Author: James R. Hannibal
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/james-r-hannibal/page,7,492524-the_gryphon_heist.html
“Eddie, I did not authorize you to include Franklin in this meet.”
“But Franklin’s desk is so much cooler than mine.”
She sighed. Boys.
Brennan had staged the rendezvous beneath the great marble portico of the Jefferson Memorial. A red triangle appeared over the dome, along with green arrows showing her the best route. They appeared flat on the sidewalk, as if painted on the concrete. She didn’t need them, but it was a good test. “Not bad.”
Franklin’s voice came over the comms again. “The word you’re looking for is incredible, chica.”
“Franklin, get off my comms. You’re not part of this op.”
“But it’s my lab.”
“Rules are rules. I’m already on thin ice with Brennan, don’t make it worse.”
The towering bronze statue of Jefferson, shaded by a dome more than a hundred feet high, rose into view as Talia climbed the steps. The Jefferson Memorial was one of the most beautiful and impressive monuments in DC, but it was also one of the least visited, making it an ideal choice for meeting an unfamiliar contact. He stood close to one of the four engraved walls, staring up at a passage that began with “Almighty God.”
Tyler wore a burgundy scarf and a gray Armani overcoat that reached to his calves. Neither was distinctive, but the patchwork flatcap on his head matched the one in his file picture. After counting to sixty, pretending to read the quotes and marvel at the statue, Talia picked an exit path that took her straight past her target. A casual observer, perhaps even a focused observer, would never have noticed her touch Tyler’s elbow.
She was waiting at a bench beside the Tidal Basin, shaded by the quivering branches of a cherry tree, when Tyler came strolling down the path. He sat at the opposite end, folded his hands on his knee, and looked directly at her.
Where had Brennan found this guy? Didn’t he say Tyler had worked with the Agency before? “Don’t speak and don’t look in my direction.” Talia kept her gaze focused ahead. “You don’t know me. We’re just two people out for some late afternoon air who happen to be sharing a bench.”
“Right.” Instead of looking away, Tyler leaned over and nudged her arm. “Spy stuff. Tradecraft. Say no more.” He sat back and looked out across the water.
Talia rolled her eyes behind the Faux-kleys. “This is my op. We do things my way. You’re just along for the ride.” She took a breath, but before she could launch into the rest of the I’m in charge spiel she had prepared on the way over, Tyler interrupted.
“I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.”
This time, it was Talia who violated tradecraft, glancing at him. She kicked herself mentally and dropped her gaze to her peacoat, brushing away a scattering of cherry blossom petals. “What are you talking about?”
“Jefferson’s quote. From the northwest wall of the portico.” Tyler laid an arm across the back of the bench. “He was writing about the dark side of foreign policy—spies and assassins. Jefferson believed in one code of morality, whether for a man or for a nation.”
“Okay.” Talia would bite. “And what do you believe, Mr. Tyler?”
“Does it matter? This is your mission. I’m just along for the ride.”
Inside, she screamed. Was he going to be like this every day? Talia kept her eyes moving, watchful for lingering gazes. The menial nature of her mission didn’t absolve her from the duty of caution. A couple walked beside the basin on the other side, fingers intertwined. A little boy knelt at the edge thirty meters away, feeding the ducks. “You are my local expert,” she said, keeping her voice even. “You are not a spy”—she glanced at him sideways—“or an assassin. If I need information, I’ll find you. Otherwise, make no contact. Remember that if you happen to see me at the airport this evening.”
“Don’t worry about the airport.” Tyler stood to leave, straightening his scarf and overcoat. “I’m flying out of Teterboro on my private jet.” He looked right at her and raised his voice so much the little boy looked up from his ducks. “The Gulfstream can fly straight to Tiraspol. You want a ride?”
Blatant. Exasperating.
Talia fought the urge to stare daggers at him as he strode away, and then waited an extra five minutes before starting off in the opposite direction. A new data stream flowed into her lenses, a picture of a Honda Civic and green arrows directing her to her car—Eddie’s idea of a joke.
She heard a voice in her earpiece. “So that went well, eh, chica?”
