Page 104 of Shadow of Doubt

“Pleased?” the analyst asked.

“Beyond pleased. Where were these taken and how did you get them?”

“We’ve been watching Peshkov’s mistress, Valentina Usova—monitoring her phone and email traffic. Turns out she’s been communicating with a woman fifteen kilometers up the coast from Pushkin’spalace, in a town called Dzhankhot. And what would you guess this woman does for a living?”

“Something with horses,” said Maggie.

The analyst smiled. “Yep. Boards them. Trains them. Teaches people to ride them. Soup to nuts, she’s the go-to person in the area for all things horsey.”

“How’d you get the photos?”

We have an asset in St. Petersburg with a cousin farther up the Black Sea coast in Gelendzhik. Our guy made a call to his cousin, we Cash App’d some Bitcoin their way, and voila—several hours later, we’ve got calendar-quality portraits of Valentina’s pride and joy, as well as his very expensive trailer, which the cousin found parked behind the barn.”

“Well done,” Maggie stated. “Verywell done. Has Conroy seen these?”

“Not yet,” the analyst replied.

“Well, you’re going to brief him when he gets here and he’ll make the call on whether or not these go to the DNI and on to the president. In the meantime, I want you to write up a full report. Do you have a laptop with you?”

The analyst patted her bag and nodded.

“We’re using the first lady’s suite for our overflow offices. Head over there and tell them I sent you. And once again, you did a great job.”

Smiling, the analyst exited the conference room.

As soon as the young woman had left, Maggie began tapping the nearest photo with her index finger. “What’s your game, Peshkov?” she asked aloud. “Are you really going to start World War Three, or do you have something else up your sleeve?”

Opening up her encrypted email system, she banged out a quick message for Holidae Hayes at the Oslo station. There was a question she needed answered.

Something had been bothering her and the more she thought about it, the more nervous she became.

CHAPTER 58

PARIS

Getting behind the wheel of the SUV, Harvath selected the fastest route out of the Bois de Boulogne and stepped on the gas.

From the back seat, Staelin relayed updates on both Haney, who had taken a round straight through his right arm, and Johnson, who had taken a bullet in the back, somewhere above his left hip, and which had not exited.

Staelin was alarmed not only by Haney’s blood loss, but by Johnson’s possible internal bleeding and organ damage. They didn’t want some guy with a staple gun and Crazy Glue, they needed an actual surgeon with proper tools and medicines. And they needed that person to work with them off the books. Showing up at a regular hospital with gunshot wounds was out of the question. It was the fastest way, short of dialing 1-1-2, the European version of 9-1-1, to summon the police.

Crossing the Seine via the Pont de Suresnes, Harvath wove through traffic, merged onto the Quai Léon Blum, and, flipping a mental coin, elected to head south. He had no idea yet where they were going. All he knew was that they needed to put as much distance between themselves and the shoot-out as possible. Soon enough the French cops would be erecting barricades and casting a dragnet over the city.

Being outside the city limits proper would be a good initial means to avoid police, but it wouldn’t make any difference if he couldn’t get Haney and Johnson the medical attention they needed.

As he swung around a slow-moving car in front of him, Harvath’sphone vibrated with a call. Pulling it out, he answered it and put it on speaker.

“What have you got?”

“La Clinique Saint-Raphael,” Nicholas replied. “It’s a six-bed, short-stay surgical center. Facelifts, tummy tucks, and rhinoplasty are their bread and butter. The surgeon who runs the place, a guy named René Jourdain, used to do covert, off-the-books medicine for the CIA until he got PNG’d for selling prescription meds to embassy employees. He’s a bit of a wild card, but he’s the best I can do on short notice.”

That was all Harvath needed to hear. “Text me the address and make sure he has Haney’s and Johnson’s blood types ready to go. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Harvath’s mental coin flip and decision to go south had paid off. Jourdain’s clinic was located at the southern edge of Paris, in the 13th arrondissement. He wasn’t crazy about having to cross back into the city, but he had no choice. All he cared about at this moment was getting there in time.

He drove as fast and as aggressively as he dared. It was an extremely difficult needle to thread. The last thing they needed was to get pulled over.

When they arrived at the small clinic, Jourdain and his two most-trusted nurses were waiting for them. The facility was currently empty with no new patients expected for the next two days. Haney and Johnson were taken directly to separate surgical suites. There was no exchange of names, no paperwork.

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