"The key!" Jana snapped, pulling the Hawlen from beneath her jacket, raising the silenced barrel to the level of the man's heart. "Now!"
Calmly, he glanced at the gun. "We don't use keys," he said, holding up a plastic card for Jana to see. His nails were perfectly manicured, coated with a thin layer of clear gloss. "I will have to program it for you."
"Do it," Jana told him, keeping the 9mm trained on his chest.
Charley put her ear to the bathroom door and listened with satisfaction to the sound of the shower running. She understood Leonora's reluctance to leave the hotel, but she was starting to go stir crazy. If she didn't get out and get some fresh air soon, she felt like she might hurt someone.
She wasn't asking for much, just a quick run and a stop at the patisserie across Avenue George V for something other than the disappointing croissants the Queen Elizabeth served. Once Tesla tasted a real pain au chocolat, all would be forgiven.
Besides, it wasn't like she was sneaking off. She'd left Leonora a note explaining where she'd gone and that she'd be back in an hour or so with breakfast. Still, she felt a twinge of guilt as she slipped into her running clothes and let herself out into the hallway.
The elevator was just outside the door of their room, but it was notoriously slow and creaky. More often than not she opted to take the stairs instead of waiting for it to creep upward. But for some unknown reason--lack of sleep affecting her brain, perhaps--she pushed the call button. Somewhere far below in the bowels of the building, the aged mechanism rattled to life.
The receptionist tapped the keyboard a few times, then swiped the card through the encryption device next to the computer before handing it to Jana.
"The room number?" she asked.
"Two nineteen," he sneered.
"How many guests?"
"Two women. One older and Madame Rosewald."
He was still sneering when Jana pulled the trigger.
Shoving the receptionist's body out of sight behind the desk, Jana headed for the stairs, sprinting for the second-floor landing. As she stepped in the hallway, she heard the elevator door slide shut. An early riser, she thought testily. No doubt there would be others. She'd have to work quickly.
Methodically, she made her way down the corridor, checking the room numbers as she went: 215, 217. Stopping in front of 219, she paused to listen. She could hear the elevator laboring noisily downward. And inside the room, the faint whine of water running.
With her left hand, Jana slid the pass card into the electronic lock and watched the light change from red to green. Keeping the 9mm ready, she turned the brass handle and let herself inside. So two occupants: Charlotte Middleton and presumably some babysitter her father had brought in.
Jana closed the door softly behind her and made her way across the small sitting room, moving toward the sound of the shower. Her wrists were locked in place, her finger light on the trigger of the Hawlen, her mind sharp. She nudged open the half-closed bedroom door and stopped, scanning the room, the two unmade beds.
Unless they'd taken to showering together, only one was here now.
Suddenly, the shower stopped. Jana heard the curtain slide open and the sound of someone climbing out of the tub.
"Charley?" a woman's voice called out.
The babysitter, Jana thought, squaring herself with the bathroom door, aiming for the height of an average woman's head.
"Charley?" The tone was slightly more urgent.
The door swung open to reveal a dark-haired woman, older but far from old, in a white bath towel. Seeing Jana standing there with the gun, she drew back slightly.
"Where is Charlotte Middleton?" Jana demanded.
The woman didn't answer. Her eyes were hard on Jana, searching for something. Then, suddenly, a look of recognition flickered across her face. "You're Santash Grover's daughter," she said triumphantly.
Jana flinched. It was impossible that this woman should know about her father and yet she did. "Where is Charlotte Middleton?!" she asked once again, reminding herself that any knowledge the woman had would soon be irrelevant.
The woman smiled. "Go to hell."
"You first," Jana told her, pulling the trigger.