Talia jerked the glasses off and stuffed them in her pocket. “Shut up, Franklin.”
Chapter
seventeen
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
BY 4:00 P.M., TALIA AND EDDIE had completed all their pre-mission arrangements. The Directorate’s Print and Copy Division, known for generations as the boffins, had established their cover IDs, creating and then distressing freshly minted drivers’ licenses and passports for both. They had also created a web presence for Talia’s fake security firm.
With a half hour of dead time before she had to leave for Dulles, Talia picked up her phone, let her thumb hover over the screen for a moment, then dialed Jenni.
“Hey. It’s Talia . . . Yeah . . . You too. Listen. I have to go away for a while.”
Talia couldn’t explain the compulsion to call her foster sister. Maybe it was as simple as doing the right thing—her standard policy of steering clear of a vengeful God. She had told Jenni she would do better. So she would. Simple.
“You’re telling me this because you don’t plan on calling for a while,” Jenni said after Talia explained she would be in places where she really wouldn’t have easy access to social media or messaging systems.
“I’m telling you because it’s true.”
She could hear Jenni mulling over this information. Given her State Department knowledge, Jenni would be inches from guessing Talia’s true line of work. After a while she sighed into the phone. “That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
“In that case, you’ll be in my prayers.”
Talia cringed. Thoughts and prayers. Great. “Yeah . . . Thanks.”
THE FLIGHT TO FRANKFURT left the gate at 6:00 p.m. for the first leg of the journey. “Eddie Pandey,” Eddie grumbled through his teeth, scrunching his body down into a steerage-class center seat. “What a stupid name. Why couldn’t they give me Eddie Brock or Edward Nygma?”
“Quiet.” Talia bumped his elbow hard enough to knock it off the armrest between them. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “That’s your cover. Deal with it. Pandey is an Indian name.”
“So?”
“Your real name is Gupta. You are Indian.”
“And that means I can’t be Eddie Brock?” He leaned forward enough to glare at her. “That’s racist.”
“Don’t be a snowflake.”
“You’re the snowflake.”
They both grinned as Eddie fell back into his seat. It had been their private joke since Georgetown.
Unfortunately, Talia’s good humor did not survive the first hour of the flight. The turbulence came too soon and lasted too long, leaving her tense and white-knuckled. She hated flying. How could there be speed bumps in empty air? To make matters worse, her seat did not recline, and a constant line of bladder-conscious passengers laid hands and arms on her headrest while waiting for the lavatory, which could have used a better air freshener. After a few hours, though, exhaustion overcame fear and discomfort, and Talia descended into a protracted delirium of head nods and nightmarish flashes.
A windshield appeared, blurry at first, but sharpening, so close to her eyes. Light rain pelted the glass. Mist hung over the road. Talia flew through the gray wisps like a superhero.
A voice called to her. “No, puiule Natalia. Don’t!”
Puiule Natalia. Little Natalia. That’s what her father had called her.
Headlights flashed. A horn blared.
Puiule Natalia.
&nb
sp; A bang. The road and the trees spun together. The windshield shattered around her. Blood tinted the shards.
Puiule Natalia. Puiule Natalia. Her father’s voice was unrelenting in the chaos.
“Talia!”
Her head snapped upright. She breathed, eyes finding focus. “Eddie?”
Concern darkened the eyes behind those thick glasses. Nearby passengers cast subtle glances her way. A heavyset man waiting for the lavatory stared outright.
Eddie lowered his chin. “Are you . . . back?”
Her fingers hurt. She had a death grip on the armrest. Eddie had a hand on her forearm. Slowly, he released her, and Talia released the armrest.
“I’m fine.” She wanted to escape, but to where? “I . . . need something to drink.” Talia unbuckled her seat belt and half rose only to find a flight attendant waiting in the aisle with a plastic cup of water.
“You want this, sweetie?”
“Yes. Thank you.” The humiliation of being the center of attention washed into Talia’s cheeks as she sank down into her seat again.
The flight attendant wasn’t finished. “Anything else I can get you? We have ibuprofen.”
