by Cari Z
Leaving at the end of all of this was going to suck.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. We still had the scepter to retrieve, and that was going to be no small feat, given what we were walking into.
We made it to Lomé in fantastically good time, only slowing down once we hit Tsévié, just north of the capitol. By noon, we were saying goodbye to Koffi—Mr. Klein didn’t bother to speak to us at all, just harrumphed and scratched his parasite-ridden belly—and entering the Hôtel Palme D’Or along a swanky section of the beach road. That was where we met Jean-Paul Salou, a retired Togolese commando whom I’d worked with on several training operations four years ago. He was making a name now as the head of Togo’s only locally-based private security company, and doing a damn good job of it. Robert had gotten me the best backup available, but sometimes even the best ran up against an obstacle they couldn’t overcome.
“What do you mean, there’s no way?” I demanded once Jean-Paul laid things out for us. Mal stood tense at my side, listening to us argue with an increasingly concerned expression. “You and your crew are fully licensed to carry arms—not even the police get that kind of leeway here. There are nine of you, plus the two of us. I don’t care how many people she’s meeting with, if we handle this right, we should be able to get in and out of there without casualties.”
“The people this woman is meeting with are not going to abide by the laws of this country,” Jean-Paul argued. He was a little shorter than me, but at least as broad across the shoulders, and he stabbed his index finger forcefully at the table to make his point. “I watched them enter the estate, I know some of these men. The two from Nigeria—they’re wanted for everything from human trafficking to illegal arms dealing, and it’s amazing they’re not going for each other’s throats right now.”
“Because she’s in control.” Corday was always in control, it seemed. “Which means she’ll be restricting access to weapons while the meet is going on. We’ve got less than an hour to get this done”—and that had been a kick in the pants, realizing that even with all my planning ahead we’d nearly missed our window anyway—“but that should be plenty of time. You said it yourself, the mansion she’s using is just down the street.” We’d seen it driving in, actually—an old, enormous two-story house, probably a colonial, with a long-overgrown expanse of lawn around it. It was literally just two houses away from the hotel.
“The men aren’t the only issue. The estate where the meet is being held is technically a presidential mansion,” Jean-Paul continued. “A derelict one, yes, but trespassing is strictly forbidden. If Corday is holding her meet there, it is because she has connections high up in the government who have allowed her to do so. If I take my men there and we are caught, I will lose my company. Lose my licenses. Possibly be thrown into prison.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it is not worth it. I’m willing to be your backup, but only once you’re off the grounds. Otherwise, I cannot help you.”
Fucking goddamn labyrinthine politics. It wasn’t Jean-Paul’s fault—he was just another player in the game. Right now, though, I wanted to smash the board and knock over all the pieces. I ran a hand over my face and thought about what we’d have to do in order to get what we needed.
We’d need to march into a den of vipers like we owned the place, which—
Actually….
I spoke slowly, out loud, gradually pulling my thoughts together. “Corday brought Fawkes with her from France. She used him in London, too. That means she’s running light on this job, working with the absolute minimum of personal backup. She won’t trust locals with the really important parts of this meeting—guarding the scepter and guarding her. That’s going to be Fawkes. If she does have other people on the payroll, they’ve probably just come on.”
“What does that mean for us?” Mal asked.
I glanced at him. “It means that I think we can bluff her crew into letting us into the mansion.”
Jean-Paul was already shaking his head. “This is too dangerous even for you, Alex.”
“Not as dangerous as you think,” I argued. “Seriously, who would expect a couple of random white guys to walk into something like this unless they were expected? We’ll get the benefit of the doubt because of Corday.” She would stand out in the crowd like a sore thumb—of course she’d have more foreigners working for her. “If I can get to Fawkes and take him out of the equation, we can get the scepter out of there. I’m sure of it.” In fact….
