Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [152]
Then he picked up the coaster with the water stain and turned it over. There, winking up at him with its rainbow glimmers, was the slick surface of a DVD.
THIRTY
THE SAFEHOUSE was a three-story building on the corner of a quiet residential street. An alley along one side revealed a wall almost completely covered with mature ivy vines. There was a streetlight at the rear, but it wasn’t on. The other side of the house overlooked a narrow, heavily shaded street. The windows had been boarded up. At the rear was what looked and smelled like an open sewer. As they had crossed the city, they had observed periodic blackouts; many of the intersections were in chaos. Homemade banners announced student protests starting at dawn.
“There’s only one way to do this,” Alli said when she, Thatë, and Vasily had completed their surveillance circuit of Xhafa’s safehouse. “You take me in.”
“Impossible,” Thatë said at once.
Vasily watched the two of them with complete impassivity.
“The place is a virtual fortress,” Alli said. “There’s only one way in or out. What’s our other alternative, to let Vasily bull his way in?”
Thatë licked his lips nervously.
“As far as these people know you’re part of Xhafa’s American operation. You have the medallion, you know the code words. You’ll bring me in as a new cherry.”
Thatë grinned suddenly. “More like a cherry bomb.”
Alli turned to Vasily. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Once you’re inside, I can’t help you,” he said.
“But you can,” Alli said. “Give us—what, Thatë?—fifteen minutes, then create a diversion.”
“A big one,” Thatë added.
Vasily flexed his muscles and hefted the flamethrower he’d salvaged from the military vehicle. “No fucking problem.”
“Okay, then.” Thatë glanced from one to the other. “Let’s synchronize watches.”
* * *
WHEN ALAN Fraine was a decade younger, he was a successful hostage negotiator. Before that, he was the best sharpshooter Metro had seen for more than twenty years. People inside the department still talked about him and the string of astonishing hits he’d made without ever harming a civilian even though some of them were standing right next to or right in front of his target.
Stepping up off the street had been a mixed blessing. It had brought with it a higher salary, an entrée into the inner circle of Metro police, as well as an opportunity to come to the mayor’s attention, never a bad thing in the highly politicized atmosphere of D.C. Occasionally, though, when he played poker with the mayor, or with his belly full with rich food, he felt a shadow of sadness pass through him, as memories of his salad days surfaced, and he turned briefly melancholy.
Following his electrifying phone conversation with Dennis Paull, he’d got to work, pulling together a team of experts from all divisions of Metro—a half-dozen men he knew personally and trusted implicitly.
They had no difficulty locating John Pawnhill. Almost immediately, they reported that he was traveling with a crew of three—an antisurveillance team. So he ordered his men up onto the rooftops. He himself and one of his team rode Harleys, dressed in Hell’s Angels leathers they had borrowed from the impound room at HQ.
The moment Pawnhill pick-locked his way into Billy Warren’s building, Fraine gave the order for his men to go to work. In short order, they had picked up all three of Pawnhill’s men. He spent a fruitless thirty minutes interrogating them.
“This is useless, they won’t give me anything,” he said when he’d turned away from the third of the men. “Tony, take them down to HQ for arraignment.”
“On what charge?” Tony said.
“Suspicion of terrorism,” Fraine said. “A matter of national security, so no calls whatsoever.”
“Got it.” Tony passed them off to the patrol officers they’d called in.
“Go with them,” Fraine said. “I don’t want any fuckups.”
“Yessir.”
Fraine returned his attention to the rear of Billy Warren’s building. Then a thought struck him and he turned back. “Tony, on second thought keep them here. I want them in a