gloved hands together and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a bottle of Becherovka. He then unscrewed the bottle’s cap and poured some of the alcoholic liquid over his jeans and coat and exposed face. Taking a swig from the bottle, he felt its contents burn down his throat. He placed the now half-full bottle by his side, pressed a number on his secreted cell phone, and said, “I’m here.”

Within seconds Will heard Roger’s voice in his earpiece. “Good. We’re all in position. In five minutes our lady should be at the place.”

Will stretched his legs out before him and crossed his feet. The temperature was well below freezing, although the streets were free of ice and snow. He breathed slowly and watched his breath turn to steam in the shadowy air. He began to gently hum a tune, caressing the base of the bottle of bitters.

“One minute until she’s there. Radio silence from now on, so earpieces stowed away.” Roger’s voice was quiet and calm.

Will kept humming as he casually removed his Bluetooth device and dropped it into his pocket. He visualized Lana’s route from her hotel, taking her to where she would now be and then to where she had to be in less than sixty seconds. That place had been carefully chosen by Roger to be the intersection of V Kolkovne and Dlouha. Roger had reasoned that if she was there, then he could accurately pinpoint to the nearest twenty meters where each member of the DGSE team should be positioned and by extension where his own team should be waiting. Will knew that right now Ben was five hundred meters away from him on Vezenska to the north, that Laith was on Hastalska to the northeast, that Roger was somewhere on Kostecna to the west, and that Julian was following Lana. Will also knew that Roger had chosen to position Lana in the intersection because it had five exits; the Iranians would have to move in very close to her in order not to lose her to one of these routes. Will again lifted the bottle to his lips and tilted it back, but this time he prevented any of the liquid from entering his mouth. He hummed his tune a little louder so that its sound echoed off the nearby building walls, and as he did so, he moved his head slightly left and right to observe the street.

He saw the man. At first he was merely an almost shapeless variation of the darkness at the end of the street, but as Will moved his vision in a figure-eight motion around the shape, his eyes adjusted and he knew that it was him. The man was walking slowly along the street and toward Will’s location. He was alone, his hands thrust into coat pockets and his head bowed low. Will tightened his grip around the bottle and took another pretend swig of its contents. He closed his eyes for a while and stretched the muscles in his legs and back.

When he opened his eyes again, the man was nearer. Will held the bottle in his lap. He hummed some more, laughed a little, and took a genuine swig of the Czech liquor. The man kept walking at the same pace. Then, as he came to within twenty meters of Will, he started crossing the street toward the opposite pavement. Will breathed in deeply and laughed again.

“You want a drink?” Will said the words loudly and with a slur.

The man said nothing and went on walking until he was directly across from Will.

“Hey, you want a drink?”

The man walked on.

Will stood up, grabbed the neck of his bottle, and lurched across the road toward the man. “Just trying to be polite. No need to fucking ignore me.”

The man kept walking. He was of medium build, but Will could tell from his posture that he would be very strong. Will staggered after him until he was within two meters of the man’s back.

“I said there’s no need to ignore me. Just want to share my goodwill.”

The man turned, took one step forward, and punched the flat of his hand against Will’s chest. The force of the impact was so powerful and precise that it lifted Will’s two-hundred-pound body into the air and backward. As he crashed to the pavement, his bottle smashed around him, and he lay for a moment, trying to breathe. The man turned to continue his journey with the same steady pace. Will brushed glass off his coat, pushed himself up onto his feet, and cursed loudly.

The man continued onward, and Will smiled. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He sprinted forward, thrust his left hand into the small of the man’s back to grab a bunch of his coat and the belt underneath it, smashed his right elbow upward into the man’s jawbone, and thrust up and backward so that both of them were in the air. As they fell back, Will twisted the man’s body so that it was beneath him and falling headfirst toward the sidewalk. He held his elbow in position, and as they landed on the ground, the man’s neck snapped instantly from the impact. He was dead.

Will rummaged through the man’s pockets and took his wallet, passport, cell phone, and all other materials that might show his identity. He knew that police would still be able to trace the dead body, but the things he’d removed would, he hoped, delay identification by a few hours. The light around him was bad, so he switched on a small flashlight to examine the man’s passport. He frowned, swung the light at the dead man’s face, then back at the details in the passport.

“Oh, dear God, no.”

Will turned away from his view of the snow-carpeted Sarajevo and looked at Roger. The two men were standing in the lounge area of a superior suite at the Radon Plaza Hotel.

“I was a kid when I joined the French Foreign Legion,” Will said. “It was very tough at the beginning, but there was a slightly older guy who had joined up with me and took me under his wing to help me get through training. That man became a friend and later served with me in the GCP. Last night I killed him.”

Roger took a step forward toward him, then stopped. “You had no way of knowing it was your friend. You barely saw his face.”

Will walked to a chair, sat down, and dropped his head into his hands.

“Will?”

Will looked up at Roger. He tried to put memories of his dead friend out of his mind. But he still remembered how, seventeen years earlier, the man had smiled as he showed the eighteen-year-old Legionnaire Cochrane how to shine the buttons on his uniform, polish his parade boots, and avoid getting ruthless punishment from the NCOs in their barracks. Will tried to focus. He had to-for the sake of Roger and his men, for the sake of Lana, for the sake of his mission to capture his father’s murderer, for the sake of the mission to stop an atrocity, for the sake of everything. He breathed in deeply and asked, “How do you intend to deploy us tomorrow?”