by Harper Allen
“You told me you were a mercenary, Malone. I never thought you were a monk,” she said dryly. “Besides, I didn’t even know you then. So you went out with your friend that night?”
“No. That’s just it.” His normal color returning, he frowned. “We were supposed to. We talked for a few minutes and he gave me the name of the bar and suggested a time to meet there later on. Then he said something about not expecting to meet one old acquaintance in a godforsaken dump like this, let alone two, and that only minutes before seeing me he was sure he’d spotted someone he’d known years before at college.
“We went our separate ways at that point—Chris to see if he could find his friend, me looking for a taxi to get me into the city. I finally got one, and as it was pulling out of the airport a Mercedes passed us. Chris was in the passenger seat, but his head was against the window and his eyes were closed. I got a vague impression of the driver, but he was wearing sunglasses, and the Mercedes streaked by the clapped-out Russian Zil I was in too fast to get a good look at him.”
“And then what?” she prompted impatiently.
“And then when I saw Chris again, he was lying in a ditch beside that same road leading from the airport, with his throat cut from ear to ear. That was the next morning, when I was returning to catch my flight out,” he said quietly.
Ainslie felt the blood drain from her face, but Malone seemed oblivious not only to her, but to the busy noise and activity of the diner around him.
He was seeing ghosts, she thought with a pang of unreasonable fear, those same shadows and ghosts that she’d seen in the eyes of her brother long ago, the same ones she’d seen in the eyes of Sully’s other mercenary friends. And maybe it was just for the moment, but right now those ghosts were more real to him than she was. She found herself clenching her hands together under the table as he continued, his tone oddly detached.
“I’d waited for him the evening before. When he didn’t show, I figured he’d found more interesting entertainment. He liked the ladies, Chris did. One of the rules of the mercenary world is that you don’t ask personal questions, but I knew there’d been some trouble with a girl in his past. From things he’d let drop, I was sure he came from an old Boston family and that they’d cut all ties with him years before.
“Anyway, I drank a little too much, got up with a hangover the next day and thanked my lucky stars I’d had the foresight to bribe the Zil driver to pick me up and drive me to the airport. If I hadn’t, I probably never would have made it out of the country.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up in a humorless smile. Her gaze widened.
“Dear God…I know where you’re talking about now. It’s in the same area as Chechnia, isn’t it?”
“Not bordering, but close. And it’s even smaller than Chechnia, so the media’s largely ignored it. Plus no one seems to know how to spell its name, since it seems to be all consonants.” His voice hardened. “Not a sexy war, I guess. But people are still dying over there, and have been since the night their president was assassinated.”
“The night you spent waiting for your friend,” she said tensely.
“The night I spent getting so drunk I can’t really remember what I did.” Malone’s grin was tight. His eyes were unreadable behind the glasses. “But I’m a soldier by trade. I wasn’t drunk enough to sleep through the first sounds of gunfire the next morning. I grabbed up my equipment and raced outside just as my driver arrived. He knew it was bad, too, but he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a civil war stop him from making a few more American dollars. Besides, people find it hard to accept that their lives have been turned inside out in a matter of hours. They stick to their routine for as long as they can, which was why the police were by the side of the highway investigating the murder of one man, when already dozens were being killed in the streets of the city. The traffic had slowed to a crawl by then, and I saw that the body they were standing over was Chris’s. I made the driver pull over.”
“Didn’t the police try to detain you?” He had been lucky he’d gotten out of the country unscathed, Ainslie thought faintly. Especially after presenting himself to the authorities as a convenient suspect—make that the only suspect, she corrected herself—in a murder investigation. He shook his head.
“They took statements from me and the cabbie right there. There were two of them, and the younger one might have been considering taking me in, but the older cop told me to go. I think he knew he’d be signing my death warrant if he kept me any longer. As it was, I got the last seat on the last plane out before the airport shut down completely. I suppose my statement must have been filed at some point. That had to be how the Agency learned of my involvement.”
