Millington's Second Report: A Novel

By Martin J. ZeLenay

Fifty-something Frank Shepard is an intelligence operative seemingly at the tail end of his career. When he heads to Alsace on his final assignment to meet a Turkish immigrant interested in passing on information to the CIA, Frank has no idea that his last mission is about to go terribly wrong.

After shots are fired and the Turk is killed, Frank manages to grab a bullet from the floor as he escapes the scene. When he later discovers that the bullet was fired from a gun issued by the CIA, Frank is suddenly immersed in an operation where he and his team will collect leads, unmask ramifications, and uncover a conspiracy aimed at shaking the democratic foundation of the free world. As Frank and other intelligence operatives attempt to piece together unrelated and illegible fragments from around the world, several plots gradually mesh into a dramatic chain of events led by an evil man who masterminds the complex operation from behind his desk. Peril faces New York City and the world at large as only one question remains left unansweredwho will be faster on the trigger?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450219099

Martin J. ZeLenay

Martin J. ZeLenay graduated from a high school specializing in mathematics and later studied architecture and fine arts. He raced cars, worked as an interior designer in London, was a presidential campaign advisor, a painter, an architect and also an international executive.

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Millington’s Second Report

A Novel

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Millington’s Second Report

A Novel

Copyright © 2010 by Martin J. ZeLenay

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-1199-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1909-9 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1910-5 (hc)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 3/15/2011

Contents

Acknowledgments.

Prologue

Part I

Puzzle Pieces

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part Two

The Game

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Part Three

The Confrontation

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-one

Chapter Fifty-two

Chapter Fifty-three

Chapter Fifty-four

Chapter Fifty-five

Chapter Fifty-six

Chapter Fifty-seven

Epilogue

From the Author

Acknowledgments.

With warm thanks to Patric LoBrutto for his inestimable guidance and superb editorial skills; Sarah Disbrow for her patience and the rest of iUniverse team for professional advice; Vieslava Grochola for her words of encouragement and creative input.

Most of all, thanks to my wife.

Prologue

Washington

Friday, October 24, 2001

I hope we’re wrong. The president signed the document with a determined movement. He pushed it toward the woman sitting next to him.

I hope there won’t ever be any need for it. She reached for the pen.

Me, too, the general repeated while signing. It sounded like an amen.

The president waited for the others to sign. Then he got up and went to the window. The silent cars were cruising down Constitution Avenue. The windswept branches of trees caused the points of streetlights to seem as if they were flickering. Beams of bright light illuminated the majestic George Washington obelisk.

More than six weeks had passed since September 11. The president still asked himself whether measures he had taken were sufficient to protect the people and the values they cherished.

There remains a certain small matter. He paused. He is … You know what he told me when we spoke face-to-face an hour ago? That he dislikes politicians and he doesn’t trust them. When I asked what he thought of me, he said his duty and vocation was to protect the nation and office of the president. Then this son of a bitch made the distinction. The office, not the person! The president laughed. Millington is a real son of a bitch. But he’s right. I like guys with balls.

The lady, the national security advisor, delicately cleared her throat. More than six months ago, I qualified his suggestions as far-fetched. Today, I would call them impossible to dismiss. And this is why I gave my consent. But I certainly hope that his predictions never come true.

The president said, his hands now touching on the back of the chair, By the way, how did he manage to hold up in Washington for so many years?

The general was screwing on the cap of a fountain pen. He looked up at the president and quietly said, It may well be that he is good.

The president was conscious that the day’s decisions would have a crucial effect on the destiny of the world. A few hours earlier, he had formed a special antiterrorist unit called Task Force 11. It would be made up of members of Delta Force, the elite, best-trained, and best-equipped antiterrorist unit in the world, and teams of the navy’s special forces, the SEALs.

A short while ago, the decision was made to create a small-sized operations team authorized to access data of all the existing intelligence agencies. They were empowered to act independently. In light of the anticipated level of peril, the team’s scope of authorization would be, practically speaking, unlimited.

