‘Yes,’ she said softly, squeezing his arm, ‘and you are good at it.’ She held his gaze across the table, before giggling and sitting back in her seat. ‘You know, it’s not that I’m good at this – it’s just that you’re hopeless.’
It was true, Cole had to admit, and he wondered if it was the simple fact of Morgan’s surreal beauty that made him unable to believe that she could possibly be interested in him.
‘It must be hard for you,’ he said. ‘Looking like you do.’
To her credit, Morgan didn’t ask him what he meant by that; she knew she stood out, she must have had to live with it her entire life.
‘It’s been hard,’ she admitted. ‘I’m used to this reaction from guys, you know? They’re either too eager – just plain arrogant and vulgar – or else they have no idea how to speak to me, like I’m some sort of alien from outer space. The other women, they always assume I can just have any man I want, all I have to do is click my fingers.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But it’s just not true, you know? It’s not true at all. I’m probably one of the loneliest people there is, despite what everyone thinks.’
‘Is that why your work is so important to you?’
Morgan nodded, paused as the table was cleared from their appetizers and their main courses were brought over, and then continued. ‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘Having a father who idolized my three older brothers and never wanted a daughter in the first place probably had something to do with it too. Gave me motivation, drove me onwards. Pushed me into getting into Oxford University, then into Five. Everywhere I’ve been, everything I’ve done, it’s been an uphill struggle for me.’
‘Well,’ Cole said, ‘sometimes adversity can be a good thing, it makes us do more than we realize we’re capable of.’
Morgan nodded, smiled at him again. ‘Sometimes brings us into contact with people we wouldn’t otherwise meet, too.’
This time, Cole responded immediately, raising his wine glass in toast to her. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said with a smile of his own, and one which – for the first time in as long as he could remember – was truly genuine.
13
‘He hit me,’ Morgan said with tears in her eyes. ‘Slapped me across the face, hard.’
It was an hour later, and Cole was sitting with Morgan at the edge of the promenade, facing out to sea, their legs dangling off the concrete sea wall just a few feet above the gently lapping waters.
Morgan was telling him about her time at Oxford, where she’d agreed to go out on a date with a young man who had it all – good looks, money, intelligence and humor. But they were things he had felt entitled to, and they had fed his natural arrogance; and so when Morgan had only given him a kiss on the cheek to say goodbye at the end of the night, he had naturally felt entitled to more.
He’d pushed her inside her student apartment where – her friends back home for the weekend – she was staying alone, and when she’d resisted his advances, he’d hit her.
Cole felt every muscle in his body tensing as he listened to her story; if there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was bullies, people who took advantage of others, and rapists were even worse, the lowest of the low.
His arm went round her shoulders as she shivered, holding her close against the night chill as it grew colder and colder; but he knew that the shivering wasn’t just due to the temperature, but from reliving the terrible ordeal.
‘I fought back,’ Morgan said, ‘clawed him with my nails, tried to bite him, but then he hit me again, he actually head-butted me, if you can believe that, he spread my nose sideways across my face and I was out of it, completely out of it. I was delirious when he got on top of me and raped me, and I guess a part of me is thankful for that, you know? It means the memories aren’t perhaps quite as terrible as they might have been.’
She was crying properly now, her shoulders heaving with the sobs. ‘I thought I’d gotten over it, after all these years. I pulled out of university, just sat alone in my room for the first few months. Went traveling after that for a while, to get my head clear. Eventually came back, changed my course from politics to law. I guess I wanted to do something that would make more of a practical difference, I thought about joining the police at first, before somebody mentioned the Security Service. I suppose I wanted to take control, not be the victim anymore, take my life back. Can you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ Cole said softly, mouth close to her ear. ‘Yes, I can.’
‘And then that man jumped us, back at the mall in London, and all of a sudden I was that teenage girl again, completely helpless. He grabbed me and I just didn’t know what to do, my mind froze, my body froze, I couldn’t move, couldn’t respond.’
How terrible for her, Cole realized; it must have been so frightening, the horror of that monster raping her coming back to her, flooding her memories, taking over her completely.
‘But you did fight back,’ Cole reminded her.
‘Yes,’ she said, the tears coming afresh, ‘and look what happened, Tom died because of it, because of what I did, because I shot him!’
Cole held her tighter as she was wracked with sobs. ‘The gun went off during the struggle,’ Cole said, ‘that’s different from shooting him. And he’d have probably been shot by Khan anyway, if you hadn’t tried to stop him.’ He was about to tell her that she shouldn’t beat herself up over it too much, but decided against it; he couldn’t change how she felt, and his words would have been wasted.
‘Poor Tom,’ she sobbed. ‘He had a daughter, did you know that? A little girl, just six months old. He was so proud too, so happy. His wife was nice, I don’t . . . I just don’t know how she’ll . . . how she’ll manage now . . .’
The tears came again, and Cole didn’t say a word, just held her and let her know that she wasn’t alone in the world, that somebody was there for her.
