Wilderness of Mirrors (28 page)

Govno
. He’d been altogether too careless. Believing the chase to be his own, he was coasting on a false wave of security. Now someone had taken advantage of that stupidity. He could feel a man on the opposite corner of the building beside which he’d paused. Nigel flexed his stiff fingers. The energy coming through three feet of four-hundred-year-old stone was edgy and sharp. Not the bouncer, who’d felt like two-tons of sand being sucked through a straw.

It was too late, though. The stranger stepped into sight, his gun centered on Nigel’s chest. He spoke in supple, refined Russian. “You’re a long way from Moscow, Sepp.” His posture assured Nigel that the gun had been used many times before.

“One could say the same for you, Sergei. Not enough whores in Russia for you?” Sergei had been one of Irina’s johns.

‘
He paid well,’ she’d laid a restraining hand over Andrus’s chest, ‘was attractive and clean. Not bad if I didn’t mind getting knocked around a bit. Leave him. He’s nothing to do with us.’

Sergei’s hand remained motionless. He was not such a fool with guns as he was with women. “Nor you, judging from the blonde whose company you’ve been keeping. Tell me, who gives better blowjobs?” He pursed his lower lip. “I thought Irina’s were overrated. Cheap, but overrated.”

Time and more than a few broken bones taught Nigel not to thrash when baited. He lifted the edge of his mouth and shrugged like a Frenchman. “Who can say? Personally, I’d rather enjoy one than discuss it.”

Sergei’s smile lost its sweetness. “You didn’t answer my first question.”

“You didn’t ask one.”

His thumb primed the trigger. “What are you doing in London going by the name Forsythe?”

Nigel shrugged again. “I go by many names, as I’m certain you do. One can’t stay a step ahead of Interpol without shuffling the walnut shells.”

There was a gleam in the Russian’s eyes. “Vasiliv is here. He wants to see you.”

Forsythe weighed his options. He doubted Sergei would shoot him in the alley. The man had an errand to run. He’d been told to fetch Sepp, which meant Vasiliv wanted him alive – dead men not being very helpful.

“He knows how to contact me.” Nigel cleared a cough from his throat. “Why send you?”

Here again, the charming smile returned. “Maybe he thought you’d decline the invitation.”

A silver S63 AMG drew up behind Sergei, blocking the most obvious way out. “How do I know you’ll take me to him? Who’s to say you don’t want my business for your own. You and Ivan, cutting a slice of cabbage pie for yourselves.”

It touched a nerve. Sergei wavered between shooting and swearing. Finally, he said, “Call Vasiliv if you’re so worried.”

“I’ve never spoken with him. How will I know it’s him?”

Sergei spat brown and thick. “He’s at The Dorchester. Call the concierge and ask.”

“And no one would use an alias at a hotel.” Irony laced his voice, a dense counterpart to the night’s thin air.

“He’s dining at Alain Ducasse. You could call the mâitre d’ and have him described.” Sergei’s teeth flashed. “You would not have me believe you’ve never seen him yourself. No one does business without sizing up his potential partner.”

It was true. Nigel had watched Vasiliv enter a nightclub in Moscow. Unfortunately, it had been snowing and, surrounded by a throng of bodyguards, he hadn’t actually gotten a clear view. “So you’d take me there? Directly.” Rides at gunpoint in black-windowed sedans left most victims with a need for Percocet or a coffin.

“Da.”

Nigel shrugged, thrust his hands into his parka and hit a combination of buttons on his own mobile. “Very well.”

Sergei watched the move with interest. It
was
cold and Nigel’s pockets were the wrong size and angle for a gun. Still, he said, “Give it to me. Slowly.”

Nigel pulled out the Nokia.

“Throw it to my driver.”

Nigel obliged, arcing the black box neatly over the running Mercedes. The leather-clad chauffer snagged it one handed, his eyes never leaving Nigel’s.

They were good.

Sergei appeared satisfied. “Let’s go.”

The driver moved around and opened the door closest to Sergei. “Don’t bother with the opposite side. It’s welded shut and the window’s shatterproof.”

“Part of the
Kriminalnaya
package?”

“Shut up and get in.”

Nigel lowered himself into the black interior, cursing his stupidity. He needed to focus. To stop thinking of Sam.

Sergei slipped beside him, the gun never losing its position. “Idti.”

