True Faith and Allegiance

Dalca rushed up and grabbed him by the arm. “Fuck! All right. Three million. I hate you!”

“You hate everyone. It’s coded into your DNA.”

Dalca ignored the comment. It didn’t offend him in the least, he was still thinking about the money he’d have to pay, and the logistics of getting everything together. “Look… I have to go into work, but I will visit your daughter this evening.”

Gabor nodded. “I will be ready with the information. Will you need help getting out of Bucharest?”

“I… I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

“Well, prepare yourself for any eventuality, because I can’t get you out till tomorrow. Come back here in the morning and I will have everything set up for you. That is, provided that my daughter contacts me to tell me about her sudden windfall.”

Dalca wanted to leave today, but things were more complicated than he’d anticipated. “Fine.”

As the older man turned away, Dalca realized something. “You never asked me what was going on. What I am running from.”

Luca Gabor didn’t stop walking, but just shrugged as he continued to the door. “Why should I? That’s your problem, not mine.”

* * *

Alexandru Dalca climbed into his Porsche and drove to work. He hadn’t planned on going in at all. The Chinese could easily be watching ARTD, so every time he went to the building on Strada Doctor Paleologu he knew he was rolling the dice.

But now he needed to take a chance, because he knew he just had to stay safe for one more day, and he’d earn the three million he owed Gabor by finishing his last targeting packages for the ISIS guys. This would still leave Alexandru with eleven million.

His greed had overpowered his fear, but it had been a very close competition between the two.

54

At eleven a.m. the Campus men and their fixer carried their gear up four flights of stairs to a small, dusty, nearly empty apartment in a gray, communist-era building on Strada Uruguay. They dumped their gear on green military cots Felix had brought in the night before, and then they followed their handler as he stepped into a common hallway and headed down to the opposite side of the building. Here Felix used a key to enter a small, narrow hallway, which was lined with doors on both sides. “The apartments in this building weren’t built with much in the way of closets. Back in the communist days, we didn’t have so much extra stuff. Apparently the people who own the building now couldn’t get renters because of the lack of closet space, so they sectioned off one of the upstairs corner apartments into storage units.”

The lighting was bad in the hall, but Felix found a key on his keychain and opened up one of the doors. Inside was a four-by-six-foot space, with a table and chair up against the wall in front of a large window that had been covered by wooden planks. Felix reached across the desk and removed one of the planks; clearly he’d loosened it before the Americans arrived, and the hole revealed a triangular intersection.

Felix pointed to a modern-looking four-story apartment building on the opposite side of the quiet street. “That’s your target’s apartment, top floor.”

“Which window?”

“All of them, it’s a penthouse. The elevator runs up the right side of the building, and apartments for rent online show the bedrooms in the back, but I can’t see into the windows from here without optics, and I didn’t bring any.”

He looked up to the men. “I hope you brought some cool toys in those Pelican cases.”

Jack said, “Very cool toys.”

Felix smiled. “There is really not much room here in the closet, but I thought you could position a one-man overwatch here.”

Chavez said, “This will work great. We have remote cams to set up here and at his place of business.”

Gavin said, “Let me guess, this is my new home.”

Chavez put his hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Did you have something even fancier than this closet in mind?”

“I wanted to go to Dracula’s castle.” The older man’s eyes lit up like a child as he turned to Felix. “Is that nearby?”

The big bearded man shook his head. “Several hours from here. Romania is more than Dracula, you know?”

Jack said, “Sorry, Felix. Gavin is our IT director. He doesn’t get to go outside very often.” He turned to the big man. “Gav, if Dalca tries to hide in Dracula’s castle, we’ll send you in to flush him out.”

“That would be awesome. I hope he does.”