11
DAVID LISS
The smoke, the heat of the fires, the falling debris, the ash that caked his mouth and choked his lungs--all these things were near unbearable, as was the clutching fingers of death at his heels, but what pained him most as he ran through this scene of destruction was the belief that for the rest of his life--whether the rest of his life spanned decades or minutes--he would never again hear the music he loved so much. His hearing was gone. No ringing. No hum. Nothing. Harold Middleton felt as though he were trapped in a horrible, violent snow globe, able only to peer helplessly at the world outside. He ran through the shattered compound, leaping over crumbled walls, scattered furniture, dead bodies, trying to find his way out of the destruction, holding on to the strange and childish notion that if he could escape soon enough, perhaps his hearing would be restored as his prize. He felt battered and bruised and hot but other than his hearing, no injuries seemed serious or permanent and for that he was grateful.
In his right hand he clutched a battered AK-47 he'd found among the ruins, scarred but its metal was not superheated. He'd fired off an experimental round--strangely disorienting in its silence--before heading off again, and now Middleton was glad he had picked it up, for as he turned a corner around a ruined, toppled wall, he saw two panicked Russians heading directly toward him. Behind them, a shattered wall spat out hot tongues of fire like an angry demon. One of them stopped in his tracks, as though stunned by the presence of another living being, the other better maintained his composure. He raised his weapon and began to fire off bursts of silent gunfire.
Middleton hit the ground, rolled and took shelter behind a twisted mass of metal and stone. He felt broken glass slice into his palm and in his silent world, the pain was somehow more vivid, more real than it would have been before. He felt rather than heard the impact of the rounds against his shelter and he crouched low, assessing his situation. He was protected here. He was safe for the next few seconds. He could form a plan.
It was all so absurd. Yes, he'd done high-risk work before with the Volunteers, but it was not that long ago he had been a professor of music, a man who investigated and verified musical manuscripts. Now here he was, in a destroyed, burning compound somewhere outside Moscow, fired upon by men whose affiliations and allegiances were a mystery to him. It was all a mystery to him. So much had happened since that day on the beach in the south of France and none of it made any sense at all.
In a dreamlike state that accompanies the loss of one of the senses, Middleton peered over his shelter. One of the Russians stood with his feet wide apart, his shoulders hunched, moving his weapon back and forth. He had a crazed, desperate look in his eye and at once it became clear that the Russian believed that if he could kill Middleton it would somehow lead to his safety, just as Middleton believed that if he could escape quickly enough, his hearing would return.
Middleton squeezed off a short burst, and the Russian went down. Now the second Russian, who had stood still and impassive, raised his own assault riffle. Middleton began to duck, but his shirt caught on a protruding piece of metal. It took only a second to disentangle himself, but that second should have been his end except the Russian went down in a spray of ash and blood.
Middleton felt it before he saw it, the faint whump whump whump of a helicopter. When he looked up it was hovering perhaps fifty feet above the wreck of the compound, perhaps two hundred yards from his current position. One man in the helicopter squatted with his weapon, scanning the chaos while another threw over a rope ladder and waved Middleton on. He shouted something, but Middleton could not hear over the noise of the chopper.
But he could hear that noise. His hearing was returning, along with the ringing, but his hearing was coming back.
Middleton had few choices. He could a
ttempt to find his way out of this burning mess, fighting off more Russians as he found them, or he could take the escape offered by the helicopter. That seemed to be the better of the two options. He would worry about the chopper's BlueWatch logo later.
In her Paris suite, Leonora Tesla had fallen to her knees. She pressed her right hand against the wound in her left shoulder. It bled horribly, but it was not a life-threatening wound--certainly not if she could get medical attention soon. It hurt like hell and she tried to think clearly through the pain, see clearly through the tears of agony that clouded her vision. She still wore nothing but an oversized bath towel wrapped around her and absurdly she felt embarrassed. She should have worn something more appropriate to her own shooting.
Above her hovered the daughter of Santash Grover, the man who had studied with Sikari. Jana was tall for a South Asian, beautiful, dark in complexion, and she moved with a kind of ease and grace that Tesla could not help but admire. She was also very cruel. Tesla could see it in her eyes.
