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  Victor spat to clear his mouth. “There’s nothing you can do to me that will make me talk.”

  “We both know that’s untrue. You’re just too stubborn to accept it. Don’t be that man. You’ve done so well up until now. You’re a professional. Don’t end up bloody and begging. Let’s end this in a civilized manner. Remember when we made that wager?” She squatted to her haunches so he could raise his head enough to look her in the green eyes. “I’d say I’ve won, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not yet,” Victor said.

  “Where?” Anderton said.

  He spat on a snakeskin boot.

  She sighed. “Your choice.” She stood and stepped back. He heard her say, “Gentlemen, over to you.”

  Soles scraped on the ground and shadows fell over him. Then it began.

  He tucked himself into a ball and covered his face and head as best as he could as the blows came from all angles. Kicks landed against his ribs and hips and arms. Punches rained down on every exposed part of his body. A heel stamped down on his left ankle. An elbow caught him above the right eye. A fist pushed through his guard and his vision blackened again and his body slackened, and he didn’t have the senses left to continue protecting himself.

  It became impossible to feel the individual hits as the pain became one horrific mass and his brain struggled to cope and his consciousness began to slip away.

  “That’s enough,” Anderton said. “He’s no use to me as a vegetable.”

  Victor wheezed and coughed, struggling to breathe, bruised ribs resisting expanding. He tasted blood and saw little more than smudged colors and blurred shapes. Sounds were quiet and distorted, but he recognized Anderton’s voice:

  “Not so clever now, are you?”

  He couldn’t respond even had he wanted to.

  She said, “Where?”

  Victor groaned by way of an answer. His mind still worked even if his body did not. While she was questioning him they weren’t beating him. He didn’t yet know how much damage had been done, but he knew his body couldn’t take another assault. He had to stall. He had to recover. More important, Gisele needed time.

  “Let me ask him,” the South African said, and Victor saw a glint of brightness among the colors and shapes and knew a knife had been drawn.

  “Is that what it’s going to take to make you talk?” Anderton asked Victor.

  Her face became clear through the fogginess. He met her eyes. “I’ll . . . never . . . talk.”

  “You know what? I think I believe you.”

  The South African said, “I promise he’ll change his mind within two minutes. Won’t you, sport?”

  Anderton stroked her bottom lip. “Maybe we don’t have to go there.”

  Victor held her gaze.

  “Maybe he’s already told me everything I want him to.”

  Victor didn’t blink.

  “Let me cut him,” the South African said.

  “No,” she replied, and he shrugged and backed off. “I have this under control.” She looked down at Victor. “I have to say I wasn’t confident that you were really coming to meet me. I wasn’t convinced you would take the bait and come in Yigor’s place. Not because I doubted my own abilities to manipulate you, but because I didn’t believe you would leave Gisele on her own. After all you’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours I thought you would never leave her defenseless.”

  Despite the agony that wracked his body, Anderton’s words hurt more.

  She said, “Even if you believed you were tricking me, not the other way around, you must have known it was a dangerous course of action. Without you, Gisele has no one. Yet you risked that to meet me? Flattering, I suppose. You put both your lives in danger just to chat with little old me.” She placed a hand on her chest, as if overwhelmed by a compliment.

  Victor kept his expression even. If ever he had to hide his thoughts, now was the time.

  “For what possible gain?” she continued. “To learn my name? Really? That was important enough to risk everything for?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You haven’t survived until now by being so foolhardy. So, why this sudden turnaround? Why take such a considerable chance? Why did you want to meet me here?” Her eyes widened. “Ah,” she said, “because you didn’t want me elsewhere. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  She waited for an answer she didn’t receive. He knew she would see through any lie.

  But his silence seemed to say as much. “Oh, now I understand. You knew the meeting was a setup. You knew. But you came anyway. You walked straight into the trap because it guaranteed my presence and the presence of my men. Obviously, you didn’t expect to get captured, but you wanted us all here to deal with you so they wouldn’t be available to deal with Gisele. This is nothing more than a distraction.” She tapped her lip. “But why is that necessary when we don’t know—sorry, yet know—where she is? Or do we? She must be somewhere we’ve been watching, hence the necessity to draw us here away from it. You wouldn’t go through all this for her to sneak back home and pick up her favorite blouse, would you? No. You’d only do this if it was really worth it. You’d only do this if you were working toward an endgame. Bingo. She’s going after the case files, isn’t she?”

  “It never had to come this far,” Victor said. “Gisele didn’t know anything. She didn’t know your name, despite what Lester Daniels told you. If you’d have left her alone, then you would have been safe.” He smiled at her. “Instead, trying to protect yourself is the very thing that will bring you down.”

  Anderton’s jaw tightened. She rose and turned to face the South African. “Get to the law firm. She’s there right now.”

  “Let me kill this one first,” the man said back.

  “When you have the girl. If you don’t get there in time, we’ll need him to call her.”

  “Trust me,” the South African said, “you don’t want to keep him alive.”

  Anderton said, “I know what I’m doing. He’s done. You three, go with him. Now.”

