An Affair of Vengeance (6 page)

“Better?”

“Yes. And of course I’m tracking it. Your call was anything but subtle. And now I’d like to know to whom you’ve gifted such a valuable piece of equipment.”

“I had the button, the lip gloss, and the pick to choose from. He was fiddling with a pick when I first saw him. If he finds it, he’ll only think it’s one of his. He’ll toss it without a second thought. We can pick it up once it stops moving.”

“The signal has stagnated.”

“So he’s gone to ground for the night. It’s late. He’s probably asleep. Where did he go?”

“Who is he?”

She wanted information, but Mason never gave anything away for free. “A Scottish man named McCrea who met with Serge Penard tonight in La Banque’s most private room.”

Mason flipped a page of his newspaper, seemingly engrossed in it. “And they discussed?”

“I didn’t hear their whole conversation. Mostly the end, after McCrea pulled a knife on Penard. Penard gave him a new contact: Ménellier. It sounds like McCrea is going to Ménellier for something big. Penard couldn’t supply it, so it’s more than the usual crates of Chinese rifles and Afghan hash.”

Mason didn’t respond, merely kept reading his paper. Their late-night debriefings often ended in such a manner, with him abruptly ignoring her and her exiting at the stop nearest her apartment, where she’d write up her official report and wait for official orders. But this was her first real chance at chasing Kral. She couldn’t let this go so easily.

“I need to stay on McCrea to find out what he’s buying,” she pressed. “It could be anything. The British government will need to know that one of their citizens is sourcing something large from Ménellier, probably for import. I know you need to run this through HQ, but we have to fast-track this. I’m sure McCrea will meet with Ménellier tomorrow. We need to be there when he does.”

He glanced sidelong at her and then looked back at his paper. “It is not our job to worry about the Brits. They have their own intelligence collection agencies. If they wanted to know what this McCrea person was up to, they’d have their own sources placed to find out.”

True. For better or for worse, the CIA wasn’t keen on sharing intel with other nations, even friendly ones like the United Kingdom. But that wasn’t really why she wanted to spy on McCrea. She’d have to play her last card to make Mason believe in the new direction she wanted to take the mission. Doing so would expose her hand, but she saw no alternative.

The train slowed as it neared a station. Doors swept open, admitting no new passengers. She waited impatiently until the train was once again humming and rocking along the tracks. Breathing deeply, she said, “Penard indicated that Ménellier works for Lukas Kral.”

Mason’s eyebrows flickered, just a bit. He was intrigued, then. Good.

She kept talking. “I know that Ménellier and Kral are suspected of working together to bring illegal goods into Europe, but this could be our first chance to prove it.”

“The administration has no desire to prove it.”

She knew that already. “The administration may not have all the facts. If we can bring the director hard evidence of Kral’s culpability in the illegal transport of high-powered weaponry into Europe, our relationship with the British would compel him to stop treating Kral like a friend and initiate a federal investigation into his activities as they pertain to the United States.”

“The president has more facts than you realize, and his facts lead him to believe that Lukas Kral is worth more to us free than imprisoned.” Mason shifted forward in his seat and made brief eye contact with her. Then he looked away again, back to his newspaper, this time to study the sports section. “You’d be wise to remember that the Agency is in the business of avoiding federal investigations, not initiating them.”

His tone gave away nothing, but his face wasn’t perfectly impassive. Between his eyes ran a trace of a line, the thinnest thread of emotion.

“Where did McCrea go?” she asked again, sensing that Mason was softening.

“A hotel.”

She withheld any indication of victory, but she had a pilot hole established. She just had to keep drilling. “I can track him. I’ll sit outside his hotel until he shows his face, and I’ll follow him to the meet. Disguised. You know I’m good at that. Best in my class. Give me the chance.”

Mason eyed her over his paper. “Why do you care so much?”

Her answer came without thought. “Because he’s mine.”

“Yours?”