"That," said the woman in her accented French, gesturing with her weapon toward the wound, "is to let you know that I am serious. Nothing more than that. You may think you are in pain, but it is nothing compared to what you will feel if I shoot you in your knee. In addition, you will have the knowledge that you will never walk unaided again. Think of what will happen, then, if I shoot you in both knees. Take a moment to consider these things and then I will ask you again."
"I don't believe I will ever walk again in any case," Tesla replied in French, trying to think of something, anything, to give her more time, to throw this woman off balance. "You won't leave me alive. I suspect it is the way you work, but even if it weren't, I know you are Grover's daughter. You think you can kill me to contain the secret, but the secret is already out. I've already sent a dozen emails."
Something dark crossed the woman's face, but it was followed by a cruel smile. "Then I will have more questions to put to you. I only hope you will answer easily. Once I put bullets into your knees and elbows, any place else I shoot will have little effect. I've seen it happen that way."
"I'm sure you have," Tesla said with a grunt. Her eyes scanned the room around her, looking for something she might use as a weapon: a lamp, a phone, a phone cord, a chair. In truth, Tesla did not know how much torture she could endure before betraying what she knew. She supposed it was a good thing she knew so little. Apparently Charley was no longer in the suite; she had impulsively slipped out. Well, good for her. But she would be back. That was what Tesla knew or perhaps assumed. Charley would, sooner or later be back, and what would she find upon her return? Tesla's dead body, and this assassin waiting?
Jana held up her silenced pistol. "You do not get to ignore my question without me destroying your kneecap, so I hope you are prepared to answer me. Where is Charlotte Middleton?"
Tesla forced herself to grin broadly. "Why, she's right behind you."
The ploy ought not to have worked, indeed it would not have worked, had Tesla not looked so supremely satisfied when she spoke the words. All of this woman's training and instincts--and Tesla did not doubt they were considerable--failed in the presence of what seemed to be real human emotion. She turned and looked.
Though it caused her the greatest agony she had ever known, hoped she would ever know, Tesla sprang to her feet and slammed into the woman with her good shoulder, ramming into her like an American football player. She struck the assassin just below the ribs, and the pain was fierce in itself, but it reverberated throughout her body and felt as though someone had thrust a hot poker into her bullet wound. Tesla cried out, but so did the assassin.
The dark woman stumbled back and collided with a chair, which she tripped over, falling and hitting her head hard upon the carpeted floor. The carpet was not thick and the concrete below was heavy. Tesla heard the woman's teeth snap together and a trickle of blood began to flow at once from her mouth; Grover's daughter had undoubtedly bitten into her tongue. She still held onto the gun, however, and Tesla could not afford to wait to discover how stunned the assassin might be. In a sweeping gesture, graceful and excruciating, she raised the wooden chair as far as the wound would let her and smashed it down against the assassin's back. She wanted to stun her, to incapacitate her, but hopefully not to kill her. She wanted the woman alive and able to answer questions, but Tesla would kill her if she had to.
The pain rocked through her and she thought she might faint, but she willed herself alert, willed herself to ignore the agony. She hardly noticed that her towel had fallen off. She lifted the chair again, this time no higher than her waist. It felt impossibly heavy and she felt herself stumble both from her diminished strength and from dizziness. Her vision went black around the edges as she raised the chair, preparing to strike again. That was when the door opened.
Charley Middleton, her face glowing with perspiration, walked into the room carrying bags from a Parisian bakery. She froze, and Tesla could only imagine how shocking things must seem--this strange woman, motionless on the floor, mucusy blood oozing from her mouth, and Tesla herself, naked and bloody, wielding a chair like a club.
Tesla dropped the chair, fell to the floor and burst at once into tears and insane laughter.
By all rights Archer should have been afraid. Any sane man would be afraid. Well, he amended, any sane normal man, but he had never been a normal man, could not understand what it would be like to be a normal man. His brother Harris had been a normal man and Harris was dead. There was much truth to be learned from that simple fact.