“And the man in the Mercedes—he’s the one they thought might be the Executioner? He killed your friend because he’d been recognized?”
“That was the theory they handed me. At some point they obviously came up with a new one—that I was the Executioner myself. I don’t know if I blame them.”
Despite, or maybe because of, the emotionless way he’d told his story, Ainslie was numb with horror. Her nerves already stretched thin, at his last remark they snapped completely.
“I do. Even if the evidence against you—evidence that the real Executioner’s man inside the Agency must have created—was overwhelming, why weren’t you arrested? Why weren’t you questioned? Why were you set up like a target in a shooting gallery, for God’s sake? That’s not the way things work in this country, Malone!”
“Not normally, no.” His voice was even. “But even a decent man like Paul would have pulled the trigger on me with no hesitation after he’d been told who I was. Who they thought I was,” he amended, holding her gaze. “It’s like the old question, If you could go back in time and eliminate Hitler, would you? Monsters have been arrested and set free, only to pick up where they left off. They wanted to be sure I never had the chance to start another bloodbath in another corner of the world, Lee.”
“Distance yourself, dammit.” Her tone was like ice, her eyes even colder. “Distance yourself, Malone, or we’re beaten before we start. Stop talking about him as if there’s a possibility he’s you. Stop seeing their side.” She gave him the same tight smile that he’d given her a few moments ago. “Understand one thing—if you’re on their side, then I’m fighting against you. Because I intend to bring them down. I won’t stop until I do.”
“It’s not your fight—” he began, but she cut him off before he could finish, leaning across the table to him.
“They stole you away from me!” Her whisper was harsh. “Don’t ever tell me it’s not my fight, Malone, because it is. What you’ve got to decide is whether it’s yours, or whether you’re willing to let them bury you all over again.”
Abruptly she shoved back her chair and stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder and praying that the trembling inside her wasn’t visible. “It’s that one memory, isn’t it? That memory of Joseph Mocamba in your sights. I don’t accept that you had anything to do with his death, but it’s obviously tearing you apart. I guess I can understand that. I’ve got a memory that still tears at me, too.”
She took a deep breath, and got herself under control. “We haven’t paid yet. I’ll wait for you outside in the car.”
She turned to go, but he stopped her with a question.
“What’s your memory, Lee?” His voice was quiet. “What is it that tears you apart?”
She looked back at him, and some part of her felt the need to rush to him, to touch his face, to feel his heartbeat. She still didn’t quite believe he’d come back to her, she thought shakily. She was so afraid of losing him again.
“They gave me a little silver shovel. I dug up some earth and tipped it onto your coffin. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that terrible sound, Seamus. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how that felt. I couldn’t go through that a second time.”
He’d risen and had thrown some money down on the table, but suddenly she needed to be o
ut of the close atmosphere of the diner, and in the fresh air.
She strode a few paces ahead of him and had almost reached the curb where he’d parked the car when she felt him grip her arm roughly.
Startled, she spun around, only to find herself looking into the face of a complete stranger. Behind him was Malone, but even as he took a swift step toward them Ainslie felt something hard press into the small of her back under her jacket.
“I’ve got a .45 right against the lady’s spine, Malone.”
The stranger’s words were calmly conversational. As a businessman hurried by, Ainslie realized that to anyone watching, the scene probably looked innocuous.
“It’s Noah, right?” Malone’s gaze was shuttered. “Let her go, Watkins. I’m the one the Agency’s been looking for. She doesn’t have to be part of it.”
“Yeah, she does. She’s my guarantee that you won’t get away from me again.” His smile was thin, but Ainslie could hear the thread of hatred in his voice.
“Like you did two years ago, Malone—the night I thought I’d killed you in that alleyway.”
Chapter Eleven
“Tell me something, Watkins.”
