The TV screen flashed images into the darkness. Like being at the cinema. A horror movie. The scenes gruesome. A body found in an apartment in Frankfurt. A young Irishman identified by Interpol as Samuel O’Rourke, of no fixed address, wanted in connection with former IRA activities. Sammy. Police in white plastic suits swarming like termites all around the apartment block.
Nadia couldn’t move. She barely breathed as she stared at the screen long after the news had moved onto the next item. Sammy had been tortured, and then had his skull smashed in with a hammer. In Frankfurt. He’d never made it to Moscow. It must have been days ago. She closed her eyes, saw him clear as day, walking away from her in Penzance as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She remembered him laughing as they got out of that unholy mess in Sebastopol. He’d always given the world the finger. It wasn’t right he should end like this.
Only twenty minutes earlier she’d been in Jake’s room discussing hypotheticals, but here was Sammy’s death, not a probability or even a risk, but a fact cold as a marble headstone. She wanted to find the motherfucker who’d done this to him, and… And what? Put a bullet in his brain? Yes. But could she? She knew this was how her father had started. He’d wanted revenge. But he hadn’t just taken off with his gun. He’d plotted it carefully, and taken a long time to exact full revenge. He’d told her one day, while out hunting, that you needed a cold eye to kill. Much later she realised he’d not only been talking about animals.
But with Jake now in full knowledge of her secrets, and Sammy dead and Kadinsky saying nothing about it, she felt the world was closing in around her, walling in the Scilly Isles. She needed to act, to regain some kind of control.
She grabbed her phone and began searching internet sites, including some of the more paranoid ones. One caught her eye. An unofficial source said premises nearby had been used once before for a CIA-instigated interrogation, four years ago, to break a terrorist cell. The interrogation had led to arrests and prevention of an attack, but had been unorthodox, involving extreme measures. Water-boarding, for sure. But also a hammer. There was no hint of an official rebuttal, but a few US Government comments had been posted to ridicule the allegation.
A CIA kill was her best guess. Russian mobsters would have taken Sammy back to Russia. Technically the CIA didn’t do this sort of thing, but as recent history had proven, they were quite happy to get a third party to do their dirty work. Yet something didn’t quite fit. It had been messy, and some of the adjectives the journalist had used – horrendous and macabre – suggested the torturer had been sadistic. They all were of course, but this one had let his true nature show more than a professional. A hammer, for Christ’s sake. And the body had been found, the lair compromised, the torturer on the run. That had been sloppy.
She took another moment for Sammy. In truth she’d not known him that well – no one talked much about their history on missions – but he’d been the closest thing to a friend she’d had in years. He’d been a professional killer, that was for sure, and he’d had dealings with the IRA in former times. But this? Tortured, and then his skull bashed in? She recalled lying next to him just days ago. He’d looked out for her, saved her from Janssen. If he’d taken the Rose, it would at least have been quicker for him.
She closed her eyes and recalled his beautiful face, his caustic laugh, his way of looking at everything and everyone sideways, how good he’d been at his job, and seeing him praying one time when he thought everyone was asleep. She’d go find a Catholic church later, light a candle for him. Find peace, Sammy. But she knew what he’d say. ‘I’ll find peace after you find the fucker who did this to me, and kill him, Nadia. You owe me.’ And she thought of her father, and that day he’d been dragged away and she hadn’t used the gun to protect him.
Thinking of her father helped. He’d have counselled her to see things as they were. There were killers after her. She must use her wits.
She picked up the Beretta, and weighed it in her hands. Holding a loaded gun always helped her think. And then it came to her. It hadn’t been sloppy. The CIA – if that’s who it was – had let the whereabouts be known. They must have tipped off the local police. But why? Why throw away an asset? Had the interrogator become a risk? Then eliminate the risk, send in a clean-up crew, and sell the apartment for a profit. Don’t put it on BBC World!
The floorboards squeaked in the corridor outside her room. Someone heavy. She slowed her breath, took aim down the sightline at the eyehole on the door, let her finger caress the trigger. The footfalls passed. Whoever it was didn’t even slow down. She breathed normally again. There were two other rooms on the top floor.