The driver nodded, swinging tightly on the narrow street before heading back to the main road.

Curiosity got the better of Nigel. “How did you find me?”

“It was a coincidence. I like coming here. The food’s good.”

Nigel shook his head. “I mean how did you know I was in London?”

“Ah. That was Ivan. He doesn’t trust you.” Sergei laughed. “He doesn’t trust anyone. He said he had you followed when you left Moscow. Caught you coming back from the Azores.”

Nigel sifted his memories. Someone at the hospital in Lanzarote must have gotten hold of Andrus Sepp’s name. Likely he’d mumbled it while hallucinating. Information, however seemingly insignificant, had a way of finding those willing to pay. C had said as much.

Sergei stretched his legs in the cavernous space. “So who are you: Sepp or Forsythe?”

I’m Sam’s.
“Both.”

“For whom do you work?”

“Myself.”

“Not Vasiliv?”

“Not yet. He still hasn’t paid me for the cargo Ivan and Jaak hijacked.”

The driver’s eyes flashed in the rearview. Apparently he didn’t like Ivan any better than Sergei, who suddenly switched to English. “You’re aristocracy.”

“You’re no Bolshevik.”

“True.” Sergei contemplated his next question before asking, “Why do you need money when you’ve got a family estate?”

They were a thorough bunch. Nigel felt as unprotected as an ostrich’s arse. “I didn’t inherit Barkley. It went to my father’s eldest child. My sister is Lady Forsythe.”
But they already knew that, having killed William.

“Surely, she could keep your bills for you. I can’t imagine cocaine dealing would endear you to her.”

Nigel had little love for money. It came and went through his fingers, weightless as a murmur. “I don’t do it for that reason.”

“And what is the reason you do it for?”

Best to tell the truth. “Because I’ve nothing else in my life. It’s something I’m good at. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”

“You didn’t learn such things in public school.”

Nigel rubbed a hand over the throb in his thigh. His ribs were similarly discontent, but he had no intention of drawing attention to his midsection. His mobile remained obscured in the bulk of down-filled blackness. “You’d be surprised what a boy can learn in public school.”

“Buggary? That happens in all schools no matter where one grows up.”

They agreed on that point. Nigel and Brad had beaten the hell out of an Eton prefect who’d forced his attentions on a boy four years below them – Jack Kingston - a peculiar, mathematically-minded first year whose stoic, bruised face had spoken volumes. Funnily enough, Jack had been recruited by SIS’s Operational Officers Department. A case supervisor, if Nigel remembered correctly. “I learned much more in Africa.”

“One does.”

They drove in silence for a time. So far, Sergei had been telling the truth. They were on route to The Dorchester. Nigel was exhausted. Was Tam alive? Was Brad comforting Sam?

He’d made a bloody mess of everything. He should have stayed in Slough, kept his arms around Sam and waited with her. When would he learn?

“I was sorry to hear you killed Irina.”

“Were you really?”

“Da.” Sergei was speaking his native tongue once more. “What made you do it? She have something? AIDS?”

The honest reaction came as a surprise. “You don’t know?”

Sergei indicated no.

Nigel felt his chisel nick a weak point. He pushed against it. “Jaak brought her in while Ivan was conducting my interview. He told me Vasiliv wouldn’t consider working with me unless I proved my loyalty by shooting her.”

Sergei sucked through his teeth. The granite had begun to crack. “He said that about Vasiliv?”

“Yes.”

Again the driver’s eyes flashed.

There was more silence. Until, “You shot her yourself?”

Nigel refrained from answering. The hotel was visible, its creamy façade like a preening Sphinx feasting upon a revolving plate of world-class cars.

Vasiliv, best finish your caviar. I’m not in the mood to let you live.

Nigel had killed Irina to gain Vasiliv’s trust. To become part of his inner sanctum. SIS needed that Intel. It all tied back to Colombia. To Italy. To drugs and laundered money. To human trafficking and gun running. To, in some shifty data, uranium.

Now Nigel intended to chuck it all away. Everything was too big. Sprawling arms of misery sweeping kids and babies, grandparents and countries into one impossible mess.

There was little Nigel felt he could accomplish anymore. Killing Vasiliv seemed like a good use of his abilities. One less bastard to clutter the crying planet.

Sergei said, “Pull to the side. We’ll use the delivery entrance.”

They swept off Park Avenue, down Deanery Street, leaving behind the steady stream of liveried Rolls Royce.

