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She resisted the impulse to sweep the syringe off her lap. “How do you know this is even the right dosage? For that matter, why is he still asleep and I’m awake?”
“You were given enough that you should have been out for hours yet. Let’s just say you’re an exceptional woman.”
“And if I were still unconscious? Would you have left me behind in the house?” She didn’t know why she was asking. At least her voice sounded no more than casually curious, and he couldn’t see the expression on her face.
“I’d already set the charges, and I only had time to bring one of you out. You or Mahmoud. What do you think?”
She tore the headpiece off, wanting to look at him without the screening between them. “I think you’re a man who’d choose someone who wants to kill you over someone who wants to save you.”
“You’ve learned a lot over the years, princess. Perhaps not as much as you think, but you’re still quite observant. However, you’re forgetting the fact that you want me dead with just as much passion as Mahmoud does. You’re just not going to act on it.”
She didn’t bother denying that. “Not now.”
“No, not now,” he said thoughtfully. “Call me if you need anything.” And a moment later he was gone, behind the door that separated the cockpit from the tiny, luxurious interior of the plane.
The takeoff into the desert night was smooth and effortless: at least the pilot knew what he was doing. Once they were at a decent altitude she unfastened her seat belt and pulled the burka over her head, shoving it under the seat. She would have preferred to throw it out the window, set it on fire, anything to get rid of it, but she wasn’t that stupid. Spain had a Large Muslim population, and a woman observing purdah would hardly be remarkable. It would require life-or-death circumstances to make her put that thing on again, but unfortunately, such circumstances were the norm right now.
She looked over at the sleeping Mahmoud. She’d seen child soldiers before, of course. Seen them kill, seen them die, and Mahmoud was just one of a long line of faceless bodies. She didn’t believe in the power of redemption, or second chances—she’d been in the business too long. But she also knew that anything was possible. If Killian were dead, Mahmoud would have nothing driving him. Maybe then he might have a future.
She leaned back, looking out into the dark night, then reached inside her bra for the small device that contained her world. It was a cross between a Blackberry, a PDA and a cell phone, so advanced no one could hack into it, at least not as of the day she’d left England. Fortunately, no one had touched her, searched her. She opened the keyboard and began to text, hoping to God Peter was on call. But of course he was. The only thing that could distract him was Genevieve, and at this hour she was probably lying in bed next to him, sound asleep. A few minutes later Isobel snapped the phone shut, tucking it back inside her bra. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were bringing their adopted child back to the U.K. via the Bilbao to Portsmouth ferry, a nice, leisurely ride where no one would think of looking for them. Someone would meet them at the ferry terminal with the proper IDs.
How Peter would get an updated photo of Killian was beyond Isobel’s comprehension, but she didn’t doubt he could do it. He could do anything. In the meantime, she needed to get them to the northern port from wherever they were going to land. She pushed herself out of the chair and headed for the cockpit door.
It was locked. “Bastard,” she muttered under her breath, rattling the latch. “Open the goddamn door,” she snapped.
There was a low murmur of Arabic, and then Killian’s voice, clear and cool. “What do you want?”
“I want you to open the door.”
“Don’t be tiresome.” Did his tone sound odd? She couldn’t be certain. “Go and sit down. We should be landing before long.”
“Landing where? I need to make arrangements.” She rattled the door again.
“We can make arrangements when we land, Sarah. In the meantime take care of little Benjamin.”
She froze. As a code it was far from sophisticated, but the message was clear. Something was wrong, and it didn’t sound as if Killian was going to be able to fix it.
Which left things up to her. She still had the Swiss Army knife, and the engine noise was loud enough to cover her work. In less than a minute the lock clicked open, and she pulled the gun from her waist and pushed at the door. Killian was sitting in the copilot’s seat, handcuffed, and the pilot was holding a pistol to his head. “Go back in the plane,” the man ordered. “Or I’ll shoot your friend.”
