Power was a strong aphrodisiac, and something that Maxim used both to control his own men and retain his grip over the local population.
Except Maxim wanted more.
He dug his fingers into his palms as the soles of his boots echoed off the concrete walls. He could smell the fear emanating from the group of men as he approached, and it did nothing to allay the fury that was coursing through his body.
Hunting down the boy had taken years of work; the past three years of his sordid life had revolved around tracking his movements, planning to kidnap him, then watching helplessly as each opportunity slipped by because the Section moved the boy, and the hunt began once more.
Until last month, when Maxim finally traced him to the gated community in Cyprus favoured by embassy workers and ex-pats alike.
Weeks of planning, getting his team in place one by one posing as tourists, so as not to alert the authorities. They’d travelled into Cyprus via Greece, buying European Union passports from a backstreet vendor in Athens, finding it easy to obtain fake identities within a country struggling with debt and an influx of refugees from the Middle East.
Days spent following the boy and the woman from a distance, noting the weak spots in their routine. There hadn’t been many, and the team were growing frustrated by the time they realised the chink in the woman’s armour was the half-hearted security at the compound that she’d grown to rely on.
Yet, despite all that, the woman had outsmarted his best men, who now lay in various states of decomposition in an Akrotiri morgue, their identities unknown thanks to his foresight to strip them of any identification that could lead back to their home country.
And she and the boy had disappeared once more.
Maxim felt warmth in his palm and, lifting his hand, realised he’d drawn blood. He stopped, licked his skin clean, then glared at the assembled men.
‘Where is she?’
‘Last seen in Berlin, Maxim,’ said an older man, his black hair shot through with grey. He met Maxim’s glare with an unwavering stare of his own. ‘Our contact sent his man after her, yet he was also outwitted.’
Maxim snorted. ‘She’s just a woman, Vadir.’ He gestured towards the doors. ‘No more than one of those bitches out there that snivel around your heels and take your drugs.’ He ground his teeth. ‘This is our last chance. She knows now that nothing has changed in three years.’
‘She doesn’t know who we are,’ insisted Vadir. ‘Nothing was ever traced to you back then, and nothing will be traced back to you now.’
Maxim stuffed his hands into the pockets of the heavy coat he wore. The edges of the forest were cold, even at this time of year, and it would only grow colder over the coming weeks. No sunlight penetrated the building despite the small windows inserted into the high walls, and he longed to return outside.
Instead, he began to pace, in an effort to control the panic that was beginning to rise within him in the confines of the building, as well as work off some of the anger that threatened to overwhelm him.
He needed to stay calm, to think, to plan.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Use your contacts. Find out where she could have gone.’ He spun on his heel to face his men. ‘Hunt her down.’
Chapter Eighteen
Prague
* * *
Eva twitched the curtain and surveyed the street below.
She’d woken at the sound of a car pulling up outside, wiping sleep from her bleary eyes as she’d stumbled out of the bedroom and across to the front window in the living area.
‘Who is it?’
Nathan moved by her side, his voice no more than a murmur.
‘Only the owner of the place next door,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘Opening time.’ She let the curtain fall back into place. ‘Did you sleep okay?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’ He stepped aside to let her pass. ‘What’s the plan for today?’
‘I’ve got some stuff to sort out.’ Eva sank onto one of the sofas and curled her legs up under her. ‘There are some things here I need to go through,’ she said. ‘It might take me a while.’
Nathan perched on the arm of the sofa opposite. ‘What sort of things?’
She met his gaze. ‘Some files, to start with.’
‘I’m guessing you mean you’ve got copies of Section documents.’
‘Some of them, yes. It’s okay, they’re in a safe. Only Douglas and myself knew the combination,’ she added when his jaw dropped.
‘You realise that’s a breach of the Official Secrets Act?’
‘Nathan, my whole life has been a breach of one law or another. I’m past caring.’ Eva stood and stretched her back muscles. ‘I want to find out who the hell betrayed me and put Alex’s life in danger.’
‘Do you really have no idea why someone wants you dead?’
‘What exactly do you know about me?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Humour me.’
‘You’re Eva Delacourt. You’ve been in a government-run witness protection scheme with your son, Alex, ever since an unknown assassin killed your fiancé, Douglas Bolton. You’re still considered a high-risk target because of your own past as an assassin, which is why your location is changed every eighteen months to two years. There have been no threats on your life for three years, which is why you were only assigned a watching brief. Me.’
‘No-one else in the Section knows about it?’
‘Well, they probably do now after yesterday’s events. But, no – it was just me, Miles, and Knox. And, I suppose, Petersen – your old boss. After all, he was the one that put you both into the witness protection programme in the first place.’
Eva sighed. ‘That’s what I thought. Did you have sight of what my next location was going to be?’
He shook his head. ‘That wasn’t known. Not at the time. Miles told me it was Copenhagen when he was interviewing you. The way they run it, they’ll have three or four options being set up at the same time. They choose the final one at the very last minute, to try to prevent anyone finding out.’
Eva stood up, then moved across to the window and checked the street below once more.