  Victor heard the four men hurry away, leaving one remaining mercenary with Anderton.

  He looked up at her. “I’ll never make that call.”

  She used the heel of a snakeskin boot to roll him onto his back. He was able to focus enough now to clearly see the smugness on her face. “Again, I believe you. I could have Sinclair slice you up to within an inch of your life and you still wouldn’t give her up, would you? It’s really quite sweet. If my life and liberty were not at stake, I could cry. I never knew hired killers could be so honorable.”

  Victor remained silent.

  “But I don’t need to do anything to you, do I? A moment ago you told me your every move without uttering a single word.” She smiled her serpent’s smile. “You’ve played a good game so far, I’ll give you that. But I’m afraid you’re simply not in my league.”

  Chapter 71

  Victor heard one of the Range Rovers driving away, tires squealing under the hard acceleration. The law firm was maybe fifteen minutes’ drive through London’s busy streets at this time of day. Gisele would be nowhere near finished by then, let alone out of the building.

  “Rogan, don’t take your eyes off him until I get back,” Anderton said to the remaining mercenary. “I mean it. Not for a second.” Then, to Victor: “Just in case you’re not as hurt as you seem. I have no intention of underestimating you as you did me.”

  Victor looked away.

  The mercenary called Rogan said, “It’ll be a pleasure, ma’am.”

  Anderton winked at Victor and then approached the second Range Rover, the footsteps of her snakeskin boots echoing around the vast, almost empty space. Victor watched the vehicle drive out of the hangar and disappear into the night. He didn’t know if she was going to join Sinclair and the other mercs, or heading somewhere else. Victor lay on the floor and thought about Gisele in the law fir
m, alone and vulnerable, with no idea people were on the way to kill her. He’d failed her. He’d failed her mother.

  He refused to give up. While he breathed, it wasn’t over.

  Every inch of his body seemed to throb or ache or sting. He twisted his head until he could look at Rogan as he paced about nearby. The man had short graying brown hair. He wore black jeans and a denim jacket lined with wool. About six feet tall, solidly built, late thirties. His heavy workman’s boots glistened with Victor’s blood. He noticed the mercenary was clean shaven.

  They made eye contact. When Victor didn’t look away, the man’s face creased in anger and aggression.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  Victor didn’t respond.

  Rogan said, “You killed some of my best mates.”

  Victor spat out more blood.

  “You hear me down there, you prick?”

  The mercenary came closer. He put a light kick into Victor’s flank.

  “Forrester. Taff. McNeil. Cole,” he said, punctuating each name with a kick. “They were my friends and you killed them. You rammed a fucking handgun barrel through Cole’s eye socket, you sick fuck.”

  Victor said nothing. One corner of his mouth upturned.

  White showed all round Rogan’s irises. “You think that’s funny, do ya?”

  Hands grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. He winced as he tried to support himself, shifting his weight onto his right foot to spare his injured left ankle. He didn’t need to. The mercenary kept him upright. He was strong and had no trouble supporting Victor’s weight. Rogan stared into Victor’s black eyes.

  “They were good lads.”

  “But not so good at their jobs,” Victor said.

  Jaw muscles bunched beneath the mercenary’s skin. His grip on Victor tightened and he half scowled, half smiled.

  “When that little bitch is dead, I’m going to really enjoy sending you to join her. That psycho Sinclair is going to have to fight me for the privilege of cutting you up.”

  Victor grinned.

  Rogan shook his head, disbelieving. “Who in the name of fuck do you think you are?”

  “I’m the man who’s going to kill you.”

  He burst out laughing. Spit and sour smoker’s breath struck Victor’s face. If Rogan had any fatigue from holding Victor up for so long, he didn’t show. Victor was glad the man was so strong.

  When he stopped laughing, he said, “And, please, just for my own personal fucking amusement, tell me how you’re planning on pulling that off when you’re beaten to a pulp and cuffed?”

  Victor stared back hard as he said, “Do you mean the handcuffs I’ve already picked?”

  Rogan hesitated, surprised, then took a half step away—in part in the involuntary reaction to danger; in part to create a better viewing angle. His gaze dropped to see:

  The handcuffs still locked around Victor’s wrists.

  Rogan glanced up in time to see a blur of movement before Victor’s forehead collided with his nose.

  The rest of his body was weak, but no punch or kick could damage the strongest bone in the human body. The mercenary’s nose was paper-delicate in comparison and he’d created the perfect amount of space between them for Victor’s to generate the force to crush it flat.

  Blood exploded across both Rogan’s face and Victor’s. The man’s hands retreated from their hold on Victor to protect himself as he stumbled backward. Victor stumbled too, unable to properly support himself, but he grabbed the man’s belt with both cuffed hands as he put his left leg behind Rogan’s and they fell to the floor together.

  His enemy was stunned from the head butt and blinded by the tears and blood in his eyes. Rogan didn’t know what Victor was doing until palms pressed down over his mouth and teeth sank into the thin layer of skin and tissue to the right of his trachea.

  The palms muffled the man’s scream as Victor ripped a chunk out of his neck.

