An Affair of Vengeance (5 page)

Now that he had a lead on Lukas Kral, his journey might be at an end. It was no time to get soft. No matter what had been the reason for the incident with the waitress, it had revealed a rusty hole in his armor. He wouldn’t let it happen again. From now on, women would be allowed to fall. Even the pretty ones.

No—
especially
the pretty ones.

He turned back to his clothing, scattered on the crisp cotton duvet. He checked his pants, emptied the pockets, checked the hems. Nothing unusual. Picking up his jacket, he reached into its right front pocket. He’d almost given up when his fingers closed on something long and thin. He pulled it out.

A toothpick.

A pointed wooden toothpick that had no obvious signs of being anything other than what it appeared to be.

He stared at it, wondering how it’d gotten into his pocket. He used toothpicks—most men he worked with did—and he generally made a point of throwing them away when he was done with them. He could have left one in his pocket. He had no memory of doing so, but it was possible. Likely, even.

But cold paranoia swept away his rational conclusion, and in one swift motion, he cracked the toothpick in half.

A thin wire ran between the splintered pieces.

He stared at it, partly shocked that he’d been right. Normal toothpicks were not stiffened by wire. This thing was an electronic device. In his pocket. Someone had planted it on him. But why? Was it a bug? A GPS monitor? The world’s tiniest bomb?

He sat down hard on the bed, staring at the now ominous stick of wood in his hand. If it was a bug, who’d have set it? His driver hadn’t gotten close enough, nor had the concierge at the hotel or front doorman at La Banque. Penard had tugged on his arm.

But the waitress had rested in his arms like a lover.

Grim certainty had him closing his fist around the tiny shards. It must have been her. She was the one who’d been closest to him for the longest amount of time. Distracting him. Slipping her arms around his waist. She must have been waiting for him, outside that private room. Listening in, too. He should have seen through it, but when he’d had her in his arms, all he could think about was how nice it felt to finally be someone’s savior.

He cursed and squeezed his fist, wanting to crush the wretched gadget she’d slipped into his pocket. Just because he hadn’t been with a woman in years didn’t mean he needed to lose his head the first time a doe-eyed girl fell into his arms. He kicked the desk chair, sending it flying across the room and into the wall with a shocking clatter.

Damn it all! This was how people got themselves killed.

Who was she? He started with what he knew: she was an apparently American waitress with access to well-disguised spy tech. Working at La Banque could be her cover job if she worked clandestine intelligence. He strode to the floor-to-ceiling window, considering the scenario. She could be CIA. She could have slipped the toothpick into his pocket to listen to his conversations or track his movements.

Intriguing little play on the part of the Yanks, if that’s what this was. What in the hell did they want with him? As far as SOCA knew, the CIA tracked Kral’s activities but didn’t bother monitoring the traffic of weapons and drugs into the UK.
Such minutiae, as they saw it, wasn’t their problem. A man like McCrea, who exclusively ran goods into Britain, shouldn’t be of interest to them.

So why did she care enough to plaster him with what was probably an expensive little bit of technology? Had the Americans finally decided to get tough on Lukas Kral, and now that McCrea was after him, too, did he merit their attention?

He didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. American involvement, official and acknowledged or otherwise, could only screw up the op. He wasn’t going to let her—or whoever had planted this thing on him—get any closer.

He carefully eased the two pieces of the toothpick back together, getting the wire completely re-encased inside. Then he walked down the hall and tossed it into an underused stairwell. If he hadn’t broken the connections, it’d keep on transmitting data, although none of it would be specific to him. They’d know he was in the hotel, but nothing more. With it resting casually in the dust, broken in a manner that suggested a passing heel strike, they couldn’t be certain that he’d found it. If they thought their surveillance was still undiscovered, they might just overplay their hand, letting him see who they were, and what they wanted from him.

Let them come. He’d rather know whom he faced than run from a ghost.

He went back to his room and placed a call. “I need information on a waitress at La Banque.”

“Name?” replied a thin male voice with a polished English accent.

“Didn’t catch it.”

“Useful. Picture?”

“Get it from a security camera. Slim. Very short, no more than five two. Long, dark, curly hair. American, wearing a black skirt and white shirt. Might be CIA. I think she dropped a toothpick bug into my pocket.”

“Girls are getting aggressive with you, are they?”

McCrea clenched his teeth, in no mood for levity. “Just figure out who she is, Lamb. We’re too close to the end to screw around.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. On that note, you’ll be pleased to hear that I have good news.”

“What?”

“HQ issued a decree today. Coordinated raids begin in a week.”

“Bollocks,” McCrea grumbled. “A week?”

“Too late? I know. We were ready months ago, but—”

“Not too late. Too
soon
. What are they thinking?” McCrea paced to the bed. “Look, I’ve just got a line on Lukas Kral. Tell them to hold off.”

“That’s dandy. They won’t.”

“Get serious. If we don’t take out the man at the top, the whole bloody network will just reassemble itself once the raids are over. What does the boss say?”

“It’s not entirely up to him, but he agrees with the plan. Look, things have changed since you were sent out. Treasury, SIS, everyone has their hands in this pot. This isn’t a solo mission, not anymore.”

“Really? Last time I checked I was the only man in the field.”

“You still are. But there are too many agencies involved. If we don’t act soon, someone’s going to whisper something to the wrong person and it’ll all slip away, and you right with it. I’m not just talking professionally, though really, you know your prospects are buggered if these arrests fall through. It’s your reputation at stake. Your future. And if one of your underworld friends gets wind of it, it’s your very life.”

“I get it.”

“Good.” Lamb sighed. “Boss was worried you’d argue.”