“My asset,” she clarified, sure that was what she’d meant. “My find. The best one I’ve had yet. And I’m not letting Langley sit on him.”

He folded his newspaper and stood, curling one hand around a rounded steel rail as his body rocked with the motion of the train. His eyes shimmered aqua blue, like arctic ice. With
otherwise unremarkable features, Mason was exactly the sort of indescribable, inconspicuous man that the Agency loves to recruit. Impossible to pick out of a crowd, he was the most inscrutable man she’d ever met. She had no idea what he was about to say.

“Meet me in six hours at the storehouse. I’ll bring what you need. You’re going in.”

Early the next morning, Evangeline lounged on a cream-colored sofa in the crystal-and-concrete lobby of the Metro Hotel. Razorsharp black bangs hung thickly in her eyes, and the rest of her naturally curly hair had been straightened and slicked into a very high ponytail. Very fashionable right now, or so the most current issue of
Vogue
had told her when she’d gone hunting for authentic details for her disguise that morning. As she gossiped in French to an open line on her cell phone, she applied a fresh coat of bright orange lipstick—the color of the moment, again according to
Vogue
. With an exaggerated look at the dangling silver watch on her left wrist, she sighed.

Playing the part of a rich party girl waiting for her breakfast date couldn’t be further from the truth of what tumbled inside of her. Between the late return to her apartment, the hours of report writing, and the early planning session with Mason, she’d hardly gotten any sleep last night. Her nerves jangled from three cups of coffee, but she’d never felt sharper and more ready for a mission.

Two bottle-blonde twentysomethings in sexy sundresses exited the glass-walled elevator and approached the couch where she sat. They dropped their bags and collapsed next to her, never halting their rapid conversation in slang-filled French. She picked up bits and pieces. Cheating boyfriends, new jeans. The usual concerns of spoiled girls, and easy enough to share. She caught
the artificially green eyes of one and said something about how much she liked her Gucci handbag. The girl’s smile widened, and she let her examine it while exclaiming over Evangeline’s bag in return. Evangeline couldn’t care less about the oversized Prada satchel she’d received from Mason that morning, but she made sure the girl didn’t open it. The small case of burglary tools tucked in a side pocket would be hard to explain.

Gleaming glass doors swung open and admitted a breath of spicy cologne, followed shortly thereafter by one of the most visually arresting men Evangeline had ever seen. He was a sparkling specimen in pale linen whose long, jet-black hair was held in place by a simple golden knot. Thick but neatly groomed facial hair outlined his broad jaw. His imperious brown eyes glowered under heavy brows.

She knew him on sight, although only from photographs. Cristobal Ménellier was a native Marseille boy made good—very good, judging by the flashy Rolex and gold jewelry dangling from his sleeve. He’d made his money as a street dealer, but his ruthless business savvy and uncanny ability to stay out of jail had helped him rise above the retail scene. He was a middleman now, higher up than Penard, and with his links to Kral, considerably more interesting.

A flash of white by the stairs caught her eye. McCrea, dressed in khaki slacks and a white shirt, loped down the stairway that led to the guest rooms. His slim-cut pants showcased a pair of long, lean legs and narrow hips. He scanned the room, and his focus landed on Ménellier. A flicker of recognition contorted the Scotsman’s hard face as he changed course and walked into the lobby, toward Evangeline and her new friends. She continued her discussion with the local girls but let her voice fall conspiratorially, reducing her end of the prattle to exclamations and encouragements for them to continue their tales.

“I believe we share an acquaintance?” McCrea’s low rumble was directed to Ménellier.

Ménellier flashed straight, white teeth. “Serge is my brother-in-law. Calling him an acquaintance gives him far too much credit.”

McCrea’s gaze swept over the three women on the couch.

Evangeline leaned close to the girl nearest her, who had just recounted a tale of single-girl woe, and patted her leg affectionately. She thought they looked like three best friends and hoped McCrea thought the same. If he looked closely, she was sure he’d see her heartbeat pulsing in her throat.