  He turned his face away to spare it from the arcs of pressurized blood from the severed carotid artery.

  Rogan was too overwhelmed by pain and terror to fight back but thrashed in panic as blood escaped his neck in machine-gun blasts.

  Victor’s weight pinned him down for the few seconds it took until Rogan lost consciousness. Victor rolled and lay for a moment, recovering from the exertion while the mercenary bled out next to him.

  His hands were slick with blood and he wiped them on the man’s clothes. He then searched through Rogan’s jacket pockets, then through the pockets of his jeans. He found keys for the Audi, a Zippo lighter and cigarettes, but no handcuff key. He found the man’s knife, but it was no good against his restraints. He spread his palms across the ground through the pool of bright arterial blood, but still no key.

  He cleaned his hands again and forced himself onto his knees and tried to stand. A buzz of pain rushed through his head and his balance faltered. He managed to stay standing, weight balanced on his right foot. It was an improvement to be able to remain upright. Every part of his body seemed to be sending pain signals to his brain but the damaged ankle and bruised ribs appeared to be the worst of his injuries. Anderton had spared him before any irrecoverable damage had been done.

  He glanced around the hangar. No sign of any handcuff keys or where they might be. He would have dislocated his thumbs, but the cuffs were on too tight and his hands too big to make such a means of escape possible. He staggered to where the Audi was parked. He opened a door and checked the glove compartment and door pockets, but still no key.

  He used the vehicle to support himself and shuffled until he could rest his elbows on the front. He reached out and with both hands twisted and pulled until he detached a windshield wiper. With the aid of his teeth he tore away the rubber wiper to reveal the long, slender wiper blade.

  He turned around and leaned against the hood to prop himself up while he fed one end of the wiper blade into the narrow gap where the handcuff bow fed, until it could go no farther. Despite the pain, he forced the cuff tighter so the teeth drew the end of the wiper blade farther into the mechanism, covering the next tooth and stopping it from locking. The bow could then be pulled back out of the mechanism and Victor had one hand free.

  In seconds his other hand was released and the cuffs clattered against the hard floor.

  Chapter 72

  Lester’s computer was password protected. Gisele had expected as much, but was still hoping for a minor miracle. She tried a few guesses: his date of birth, his wife’s name—the usual kind of thing people had. She gave up after a couple of minutes. There was no telling how much time she had before someone would catch her. The alarm still sounded, but inside Lester’s office it was a little more bearable, muted by the walls and door.

  Having given up with the computer, she turned her attention to hard copies of case files. He had a filing cabinet full of them, but she limited the search to the priority cases—those with upcoming deadlines—and ones she had assisted with by scanning or copying documents or filing. She found herself reading about a man named Adeib Aziz, an Afghan policeman currently imprisoned at Bagram Airfield for killing a British intelligence officer named Maxwell Durant. She read the case against Aziz, or the lack thereof. He had been convicted based on the testimony of a single witness who had not been contactable since the conviction. Lester had taken on Aziz’s appeal, working pro bono on behalf of an international human-rights charity. Lester was as ruthless and driven a barrister as Gisele knew, but he’d had a good heart too. If Aziz’s case was not heard in a week’s time, his appeal would be turned down by default and he would spend the rest of his life in an Afghani prison.

  Could this be why the blond woman had killed Lester, and was mistakenly after Gisele—to stop Aziz from being released?

  She searched further into the file, reading between the lines.

  The blonde d
idn’t want Aziz released. She’d had Lester killed to stop it happening. But why? What was so important about keeping him in prison? Unless he was innocent. If she knew he was innocent, then maybe it was she who was guilty instead. Were Aziz’s conviction to be overturned, the investigation into Maxwell Durant’s murder would be reopened.

  Assuming Aziz had taken the fall for killing Durant, for the intervening years the woman must have thought she’d gotten away with it, that she was safe. But then Lester took on the case no one wanted. Now she was trying to protect the truth.

  Gisele read on, because she couldn’t believe anyone would go through so much purely to prevent Aziz’s being released, regardless of the questions that might follow. There had to be something more concrete.

  The file contained an afteraction report pertaining to the arrest of Aziz. The investigation and arrest had been carried out by a three-person team consisting of a private military contractor, William Sinclair, and two officers of the Intelligence Corps, Marcus Lambert and Nieve Anderton.

  Gisele smiled to herself. The plan was working.

  The fire alarm ceased blaring. The sudden silence startled her, snapping her attention from the file in hand. She dropped it. Pages scattered across the floor.

  “Shit.”

  She tried gathering them up, but paused when she saw a line of shadow under the door to Lester’s office. She held her breath as the handle turned and it opened.

  “Christ, Alan,” she breathed, palm moving to her chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Big, kind Alan the security guard stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Miss Maynard. I didn’t mean to startle you. Just checking out the . . . hey, why didn’t you head to the lobby when the alarm went off?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. I assumed it was another false alarm. I’ve got so much work to catch up on.”

  He looked at her and she saw the suspicion in his gaze. “As it happens, it was the switch around the corner that was set off. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”