I turned to Mal. “I can probably do this part on my own, actually.” I didn’t like going in alone, but I didn’t want to risk him. “If things go south, I’ll fire my gun into the air. The Togolese police force have to pay attention to gunfire, even if it’s coming from a presidential property. They can act as backup. That way”—I looked back at Jean-Paul—“we keep you and your men out of the loop entirely, unless I’m followed off-grounds by men with guns. In which case, I’d hope for some help.”
“Absolutely not,” Mal said before Jean-Paul even opened his mouth.
“You see? He is reasonable,” Jean-Paul told me.
“There’s absolutely no way you’re leaving me behind for this.”
Jean-Paul threw his hands up. “Never mind, he is as much of a fool as you are.”
“I know I’m not going to be any help at all when it comes to Fawkes or Corday,” Mal barreled on. “I mean, it certainly isn’t as if I’ve done much to help with them so far, but at the very least you might need someone to be your lookout, and I can do that for you, I can, and—and I’m sure I’ll go mad if you leave me here for this, and at the very least you need me on hand to make sure you’re grabbing the right thing, because what if she’s had replicas made, and—” He ran out of breath, and I took advantage of the moment to intervene.
“Okay.”
Mal looked mildly stunned. “Really? Just like that?”
“Just like that, with two conditions. One—you do absolutely everything I say at all times, including running away and leaving me behind. No arguments,” I said sternly. “And two, the minute you hear sirens, you get out of there even if we’re not together. I’ve got KIS on my side, they can negotiate a quick release if I get thrown into jail, but you’re not an employee of theirs. You’re just a contractor, and I have a feeling that the British government’s not going to find bailing an AWOL museum curator out of an African jail a top priority. Got it?”
He nodded, his smile relieved. “Perfectly.”
Jean-Paul sighed. “You two are both mad. This is not the way you trained us to approach dangerous tactical situations, Alex. Is this scepter worth losing your life over?”
“Yes,” Mal said at the same time as I replied, “It’s worth trying for, at least.”
“C’est fou.” Jean-Paul crossed his arms and looked at us. “At least put on something that makes you look like you belong. Her second was wearing army fatigues. I’ll find some for both of you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank me after you survive,” he said dryly. “Are you going to let Mr. Kensington know what you’re about to do?”
“Oh, would you look at the time?” I glanced at my watch theatrically. “We have really got to get going, so if you could just grab those uniforms….”
Mal laughed, and Jean-Paul left the hotel room where we were ensconced. I took advantage of the moment of privacy to move in close to him and take his hand. I set my lips against his ear.
“It’s not worth your life,” I whispered. “Tell me you remember that.”
“I do. I really do,” he said, holding me right back. “I got caught up earlier, but I do know that. I won’t throw myself into danger in order to get it, I promise.”
It was probably as good as I was going to get from Mal. “All right, then.” I rolled my neck and felt it crack. My face still looked a little nightmarish, but my shoulder was holding and my head was clear. Adrenaline was making all my minor aches and pains barely noticeable. I loved the feeling of ramping up for the job. The comed
own would be brutal, but that was what Jacuzzies and whiskey were for. “Let’s get this done.”
It took fifteen minutes to change, to arm myself to the fucking teeth and then some, and to get down to the mansion in question. Jean-Paul set up a spot for himself and his crew across the road, where he could keep an eye on things with his binoculars. “My man reported that the person you’re looking for is on the second floor, far right room,” he told me. “You might have to climb the outside of the building to get there.”
“No, we’re trying to be inconspicuous, remember?”
“Of course.” He smiled mock-pleasantly. “Because what is more inconspicuous than two yovos walking into a house full of Africans?”
“Two yovos climbing the walls.” I shook his hand, and Mal followed suit. “Thanks for your help.”
“Thank me by getting out of there as fast as you can.”
