by David Archer
“That'll work. Take him down and lock him in, then we should all try to rest. In the morning, we can talk about our next moves.” Moose stood and motioned with his gun for Vladimir to precede him down the stairs that led off the kitchen. Noah turned to Dimitri. “There are several bedrooms, find one that's empty and make yourself comfortable. I don't have to tell you what would happen if you suddenly decide to change sides on me again, do I?”
Dimitri gave him a half smile. “I am no fool, young man. At this point, I am a corpse that is still walking around, caught squarely in the crossfire between you and your archenemy. My only hope of seeing my family again is for you to succeed in your quest to kill Nicolaich. If you do not, then he will kill me for even considering this kind of betrayal. If I try to escape you, then there is no doubt in my mind that you will kill me.”
“You're absolutely correct,” Noah said. “Go get some sleep, and we'll talk in the morning.” He looked at Pendergrast. “You might as well go back to bed, too, Jeremy. We'll talk more in the morning.”
The two men looked at each other, and then rose and walked up the stairs. Noah sat there for another minute, thinking over all that had been said, and realized that something didn't feel right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He finally shook his head and went up the stairs to the room he had shared with Sarah the week before, stripped out of his clothes and slid in beside her.
She rolled over to smile at him. “About time you got here,” she said sleepily. “Hold me?”
“Sure,” he said, and spooned up against her. He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her snugly into himself. “Something bothering you?”
“I'm just worried,” she whispered. “This Nicolaich sounds like a pretty bad guy, and he already wants you dead. I'm scared, Noah, I'm scared he might be more than you can handle.”
Noah held her close for a moment, then said, “In this line of work, it's a safe bet that I'm going to meet the guy who’s meaner than me sooner or later. I knew that when I signed on, we all did. If that time has come, then I have to think that's how it's supposed to be.”
Sarah rolled back to face him, and he saw the tears in her eyes. “But that sucks,” she said. “Damn it, Noah, why did I have to fall in love now? Why couldn't I have met some wonderful guy two years ago, someone who would have gotten me out of my dad's life and let me settle down? Noah, we can't ever have a life together, and I know that isn't what you want, anyway, but even if you did we couldn't have it. I want to love you, and I want you to love me, and I want to have babies with you and—but the best I can hope for is a few months or years of sleeping with you, and then one of us will probably be dead. It's just not fair.” She looked at him for a moment longer, and then rolled away again.
Noah pulled her tighter against him. “Three months ago, I would have said that I wasn't capable of wanting a life like that,” he said softly, “but that isn't completely true anymore. I enjoy the time we're together, even when we're just watching TV or cooking together, and if it could last for years, I'd want that. The truth is, though, that I don't know how to love anyone, so I think you'd get tired of me sooner or later, anyway.” He moved his hand to caress her cheek. “I do want whatever time we can have, Sarah. Even if it's out here on a mission. And if I die, then I want you to be safe and go on, and find another way to have some happiness in your life.”
She trembled in his arms. “I don't want you to die,” she said through soft, gentle sobs. “I want every minute I can have with you, and I don't want anything to mess it up!”
He pulled her face back around, then leaned down and kissed her lips gently. “I'm not planning to die. Like I said, I figure you'll get tired of me sooner or later, but I want all of those minutes with you, too. That's a pretty good motivation not to let anything mess this up, don't you think?”
Sarah managed to grin through her tears. “Yeah, it is. I'm gonna hold you to that. You're not going to let anything go wrong, you got that?”
He kissed her again. “I've got it.” He pulled her close again as she rolled back over, then lay down beside her. He was asleep within a minute, but Sarah lay awake for a while, just enjoying the feel of his arm around her.
Sunlight coming through the window woke Noah, and he carefully untangled himself so that Sarah could sleep. The bathroom in this house was at the end of the hall, so he dug his shaving kit and clean clothes out of his suitcase and padded down the carpeted hallway in his skin. He turned on the shower and got inside, closing the glass door behind himself.
