The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3

by Karen Robards

  He was concussed, stitched up, badly bruised and groggy-eyed from medication.

  He was also sixty-four years old, gray-haired and clad in a limp blue hospital gown with his head propped up on a pair of fluffy blue pillows.

  Elite assassin, master criminal—or just a tired and injured old man?

  Getting it wrong was not a mistake Colin was planning to make.

  “You were following her. Why?” There was steel in Colin’s voice. He was beside himself with fear, although he was doing his best to conceal it.

  Bianca had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. None of the hospitals had a record of having admitted anyone named Lynette Holbrook, or Bianca St. Ives, or any of her other aliases that Colin had been able to remember. A physical search of every single hospital to which victims of the bombing had been admitted had failed to turn up any trace of her. She was not listed among the fatalities, nor was her body in the temporary morgue that had been set up. Surveillance footage was no help: the cameras around the square had been disabled, probably by the perpetrators of the atrocity, and none of the cameras in the surrounding streets had picked up any sign of her in the aftermath of the bombing.

  Park and the bodyguards remained missing as well.

  Was it possible that Bowling had been on the right track, and she’d sold them out to someone and disappeared? Or, in a scenario that he considered slightly more likely, that she’d taken advantage of the chaos to run, to cut all ties with her former existence and start over again with a new name and identity somewhere else?

  He was as certain as he could be that the answer to both questions was no.

  His biggest fear was that she was dead. The police continued to search for additional victims. The medical examiner’s office was cataloging body parts.

  Just thinking about that made him sick as a horse, so he didn’t.

  If she hadn’t run away, and she wasn’t dead, she was in terrible danger. The third credible possibility was that someone had grabbed her. If that was so, they would kill her as soon as they got what they needed from her. Every minute that he spent trying to find her was the minute she could die. That was the thought that was driving him insane.

  Thayer’s eyelids drooped as if to signal that he was on the verge of falling asleep. “As I believe I’ve told you several times before, I was simply out for my morning constitutional. I had no idea she was even in the area.”

  Colin held on to his fraying calm with effort. He knew Thayer was lying—hell, Thayer knew he knew he was lying, and didn’t care—and what his every instinct urged him to do was beat the truth out of him. But number one, Thayer was old, number two, Thayer was injured, and number three, given the kind of man Thayer was, even beating him to a bloody pulp was unlikely to get him to give up any information he didn’t want to give up.

  Looking around at Davis and Charlie Parrino, whom he’d assigned to stand guard over Thayer with the added instruction that they were not to take their eyes off him even if they were 100 percent certain he was dead, he said, “Give us a minute, please.”

  Because he was about to embark on a negotiation that no one except the other party to it needed to hear.

  His men left the room.

  Thayer’s lids drooped again. He didn’t quite yawn, but he looked like he was about to.

  Colin kept his voice even. “She’s incredibly loyal to you, do you know that? Won’t tell me or anyone else the first thing about you. Incentives, threats, nothing anybody’s come up with yet has made her turn on you. I don’t know what you are to her, or what you’ve done to deserve that, but how about you reciprocate a little bit? Anything you can tell me about what happened to her or where she is could save her life.”

  “You’re the cop.” Thayer’s response was unexpected. He was looking at Colin with a spark of interest. “From the casino in Macau.”

  Where Bianca had staged a distraction so that Thayer could escape.

  “That’s right.”

  “How the hell did you end up with Bianca?”

  The easy way Thayer said her name spoke to the long and deep-seated familiarity that Colin had known existed between them. He still didn’t like it.

  “You answer my questions, maybe I’ll answer yours.”

  Thayer’s lids drooped again. “As I’ve said every one of the umpteen other times you’ve asked me, I wish I could help you out, but I can’t. I don’t know where she is, or what happened to her.”

