Ice Storm (25 page)

He pushed himself off the bed, pulling his shirt back around him but not bothering to button it, zipping up his jeans reluctantly. Had Isobel been the one to search him so thoroughly? He’d hate to think he’d missed it.

There was a small living room, a dining room with a laptop set up on the table, and a tiny kitchen. Her back was to him, but her voice was calm and accepting. “It’s really hard to keep you shackled, isn’t it?”

He moved into the kitchen, crowding her. On purpose. “Just about impossible.” The windows were boarded up, allowing in no light. “I take it this isn’t your apartment.”
“You think I’d take you to my home?”

“Hope springs eternal. This seems like the kind of place you’d live. The perfect place to do eternal penance.”

“My flat is very large, elegant and airy,” she said, pouring boiling water into the coffee press. “And I have absolutely nothing to do penance
for.”

“Not anymore. You didn’t kill me.”

She turned around to glare at him. “I never regretted killing you. Only that I’d been such a fool in the first place.”

“You were out of your league, princess. There was no way you could even guess how well you were being played. I’ve got skills you wouldn’t even imagine, and you were nothing more than a kid, infatuated with me, just as I planned for you to be.”
To his amazement there was a faint stain of color on her pale cheekbones, the only clue to her rigidly repressed emotions. When she looked at him her eyes were clear and cool. “As you say, I was young and stupid. I’m neither of those things now.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid. Just vulnerable.”

“Trust me, I’m not currently vulnerable.”

He didn’t move. “Trust me, you are.”

She’d managed to will the color away from her face, and when she turned she was the picture of calm efficiency. “I suggest we start the debriefing process as soon as you’ve had your coffee. I’ll admit things aren’t going as planned, and we shouldn’t waste time if we can help it.”

“I thought Madsen was going to do the questioning.”

“He’s got other things to deal with.” Her voice was flat and unemotional.
“Like what?”

“Like none of your damn business. I don’t have anything better to do at the moment.”
“I thought you wanted to get back to that elegant and airy apartment of yours.”

 
“I do. Unfortunately, the people who are after you are far too determined, and it’s not safe. Given their recent track record they would probably figure out where I live quite easily. We need to conserve manpower.”

“You still think it’s me they’re after?” Killian took the coffee press from her. “Don’t you think the Committee has more than its share of enemies’? Why take out MacGowan’? He was in
Central America
, and he had nothing to do with me.”
She slammed the mugs down on the table. “How do you know everything about our operations? We don’t even know if MacGowan’s dead. He may have just gone to ground—his cover was so deep no one should have broken it. Did you set him up? He was a good man...”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your operatives are doing. as long as they aren’t interfering with me. The fault lies in your operation. If I could get that kind of Intel, then so can other, less benevolent people.”

‘“Benevolent?” she echoed.

“I’m not the worst man in the world.”

“Prove it.”

“You’re still alive.”

She stared at him. “Drink your coffee,” she said finally. “And then we’ll get to work.”
“Breakfast first.”

He was usually a good judge of how far he could push someone, and he knew Isobel far better than she would have wanted, but he might have gone overboard. And then she blinked, and like the shutters covering the windows in this small space, her emotions and reactions were shut down, blanketed. “You’d better be worth all this trouble,” she said. “Good men have died for you.”

“The truth is, many good men have died because of me,” he said. “I don’t let it bother me. If you were as cold as you want to be, it wouldn’t bother you, either.”
“If it didn’t bother me, I wouldn’t be in this line of work. I don’t like good people being killed. I don’t like bad people getting away with it.”

“So it really must gall you to have to keep me alive.”

“Believe me, it does.”

He moved closer, deliberately crowding her again in the limited space. She stood her ground, simply because she had no place to go, and he leaned down and breathed in her ear. “I promise you can be the one to kill me if it comes to it. Does that make you happy?”
“Deliriously,” she snapped.

She smelled like coffee and soap. She smelled like Isobel, and he wanted to take her up against the kitchen wall, no preliminaries, nothing but fast, hot sex. He let her see it in his eyes, and her own flared with sudden awareness. And then he stepped back, leaving her with the illusion of safety.

I like my eggs scrambled,” he said. And he walked back into the living room, smiling when he heard her drop something. Chaos, lust, confusion. His job here was done.

The house in Golders Green was small, older, seemingly ordinary. The reinforced, lead-lined door looked as if it was made of wood: the windows were shatterproof and as close to bulletproof as technology could get. There was a highly developed sensor system around the perimeter that could pick up any trace of explosives, and there were three escape routes underneath. It was a fortress inside an ordinary white house, and as Peter passed at least three invisible security checkpoints he told himself Genevieve was safe. He wasn’t so sure about his own sorry ass. She was going to be majorly pissed off, and Genevieve Spenser was not someone you pissed off lightly.
It had been one hell of a night. Cleaning up the mess of Morrison’s murder left no time to mourn his old friend. The man known as Serafin was unconscious by the time he and
Reno
reached Isobel, but the child in the backseat was both unexpected and a pain in the ass. To Peter’s amazement, Reno had taken charge, subduing the brat just by the tone of his voice, while Isobel and Peter dragged Serafin’s unconscious body into the car they’d bought and drove back to the apartment.

By the time they reached Kensington,
Reno
and the kid—Mahmoud was his name—were in curious accord, probably due to the iPod
Reno
had handed over. Peter hated to think what sort of Yakuza gangsta rap Mahmoud was listening to, but at least it kept the boy quiet while they lugged Serafin up the camouflaged back staircase to the hidden apartment behind the offices of Spence-Pierce Financial Consultants, Ltd. As long as Mahmoud knew Serafin was on the floor below, he went along with
Reno
peacefully enough, up to the stripped-down apartment
Reno
had turned into his home with a flagrant disregard of property. When Peter left them,
Reno
had switched on the state-of-the-art video game system, and Mahmoud’s sullen eyes had lit up. At least that was one thing Peter didn’t need to worry about.

