by Camilla Monk
He sighed a cloud of smoke. “When did you become so straightforward? Has the company of Mr. November hardened you so?”
“I won’t talk to you if you keep me in the dark.”
“I’ll indulge you then. I was . . . intrigued by his handling of your father’s case. He spared no efforts to hunt down Mr. Kovius—that, I expected—and he was onto Mr. November the minute his house was targeted, but when Sabina Falchi’s name came up, it took him eight hours to even start looking for her, and by then, I was informed that her trail was cold. He’s not that sloppy; we both know that, right?”
I pursed my lips in guise of an agreement. “But you didn’t know there was a personal beef between Anies and Dries. Otherwise you might have seen it coming.”
“So you too believe that his elusive brother threw Mr. Kovius under the proverbial bus? May I ask what the ‘beef’ was about?”
In my back pocket, I could still feel Jan’s Polaroid. “Irreconcilable differences.”
“Very helpful.” Leather squeaked as Erwin leaned back in the seat and crossed his legs. “In any case, I knew there was a degree of rivalry between the brothers, but I underestimated it. As I underestimated Kovius Senior’s influence on Mr. Morgan. Which brings us to our current agenda: what do you suggest we do now?”
“I don’t know. You’re the secret spy; you figure it out. I’m almost certain we’ll find Gerone in Rangiroa, but I honestly have no idea what his connection to the Lions is, or why he wants to blow up that dome . . . I mean, other than because he has some serious issues.”
The cigarillo hanging from his lips, the Caterpillar studied me for several seconds, concealed behind a smoke screen I was starting to think of as a metaphor for his very self. “Miss Chaptal, how many languages do you speak?”
I gave him a wary side-eye. “Um, apart from English and French, not that many . . . I have a decent grasp of Japanese and Italian. The other languages, it’s more basic knowledge and intuition, enough to figure out what’s going on around me, like”—I counted off on my fingers—“German, Russian, Afrikaans and Dutch, Spanish, Korean . . . I learned a little bit of Chinese too, when I was twelve.”
“Do you speak Croatian?”
“No. I only recognize some words because of the Slavic and Latin roots. Like I said, intuition and etymology help.”
Through the smoke, he bobbed his head slowly. I waited for him to clarify his intent.
“Miss Chaptal, what can you tell me about my watch?”
This time I nearly eye-rolled. What next? Would he pop out a Ouija board? I lowered my gaze to the brown leather band holding a rectangular dial peeking from under his shirt cuff. No need to see the brand; the shape spoke for itself. “It’s a Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso,” I said. “It’s a Swiss brand, and it’s called a Reverso because you can slide the dial in its case and flip it around.” I mimicked the gesture with my good hand. “That way the glass is facing your wrist, and it’s protected from shocks. They invented it for British polo players in the thirties, because they’d break their watches during the games.”
He crossed his arms and remained silent.
“I’m sorry, sir; where are you going with this?”
At last he stubbed the cigarillo in a door ashtray I was willing to bet had been installed just for him. “Don’t expect to get paid if I don’t see results. Don’t expect to get rescued if you get caught. And don’t ever expect to escape me, Miss Chaptal. Mr. Morgan is about to learn that the hard way.”
A chill crept up my spine. “Are you forcing me to work for you again? I don’t think that March—”
“I own him. And now, I own you too.” His tone had noticeably cooled down. I shrank in my seat as he went on. “Welcome to our little family. As you can understand, we don’t hand out written contracts.”
I stared down at the cast on my lap. The meds the doctor had given me were wearing off. Slowly the pain was coming back, swelling, pulsing under my skin. “March is going to kill you for this.”
The Caterpillar let out a dry laugh. “When he’s fifty, and I’m a bag of bones in a wheelchair, that’s when he’ll come for me. Until then, I suggest we focus on the task at hand.”
“I see. I have one last question.”
A sigh of impatience fanned my way that carried terrible smoker’s breath. “All inquiries can be addressed to either Murrell or Stiles.”