Cole watched the twinkling lights of the boats out to sea, bobbing up and down on the dark water ahead of him as he held Morgan. He wasn’t aware of the passage of time, but eventually her shoulders stopped shaking, and the tears subsided.
Still he said nothing, letting her become relaxed, settled, until eventually she nestled into him even closer, head to his chest.
‘I feel safe with you,’ she said finally, pushing away slightly so that she could look at him properly, and as Cole saw her face in the moonlight, he almost gasped, her eyes almost impossibly beautiful. He sensed the need in them, the longing, the hope that Cole would respond to her.
And, unable to help himself any longer, Cole did respond, leaning in close to her, mouth seeking hers; and she leant in too, until their lips met and they kissed under the starry night sky, united at last.
Cole stared up at the ceiling from his bed at Art Hotel Kalelarga, his arm around Elizabeth Morgan who slept peacefully next to him, legs wrapped tight over his.
What had he done? What had they done?
At the time it had seemed so natural, so necessary, that he couldn’t have stopped it from happening even if he’d wanted to; and as they returned to the hotel and made love in a frenzy of animal passion that had taken his breath away, he had believed that he could never regret it, not if he lived to be a thousand. Something that felt so good, so right, just couldn’t be bad, could it?
But now, the passion spent, he didn’t know.
Had he just taken advantage of her, in the same way that boy at Oxford had done? She was willing perhaps, but hadn’t he used the situation? Would she have been so willing under any other circumstances? Cole wasn’t so sure.
But then again, why not? He was who he was; and if that appealed to her, then where was the harm?
The harm, he reminded himself, was in wanting to progress things beyond the single night together. It could never work between the two of them; Morgan didn’t even know who Cole really was, and he would almost certainly never tell her.
But why did he have to complicate things? Why couldn’t he just be happy with the way things had turned out?
<
br /> He didn’t want to hurt her, that was the thing. But what made him think that she wanted anything more than this single night? Perhaps she would be happy with things just as they were?
Was it just his own arrogance that suggested she would want anything more?
‘Don’t worry,’ she said sleepily, head on his chest, ‘I really don’t expect anything more than this. Let’s just enjoy it while we can, okay?’
Cole blinked in surprise. Who was this woman, that she could seemingly read his every thought?
But he decided to take her advice, and – checking the bedside clock – turned to her, his lips once again finding hers, his hands exploring her body.
After all, they had plenty of time left before their flight.
14
Cole, flanked by the two bodyguards from Pro-Tec Security, walked into the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Belgrade at exactly midday.
The Anders Gunvaldsson identification had been waiting for him in the Art Hotel Kalelarga lobby as promised, and he’d had no problem boarding the flight to Serbia with it.
The two security guys had met Cole at the airport, and drove him to his suite at the Hyatt Regency, just around the corner from the Crowne Plaza. Here, Cole ran them through the plan, and he was impressed with their professionalism, and the fact that they asked no questions about why he was really there. They knew what their jobs were, and kept their noses out of any business that didn’t concern them.
The Ranger was a short, barrel-chested fireplug of a man called Frank Mitchell, and the Marine was a slimmer – if not much taller – man called Larry Thompson. They were armed for the job in Bosnia, and had brought their Sig handguns across the border with them, hidden in concealed holsters at their waistbands. They struck up an easy rapport, and Cole certainly felt safer having them along for the ride.
Morgan, meanwhile, had been provided with instructions on getting to the office block, where Mitchell and Thompson had already set up the surveillance gear. She called while Cole was chatting to the two bodyguards, confirming that she was in position, and had eyes-on the room in question.
Normal binoculars were no good due to the darkened glass of the hotel’s exterior, but thermal imaging indicated that there were four men in the room where the meeting was to take place. It was difficult to know if any of the four was the target, Radomir Milanović; it was also unknown whether any more of Milanović’s people could be found in adjacent rooms, or in the hotel lobby. But she would be able to update Cole in real-time on how things changed, and warn him if it looked like the room was being set-up as some sort of trap.
For now though, Cole was concentrating on the lobby before him. It was highly modernistic, acres of glass and steel, the wall to the street angled inwards to create a very open and airy feel. White marble lined the interior walls and floors, and there was an assortment of specially designed lounge furniture spread around the large space. A huge, golden free-standing wall occupied the middle of the impressive foyer, acting as a backdrop to the shining white reception desk.
Out of all the tourists, business people and hotel staff that roamed the cavernous space, Cole immediately picked out four men from the masses, two on either side of the lobby. They were seated, but obviously looking for someone; they were bulky, heavily muscled like a lot of criminal hard-men from this area of the world, with suits that barely covered their frames and certainly did nothing to hide the handguns they carried in shoulder holsters underneath.
As Cole strolled across the foyer to the bank of elevators, both pairs clocked him at almost the same time and immediately rose to their feet and moved toward him. Mitchell and Thompson saw them moving, Cole noted, and whispered to him that they’d done so. Delta Force or Team Six guys would probably have picked them up while they’d still been seated, just as Cole had. But at least the Pro-Tec guys had picked them up; plenty of other so-called bodyguards and security operators wouldn’t have done.