“No. Thank you. I’m fine.”
“You sure, sweetie? It’s no trouble.”
Humiliation gave way to anger. The old pain in Talia’s hip began to throb. “I said, ‘I’m fine.’” She looked around at the other passengers. “Did you all hear? I’m fine.”
They all looked away. Blushing, the heavyset man crammed himself into the lavatory.
Eddie gave the flight attendant a grateful nod and eased Talia back against her seat rest. “Hey. Calm down. Is this what you call maintaining a low profile?”
“I’m sorry.” She took another drink and scrunched up her face as she swallowed. “Did I cry out in my sleep?”
“Like a wounded mongoose.” Eddie fished a pair of ibuprofen from his backpack and pressed them into her hand. “That must have been a serious bad dream.”
“It was . . . an old one.”
The nightmares had persisted into Talia’s teens—snippets of the accident, rarely in the correct order. Unable to retrieve the rest, her last government therapist had taught her to suppress the memory instead. Using guided meditation and soothing string music, she had strengthened the wall Talia’s mind had built, finally hemming the nightmare in for good.
Or so Talia had thought.
What sort of trigger had released the nightmare from its pen? Talia let the events of the last few days roll through her mind. The mock kidnapping seemed the most likely culprit, especially with the jolt of the flash grenade. But Talia had experienced similar scenarios at the Farm.
Maybe this slip was a one-off, a symptom of a major shift in her life, entering the real Clandestine Service. Maybe.
“You good?” Eddie asked, still worried.
Talia pressed her earbuds into place and selected a string quartet by Mozart. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Yeah. I’m good.”
Chapter
eighteen
TIRASPOL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
TRANSNISTRIA UNRECOGNIZED TERRITORY
A STEADY RAIN drummed against the flat tin roof of Tiraspol’s open airport terminal—so loud Talia could barely hear the girl behind the rental counter. She and Eddie had been in transit more than fifteen hours, including a two-hour layover in Frankfurt followed by a mad sprint from one end of Belgrade International to the other. And from the girl’s shouted, broken English and insistent pointing, Talia gathered the actual rental facility was off-site, a block away.
In the movies, spies travel light. Together, however, Talia and Eddie dragged a total of six bags down the sidewalk. Their roller bags clacked as Eddie tried to squeeze under Talia’s umbrella. He had failed to bring one.
An A-frame shed with the sign DA! AUTO and a gravel lot full of beaters appeared to hold a local monopoly on the rental market. A line of soaked customers started twenty yards short of the awning. As Talia and Eddie huddled together, shuffling an inch or two every few minutes, a black Mercedes G-Wagon rolled by. The look of it set off all kinds of alarms in Talia’s brain.
“Eddie, get ready to bolt.”
“What? Why?”
She didn’t answer. Squinting through the droplets on her eyelashes, Talia watched the overpriced SUV make a three-point turn to head back their way. Maybe the driver was lost.
Maybe not.
The G-Wagon slowed to a stop with Talia’s warped reflection squarely framed in its tinted rear passenger window. She held her ground, fingers tightening into a fist. And then the window motored down.
“Tyler.”
“Well, hello there. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah. What a coincidence.”
“I came because I thought you might like a ride, so I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘thank you.’ Do you want to soak in Tiraspol drop by drop, or would you like to get in?” Tyler looked her up and down as if assessing the state of a muddy child. “Your choice, but the wet-cat look doesn’t suit you.”
The others in line watched the conversation with mild curiosity. Most seemed more interested in the Mercedes than its occupant. A man near the hood reached out to touch the paint job, and the Moldovan at the wheel, wearing a driver’s cap and sunglasses, pounded the horn. The man jumped back and shook his fist, shouting at him in dialectic Romanian.
Talia stepped off the curb, closer to the window. “What happened to ‘we don’t know each other’?”
“I filed it away with ‘You’re just along for the ride.’”
The line hadn’t moved the entire time they’d been talking. The offer was tempting, but Talia couldn’t just leave. “We need our rental.”
“No. You don’t. Not right this minute, anyway. Get in and I’ll explain.”