“No. I want to know what will happen to Alex’s sister now. Will Poppy be safe?”
His eyebrows jerked. “Poppy?”
“Yes, his sister. She’s sixteen.”
On his lap, his fingers clenched. Weird that, of all things, bringing up Alex’s sister would make him nervous. “Miss Chaptal, when was the last time you spoke to . . . Poppy?”
“Actually, I’ve never . . . Back when Alex and I were together, he’d sometimes call her or text her, but, you know . . . he never let me get that close. Looking back on it, I don’t think he ever intended to introduce us,” I concluded, feeling suddenly a little queasy at the memory of the months Alex had spent manipulating me.
“I see.” The Caterpillar gazed through his window at his agents hurrying around the plane outside, loading suitcases, making phone calls. “I doubt you’ll ever meet her, indeed. Not in this life anyway.”
I had a bad feeling about this. “Sir—”
“Her mother wanted to show her the pyramids. Something anyone should see at least once in their lifetime, right?”
For a second, the car and Erwin ceased to exist. I was free-falling, and my internal organs were knotting from the sudden vertigo. “She was in the plane?” I croaked out.
He dragged his gaze back to me and nodded once.
Dries’s words came back to me. We all live with our ghosts. Poppy was one of them. A sixteen-year-old girl her parents had probably wanted to impress by taking her on a private jet to see the pyramids. And Alex . . . he carried her with him. He lied about her to keep her alive. It worked. If not in the flesh, Poppy had lived in my mind for months. He had shown me pictures of her, and a bubbly, snarky teen with a mop of brown curls had taken form in my mind. She was an integral part of the madness he’d spiraled into. My forehead throbbed with a pain that rivaled the one now blazing in my forearm.
And I was going to be sick.
When I lunged at the door handle, it resisted at first, but the Caterpillar flicked his wrist and the driver opened the door. I tumbled out, bumping into Murrell and March. He tried to catch me in his arms, but I pushed him away and staggered back. My stomach heaved, once, twice. I bent forward, braced my right hand on my knee, and curled my left arm against my breasts. Within seconds, I was done emptying the meager contents of my stomach onto the tarmac.
Once I was done coughing and drooling bitter vomit on the asphalt, I felt March’s arms come around me, helping me up, bringing a tissue to my mouth. Part of me was aware of what it must cost him to get anywhere near that kind of filth. That mundane thought was the last straw. The tears came, hot, unrelenting. Because I felt so dirty and powerless—over Karl, Alex, Poppy, my mother . . . all the lives that were lost, broken, and that I could never fix. March anchored me, squeezed me tight as I heard myself bawl, “I’m sorry . . . I need a shower. I just want a shower!”
26
The Osmeterium
He had her in his claws, and no matter how hard she fought her instincts, Lexie could no longer deny the raging chemistry between her and Bobby.
—Lane Tempest, Kiss of The Lobster Shifter
The shower helped. Stiles had given me a plastic bag to wrap my cast into, and after a good twenty minutes spent emptying minibottle after minibottle of shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, hand cream, foot cream . . . I felt focused enough to come to the conclusion that the Caterpillar was robbing the taxpayers blind.
Because dude, dat 787!
With its ceiling shower system, golden taps, and the buttload of miniature shit lined on elegant ebony shelves, the bathroom I stood in represented only a fract
ion of the madness that was this plane. I had seen the Caterpillar in a Cadillac limo back in New York, and that alone had gotten me suspicious of the way that old fart handled government money. But we were dealing with a fricking airliner here, complete with two sleeping cabins and a conference room. And don’t get me started on the walnut burl inserts and gilded stuff everywhere, around the windows, in the armrests—which were all fitted with black suede, by the way!
In the cabin adjacent to the bathroom, several bags and boxes sat on the bed: Stiles had raided the airport’s sole duty-free shop while I scrubbed myself. Something else had been laid next to the pillow—by March, I was almost certain of it. Next to my precious polaroid lay the compact CZ 75 Alex’s men had wrenched from my hand in the hotel room, its black steel glaring against the snowy-white linen. I stared at the gun for a while before I resolved to tuck it, along with the Polaroid, inside a little green shoulder bag Stiles had found for me. Someone needed to give that man a medal.