“We will.” We crossed the road, and the skin on the back of my neck prickled as we walked down the leaf-strewn gravel path that led to the mansion. The lawn in front of it had nine cars parked on it. With one, maybe two of those for Corday and Fawkes, that still meant there were at least seven bigwigs in there ready to do business for the scepter. Each one would have a minimum of one bodyguard. More likely two or three. Twenty people, all of them nervous, all of them willing to overcome their nerves to bid on the scepter of the legendary Malian king.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Corday.
If she saw us, we were sunk. If Fawkes saw us, same thing, only we’d probably get shot sooner.
Better hurry up, then.
Changing personas for me was as simple as switching up the cadence of my step. In a second, I went from “random person” to “military man.” The posture was hardwired into me after years of service. I walked toward the mansion like a man on a mission, like a guy who knew what he was doing and where he was supposed to be, and drew Mal along in my wake.
Two of the cars had drivers sitting outside in them, playing with their phones. Both men glanced at me, but I didn’t even bother making eye contact with them. They were the guests here—I was here because I belonged.
Spiral staircase straight ahead in the foyer, take the curve to the right, up to the second level and straight to the end of the hall. I marched through the entrance of the house, glanced around at the people milling there, several of them holding crystal champagne flutes, then continued on to the stairs. Gazes followed me, but they didn’t matter—there was no outcry, so Corday hadn’t seen us. So far, so good.
I jogged up the stairs, turned sharply to the right, and headed toward the end of the spacious hall. The floor was marble, stained by time and neglect. The wallpaper, once an elegant rose pattern, was mostly gone. Several of the windows were broken. There was no one else up here—no one visible, at least. But Jean-Paul had seen Fawkes enter the room at the end and hadn’t seen him leave. Either there were internal doors he wasn’t aware of, or Fawkes was still there.
The auction hadn’t started yet. He was still there, guarding the prize. Not for long.
I slowed my pace as we got close to the door, and motioned for Mal to stay put and stay quiet. He nodded and pulled back a few paces, letting me close the last few yards on my own. I drew my gun—not the one I’d originally intended to use, but a stern glance from Mal was enough to make me think twice—and hovered outside the door, listening for any hint of sound from within.
Feet, moving. Pacing. Fawkes was nervous. I could work with that. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and reached for the door. The handle turned easily under my hand.
I burst into the room and slammed the door shut behind me, my gun already bearing on Fawkes. I fired—he dodged, he fucking dodged somehow. The dart went into the cloth of his jacket instead of his body.
“Too slow, asshole,” he sneered, bringing his own weapon up. I grabbed the nearest thing at hand—a disintegrating piece of wall, the board half-rotted and mildew—ripped it free, and hurled it at him. It hit him in the chest, knocking him back. He was already firing, but the bullet went over my head.
I was on him before he could fire again, with a much more lethal weapon in my hand after ditching the tranq gun. I bent Fawkes back over a tabletop—there was an open cooler on it, with food and a few bottles of water inside, but nothing else. He scrambled against me, struggled, but he was weak on one side. Looks like Patricia’s bullet did a little better than hitting his vest. I put the muzzle of my gun beneath his chin and looked him in the eyes.
He looked… tired, behind the bravado. Resigned. And young—younger than me, maybe younger than Mal. Too young to give up this easily.
Fuck it. I carefully felt my way around his shirt and along the inside of his unseasonable coat.
“Fuck you, man, killing me is one thing but feeling me up is….” His voice trailed off as I jabbed him in the side with the dart I’d found, the compound making its way into his bloodstream. He was out a few seconds later. I pulled him off the table and laid him out of sight behind an old, tattered settee, then looked around the room. There wasn’t much here—cooler, a radio, a small duffel bag with what looked like a change of clothes in it, and—there. Rifle bag, under the window. It had to be in there.
There was an absolutely beautiful Finnish SAKO TRG 42 sniper rifle mounted with a sound suppressor in there, but no scepter. I looked around again, hoping against hope that I’d missed something, but I hadn’t. The scepter wasn’t in this room. Which meant that Corday had it already.