Tyler had crossed the line when he spoke to her in front of all those people. What did it matter now if she accepted the ride? Talia looked to Eddie. The SSO was already loading his bags into the back of the G-Wagon.
“What?” he asked in answer to her openmouthed stare. “We both knew where this was headed.”
As he steered the G-Wagon away from the curb, the driver passed each of his new passengers a spotless white towel. Tyler intercepted Talia’s and wiped the spatter from the inside of his door before passing it along. “Make sure to get the seat around you too. I can’t handle the feel of wet leather.”
She pursed her lips. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Your accommodations?”
“The Best Choice Motel.” Talia handed him a card.
“I know it. Not the most apt name.” He passed the card to the driver.
The man checked the address, then offered a salute. “Yeah. Okay. No problem.”
“Now,” Tyler said. “About your rental. With my resources, your mission—”
“Ahem.” Eddie interrupted him with a cough from the front passenger seat. He made a subtle head tilt toward the driver.
“Oh, don’t worry about Davian. He doesn’t speak a lick of English.” Tyler patted the man’s shoulder. “Do you, Davian?”
Davian gave him another salute. “Yeah. Okay. No problem.”
“Look.” Talia slapped the towel into his hand, blackened by her running mascara. “I know you think this is all some kind of game. You think it’s fun to poke at my boundaries. But I put those boundaries in place for your protection, as well as for mine and Eddie’s.”
Tyler answered with a sage nod. “I understand.”
“Then what possessed you to swing by and pick us up?”
“Look around you.” He gestured at the people dotting the sidewalk, shoulders hunched against the rain. Hardly any carried umbrellas. “This is Moldova, Europe’s poorest country and at the same time its largest per-capita consumer of hard liquor. Think about that. These people are too miserable to care one whit about a couple of Americans meeting in the street.”
The G-Wagon turned down the first tree-lined lane they
had seen since leaving the airport. An alabaster building topped with bloodred tiles rose from the greenery, an oasis amid the urban sprawl. Talia had studied maps of Tiraspol. That building was nowhere near the route to the Best Choice Motel. She touched the driver’s shoulder. “Hey, where are you taking us?”
Davian smiled at her in the mirror. “Yeah. Okay. No problem.”
“Relax,” Tyler said. “He’s taking the scenic route.”
“Tiraspol doesn’t have a scenic route.”
“Touché.”
The G-wagon wound its way through the trees until it passed the alabaster building. The red-tiled roof pierced the rain clouds twelve stories up. At its base, a gatehouse kept unwanteds away from a circular drive and a covered entry with gold-painted columns.
Eddie pressed his face against his window, fingers caressing the glass. “That’s the Mandarin, the only five-star hotel within a hundred miles.”
“Meh.” Tyler bobbled his head. “Five stars is a stretch. The Ming vases are fake, but the marble counters are real enough.” He cast Talia what she took as a creepy, I’m not too old for you gaze. “Did I mention I have a standing hold on the presidential suite? Plenty of space if you prefer Egyptian cotton and silk carpet to that moth-eaten roach-fest Brennan booked for you.”
“You want us to stay with you?”
Tyler shrugged. “It makes the logistics easier. No need for a rental.”
Eddie’s eyes pleaded for her to say yes like the sad eyes of a bespectacled basset hound.
Twenty minutes later the two trudged a wet outdoor staircase at the Best Choice Motel.
“I can’t believe you said no.” Eddie hauled his bags over a lip of rusted steel as he reached the concrete walkway on the third level.
“Operational. Boundaries.” Talia walked ahead of him. One of her bags lolled sideways and she kicked it to keep it rolling straight. “I’m not going off book at the start of my first mission.”
Eddie mimicked her in a childish voice. “I’m not going off book.” The door to his room, bloated from the rain, got stuck in its frame. With a thrust of his shoulder, he forced it open, and a musty blend of mold and smoker’s carpet smell blew out to meet them both. “The man said Egyptian cotton, Talia.” He tossed and kicked his bags over the threshold. “Egyptian cotton.”