“That’s your problem. Frankly, I don’t care what happens to you. I still owe you for Paris, and I just know that you’re itching to find out which of us is better. That’s something I’d welcome too, but it hardly seems critical at the moment, does it?”
Milverton took another swig of beer. “At the end of the day, I’m a businessman, and right now I’m doing business with a very nasty man whose money and resources command a great deal of my respect. Still, I am eager to get this particular transaction over with, and what happens to my current employer after that…”
And then Milverton did something that caught Devlin completely by surprise: he gave him a sympathetic, man-to-man look, unaffected and unadorned. There was no fear in it, but there was some vulnerability. Imagine that, the “worst man in London,” vulnerable. Or at least honest. “In the end, we both want the same thing, don’t we?”
“A woman…” said Devlin. “And that’s why you’re offering me a deal.”
Milverton shook his head. “No. There’s no deal. It’s strictly take it or leave it. Skorzeny’s been looking for you for a long time, and my job is to deliver you to him.”
There was nothing to lose. “Where is he?” asked Devlin.
Milverton laughed. “He’s in France, at his ‘country house.’ You know what a history buff the old bugger is, and he’s taken it into his head that the safest and most discreet place for him to be at the moment is in the monastery of Clairvaux.”
“The Clara Vallis. Latin for Clairvaux. At least he hasn’t lost his famous sense of humor. You know, the one that nearly broke the Bank of England.” Devlin didn’t mention he’d already figured that out, and had acted accordingly.
Milverton flashed anger. “England is finished,” he barked, “and I’ll thank you not to rub it in…anyway, what happens after I deliver you to him is none of my business.”
“You mean, you don’t care if I kill him.”
“Shit, as they say, happens. I’m offering you a swap — your life for your country’s. If you refuse, I give you an EMP blast that will cripple your country for…for long enough for your enemies to finish you off.”
“What about the little girl?”
“Unfortunately, she’s not part of the transaction.”
“Then let’s get this over with, then,” said Devlin.
“Not until you answer my question,” replied Milverton. “Do you trust the bitch? I don’t see why you should. She was on to you in Paris before I was. She’s good. Very good.” Milverton took another swig of his beer. “You know, for a professional, you’re a bit of a nancy boy, emotionally speaking. You don’t even know her real name, do you?”
Devlin decided to ignore the question. In fact, come to think of it, he didn’t. “The bomb. The EMP. Launching it from a ship — on a weather balloon — on the open seas. That is very clever.”
Milverton laughed again, this time for real. “We try.” He rose, walked over to a desk, and opened the lid of a laptop. “No, don’t get up. It isn’t safe.”
The laptop sprang back to life. Milverton touched a few keys, then spoke into the laptop’s mic. “Whither away,” was all he said. Then he turned back to Devlin. “The Clara Vallis is still safely beyond American territorial waters, and the weather balloon is now well and truly launched. All that remains for me to do is arm the package and in a few hours an EMP blast will ripple across the eastern United States and that, as they say, will be that. Which is why my offer’s sell-by date is getting shorter by the minute.”
The room’s sensor controls, Devlin knew, would be on the laptop; he’d have to disable it to fight safely, but not destroy the hard drive…
“It’s showtime, O my brother. The pity is, we’ll neither of us ever get to know each other on, shall we say, a real first-name basis.” Milverton punched in the arming codes. The only way for Devlin now to stop the bomb was to get to that laptop, to force Milverton to give him the rollback codes. But first he had to disable it, to give himself freedom of movement. Right.
At that moment, Devlin’s phone rang.
He didn’t move, but only looked at Milverton, who nodded. “Maybe it’s your girlfriend.”
Carefully, Devlin pulled the BlackBerry out of his breast pocket. It was still ringing. “It’s her,” he said.
“Well, bloody talk to her,” urged Milverton. “Never let it be said that I was not enough of a gentleman to allow the condemned a last tender moment. Who Dares, Wins.”