‘Have you heard from your contact?’
She shook her head. ‘He won’t email back. He’ll be here if and when he can.’
‘What if he doesn’t show up?’
‘He will.’
‘Yes, but how long will we have to wait for him?’ Nathan said, pacing the room. ‘I mean, there’s a very good chance the Section will have traced our movements by now – I’ve seen the technology they’ve got.’ He checked his watch. ‘I reckon we’ve got twenty-four hours at most before we’ll have to move.’
‘Nathan, I know.’ Eva held up her hand. ‘I know. Look, I really need to check through my stuff. Can you keep Alex occupied when he wakes up?’
‘Sure, why not?’ said Nathan, his tone exasperated. ‘I’ll just stay here and babysit, shall I?’
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ said Eva. ‘I’m sorry you’ve got involved, really I am, but let’s just deal with it, shall we?’
‘Fine.’
Eva brushed past him before he could utter another word, and made her way back along the passageway to the bedroom. She glanced over her shoulder before closing the door, and pulled a chair across the rug until she could prop it under the door handle.
‘That’ll have to do.’
She moved to the large bay window, checked the net curtain was securely in place, then crouched down next to the window seat. She swore as a nail broke under her efforts to move the wooden seat cover, then felt the surface give way, and pulled it free.
Setting down the lid, she knelt next to the exposed metal door of the fireproof safe, and wiped the grease from her fingers.
The tell that she’d left in place under the seat hadn’t moved, so evidently the Section had never discovered her hiding place after Douglas’s death.
Nor had her enemies.
She
chewed her lip. Maybe she, Alex, and Nathan stood a fighting chance after all.
In her heart, she knew she wasn’t going to keep running this time; at some point, she’d draw on all her resources and take the fight to those who wanted her dead.
First, though, she had to ensure Alex remained safe – he was her only focus for now.
Eva checked over her shoulder.
The door remained shut, the faint sound of voices reaching her ears, and she realised Alex had woken up.
She reached out and turned the locking mechanism on the safe, then lifted the lid. She pushed aside a clip of photographs she knew she had to resist the temptation to look through, or else she’d lose her composure.
Instead, she pulled out a stapled set of handwritten notes and ran her fingers over them. Lifting them to her face, she inhaled the last remnants of Douglas’s scent that still clung to the pages.
She blinked away the tears that threatened to form, and cleared her throat.
‘Concentrate,’ she murmured.
After they’d left his official residence and hid above the bookshop for those last precious days, Douglas had insisted on writing everything down about the case he’d been working on. At the time, Eva had shrugged, her attention on ensuring the small apartment remained under the radar, and not on his need to justify his movements over the past few weeks.
She folded the pages and put them to one side on the floor next to her, then emptied the safe of its most useful contents.
Passports, first – alternative ones for her and Alex that she’d procured as a back-up; ones that she’d never really expected to need. A third passport joined them; she’d already committed to ensuring Nathan’s safety, and so with a bit of handiwork she could create a new identity for him using Douglas’s spare.
She’d never told Douglas about the passports. Their relationship hadn’t left room for her to explain the intricacies of her life, and for a brief moment she wondered what could have been, if she’d foreseen what was going to happen and had insisted on them disappearing instead.
She spent another half an hour poring over the information she’d obtained from the Section’s secret files, but none of it gave her any indication as to how or by whom her location had been compromised.
Finally, she pulled out a cloth bag from the safe, reached inside, and extracted two bundles of cash – one in Euros, the other in American dollars.
Closing the safe and putting the window seat back in place, she gathered the items together, and fetched a small backpack from the top shelf of the wardrobe.
She froze at the sound of the door entry system buzzing in the hallway, then crossed the room in an instant and tore the door open.
‘Wait.’
Nathan was already standing next to it, pointing at the screen.
‘This man says he knows you,’ he said, and inclined his head towards the image on the screen.
The figure of a man glared back at them, his pale eyes half-hidden under a black woollen hat that had been pulled so hard onto his head, it covered his eyebrows. His jaw appeared slightly stubbled, and his nose bore the signs of a retired boxer. A black coat covered the top half of his body, the collar pulled up under his chin.
He jerked his head at the door, then held up his hand, and a tray of three takeaway coffee cups and a milkshake filled the screen.
Eva exhaled, some of the tension from the past twenty-four hours slipping from her body. ‘Decker. Thank God you’re here.’
She hit the door release, then walked through to the living area to wait.
‘Hang on,’ said Nathan as the sound of the stairs creaking reached them. ‘Who is this man?’
‘He used to have the dubious reputation of being one of the best assassins in Europe,’ said Eva. ‘And he can be temperamental, so my advice to you is, play nice.’
Chapter Nineteen
Prague
* * *
Not only had Decker brought coffee, he’d also had the foresight to bring food provisions, and now the smell of cooking filled the small kitchen.
Eva had introduced Decker to Nathan, and had explained how their presence at the apartment had come to be.
