Clarke exhaled. ‘How long has this op been going on for?’
‘A long time. Like ten years, maybe longer.’
Clarke shook his head and closed his eyes. He pinched the skin at the top of his nose. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I’ll come to that in a minute. Fortunately, Mossad don’t know a great deal about what happened in Minsk when their people got killed.’
‘Sounds like there’s a “but” coming.’
‘But,’ Procter continued, ‘they’re looking for the man who killed their team.’
Clarke picked up the significance of the wording instantly, just as Procter knew he would. ‘Not men?’
Procter shook his head.
‘If they know it was just one man, then they must have spotted Tesseract.’
Procter nodded but didn’t respond. He looked away.
‘If they’re looking for Tesseract,’ Clarke said, ‘they’ll want to know who sent him. And he knows your face if not your name. And even if he doesn’t know you’re CIA, he’s smart enough to guess.’
Procter slowly nodded.
‘But Europe is a big place and, as you keep saying, Tesseract is a special kind of guy. They’re not going to be able to find him, right?’
Procter didn’t answer. He toyed with the change in his pocket.
‘What aren’t you telling me, Roland?’
Procter looked Clarke in the eye and said, ‘You need to see something.’
Procter withdrew his smartphone and thumbed a few buttons. He passed it to Clarke, who examined the screen.
The phone’s screen was filled with an image of a room with a white carpet, white walls, expensively decorated and furnished. Standing in the room were two men. A large man stood in the background, side-on to the camera. The second man was the focus of the image. He was tall, wearing a suit, face to the camera, well lit, perfectly identifiable.
‘Holy crap,’ Clarke said. ‘That’s him.’
Procter nodded. ‘Just slide to see more. Not that you really need to, as that one says it all. There’s video footage too, with audio. In Russian, granted, but it’s still his voice.’
‘How the hell did you get hold of this?’
‘Mossad has passed to us everything they have on the incident.’
Clarke stared at Procter for a long time before saying, ‘They’ve asked for the CIA’s help finding him.’
‘And it’s been granted,’ Procter said. ‘Satellite, facial recognition, HUMMIT — everything. The Director wants to demonstrate our commitment to one of our closest allies.’
‘This is bad, Roland,’ Clarke said. ‘This is really bad. Are you going to be involved?’
Procter shook his head. ‘Chambers is overseeing it. We’ve been helping for about a week so far. I’ll get some updates, but I won’t be able to influence.’
Clarke looked as scared as Procter had ever seen him. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘We send Tesseract after Kasakov, as already discussed, and we tell him to disappear straight after.’
Clarke raised his eyebrows. ‘Or?’
‘Don’t even think it, Peter. It’s not Tesseract’s fault Mossad were watching Yamout. He couldn’t have predicted that. Hell, we didn’t. I brought him into this operation, and I’m not going to turn on him as soon as we get a little heat.’
‘ A little heat? Roland, are you joking? This is about as hot as it can get. They have his face, they have his voice. They know where he was and when. You think that isn’t enough to establish a trail? This is Mossad we’re talking about here. They don’t play by the rules. They’ll do whatever it takes to find him. They’ll send a Kidon team, and eventually they’ll track him down, you know they will. That’s what they do. They’ll make him talk. You’ll be identified, then me. Best-case scenario: this operation blows up in our face and we find ourselves facing an oversight committee. That’s if we’re lucky. Israelis like their revenge served ice-cold, don’t forget. You think they’ll forgive us for killing their people because we’re allies?’ Clarke shook his head. ‘It’s over. Have him kill Kasakov, and then we cut our losses.’
After a minute of silence Procter said, ‘He can keep a low profile. This will blow over eventually. These things always do. When there are no leads after a month, resources will be reassigned. The Israelis won’t find him on their own. I have faith in his abilities.’
Clarke pointed an accusatory finger. ‘You found him once, remember.’
‘That was an entirely different set of circumstances. He was on his own. This time I can help him.’
‘You want to take the risk?’
Procter didn’t answer. He heard laughter and looked down the beach to where a little girl was flying a kite, guided by her father. Procter couldn’t help but smile. He looked back at Clarke.
‘If anything goes wrong killing Kasakov, or Mossad get too close to him, I’ll activate the contingency. Happy?’
Clarke didn’t answer.
CHAPTER 45
Ljubjiana, Slovenia
Slovenia’s capital was spread before Victor. His hotel room was on the fourteenth floor, high enough so that it wasn’t overlooked by other buildings, letting him enjoy the rare pleasure of open drapes. The city beyond his hotel- room window was muted beneath grey clouds, but the dawn rising over the snow-covered peaks of the Kamnik Alps in the distance made it a view to savour.
His employer, sounding not unlike how Victor imagined a father might to his son, said, ‘We need to talk.’
Victor took a seat at the room’s meagre desk on top of which sat a laptop. He drank Sicilian lemonade from a frosted glass bottle.
The voice sounded through the computer’s speakers again. ‘There is a serious problem you need to be aware of. Regarding Lancet.’
‘I take it this problem is the fact the team I killed in Minsk were Israeli Mossad.’
‘How did you-’
‘I asked myself who would have the motivation, means and guile to run a surveillance op on Gabir Yamout, and who the United States would sell restricted technology to. There was only ever going to be one answer.’
‘I take it you understand the seriousness of the situation.’
‘Of course,’ Victor said. ‘Your tone so far has been quite evocative.’
‘This is no time for jokes. The Israelis recorded you real good, my man, when you took that recon of the suite. I have to say I was very surprised you did that. I thought you were more careful. The surveillance team’s cameras got your front, back and everything in between. I’ve seen the stills. They’re crystal clear.’
Victor nodded to himself. He’d assumed the video feed had been backed up elsewhere, but at times like this it wasn’t much fun being right. His enemies had his face, his voice — albeit in Russian — and would be able to work out his height and weight. It would give Mossad as good a profile on him as anyone. Anonymity was always his best form of defence and without it he was vulnerable.
‘Given the limited time frame I had to operate within,’ Victor said, ‘that reconnaissance could not have been avoided.’ He paused, then added, ’And I take it Mossad have requested CIA assistance to look for me, which is why you’ve seen the stills.’
‘I’m sorry to say they’re getting the best-bud package on this one. The full power of US intelligence is, in effect, being loaned to Israel.’
‘They must want me pretty bad.’
‘That they do, my man, that they do. Mossad are easily the most vengeful intelligence organisation on the planet, and that’s without the fact the head of their operational arm has taken a particular interest in this incident. He’s as old as Israel herself, and takes attacks against his people very personally, like they’re all one big extended
