Blood Moon Rising (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 2) (11 page)

Chapter Twenty

B
ryan Duffy dropped the unconscious body of the
protester
in the shaded courtyard between the administrative buildings where Manage Risk planned its work in Energy City. There were a dozen men and a few women there already, all of them recovering from their forcible removal from the area near the gates. Duffy’s man had been jostled into him amid the crush, and he had pistol-whipped him across the
forehead
, knocking him out. He prodded him with the toe of his steel-capped boot and flipped him over onto his back. Blood was running freely from the deep gash in his scalp, and his head lolled on floppy muscles. The team would wait until they were recovered and then ship them back to the city. There would be charges for vandalism and public disorder, a quick trial and a long stay in the new al-Mina prison.

Duffy was responsible for security at Energy City. It was a demanding job, but that was why the company had been able to charge ten million a year to keep the place safe. Duffy had shares in Manage Risk, and it was in his best interests to project the right image. Tough. Ruthless. No pity for anyone who threatened the status quo. He took his job seriously, and he was good at it.

They had quelled the riot before it could get started, but he was not happy as he pushed open the swing door into the air-
conditioned
oasis that was the hub of the operation. He was not happy at all.

“McNulty,” he said.

“Yes, boss?”

“I need you to put a team together.”

“For what?”

“I thought I saw someone today,” he said absently. “In the crowd.”

“Someone?”

He waved a hand. “Someone I used to work with. A long time ago. I haven’t seen her for a while.”

He took out his phone, opened his photos and selected the one that he wanted. It was ten years old, the most recent one their
contact
in the Group had been able to find. The picture was of a smiling Beatrix Rose in the Sahara Desert with an officer from the
Moroccan
army who stood alongside her. She had long, straight, blonde hair
;
beautifully crafted features
;
porcelain skin
;
and a
slender
figure. Her eyes were an icy blue, the bluest that he had ever seen.

He slid the phone across the desk, and McNulty looked at the picture. “Good-looking woman,” he said with leering grin. “If it were me, I’d be looking for her, too.”

“No,” he said. “Trust me, you wouldn’t.”

Duffy looked at the photograph again. He remembered how attractive Beatrix had been.

Had he seen her?

If it wasn’t her, it was someone who looked very much like her.

Normally, he would have passed it off as a mistake or a trick of the light. But he knew what had happened to Oliver Spenser and Joshua Joyce. And then, just the day after he had spoken to her, someone had put a bomb under Lydia Chisholm’s car and detonated it with her inside. It was difficult to look at the trail of dead and not see the pattern.

Number Five: Chisholm.

Number Eight: Spenser.

Number Ten: Joyce.

He had been Number Eleven on that day, nearly a decade ago, when Beatrix Rose’s family had been torn away from her.

If it was her and she had a list, his name was definitely on it.

“Is it going to be a problem, skip?”

“I don’t know,” Duffy said, although he did.

If it was Beatrix Rose, “problem” didn’t even get
close
.

Chapter Twenty-One

B
eatrix awoke with the dawn. The sunlight suffused the material that was hung on the walls, the fabric rippling gently in the early morning breeze that was blowing off the desert. She looked up at the ceiling, where the joists met in the middle, and remembered where she was. She had fallen quickly into a deep and dreamless sleep. The night had been cold, and she noticed with a pang, the girl had covered her with another blanket. She pressed against the ground with her right arm and raised herself to a sitting position. Mysha wasn’t there.

The pain returned as soon as she stood, falling over her as if it had just been waiting for the moment when she had almost
forgotten
about it. She fought against nausea and then the
dizziness
that followed in its wake as she stood. She wobbled and then
shambled
to the shack’s single rickety wooden chair. She fell down into it and was still there, breathing deeply, eyes closed, when Mysha yanked aside the tarpaulin and came inside. Her face fell when she saw 
Beatrix
.

“Are you unwell?”

“I got up a little too fast. I’m fine.”

The girl was carrying the jerrycan, and it sloshed with water as she set it down. She must have been to the well. She lit the stove, filled the saucepan and set it to boil.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I did. Thank you.”

Mysha prepared the spiced cardamom tea and brought Beatrix a cup. She sipped it, the spices chasing away the metallic aftertaste of the vomit that had crept up from her gullet.

“Where is the well?”

“The other village.”

“How far?”

“Two miles, there and back.”

“What time did you wake?”

“I get up at four,” she said. “I always have things to do.”

They both heard the single blast of a car’s horn from outside. Beatrix looked at her watch. It was seven, the time that she had arranged with Faulkner.