The CIA hypothesis didn’t add up. She released the Beretta’s magazine, let it drop onto the bed where it bounced and ended up resting cool against her thigh. She took aim at the door again. She focused on her breathing, imagining the torturer who’d killed Sammy, his head in front of the door. As soon as she did, her aim was off. Anger – and maybe fear – offset her psychomotor coordination. She focused on her breathing again, and her aim steadied. Click. Once more, this time imagining the CIA agent, the one who had ordered Sammy’s torture, standing in front of the door, his left eye just in front of the eyehole. Her father had said it was important to pick an eye, not to shoot between them like in the movies, because that was ultimately cowardly. Look your enemy in the face as you shoot him, and snuff out his life. Her aim was solid. Click.
She back-tracked. Janssen had tried to double-cross Kadinsky. The Rose must be worth twenty million at least, probably more. Who was the buyer? A number of nations would be interested – China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, to name a few; not counting the terrorist organisations who’d love to get their hands on it, some of whom could afford that kind of money. But there would have to be an intermediary. Janssen, first, then… Who else? A CIA agent on the take? It began to take shape. A rendezvous planned, but Janssen never pitched up. Maybe Janssen had told the CIA agent about Sammy. Nadia joined the team late, and Janssen probably thought she wasn’t worth mentioning. The CIA spook tracked down Sammy, had him tortured, and then ratted out the torturer as a distraction while he came here, knowing exactly where the Rose was. Which meant he knew about her.
Lowering the gun, she checked the contents of the cartridge – eight rounds left – then reinserted it and sat up, cross-legged.
She’d told Kadinsky seventy-two hours. If she didn’t retrieve the Rose by six pm tomorrow, time was up. What would he do? He’d send someone. She let the end of the barrel rest cool against her forehead, pointing at the ceiling. Think. Think like him. He’d send someone else. But that wasn’t right either, it seemed off, like her aim earlier.
The floorboards again. Lighter this time, possibly female. Somebody paused outside her door. One of the girls? Elise? Wrong door, girl, he’s not here. The floorboards retreated again, fading into the general hubbub percolating upstairs from the bar.
Good, she needed to concentrate. Eyes closed, Nadia let her finger touch the trigger. What else? She’d seen two people who didn’t belong. One was CIA. The other one, who was he working for? The nose of the barrel moved up and down, between her eyes, her finger on the trigger, as she tried to coax it out of her head.
Her eyes flicked open. She put down the Beretta. Kadinsky had already sent someone. The bastard was playing her. Pretending to give her three days, showing that her sister was still alive, when all the time he’d fucking sent someone. She got up and paced her small room, wishing she was back home where she would have finally gone out into the woods with a rifle to hunt something.
It’s not personal, she told herself, never is, and even if it was it never helped to treat it that way. Kadinsky wanted the Rose badly. Janssen had tried to cheat him, so why should Kadinsky trust her? He knew she was itching to leave his operation with Katya in tow, which would make her a liability more than an asset in a high-stakes operation. He’d sent a heavy, the guy with the straw hat. She wished she could remember his face. If he delivered the Rose back to Kadinsky her life wouldn’t be worth shit, nor would Katya’s.
She stopped pacing, went to the sink, splashed cold water on her face. What to do? Cut and run? Not an option. What if she failed to retrieve the Rose? Same outcome, plus they’d torture her to find out where it was. She had no misguided belief she could hold out against a skilled interrogator. No one could in her estimation, such bravado being the stuff of films and TV, not reality. And if she retrieved the Rose, one of these two men – the rogue CIA agent, or Kadinsky’s man – would be waiting to take it from her. Probably both.
The solution came to her. Crossfire. Play them off against each other. Get one of them to take the other one out of the equation. Even the odds. But which one? No contest. CIA man. He’d be more civilised, even if just as ruthless. She’d need to find him, do a deal. He’d lie of course, but he’d watch her back at the critical stage, if only to ensure he got the Rose.