I damn near moaned at the feeling of clean underwear and silently thanked him for the ample cream tunic I could easily slip into, even with my cast. A pair of navy leggings completed the ensemble. I used a wet wipe to clean my ballet flats, and I felt pea-chy. No, on the verge of physical and mental exhaustion actually. Also those noises coming from my stomach didn’t sound right. Low growls and ritual chanting too, I was pretty sure of it. A gate to hell would open in there real soon if I didn’t eat something.
I came out of the cabin with the firm intent to find a fridge in the plane while around me everyone took a seat. The Caterpillar’s agents were finished loading their stuff, and it appeared we’d be taking off in a few minutes. March was nowhere to be found, but before tumbling into the shower stall earlier, I’d heard him mutter that he wanted a “word” with the Caterpillar, so I figured they’d isolated themselves either in the second cabin or in the conference room. I feared there’d be in fact several words, like no, unacceptable, the terms of our agreement, and also no.
Rather than a fridge, I found a fully equipped kitchen at the other end of the sitting area. There too someone had raised trembling fists to the sky and yelled, “More walnut burl, more gold!” Noticing Stiles approaching behind me, I poked gingerly at the windows of a small . . . lobster tank. “Don’t you think that this a little too much for governmental equipment?”
He had the good grace to cringe when a brownish crustacean waved at him through the glass. “I know, but changing everything would cost too much at this point.”
“Well, maybe you guys shouldn’t have bought it in the first place,” I said tartly.
“It was actually a gift.”
“Really?”
“Yes, from a Russian businessman.”
I seized a fat chocolate muffin and gobbled it in three bites with a sigh of delight. I wiped the crumbs from my cheek. “So he gave you his plane, just like that?”
“Well, we inherited it, really.”
“He’s dead?”
Stiles shrugged. “They haven’t found the body yet, but don’t worry about that.”
I looked over his shoulder. March and the Caterpillar had reappeared, both looking tight as violin strings. It was the first time I saw the guy standing on his legs, and he was shorter than I’d imagined, no more than 5´8˝. He went to sit in an isolated area where smoked-glass panels surrounding a large seat offered some degree of privacy. Nearby, a blond flight attendant was searching a cupboard for a bottle of cognac and went to serve him a glass.
“Stiles!” I hissed. “He’s drinking before we’ve even taken off. Also, I think he stole this plane!”
He looked more than a little embarrassed as March joined us. “Well, he really liked it, and trust me, no one is going to come forward to claim it back.”
“That’s . . . hardcore.”
I took a fearful peek at the man who’d proclaimed himself my new employer. After he’d downed his cognac and put his seat in sleep mode, the Caterpillar appeared dead to the world. Stiles went to sit across from Murrell, who had something to show him on a tablet, and at last, I was able to sink into a seat facing March’s.
“How did it go?” I asked, while he helped me buckle my belt.
“You don’t have to worry. I will find a way out of this. Until then, I don’t want you anywhere near that dome.”
“It’s okay. I don’t think I’ll be much use to him anyway. Once he figures how bad I am at the spy stuff, he’s gonna pay me to quit.”
“There won’t be any of that!” March snapped. “You have no idea what he’s capable of asking—”
“I know.”
He went silent, and his gaze drifted to the Caterpillar’s agents, checking whether they might be listening to us.
“I haven’t forgotten the story Kalahari told me in Paris,” I said.
We wouldn’t have that particular conversation here, surrounded by CIA agents, and less than twenty feet away from Erwin, but March knew exactly what I meant. Charlotte Covington was a ghost from March’s past, who had visited me six months ago and never really left since. I think Kalahari told me about her so I’d know March was capable of loving just like anyone else, so I’d understand where he came from.