The national security advisor shut the gray briefcase with a diagonal blue strap. It had no identification except for handwritten markings in the top right corner, the letters TS, short for top secret. The briefcase contained a document known only to a few people in the country as Millington’s Second Report.

Part I

Puzzle Pieces

Chapter One

Sunday, October 9

A Few Years Later

Teddy O’Malley halted on the edge of the stony road to rest. After a while, he took his wife, Carol, by the arm, and they slowly moved on.

Just to the main road. Then we’ll head back. Okay, honey?

Every year, their excursions were shorter. For more than ten years, ever since their retirement, they’d spend at least two months in this area, from the end of August until the first autumn cold. Back then, they’d start their daylong outings at dawn and reach Bearsville, more than ten miles from their wooden cabin on the bank of a stream.

They stopped once again to relish the view of forest-covered hills, from behind which emerged the majestic summits of Catskills. In the warm sun, the leaves reflected colors of early autumn. The softly falling slopes turned into a high grass meadow, which stretched on to the road. In the distance, a small dot appeared on the road. Yet another dot followed. The vehicles picked up speed.

Look, they sure are speeding, he said to his wife.

Teddy recognized a dark green Porsche followed by a Chevrolet SUV. Something worried him though. The Porsche up front was acting strange. He’d call it in an unnaturally nervous way. He knew about cars. He’d spent most of his life behind the wheel. Now that he was retired, no one needed his expertise.

The cars were approaching a right turn. The first car suddenly veered left. It was projected into the shoulder of the road in a cloud of dust. Then it vanished behind the embankment. The second vehicle slowed down.

Teddy and Carol heard a crack that sounded like breaking of dry branches. Flames burst forward from behind the edge of the road and turned into a whiff of smoke that the wind dissipated.

The Chevrolet stopped on the shoulder. Teddy clearly saw (or at least so he claimed afterwards) a short, burly man getting out of the car. The man approached the edge of the road, watched the site of the accident for a while, and went back to his car. The Chevrolet drove off.

*  *  *

The man appeared suddenly, as if out of nowhere. He was walking toward the Centre Pompidou. A tall man, he had close-cropped hair, and he wore dark glasses. He adjusted the collar of his leather jacket. He may have gotten out of a cab or emerged from the Rambuteau metro station. Maybe he left his car somewhere close. Maybe someone had given him a ride.

Two months later, the French police and intelligence operatives from a few countries meticulously went through the recorded pictures made by cameras that abounded in the area. His photographs were shown to security staff of the museum, shop employees, and street hawkers. The waiters of the nearby cafés were questioned. To no avail. No one remembered the man. It would take another month for the American intelligence service to establish the man’s name, Andrew Serov.

He followed a group of tourists. Some would stop to take pictures of the extraordinary walls of the Centre Pompidou constructed of scaffold-like structures and colorful pipes. The man in the dark glasses paid no heed to his surroundings. He crossed the square in front of the museum. A little later, he reached a narrow Rue Quincampoix, hidden between eighteenth-century properties. He passed by several galleries of contemporary art until he stopped in front of one of them. He tidied the scarf. Without taking off his sunglasses, he pushed on the door.

Paintings were hanging on the walls. He didn’t pay attention to them.

Can I help you? inquired a girl sitting behind a desk.

I am from the Future Art Gallery in New York. His French was correct, although with a marked American accent. I am supposed to pick up some works that had been ordered.

Ah, of course. The girl got up. My boss is not here, but everything has been arranged. She took him to the backroom, where drawings, pictures and graphic works were spread across the table.

Are the documents ready?

Exactly as you requested. Separate documents for each work. Invoices, customs papers, and forms.

He carefully looked through the documents. Were you told that I’d be paying cash?

Yes, of course, a colleague of mine will join us in a second. Maybe, in the meantime, you’d like to take a look at these. She pointed at the drawings on the table. Would you like something to drink? Some coffee?

No thanks.

He picked up the first drawing, a bridge packed in fabric and tied up with ropes like a parcel by strings. He pushed it aside. He looked at the color photograph, a narrow street blocked by barrels to the height of two floors.

