Nathan sighed, wandered to the back of the shop and found a towel hanging from a hook in the kitchenette he’d installed a year ago after growing tired of walking upstairs to the flat every time he wanted a hot drink.
Drying his hair, he slapped the switch on the kettle and resigned himself to a morning of stock-taking.
Once a mug of Earl Grey tea stood steaming next to the till, its sweet bergamot aroma filling the air, he turned his attention to the day’s tasks. His eyes fell upon the row of six boxes stacked against a wall beyond an archway leading from the bookstore, and he smiled.
Despite the work, he looked forward to finding out if there were any more hidden gems amongst the dusty and spineless offerings cluttering the first box he’d peered into last night.
The delivery was made by Mr Svoboda’s grandson late on Saturday afternoon. As he owned the largest car in the family, it had fallen to him to dispose of his grandfather’s belongings after the old man had been moved to a care home.
Nathan had spotted a couple of first editions within the collection, offered a fair price and seen Mr Svoboda’s grandson on his way, the man returning to his car with a bounce in his stride.
Thunder rolled overhead, and Nathan turned to see the rain striking the cobblestones with renewed fervour, commuters hurrying past with their umbrellas held aloft.
Not one of them paused to look at this morning’s display.
He sighed, then moved to the first box and pulled back the lid.
Cradling eight hardbacks minus their original covers, he walked back to the computer, entered the details into stock, and then crossed to the shelves filling the space.
Once a thriving private bank, the building had changed hands several times over the centuries since being built. The first record of it becoming a bookshop was in the early nineties, although it had lain empty for a decade prior to that while the Soviet bloc around it dissolved.
As Nathan moved between the rows of shelves, his fingers traced gold leaf titles worn thin by age and authors’ names who had faded into obscurity for all but the shrewdest collector.
Three books were left in his hands when footsteps sounded on the patterned slate tiles that led from the cobblestones to the bookshop’s threshold.
He glanced up from his work. ‘Morning.’
A woman, dressed in faded jeans and wearing a short coat caught his eye before he turned back to the shelves.
She hadn’t acknowledged his greeting.
Perhaps she didn’t realise that his Czech was terrible and his German not much better, which was why he stumbled along in English for most transactions.
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth in sympathy.
Wet strands of hair clung to the woman’s face, tendrils escaping from a short ponytail and plastered to her skin by the rain. He placed two more books on a shelf next to a collection of Charles Dickens’ works. Perhaps she would like a hot drink while she browsed.
Still, she had said nothing.
He tried again. ‘Morning.’
The woman wore a hunted expression as her eyes darted to the door, then back to where he stood.
Nathan lowered the book he was holding, and frowned. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I hope so.’ Her voice was soft, but abrupt – as if used to staccato responses. She took a tentative step towards him. ‘Do you have a 1915 first edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan?’
He swallowed.
‘I’m not sure there’s an edition from that year available,’ he managed.
The woman’s face fell. ‘I was told if I came here, and asked for that book, you could help me.’
He could hear the desperation in her voice, and yet––
‘Let me have a look behind the counter,’ he said. ‘Come over here.’
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, grimaced, then wrapped her left arm around her waist and followed him. She leaned against the mahogany and glass counter while he shuffled the mouse to wake up the computer screen.
A prickle of sweat began at the nape of his neck, and he resisted the urge to wipe it away under the woman’s scrutiny.
‘I can’t find anything listed here.’
His eyes flickered to hers for a moment. He could sense stress emanating from every pore as she clenched her jaw.
Her right hand gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles white.
‘Look again,’ she urged. ‘Please. I don’t have much time.’
‘One moment,’ he said, his heart racing. ‘I think I might have something out the back. The 1915 edition, was it?’
She nodded.
Nathan scurried behind a thick brocade curtain separating the bookshop from a small windowless room that served as a cluttered office, crossed the space in three strides and with fingers that slipped on the dial at the first attempt, flipped the combination lock on the safe.
He ran his hand over the book while his heart tried to punch its way out between his ribs. Mid-blue cloth, a darker blue embossed title, and the author’s name underneath in tiny lettering almost as an afterthought, it felt heavy in his grip despite its size.
He closed the safe and went back to the counter.
‘Here it is.’
A palpable relief washed over the woman’s features as she reached out for it.
‘Thank you, I can’t tell you how grateful I am—’
A shadow fell over her right shoulder and the woman’s eyes opened wide at a smooth click.
She raised shaking hands.
Nathan held his breath.
Standing behind her, jaw set, eyes blazing under a choppy fringe of dark brown hair, was another woman.
One whose demeanour was the exact opposite of the book-seeking client.
Nathan dropped the book to the counter and glared at the figure before clearing his throat. ‘Eva, that’s no way to treat the customers.’
‘She’s not a customer. Not if she’s asking for that book.’
‘It could be a coincidence.’
‘She’s bleeding.’
‘What?’
Nathan leaned over the counter as the woman removed her left hand from her waist and peeled back her coat.
Sure enough, a rich blood stain bloomed across her shirt above her hip and now dripped upon the parquet floor.