  Colin could feel an angry pulse begin to beat in his temple. “You know, I can choose who I turn you over to. I can go with Interpol, or four of the Five Eyes countries—for the most part they’re nice and civilized. The Americans and their CIA—not so much. Then there’s a prince in Bahrain who’s offering the kind of reward for you that would set me up for life. I hear he’s a big fan of beheading people he doesn’t like. And let’s not forget—”

  A tap on the door presaged Davis’s entry. Looking apologetic, he held out a cell phone. “Sorry, Major, but an urgent call’s just come in for you from the home office. Miss Trainor says it’s about the lady we’re looking for.”

  Colin’s instinctive frown at being interrupted vanished in a quick upsurge of hope. Helen Trainor had been the first employee he and his partner, John Hart, had hired when they’d gone into the spy-for-hire business. An elegant, posh-voiced, silver-haired sixtysomething, she ruled Cambridge Solutions’ headquarters in London with a rod of iron. She never called him in the field. If she was doing so now, something of earth-shaking importance was up. Stepping forward, he took the phone from Davis and dismissed him with a brief “thanks” and a gesture asking him to close the door behind him as he slipped back out into the hall.

  As Davis complied, Colin spoke into the phone. “Rogan here.”

  “I have a Dr. Zeigler from the States on the line who says speaking to you is a matter of life and death.” Helen sounded as untroubled as if she was placing an order for takeout. “Shall I put him through?”

  It took him a second to cobble it together: Dr. Zeigler was Bianca’s Doc.

  “Yes.”

  Helen said, “Dr. Zeigler, I have Major Rogan for you. Please go ahead.”

  “Doc?” Rogan said.

  “What are you doing in Paris?” Doc demanded without preamble. His voice was shrill with distress. “The boss is in North Korea!”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “She activated the locator beacon. You know, the one she has in her—” he seemed to get briefly tongue-tied “—garter belt. She never activates that. Never since I’ve known her. It’s only for the most extreme kind of emergency.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  At the unexpected nearness of the gravelly voice, Colin almost jumped. Grabbing for his weapon, he whipped around. Thayer—damn it to bloody hell, he’d broken his own rule and taken his eyes off the man—stood—stood—not three feet away. Shackle free. Minus IV, catheter and gauges. Barefoot, barelegged, baggy hospital gown slipping off one shoulder. Eyes clear and 100 percent awake. Holding his hand out for the phone.

  The sight poleaxed him. Even with his weapon in hand, he felt off balance.

  “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Thayer said impatiently. “Let me talk to him. I know how that locator beacon works. You don’t.”

  Obviously he’d heard both sides of the conversation.

  “Step back, Thayer. And get your bloody hands up,” Colin managed, and said to Doc, “Hang on.”

  “Is that Mason Thayer there with you?” Doc sounded shocked. “Jesus, man, look out.” He added something that Colin, preoccupied with keeping Thayer covered, missed.

  Thayer sighed. “I’m Bianca’s father,” he said. At what Colin felt must be his own stunned expression, Thayer nodded at the phone and added, “Ask him.” He raised his voice, directing his next remarks to Doc. His voice, Colin noted, was completely different now. Smoother, tougher, American. “Hey, there, Miles. Thanks for the lift in Macau, by the way.”


  “Yeah, that’s him,” Doc said unhappily before Colin could even form the question. “It’s true. He is. Her father, I mean.”

  Thayer said, “If she activated that locator beacon, she’s in real trouble and she’s asking for an extraction. You want to save her life, give me the damned phone.”

  Colin hesitated, looked the man he’d been doing his best to bring to justice for months in the bright blue eyes and felt the pieces of the puzzle he’d been trying to assemble since he’d first laid eyes on the hot blonde in the lethal underwear fall into place. He’d succeeded where so many others had failed. The rewards of capturing Thayer, both monetary and to his and his company’s professional reputation, would be immense. He had the prize Durand had been seeking for a large part of his working life within his grasp, thus fulfilling his promise to his friend and mentor. And he was thinking about turning him loose.

  Durand would go apoplectic if he knew. And the call he was getting ready to make in regards to Thayer might be dead wrong.