Fifteen minutes later he stepped out and dried himself, shaved quickly and then got dressed. He went back to the bedroom to get socks and shoes, and was surprised to find Sarah gone from the bed. Normally, she would either sleep while he showered or come to join him. He sat down on the bed to put his socks on, slid his feet into the comfortable trainers he usually wore and headed for the stairs.
No one was in the kitchen, which struck him as odd. He looked out into the backyard, instantly noticing that the Jaguar was gone, but there was no sign of Sarah, so he made a quick search of the ground floor. When he didn't find her, Noah suddenly found himself feeling a rush of adrenaline.
He went back upstairs and looked in the bathroom, but it was empty. He instantly turned and threw open the first bedroom door across the hall from it, where he found Neil sleeping peacefully. He closed the door and turned to the next, opened it quickly and looked inside, then froze.
Jeremy Pendergrast lay on the bed, his eyes open and staring upward, but Noah knew instantly that he was seeing nothing. His face was pale with a bluish cast, and the pillow that had been under his head was lying beside him. Noah stepped into the room, carefully looking behind the door, then moved to stand beside the bed. A finger on Pendergrast's throat confirmed what he already knew; Jeremy Pendergrast was dead. He had obviously been suffocated with his own pillow, and the position of his arms told Noah that he had tried to put up a fight.
Noah turned away and hurried back to his room, snatched up his Glock and began searching the other rooms. They were all empty, as he had expected them to be. He hurried down the stairs and through the kitchen, then carefully made his way down the steps into the basement.
Moose was sitting on the floor, slumped over with his back against the wall beside the steel door to the storm shelter. The door was still locked, so Noah scanned the basement with his eyes and then called out to Moose.
The big man's eyes came open instantly, his head snapping up so quickly that he banged it on the wall behind him. “Noah?” Moose asked, his eyes locked on the gun in Noah's hand.
“Dimitri is gone, and I think he took Sarah with him. Pendergrast is dead, but Neil is snoring like always.” He pointed with his chin at the storm cellar. “Vladimir?”
Moose, his eyes wide, shook his head. “No one's been down here. He's still in there.” He got to his feet and took a key from his pocket, using it to undo the padlock that secured the door. It creaked as it swung open, and Noah saw Vladimir's head rise up from the pillow on the cot where he lay.
“Dimitri is gone,” Noah said. “He's taken one of my people with him. Where would he be going?”
Vladimir smiled. “I have no idea where he would go at this moment, but I can tell you where he will end up: somewhere in Russia. The man you call Dimitri has played you for a fool, and quite successfully. Who did he take?”
“My driver, a young woman. What will he do with her?”
Vladimir's eyes seemed to show realization. “This woman, she is important to you? To you personally, I mean?”
Noah nodded once. “She is. All of my team are important to me.”
“But this one, she is possibly more important than the others,” Vladimir said, a statement rather than a question. “She will be bait, at first. Nicolaich will use her to set a trap for you, and when you think you're going to get her back safely, then he will kill her. He will kill her just as you killed Vasily, so that you will know how it feels to lose someone you care for.”<
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“Why would Dimitri take her to him? He wanted my help to be free of Nicolaich, why would he change his mind?”
Vladimir began to chuckle. “You truly are a fool. When he came to me last night and told me his plans, I never believed he could deceive you so well, but obviously he has done so.” He shook his head. “Mister Colson, you had your prey within your grasp, and never knew it. Dimitri does not exist; the man who has taken your woman is Nicolaich Andropov, himself.”
“Holy crap,” Moose muttered, but Noah only nodded once.
“I suspected as much this morning, when I saw that he killed Pendergrast and disappeared with Sarah. The whole thing, finding him at Pendergrast's flat, how easily I captured him, his willingness to make himself another target, despite the danger hi family is in—it was all a setup, right?”
