Page 25 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

“I still am.”

“No.” Julian shook his head. “You’re almost eighty years old. Your reflexes are shot, your joints are failing, and you walked into an obvious trap because you were too arrogant to consider that someone might be waiting for you.” He stopped circling, positioning himself between Vera and the door. “You’re a relic, Mrs. Calloway. A museum piece. And it’s time to close the exhibit.”

Vera said nothing. She was calculating distances, angles, options. The pepper spray was in her bag, but she would never reach it before he fired. The door knocker was too slow. And even if she could get to him, he was younger, faster, stronger.

She needed a different approach.

“So what happens now?” she asked. “You shoot me and dump the body in the river?”

“Nothing so crude.” Julian reached into his pocket and produced a silver lighter. “This mill is a condemned building. Full of old timber, dry rot, and—” he gestured at a pile of hessian sacks in the corner “—highly flammable materials. There’s also several hundred pounds of grain dust in the upper hoppers. When that ignites...” He made an expanding gesture with his free hand. “Boom.”

“A fire.”

“An accident. A tragic accident involving a confused elderly woman who wandered into a dangerous building and somehow knocked over a kerosene lamp.” He flicked the lighter open, letting the flame dance. “No bullet wounds. No forensic evidence. Just another sad story about the dangers of urban exploration.”

Vera watched the flame. “And the files? The maps? All this evidence of your operation?”

“Burned with everything else. Convenient, as I’ve been told to destroy it. Of course, I’ll relocate to a new base, complete the final acquisitions, and be on a plane to Zurich before anyone starts asking questions.” He smiled. “Mrs. Gable will be convicted of Pym’s murder. The other holdouts will sell in a panic. And Lark’s End will be a memory.”

“You’ve thought of everything.”

“I’m a professional, Mrs. Calloway. Unlike you, I don’t let sentiment cloud my judgment.”

He tossed the lighter onto the pile of hessian sacks.

The flame caught immediately—a hungry orange flicker that spread across the oil-stained fabric with terrifying speed.

“Goodbye, Vera,” Julian said. “For what it’s worth, I respect what you were. But the Cold War is over. These days, we just have hostile takeovers.”

He walked toward her. Vera tensed, ready to fight, ready to go down swinging if necessary.

But he didn’t shoot her. Instead, he reached out and plucked the glasses from her face.

The world dissolved into a blur.

Vera gasped. Without her thick lenses, Julian became a smeared shape, the room a confusion of colors and shadows. She couldn’t see his expression, couldn’t track his movements, couldn’t judge distances.

“There,” Julian said, his voice sounding distant and distorted. “Helpless. Just a confused old lady who got lost in the dark.”

He pocketed her glasses.

“Now, sit.”

A hand shoved her backward. Vera stumbled, her depth perception gone, and fell hard into a wooden chair. Before she could scramble up, she felt him behind her—hands grabbing her wrists, pulling them back.

Zip ties. The familiar bite of plastic against skin, pulled tight enough to hurt.

“Comfortable?” His voice was close to her ear.

“I’ve had better hospitality at Ryanair.”

A short laugh. Then footsteps, moving away.

“The fire will reach the grain dust in about four minutes,” Julian called from somewhere across the room. “You’ll want to make peace with whatever god you believe in. Though given your file, I suspect you stopped believing in anything a long time ago.”

A door opened. A rush of cool air.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Calloway.”