Devlin pressed the Talk button, at the same time he hit the “Sym” key. “I’m having the nicest chat,” he said into the phone as he electronically swept the room. “I think a vacation in France would be lovely. Yes. Some historic little town tucked away in a valley where we can drink absinthe and make love….”
He was right: the motion sensors were being controlled from the laptop. Blind the laptop and he just might have a chance. Let’s see just how good he was.
Milverton laughed and signaled for him to wrap it up.
“Good-bye, Maryam,” he said. “Wish me luck.”
Milverton let out a chuckle. “Very touching. And now, for the last time, I ask, what is she to you?
Devlin realized he was serious. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Then you’re fooling yourself. She’s a dream, the dream of the prisoner in the condemned hold. You think that this time it’s going to be different, but when they string you up and drop the trap, you’ll realize as your neck snaps that it was all a fantasy. Blokes like us, we spend our lives not trusting anybody but ourselves and our weapons, and then some skirt comes along, the one with our name on her arse, and down we go. Happens to the best of us. And you and I…we are the best.”
Now or never.
Devlin leaped, rolled, firing four shots from the semiautomatic Glock as fast as he could. No time for niceties, just marksmanship. The laptop’s LCD screen shattered. He was that fast.
So was Milverton. The return fire nearly took his head off. Then the lights went out. That much he expected. The strobe light, he didn’t. Like a seventies’ disco, but brighter and more blinding. Illuminating the target, which was him.
He charged, hit the sofa, and flipped it over, ducking beneath it as the shots rained down. Mentally, he calculated the trajectory. Milverton was slightly above him, on a stairway, seizing the high ground, firing down. His temporary refuge was now a killing field. He had to get out of there.
Frontal assault. It was the only way.
He managed to get just enough purchase, just enough leverage, to shove the sofa in Milverton’s general direction. The motion caught his eye, then his aim, then his fire.
Big mistake.
The Glock still had plenty of ammo left.
The whirling strobe died first. Then he put a perfect multi-round shot group where his senses and his experience told him Milverton would be.
He was wrong. Milverton was that fast.
Milverton landed on him from behind, clawing, tearing, scratching. Devlin was knocked to the ground by the impetus.
Knives. He had none. And Milverton, he knew from experience, would have several. The first order of business was to protect himself. The killing thrust would come almost immediately. He rolled…
And took it right in the shoulder. Deep, slicing through the trapezius, the supraspinatus, and the head of the triceps. More than deep enough.
He was prepared for the pain. He welcomed it.
For it froze Milverton’s knife hand, just long enough…
He came up firing.
He could hear Milverton groan as his insides were shredded. It would take him an agonizing while to die.
Which meant he was more dangerous than ever.
No time to relax. Dead wasn’t dead until dead was dead.
He shot him again. He could hear the man’s agonized breathing, then a scrabbling as he moved, clawing his way toward something.
Toward the computer, its shattered screen casting off sparks. But it was still dangerous — as dangerous
as Milverton.
In his pain, a vision of the dying FBI agent came to him. The woman, whose name he never knew and never would know, her face turned to his, her last question on her lips: “Who are you?”
Another unanswered question.
Ahead, he heard a crashing. Of things swept away, to the floor. Of desperation as Milverton lunged for the laptop. “You’re too late!” came the voice in the darkness. Big mistake.
His last shot followed the voice trail, striking Milverton square amidships. He fell.
Time to end this.
Devlin dove, landing hard on Milverton’s back, full force. He could hear the spine break.
“Get it over with,” said the paralyzed man lying beneath him. The pain must have been agonizing. Devlin could feel the involuntary twitching, as the body’s neuromuscular system shut down. It would not be long now.
“No luck,” he said. “I’m not that nice a guy.”
“Who are you?” begged Milverton, still clutching the laptop beneath him.
Devlin popped another clip into his weapon. “The codes. I need those codes.”
“Fuck you!”