“Looks like you’re going to shoot him anyway,” Isobel said, not moving. Killian appeared singularly unalarmed, a fact that annoyed her.
“He’s worth more alive than dead, and I like money. You, however, don’t matter.” The plane must have been on autopilot, for he turned away from the controls and aimed the gun at her.
A mistake, Killian slammed his head against the pilot’s, so hard the man jerked in his seal, and a moment later the two of them were down on the floor, sprawling into the plane. Killian’s hands still bound. Isobel stepped back, out of the way. If she came too close she could be pulled into it, and if she tried to shoot the pilot they could end up with a depressurized cabin. Besides, she might miss and get Killian, which would be a great tragedy to someone in this world, if not to her. She watched, unmoving, as the pilot slammed his elbow into Killian’s unprotected stomach.
She’d witnessed violence before, participated in it. The strange silence of this life-and-death struggle gave it an eerie sense of unreality, as the unpiloted plane flew through the desert night. She ought to do something, ought to stop them, but some small part of her was taking a savage delight in watching Killian get the shit beat out of him.
Except that he was winning. He had the man under him, his knee on his neck. The cracking sound was unmistakable, and then the pilot lay still in the narrow walkway.
Killian rose, falling back into the seat, slightly out of breath. “Get the keys to the handcuffs, would you, princess?”
She didn’t move. “I think I like you better when you’re tied up.”
He didn’t even blink. “It didn’t stop me from killing him, and it wouldn’t stop me from killing you. Can you fly a plane?”
“No. Can you?”
“Of course, I was going to wait until we were closer to landing before I killed him, but you did have to blunder in and precipitate things, didn’t you?” He sounded vaguely annoyed. “Next time, remember I don’t need rescuing.”
“Next time, I’ll let you die,” she said, kneeling down and going through the dead man’s pockets with efficient distaste. She found the keys and threw them to Killian. Found a crumpled back of cigarettes and palmed them, sliding them into her pants pocket.
“You can try,” he said, unfastening the cuffs and tossing them on the body. “Cover him with a blanket or something, will you? I don’t want Mahmoud to wake up and see him. Another dead Arab won’t increase his trust in me.”
“You expect him to trust you?”
“Not exactly. But I’d prefer not to push him over the edge right now. He’s happy to wait to kill me, but he could always change his mind, and I’m not in the mood to break his scrawny little neck,” Killian slid over into the pilot’s seat, checking the gauges with reassuring confidence. But then, when had he ever seemed less than confident? “Close the door and go back to your seat. I’ll let you know when we’re getting close to landing.”
“Landing where? I’ve made arrangements to get us from Spain to England, but I need to know our stalling point.”
“Our pilot was heading toward Málaga, where I expect we had a welcoming committee. I’m heading farther up the coast—there’s an airport in Almeria and one in Murcia. I don’t think this plane holds enough gas to get farther.”
“All right. We’ll rent a car to take us up to Bilbao.”
“We’re leaving from Bilbao? That’s a pretty busy airport.”
“We’re not flying,” she said, and clo
sed the door before he could ask any more questions.
At least she could be enigmatic, too. It wasn’t much of a weapon against someone like Killian, but it was better than vulnerability. She looked down at the dead man on the floor. Someone had betrayed them again, maybe Samuel, maybe someone else. Whoever it was, he knew far too much about Killian’s whereabouts, and her plan was a perfect way to just disappear for twenty- four hours. At this point the only person she could trust was Peter Madsen, and he was a thousand miles away.
This was up to her. She’d be bringing Killian back to the U.K. in one piece, though she didn’t mind if he was a bit battered in the process. But failure wasn’t an option.
Mahmoud was still out, and she put her hand on his forehead. Cool to the touch, and his eyes flickered open for a brief moment, dilated, drugged, before closing again. He wouldn’t be causing any trouble for quite a while, she thought, sinking back into her seat. In the meantime she could only hope Killian was half as capable as he seemed to think he was. Or else they were all going to end up in a fiery crash somewhere north of Algeria or deep in the Mediterranean.
