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  “We work together to solve this problem. I believe this man is still in London with the girl. Your network has eyes and ears. Keep them open. That’s it.”

  Linnekin considered. “And if we spot them?”

  “Inform me. My people will do the rest.”

  “Aside from his face, I know nothing about him.”

  “That’s no problem. He’s with the girl. Look for her and you’ll find them both.”

  Linnekin nodded. “Okay. Deal. I know what he did to warrant my vengeance, but what is this girl to you?”

  Anderton didn’t answer. She stood up and left. Linnekin watched her go, hoping the suited man would kill her to save him the bother. But he wanted the man for himself. He had given his word.

  Chapter 46

  It was still raining when they alighted a few stops later, leaving enough of a distance between them and the group of drunk guys to ensure they did not cross paths again, but not staying on the bus for any longer than they had to. He found another car to steal, this time a twenty-year-old Vauxhall station wagon.

  “That was a nice move back there,” Victor said when they were both inside. “But you really shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

  “I’m not like you. I wasn’t going to let him hurt her.”

  “He didn’t hurt her.”

  “Not physically, at least not at that point. But no one deserves to be intimidated like that.”

  Victor said, “But when you intervened you couldn’t have known what the end result would be. Had I had to become involved, things could have turned out very differently.”

  “Or maybe I knew that as soon as that greasy prick was challenged, he would back down. Maybe you need to start giving me a little more credit. I’ve been taking self-defense classes for months. I knew what I was doing. Plus, I carry a can of pepper spray, just in case.”

  “It could have escalated into something very bad for both of us.”

  “But it didn’t, did it?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “And it didn’t put us at any additional risk, did it?”

  He hesitated, then had no choice but to agree. “It did not.”

  She stopped and looked at him. “So what exactly is your problem?”

  He considered her, and if not for the danger they were in might have smiled. “You’ll make a good lawyer someday, Gisele. Of that I have no doubt.”

  “I’ll take that as you conceding the argument.”

  He didn’t answer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the beginnings of a smile, but it disappeared within a heartbeat and she said, “Maybe you need to start trusting me.”

  He nodded to placate her. He didn’t trust her—not when their lives were in danger. But he was impressed with her resolve. She was calmer than any civilian should be in such a situation. For now, at least, he did not have to be concerned with Gisele’s actions or inactions further complicating his job.

  Except this was no job. It was a favor on behalf of a dead woman. He focused on the road ahead to prevent the memories from surfacing. This wasn’t the moment to let himself be distracted. Both for his sake and the sake of the young woman sitting next to him.

  She didn’t ask where they were going, but he guessed that was because the enormity of what had happened was hitting home. He expected her to cry, but she didn’t. His eyes flicked between the mirrors as he drove, watching out for pursuers, but after ten minutes he was sure there were none. After another ten he allowed himself to think about what to do next. The immediate danger may have passed but a whole new level of threat had materialized. Whoever these guys were, they were not Russian and they were not gangsters. They were mercenaries. Good ones.

  Eventually Gisele said, “We can’t wait any longer. We need to find out if Dmitri and the others made it. Back at the warehouse, I mean. We shouldn’t have left them. We need to contact Alek or Yigor.”

  “No,” Victor said.

  “Don’t be a bastard. They were trying to protect me just as much as you were. Maybe more so. I need to know they’re okay. I’m worried about them.”

  “They’re all dead, so stop worrying.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that. You can’t be sure they’re dead.”

  Victor said nothing to that. Apart from Yigor, the Russians were all dead. He stayed quiet because Gisele wasn’t ready to accept it.

  “As you killed my phone, let me borrow yours for a minute so I can call Alek.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  Her eyes widened with disbelief. “What? Then you’re the only person who doesn’t.”

  “I came to the same conclusion myself.”

  “This is ridiculous.” The annoyance turned to despair. “I need to know if they’re all right. I need to know . . .” She exhaled sharply. “You don’t give a shit about them, do you?”

  He saw the hostility in her eyes. He was used to such looks but it was essential to keep her on his side. He couldn’t protect her if she saw him as an enemy. “Okay, I’ll call your stepfather.”

  A few minutes later he stopped the car next to a pay phone and left the engine running and the driver’s door open while he went inside to call Norimov.

  As soon as the line connected, Victor said, “She’s okay.”

  Norimov breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Put her on the phone.”

  Victor looked at her sitting in the passenger’s seat, rubbing her shoulder, staring expectantly at him, waiting to hear about Dmitri and the others. He shook his head and he watched as she put her face in her hands.

  “Not now,” Victor said. “What do you know?”

  “Only what Yigor told me. He called not long before you did.”

  “Which is?” Victor asked.

  “That when he tried returning to the warehouse it was swarming with cops.”

  He thought about this for a moment, then summarized the attack and subsequent escape, finishing with “Dmitri sacrificed himself.”