“Not interested. You’re done. You’ve never done a single worthwhile thing in your whole life. Now’s a real good time to start.”
Whether he had touched his conscience or whether it was the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death, Milverton suddenly softened. “Trade,” said the dying man.
“Trade,” soothed Devlin.
“Save her…” Milverton released the laptop.
“If I can,” said Devlin, grabbing it. “The codes?”
The light was going out in Milverton’s eyes. “Bernard, Malachy…” he whispered. The pain must have been excruciating, but the SAS man was a tough guy to the end.
Devlin patched the laptop into his PDA and punched what had to be the codes: 1146–1139.
Bernard. Malachy. The years of the Second Crusade and the Malachy prophecies. Things that obviously meant something to Skorzeny. What the hell were they dealing with here? A madman, yes, but a special kind of madman. A madman whose battle was not with the world, but with God.
He had been right all along: the “terrorist” angle was just a smokescreen. St. Bernard, St. Malachy, the passage from Revelation that Milverton had quoted to the President…There was an apocalypse coming all right, but it didn’t have anything to do with the Hidden Imam or the Second Coming.
Milverton was telling the truth. The message flashed:
OVERRIDE SEQUENCE. ABORT Y/N?
He had time. Just enough time. He looked back at Milverton.
“Where is she? Where’s Emma?”
He could just barely hear the words. “With her.”
He took pity on him.
Devlin turned the sofa upright, lifted Milverton off the floor, and laid him down, gently, on the couch. “Die in bed, O my brother,” he said.
He tossed the flat, took everything that was useful, including the hard drive, set the charges — SAS could pick up the rubble later — and downed his beer.
There was a picture of a beautiful woman on Milverton’s desk. At last he understood what had happened to Emma.
He memorized the face and laid the picture over Milverton’s dead heart.
Chapter Fifty-five
CLAIRVAUX PRISON
Emanuel Skorzeny got into the elevator that would take him down to Level Seven, the most secure part of the prison. It was the French equivalent of the Supermax facility in Colorado, reserved for the most dangerous inmates in the country.
Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, the notorious “Carlos the Jackal,” was lying across his bunk with his back to the cell door, smoking a cigarette. France having succumbed to the antismoking hysteria that had swept the West, it was against the law to smoke in any public building, which included the prisons. But when cigarettes were outlawed, only outlaws would have cigarettes, and Carlos was living proof of the proposition.
“What’s up, Manny?” Carlos asked him in English, without preamble. He still had a very strong and pronounced Latin American accent.
Skorzeny hated to start a conversation without preamble. And he really hated it when Carlos called him Manny. “How are you today, Monsieur Ramirez Sanchez?”
Carlos rolled over and deigned to look at him. It infuriated Skorzeny that he, one of the most powerful men in the world, had to take such insolence from a man like Ramirez Sanchez, but there it was. Luckily, this would be the last time he would have to spend in the man’s company. Even though they’d known each other for decades, they were business associates, not friends. “I don’t hear no noise.”
“This far underground, and this far away, I doubt that even your keen ears will pick up any sound. You’ll certainly hear the reports, however.”
“You’d be surprised what I can hear way down here,” said Carlos. “Anyway, I never had nothing against the Americans—”
“That’s because you’re a mercenary, not an ideologue. Even with a name like Ilyich.”
“I want to fuck up the Arabs. For what they did to me.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you kidnapped the OPEC delegates in Vienna. You made some powerful enemies back then.”
Carlos snorted and chain-lit another cigarette. “Look who’s talking. When word of this gets out, your life ain’t going to be worth jack shit.”
Skorzeny smiled. At last, he had this churl at a disadvantage. “Of course word is going to get out. It’s supposed to get out. It’s my ship. I learned a long time ago that it is far better to be feared than loved. And the increase in my investments—”
“Easy for you say,” said Carlos, looking bored. “Even if you richer than God, nobody fucking loves you. Don’t you know the old song? ‘Money can’t buy me love.’ I think that was the Beatles.”
