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She wasn’t screaming at him, but it was close. “That’s fine,” said Jack. “I don’t need to get it. It’s none of my business.”
“None. I agree.”
“Great. It’s good to be in agreement. I’ll see you when I get home tomorrow.”
“See you,” she said, and the call ended.
Andie was pissed, no question about it. Making things better, fast, was not exactly Jack’s specialty. An argument with his father had once lasted a decade. He would be up all night trying to figure out this one.
He turned on the television, but nothing caught his interest. He wasn’t hungry, and ordering something to eat just to have something to do was a terrible idea. Rather than lie in bed staring at the ceiling, he put on his workout clothes and went outside for a run. The jogging map on the hotel’s app came with a tourist guide’s audio. Jack listened through his earbuds.
... concentric stone walls along the bank of the Thames River, the oldest of which date back almost a millennium.
It was a cool night, perfect for a run along the river. Jack was feeling strong. Maybe too strong. Thirty minutes into his run, the audio descriptions no longer matched Jack’s surroundings. He was off the guided path, having hung a right when he should have gone left. Or was it the other way around? It was Jack’s firsthand introduction to the fact that London streets could change names three times in the span of three blocks. He was in a business district, but all of the shops were closed, and Jack was alone on the street. He was tired, and his run became a walk. He was headed somewhere in the general direction of his hotel, checking the street signs carefully, when he noticed the clap of footsteps behind him. They had the rhythm of his own footfalls, seeming to match his pace and direction. It suddenly occurred to him that Theo was landing in Miami at that very moment, and the words of the FBI attaché replayed in his mind:
“Russian oligarchs don’t mess around.”
Jack saw no one, but he walked a little faster. A car passed, then more silence. Uncomfortable urban silence. He passed the darkened storefront windows of a “chemist” and continued around the corner. Jack quickened his pace when, all of a sudden, it felt as though he’d been broadsided by a rugby player. The force knocked him off his feetand sent him tumbling into a narrow alley. He landed facedown on the pavement. The attacker was on him immediately.
“What the—”
Before Jack could finish his sentence, much less react, the man rolled him over and grabbed Jack by the throat.
“Don’t move, just listen,” the man said.
He had the fingers of a mountain climber, and the pressure around Jack’s neck made it difficult to focus on what he was saying. The thick, slurred speech didn’t make things any clearer.
“Where is Theo Knight?”
Whereish...It wasn’t that he was drunk. Something was in his mouth—a wad of cotton or some spy toy to make his voice unrecognizable.
Jack could barely breathe, let alone talk. “I don’t know where Theo—”
“If you lie, you die.”
Jack was having trouble following even that simple line of logic. The pressure around his neck had his head pounding and lungs burning as he struggled to breathe. Jack couldn’t see the man’s face, couldn’t see much of anything. His attacker, like everything else, was a blur.
“I got a message for you to deliver to your friend. You listening?”
“Uh-huh.”
The grip was atomic. The burning sensation in Jack’s lungs was unbearable. A hint of blood flavored his mouth, the pressure somehow having triggered it. Jack fought for air, but his attacker was in complete control.
“If Sergei Kava is extradited to the States, your friend Theo is a dead man. Understand?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
It was the most audible response Jack could muster. The vise grip at Jack’s throat rose higher around Jack’s neck and closed even tighter. Jack had one final burst of resistance left in his body, and then nothing more. The pounding in his head seemed to explode into his ears, and then the night went from black to blacker. He was on the verge of unconsciousness when the vise grip released.
Jack lay on his back, gasping for air, as the footfalls of his attacker faded into the night.
Chapter 19
Jack found his way back to the hotel. His first call was to the FBI’s legal attaché, Madeline Coffey. She’d already left the embassy for the evening, but it was a ten-minute drive across the river from her house to the hotel, where Jack met her in the lobby. They found a table in the lounge near the window.
“Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?” she asked.
“No. I thought about going to an emergency room, but once I caught my breath, I recovered pretty quickly.”