The driver pulled between two parked lorries. Nigel could smell fish and flowers, even through the glass of the car’s window. They exited the Mercedes, in the same fashion they’d entered, and Nigel was escorted off the pavement into the glass-boxed stairwell.

A dark-faced beast of a man – a Russia-Afghan War vet if Nigel had to guess – stepped out of the darkness. He’d been waiting for them. He secured the door and was swallowed once more by the shadows. Vasiliv wasn’t counting on the hotel security.

They entered the restaurant’s corridor in a loose trio, friends to the casual observer. It didn’t pay to have the public notice you escorting a prisoner. Only Nigel’s attire drew stares.

There was blood on his cheek where Sam’s fingers had lingered. Once. When he’d moved to close the Audi’s rear hatch over her and Tam. Babushka had remarked on it. But nothing came of that. If Nigel were killed, he’d be buried with some of her. A small consolation.

Beyond the hostess, honeyed wood and enormous brushed nickel curves presided over white linen tables sparkling with silver and jade Ercuis. In the restaurant’s center, an ovoid shaft of Swarovski-beaded linen and fiber optics shimmered. It resembled a chute of water, and Nigel let his mind drift to Victoria Falls.

He’d been there one December. Christmas Day to be precise. And, taking the locals at their word, he had jumped into Devil’s Pool, full of mist and roaring. Bracing, racing water at the very edge of reason.

Sam would love it. They’d swim in the cataract, and then drift for a while in each other’s bloodstreams. She intoxicated him. Was redolent of old brandy and even older cleverness. Nigel liked who he became when he was with her.

They neared the lumière. If it shrouded a single, very expensive table, Vasiliv was indeed playing his role for all its worth. Nothing invites curiosity more than being secretive. Whisper and ten listen. Talk loudly and one might.

“He wants to talk with you alone.” Sergei slid his hand between the shimmering curtains. They were radiant yet concealing. Nigel wouldn’t have had the slightest idea six cappuccino armchairs and a table rested within.

Stepping through, Nigel heard the soft patter of drapes closing behind him. He had picked up a knife in the Russian tearoom. It was in his sleeve. Dropping now. Almost to his fingers. He palmed the coolness of its blade. One throw and Vasiliv would sink into the quietness of his armchair and bleed to death before his dessert.

Then Nigel felt the floor drop away.

Vasiliv was indeed alone – and unguarded. His eyes, topaz ingots of cunning, swung upward from a simple dish of soufflé au pamplemousse rose.

He was hellishly disfigured.

He was also, without a doubt, Samantha’s deceased father.

S
am worked her way through Kew until she came to the vast Victorian-era northern entrance. She slid through the iron and glass doors, glad for the sultry heat. Here the scent of growing things pervaded all. It touched her nostrils and lingered seductively on her tongue. Greenery, everywhere, creeping upward before her eyes. She spread her fingers, letting them soak up warmth even as her feet hurried through the familiar maze of vegetation and visitors.

How she longed to be this warm always. To be out of London’s insincere, gray grip. To be watching a sunset held tight in Nigel’s steely confidence.

Her immediate thought, that when he found out her part in William’s death, Nigel would rather cradle a bale of barbed wire, counteracted the wish’s balm. Hot tears pricked until she blinked them into oblivion. There was no use crying. There never had been – probably why she hadn’t done so in nearly two decades. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was accountability. She had to live with her decisions.

A trickle of February air widened into a river as she neared the greenhouse’s enormous southwest exit. The manmade rink was just outside it, spilling skaters like champagne bubbles into the snow-dusted portico.

Sam grabbed a map from the stack by the door, rolled it like a spyglass and tucked it under her left arm. Then she strolled out onto the wide, gracious set of stairs and descended as though she hadn’t a care worth mentioning.

This was ‘
the simple and terrifying’
. Sometimes she felt her contact, other times he came and went like a whisper. Always, it was human-to-human contact. Never a dead drop. Another of their tortures, she decided. Another reminder that it had never been about what she wanted, about her choice in the matter.

So it happened once more. Between the dropping of a child’s mitten and the subsequent parental scoop-up, the map was switched. Only this time,
this time
, Sam had been less afraid. She turned and watched for the flutter of Tam’s photo. The photo she had tucked into the roll of paper. When it happened, her contact paused, momentarily distracted.