Presently, a short gentleman in a tweed jacket turned up. After a few words of greeting, the man in the dark glasses opened his briefcase and took out wads of banknotes. The girl started wrapping up the works in foil.

No tape, please, the man said when he saw her reaching for a roll.

I just wanted to make sure that the drawings won’t stick out. Please don’t forget that you mustn’t fold the drawings.

On his way out, he had trouble holding on to the cardboard packing that was more than two meters long and almost one-and-a-half meters wide.

Can I be of assistance? the girl asked.

No thanks. I’ll manage.

Manage he always did, but he preferred using other people to achieve his objectives while he himself concentrated on planning, directing, and controlling. He made an exception on this occasion, as he didn’t have anyone at hand whom he could dispatch as an art collector. He was certain a cash purchase of a few objects of art in Paris would pass completely unnoticed.

He walked fifty meters or so and turned into a backstreet. He put down the cardboard against the wall, tore up the foil, pulled out the purchased works, and starting rolling them tightly. The drawings on stiff carton—for which he had paid a few hundred thousand dollars a little while ago—were breaking with a cracking sound. He put the roll under his arm, pushed the empty cardboard behind the garbage container, and walked out of the gate.

*  *  *

The targets were stone buildings in the deep of the valley. This was a joint operation of the international forces supporting the Americans from the 10th Mountain Division stationed in Kabul.

The AB-212 chopper, a modified version of the American Iroquois, equipped with two extra sets of SNORA rocket missiles, supplemented a group that only numbered twenty-two people, but represented firepower that, in normal combat conditions, would suffice to conquer a well-defended fortress. But in the mountains along the Pakistani-Afghani border, in the deserted area of the Zabul Province, the conditions were far from normal. All it takes is a strong shoulder to launch the Stinger missile, supplied by the dozen and by American taxpayer money to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s.

Efforts were now being made to buy them back. There was also the Russian Strela missile, hundreds of which remained after the War and were now available on the black market for five thousand dollars apiece.

Satellite and spy drones could not detect a fanatic hiding in the bushes. They could, however, detect the movement of groups of people or locate their hideouts. This happened this morning at 6:43 (local time). The American command transmitted accurate intelligence data to the French command of the 7th Battalion of Alpine riflemen, the Blue Devils. It was 12:10 when the commanding officer of the French contingent concluded the briefing with the words Find and destroy.

The crucial moment was approaching. A PFC holstered a gun with a silencer and reached for his Remington rifle. His task was to fire at the possible reinforcements and pave the way for other soldiers. Pierre Barniche, the second lieutenant in charge of the group, perceived movement. A black silhouette was outlined against the still bright sky.

A man clad in a khali that reached the ground looked around anxiously. He knelt down near a stone, hid something in the grass, and started running. He saw the soldiers and put up his arms.

Barniche moved, freeing the line of fire of the PFC who was securing him. He reached for the spot in the grass where the Afghani had hidden something. He saw the Afghani suddenly produce a knife from inside the khali and hurl himself forward. The second lieutenant lunged to hit the attacker, but didn’t make it.

The PFC squeezed the trigger without a second thought. The bullet from the Remington rifle fired from a distance of ten meters hit the Afghani in the side beneath the ribs and practically cut him into two pieces. Barniche searched the corpse, but didn’t find anything. He spread the grass and picked up a rag doll. He held it for a while, undecided. It was an old, shabby doll, like those he remembered from his childhood, with a delicately outlined face and a thatch of hair made of strings. Strips of fabric hung from its torn-up leg.

Here, even dolls are injured.

He was about to chuck it away when he heard crackling in the earphones of his helmet. He reached down to adjust the transmitter on his chest with his left hand. A gun was still in his right hand. He held the doll under his arm. Then, without thinking, he shoved it into his pocket.

The order was given to assault the stone buildings. It was too late for surprise. A lengthy whiz and a thunderous blast ripped through the surroundings. From a distance of more than a kilometer, the chopper fired, by turns, four missiles in the direction of the buildings. The combat group only took ten minutes to surround the area without encountering any resistance. It took another hour to meticulously search the ruins and surrounding area. The soldiers were looking for hiding places, entries to holes in the ground, and caves in the rocks. Nothing was found except for traces of recent human presence.

