The Crimson Code

Yawi reached the third-floor landing and pulled his ski mask down over his face, then placed his left hand on the shoulder of the last man in his team. That man in turn placed his left hand on the shoulder of the next, until the fifth commando, first in the line, placed his left hand on the door leading from the stairwell into the interior corridor. Now, simply by squeezing the shoulder of the man in front of him, Yawi gave the silent signal to go. In less than a second, the message had been relayed to the lead man, and he pushed open the door.

The corridor was clear, and they moved silently, each holding up fingers to count the doors they passed. One…two…three…four. Yawi checked each man’s count, for in the stress of an assault, he knew not to overlook even the smallest, most basic detail. Certain that they were at the right door, he patted the shoulder of the man in front of him.

That action was repeated up the line, and the lead man extracted a tiny video camera with a fish-eye tubular lens. As the tube slid beneath the door frame, Yawi studied the distorted image on the handheld monitor. He counted six people in the room, two on a sofa along the left wall, two in the kitchen area to the back and two at a small dinner table. A shadow moving in the distance marked the seventh target, walking along the back hallway.

As the lead commando withdrew the camera tube, Yawi relayed the information to his men with hand signals. Each nodded. Now the second man squeezed two small gobs of putty into the gap between the door and its frame, one at the catch for the doorknob, the other at the dead bolt. As that man pressed detonators into the plastic explosive, Yawi and the others readied flash grenades. The second man held up a thumb.

All was ready.

The men flattened themselves against the wall, and Yawi nodded. The second man squeezed a tiny plunger, and two muffled pops sounded almost simultaneously. Yawi felt a momentary rush of satisfaction. His man had done his job precisely as he had been trained, using the minimum amount of explosive necessary to blow the door. The satisfaction was quickly lost in the moment, however, for now he and his men burst into motion.

The lead man kicked the door open, and four flash grenades were tossed in immediately. Two seconds later, the grenades exploded with a rushing whoosh, as Yawi and his men shielded their eyes against the blinding, blue-white glare.

“Go!” he snapped.

The command was unnecessary, for his men were already in motion. The first two men burst in, pistols leveled, marking their targets, the quiet pops as they fired lost in the cries of panic within. Yawi followed and saw that two of the targets were already slumping to the floor, red holes punched in their chests.

Yawi pressed on toward the back of the apartment, his arms extended, left hand beneath his right, supporting the weight of the weapon, moving it side to side, tracking with every turn of his head. A light beneath the bathroom door flicked off, and Yawi fired through the door at the same instant that it seemed to spout holes from within.

He felt the three rapid punches in his chest, knocking him back against the wall, but kept firing, the flimsy door now almost disintegrating before his eyes. He realized he was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, with an unbelievable tightness in his chest, making it all but impossible to breathe.

Through a gaping hole in the door, he watched his target rise and come toward him, gun in one hand, the other vainly trying to staunch the angry geysers of blood spurting from the side of his neck. Yawi was dimly aware of one of his comrades coming around the corner to check on him, of the target turning and raising his pistol, of three more shots, of the target finally crumpling to the floor, half-atop him.

Mission accomplished, Uncle, Yawi thought. We killed them all.

And then the darkness swelled around him.

Frankfurt, Germany

It all sounded so simple, but Lawton knew it wasn’t. Nothing could be that simple. He drew Renate from the back room into one of the executive offices. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“This sounds too simple.”

“Anything sounds simple when it is laid out this way.”

Damn, she was so distant again, as if everything that made her Renate had flown away to another star system.

“Renate, listen to me.”

“I am listening, Law.”

“Then think about it. If this bank really contains the kind of information you think it does, why isn’t it better guarded? The entire Frankfurt Brotherhood could take a fall if their computer records were breached.”

She turned to face him directly. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the only reason they’d do this is if their records are so heavily encrypted that we’ll probably be wasting our time anyway.”

She shook her head. “First we go for their communications. We hack into their computer system and view their private Internet messages. If we find what we need there, we can talk about what to do next to nail them. But trust me, if we follow the money we’ll find them.”

“But how will we break their encryption? Even the NSA can’t hack SWIFTNET. When they want the information, they get a subpoena.”

She gave him a tight smile. “You must have faith in me. And in Assif. We have done this before.”

“Why do I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

“Because there are some things that it’s better not to know,” she replied, her icy eyes fixed on him. “Trust me, Lawton. I know what I’m doing here. And we will get what we need.”

She left to rejoin the others, and he followed reluctantly, thinking that he didn’t mind putting his neck in a noose if he could be certain it would serve a purpose. He wasn’t sure of that with this job yet.

Niko was regaling Assif with the story of the murder of Jürgen Ponto.

“He was the head of the Dresdner Bank, back in the 1970s. It was a terrible time in Germany, in Europe. Lots of terrorist groups active. Suzanne Albrecht was Ponto’s godchild, the daughter of a man he’d known since childhood. But he didn’t know she’d joined the Red Army Faction. She showed up at his door carrying a bouquet of roses, acting like the loving godchild. Then she and her two companions tried to kidnap him. He fought back. They shot him five times.”

“Wow,” said Assif, shaking his head. “His godchild?”

Niko nodded. “It makes you think, doesn’t it? You can know someone from the day they were born and still not know them at all.”

“He was the enemy,” Renate said quietly.

“The anger of disaffected youth,” Niko said. “So easy to twist young minds.”

Assif’s face froze as he looked at the television news. “Yes. And it’s happening again.”

8

Saint-Arnans-la-Bastide, France

General Jules Soult sat in the comfortable leather armchair in his library. He puffed on a cigar and studied the papers that had arrived by pouch from Frau Schmidt only a short while ago. The courier was cooling his heels outside, awaiting Soult’s response.

It would be positive, of course. He had every intention of taking over intelligence operations for the European Union Department of Collective Security. He also intended to make very sure that these documents he was to sign would hamper him in no important way.

He was quite pleased to discover that there was nothing to object to in the papers before him. He was assigned full intelligence responsibility and ordered to report directly to Frau Schmidt herself. Apparently the good German woman had no desire for any dirt to get past the two of them. That pleased him.

His operational budget would be generous, and while his operatives were forbidden to use deadly force except in self-defense, Soult wasn’t worried about that detail. His people would ensure that he retained plausible deniability.

Satisfied, he signed and initialed the first set of documents, keeping a copy for himself, and slipped the executed version back into the pouch. He touched a button on his desk, and moments later his butler appeared. An English butler, of course. There was something about the way the English buttled that remained without compare.

“For the courier. Then I should like my brandy.”

The man bowed, accepting the pouch. “At once, Monsieur le Général.”

Soult sent the butler on his way, then reached into his top right desk drawer and pulled out a remote control. With the touch of a few buttons, the library wall to one side opened and revealed a large-screen television. As always, it was already tuned to a news network. Today he chose to listen to one out of Germany. It always paid to have a wide variety of sources.

What he saw pleased him immensely. Students in Berlin were burning pictures of Osama bin Laden. The Islamic Center in Vienna had suffered from graffiti and broken windows. The violence was still only in the stage of small outbreaks. But it would provide perfect cover for what was to come.

He was still smiling when his butler returned with his Napoleon brandy on a silver salver. The man placed the snifter carefully on Soult’s desk and began to bow out.