  Colin did a lightning review of everything he knew about Thayer, then went with his gut and handed him the phone.

  26

  Tuesday, December 17th

  If Hell was cold and smelled of urine and vomit and damp, then the place where Bianca opened her eyes was Hell. She lay on her side on a filthy stone floor. Stone walls splotched with dark patches of—something—met her gaze. The corner where she lay was deep in shadow. The room itself was dimly lit with artificial light. Her head ached, her mouth was dry, and her body felt like one giant bruise.

  Someone tapped her cheek with an icy finger. It wasn’t the first time, she realized, and realized, too, that those soft taps were what had brought her back to consciousness.

  “Please. You must wake up. They will come for you soon.”

  The voice was female. A scared whisper, not threatening. Bianca turned her head. The cheek-tapper was kneeling beside her, leaning over her, tapping anew.

  Black hair, chopped short and matted. A round face. Anxious dark eyes. It was a girl, late teens, twenty at the most. Skinny. Dirty. Arms covered with bruises and goose bumps. Dressed in the tattered remains of a T-shirt and shorts. Chained.

  The chain was what snapped Bianca back to some semblance of real awareness.

  The girl had what looked like a dog’s choke collar fastened tight around her rubbed-raw neck. A heavier chain ran from that to an iron ring set into the wall about two feet from the floor. It wasn’t long enough to allow her to stand up.

  What—

  The girl spoke again, softly and quickly. “You said some things while you were unconscious—you are American? Maybe they will let you go, trade you. If they do, if you get out, you will tell my family that you have seen me, please? I am Irene Choi. I was kidnapped in August from the streets of Seoul, walking to my mother’s house.”

  Bianca blinked. She heard the words, but their meaning did not quite compute. “Where are we?” Her throat was scratchy, which made her voice whispery, too.

  “This is Hwasong.”

  “Hwasong?”

  “Kwanliso Number 16.”

  It took Bianca a moment—her head swam, and thinking seemed to require an enormous effort—but she was able to translate kwanliso: it was Korean for penal labor colony. With a flash of horror, she realized that Kwanliso Number 16 was one of the notorious prison camps of North Korea. Which meant she was in North Korea.

  Did not see that one coming.

  A burst of frantic memory recalled Park, the explosion, the pink van hurtling toward her. Everything before that, almost nothing after. She had clearly been knocked senseless. The van must have protected her from the worst of the blast while somehow failing to hit her, probably passing over her as she lay unconscious in the street. Subsequently she’d been kidnapped—by Park? Or, more likely, someone in his orbit, because who else would take her to North Korea? She recalled, too, a brief window of hazy lucidity when she came to in the belly of what she thought was a cargo plane and was given something to eat and drink, and then injected with a substance that sent her plunging back into darkness. Another fragment of memory in which she’d been in a vehicle on a rough road tried to take shape in her mind.

  It was superseded by the surprising realization that the girl was speaking to her in English.

  “It is in North Hamgyong,” the girl continued. “The mountains hide it.” Her already low voice got even softer, so soft Bianca had to strain to hear the words. “The former Pungyye-ri nuclear test site is nearby. Mount Mantap is nearby.” The mountain that had collapsed as a result of North Korea’s nuclear tests: Bianca remembered that. “It is rumored that much secret work for the military is carried out here. Important people visit, and sometimes we are taken out to see them. There are more than 20,000 prisoners here. No one is ever released, no one has ever escaped. If you are brought here, you die here.”

  “You speak English,” Bianca said. She wasn’t quite hitting on all cylinders, but she was getting there. One thing she knew for sure: the situation was bad.

  “Yes. I am Hanguk saram—from South Korea. I go to college at St. Louis University. I came back for the summer to visit my mother. My grandfather is General Ri Yang-ho. His son, my father, is dead. I am his only grandchild. He defected from North Korea, and they grabbed me to make sure he stays silent about what he knows. They make me make videos pleading with him to come back or I will be killed. Of course, if he does come back we will both be killed. Please, you must get word to my mother that I am alive.”