He sat around a low table in a small village outside Jhelum in Pakistan, near the border of the Jammu and Kashmir. He sat with three men, all dark-skinned South Asians, and understood his own fair complexion was his greatest obstacle. He had always known it would be and he had calculated the solution. It seemed hardly possible to Archer that these men, with their suspicion of outsiders--their suspicion of everyone, really--could outmaneuver his calculations. Even so, for a moment Archer envied Sikari and the easy passage his appearance had brought him. He, a devout Hindu, had fooled these Muslims--fools, but clever fools. It could not have been easy for him and now Archer's task was that much harder.
Well, what of it? He had made it his life's work to deceive. He had deceived his brother, almost every day, greater and greater deceptions, only to see what he could get away with. No, Harris, I don't know what happened to your books. No, Harris, I have no idea how the stolen whiskey bottle ended up in your room. No, Harris, I did not subscribe to those pornographic magazines in your name. They were little things, of course, childish pranks, but then they had been children. But he'd taught himself how to lie, how to explain away the impossible, to make others believe him when his falsehood was so obvious.
Now he sat with the three men in the dark hovel. There was but a single light above them, a naked bulb powered by a generator that hummed outside. All three stared at him in hot suspicion and dull curiosity, but mostly only one spoke, their leader, a man named Sanam. He was very tall and painfully thin, with a long beard and very intense eyes. He wore the same white robes and taqiyah as Archer.
Sanam sipped his tea. "It is all very sudden," he said in Urdu. He had been switching all night from English to Urdu to Kashmiri to Arabic as if to keep Archer on his toes, to make him slip up, but Archer spoke all of the languages perfectly, just as Sakari had made certain he could.
"Death is often very sudden," said Archer. "My father's death is a terrible blow to me personally and of course to our cause, but it is also the will of Allah. My father has died and I will mourn him, but I will also honor him by continuing his work. It is unfortunate that he should die just as events are coming to a head, but we must not let our trials stand in the way of our goals."
"I do not love to hear this fair-haired American speak of Allah or the Prophet or the holy Koran," said Umer, one of the other men. Of the three men, he was the most uncomfortable with Sikari's disappearance from the scene. "All night you have sprinkled your conve
rsation with such things as though you were salting your meat, but are we children to be so easily deceived? You do not look like a Muslim. You look like an American underpants model."
Archer sensed Umer would be his greatest obstacle. "I do not see how my European ancestors must keep me from following the path of Islam," he said, speaking now in Arabic. "My father raised me as a Muslim man ought to raise his son. That I am adopted is no matter."
Sanam nodded. "It would be a sin to doubt his faith because of his appearance. Nevertheless, you must understand our suspicions. These are dangerous times. We are hunted by the Pakistani government, your government, India's government. We must be cautious. We must be convinced you are who you say you are."
Archer laughed. "Who else could I be? I know my father spoke to you of his sons, so my existence cannot surprise you. Perhaps I am an agent of the CIA, an organization whose highest ranks concluded that the best way to infiltrate your organization would be to send a fair skinned, blue-eyed man. And, of course, the CIA has no higher priority than infiltrating groups that are primarily interested in the future of Kashmir." Continuing his sarcasm, he added, "And it is well known that the CIA has many agents who speak Arabic, and of course Urdu and Kashmiri."
Sanam snorted. "You raise good points. Your skill with languages ought to be enough to convince us you are not an American agent. Your knowledge of our ways and customs is impressive and seemingly natural, and the information you have offered us is not only vital, it corresponds with what we have been able to glean. My only question is, why should you care? Your father cared because he came of age in Kashmir and understood full well what it means to have our land in the hands of the infidels. You are, however much a Muslim, still an American. What does Kashmir matter to you?"
"It matters to me," said Archer, "because it mattered to my father. It was my father's jihad and so now it is mine. Is there one among you who thinks this is not reason enough?"