Rules of Vengeance

70

They formed lines on both sides of the hallway, each with six policemen clad in assault gear, backs to the wall, with Graves and Ford pulling up the rear. Black Panthers were permitted to carry weapons of their own choosing. The first man in line clutched a Benelli semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun. The second followed with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The strategy was blast and spray. And God help whoever was on the receiving end. The rest of them held pistols at the ready to fire on more precise targets.

The captain gave the signal to go forward. A policeman carrying a Remington Wingmaster ran down the hall and aimed the rifle at the door. The captain raised his gloved hand. His fingers counted down: five… four… three… two…

“Ready?” whispered Kate.

Graves nodded.

An earsplitting bang rent the hallway. The door careened off its hinges and slammed to the floor. There was a flash and a concussive change in the air pressure as the stun grenades exploded. One, then another. Smoke flooded the hallway. By now Graves was ru

“Arrêtez! Arrêtez! Bougez pas!”

Shotgun blasts fired in rapid succession. Graves’s ears rang painfully. He registered the apartment in static frames. A run-down kitchen. A living room with threadbare furniture. The crate of machine guns. And another larger crate next to it, with the words “Property of Italian Armed Forces. Semtex-H. 50 kg.” It was the Semtex that Emma Ransom had stolen from the barracks near Rome. He heard a scream. He turned a corner to see a slew of black uniforms tackling someone to the ground. It was a man with gray hair, and he struggled fiercely, shouting something in a language Graves recognized but at first did not understand.

A staccato burst from an automatic weapon forced Graves to spin and look behind him. Pieces of drywall scattered through the air, clipping his face and neck. He ducked instinctively. The policeman next to him went down, half his face blown away. Graves leveled his gun at a woman who stood facing him, an AK-47 held in her hands. He squeezed the trigger, but before he could get off more than one round, there was another blast and another, and the woman was blown across the room and slammed high onto a wall. Graves looked and saw the French police captain, the Benelli shotgun pressed to his cheek.

And then, louder than all that had gone before, silence.

Seven seconds had passed.

Graves walked to the woman. She was dead, effectively sawed in half by the shotgun’s vicious barrage. He noted that a single bullet had pierced the center of her forehead. It was not Emma Ransom.

He walked into the bedroom.

A man lay facedown on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him. He was dressed in a gray suit; his hair was the color of steel wool. It’s him, thought Graves. Shvets.

“Turn him over,” he said.

A policeman rolled the body over and Graves swore very loudly.

At first glance, the man was of Middle Eastern extraction. He let loose with a violent protest in the suddenly familiar language. It was Farsi.

“He says they’re Iranian diplomats,” translated Graves. “You can find their passports in the bedroom.”

A moment later another policeman emerged from the back room, clutching two diplomatic passports from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Graves opened the first. It identified the holder as Pasha Gozhi and stated that he was attached to the Foreign Ministry. “Mr. Gozhi,” he said, “what are you doing with a crate of machine guns and plastic explosives in your apartment?”

“I wish to see the ambassador,” he said. “I have diplomatic immunity.

You have no right to break in. Where is my wife? Anisha! Are you all right?”

Graves looked at Kate. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “We’re royally screwed.”

Kate placed a hand on his arm. “Maybe we’ll get that reading on the location of the phone call Emma Ransom placed last night.”

“Yeah,” said Graves, without hope. “Maybe.”

71

From his flat on the fourth floor of a building half a block away, Sergei Shvets watched in horror as the Black Panthers of the French RAID prepared to assault the Iranian safe house he’d used two nights earlier. There was no time to wonder how they had found it. A leak. A slip-up. A spy nestled close to his breast. A postmortem of the operation would locate the source. Right now, there was only time to act. Time to ensure that his months of careful pla

“What is it, Papi?” asked Emma Ransom.

“Where are you?”

“Inside the CPF. We’re cutting it close. There was an extra security presence at the main gate.”

“We had to expect as much once the Brits discovered the real reason for the bombing.”

“Then why are you calling?”

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with. Just hurry and get the job done as quickly as possible. I’ll be waiting at the airport.”

“Keep the engines ru

“You have my word. Now go.”

Shvets hung up the phone and scrambled into the bedroom, where he gathered his clothing and stuffed it into his overnight bag. Using a damp cloth, he rubbed down the lamps, light switches, the television remote control, and any appliances in the kitchen he might have touched. Satisfied that the flat was clean, he put on his coat, slipped his pistol into his waist holster, and put on his jacket. He checked his watch. It was nearly six-thirty Just then there came an eruption of gunfire from outside, a succession of bangs that crackled like a cap gun. Shvets hurried to the window. The uniforms were nowhere in sight, and a crowd had gathered on the corner. There was a burst of machine-gun fire, and a window shattered on the upper floor of the apartment building. People screamed as the glass rained down. Smoke escaped the window and drifted into the sky. Picking up his bag in one hand and his phone in the other, he headed to the front door.

“Yuri,” he said, calling the pilot. “Get the plane fueled and ready for takeoff. I’ll be there in an hour… Yes, I know it’s early.” He opened the door. “There’s been a change of-” Shvets stopped in midsentence. “Jesus Christ,” he said, looking at the man standing a foot away and pointing a pistol squarely at his face. “What are you doing here?”

“Hang up.”

Jonathan Ransom pressed the pistol against the heavyset man’s forehead and shoved him back into the apartment.

The man thumbed the off button hard enough to break it. “Where’s Alex?” he asked, with a heavy Russian accent.

“Dead.” Jonathan closed the door and put his back against it. “You’re Shvets?”

“Call me Papi. Lara does. Or would you prefer it if I called her Emma?”

“Call her whatever you want. I saw the file. Now turn around and walk into the living room. Sit down on the couch. Hands on your legs where I can see them.”

Shvets turned and walked into a sparsely furnished corner room with large picture windows. “You’ve become quite the professional,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

“Yeah, well, I learned from the best.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Spacibo.”

“Fuck you, too.”

Shvets lowered himself onto the couch, placing his hands squarely on his legs. “Happy?”

“Great,” said Jonathan distractedly, his attention drawn to the hive of police vehicles jamming the street four stories below and the swarm of uniforms buzzing among them. He’d jumped from one hornet’s nest to another. “Why are the police down there?” he asked.