In a quiet bedroom in Paris, I had listened as she told me how the Caterpillar had sent Charlotte to March’s bed, how he’d fallen in love for the first time in his life, despite knowing she was a spy. He’d told her, laid his heart at her feet . . . and she’d dumped him—along with her mission—because she couldn’t deal with that level of complication.
It should have ended there, as nothing more than a painful lesson and a love forgotten, drowned in a whisky bottle. But a few months later, Charlotte was sent on a risky job in Ivory Coast, in the middle of a civil war. She was captured, along with several of her colleagues. As per rule number two—Don’t expect to get rescued if you get caught—the Caterpillar issued a burn notice. I feel bad even using that term, since Charlotte ended up being tortured and burned alive before March could rescue her. By the time he found her, it was too late. There was nothing left to do, and he made the decision to end her suffering. That single shot and the memory of Charlotte’s disfigured body haunted his nights for years afterward . . .
Back to the two of us, sitting in that ridiculously kitsch plane with the lobsters watching us. The vibrations of takeoff filled the cabin, and I let them wash over me, lost in March’s eyes. There were so many things passing between us in that moment, words we couldn’t say.
Once the 787 was gliding high above the clouds, March leaned forward, and with great care, caressed the fingers of my left hand that were peeking out from the cast. Only I could hear his softly whispered words and the determination in his voice. “It won’t end like that. I’ll do anything . . . I won’t let it end like that.”
I knew he meant it, and I was all too aware that “anything” meant a lot of people would die if it was the price to protect me. Yet, not for the first time since I’d met March, I wondered if I’d end up like Charlotte, like my mom: someone else’s ghost. My throat tight, all I could say was, “It’s okay. I know we’ll figure this out.”
“Sorry to interrupt.”
March let go of my hand, and we both looked up as Stiles, who gestured to the conference room occupying the center of the plane. There, Murrell and another agent fumbled with the remote to a large mounted screen, reinforcing my deeply ingrained belief that there is no such thing as videoconference equipment that “works,” only tears, self-loathing, and faulty HDMI cables.
“We got a meeting”—Stiles checked his watch—“in five. But we can get some sleep after that.”
27
The Whitlow
She could run, she could hide, but it would be no use. He was a patient wolf; eventually, he would grab that pussy.
—Raquelle Montana, The Cat Breeder’s Dark Obsession
True to my prediction, March and I had the time to eat two chicken sandwiches each and an entire bag of beet chips before Murrell was finishe
d wrestling the wiring into submission. Thirty minutes later, the four of us were sitting around a long glass table. Water bottles had been placed in front of each seat, as well as complimentary notepads bearing the CIA’s logo. They had given us pens too. I was so keeping those.
“Isn’t Erwin going to join us?” March inquired.
Murrell shook his head. “He doesn’t like meetings. I’ll report to him later.” With this, he grabbed the remote and pressed a button. Around us, the glass panels isolating the conference room instantly turned a milky white to give us privacy.
I couldn’t resist the urge to get up from my seat and go poke one with my good hand. “You guys have electrochromic glass here? This is so cool.”
“I know, right?” A young male voice laughed.
I spun around to find that the large screen mounted on a wall at the end of the room had been turned on. His desk was still a complete mess on which sat a half-assembled server; today was, uncharacteristically, a red He-Man T-shirt day, and Colin looked fine overall.
He gauged us with round eyes from behind black-rimmed glasses. “Are you guys okay? I heard that there’s been some action.”
Some, indeed . . . I gave a sheepish shrug. “Yeah, sort of. We’re good. Well, alive, anyway.”
“Cool. And no news from Morgan, right?”
Murrell pursed his lips. “His file has been locked following the incident in Kv-Kravat . . . vica. We won’t be discussing his case for now.”
Colin gave an uneasy nod and directed his gaze to March and me. “So we did some research on Lucca Gerone based on what you gave us.”
“What happened to him after Novensia?” March asked.
“Nothing that left any public trace, but you already know that. No known issue during his postdoc there, nothing from HR. But in December 2005, he got admitted into intensive care at the American Hospital in Rome. His file says ‘lab accident.’”