Beatrix finished the tea and gingerly levered herself upright.

“Are you leaving now?”

“Yes. I expect that’s my friend.”

Beatrix collected her jacket and her Oakleys and checked her reflection in the mirror that was hanging next to the door. There was a picture of a man and a woman tucked into the brass frame. Mysha’s parents. There was a
hijab
on a hook next to the mirror. It must have belonged to Mysha’s mother.

“Could I borrow this?” she asked.

“Yes,” the girl said with a nod.

Beatrix wrapped it around her head.

“Thank you,” Beatrix said. “And thank you for the tea.”

She stooped to hug the girl.

She still had her clasped in an embrace as she reached her right hand back into her pocket and took out the rest of the notes that she had brought with her. There were five or six hundred dollars in all, Beatrix couldn’t remember how much exactly. She flicked the tight roll with her index finger and propelled it onto the chair in which she had been sitting. It bumped once, twice, and settled against the cushion. Mysha was still in her embrace and didn’t notice. Beatrix put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and moved her a step backwards.

“If I get your brother, you have to promise me something.”

“Yes?”

“Stay away from the protest. It isn’t safe. Do you promise?”

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.” She looked up at her with hopeful eyes. “When will you be able to find Faik?”

“I’m going to start right away.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

D
uffy shut the door to his office and opened the encrypted videoconferencing app on his laptop. There was a delay of a few seconds as the connection was made, and then the screen showed the inside of another office, bright sunshine streaming through an open window. He waited for moment, listening to the sound of conversation off-camera, until the man he wanted to speak to sat down at the chair in front of the camera. He was a little plump, with bushy eyebrows that topped eyes that seemed caught in a perpetual glower. His face was lined and worn, and the beard that he wore was shot through with more grey than Duffy could remember. He did not know the man’s real name. None of them did. His designation within Group Fifteen had always been Control, and it had stayed the same despite the fact that he had fled his previous employment in disgrace.

They all had that much in common, at least.

“Yes?” he said curtly. There was something of the public schoolmaster in the way he spoke to his agents. He was supercilious, abrupt and short of patience. Duffy did not like him, but he did respect him. He was an operator of the highest order, a master strategist, and he had connections throughout the world. Colonels and admirals, spies and spymasters, they all answered his calls.

Duffy was not afraid of many people.

Control was different.

He spoke carefully. “We may have a problem.”

“I hope not,” Control said irritably. “We’re coming up to renewal. That nonsense with the protesters hasn’t gone down well with the Iraqis. We cannot afford to have anything else like that.”

“I know,” he said, taking a deep breath. “That is under control, I told you.”

“You said that before.”

“It was then, and it is now. That’s not why we need to speak. It’s something else.”

Worse than that.

“Out with it.”

“It’s Rose.”

Even with the buffering on the call, it was obvious that this had rattled Control. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I think I saw her.”

“Where?”

“There was another protest yesterday. Not as bad as before
;
we kept it under wraps, but I saw someone in the crowd. It might have been her.”

“You
think
? It
might
? You need to be sure.”

“I’m not sure. I know I’ve been thinking about it a lot since we talked about her, about Spenser and Chisholm and Joyce, and I know it’s possible I’m seeing things when there’s nothing to see. But I’m pretty sure I saw a Western woman, medium height,
slender
build. Blonde hair.”

“You
think
?” Control said again.

“There was another sighting. One of our patrols, just outside the facility—they pulled over an SUV with a blonde woman inside. She had papers for onward travel, but they had been faked. She said she was a journalist. BBC.”

“And?”

“And so I checked with them. They don’t have anyone in Basra. They haven’t had anyone here for a month. I showed the men who pulled the SUV her picture. And they think . . .”

“I need something better than that!” he snapped.

“And they think, high probability, that it’s her.”

Control glared into the camera. “I’m not going to pull you out of there on the basis of that. It’s not enough.”

“I didn’t say I wanted you to pull me out.”

“So why are you bothering me with this?”

Because you asked.

Because you need to know, too.

Because if she crosses a line through my name, you might be next.

Duffy bit his lip. Control’s temper had been much worse since Milton and Rose had wiped out the team in Russia and forced him into hiding. That was understandable enough. If Rose was working her way through a Kill List, then his name was right at the top.

“Look, I just wanted you to know,” he said. “If it is her, at least I’m forewarned.
We’re
forewarned. I’m not going anywhere. She won’t be able to get the jump on me like she did with Joyce. We’re looking for
her
now. The shoe is on the other foot. We know she’s coming.”