  “That hurts me. My poor boys. They were good men.”

  “No one who works for you is a good man.”

  “They died for me—for Gisele. Whatever wrongs they did before then are irrelevant. When Gisele is safe I will grieve for them. They deserve that of me, at least.”

  “Gisele is far from safe. The assaulters were mercenaries—pros—with suppressed MP5s, body armor, and flashbangs. I killed two of them, maybe three, but there are as many more still alive. What aren’t you telling me, Alek?”

  “I . . . I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “A rival organization is not going to hire a team of professional mercenaries just to kidnap your daughter. That seems a little excessive, don’t you think?”

  “I agree. They must have known I sent men to London to protect her.”

  Victor didn’t respond. “If there’s something you’re keeping from me, then you should know I’m going to find out what it is, and you’d better pray that I don’t learn that you’ve put Gisele or me in danger as a result.”

  “Vasily, I’ll swear on my life, if that’s what it takes. I’ve told you everything.”

  “It is your life you’re swearing on.”

  A pause; then, “In time you’ll see I’m telling the truth. Until then, I implore you to get Gisele out of the country. Bring her to me, to St. Petersburg, where I can protect her.”

  “Negative. You can’t protect her from these people. Four of your men just died to prove that fact. Until I know more, we’re not moving.”

  “But—”

  “The decision is not yours to make. Your safe house was blown. If your enemies knew about that, they know everything. Gisele stays with me until I’ve figured out exactly what is going on.”

  Norimov was quiet for a long moment. Eventually, he said, “Okay,” because there was nothing else he could say.
<
br />   “Where’s Yigor now?”

  “Driving. He’s waiting to hear from you.”

  Victor said, “He can stay waiting.”

  “What are you and Gisele going to do next?”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  “Excuse me? I’m her father.”

  “And I’m protecting her. That means I do things my way. My way is the reason you don’t yet have to organize her funeral.”

  A sigh. “Okay. Fine. You can handle this however you see fit. I’ll go along with whatever you think is best.”

  Victor said, “You don’t have a choice,” and hung up.

  Chapter 47

  They ditched the car, leaving the engine running and the lights on. It was only a matter of time before it was stolen, Gisele’s companion had explained. What the thief or thieves did with it was unimportant, but they would add another layer of defense against their enemies. They caught a bus, then alighted to board the tube, then another bus before a taxi took them the rest of the way to a hotel. He paid the fare and left a modest tip.

  He guided Gisele into the lobby and up to the third floor, and she followed him to where she assumed he had been staying, as he already had a keycard. She watched in silent confusion as he went into the bathroom and spent a few minutes pouring shampoo and body wash into the bathtub, then rinsing it away before unwrapping soap and wetting towels. She wanted to know what he was doing but had no energy to ask. She left him and flopped down onto the bed.

  He entered a moment later and said, “Get up.”

  She lay there, eyes closed, hoping he would just let her rest.

  A strong hand gripped her by the wrist and wrenched her to her feet.

  “What the fuck . . . ?”

  He didn’t answer. She looked on as he messed up the neatly made bed and squashed and punched the pillows.

  “What did that bed ever do to you?”

  He ignored her—infuriating her in the process—and went briefly back to the bathroom, returning with a freestanding mirror that he then placed on the windowsill, painstakingly positioning it as if it were the most important thing in the world.

  “You have serious issues.”

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Go? We just got here. You said we were going to rest.”

  He held open the door and ushered her through it.

  Back on the ground floor he steered her away from the lobby when she headed in that direction. She was looking around and becoming increasingly confused as he took her through the hotel’s ground floor, past the business center and fitness suite, and out the southern exit.

  “Where are we going now?” she asked.

  “We’re nearly there.”

  He checked the traffic and crossed the road beneath the railway and cut between the sparse line of trees.

  “Here?”

  They entered his other hotel and used the stairs to ascend to the fourth floor. He unlocked his room with another keycard and led Gisele inside. She stepped in slowly, brow creased and eyes wide as she looked around, trying to understand what they were doing. This made no sense at all.

  “You can sit down,” he said.

  “Are you going to tell me to stand up in three minutes’ time?”

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  He nodded, and she lay down on the bed. After a moment she asked, “What was wrong with the previous room?”

  “This one is better.”

  “If you say so,” she sighed. “I’ve given up trying to understand you.”

  She watched as he closed the curtains. As with the mirror, he spent a bizarrely long amount of time adjusting them. He turned around. She realized there was only one bed. Her pulse quickened, as she feared he would want to share it. It disgusted her to think of him lying next to her.

  “You can sleep in the bed,” he said. “I’ll take the armchair.”

  She wondered if he’d seen in her face what she’d been thinking and felt bad for it. She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Funnily enough, I’m not actually tired now. My brain is fried. Deep-fried in crazy, that is.”