Chapter Two

Friday, October 9,

Morning, Two Months Later

I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay, Mr. Rogers.

Great. Frank Shepard made for the revolving door.

It was a few minutes past five. Frank was in a particularly bad mood. The receptionist’s professional politeness didn’t do anything to improve it. He disliked airport hotels; the sterile, impersonal sleeping machines where everything was phony, the plastic-like elegance of the interior; gloomy, gray modernity; and pretended friendliness of the staff.

Frank knew he wasn’t looking his best. The white pants made of thick sailor’s fabric were ill-suited for this season of the year. They also badly needed laundering. The woolen sweater looked as if Frank had slept in it. And he had.

Angry, Frank needed a good sleep. In his thoughts, he was venting his anger on the stupidly smiling receptionist, cursing him and all the hotels of the world. He had spent too many nights in them that were too short. The hotel in Strasbourg, the name of which he didn’t intend to remember, was the same as many others. It had a most depressing effect on him when he found himself there in the middle of the night instead of returning home. Frank realized hotels had become just a part of his work.

What a lousy occupation. There was yet another profession where a quick visit to a hotel was also part of the job.

It was dark when he pushed open the door and walked out into the cold night. Due to a professional reflex, he didn’t park the car in front of the hotel. Somebody might remember the registration. Colorful flags on steel masts fluttered in the wind, causing the steel cords to roll. The dark December wetness consumed the gray, concrete parking lot.

There, a couple of hours earlier, he had left a small rented Renault. Frank was supposed to go home the day before.

Home? Do I still have one at all?

He had spent so many years in France that he had become most familiar with its exceptional tradition of careful and, at times, too overblown conversation. He was also familiar with the sometimes almost funny, but nevertheless deserving of respect, struggle for language purity. And not least in an era when more and more people thought the simplified language of text messages and commercial spots met their communication needs. He spoke French so well that it would not occur to anyone that he was an American. Neither did anyone suspect the real identity of this handsome man in his forties.

No one knew either that his completely genuine, American passport with the not-so-genuine name of Stanley Rogers was issued by the American authorities at the request of the director of the CIA. Not many people, even within the CIA itself, knew about Frank Shepard’s occupation.

He was part of the elite of the elite in the twilight zone of international secrets and the combat conducted by American intelligence. Lately, he tended to be slightly frustrated. Because of special training, he was able to monitor his reactions. His current psychological condition was not good. He needed rest to cut himself off from the murky secrets of the world that he lived in and the oppressing burden of the constant piecing together of apparently incongruous plots into a coherent whole. He needed to break away from connecting events and persons and facts and numbers, the composition of which could mean everything or nothing. He needed to break away from conceiving of additional ideas and the ongoing struggle to sustain hope that one of these ideas would be instrumental in solving a given problem.

Frank pulled up the collar of his coat. The cold and fatigue made him shiver. He reached the blue Renault. He put the flat bag on the seat next to him and started the engine. He set the heating at maximum. It was past 5:15.

I hope I won’t have to come back here.

Despite his exceptional standing among operating agents of the American intelligence service, he had reasons to be concerned about his future. Working for the most secret intelligence unit, the department of special operations of the CIA, he had spent the last three months in France in an attempt to infiltrate the arms dealers linked with international terrorism. He was replacing a colleague who had been brutally assassinated. Frank had found traces of the killers, but they led further to the Middle East and Africa.

He modified the rules of cooperation with agents, which possibly saved lives. He also tried to recruit, bribe, intimidate, or, in any other way, gain access to people who might reveal information about the terrorists. His efforts were not rewarded. Terrorists were a hermetic community split into small groups comprising only a few people. It was hard enough to penetrate family ties and criminal connections. Religious extremism turned them into particularly difficult adversaries.