How to find him? She remembered hunting the bear with her father. He’d said you don’t just track a bear, you need to consider its habits, its motivations, and most of all the environment. She looked at the clock. 10:30pm. Where would he be? He’d arrived quite quickly when Kennedy’s went up in flames. CIA. American. Where would he stay? Not some little B&B. Either the Splendide or the Grande. And what would he be doing? Maybe in the bar… No, he’d stay out of sight, or at least not be somewhere where someone might strike up a conversation with him. He was most probably jet-lagged, so 10:30 pm to him was at most early evening. He’d be wide awake. A CIA man, alone, probably away from home often. Maybe he’d be horny, in the Scillies surrounded by semi-bare young flesh all day, but unable to risk any kind of entanglement, not even a hooker in his room, wherever that was. If he was professional, he’d be in his room polishing his gun. But he was rogue, which meant he didn’t play by the rules.
It was a long shot, but she switched on her smartphone and started searching for massage parlours. She found one in the street behind the two big hotels. She’d swing by the two hotel bars just in case, and then stake out the parlour. She saved the address, stowed the Beretta in her jacket, and headed out. Descending the stairwell, she spied Elise standing outside Jake’s room, hesitating. Elise turned and glared. Nadia paused for a second, then walked straight up to Elise, looked her in the eye, knocked hard on Jake’s door, then left before he had a chance to open it.
***
Adamson wasn’t happy. His branch of the Agency used a five-stage coding system for mission status, from one, routine, to five, catastrophic, the latter invariably applied posthumously. His current mission status was three, unstable, because factors had arisen that were outside his control. Standard protocol for level three was to call in back-up. The one thing he couldn’t do.
He found it difficult to sleep. He’d been out for a walk earlier in the day, and spotted someone he’d not expected to see. Why the hell was Danton here? It complicated everything further. Danton should have been arrested back in Frankfurt, the raid on his apartment had been at 4am as planned. Evidently he’d not been there, and now he’d showed up in the Scillies. Revenge? Unlikely. Danton might have figured out who gave him away, but he’d have gone to ground, laid low. Besides, Danton might be sadistic but he was no idiot, and knew how the game worked.
Adamson had tried to follow Danton but had lost him in the crowds when a trio of policemen on mountain bikes had appeared in his path. Besides, he’d not had his silencer, and taking on Danton hand-to-hand in some back alley was not an option. Instead he’d anonymously sent a photo of Danton to Reuters in the afternoon, but the news agencies hadn’t posted it yet, probably waiting to verify it. But as soon as they did, he could alert the local police – anonymously, of course – that he’d seen someone fitting Danton’s description walking around Hugh Town.
And there were other complications. The girl was still around, which meant she hadn’t retrieved the device yet. His clients, the Kilanoa family, the first so-called fourth generation Colombian drug cartel, operating out of Medellin – it was always Medellin, the Silicon Valley of drug cartels – were getting antsy. He’d ridden that one out. A minor delay. They were used to that. But he did wonder who the other client was, the one Kadinsky was working for. At least the Kilanoas would never actually use it, except for leverage with the US. He was actually doing the world a favour, making sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
It wasn’t good if the Brits got to keep it either. Peace was never the result of one side having a significant advantage. Rather, it was always down to staring along your own barrel at your adversary and finding another barrel pointing back at you. The key to peace, ever since the atomic bomb, was the prospect of mutual annihilation. Trusting in human nature ignored millennia of harsh history. He was helping the world avoid a dangerous loss of equilibrium, and getting rich into the bargain, to the tune of thirty million.
But the Office were asking more and more questions. How had he missed what was going on in Frankfurt? Why hadn’t he sent his report? Why had the Heathrow lead gone dead? Adamson had played it up, saying he was busy chasing secondary leads, and worried about Sandy and Arnie, that they should go to his sister’s, that he only trusted Jorgenson to look after them. It had been a difficult phone call, but he’d secured another twenty-four hours before they’d expect him back in Penzance.
Twenty-four hours before they’d consider him a risk.
Jorgenson had upped his stake to three million. Fair enough, as now he’d take the family to Sandy’s sister’s place as agreed, then on a boat trip down the Florida coast. Once Adamson had the Rose, Jorgenson would fly them to Cartagena where the luxury villa awaited them all. Sandy didn’t know, but this wasn’t the first time she and Arnie had had to go into protective custody. And then… and then everything would be fine. Easy living for the rest of their lives, private schooling for Arnie, and the next kid… Sandy had told him yesterday she was pregnant. Talk about bad timing. After three years of trying and firing blanks…
Twenty-four hours. The only good news was that the weather was deteriorating. Most dive boats wouldn’t be going anywhere. Kennedy’s had been taken out of the picture, which worked in his favour. He wasn’t sure if it was the girl or Danton who’d torched his dive shop. Could they be working together? Not likely.
