Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

“Dead! How?” At the exclamation from her colleague, Tesla’s head whipped around.

“Tampa was a trap. Place looked like it’d been empty for weeks. They had a bomb planted for us.”

His landline rang. He ignored it. “For you ? How could they plant a bomb for you? They couldn’t know that you were coming.”

“If not for us, for someone. Jesus, Harry, cut me a break on the grammar, OK? I’m on my way into surgery.”

So Carson was hurt too. He hadn’t thought of that. “What happened to you?” The landline cycled through its third ring and Middleton nodded for Tesla to answer it for him.

“Some burns and broken bones. Not too bad, I don’t think.”

Despite her words, he could hear the pain and fear in her voice. “Is that what you say or does that come from the doctor?”

Carson said, “I didn’t call for sympathy, Harold. I have important news that I need to share before I go under the knife.”

Across the room, Tesla covered the mouthpiece with her hand and waved at Middleton.

Still stunned by the news of the death of his comrade and friend, Middleton stared at her blankly as he tried to focus on his own call. “Hold on, Connie.”

Tesla said, “It’s about Felicia.”

“Is she OK?”

“This is the police on the line. They say that she wandered into the station bruised and bloodied and saying something about diving out of a moving car. They’ve sent her to the hospital.”

“Who snatched her?”

“A woman. Youngish. Pretty. Tough… Middle Eastern maybe. Indian, Pakistani. Sri Lankan. Harold, what should I tell the police?”

“That you’ll call them back.”

He returned his attention to Carson. “OK, Connie, go ahead.”

The Texan was explaining her own urgent matter. One phrase jumped out and refocused him entirely on his cell phone.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Did you say thermobaric explosive?”

“I did,” Carson said. Even through the phone, he could hear her pleasure that he’d connected his own set of dots. “Just like all those we dealt with in Kosovo. Just like the ones the Afghanis have been disarming for a decade.”

Thermobarics were perfected by the only nation he knew of whose troops regularly deployed them. “So you think there’s a Russian connection?”

“Sure could be. I found a note about calling Moscow. No number. And a shipping label in the trash. Blank, but they may have records.” She gave him the name, her voice quivering in pain.

He thanked her. “Connie, I’m sorry.”

Toughening her drawl, she said, “Later, Harry. I’ve got to see a man about a knife.”

The phone sagged in Middleton’s hand. He turned to Tesla and inhaled deeply. Then he shared the terrible news about Lespasse.

“No! My God, no!”

“And Connie’s been hurt.” But then he controlled the emotion and continued, telling her what Carson had explained about the thermobarics.”

“Russia?”

“Possibly.” Then he nodded at Tesla’s phone. “What about Felicia?”

“She told the police that her kidnapper was angry that they’d taken the wrong person. She thinks they were actually after Charley.”

Middleton felt the color drain from his cheeks. “Sure, Felicia’s young and was in my apartment. They thought she was my daughter. Then they realized she was Polish, not American. They were probably going to kill her. Thank God she got away.”

“She’s still in the emergency room-they won’t let her call. But she sent a message. You should read your email.”

He lifted his cell phone, furious at himself for not opening Felicia’s message immediately. “Jesus,” he said as he read, “Sikari patented technology for a new heavy-water system for making nuclear material.”

“What she was telling us about heavy water… ”

“Right.”

Middleton pulled out his encrypted cell phone and placed a call to the Volunteers’ office outside D.C. He took a deep breath and when a man answered, he said, “Wiki… ”

“Boss? What’s wrong?”

“I have something to tell you.” After a moment’s hesitation, he delivered the news about Lespasse.

“No, Harry… Oh no.”

“I’m afraid so. Connie was with him. She’s in surgery in Florida right now. I need you to stay on top of what’s happening down there.”

“You bet. Of course… Boss, I’m sorry.”

Then Middleton shoved aside the memories about his dead colleague and consulted his notes. He said, “I need you to crack into the shipping records of Continental-Europe Transport Ltd. Find all the deliveries to and from Sindhu Power in Tampa. Connie found their shipping label.”

“And that’s the outfit in Florida where Connie and JM were?”

“Yeah. The address on Balan’s computer.”

Middleton clicked his phone shut and turned to Tesla. “OK, Nora, if they snatched Felicia thinking she was Charley-”

“It means Charley’s in trouble. You want to go to Paris, Harold?”

“No, I want you to. The email on Balan’s computer said whatever was going to happen in the ‘village’ was going to happen soon. Our Florida operation’s been derailed. Given that Connie found a note about calling Moscow, Russia’s our only lead-that’s the only country selling thermobarics on the black market. I’ve got to get there as fast as I can.”

Stepping over the body, he snagged his suitcase, which he hadn’t had a chance to unpack.

Tesla looked at the body. “The police. I have to call them back. What should I tell them?”

Middleton paused for a moment to think. “Tell them anything,” he said. “Everything, if you’d like.” He started walking toward the front door. “We won’t be around when they get here anyway.” A nod at the body. “He’s their problem now.”

At just after three o’clock on a gloomy afternoon, the Boeing 727 touched down on runway number 3 at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport.

The reverse thrusters kicked in with a loud whine and before long the roar of the engines subsided as the plane was powered down.

For several minutes, the pilot and his three-man crew just sat there, waiting patiently for the tedious rituals to begin-border control and customs, clearing first the crew and then the cargo. Hours of forms and questions but most of all waiting. The Soviet Union was no more, but its bureaucracy lived on. Rain thrummed against the Plexiglas cockpit window, which slowly began to fog up.

And they waited.

Since this was a cargo plane, there were no passengers to deplane. The main cabin was a cavernous cargo bay packed with eleven containers of cargo-igloos, they were called in the business-which were in turn jammed with boxes. Everything from flat-screen TVs to iPhones, from Armani suits to Armagnac.

Seated along the bulkhead in the small compartment aft of the cockpit, the second officer spoke quietly to the new man, who had been added to the crew at the last minute, just before takeoff in Frankfurt.

“You don’t talk much,” the second officer said. He hadn’t stopped talking since they departed Frankfurt.

“Yeah, well,” said the other man.

“Ever been to Moscow before?”

“Once or twice. Long time ago.”

“You won’t recognize the place.”

“So I hear.”

“Well, you got one whole night to see Moscow before we turn around and fly out of here in the morning. I know a couple of awesome night-clubs. Smokin’ hot Russian babes.”

“Thanks anyway,” the new man said. “I thought I might just do a little sightseeing.”

“Come on , man. What’re you gonna do, go see Lenin’s tomb or something? This place I’m going to, it’ll totally blow your mind when you see the way these Russian babes-”