They were about an hour outside of Boston. In the driver’s seat in front of them, Malone flicked a quick glance into the rearview mirror.
“When you killed Paul last night, was there an instant when he realized what you intended to do? Or did he die thinking you were his friend?”
“I don’t know.” The man seated beside Ainslie lifted his shoulders in a tensely dismissive movement, keeping his gaze fixed on Malone, the ugly weapon in his hand aimed at her. “That was something I thought of asking you. But I figured you’d lie about it, anyway.”
Ainslie turned away. It was a perfect autumn day, she thought dully as the scenery blurred by. Drifts of gold and scarlet blanketed the landscape beyond the freeway and the sky was a hard, late-October blue, as if the sun had polished it to a high gleam in readiness to be put away for the winter.
Cutting across it she could see a wavering vee of geese traveling in the same direction as they were, and the sight rang a faint bell in her mind. Sully, she thought. Once he had told her that when mercenaries died, their souls took on the form of wild geese and they flew for eternity, searching for redemption.
No, they don’t, Sully, she told him silently. When mercenaries die, they’re buried like anyone else. They’re lowered six feet down into the cold, hard ground, and it’s the ones they leave behind who search in vain to find some meaning in their deaths.
She’d told Malone she wouldn’t be able to stand going through that again, but she’d lied. She would have to go through it again. If everything went according to Watkins’s plan, and he managed to finish the job he’d botched two years ago, she wouldn’t be able to allow herself the luxury of accepting her own death. She had to survive, even if surviving Malone a second time meant living with unceasing pain for the rest of her life.
Tara had already lost one mother. She was the one who didn’t deserve to suffer a second loss.
But if there was even the slightest opportunity of catching Watkins off guard and giving Malone a chance to take the man down, she would risk it, Ainslie thought coldly. Despite the gun he had aimed at her, Watkins’s attention wasn’t fully focused on her. That might be his undoing.
She shifted cautiously, studying him from the corner of her eye. He wasn’t a man to command attention at first glance. His height was average, his hair a close-cropped sandy-brown and his features, nondescript. Only his eyes gave him away. They were pale blue, so light in hue that in the bright sunlight they seemed to be almost colorless. Sailor’s eyes, Ainslie thought. Or marksman’s eyes. Even if he hadn’t already admitted it, she would have known instinctively that he’d been the one who had held Malone in the crosshairs of a nightscope, and who’d coolly pulled the trigger on him.
“Do you mind if I take this off?” She touched the smooth blond wing of hair skimming her jawline.
“Go ahead.” For the first time, those pale eyes looked directly at her, and with a small shock she saw a flicker of emotion at the back of them. “Just don’t make any sudden moves.”
Slowly she pulled the wig backward from her forehead, feeling like herself again as her own hair fell forward. Folding her hands carefully in her lap, she turned back to the window.
If she’d seen that emotion in anyone else’s eyes, she would have identified it as compassion, she told herself shakily. But Noah Watkins was a self-acknowledged killer for the Agency, who even now was taking a man to his death. Whatever he was feeling right now, it wasn’t anything as human as pity.
“Take the next exit, and then the first road off it to the right, Malone.” His voice was devoid of inflection. “I’m told you have a soft spot for your girlfriend here. Don’t count on me counting on that. Seeing you die has been all I’ve dreamed about for two years now, and today it’s finally going to happen.”
“I wondered why we were heading out into the country.” Malone slowed for the exit. “But now it makes sense, it being your dream, and all. I guess the setting has to be just right.”
“Why didn’t Paul get the same treatment?” Ainslie asked, tearing her suddenly burning gaze from the scenery and turning to meet those colorless eyes. “Why did he have to die at all? The Agency never intended for the police to be the first to find Malone, so what was the point of that murder?”
Instead of answering her, Watkins searched her face, the expression on his own almost curious. Then his glance flicked away. “I don’t think that’s something you need to know. If it is, then someone else can fill you in. I don’t consider that part of the job.”