  Bianca nodded. “How long have I been here?”

  “Not long. They went to eat their midday meal. I heard them talk among themselves—they will be back for you when they have finished. Did you understand what I said to you? I am Irene Choi. I must get word to my mother—”

  “I understand,” Bianca said. “You are Irene Choi, and you want me to tell your mother where you are if I get out of this place.”

  “Yes.” Irene darted a fearful glance around. “I am not the only one. There are five of us. They call us special prisoners. Right now we are of use to the regime. When we are not, they will kill us.”

  Bianca grimaced and tried to sit up. Her head pounded unmercifully, but that wasn’t what stopped her. Her wrists were shackled, and the chain connecting them was fastened to the same iron ring that Irene was tethered to.

  She frowned at it. It was a heavy chain, with solid links. Just as the shackles around her wrists and the chain linking them were solid and heavy.

  This just keeps getting better and better.

  The chain’s length was too short to allow her to sit up, much less stand. She had to recline on one elbow. She looked around. A single incandescent bulb hanging from a long wire nailed to the ceiling provided the only illumination. There were no windows, and a solid-looking metal door was the only exit.

  “What’s your name?” Irene asked.

  Bianca already had her mouth open to reply when she remembered. “Lynette,” she said. And immediately did a quick inventory to see if that was still operable.

  The wig, thanks to the truly world-class measures she employed to secure it, had stayed in place, as had her cheek prosthesis. Her glasses, earrings and ring were gone. Her red coat was gone as well, and she felt a pulse-quickening shot of alarm as she remembered the ChapStick/flash drive in the pocket. Had it made it to North Korea with her, or had it been lost along the way? There was no way to know, which meant that worrying about it was useless, so she pushed it to the back of her mind and continued to take stock.

  She was dressed in her Lynette-wear of black crewneck and loose black pants. Her shoes were missing; she was in (torn) stocking feet. The stockings were attached to her garter belt—

  The hazy memory that had been trying to surface succeeded. During her brief period of consciousness in the bumpy vehicle she’d managed to activate the locator beacon in her garter belt. Of course, the only person left to monitor it was Doc, and what he could do about getting her out of this she had
no idea—if the signal was even getting through. If he even saw it.

  Colin—he would be wild with worry. Or would he? Maybe— Stop. She refused to think about Colin any more. All her energy had to go to dealing with the disaster at hand.

  “What did you do?” Irene’s tone was a mixture of curiosity and pity.

  Irene meant what had she done to wind up at Hwasong, she knew. Bianca shook her head. She was still gathering information about the room—actually, calling it a room was a misnomer; it was more of a stone dungeon with a wooden ceiling—and had just discovered that she and Irene weren’t the only people in it. A large, cylindrical metal tank stood in the corner opposite them. A rubber hose fed into its open top from a faucet attached to one of the many PVC pipes that crisscrossed the ceiling. That particular pipe must have been a water pipe, because the tank was full almost to the brim—and the young man standing in it was submerged to just below his nose. His mouth was underwater, and if he lowered his head by even the slightest degree his nose would be, too. She knew he was chained in place, or secured in some way. It was classic torture: if he slumped, or worse, if his legs gave out so that he couldn’t stand anymore, he would drown. What could be seen of his face was ghostly white. His hair was dark and wet and clung to his skull, his face was long and cadaverous, and his eyes were wide and full of despair and looking right at her and Irene. Bianca was reminded of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

  “That’s David,” Irene said, seeing where her gaze rested. “He’s one of the Americans. Tim—” She nodded at what Bianca realized to her horror was a wooden cage hanging from the ceiling. It was maybe four feet by four feet, with slats in the front. Inside was a man. He was folded up on himself like a paper clip, and appeared to be either unconscious or asleep. “—is the other one. They’re college students, too. They came on a tour from China, and got arrested for an act of disrespect to the Supreme Leader. They’re here at Hwasong because they can be used as bargaining chips with your country. But the guards hate Americans, so they are being treated very badly.”