“Argue?”

“Yes. You’ve got nothing more to prove, you know. Not anymore. If these raids go down as planned, your reputation is secured.”

“I was unaware of ever having anything to prove.”

“No, it’s just,” Lamb paused, cleared his throat. “With your brother’s reputation, I thought that maybe you might feel like you needed to—”

“Seven more days, eh?” McCrea interrupted, annoyed. He didn’t give two chits for his reputation. The mission wasn’t about proving himself. It was about doing everything he could to counteract the evil that his brother had spread through the world.

“Seven days,” Lamb repeated. “You’re to behave normally, keep things cool. For God’s sake, don’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

“Do you really need to tell me that?”

“Don’t I?”

McCrea ran his tongue over his teeth and clicked the phone off. Just one more week in this skin, and he could return to his life.

Whatever that meant.

Had he done enough? Had he dug out the cancer that Aaron had helped to metastasize? No. He hadn’t gotten to Kral. He hadn’t gotten to the root of the malevolence. After the raids, it would regrow like a weed, spreading its insidious tendrils into individuals, families, and communities. It would never stop, not unless he dug it out at its source. Then there would be peace, at least for a while. He could...

He could what? He stared at his black-socked feet, gripped by uncertainty. What would he do after he finished the mission? Criminal Britain would be aflame with news of the SOCA rat who had invaded their nest—him. His name, his face, would be mud. He’d quite possibly be blown for undercover work, at least for a while. SOCA would still employ him, but he had no idea what sort of work he’d do. A desk job? Not for him. He knew they had agents who didn’t work undercover. He supposed that’d be his new role, too. Some kind of badged investigator.

He’d have to find an ill-fitting suit.

He laughed darkly at the idea, because somehow, he couldn’t see himself living straight. It didn’t feel right to him to wear a badge and bear the full authority of his position. He was a hybrid, part criminal, part cop, and only felt right doing exactly what he did, straddling two worlds. But once this case was publicized—and he hardly imagined that SOCA would keep the most important bust of the last ten years quiet—would he ever get the chance to do it again? Even if his name and picture were kept out of the press, word would get around the gangs. He’d have a bright red target on his back, should he ever attempt an undercover mission again.

Maybe he should take time off. He hadn’t done that since he joined. He’d barely taken a weekend to himself in years. But he didn’t know where he’d go. To his semicomatose mother? She’d gotten released from Castle Craig a little while ago, apparently cured of her addictions, but her brain was too fried for her to survive on her own. He’d secured her a space in a nursing home outside of Inverness, far away from her husband, and covered her expenses, but he hadn’t had time to visit. Hadn’t
made
time. He hadn’t seen her since he joined SOCA. Years had gone by, and he’d not done more than write her caregivers a regular check.

Now, contemplating meeting her face-to-face made him anxious. It made him feel like that stupid teenager who hadn’t gotten her help in time to save her. He knew from the quarterly updates that she still enjoyed watching television. Watching her stare blankly at a screen again would only remind him of how little room for improvement there was in her life and how badly he’d failed her.

Could he go back to his old neighborhood in Glasgow, where he’d watched his childhood friends drop out of school to join violent street gangs, ending up dead, imprisoned, or so blackened by evil that they were hardly human anymore?

Hardly. If any of them were left, they’d run him—a dirty snitch—out of town.

No, he had no friends or family to go home to, and couldn’t quite see himself living a quiet, ordinary life anyhow. Grocery shopping and watching movies were a world apart from the one in which he lived. Standing in a queue and handing cash over to a shopkeeper for a basket of biscuits and crisps seemed all too normal. Surely the shopkeeper would have one hand on a cricket bat, just waiting for McCrea to make a move he didn’t like. Regular people shouldn’t feel comfortable around a man like him, a man who could put a knife to their throat in the blink of an eye. They’d see right through him and know him to be a hardened man.

Good society would never let him back in, if he’d ever been allowed inside in the first place. He’d never make it in the real world, not now. Not after what he’d seen, and what he’d done. He’d just have to keep going, whatever happened. He’d request a new assignment immediately. Never stop. Never look back.

He’d stay undercover forever—until it killed him.

E
VANGELINE CHECKED HER
watch as she sprinted down the subway escalator and into the belly of the underground. She’d worked her whole shift at La Banque—she had to maintain the appearance of normalcy—and should have been exhausted after so many hours on her feet, but all she felt was exhilaration and the sense that she’d made concrete progress by bugging the Scottish gangster.

Now she only needed to find out where he’d gone. But Mason was in control of the information gathered by the toothpick bug. With any luck, he’d deem the information worth sharing, and she’d know the Scotsman’s whereabouts before the night was over.

She reached the platform just as a white train screamed into the tunnel, pushing a welcome gust of air through the stagnant station. She spotted an empty car two from the back. She entered it and sat down on a smooth leather seat where she could see the doors, as a matter of habit. Stations passed without a single passenger boarding her lonely section. Then, three stops from her home, someone stepped into her car. A man in his early fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes, he wore dark slacks, a wool overcoat, and a stern expression. Businessman personified. Like most of such people in Marseille, a wireless
cell-phone headset clung to his ear like a black plastic caterpillar. He sat down with impeccable posture a few rows away from her, pulled out a newspaper, and began to read the financial page.

She straightened in her seat. “Tell me you’ve been tracking the pick.”

“Protocol, please.”

She ran her tongue over her teeth but fished her wireless cell phone earpiece out of her bag. She slipped it over her ear so that if someone noticed that they were both talking, it might reasonably look like they were each talking on their respective phones. They were completely alone in a sealed vehicle, so it was a silly farce, though not worth arguing over.