Frank was becoming convinced that the time of his spectacular successes was about to end. The 1990s saw the advent of an era of such prudence and political correctness that operating officers categorized as adventurous were sidelined or simply removed from the CIA. They were no longer necessary. The peaceful patterns initiated in Eastern Europe changed the prevailing order of things. The former enemy, the Soviet Union, had ceased to exist, and Washington was reaping the benefits of victory over evil. The era of general good had set in, and the spoils had to be enjoyed. This applied especially to allocating cushy jobs and granting lucrative contracts in the pleasant quiet that the Washington offices offered. People with Frank’s past were most certainly not needed for this purpose.

Another one hundred and fifty kilometers remained until he reached his destination; a last-minute mission. He didn’t like tasks of this type. He knew how to improvise, act intuitively, and respond to surprising events. But he didn’t like being unprepared.

A gust of wind rocked the small Renault. He opened the window a little. Icy air invigorated him, and his drowsiness subsided. But the same couldn’t be said of his bad mood.

It was past six, but still dark. A drizzling rain started. The raindrops blown by the speeding air slid down the windshield. It soon became covered by a web of mobile chaos, which reflected the lights of oncoming cars. He hoped the activated wipers would put order into the picture of the world in front of him. White stripes in the center of the road rhythmically appeared. In the distance, they merged into a line that inevitably attracted attention. Now and then, the red lights would flash.

Were these warning lights?

The day before his return to the States, he received a new order from headquarters, a short visit to Alsace. It was a routine assignment. He was to contact a certain Frenchman of Turkish origin by the name of Turgut Taka, who wanted to talk to someone from the CIA. The mission didn’t seem to be interesting. This person didn’t appear on any list of people suspected of anything. Neither Washington or Paris knew anything about him. The guy called the American Embassy in Paris and asked to be put in touch with the CIA. Maybe he thought he had valuable information the Americans would pay for. Most probably, however, he wanted something from the CIA. But Frank wanted to finally go home and rest.

He suspected that, due to an escalating hiring freeze and budgetary cuts, the CIA simply didn’t have any trainee agents who could execute this assignment. The standard procedure of contacting someone who approached the CIA was to check, verify, and collect material pertaining to this person. Then it was time for a first meeting. If the contact did turn out to be of interest, a meeting would be arranged with his future control, an experienced intelligence officer. In the case of this Turk, it was the opposite.

Frank held his boss in high esteem and trusted him. Jason Millington was four years older than Frank was. He was an outstanding personality and an exceptional human being amongst the power brokers at the CIA. Years ago, he had become famous following Operation Rosewood, the seizure of the complete STASI files in East Berlin literally hours before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Frank’s own story seemed to be obvious and inescapable. He no longer thought he could be doing something else. He was positive the world was constructed in such a way that there were those who tried to damage it so that there had to be others who would fix it. His work was to solve problems that popped up. He was to work fast and efficiently. And he was good at it.

He took his foot off the gas pedal when he saw the gas station. It was past 6:30. He stopped next to the entrance. He bought a bottle of water, drank some coffee, and went back to the car. It had stopped raining. The dark night had turned into a cloudy morning.

There was a certain problem in his life, a problem in line with all the others to be solved. Perhaps it was the most crucial issue of his life.

Susan, this lovely, charming girl. Does it always end up like this? Is there an expiration date on love? Have I wasted my life?

As long as they were young, happy, and madly in love with each other, words didn’t matter. Every gesture or look said it all. He was always headed somewhere, usually at short notice and for long periods. Over the years, he’d return less frequently and, admittedly, less eagerly. At one time, these homecomings would be joyful, full of expectation, and longing. Then he gradually felt a wall rising between the two of them.

And all these endless grudges and complaints of hers! About what?

So he wasn’t there for the birth of his daughter, Toya, who was born when he was in France.

How many years ago was it now? Eleven … no … twelve.

She blamed him for not having time for his family, never seeing Toya in kindergarten, lonely evenings, and unkept promises. And most of all, she blamed him for persistent lies and things unspoken. Susan didn’t know his real occupation.

But could she know?