The two SEALs would arrive in the morning. They’d retrieve the Rose from the Tsuba – he’d worked that one out from talking to Ben, and seeing the Tsuba listed on the weekly dive schedule at Kennedy’s. The SEALs would have to search for it, but they had rebreathers, and could stay down there a long time. Besides, he had the locator code. As long as they could get within thirty metres, it was a cinch. The 4pm Scillonian ferry tomorrow would do. It could sail in heavy weather. He and the Rose, tucked safely in his diplomatic bag, could travel onwards to Bristol, then Paris Beauvais airport, a quick taxi across to Charles de Gaulle, down to Lisbon, across to Rio, then Bogota where the trade would take place. Two more days. Then nothing could touch him, and the world could carry on screwing itself for all he cared.
Still, he couldn’t sleep. He was wired. But he needed to be in tip-top form tomorrow. He knew what he had to do to get some relief. Sex between him and Sandy had been difficult in recent months, and he’d even started to wonder if she was seeing someone else. Jorgenson, who’d been keeping an eye on her, said no. Truth was, she was cut up by Arnie’s falling behind in school, somehow blamed herself, and meanwhile he was never at home, always travelling. The job, always the fucking job. Well, all that was going to change. Soon they’d have all the time in the world together, would get their marriage back on track and get Arnie the best help money could offer.
But right now… He’d seen the right sort of establishment on the previous night’s walk. Picking up his coat and holstering the Smith & Wesson, he was about to leave when he decided to take one more item, as a precaution, in case Danton turned up. He had to protect his family, in case things went south. He fished the device out of his case. It looked harmless. But it would obliterate anything – or anyone – in a five-metre radius.
He considered the worst case scenario: Danton found him, whether here or at the parlour, dragged him somewhere and tortured him until he begged to be killed, which realistically wouldn’t be that long, and wouldn’t be soon enough. No, better to take out Danton if he was caught. That way Sandy and Arnie got full pension, Jorgenson would stay quiet, all suspicions would be swept away, and he would die a hero. Clean cut, even if not exactly best case scenario. He stared at the device. It was in two parts, a small cylinder disguised as a deodorant stick, and a remote on a key fob, which required three of six buttons to be pushed in sequence. He could enter the code with his eyes closed, and the cylinder would do the rest. Eau de C4, he called it. Arming the device, he pocketed the cylinder and put the key fob around his pinkie, concealing the remote in his left palm. He headed for the elevator.
***
Nadia stood in the night-time shadows, in the entrance of a closed jewellers. She’d waited a while then seen the CIA man exit the Grande. He was good, and she’d had to hang back a long way, but luck was in her favour for once, and her instinct had proven correct. There were two massage parlours in Hugh Town, but this one was on a deserted street, closest to the hotel and furthest from the police station.
She checked her watch. 11:35pm. In theory the parlour closed at midnight. She backed into the shadows. CIA man walked past the parlour, glanced both ways down the street, even looked in her direction once, though she was hidden well enough, and then turned back to the parlour. The door tinkled as he went in. She glimpsed inside the garish pink reception. The legal part of the financial transaction was over pretty quickly, and he disappeared from the front of the shop.
Nadia stayed put. She recalled when Kadinsky had invited some Chinese guests, and brought in some Russian-speaking Chinese prostitutes in case they didn’t fancy the local girls. One of them, a translator, befriended Katya and Nadia after the business negotiations, and told them how it worked in China, but also in massage parlours around Europe. The first ten to fifteen minutes was usually straight massage, then the girl would edge closer to genital territory, and see how the guy reacted. She’d gone into a lot of detail. Katya devoured it all, wanting to know special massage techniques for speeding up, sustaining or slowing down a man’s desire, or getting his dick up in the first place if things weren’t working properly. Nadia had excused herself from the more graphic episodes.
She glanced at her watch. Eight minutes. It was late, so the girl might start teasing him early, or the guy might just come right out and ask her, and Nadia didn’t particularly want to see his dick. She came out of the shadows and walked over to the shop.
