Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

“Three is fine,” said Balfour. “If you’d like, we will take a ride afterward. I told my grooms to have my favorite stallion ready.”

Jonathan saw the challenge in his eyes. He thought of Connor’s excuses and discarded them in a bunch. “I look forward to it,” he said. “It will build our appetite for dinner.”

Suddenly Balfour checked his watch and hurried from the room. “Excuse me,” he said. “There’s someone else I must meet.”

Jonathan kept himself from following too closely. He had not yet seen Emma and was nearly insane with curiosity that it might be her.

Frank Connor climbed the stairs to his third-floor retreat slowly-one step, rest, one step, rest-so as not to give his heart another reason to expire at an inopportune moment. Reaching his bedroom, he did not lie down and rest for his customary twenty minutes before entering his study. When the people spying on you were already inside, any further deception was useless.

Connor poured himself three fingers of bourbon and quaffed it in a long, desperate swallow. He was not a field man, nor had he ever been. He was an operations man: a planner, a persuader, an organizer, and at times a procurer. So it was with difficulty that he drove the blood-soaked image of Malloy from his mind. The bourbon helped, carving a soothing course down his throat, leaching his anxiety. Collapsing in his captain’s chair, he forced himself to focus on the events of the past two weeks, moving from one day to the next in an effort to spot the mole’s tracks and put a name to a traitor.

First there was Dubai and Emma’s unmasking as his agent at the hands of Prince Rashid. Peter Erskine was correct in establishing that a handful of people had been privy to the manufacture of the booby-trapped rifle, but fewer still knew of Emma’s status as a double agent. That number was four. There was Connor, Erskine, Sir Anthony Allam, director of Britain’s MI5, and Igor Ivanov, the Russian director of the FSB, who was Division’s most highly placed asset and the man to whom Emma, or Lara Antonova, reported.

Connor could take himself out of the running. Likewise, Igor Ivanov was beyond suspicion. He could not risk outing the one agent who could out him. Allam was a possibility, but only if the leak had stopped there. It hadn’t.

The mole had likewise known about Connor’s visit to Malloy at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The question was how. Had he followed Connor to NGA headquarters? If so, how had he discovered that he had visited Malloy? Or had someone told him about Connor’s destination and the object of his interest?

Connor replayed his conversation with the Marine helicopter crew chief. If he dared read between the lines, he could imagine that Emma had been forewarned to expect the Marine special operations team. Only one person other than Connor had been witness to his call to Bagram Air Base and had sat with him during every agonizing minute of the operation. Peter Erskine.

The number of suspects dwindled to one.

But here Connor’s exercise in deduction hit a wall. Erksine knew every detail of Connor’s trip to the NGA. There was no reason for his counterparts to torture Malloy for information he himself could provide his handlers. Unless, of course, Malloy was privy to information that even Connor didn’t know.

Connor rose and poured himself another measure of bourbon. No matter how compelling the evidence, he could not bring himself to believe that Peter Erskine was a spy in the pay of a foreign power. The man was a newlywed, a scion of blood so blue it was practically black, and, Connor had to admit, a damn good guy. To distrust Erskine was to distrust himself. But what other answer was there?

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Thank you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

It was Erskine, whether Connor wanted to admit it or not.

And if Erskine had told his handlers about Emma and about Malloy, there was no reason why he hadn’t told them about Jonathan Ransom.

Connor put down his glass and went to his desk, where he accessed his secure line and dialed a foreign number. To his frustration, no one answered. By now she was back in Israel, no doubt taking some well-deserved leave. The voicemail was a mechanical prompt.

“Danni,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Frank. Get to Islamabad as quickly as you can. Our boy is in trouble. Call me as soon as you get this. No matter what, call me.”

He hung up and called her superior at Mossad headquarters in Herzliya. He was put through immediately, only to be disappointed that his suspicions were correct. Danni had signed out for a week’s leave prior to leaving Zurich. She had not left any word on her whereabouts.

Despondent, Frank Connor hung up.

He could not lose another one.

Jonathan unpacked his clothing with care, placing socks and underwear in one drawer, shirts in another, and hanging his suits in the closet. The room was enormous. A tartan carpet covered the hardwood floor. The canopy bed was big enough to sail across the Atlantic, and the ceiling was high enough for a regulation basketball net. Connor had instructed him to act as if he were being watched every second of every day. There was no need to act. A bulky surveillance camera perched high in one corner dispelled any doubt about his privacy. Taking a towel from the bathroom, he leaped and managed to drape the cloth over the camera’s lens.

The blood panel lay inside a folder on the desk. Standing, Jonathan studied the results, but not before starting the chronograph on his wristwatch. A cursory study showed Balfour to be in moderately good health. His cholesterol was high. Enzymes indicated a problem with his liver. Maybe he had an ulcer. Still, there was nothing to prevent him from having reconstructive surgery.

Jonathan put away the blood panel and crossed to a sash window that looked down on the rear of the house. The motor court was directly outside, and to his right lay the stables and a large grassy meadow. To his left he could see the maintenance shed that had been the hub of so much activity. A van pulled up to the far entrance, and workers in blue coveralls unloaded a piece of machinery and dollied it into the shed.

He observed this for a minute. The activity, combined with the presence of so many armed guards and Balfour’s agitated behavior, convinced him that the arms dealer had taken possession of the nuclear warhead and that it stood at this very moment barely fifty meters away in the maintenance shed. He could also conclude that if Balfour wanted to move up the surgery to tomorrow evening, he expected his official business to be terminated by then, and that therefore he meant to deliver the warhead to his buyer sometime tomorrow.

An icon on Jonathan’s phone indicated that there was no wireless service. Connor had been correct in assuming that Balfour maintained a strict digital net over his home, jamming all incoming and outgoing calls. Cell phones were an intelligence agency’s preferred tracking system and could be hacked to act as a microphone or a homing device, or, more simply, just eavesdropped on.

Jonathan lifted the window and ran a hand over the exterior wall. The surface was rough and pitted, with smooth grooves cut horizontally into the stone a meter apart. According to the floor plans, Balfour’s office was directly above Jonathan’s room. The windows farther along the house looked to be about four meters, or twelve feet, above his own. He ran his fingers inside the grooves and judged them to be five centimeters deep. That was fine for his toes, but precious little for his fingers to work with.

A knock at the door interrupted his impromptu recon. “Yes?”