He was always going somewhere. They took to living independently. Consequently, they had still less to say to each other. Maybe he ought to warn her and himself about the life that was awaiting them. After all, at the time when they had met in Paris, he didn’t know what direction his life would take. He had told her that he was working at the embassy. And then things happened so fast.

Yesterday, after three months in Europe, at the very last moment, they called off his return back home. Actually, he had no home to go back to. It was just an empty apartment that the CIA rented, space that might just as well be a hotel room. It held furniture that he didn’t remember. It was an address devoid of any memories, a point on the city map, and an invisible dot on the map of the world.

Maybe she was right? Maybe it really was unbearable?

Perhaps living with a man who was always away, physically and mentally, and who could not be made to stay in any way whatsoever was more than any woman could cope with. He sensed he was losing something that could never be replaced by anything else.

He did really love her. He loved them both, and he missed them. It’d been three months since he had seen Toya. He made up his mind to buy her something at the airport, maybe a doll or, better yet, a fancy dress. After all, Christmas was around the corner.

But what size? I have no idea.

A few minutes past seven, he located the side street designated as Route du Vin. It wound among slopes covered by now sad-looking rows of vineyards. A few buildings, sites of domaines, were marked with their names and invitations to taste local wines.

In the rearview mirror, he saw a light. It was approaching fast. After a while, a black motorcycle overtook him. He noticed the driver was much shorter than the passenger behind. He seemed to have a burly build, almost square. He memorized two digits and a few letters of the license, but he didn’t notice the last one. The registration was French.

Driving down the narrow streets of the stone-built Rouffach, he reached the market, passed the medieval church, and found a hotel. A few cars were parked; one was leaving. Frank braked to give way to a gray BMW majestically entering the road. It had Swiss plates. After all, the border was close. He checked if he had left something in the car and went to the entrance. He slung the bag over his shoulder. Over the years, his job caused him to develop certain reflexes. He’d automatically assess the surroundings and memorize details. The two-story stone building on the left side bordered on an old stone wall, behind which was a gravel road. In the one-story building on the right, there was a restaurant. Both buildings were linked by new construction.

A swimming pool?

The main entrance to the hotel was in the old part of the house. It was almost 8:00. He intended to make the meeting a short one. It would be standard procedure or, rather, playing his game of observing and asking questions. He’d ask tens of questions that were meant to provide an answer to only two. Is he trustworthy? Does he represent any value to the Agency?

He pushed the wooden door and walked in. On a good day, this shouldn’t take more than a half hour. If the guy was a lunatic, Frank would be gone in a matter of minutes. One way or another, he’d be done by nine. It would take less than two hours to get to Strasbourg where he would return the car. Then he’d take a short flight to Paris and then home. He would have a good night’s sleep tomorrow. On Saturday morning, he’d submit a routine report. Following which, he would have a short meeting with Millington in Washington. Then he’d go off on vacation. Then he would have the time to think through all the stuff that had been nagging him these last few days. He would also have the time to make some decisions, without haste, about what to do with his messed-up life.

The keys to the rooms were in a wooden case on a small reception desk. On a counter, there was a phone, advertising folders, and a bouquet of dried flowers. In front of him, he saw a wide door to the dining room. He hung his coat on a hanger by the door. He made sure the pockets were empty. It was all routine.

Only a few people were in the room. A couple sat at a table by the wall. A map and a guidebook were spread out between their plates. At a table nearby, a young man in a shoddy suit was busy on a calculator. The metal door to the kitchen opened up. A woman brought in a dish.

I’ll have breakfast with the guy.

Three tables stood in the back. A man in his forties, who matched the given description, was sitting there. He was having coffee and smoking a cigarette. Frank slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and came to the man with short black hair, a black moustache, and a lowered gaze. The man was tense. His hand was shaking. A number of cigarette butts were in the ashtray.

Monsieur Turgut Taka?

"Oui, c’est moi." He began coughing as soon as he began speaking and barely got the words out.

He’s terrified. This is not going to take just a half hour. What is he so afraid of?