Skorzeny was to remonstrate with this savage that somebody indeed did love him, that she was waiting for him, desiring him, lying in his bed right now…but this was no time to lose focus.
“Anyway,” continued Carlos. “There are plenty of Arabs in here. North Africans, Algerians. The place is filthy with them.”
Carlos rose and padded over to his crude shaving mirror. It wasn’t a real mirror, of course, not one made of glass. More like a reflective surface, embedded in the wall. He put his hand on it and pushed—
The sound of voices, wafting from somewhere. Spooky.
“This used to be the cellars of the old abbey. Where the monks could hide out, get drunk, fuck around, whatever. But they built it so they could hear what was goin’ on upstairs. ‘Whispering galleries’ or some shit like that. Amazing what those medieval guys could do with no electricity. You can hear a fish fart in the pond. Anyway, I pay off every month for the authorities to leave it alone.”
Skorzeny could hear the voices quite clearly now, rough voices speaking in French, Arabic, Urdu, Chinese, Vietnamese…the mother country’s violent progeny. “You’re a powerful man, Monsieur Ramirez Sanchez.”
“Yeah, well,” said Carlos, “look where it got me…. Anyway, what you want? I guess if you’re here, the shit really is about to hit the fan.”
Skorzeny wished he had some water in which to wash his hands. Just being near this man made him feel unclean. “I wanted to tell you”—here he was, off-balance again—“that it’s been a pleasure doing business with you. What we’ve done together, this day—”
“Or else you scared of something.”
Skorzeny despised it when anyone interrupted him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. His power was useless here. “The only thing I fear is the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death, and I intend to postpone that as long as possible.”
Carlos sat back down and looked Skorzeny over. “Yeah, well, from the looks of you, that won’t be all that long. You still scared of that kid whose parents you killed. You and those Arabs.”
This was hitting uncomfortably close to home. “We all…took part in that conversation. You, me…the American.”
Skorzeny was referring to Seelye.
“And that’s why he fucked you. ’Cause you fucked him. Everybody guilty, and everybody gotta pay. Way of the world. Me, I’m already doing it. You got a ways to go.”
Skorzeny tried to control his rising anger and anxiety. “You’re wrong. That boy is dead. If he wasn’t then, he is now. Our plan is going to work—”
“What’s in it for you? More money? Ain’t you got enough?”
“Revenge is what’s in it for me. And altruism.”
Carlos laughed in his face. “That’s a good one. You keep telling yourself that.”
“Euthanasia, then,” said Skorzeny. Why was he on the defensive?
“That’s a big word for murder, Manny.”
That did it. Skorzeny actually raised his voice: “How many times do I have to tell you—”
“What’you going to do about it, baby? Have me killed? One word from me and every porch monkey in this joint gonna be looking to fuck you up. So why don’t you shut up and listen for once in your sorry-ass life?”
This was getting out of hand. “Listen to what?” demanded Skorzeny. He had better things to do than to sit here and—
“Listen to this,” said Carlos, holding up a hand for silence.
The voices had stopped. That much he could tell. Skorzeny strained his ears, to pick up whatever it was that Carlos was hearing.
And then he heard it.
Thwack thwack thwack…It was like the beating of wings.
But it wasn’t angels. It was helicopters.
“I think you got company,” said Carlos, lying back down on his bunk. “It was a real pleasure doing business with you, Manny. Have a nice day.”
Chapter Fifty-six
CLAIRVAUX PRISON
“Eddie Bartlett” brought his MH-60/DAP Black Hawk down low and fast. The United States didn’t have bases in France any more, not since de Gaulle had withdrawn from NATO, but American ships still put into port in the south of France and so he had come aboard the USS Heliotrope near St. Paul-de-Vence, where the Black Hawk was gassed and good to go.
There was no flak over French air space. Not that he had expected actual gunfire, but usually the French got a serious wedgie whenever the Americans looked crossways at them. This must be a very special occasion.
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