  “Nevertheless, you should try to get some rest. First rule of soldiering: sleep whenever you can.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a soldier. I’m about as far from a soldier as you are from a normal person. Well, maybe not that far.”

  “You still have to sleep,” he insisted. “You may not feel like it now, but if you don’t, it will catch up with you tomorrow. That’s how it works.”

  “And we need to be alert, right? Because they might come after me again?”

  “That’s right.”

  “God, it’s so much work.”

  She sat up and pushed herself off the bed. She had to walk off some of the nervous energy. She paced and watched him as he wedged the back of a desk chair underneath the door handle. It seemed such a simple precaution to take, but she would never have thought to do it. Her mind was racing at one hundred miles an hour, but she couldn’t think clearly. In comparison, his calmness was unnatural and unnerving.

  Stepping away from the door, he said, “Whoever these people are, they are heavily invested in you, Gisele. They’re skilled and they have numbers. And they will succeed unless we do everything right. Even then, it might not be enough.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance.”

  “I’m not attempting to reassure you. I’m telling you how it is, because you can’t afford to relax for a second.”

  “Then how am I meant to sleep?”

  “Stop trying to pick a fight with me. It won’t work.”

  “I don’t like you,” she said.

  He nodded. “I know. But I don’t need you to like me. I just need you to do what I say.”

  “You sound like Alek.”

  He didn’t respond. He went to step around her on the way to the bathroom and she flinched. He saw it and backed away, seeing her fear even though she was trying to hide it. For a moment they stood in silence, her afraid and him surprised, until he said, “There’s nothing to be nervous of, Gisele.”

  “You killed two men. You tortured one.”

  “I did what was necessary,” he explained.

  “Says you. I don’t know what’s necessary or not. I don’t understand any of this.” She rubbed her arm. “All I have to go on is what you tell me. How am I supposed to know if what you’re saying is true? I look at you now and you don’t seem any different from when I first met you. But so much has happened since then. I can barely keep a lid on what I’m feeling. I can only just about stop myself screaming at the top of my lungs. Yet you . . . nothing. You said you were used to it, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? What happened doesn’t bother you at all. Getting attacked. Killing those men. The blood. The violence. None of it has even the slightest effect.”

  She was staring at him intently and saw that he thought about lying, but a second’s deliberation was all it took for Gisele to see the truth.

  She said, “Man, you are a fucking psycho,” and backed away.

  “It didn’t bother me—that’s true. But you don’t have to worry about me, Gisele. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Again, says you.” She backed away another step until her shoulder blades were against the wall next to the door. “What’s the word of a murderer worth?”

  He didn’t respond.

  She said, “If you wanted to, you could kill me just like that,” and snapped her fingers. “Couldn’t you?”

  His black eyes didn’t blink. “I’ll never want to.”

  “But you could. If you are lying and turn on me, there’s literally nothing I could do to stop you, right?”

  He had no choice but to nod. They both knew it was the truth. Denying it would have been ridiculous.

  He said, “I’m here to protect yo
u, Gisele. To that end I’ll do everything I’m capable of to make sure no one harms you. If that scares you, then I’m sorry.”

  She noted he was careful to create as much distance as possible between them as he passed. He flicked on the light switch.

  “You don’t scare me,” Gisele said from behind him. “You terrify me.”

  He paused and nodded without looking back.

  Chapter 48

  The night had always been Victor’s friend. He guessed he had spent more of his waking life during the night than the day. He had learned to know the night and to use it, but now it was an enemy because he was not alone. Gisele was finally still beneath the duvet after tossing and turning for a while. She complained about the lights being left on but Victor was insistent. She lay on her side at the very edge of the bed—as far away from him as possible. He didn’t blame her.

  Victor stood by the window, gazing outward. He was relaxed yet vigilant. He was used to waiting. Waiting was half his work: waiting for people to show; waiting for them to leave; waiting for it to get dark. The most undervalued skill of the assassin was patience. Those who didn’t have it didn’t survive for long. Now that patience might keep Gisele—and him—alive.

  He’d said he would take the chair but he stood. The chair was wedged against the door handle. He was positioned by the window, looking out between the curtains but from an acute angle. Across the street on the other side of the concrete posts supporting the elevated railway line he saw his other room and the mirror set on the windowsill. He could see nothing in the reflection. If he could, it would mean someone was in the room.

  Gisele woke with a start, bolting upright in the bed, gasping when she saw him but then relaxing slowly once she had processed the situation.

  “I fell asleep,” she said.

  “That’s good,” Victor replied. “Try to go back to sleep. Get as much sleep as you can.”

  “First rule of soldiering?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What are you doing by the window?”

  He shrugged, as though it was nothing. “Just passing the time.”

  “You can’t sleep?”