Peter Madsen quickly wiped the memory off his PDA, deleting all trace of Isobel’s message, and tried to ignore the peculiar sense of relief that washed through him. He still wasn’t comfortable with emotions. He’d made peace with the fact that he loved Genevieve to an almost dangerous degree, but he was determined to stay icy and detached as far as his work went. Except that Bastien, the closest friend he’d ever had, had turned his back on what was most precious to him just to save Peter’s life. And Taka had almost died for him as well. Even if he’d paid that debt back in full, it made ties that Peter couldn’t break.
But his strongest ties, after Genevieve, were to Isobel. He could see her so clearly, she was like a mirror of his former self. The ice-cold control, the gnawing pain that was going to make her crazy or kill her if she didn’t find a way to deal with it. You could only stay in this business a certain amount of time before you snapped. And Isobel was dancing on the razor’s edge.
But she was alive, she had Serafin and she was headed to Spain. He’d make arrangements for them to take the car ferry from Bilbao—giving them almost twenty-four hours of breathing space out in the Atlantic. He still wasn’t sure why there was a child to provide papers for as well, but Peter was nothing if not efficient. The papers would be awaiting her at a cafe just outside the city, and they’d be on their way to England by tomorrow evening.
She hadn’t asked for transport to Bilbao, so he was leaving that up to her. Nor had she said anything about the mission—he could only assume it was still on, even if she’d had to go dark for a stretch of time. He didn’t doubt Harry Thomason’s word that Isobel had known Josef Serafin in another life—Harry didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.
And Peter didn’t doubt Isobel had known exactly what she’d been walking into—she didn’t make those kinds of mistakes either. Serafin might be considered the most dangerous man on earth by certain glossy news magazines, but Peter would put his money on Isobel every time.
He flicked off the light switch, setting the alarm system. Overhead he could hear Reno—music that could only be Japanese hip-hop, for God’s sake, and thumps and bumps. Either he had half a dozen girls up there on the floor and he was doing them one by one, or he was doing some sort of exercise. Or dancing. The thought of Reno dancing was enough to send cold shivers down Peter’s spine. He preferred the notion of an orgy. In the few days Reno had been in London it was clear he was like catnip to the nubile female population. It was astonishing he was finding enough time to work on his English.
Peter headed downstairs, out into the darkened streets. Genevieve would be waiting up for him, and he intended to lose himself in her wonderful body tonight. She was already past her fertile time, she’d told him gloomily. So now they could fuck just for the sheer pleasure of it, something he was looking forward to. He didn’t mind providing stud service on call for Genevieve—there were far worse things on his plate—but he was looking forward to having the two of them in bed with no agenda. Maybe even doing a few things that didn’t make babies but provided shattering pleasure.
No, he was going to have a good night, and then sleep soundly. He’d put enough roadblocks in Thomason’s way; their former boss wouldn’t know Isobel had successfully completed the mission until she was safely back in London.
If Peter were a decent human being he’d have some pity for the old man. Thomason had been shoved out of the job and the world he’d controlled for almost two decades, replaced by a female, no less. He’d do just about anything to get back in power, and the only way he was going to do that was over Isobel’s dead body.
Not that Thomason would dare go that far. Not from any moral qualms—it was his ruthless ordering of terminations that had finally been his downfall—but because too many people were watching him. However, he was entirely capable of sabotaging Isobel’s mission so that he could step in.
Peter had made sure Thomason wouldn’t know she was in Spain, or if she was even alive, until she could present herself in person, mission complete. And then maybe Sir Harry would get the message.
In the meantime Reno had provided a distraction. Thomason had been so horrified, he’d gone rushing off, presumably to do his best to get both Reno and his cousin Taka drummed out of the Committee. It wasn’t going to happen, but it would keep Sir Harry occupied for a few days until Isobel came home.