Isobel was more than capable of dealing with someone like Josef Serafin, no matter what their history. Peter had taken one look at her, the blank expression in her eyes, and knew she was almost at the end of her endurance. But then she’d pulled herself together, as she always did, taking the news of MacGowan‘s disappearance with no more than a flinch.
Peter had tied Serafin to the small bed in the apartment, and hoped to God Isobel had the sense to leave him there until he could get back. He never would have thought it, but the indomitable Madame Lambert was vulnerable. Younger than he’d ever realized. And running out of reserves.

In the meantime, he had someone even more terrifying to face. His angry wife, who didn’t even know she was, finally, pregnant. The nurse who had checked out her stomach Ilu had worked for the Committee before, and knew better than to say anything to anybody—even the patient—until given permission.

Peter had no illusions that his wife was suddenly going to become docile and complacent. Genevieve was a warrior woman, and if she had a child to protect she could take on the Russian army.

He passed the fourth checkpoint, punched in the code on the keypad and pushed open the door to the house, entering a long, narrow hallway with a row of closed doors on either side. Then he froze.

Somewhere in the depths of the house, a baby was crying, and for a moment he thought he’d somehow walked into the wrong building, the wrong life.

One of the doors opened, and if Peter weren’t so disoriented, the man who stepped into the hallway would have already been dead.

“You’re getting slow in your old age, Madsen,” Bastien Toussaint murmured. “You’d better come in and explain a few things to your wife.”

Peter shoved his gun back in the shoulder holster. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The crying noise had stopped—clearly the angry infant had been given what it wanted. Peter imagined a future filled with such moments, and told himself he should be miserable, but he couldn’t summon up much of anything.

“Safest place to be,” Bastien said. “Come in and meet Swede.”

“Swede?” God, not another person crammed into the tiny house.

“The new baby. We’re all here, in one piece, and we’re going to stay that way while we find out what the hell is going on. Three men tried to get to us in the States.”
“And you couldn’t find out who sent them?”

“They died too quickly.” Bastien said with his impenetrable calm. “I decided not to wait around to see if someone else was going to show up. Where’s Madame Lambert?”
“In trouble,” Peter replied. “More than I’ve ever seen her.”

“Then we’d better see to it. Chloe will keep Genevieve calmed down. I don’t think you have the time to deal with her at the moment. A pregnant woman is a dangerous thing.”
“How did you know she was pregnant? I don’t think she knows herself.”
“It’s obvious to anyone used to the signs. Chloe’s bound to blurt it out sooner rather than later, which means we’d better get this mess taken care of fast or your wife might possibly kill you. What’s Madame Lambert working on that’s got her in trouble?”
‘Josef Serafin. He’s trading Intel for immunity. Right now he should be filling her in on the inner workings of some of the worst fascist governments of the last twenty years.”
Bastien froze. “Hell and damnation,” he said. “He’s trading nothing but lies.”
“I imagine he’ll try, but Isobel’s too smart to fall for anything like that. Why don’t you think he’ll tell the truth?”

Bastien grimaced. “Because he’s not a professional mercenary, working for the highest bidder. He’s CIA, and always has been.”

Peter’s bad day suddenly got a great deal worse.

19

“You’re lying to me:’ Isobel said.

“Now why would I do that? I haven’t anything to gain—I expect the Committee’s generosity is going to be contingent on the quality of Intel I bring. I have no reason to hold back,” Killian turned his head to look at her. He was stretched out on the sofa, his long, lean body taking up the entire space. Not that she would have wanted to sit next to him. She was happy to keep her distance, and the uncomfortable chair was perfectly adequate. Shed fed him, simply because she was famished herself, and in a battle of wills he probably would have won. And she’d spent the last three hours grilling him. And getting nowhere.

He told her absolutely nothing she didn’t already know. It wasn’t common knowledge, but the Committee wasn’t a common organization, and their intel was first-rate. Killian wasn’t bringing anything new to the table.

“What happened in Mauritzia?”

He shrugged, perfectly at ease. “One of my more spectacular fuckups, I have to admit. I was in charge of removing the ethnic population of three small cities to a holding area where they were to be exterminated under my supervision. Which is where I got the charming name Serafin the Butcher. Unfortunately, someone let word slip, and the neighborhoods were emptied before I even got there. Personally, I didn’t see the problem—the local governments wanted these people gone, and they were, having slipped over the border into refugee camps. Unfortunately, Busanovich didn’t see it that way. I got out at the last minute.”

“It didn’t seem to hurt your future employment prospects any,” she said.
His smile was cool and deadly. “There’s always employment for a man with my skills and moral…flexibility. I’d be more than happy to give you names, positions of President Busanovich’s advisors, but like the president himself, they’re all dead, and Mauritzia is discovering the wonders of democracy. I like to think in my own modest way I contributed to that.” His tone was mocking.

“Next you’ll be telling me that you were saving the world with your incompetence.”
He shrugged. “You could look at it that way. I’m afraid Fouad Assawi was a bit more determined than some of my previous employers. Which is why I decided to throw myself on the mercy of the Committee.”

She said nothing, closing the lid to her laptop.

“If you’re done with that do you mind if I check my e-mail?” he said, sitting up. “I was bidding on a couple of things on eBay and I wanted to see if I won—”
“Oh, shut up. You’ve probably never been on eBay.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong. There’s quite an interesting bit of black market trade going on—you just have to know how to find it.”

“And what’s the e-mail for—online dating services?” her voice was caustic.

“No, princess, I’ve already got you.”