“How about this one, then?” The road to the right that Watkins had referred to was unpaved and badly rutted. Malone maneuvered onto it cautiously. “How did you locate us, Noah?”
“I sent out doves,” Watkins said curtly. “Just concentrate on the driving, Seamus. The road curves up ahead. Follow it around the lake.”
As he spoke Ainslie saw a glimmer of blue through the feather tracery of the tamaracks lining the road. The car took the curve and the trees became sparser, the lake coming into full view.
She felt her breath catch in her throat. It was beautiful, she thought unwillingly. The shoreline was softened by massively old willow trees, and as they came nearer she saw a pair of mallards skim lightly down onto the mirror-like surface of the water. At the top of the gentle rise that overlooked the lake, a long-ago fire had destroyed all but the gray stones that had once made up the outer walls of a mansion.
The place had a kind of forgotten enchantment about it that would soon be shattered by the violence Watkins intended to carry out here. On a sudden impulse she reached over and touched Watkins’s sleeve as Malone slowed the car.
“He’ll kill you, too.” Her voice cracked with urgency. “You know he will—you’re the only one who can connect him to all—”
“He’s not going to kill me. I intend to make sure that Paul was his last victim.” Watkins studied her face even more intently than before. Slowly he shook his head. “You finally accept it, don’t you? You didn’t know for sure before, but Paul’s death was the final straw for you, wasn’t it?”
She stared at him, but he seemed to take her confusion for acquiescence and once again she saw a flash of something like pity in his gaze.
“I was at the funeral, too. I saw you there with Paul, and I heard that he watched over you for the next few days. You’re right, he of all people didn’t deserve to die.” He reached past her for the door handle on her side and unlatched it. “Get out slowly and stand away from the car. Malone, you do the same.”
After the close confines of the vehicle the air outside was instantly cool against her face. The slight breeze stirred a few strands of her hair as she did what Watkins had instructed her to do, and took a couple of steps away from the car, the autumn-dried grasses making a sound like rustling taffeta as she moved through them.
; Her gaze sought Malone’s, but he was looking away from her, squinting against the sunlight toward the sprawling stone outline of the house at the top of the rise. His profile was grim.
“Was it a setup in your dreams, too, Noah?” he said harshly. “Because that’s what I think you just walked into. Lee, stay as far away from him as you can.”
Watkins had come up beside her, and with one part of her mind Ainslie realized that he was no longer aiming the gun at her. She started to distance herself from him, but he grasped her wrist.
“You know you don’t trust him anymore. If he can use you, he will, and that’s exactly what he’s trying to do, Ainslie.” In the bright sun his irises were silvery. “Paul once thought of him as a friend, too, but in the end he’ll destroy anyone who gets in his way. Like you said, if he could, he’d kill me, because I can tie him to all the other deaths—but letting you live would be an even greater risk to him. Malone eliminates risks like you and Paul.”
For a moment she just stared at him. His expression was implacable, but his words had been delivered with a kind of heavy reluctance, as if he found no pleasure in what he was telling her. A terrible suspicion began to take shape in her mind.
If you could go back in time and eliminate Hitler, would you? Malone’s hypothetical question came back to her, and suddenly everything became shockingly clear.
“There was a chance in a million that you were fully aware of what he was, and were working with him,” Watkins went on. “I wasn’t completely convinced of that, and now I know for sure. You just fell in love with the wrong man.” He released her at the same time as his other hand lifted and aimed the gun at Malone. “Get back in the car. There’s no reason for you to have to see—”
“You really believe it!” She felt as if the air had been slammed out of her. “You weren’t his puppet, you were his dupe! From the first you’ve seen this mission as some kind of noble crusade, haven’t you?” Her voice climbed. “I was with Malone last night. He didn’t leave my side, dammit—not even for a second. He didn’t kill Paul, and he’s not the Executioner!”