The door tinkled again as she entered, and Nadia took a look around. A lacquered wooden counter, a full-length fake porcelain mannequin with all the meridians and acupuncture points inscribed from head to toe in red and black ink, some posters of Chinese landscapes, and a price list. A woman appeared from a back room on the other side of the counter, her heavily made-up face smiling, a question mark hidden beneath her wrinkles. Nadia didn’t smile back, instead looked pissed off and bored as she flashed an official-looking card written in German with the word INTERPOL in large letters, her photo to one side. She’d never used it before, one of the stocks in trade in her survival pack, a graduation present from Kadinsky’s training camp. The woman’s smile shrank into a thin straight line.
‘I’ll make this quick,’ Nadia said. ‘I can shut this place down, or I can go and have a discussion with the last client who came in. I’m not interested in the other guys currently having their dicks oiled.’
The woman gaped a moment, then spoke. ‘Number four.’
Nadia walked through the bead curtain and passed through a heavy swing door into a narrow corridor. Dim light bulbs inside red paper lanterns barely lit the bamboo-pattern wallpaper and plush carpet. Six wooden doors, each one numbered. As she passed door number two, she heard a man moaning, a girl whispering, then giggling. She moved on and stood outside door number four. Beyond were two more facing doors, and a light glaring from a bathroom with a washing machine churning away quietly. To its right a small child appeared, big eyes poking around the corner before his mother’s head and arm appeared, smiling briefly before the child was snatched out of view. Good, a rear exit.
Nadia listened. No sound. Still in the straight massage stage. She checked her Beretta, then opened the door a sliver so she could see. The guy was on his stomach, butt-naked. His head was supported by a towelled ring, and faced the floor. He was flabby, out of shape, middle-aged spread taken hold. A youngish girl was working hard on his lower back, but also occasionally caressing his buttocks with her finger-tips. As she did so, he made a soft encouraging noise. The girl giggled. ‘You like?’
Nadia stole into the room as the guy replied, ‘Oh yeah,’ in an American accent.
The girl’s head jerked in Nadia’s direction with a startled look. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but Nadia guessed most men coming here didn’t care.
Nadia put her finger across her lips, and gestured for the girl to continue. The girl’s eyes went large when she noticed the Beretta in Nadia’s other hand.
‘Can I turn over yet?’ the guy asked.
The girl looked to Nadia who shook her head.
‘Not yet,’ the girl said.
The girl carried on massaging, but her hands stayed well out of the erotic zone. Nadia crept forwards, picked up a towel and put it over the end of the nozzle of her Beretta, then manoeuvred it into position, between his buttocks.
He flinched, then relaxed. ‘That’s different,’ he said.
Nadia kept her voice level. ‘Actually there’s a Beretta pointing straight up your ass. If you move, I’ll pull the trigger.’
His muscles came alive for a moment – not so flabby after all – then he relaxed again. He didn’t try to get up.
Nadia glared at the terrified girl who had backed against a wall. ‘Get out,’ she said.
The girl fled.
‘If that’s really a Beretta, you’ll blow my brains out,’ he said.
‘Too much gristle. Bullet should make it to your heart, though.’
‘What do you want, Nadia?’
He was good. Smart and cool, not such a frequent combination. But she needed to keep control of the situation, ask the questions. ‘There’s another guy –’
‘Danton. Mean. Sadistic. Tortured your buddy Sammy, then smashed his skull in with a hammer.’
Nadia’s trigger finger tensed. So, he already knew. She noticed his left hand twitch, a small grey ring around his little finger.
Nadia pushed the gun a little further to remind him who was in control. ‘I said don’t move.’
The hand stilled. Was there something inside it?
‘Again, Nadia, what do you want?’
Dammit, he was taking charge, even with a gun up his ass. ‘To live. That’s top goal on my list.’
‘It’s not mine,’ he said.
Tricky answer. For a moment she considered she might have picked the wrong one out of the two. She could kill him now. But she’d not been able to kill Janssen even when he’d been shooting at her. In any case, she had no silencer, and there were now two witnesses. She’d have to kill them, then the other one around the corner, and then the kid… A bloodbath. Never going to happen. Anyway, the police would descend on her, and she’d spend a short spell in prison until one of Kadinsky’s goons got to an inmate and soon afterwards she’d have an unfortunate accident. And Katya would already be long dead by then.
