“Harsh, man,” the kid said.
“Shut the fuck up and start walking,” he said. And they did.
CHAPTER FOUR
The home offices of Bradley Manufacturing and Import, Ltd., were still and quiet in the late November morning. Peter Madsen sat back in his chair, staring at the computer screen abstractedly, barely listening as the rain clicked against the windows with icy insistence. He was used to the cold of English winters. Only his bad leg protested, and he ignored it, as he ignored anything inconvenient.
He liked working in a vacuum. The board that oversaw the covert work done by the organization he headed left him alone, and it seemed as if even the CIA had stopped hounding him. It was always possible that they’d finally given up looking for the former head of the Committee, Isobel Lambert, and her lover and former CIA operative Thomas Killian, but he didn’t believe it. In four years they’d been unable to get any closer to finding them, and if Peter had his way they never would. Nor would the various other international groups that desperately wanted to take out Killian, or Serafin the Butcher as he’d once been known during his undercover work. Both Isobel and Killian were experts at getting so lost no one could ever find them. Not even the best in the business, which was, frankly, himself.
The fact that he knew exactly where they were, and always had, was due to Isobel’s choice and not any brilliance on his part. If anyone decided he held the answers and tried to get them out of him, Isobel knew that he was, simply, unbreakable.
There were no family photos on his desk or on the computer or in his wallet. He didn’t need them – he had a photographic memory. And there was no way he’d put them at risk. Their existence was no secret, but his reputation as the Iceman was so widespread that no one would dare touch them. He’d done just enough to terrify the most hard-boiled assassins. He’d installed other security measures as well, just to be on the safe side, and he’d made sure Genevieve knew how to shoot, and shoot well. Mahmoud, once a child soldier and now a seventeen-year old with the arrogant attitude of a teenager and the cold-eyed determination of a killer, would keep the only mother he’d known safe, as well as the two babies, six month old Sasha, and Isobel, nearing three. They were as safe as anyone could humanly be, and normally he didn’t even think about them when he was at work, compartmentalizing everything neatly.
But today he couldn’t help it. The message had flashed across his computer screen, the ghost messages that came from Isobel, merely a passing cloud of phosphors that vanished the moment he touched the computer. He had no idea where she got her intel. She and Killian were so far off the grid that they could have been on another planet. The tiny island in the middle of the Southern Pacific was almost impossible to find, like something out of a dream, and he liked to think of the two of them living alone there, dispensing with clothing and even conversation most of the time.
At other moments he wondered whether they’d ended up killing each other, two trained assassins so caught up in passion that it could have turned deadly. He didn’t think so. The last he’d seen of Isobel she was a different woman. Some of the shadows had lifted, and the bright southern sunshine would keep them at bay. The sun, and Killian.
He still couldn’t figure out how she could have discovered something that had eluded even his substantial efforts for the last three years, but she’d somehow managed to ferret out the truth. Finn MacGowan was alive.
He still couldn’t believe it. MacGowan had disappeared in the bloodbath Harry Thomason had instigated almost four years ago, a debacle that had ended with the loss of five of their best agents, the disappearance of Isobel Lambert, and the death of Thomason himself, just before the old bastard had been about to be knighted for his noble deeds, may he rot in hell. Peter had turned over every rock, looked everywhere for MacGowan, only to be assured that he had died in a gunfight in Callivera.
When all the time he’d been held prisoner, with the Guiding Light waiting patiently for word from Thomason on what to do with him.
At first he hadn’t been able to figure out why they’d waited so long, but once he’d had a place to start it hadn’t take him long to come up with the answers. He could hack into anything, leaving no trace, and he found the hidden account in no time. Thomason had set up a blind trust, sending automatic payments to the ever-bribable Guiding Light to keep MacGowan on ice. He could imagine just what he’d been through. Rebels like F.A.R.C. in Callivera were finally releasing prisoners who’d been held for up to seven years. The Guiding Light would have waited longer, seeing as they were being well-paid.
Even that would have been no guarantee that MacGowan had survived. The rebels would have continued taking the cash even if Finn had inconveniently expired. But the son of a bitch had finally managed to escape, and his movement was what had alerted Isobel in her island sanctuary. He’d taken off with a few of his fellow hostages, disappearing into the heavily-forested mountains with his captors hot on his ass.
Peter leaned back, considering. If Isobel had even a decent approximation of where they were she would have told him. Right now he had a country and nothing else, and no one he could trust to send after MacGowan. The rest of the operatives were just too new to the game.
He could always go himself. Genevieve would just look at him out of huge, sad eyes, but she’d let him go. Taka could take over the day to day running of the Committee – handing out assignments, gathering intel, and he could pull his cousin Reno in if need be. Peter had no delusions about his being irreplaceable – no one was. And Taka could be just as ruthless and coldly deliberate, if not more so, than he could. His wife would be just as happy if he stayed put for a while, and so would Taka.
But he’d promised. Even if Isobel wouldn’t hold him to it, he’d promised not to walk into a firestorm again, not if he could help it.
Tomas was on the ground there, and MacGowan would go to him. Tomas was an independent contractor, but he was the best man in the business for false papers. MacGowan would go straight to him, and Peter would make certain he had enough money to get where he wanted to go.
He had a good idea where MacGowan would be headed. Back to England to kill the man who had left him to rot in a South American jungle. Namely, Peter Madsen.
He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to stop him long enough to tell him. In fact, he wasn’t sure MacGowan’s rage wasn’t justified. He should have made certain. But when operatives disappeared it was hard to verify they’d been cancelled.
He would wait. With an eye out for an extremely pissed off Irishman out for blood.
At least, for now, the CIA was the least of his worries.
Beth was past exhaustion, past hunger, past pain. She simply kept walking, her eyes trained on the back of their fearless leader, careful not to careen into him again. It wouldn’t do any good to complain – his feet and legs would be hurting too, after al
l that time in captivity. He’d been just as hungry as she’d been when he’d shared his last candy bar. Which, in retrospect wasn’t nearly as noble a gesture as it had seemed, since he’d been planning on getting out of there and getting any number of Santander bars in the near future.
The German and the American weren’t as circumspect. Hans Froelich complained vociferously about her presence, about the roughness of the trail, and the teenager – Dylan – kept whining about being hungry. There was an odd, jittery intensity to him that somehow reminded her of Carlos and his buddy, and she found it unnerving, but she said nothing, just put one foot in front of the other. MacGowan had told him to keep his hands off her, and Beth had every faith in him, though she wasn’t quite sure why. He’d protect her, at least from the worst predators of the night. She would have said a teenager was hardly that dangerous, but then she remembered Carlos.
She heard the noise first, a muffled roar that could have been a convoy of trucks, or a helicopter, rescue or recapture, but MacGowan ignored it. She tried to do the same, but it was slowly growing light, and if the Guiding Light were imminent, she was heading into the bushes. “What’s that noise?” she said finally in as soft a voice as she could manage.
There was no response, and she wondered whether he’d heard her. She started to ask again when he spoke. “It’s a waterfall. We’re stopping there for a few hours. There’s less coverage further down, and we’re better off travelling at night.”
“That’s where we’re stopping?” Froelich demanded, pushing past her.
The man turned to look at him. “Why the fuck do you care so much about where we’re stopping, Hans? You expecting company?”
In the early morning light she could see the German’s already high color deepen. “I’m expecting you to get me out of here as soon as possible, given the money I’m paying you.”