The first bullet hit Turgut Taka in the neck. The second, fired almost simultaneously, ripped off part of his skull.

*  *  *

The wooden clock standing in the corner of the room chimed 8:00. Senator Hamilton Jake Crox had his breakfast served at the table by the window. A charming petite waitress handed him a glass of fresh orange juice. He glanced at her. On a white apron that clung to her well-formed hips, an embroidered inscription announced, Hotel de la Paix.

What a doll, but nothing compared to Anne.

Memories of recent days or, rather, nights made his face light up in a radiant smile. Sixty-seven years ago, Crox had been born in Billings, Montana. After finishing school, he was admitted to the technical faculty of the University of Montana. At the time, the university was called the Montana School of Mines. There, he met his future wife, Mildred. They married in 1958. For the next forty years, they led a quiet, not to say dull, life. His career as an entrepreneur in the machinery business was developing slowly at best. Attempts at political activity didn’t reach beyond local, middle-level political structures. His only short period of relative prosperity was in the 1970s when the oil industry in Texas was interested in his company’s products. They had no children, not surprising because their conjugal life had been nonexistent, apart from a short period right after they were married. His career picked up speed in the second half of the 1990s when a wave of favorable, but curious, circumstances led to Hamilton Crox being elevated to the dignity of a United States senator. However, the committees he would sit on and his standing on these committees by no means made him a key player on the field of Washington politics.

He owed a lot to his private aide. He thought that meeting Grade on his life’s journey was truly a godsend. Stanford Grade, some forty years of age, was a lawyer. After less than a year of working for him, Grade had made the senator’s life fuller and his career soar. With truly exceptional speed, he was able to put surprisingly well-prepared analyses and elaborations at the senator’s disposal. Crox realized the opinions he voiced, based on the material that his aide prepared, were beginning to carry increasingly more weight, to such a degree that he was singled out by certain circles close to the White House and those who wanted to get there as fast as possible. He suddenly found himself in the cogs of a machine, the working principles of which he didn’t understand. Then again, he didn’t have to. He was steadily moving up the ladder. He was positive that years of hard work without being involved in any compromising scams, like so many of his political peers, made him a reliable partner. His self-assurance grew. Furthermore, Grade’s skill at managing complex financial operations and his play on the international financial markets provided the senator with a considerable revenue. His aide was also a past master at the game of what he himself called tax optimization. Now and then, the senator would ask himself whether this was not simple tax avoidance, but he was able to retrieve Pecunia non olet from the recesses of his memory, which he had overheard in Washington’s corridors of power. He had never heard the name of Caesar Vespasian.

He pushed back the empty plate and peered through the window. The sight of the Jet D’Eau, a fountain sending powerful streams of water up from the Leman Lake that now sparkled in the rays of the sun, made him think of Anne.

Oh yes. She gave me back my youthful vigor and the energy so necessary to climb the top rungs of power.

Senator Hamilton Crox didn’t concern himself with the fact that he made Anne’s acquaintance through his gifted aide.

*  *  *

Frank threw himself down on the floor, overturning the neighboring table. Before finding this precarious shelter, he noticed a short, burly man in the entrance door wearing a balaclava and holding a gun with a silencer in his hand.

For a moment, nothing happened except for the hysterical screaming of a woman. The next bullet tore a piece of the paneling above his head. He didn’t see the assailant. Another shot hit the stone wall. The bullet rebounded. Then it was deflected and fell next to him. The whole place was splashed in blood. The shattered bullet was lying in a puddle of blood. He reached for it. He was unarmed. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew he had to escape and hide.

He jumped, rolled, and rose a bit. Clenching his bag in one hand and protecting his head with the other, he sprang headlong into the revolving door of the kitchen. The door banged against the wall. There was another shot. He heard steps of someone running through the dining room and the screaming of women. He ran into the kitchen. Behind the metal tables, he perceived a door standing ajar that led to the back rooms. He peered outside.

Nothing.