“Join me in my room?” McCrea asked Ménellier.

The Frenchman nodded and followed McCrea toward the stairs. Evangeline watched under thick bangs as McCrea and Ménellier walked out of sight.

She excused herself from the girls and smiled at the concierge as she promenaded past the reception desk and up the gray concrete steps. Her rubber-soled platform sandals were silent as she tiptoed up the stairs. Ménellier tried to initiate small talk as the men walked, but McCrea was unresponsive. Someone opened the door at the fifth-floor landing. Footsteps recurred and then faded as the door snapped shut behind them.

She vaulted herself up the remaining steps and reached the landing just in time to hear the click-and-whoosh of a door opening and closing in the hallway beyond. She had to assume they’d gone inside a room.

She opened the heavy stairwell door and found the corridor empty. Padding softly down the travertine-tiled hallway, she wondered which of the ten rooms they’d vanished into. Pressing her ear against each warm wooden door gave her nothing but silence. Either all the rooms were empty, or McCrea had activated some sort of white-noise device to prevent eavesdropping.

No problem. Her bag contained, among other things, a sound-amplification tool that could detect such antisurveillance measures. She found it and held it up to each of the three doors closest to the stairwell. She heard nothing on the first two, but the door to suite 434 buzzed like a radio between stations.

Bingo
.

She assessed the door, which was unfortunately well crafted. Dropping to her knees, she tried to push her smallest surveillance device, which this morning was a hairpin, between the door and the metal sill, but the space was airtight. Pushing any harder might rattle the door. She’d have a hell of a time explaining what she was doing out there if they caught her.

Damn. If she wanted to hear what they said—and she surely did—her only choice was to breach access from the room next door.

Quickly, Evangeline walked to the empty suite next door and inserted a credit-card-size lock pick programmed with the hotel’s master key into the card reader. The door latch released with a little snap and she was inside the room in seconds. From studying blueprints last night, she knew that all of the hotel’s suites were identical. A small kitchenette, bed, and sitting area composed the main level. Stairs led to a lounging loft with a second bed. Two big French doors added light and opened up to a false balcony. A waist-high balustrade prevented tenants from falling five stories to the alley below.

A precious minute had passed since McCrea and Ménellier had entered the suite next door, and she needed a solution. Her one chance was that McCrea would have his curtains open to the bright summer morning, for Mason had handed her a fancy new tech toy that morning: a tiny digital video camera with a parabolic microphone on a ten-foot angling telescope. Even if the curtains were closed and she couldn’t film any worthwhile images, the advanced mic actually worked best when applied outside of a closed window, as it could capture the minute reverberations of voices against glass. One way or another, she’d get the conversation on the camera’s polysilicon flash memory.

She pulled the six-inch collapsed aluminum wand out of her satchel, screwed the credit-card-size camera to one end, and whipped it to its full length. After tucking the camera’s tiny receiving speaker into her ear and clicking the remote control
and viewfinder onto the scope’s handle, she swung open the French doors and slowly eased the camera across the exterior wall to McCrea’s room. But no matter how far she stretched her arm, his window was just out of the camera’s reach.

Hanging over the warm iron railing, she assessed the architecture of the building. It was an unadorned modernist structure, but a narrow horizontal ledge ran under her window and over to McCrea’s. If she could step onto it, she could bring the camera close enough to record the meeting.

Most people wouldn’t think that of that ledge as particularly useful, but Evangeline wasn’t most people. Right before she’d gone through the Farm, the Agency had added a training module in the modern practice of freerunning, which involved moving quickly through an urban environment using an unconventional combination of surfaces. Practitioners might leap from an overpass onto a roof, catapult from the roof into a tree, and from the tree roll to the ground. The best freerunners could scale the side of a building in seconds using little more than windowsills and drainpipes. With her small size and a bit of gymnastic experience as a child, she’d been better at it than most of her heavierbodied classmates, who were too cumbersome to fly through the air easily.