And then life was going to get very interesting indeed. In the meantime, Peter had a woman waiting for him, and he’d stayed too long at the office already. He glanced at the shaded windows of the third floor flat and shook his head, Isobel was going to love finding out about Reno.
12
Killian might think he knew how to pilot a plane, but several hours later Isobel was far from convinced. It was still dark outside when they landed—or crashed, if she decided to be critical—and if he’d found an actual airfield she’d be surprised. They were in the middle of nowhere, hopefully in Spain, but she couldn’t even be sure of that. Mahmoud had woken up for a few moments, long enough to try to stab her with a knife she hadn’t realized he was carrying, and once she’d disarmed him he fell asleep again. Even the bumpy, jarring landing didn’t disturb him, but at least his color, beneath the layers of dirt, was better than it had been.
Killian emerged from the cockpit, stepping over the blanketed body of their erstwhile pilot. “Not bad,” he said.
“Not good,” Isobel said. “Where the hell are we?”
“Spain.”
“Thank God for small favors. Where in Spain?”
“Did you know your English accent is starting to slip, princess? You’d best be careful if you don’t want people like Peter Madsen and Harry Thomason knowing all your secrets.”
She didn’t blink. “How do you know who works for the Committee? I would have thought you’d be too busy pillaging and ruining countries and conducting ethnic cleansings. Though you have done a singularly bad job of it, haven’t you? One botched massacre after another. It’s no wonder you need to turn to your enemies to keep you alive.’
“I wasn’t aware there was anyone left in this world who wasn’t my enemy,” he said. “And I’ve survived as long as I have because I find out what I need to know. Do you want me to tell you where Bastien Toussaint and his family are living? I can even give you longitude and latitude. What about Takashi O’Brien and his American wife? I’m not sure she’s too happy with the Roppongi district of Tokyo—she’d probably be happier out in the countryside, but O’Brien has work to do. And then there’s Madsen and his wife, and their cozy little house in Wiltshire, where she plays dress-up and tries to get pregnant. I know everything.”
Isobel kept her face stony. “You must have an informant,” she said. I’ll have to see about that when I get back.”
“Heads will roll?” he murmured. “What I’m most interested in is why you seem to have had no sex life whatsoever. Don’t tell me you’re s
till pining for me despite my betrayal?”
“Everyone betrays you, sooner or later.” she said with devastating calm. “You weren’t the first and you weren’t the last. I admit killing you might have been a little traumatic for the stupid girl that I was, but I’ve learned to adjust, and I can kill quite easily now.”
“I think that’s a lie,” he said. “I think you suffer the torments of the damned when you have to terminate someone. You’re not a born killer.”
“You think not? Perhaps you’re right—in general I don’t like to take lives, no matter how evil my target. But I can thank you for a major change in my attitude. For the first time in my life I’m really looking forward to killing someone.’ The threat wasn’t veiled. He knew exactly what she meant.
And the son of a bitch laughed. “I give you free rein to try, princess. You should have realized by now I’m a great deal harder to kill than most people.”
“I can rise to the challenge.”
He wasn’t the slightest bit daunted. “Let’s get out of here. You can fill me in on your bloody plans once we’re in England.”
“We aren’t going to get to England unless you tell me exactly where we are.”
“Outside of Zaragoza. This little plane had more range than I realized, and I thought I’d get us as close to Bilbao as I could manage. Not the main airport—I didn’t want to have to deal with air traffic controllers and customs. Besides, the Spanish air force is stationed there and I’d like to avoid them if possible.”
“I imagine you would. What about rental cars?”
“Why rent when you can steal?”
“Because it attracts more attention?” she suggested with deceptive calm.
“Not if it’s done right. The Citroën was stolen, you know.”
She didn’t bother to ask which Citroën. “You’re just lucky you’ve gotten away with it so far.”
“I’m still alive, aren’t I? I guess that proves how lucky I am. How’s Mahmoud?”
