AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The black Mercedes sedan began to roll. The flight from DC had taken six hours and eleven minutes. They were wheels up at 11:47 p.m., and with the time change they were on the ground in Geneva a few minutes before noon; a full hour before Garret’s plane was due to land. No one slept on the way over. There was too much work to be done. Dumond went online and hacked into the networks of seven different hotels before he found out where Garret was staying. He was booked at the Beau-Rivage on Quai du Mont-Blanc overlooking the lake. If he had business at Speyer’s bank, the hotel made sense. It was a short walk.
After analyzing the Rivage’s reservation system, the best they were able to do was get a room on the same floor as Garret two doors down. There was no adjacent hotel with a direct line of sight to Garret’s room so they would have to bug his room instead. After they cleared customs, they found two identical black Mercedes sedans with heavily tinted windows and a white Volkswagen cargo van waiting for them. In the trunk of each sedan they found a full complement of silenced weapons, and in the back of the van a surveillance kit. Everyone was dressed in business attire, except Coleman and Stroble, who were wearing pilot’s uniforms. Coleman and Stroble took one of the sedans and parked out in front of the Air France terminal. Rapp, Dumond, and Hacket took the white van and followed Brooks and Wicker, who were in the other Mercedes, to the Rivage. Brooks and Wicker checked into the room at the Rivage while the rest of the team went to the D’Angleterre a few blocks away. Rapp and the other two waited outside until the newlyweds finished bugging Garret’s room.
Dumond in the meantime managed to insert Garret’s mobile phone numbers into the National Security Agency’s Echelon system. The CIA worked closely with the NSA on overseas matters. Neither wanted to be embarrassed over the discovery that they were intentionally targeting U.S. citizens abroad, so they’d developed a system where numbers could be monitored for a brief period, a day or two, and then they would be purged from the system as if they’d never been looked at in the first place. Garret’s e-mail addresses were also added to the list. So far the hardest part of the op had been getting a reservation for Brooks and Wicker at Le Bearn. Wicker slid the concierge at the Rivage a hundred-dollar bill and the guy barely batted an eye. It took two more C-notes before the guy could guarantee a table.
A laptop was sitting on the seat next to Rapp. The screen was divided into four pictures. Wicker and Brooks had already arrived at Le Bearn and had planted several miniaturized cameras and listening devices in the bar, restaurant, and bathroom. Dumond was monitoring everything from the back of the van which was parked a half block away from the restaurant. The screen currently showed a picture of the street outside the restaurant, the front door of the restaurant from the inside, and two more interior shots of the dining area. Dumond was recording everything.
50
G arret stepped through the front door a few minutes early and was immediately cut off by three men wearing tuxedos. Le Bearn wouldn’t let you into the bar if you didn’t have a reservation for dinner. The shorter of the three men greeted Garret in French. He was polite but unyielding. Garret ignored the greeting and told the man he was meeting Joseph Speyer for dinner. Their attitudes changed immediately. One man grabbed his coat, the third disappeared, and the other began singing the praises of one of Geneva’s most well-respected bankers.
The man himself showed up just moments later. Next to Garret, with his frumpy demeanor and ill-fitting clothes, Speyer looked as if he’d just stepped out of a GQ ad. His two-button, blue-gray flannel suit had a faint light gray pinstripe. The fabric hung from his thin frame perfectly, the pants breaking at the perfect spot above a pair of handmade light brown Italian shoes that matched the frame of his glasses. Speyer’s thinning light brown hair was cropped short and styled slightly forward.
They had just made it to the bar when four men came through the door. Two of them were huge. Standing well over six feet tall and weighing upwards of three hundred pounds, everything about them screamed bodyguard. The two older men sandwiched in between them were Cy Green and Aleksandr Gordievsky. They were opposites of sorts. Green had a relaxed air of confidence about him. His permatan, slicked-back hair, open-collared shirt, gold necklace and watch, and double-breasted blue sport coat was the uniform of the ultra-wealthy. Compared to Green, Gordievsky looked a bit pasty. His brown hair was mostly gone, except around the sides and in back, where he grew it a bit too long. His suit was a bit too shiny, and the mock turtleneck sweater that he wore under the jacket screamed Eurotrash.
Handshakes and greetings were exchanged, and the restaurant staff made a great production out of taking care of the group. They were escorted to their corner table where Green and Gordievsky insisted on sitting with their backs to the wall. The two hulking bodyguards were given the table next to them. Water and bread were left, and drink orders were taken. A special wine list was brought to the table and offered to Green, who quickly declined and gestured for it to be given to Speyer.
While Speyer perused the list Green looked across the table and flashed Garret a devilish look. “You have picked a good time to visit. Tonight is going to be great fun. When we are done with this exquisite meal we are going to hit some fabulous clubs and then we will head back to my place for some truly unique late-night entertainment.”
Garret hadn’t flown all the way from DC to party. He wanted to get the nasty stuff out of the way, so he said, “We have a problem.”
“May we at least eat before we talk business?” Green said.
“I’d rather get it out of the way. You guys promised me that you were going to tie up all the loose ends over here.”
“And we have,” Green smiled at a passing woman.
“Didn’t you see the president’s press conference yesterday?”
Green dismissed Garret’s worries with an unconcerned look. “I’m not worried.”
“They found the guy.”
“There is no way they can trace the Bosnian back to any of us,” Green assured him.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Tell him, Joseph.”
Speyer did not bother to take his eyes off the wine list. “Everything was done with cash. We never met him.”
“How did he get the money?”
“We put it in two separate duffelbags and flew it into Cyprus on a private plane. The assassin gave
us some coordinates. The bags were left behind a stone wall in the middle of the night on a deserted stretch of road outside Limassol.”
“So no one ever met him face-to-face?”
“Nope,” Green said.
“And there’s no financial records anywhere, or e-mails that could be traced back to you?”
“None.”
“So the CIA is lying,” Garret smiled.
“Or the Bosnian is lying,” Green added.
