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“I don’t really care. I don’t have to like you, I just have to get you back to England. Alone.”
She felt it—the sight of a weapon trained on the back of her head. She trusted her instincts implicitly. Someone was pointing a gun at her, someone who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.
Serafin must have read her expression even as she tried to keep it blank. “That would be Mahmoud aiming his AK-47 at you. And don’t think for a moment he wouldn’t use it. He has a vested interest in keeping me alive and within reach, and he won’t hesitate to kill you if you get in his way.”
“Wouldn’t that interfere with your plans?” Her voice was level.
“It would,” he said. “Unfortunately, Mahmoud is the one with the gun.”
She held out both hands, her own gun visible. “The Jeep’s big enough for three,” she said. “As long as he doesn’t get in my way.”
Even without looking she knew the machine gun was no longer trained on her back, and she tucked her own weapon away, turning to look at the child behind her, an empty-eyed casualty of war and poverty. He was probably no more than ten and yet he was ageless, and already dead.
“You surprise me, Madame Lambert,” Serafin said. “I thought a woman would be more tenderhearted. Surely you wouldn’t want to leave a child alone and unprotected out here?”
“Considering that he’s more than ready to kill me, I wouldn’t hesitate. And don’t assume anything because of my gender, Serafin. It’s simply an accident of birth. I’m older and wiser and just as ruthless as you are.”
“Are you really? Somehow I doubt that.”
She said nothing. She could pass for a perfectly preserved woman in her fifties, and there was absolutely no way he could prove otherwise.
“So, we’re agreed? We’ll take the mountain route into Algeria, heading toward Bechar. I drive, Mahmoud comes along, and we’re a happy little family.”
“You don’t give me much choice.”
Somehow he must have seen behind her cultivated blankness. “You’d like to tell me to fuck off, wouldn’t you? But you don’t have that luxury. War makes strange bedfellows, Madame Lambert. You ought to have learned that by now, given your great age and experience.”
There wasn’t even a hint of mockery in his voice, but she still felt uneasy. “Hardly bedfellows, Mr. Serafin,” she said. “Partners in crime, perhaps.”
His smile exposed those darkened teeth behind the graying beard. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.” He looked past her. “Mahmoud?”
Her language training had included only the most basic Arabic, and she barely understood his orders, but the meaning was clear. Mahmoud darted past her, machine gun swung over his back, and picked up Serafin’s battered duffel bag.
She could’ve reached out, snatched the gun from his shoulder as he went, neutralizing him long enough that they could get out of there without an albatross. The mission was going to be difficult enough wi
th Serafin’s meddling, and in the end a child soldier was still only a child.
But she didn’t. The day she couldn’t handle an over-the-hill mercenary and a young boy was the day she’d retire. And that day wasn’t in sight, no matter how worried Peter seemed when he looked at her.
“I take it you’re ready to leave?” she said.
“Whenever you are, princess.”
It was too dark for him to see the fleeting reaction that managed to crack her perfect reserve. And the fact that she tripped was understandable—there was rubble underfoot. Unless he’d done it on purpose, he wouldn’t know his casual word had been like a knife to the belly.
But it had been casual, automatic. She’d heard Killian call any number of women “princess”—from a toothless crone in Marseille to a White Russian countess in Nice, and they all preened just as she had, when he was inside her and whispered the word against her sweat-damp skin.
“After you,” she said now, no catch in her voice, as she followed the first man she’d ever killed out into the twilight shadows of Morocco.
4
Peter Madsen looked at the man across from him, knowing that his own icy blue eyes gave away absolutely nothing. Sir Harry Thomason had never been able to read him, and he never would. It was part of what had led to Thomason’s downfall—his inability to realize what his operatives, including Bastien Toussaint and Peter Madsen, were capable of. That, plus his ruthless destruction of anything that got in his way. Peter had been a star pupil, and even Isobel Lambert could issue termination orders without blinking.
There was one crucial difference between Thomason and the rest of the Committee. Thomason sacrificed everyone, operatives and enemies alike, with a total disregard for loyalty, and that could only carry him so far. It had carried him into forced early retirement and a seat on the Committee, the shadowy group of men who did their best to control the fate of the world.
Thomason wasn’t nearly as good at hiding his resentment. He’d shown up at the Kensington offices the morning after Isobel had left, and Peter hadn’t managed to budge him. And he needed to. Now.
“I was against this from the very beginning,” Thomason was saying, and Peter dragged his attention back reluctantly. “You can’t trust a woman in situations like this. We all know Isobel is more machine than human, thank God, but she’s not completely devoid of hormones, at least not yet, and sending her after Serafin could be disastrous. I’ve been able to uncover some recent information that makes the situation untenable.”