Eva Delacourt moved until the woman could see her face, and pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple. ‘Who are you?’
A single tear rolled over the woman’s cheek.
‘Flight Lieutenant Kelly O’Hara. I’ve been shot.’
Chapter Three
Eva lowered the gun, paranoia turning to intrigue.
‘How did you know about the book?’ she said, her eyes narrowing.
‘A friend told me. She said if I came here and asked for that exact book, it was some sort of code and that I’d get help.’
Eva caught the look that crossed Nathan’s face, and tried to ignore her heart rate increasing.
Since her last mission, she had been keeping her distance from the covert British intelligence agency that had dictated her life for over a decade. The Section wanted her back – she was one of their best assassins – but she had refused, telling them she needed more time.
After all, it wasn’t every day one of their operatives cheated death and made sure an international terrorist’s plans to kill millions of people went up in smoke.
Literally.
Despite her reluctance to return to the fold, Eva had recognised the need for a support network amongst her ilk. If it hadn’t been for her wiles and network of underground contacts, her last mission would have failed with catastrophic consequences.
Eva ran her gaze over the stricken woman and sighed.
Either Kelly was telling the truth and needed their help, or this was going to turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
‘Come with me,’ she said, tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans. ‘Nathan – shut the shop. Use the family emergency sign.’
‘Right.’
She helped the woman around the counter while he hurried out into the rain, collected the sandwich board and then shut the front door and pulled a blind over the glass panel in the middle of it.
After placing a handwritten sign in one of the windows, he jogged to the back of the store, brushed past her and moved ahead of them, clearing a pile of books and discarded newspapers from a tattered armchair before spreading an old blanket across the cushions and helping Kelly to sit.
‘What happened to you?’ he said.
The woman cried out, grimacing from the movement.
‘We were duped – fooled into thinking we were on a secret mission,’ she said, her voice weak now. ‘I had no idea. I would never have got them into this otherwise. It’s all my fault…’
Eva was only half listening, reaching up into a cupboard and pulling out a fishing tackle box. Kelly looked horrified as she turned. ‘Don’t panic – it’s the most practical thing to use as an emergency first aid kit.’
Dropping to her knees, she flicked back the chrome levers and began handing gauze bandages and antiseptic swabs to Nathan.
He pushed his glasses up his nose and gestured to Kelly, colouring slightly. ‘I’ll need you to unbutton your shirt – is that okay?’
The woman nodded, swore as she shrugged her way out of her light coat, and then removed her shirt exposing a bloody wound above her right hip.
‘Shit.’ The words passed Eva’s lips before she could stop them, and she hitched her hair behind her ears. ‘Kelly, can you lean forward a moment? It looks like it was a small calibre weapon but I need to see if it’s a through-and-through.’
Kelly gasped and clutched her side, then peered over her shoulder as Eva frowned. ‘Did it?’
‘No.’
‘Then like you said, shit.’ The woman sounded exhausted, as if the effort to talk was now too much to bear.
‘Who did this to you?’ said Nathan.
‘I presume they worked for the man who got us into this in the first place.’
‘Who was that?’
‘He called himself Colonel Paul Richards,’ said Kelly. ‘None of us had ever seen him before. First we knew about it was back in Lincoln – the three of us were out for a curry when a warrant officer came through the door of the restaurant and told us we were required to report back on duty and that a car was waiting outside.’ A sad smile crossed her features. ‘Josh was pissed off he hadn’t even managed to have a sip of beer before we were interrupted.’
‘What happened?’ said Eva. She frowned as she worked, cleaning the entry wound as best she could but every time she swabbed away the blood, more bubbled from the hole in Kelly’s side.
‘We were taken to a small airfield – not our usual base. Colonel Richards was in the car – he said an emergency situation had occurred, and we were the only ones available. He said we would be flown to a NATO base in Eastern Europe where he’d explain more and provide us with our mission details.’ Kelly pursed her lips. ‘It probably sounds strange to you, but it’s not the first time we’ve been asked to drop everything and run because someone’s in the shit. None of us questioned him, and because we knew we’d be running a twelve-hour shift once the mission started, we just got our heads down and slept on the way there.’
‘What is it you do?’ said Nathan. ‘I mean, I take it from your rank that you’re a pilot, but––’
‘I fly drones. An MQ-9A Reaper.’
Eva’s hand froze above Kelly’s hip. ‘You don’t fly those on your own. How many were in your crew?’
‘There were three of us.’ A tear rolled over Kelly’s cheek. ‘They shot Josh. At the base. Marie – she’s the intelligence officer – suspected something. She said she saw something, before the target was hit by the missile. She said it wasn’t a terrorist in the vehicle. She said she knew the man we killed…’
Nathan walked across to a counter beside the door and plucked some paper tissues from a box before returning to the pilot. ‘Here.’
‘Who did your intelligence officer see in the vehicle?’ said Eva. She frowned, bit her lip, then pulled a bottle of iodine from the tackle box and recalled the last time she had treated a bullet wound.
It hadn’t gone well.
