“Caine, Nolan and I tried to protect you—”
“Oh, you mean like at Sounion , at the overlook?”
“Nolan admitted that was a mistake and that he and I—”
“Are liars. The ambush at Sounion was not a mistake. That was a sting operation—your sting operation—to snare enemy agents, with me and Opal staked out as a pair of Judas goats.”
Downing felt his face grow very hot very quickly. Bloody hell: Caine caught us—well and good.
And he did not appear to be in a forgiving mood.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
MENTOR
Downing opened his mouth, hoping that a glib, convincing lie would cooperatively spring forth from it—but he remained mute. Tarasenko stared politely out his window toward the throngs of sightseers headed toward the National Mall.
Downing let his lips close, looked down at his folded hands. Bugger all: nothing left but the truth, I suppose. “So you figured that out. About the overlook.”
“Oh yes, I figured it out.” Caine’s voice was as hard and level as a steel ruler. “Too much coincidence. And too happy an outcome. You sent us out there as bait—because the best way to draw the opposition into the open was to give them a target they couldn’t resist.”
“And that’s how you figured it out? Because you retroactively conjectured how their attack might have been to our advantage?”
“No, what tipped me off was what happened to that thug you shot—or rather, the thug you didn’t shoot.” Caine shook his head. “So much went on that day, and then the next, that I didn’t realize it at first: when you saved me by shooting that assassin who had come around the front of the car, there was no sound of a gunshot. And when I thought back, I distinctly remembered seeing your pistol: no silencer. So who shot him?”
Downing tried to swallow, found his mouth too dry.
Caine’s smile was cold. “I guess I’m just about the luckiest man alive, considering that there was a sniper—my own personal guardian angel—someplace higher up the mountain, waiting to put a hole the size of a tailpipe though that assassin’s head. I should have realized it sooner: the angle of the impact and the way his head went over so sharply couldn’t have resulted from any shot that would have come from your handgun. It had to be a bigger, high-velocity weapon.”
Tarasenko glanced back at Downing once, then out the window again.
“And once I realized that, then everything else started falling into place. It wasn’t my landslide of PVC pipes which sent that second car over the embankment; it was another well-placed shot from another guardian angel. And why did that vehicle burn so handily? Because while Opal and I were fighting for our lives, the sniper put an incendiary round into the engine and transmission—or maybe a few, at least until the oil in both systems caught fire.
“I think what really kept me from suspecting a setup right away was that clever lie you told—so quickly, too—about the road worker at the detour being part of the assassins’ team. But no, she was your agent, because it was her directions which sent us to that deserted overlook, where your snipers were already in overwatch positions. Pity it got a little messy, but you still got what you wanted.”
Tarasenko’s head turned back from his sustained gaze out the window. “Which was?”
“Mr. Tarasenko, you’re no stranger to special operations, so that question is pure theater. Richard needed to get the opposite side to risk their assets so that he could pull their fangs in one fell swoop. Because after assassinating their assassins, IRIS was in control again.
“From the moment you took out their operatives, the opposition was running out of time and options. They wait to hear from their assassins, don’t, try to contact them, can’t. So it takes them hours to learn that their assassination attempt has failed, takes even more time to learn how their first crew of thugs was liquidated, and still more to start moving new forces into the area. By then, it was the next day and I had sung my song at Sounion —and was no longer a crucial target.”
Richard leaned back in his chair. “So, if you understand all that, how can you fail to see that we did it for your own good?”
“Why was anyone looking to kill me in the first place? Who was responsible for putting me on a hit list to begin with—Richard?”
Downing tried to look Caine square in the eyes. “That ambush was the only option we had to secure your safety. Once you stepped off the VTOL in Greece, we knew the clock was ticking and that if we waited for the opposition’s inevitable attack, we couldn’t be sure of the outcome. For all we knew, they might have had the time and resources to conduct multiple attacks: first on the villa, then, the next day, a bomb at the Dialogs. And what would have been left when the dust cleared? International discord, finger pointing, mutual suspicion—”