‘You were lucky you saw Parkes in the hotel lobby,’ he said, taking a plate loaded with bacon, eggs, and toast from her and joining Nathan at the table. ‘I don’t know that you’d have had a chance to escape otherwise.’
Eva spun round from cooking her own food at a loud clatter.
Nathan shrugged apologetically, and picked up his knife and fork once more. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m still finding it hard to believe people are trying to kill us.’
Decker shook a liberal helping of salt and pepper over his breakfast, passed the condiments to him, and began to eat. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Eva plated up her own food, and sat next to Alex. She ruffled his hair as he glanced up at her. ‘Eat it all,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll grow up to be big and strong.’
‘Like Decker?’
A smile split the hard features of the brute of a man sitting opposite. ‘Like me.’
Alex grinned, and attacked his food once more with gusto.
‘What are your immediate plans?’ asked Decker.
‘I’ve gone through the files I’d hidden here,’ said Eva. ‘The man in the lobby, Samuel Parkes, was hired by Gerald Knox but turned rogue. The accepted rumour was that he left the secret service after being offered a lot of money to do so.’
‘Is that when Knox sent you after him?’
‘Hang on. What?’ Nathan spun in his chair to face Eva. ‘What did he just say?’
Eva shook her head, and waited until she’d finished her mouthful before speaking. ‘Petersen sent me. At the time, he wanted to keep Knox’s involvement to a minimum – said it’d be a conflict of interest if he sent an assassin to catch his own assassin.’
‘I can’t imagine Knox took it that well.’
‘If he did, he didn’t show it,’ said Eva. ‘I think he was as relieved as Petersen that the problem was addressed quickly without casting aspersions on the Section.’
‘How did you…’ Decker raised an eyebrow, and inclined his head towards Alex.
‘Alex, could you fetch the rest of that bacon on that plate next to the stove for Decker, please?’ said Eva, and waited until Alex was out of earshot. ‘Poison.’
‘And you were sure it worked?’
She nodded. ‘All the signs were there. And it was reported the next day that a man had been found dead in that apartment matching Parkes’s description. Petersen showed me the clipping. I’ve got a copy of it on my file.’
‘So, he’s got some influential friends,’ said Nathan. ‘If he can get a newspaper to help fabricate his death.’
‘True.’
Decker leaned back as Alex approached with the extra food and put it on the table next to his elbow. ‘Thanks, kiddo. Do you want some of this?’ he asked Nathan, then heaped the bacon onto his plate after the man had shaken his head. ‘I wonder why he waited three years to come after you?’
‘I don’t think his contacts knew where to find me,’ said Eva. ‘Let’s face it,’ she added, pointing at Nathan, ‘only he and Miles knew my exact locations – even Knox didn’t know where I was until my cover got blown.’
‘But there was a gap of six months between you, er, dealing with him, and what happened to Douglas,’ said Nathan, keeping a wary eye on Alex in case the boy suddenly realised what they were talking about. ‘So why not come after you during that time?’
‘Maybe he was too sick,’ suggested Decker. ‘If he was poisoned—,’ he held up his hand to silence Eva’s protests, ‘then it may have taken some time to recover. Whatever was meant to kill him, didn’t, but every poison will take its toll on the body somehow. Perhaps by the time he was well enough to contemplate revenge, it was too late – Eva was in hiding.’
‘Can I get down, please?’ said Alex.
‘Of course,’ said Eva, and watched as the boy trotted off t
o the living room, before the sounds of him playing with his toy car reached her.
She pushed her plate away and sighed. ‘How the hell does someone survive poisoning? It’s usually so effective.’
Nathan spluttered on his last mouthful and reached out for a glass of water. He eyed it suspiciously.
Eva rolled her eyes. ‘You’re one of the good guys,’ she said. ‘Drink.’
‘Where did you get the poison from?’ asked Decker.
‘One of the Section’s contacts acquired it for me. I made the pick-up an hour before the hit, then got the hell out of there.’
‘So, no time to check it was the right stuff?’
Eva leaned her elbow on the table and tapped her chin. ‘No.’
‘You’re saying it was deliberately just enough to make him sick, but not enough to kill him?’ said Nathan.
Decker nodded. ‘Exactly. Eva would have waited to see the poison take effect, and then cleared off before anyone spotted her, am I right?’
She nodded. ‘Right.’ She leaned back in her chair, stunned. ‘Why on earth would I be sent to kill someone, if the Section wanted him to survive?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Decker. He pointed at her with his fork. ‘But every minute you stay here, it gets more dangerous for you and Alex.’
‘No-one in the Section knows about this apartment.’
‘Can you be certain of that?’
Eva swallowed. ‘The place hasn’t been touched since Douglas and I left here three years ago, Decker.’
Decker narrowed his eyes. ‘They’re good, Eva. Remember that.’
‘I’m certain of it.’
‘All right. I trust you. What are you going to do?’
She looked down at her hands. ‘I thought I might see if I can talk with Scott Lancaster. He might have heard things in my absence. Maybe he’s heard something I can use to get a toe-hold in this mess and find out what’s really going on.’
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