‘Jeffrey Dukes.’ Kelly shifted in the armchair and stifled a cry. ‘Marie said he’s – was – a special adviser to the Foreign Secretary.’
Nathan emitted a strangled gasp that mirrored the shocked punch to Eva’s chest.
‘Which country was he in?’
The pilot paused.
‘Kelly – this is no time for the Official Secrets Act,’ she said. ‘If you want our help, you need to tell us everything.’
‘Okay.’ The woman took a deep breath, and blinked. ‘Syria.’
‘Syria? Why?’ said Nathan.
‘How the hell do I know?’ Kelly snapped. ‘I was just following orders. Same as every time I fly.’
‘Then what happened?’ Eva turned to Nathan. ‘Can you get me some water? These swabs aren’t working. Towels or something, too.’
‘Marie told us we had to leave.’ The pilot shook her head, her eyes seeking the curtain between the room and the bookshop beyond. ‘I think Josh and I were starting to wonder about the whole thing by then, to be honest. I mean, the airfield was in the middle of nowhere, and looked run down. I don’t think anything had flown out of there in years. Marie started to lead us away from the building where the ops centre had been set up – she said we should head for the woods we could see surrounding the airfield and try to make our way out of there.’ She sniffed. ‘We’d stopped, arguing about whether it was the right thing to do, when… when Josh was shot. One minute he was talking to Marie, next thing I knew, he was dead.’
‘Christ.’ Eva sat back on her heels and gave the woman a moment to compose herself, her thoughts spinning.
What the hell were they getting into?
‘Here.’
She looked up at Nathan’s voice to see him standing with a glass jug of water and some clean tea towels.
‘That’s all we’ve got upstairs.’
‘It’ll have to do. Hang in there, Kelly – I’m still trying to stem the bleeding.’
The pilot gritted her teeth while Eva set to work putting pressure on the wound and packing it with soft bandages, then took a deep breath. ‘Needless to say, we figured out we weren’t on a NATO base. Turns out we were in the south of Belarus.
‘What about the command centre you were working in?’
‘It was only one of those Portacabin things. They can be transported anywhere on the back of a truck.’
‘How did you get here?’ said Nathan.
‘We managed to get away – Marie said we should split up, that we’d stand a better chance of survival if we did, and that we had to tell someone what happened. It was she who told me the code phrase and where to come. I managed to get a lift with a local. His daughter was away at university in Copenhagen, so he gave me these clothes to wear.’
‘Who shot you?’ said Eva.
Kelly sniffed. ‘I was doing fine until I got to Prague this morning. I hitchhiked through Slovenia and then got a bus over the border. It was stupid – I had my passport on me and used it––’
‘So whoever Colonel Richards really is, he had the means to trace you.’
‘Yes. I guess so. I was in the market over on Havelská looking for something to eat before coming here when I – I don’t know – I could feel someone watching me. I ran down an alleyway, but they got a couple of shots off before I could escape.’
‘Didn’t anyone hear?’
‘No.’ Kelly groaned, then scrunched her eyes closed. ‘They must’ve been using suppressors, and there was music playing in the market. I thought I’d only been winged at first – I managed to stumble away and got on a bus full of tourists that was pulling away. It wasn’t until it was on the move that I realised this was more serious…’
‘Adrenalin will do that to yo
u,’ said Eva, her head bowed while she worked. ‘Did you come straight here?’
‘I saw a road sign the bus passed – a street name I recognised – so I got off at the next stop and slowly doubled back here.’ She lifted her chin and met Eva’s steady gaze. ‘I was careful. I didn’t see anyone following me.’
'What about your intelligence officer?' said Eva. ‘What’s her full name?’
‘Marie Weston.’
Nathan paled. ‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Kelly, opening her eyes. ‘The last time I saw her was on that hillside in Belarus. She was supposed to come here too.’
He turned to Eva. ‘I need a word – now.’
‘In a minute.’ She shook her head to silence him, despite his stricken eyes, then put her hand on the pilot’s shoulder. ‘She hasn’t been here. It’s been quiet all morning, and we were closed yesterday.’
‘She didn’t make it, did she?’ said Kelly. ‘I’m the only one left.’
Chapter Four
Eva entered the six-digit PIN code for the electronic door lock to the upstairs flat, ignoring Nathan’s shout from the foot of the stairs.
She hurried through the living room and along a short corridor to a bedroom at the back of the building, dropping to a crouch next to a built-in wardrobe, opened the door and peered inside. Pushing her hair from her eyes, she lifted a section of one of the floorboards out of the way and reached into a cavity.
Her skin touched cold metal, and wrapping her fingers around the surface she pulled out first a 9mm pistol and then a compact revolver. Placing them on the floor beside her, she shoved her hand back into the cavity and extracted a box of ammunition.
That done, she replaced the floorboard, closed the wardrobe door and picked up the weapons before returning to the living room.
Lowering the two guns and the ammunition onto a small wooden table beside an overstuffed leather sofa, she sank into the cushions with a groan.
‘Talk about bad timing,’ she said under her breath.
Assassins Rogue Page 2