But what if she killed this CIA agent afterwards, on the way back to his hotel? Plan B. But she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. At least not yet. Maybe in self-defence, if the situation arose again, she could pull the trigger. But not in cold blood, not assassin-style, not like…
She pulled back the gun. Plan A, then. ‘Take him – Danton – out of the equation.’
‘That is on my list, believe me.’
She did, because he must have been the one who’d ratted out Danton.
‘I mean kill him before I retrieve the Rose.’
Silence. Then: ‘You don’t like to kill, do you Nadia? Does it occur to you you’re in the wrong business?’
‘Don’t profile me. Besides, don’t like and don’t do aren’t the same thing.’
‘How did it feel when you shot Janssen in the face, Nadia?’
Nadia did a double-take. So, he’d been there during Sammy’s interrogation. And Sammy had lied, to protect her, to make out that she was stronger than she seemed, whether to this guy or to Kadinsky. It couldn’t have been easy. Thank you, Sammy. But then anger flooded in.
‘How did it feel watching Sammy being tortured, asshole?’
‘There you go again. Unprofessional. It’s just business, Nadia. Enough, I’m starting to get cold. Retrieve the device tomorrow, I’ll take care of Danton.’
And then it would be just the two of them.
She asked the next question, knowing she wouldn’t be able to trust the answer. ‘Is killing me on your list?’
‘No. But I’d bet good money it’s on Danton’s. But I will do whatever it takes to get the device.’ He lifted his head for the first time, and turned to face her. ‘Will you?’
She thought about it, and about Plan B. ‘What are you holding in your left hand?’
‘Insurance,’ he said. ‘And if you’re thinking of waiting for me outside, or entering my hotel, don’t. There’s a lot more to killing than being a good shot. Besides, I’m betting only one of us has a silencer.’
She wasn’t winning this, at best she was breaking even. This guy probably had twenty-five years in the field, a seasoned pro. If she had a serious amount of money, she’d ask him to kill Kadinsky. This one might be able to pull it off.
‘You know my name. What do I call you?’ she asked.
‘Bill.’
She turned and walked to the door.
‘Send the girl back in here, please,’ Bill said, turning his head back. ‘It’ll be best all round, trust me.’
Nadia closed the door behind her, walked back to the reception, and found the girl there with the older woman.
‘He’d like you to finish the massage,’ Nadia said to the girl. ‘Thank you for your co-operation,’ she said to the older one, then left.
Outside, she wondered what more she could have expected. She was an amateur compared to Bill. She’d actually kidded herself she could frighten the guy. Anyway, at least she’d gotten the measure of one of her opponents. Definitely freelance, otherwise he would have threatened her with how his CIA buddies would track her to the four corners of the globe if she harmed him, that kind of crap. No, a lone wolf, razor teeth. Also, she now knew the name of the other one, though not what he looked like.
She began walking, considering scenarios. Number one was that Jake had shopped her, and SAS or whoever would descend on the Scillies in the morning. But she was sure that if he’d done that, police would have been scouring Hugh Town for her right now. What she hoped was that he’d help her retrieve it, for his own reasons. And then… well, then it would get difficult.
Back to the other scenarios. Even if Bill killed Danton, he would try to take the Rose from her, and that meant killing her. But she had no idea of what her alternative might be, no strategy. It occurred to her that she was bringing others into this deadly game. Pete, Ben, even Elise. She had no right to do so. Jake, yes. But only him.
She got up and headed back to the inn.
She had found Bill, so maybe she should go find Danton, take the game to him. But that meant walking into his lair, the torturer with his hammer… She shivered, imagining Sammy’s last moments, before his beautiful head of hair was caved in. Could she kill Danton in cold blood? She thought of Sammy, those pictures on the news, and walked on, arriving at her temporary home. Maybe she finally could. She’d got the measure of Bill, to an extent. She didn’t really want to try the same with Danton. She had a feeling that if he got near enough to her, it would all be over. He was a torturer. He liked things up close and personal. If she could keep distance between them, she had a chance. And then a thought occurred.
She wondered if Danton could shoot.