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Nota truck,I chastise myself.
It’sa lorry.
I wait.
A black Lexus comes down the road, slows, and stops.
The driver’s window—still on the wrong side, my American mind complains—slides down, and a smiling Jeremy Windsor calls out to me.
“Looking for a ride, Luv?”
I stand up, grimace, and hobble across the road to the car.
“You know it,” I say.
Then I hold up my pistol.
“Just don’t try anything funny.”
Chapter77
THE INTERIORof the Lexus is soft, warm, and oh so comfortable, and I know I’m going to collapse and maybe even doze off, but I manage to squeeze out a few questions before I do. Out to the west, the sun is setting.
“Good to see you,” Jeremy says, looking at my bloody wrists and hands. “Your blood, or someone else’s?”
“Mine,” I say. “Bit of a sacrifice to get me out.”
“Want to tell me about it?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
Several seconds pass and I ask, “How long has your little drone been looking for me?”
“Since you were snatched outside of Perky’s care home,” he says, passing over a soft white towel and a plastic bottle of water. I unscrew the cap, take a long drag of the water, splash some on the towel, and do my best to clean up my bloodstained flesh.
“You guys know where the CIA has its secret black sites?”
Jeremy says, “What kind of intelligence service would we be if we didn’t?”
“Are Winnie and Felicity around?”
“No,” he says, speeding up as we get onto a highway called the M1. “There’s been a big blowup at home. Winnie and Felicity have been called off…and if I answer my phone, I’m sure the same’s going to happen to me. Still, this is where I knew you were.”
He taps on a screen about twice the size of an iPhone that’s attached to the dashboard. There’s an overhead view in black and white of where I had just been. Nice view, especially since I’m not there.
I take another drag of the water. Cold and so very refreshing. “Why?”
“Your boss and my boss had a fight over Rashad,” he says. “My boss lost.”
“Here? On your home turf? Why didn’t your boss tell my boss to go to hell?”
Having been in solitary for a few disturbing days and nights, it’s great to be out in the open, among the happy, innocent, and ignorant civilians speeding by in their vans, buses, and cars.
“Your boss controls the purse strings for a lot of our operations,” Jeremy says. “Losing that funding over a possible terror attack, not based on actionable intelligence…a nonstarter.”
I give out a big yawn. “Okay,” I say. “You’re alone. No Winnie, no Felicity. What, you were just going to keep an eye on the black site until you saw my remains hauled out in a body bag?”
“No,” Jeremy says, speeding up the Lexus. “I had contacted some of my mates in the regiment.”