At the stone fence, he saw two delivery vans, so he hid between them. He was checking for sounds, but heard nothing. He jumped over a wall. He was about to turn into a street when he heard someone approaching. He retreated behind a stack of boards. He saw no one. He heard a metallic click and the sound of wheels rolling. He took out a phone. It had a high-quality miniature camera and a high-sensitivity recorder. The antenna, slightly thicker than standard, was actually a powerful direction microphone.

He heard the rumble of a motorcycle engine. He hesitated.

Maybe I should attack.

He didn’t see his adversary, but he knew his hands were busy with the motorcycle.

The distance? Five meters? Ten? And is he alone? Facing me or with his back to me? Is he holding a gun in his hand?

He heard the steps of some other person. He noticed a distinct, loud Brooklyn accent with a hard d replacing t and a characteristic dropping of ends of words.

Fuck, les ged outa heah.

A bark of the engine and the motorcycle with two men in dark helmets was vanishing behind the corner. The one on the backseat was much taller than the driver, who was short and burly. He saw a French number plate with two digits and a few letters. Once again, he failed to read the last one.

It was the same motorbike and the same people who, a short while ago, had overtaken him on a narrow road among the vineyards. Frank walked in the opposite direction. He reached the intersection. A woman with shopping bags in her hands walked out of a grocer’s shop. A stooping man was opening the creaking door of a house. He heard laughter. A girl stood with her head leaning back while a boy was saying something to her, gesticulating wildly. She laughed again and kissed him. Holding hands, they moved on. No one paid any attention to Frank. He looked around and saw a few well-maintained houses, neatly cut hedges, and clean, narrow streets. From around a corner house, a car was nudging forward. Frank stepped back and flattened himself against the humid, ivy-covered wall. The driver looked to the left and then to the right as if he were looking for somebody. A gray BMW rolled in the opposite direction. On the back fender, it had a sticker with a CH. Next to it was a number plate with black digits. The same car had driven off from the hotel while he was entering the parking lot.

He crossed to the other side of the street and continued to the next intersection. A side street was leading uphill to the last buildings of the town. He started for the vineyards. He turned around. He saw red roofs and two church spires. Above them, black, gloomy clouds covered the sky. Somewhere further down, the pulsating wailing of an approaching police car tore the silence.

Only then did Frank realize that he was freezing. He took out the phone, punched in a number, and waited. No one answered.

Shit, he mumbled.

He picked another number. This time, Betty, Millington’s assistant, answered immediately even though it was middle of the night in Washington.

Bet, Frank speaking. Put me through to Jason. He was anxious, but trying to control his voice.

He’s still in a meeting.

So get him out of there, damn it!

I’ll put you through right now.

He was walking through mud puddles.

What’s up, Frank? He heard Millington’s slightly throaty voice.

You sure got me into a real mess.

Go on.

He reported briefly.

You safe?

Hard to say. I backed out. No one saw me, although—

Yes?

A gray BMW with Swiss registration. He added the number he had committed to his memory.

Can’t give you any backup there. Memorize. Millington gave him a four-digit code and an address that he also probably knew by heart. Safe apartment in Zurich. Two-hour drive. For now, get the hell out of there.

They settled the matter of the car Frank had left in front of the hotel.

Too bad. Leave it there. I’ll find a way to remove it, Millington said.

Frank had the keys to the Renault. His coat was still on a hanger in the hotel, but he hadn’t left anything in its pockets.

Would you explain what you got me into?

Don’t take any risks. I’ll be in touch.

The connection was cut off.

After a half hour of walking, he reached the next village. He was freezing to the bone. He could feel the first lashes of a rain. In a bystreet, a woman was rolling up the shutters of a clothes shop. On a metal coatrack with marked-down articles that stood right behind the door hung a man’s raincoat. Its price was written on a tag attached to the sleeve.

"Je le prends."

The streets led toward the village center. He felt the phone vibrating in his pocket. He stopped in an alley between buildings to receive a text message. He was to leave the car keys in the reception of a certain hotel.

He took a cab at a station de taxi at the town square. He proceeded to the next town, where he got off before reaching the center. He continued by foot to make sure he was not being tailed. He walked into the auberge that was