Vladimir nodded his head. “He knew you would be back, and would come for Jeremy again. He arrived in London a few days ago and immediately put people to watching the airport for you. You are easy to spot, coming in on your private jet. He had good photos of you from Kubinka, and expected you to come in on a private flight, so he had some of his own people working that area of the airport. One of them used an amplified microphone to eavesdrop on your conversation with the British woman, so he knew you were going after Jeremy at that time. Nicolaich was actually staying in another apartment in the same building, so it was easy for him to get into the flat and put on his act. He was certain that you would take him alive, as long as he gave you a reason to believe he could be turned into an ally.” He chuckled again. “Obviously, he knows you very well, Mister Colson.”
Noah looked at him for a moment, then nodded again. “Better than I know him, obviously. That doesn't do you any good, however, since he left you here for me to take it out on. I'm sure he would realize that if anything happens to Sarah, you'll never see the light of day again.”
Vladimir shrugged. “I have been a dead man living on borrowed time for more than ten years,” he said. “There is nothing you can do to me that I have not been expecting for some time. Nicolaich has already written me off, of that I can assure you. I am expendable.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Noah said. “He managed to kill Pendergrast less than twenty feet away from me, but he made no attempt to kill me or any of the rest of us. If he can move so stealthily, he would have had no trouble taking out one of my other people, and that would've left him with weapons. That tells me that he doesn't want me dead yet, he wants me to suffer first. What should I be doing to get ready for what's coming?”
Vladimir suddenly laughed, a hearty laugh that echoed through the basement. “Oh, Mister Colson, you surely do not expect me to tell you that. Unlike your false Dimitri, my loyalty to Nicolaich is absolute. I will do absolutely nothing to help you. Feel free to kill me now, since you're going to do so anyway.”
“Let me hang him up in the barn,” Moose said. “He thinks he's tough, but he'll crack.”
Noah shook his head. “Nicolaich and Sarah have been gone for at least twenty minutes. By now, he's called other agents and they'll be descending on us within the next half hour. We've got to get out of here, right now.” He looked back at Vladimir. “Ironically, I'm not ready to kill you yet. Instead, I want you to give a message to Nicolaich when he finds out you’re alive and contacts you. You tell him that I'm coming, and that I intend to kill everyone who stands between me and him. And you tell him that if anything happens to Sarah, I will not only kill him, but I will skin him alive, one square inch at a time so that it takes him a month to finally die.”
Noah closed the door and reached out for the padlock, hooking it through the hasp without locking it. “Let's go,” he said to Moose. “Get Neil up, and you guys get all your stuff into the Land Rover. I'll grab mine and Sarah's. I want to be on the road and off this property within fifteen minutes.”
He turned and ran up the stairs two at a time, with Moose on his heels. They were both shouting for Neil as they entered the upstairs hallway, and Moose ran on to the boy's room as Noah entered his own.
He quickly snapped his own bag and Sarah's closed, then grabbed them and carried them down and out through the back door. He had found the keys to the Land Rover on the nightstand beside the bed, and had already loaded the bags into the back by the time Neil and Moose appeared with theirs. They tossed them in, and the three men got into the car.
“Now, will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Neil asked. “What's the rush, and where is Sarah?”
“I got played,” Noah said. “Dimitri, the guy I captured last night, the one who was supposed to help us catch Nicolaich, turned out to be Nicolaich himself in reality. He killed Pendergrast sometime during the night, then waited until I went to the shower this morning and took Sarah. He's planning to use her as bait to set a trap for me, and then kill her right in front of me when I show up.”
“Oh, shit!” Neil said. “Boss, we can't—we gotta go get her! If Cinderella finds out…”
“It won't matter,” Noah said. “Sarah and I had been in bed, sleeping. He took her while I was in the shower. She doesn't have her belt on, it's in her bag right now.”
Moose groaned. “Oh, that's just great,” said. “Without that belt, she could spill everything she knows about us, about E & E, everything.”