“Have you started?”

“I’ve got men at the hotels. We’ll try them all. She has to be staying somewhere.”

“It won’t be as easy as that. She was good, Duffy. The best until John Milton. Maybe even better than him.”

And she’s just one person in a place that we control,
Duffy thought.
A place we have flooded with soldiers. And we know she’s coming. It doesn’t matter how good she is.

He paused. “Did you find anything out about where she went after Somalia?”

Control frowned. “Only two leads. Someone who looks very like her flew out of Kenya. There were only a handful of flights out that day. Fuel spill on the taxiway shut the airport down.
Casablanca
or Durban look like possibilities. We’ve got men looking into it.”

Duffy nodded and cracked his knuckles. “That’s all I had for you, sir. Thank you.”

“Keep me posted.”

Control ended the call.

Duffy stood and collected his holstered pistol from the back of his chair. He put it on.

Time to go to work.

Duffy and McNulty drew up at the hotel. They were in an unmarked Land Rover, with the four men that they had brought along for the job in another Land Rover behind them. Each man was armed with a semi-automatic, and McNulty had a Remington Model 870 Pump in a sports bag that was stowed in the back.

Duffy picked up the handheld radio and thumbed the channel open. “Wide awake, boys,” he said. “The target is a serious player. Eyes open.”

“How serious?” McNulty said beside him.

“You don’t want to know.”

Duffy got out of the Land Rover and made his way to the hotel’s entrance. It was plush, at least as far as Basra went, and he was a little surprised that Beatrix Rose would have considered this a suitable place to stay. It was hardly low-key, for one. It would have been more usual for a member of the Group to find somewhere deep in the city, somewhere that no self-respecting tourist would ever consider, in order to rise out of the background, do the job and then fall back out of sight once again. But his contact in the local police had reported that a foreigner who matched Rose’s description had checked in to the hotel. She was a striking woman, especially here. There couldn’t be many like her in a city like this. It was a good lead, the best that they had received. They had to check it out.

His contact from the Basra police department was waiting in the lobby with two of his colleagues. The man was called Tariq, and he was the most crooked man that Duffy had ever met.

“Did you get it?” Duffy asked.

“I did.” He held up a sheet of paper. “A judicial search order.”

“Any trouble?”

Tariq smiled his brightest, most avaricious smile. “No trouble, Mr Duffy. You have something for me?”

“Sure.” He handed over an envelope. “Five hundred dollars for you and your friends. Knock yourselves out.”

“We must come up with you. We will open the door, and then if she is there, and you happen to go inside?” He spread his hands wide. “What can we do?”

The blonde woman and her companion had checked into adjoining rooms on the fourth floor. Duffy left one of his men in the lobby and sent another two up the stairs. The Iraqi police went up in the first lift, and Duffy, McNulty and the fourth operative took the second.

“Think she’s here?” McNulty asked him as the lift ascended.

“I don’t know.” He slipped his hand inside his jacket and drew out the Walther PPK that he had holstered beneath his arm. “Best to assume that she is.”

The fourth-floor lobby was empty. The two operatives who had taken the stairs appeared, and Duffy told them to stand guard. Tariq told his two colleagues to do the same and set off down the corridor, stopping outside room 415.

Duffy followed. McNulty was behind him, the Remington held in both hands.

Tariq took the key card that he had requisitioned at reception and, after checking that Duffy was ready, slipped it into the slot.

The lock changed from red to green, and the door clicked open a fraction.

“Ready?” Duffy asked McNulty and the other operative.

Both men raised their weapons and nodded that they were.

Duffy kicked the door open.

He went inside, nerves afire, clearing the en-suite bathroom and then the bedroom beyond.

Empty.

It was a decent enough room; clothes lay scattered across the bed. He picked up a white T-shirt. There was a towel on the floor, still damp.

“She’s been here,” he said. “Not long ago.”

McNulty came out of the bathroom. “Shower’s only just been used,” he said.

“
Dammit
.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go down to the lobby. Close the hotel down and call for backup.
No one
goes in or comes out. She might still be in the building.”

“Will do.”

McNulty and Tariq left him alone.

There was a box of bullets on the bed. Nine-millimetre hollow points. He picked up the box. It was empty.

It was her. She had been here. They had missed her by a matter of minutes.

This
had been
his chance. His best and only chance. There
had
only
been
one opportunity, and it had passed. She knew, for sure, that they were onto her now. She would be a ghost. They wouldn’t see her again until she decided to come for them.

For him.