‘We’ve got four more moving toward us here in the lobby,’ Cole advised Morgan through his hidden microphone. ‘We’re on our way to the elevators.’
‘Got it,’ came the reply through the tiny earpiece embedded, unseen, within his ear. ‘There’s no movement in the room yet.’
‘Mr. Gunvaldsson?’ one of the approaching men asked, and Mitchell moved to cover that flank, while Thompson slipped to the other, covering the other pair. If anything happened, Cole was sure that the American pair would have their weapons out first, would have fired and dropped all four before they’d had the chance to get their own guns out from their tight-fitting jackets.
Cole waved a hand at his two protectors to stand them down, a wealthy industrialist taking charge. ‘Yes,’ he replied curtly. ‘And who are you?’
‘We are with Mr. Milanović, sir. He has asked us to escort you to his room.’
‘Thank you,’ Cole said, ‘although I am quite sure that we do not need an escort, I am perfectly capable of finding the room myself.’
‘Mr. Milanović has unfortunately had to change rooms, quite unexpectedly,’ the big man said apologetically. ‘That is why we are here.’
‘Very well,’ Cole said impatiently, ‘then let’s get on with it.’
Shit, Cole thought – the four people Morgan was watching were nothing to do with Milanović, she had eyes-on the wrong room entirely. He wondered if she’d picked up the conversation, and soon heard her words coming through the earpiece, reflecting his own thoughts.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘What do I do now?’
But, ensconced between the Serbian security team, Cole could no longer answer; but she was a professional, and he was sure that she would think of something.
He wondered what the change of room meant. One thing was for certain though – the change was by no means ‘unexpected’. Milanović would have changed rooms for a reason; perhaps it was only due to the nature of his work, maybe he’d developed an acute sense of professional paranoia over the years he’d been in business. For such a man to survive for so many years in this business, Cole reminded himself, he would have to be suspicious of everyone. Milanović was a survivor, and survivors liked to play the game on their own terms.
But what if there was something else going on?
What if it was a trap?
Mitchell and Thompson looked like they could handle themselves, and Cole was certainly confident in his own abilities, but they were going into the lion’s den completely unprepared, flying blind.
It was a situation that Cole didn’t like at all, but what could he do? He was committed to this course of action now, and would have to see it through.
The seven men arrived at the elevators, and one of the Serbs pressed the button. The doors immediately hummed open, and they all stepped in. The doors closed, the man who’d spoken pressed the button for the seventh floor, and the elevator whisked them upward.
It was cramped in the elevator car, the big Serbs taking up the majority of the space, and Cole used the opportunity to take a good look at them. They were all in their late twenties or early thirties, except perhaps for the one who’d spoken, who looked like he might be edging forty. Cole pegged them as ex-military, now guns for hire. They all had the look in their eyes that indicated they’d seen their fair share of action, and Cole would be willing to bet that most of it had only been after their military careers had ended.
The doors opened to the seventh floor, and the older Serb led them out down the left-hand corridor; the opposite direction, Cole noted, to the side of the building where the expected room was situated, the opposite side to where Morgan was watching.
Cole wondered again at the significance of the room change. Did Milanović know that Morgan was there, is that why he’d changed the location for the meeting? Or did he routinely do such things, a normal precaution just in case someone was watching? It was the sort of thing that Cole himself would do, although that didn’t add to his comfort level.
They walked for some time through the hotel’s seventh floor, but eventu
ally – with the flash of a pass-card – entered the hotel’s club lounge, another modern offering following on the theme from the foyer. It was busy, though not crowded, and Cole noticed the guests studiously ignored the big men as they led him and his two colleagues through to the far side.
One of the Serbs opened a connecting door, and beyond Cole could see a private hallway that he assumed led to the larger guest suites.
‘Just down here, Mr. Gunvaldsson,’ the older man said to Cole. ‘Mr. Milanović is waiting for you.’
Sure enough, they were there just moments later, outside the last door in the hallway.
A door behind which could be anything; anything, and anyone.
But, he reminded himself once more, it was too late to back out now.
And so, as the older man knocked at the door and opened it, gesturing for Cole to enter, he did just that, striding into the room with the confidence of the rich industrialist he was pretending to be.
As he walked inside, Thompson and Mitchell right next to him, he surveyed the room; it was a private suite, with a lounge connected to a separate dining area, and two bedrooms at the other side, separated by closed doors.
A middle-aged man – from the pictures he’d seen, almost certainly Radomir Milanović – sat opposite on the couch, a wide smile on his face.
And yet it wasn’t friendly, not in the slightest.
It was the smile of a spider that had just trapped the fly in its web.
Cole heard the main door close behind him, and he instantly felt a chill racing down his spine.
Something was wrong.
Something was terribly wrong.
And then he saw the handguns, pointed from behind, held to the heads of the Pro-Tec men; the last two Serbs must have pulled them when they were scanning the room.
The bedroom doors burst open instants later, a pair of gunmen racing out of each, suppressed MP7 submachine guns in their hands, the ominous barrels aimed straight at Cole and his men.
PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 21