Noah nodded. “She undoubtedly will; I'm certain Nicolaich is going to be quite skilled at getting information out of people. There's nothing we can do about that, but we can do everything possible to rescue her and kill him.”
“Damn right,” Moose said. “That son of a bitch just made a fatal mistake! Team Camelot takes care of our own!”
“We're going after her,” Noah said, “and I want Nicolaich dead. He knows way too much, including what we look like, and he's about to know a lot more. We can't afford to have someone in his position knowing so much about us.”
“What I can't believe,” Moose said, “is how cool that bastard is. He actually sat there last night and suggested that you kill him in order to bait himself out. What if you had decided to take him up on it? I mean, I thought it was a pretty good idea myself, I figured you were going to go for it. I mean, knowing how you are, it wouldn't have been that big a deal to you.”
Noah nodded. “I almost did go for it,” he said. “On the other hand, it shows me that he doesn't know as much about me as he thinks he does. Somehow I don't think he would've made that offer if he had known that I have absolutely no conscience. The only thing that kept me from agreeing to it and killing him on the spot was that, logically, if he were who he said he was then he might be more valuable alive. He's expecting me to react like a human being, rather than a robot.”
“Okay, I never thought I would say this, but suddenly I'm very glad that you are as messed up as you are,” Neil said. “He's counting on you doing what most people in your situation would do, so logically, you want to do something completely different. Am I right?”
“Pretty much,” Noah said. “I need to keep him in the dark about my lack of emotions and conscience, so I'll pretend to react normally at first. Then, when he thinks he has been where he wants me, I let the real me out of the box.”
Moose, sitting in the front passenger seat, looked over at Noah. “Boss, if I didn't hate this son of a bitch so much, I might just start to feel sorry for him.”
“Not me,” Neil said, “this is one case where I'd love to be there and watch when you kill him. The question is, what do we do now?”
“We get to somewhere safe and hunker down for the moment,” Noah said. “I'll check in with Catherine Potts, get her watching the chatter for any sign of Nicolaich, and you're going to get on your computer and do the same. Somewhere out there, there's got to be some sign of him on the Internet. You're going to find it, so that we can get a step or two ahead of him.”
Neil reached back behind the seat and grabbed his laptop case. “I can get started on that right now,” he said. “My computer can tap cell towers for a data connection, so I can start lo
oking. Any idea what I should be looking for?”
“I've been thinking about that. He's not going to risk trying to go through one of the major airports, that would be too obvious. That means he's got another way to get out of the country. Could be a jet on a private airstrip, I suppose, or some smaller airport. I can't imagine he'd want to leave by water, but we might as well check ship departures, just to be safe.”
“I'm thinking air,” Neil said. “He may not know all about you, but he knows you're a deadly sucker. He's going to want to get out of the country fast, I think, not take a chance on you catching up with him. Let me see what I can find.”
“So, where are we headed now?” Moose asked.
Noah glanced at him, and then looked back at the road ahead. “I'm going to London, we need a hotel.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and searched through his call log until he found the number he wanted. He hit the dial button and put the phone to his ear.
“Catherine? It's Alexander Colson. I've got a situation on my hands. I need a hotel room for three of us, all men, somewhere I can hole up and stay out of sight for a little while, something without my name attached to it.” He listened for a moment, then nodded into the phone. “That sounds fine,” he said. “Then I need you to do something else. Nicolaich Andropov was in London, and managed to convince me he was someone else. I thought I had captured and turned him, but this morning I found him gone, Jeremy Pendergrast dead in his bed, and my driver, Sarah, missing. Vladimir Sokoloff says Nicolaich has her, planning to use her as bait to set a trap for me. I need to know anything you hear about Nicolaich, two seconds after you hear it. I don't care how unrelated or mundane it sounds, I want to know everything you can find on the guy.”
He ended the call and looked at Moose. “We're going to the Wee John hotel, a dive place that doesn't ask for identification. She'll have a room waiting for us under the name William Bonner. We'll check in and wait until we have some idea of what to do next.”