The door opened. I had my gun up and ready in a second, but as soon as I saw Mal, I took my finger off the trigger. I wasn’t going to shoot—especially not since he was in the very firm hands of a man who was probably big enough to bench press him. A much smaller, older man with jet-black skin, white hair, and a beard peeked around the two of them at me.
“Ah,” he said pleasantly. “There you are.”
Chapter Twelve
I SHOULD have known I was going to fuck it all up.
Eye contact. Why had I made bloody eye contact? I didn’t look like myself right now, not a version of myself I would recognize, in the fatigues and the cap with a gun at my hip. Alex had told me to keep my eyes straight ahead, not to stop for anything, and we would be all right. Only—only I saw someone I thought I knew, in the foyer, and I’d glanced his way.
It turned out, the Beninese Minister of Culture and History had an excellent memory for faces.
“I asked myself,” Minister Adjoukoua said as he led the way downstairs, “what could a curator for the famous British Museum be doing here, in Lomé? Working for Mademoiselle Corday it seemed, but surely not you. You might have been demoted, Professor Armstrong, but you are still a man of principle. Not the sort of person to whore himself out to a treasure hunter like our auctioneer. Then, when I heard the noise from inside the room, and your companion nowhere to be seen? Well.” He smiled broadly. “I thought you might be here to render the rest of this day meaningless. I couldn’t have that. Mademoiselle!” Minister Adjoukoua called out to Corday, who came in from the next room wearing a smile that got broader as soon as she saw us. She wore a feathery, fluttering red dress covering her from shoulder to shin—bloodred. “Mademoiselle, I have a surprise for you, eh? Two people who should not be here sneaking about.”
“You have a sharp eye, Minister,” she said graciously, but there was ice behind her beaming smile. “Where did you find them?”
“Upstairs, at the end of the hall.”
“Alone?” Anyone else might think it was an idle question, but I could hear the tension in her voice, as soft as a breath of air but as furious as a hurricane.
“There was no one else that I saw.”
“Ah.” She was likely wondering if we’d killed Fawkes, and if so, where we’d stashed the body. I glanced at Alex—he minutely shook his head. He hadn’t killed him, then. That was a relief. “Well, then. Allow me to dispose of these irritants and we’ll get down to business.”
Dispose of—
Surely she wasn’t going to just murder us. The bleak look in her eye suggested she was ready to do just that, though, and neither of us had a gun any longer—they were all in the possession of the enormous bodyguard holding a gun on me. Oh God. Oh God, I was going to be killed—I was going to get Alex killed, no, this couldn’t be—
Minister Adjoukoua held up a hand. “I will not allow you to delay our business longer, Mademoiselle, just for the sake of dispatching these two men. And why should you get to kill them now anyhow? Who would get the blame, eh, if the law came to this house and found their corpses here? Not you, not a youthful white woman. It would be one of us.” He stared around at the rest of the killers and drug lords, and they nodded in assent. “There are people out there, on the streets, who have seen us, who will know us. They could implicate us in your crime. We will not be a shield against your own wrongdoing. When we are done here, and it must be soon, they will leave with me.”
I exhaled harshly, too loud but I couldn’t help it. Minister Adjoukoua patted me on the shoulder. “You will agree not to speak of what you see here,” he said companionably, and I could read between the lines on that. “You or your friend. Or we will find you and take you someplace where your body will never be discovered.” He turned back to Corday. “Lead on, Mademoiselle.”
Corday’s smile was gone, but she nodded and swept into the next room, her airy dress billowing around her like a hibiscus flower. Alex brushed my shoulder with his as we were marched into what looked like a ballroom, more marble and colonnades and papered walls that had likely been beautiful half a century ago. There was a hook that would have been for a chandelier in the ceiling. Attached to it was a chain, and at the end of the chain hung a long metal box, kept closed with three separate padlocks. It was weirdly ostentatious, for all that it was just a matte gray box. Honestly. Who hung a bloody treasure up like that?