Ted Bell - Warlord

"Why?" Hawke asked, unable to comprehend how anyone could stand the foul-tempered, noisy beasts.

"I like the way they smell," Abdul said.

Hawke laughed.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to give them another go, Mr. Dakkon."

Dakkon said, "The trails we'll be taking in the mountains are about two feet wide in places. One misstep and you're looking at a few thousand feet of air before you hit the ground. Camels and horses don't make missteps. That's why I like them. And we'll be using a great many mules to transport food, water, and weapons."

C stood up, indicating that the meeting was over. "Thank you all for coming. We'll be seeing a lot of each other in the coming days. Alex? Let's have a nice cup of tea and talk about Ireland, shall we?"

"Lovely," Hawke said, his mind already somewhere else.

"Have a look at this first," C said, handing him a folded piece of paper. "Delivered anonymously to the Ambassador to the Court of St. James at Winfield House last evening. The American ambassador personally brought it over to me this morning. It's why I was a bit late."

Hawke opened it, his heart skipping a beat when he saw the familiar scrawled signature beneath the single sentence:

THE CHILDREN WILL DIE FIRST.

THE PAWN

"Good Lord. Wills and Harry. Has the Prince of Wales been informed?"

"Of course. Look here, Alex, I appreciate your feelings in this matter of threats to Prince Charles. But I have spoken to him at length about the necessity of your leaving as soon as possible for Pakistan. Your mission is to counter a very real threat to our entire nation. He understands completely. I assured him Ambrose Congreve would remain on the 'Pawn' case until your safe return. At which point you could, if necessary, resume your involvement. Do I make myself crystal clear?"

"Indeed."

"Very good. Now tell me about Northern Ireland. I understand there's progress."

"We found human remains. Possibly from the girls who went missing that summer, presumably victims of Smith. Ambrose is still there with his former partner on the Mountbatten case, a man named Drummond. The two of them are quite determined to put this case to rest. Should they succeed, we will have taken the first step toward identifying the killer. We also have startling new information about a third suspect in Lord Mountbatten's murder, a man named 'Smith,' which may or may not prove out. Either way, we've got the scent. The bone in our teeth. And, possibly, the Pawn himself."

"Well done," C said thoughtfully.

"Thank you, sir," Hawke said, stunned at perhaps the first and only time the man had ever paid him a compliment.

SMITH SAT STOCK-STILL IN THE SEMI-GLOOM, transfixed by the flickering black-and-white image of the famous woman on the monitor. It had been years since his triumph at Windsor Castle. Oh, he'd had some minor opportunities to plunge yet another stake into the Royal heart of Britain, and he had even taken advantage of a few.

But tonight?

Tonight would be the result of patience and incredibly meticulous planning. And it would be cataclysmic, a world-shaking event that would rock the Royal Family back on its heels like nothing he'd done since Mountbatten's murder. It would shake them, and their bloody nation, to the very foundation.

And, best of all, it would be the perfect opening act leading to his grand finale. His final day of reckoning with his implacable enemy. The epic culmination of his life's work, the realization of his childhood dreams of total vengeance. The penultimate penalty to be paid.

An eye for an eye.

He saw that she was just finished dressing, suitably chic for a late-night Paris rendezvous. Now, leaning into the gilt mirror above the bureau, applying her lipstick, she smacked her lips together a few times and essayed a smile. Happy with the result, she picked up a crystal flute of champagne.

Eyes shining, she raised the glass to herself.

She had not looked better than at this moment, he thought, not in years. But that pained, haunted look he'd seen in her eyes during the bad times remained. She looked like what she was, a woman on the run, in search of peace.

Four flatscreens stood atop his room's faux Louis XIV desk, bathing the tiny bedroom in cool, phosphorescent blue. An hour earlier, he had tapped into the hotel's CCTV security camera system: three of his monitors were broadcasting alternating live feeds directly from various areas inside the building. The hotel's front and rear entrances, the guest and service elevators, the employee entrance, and the foyer directly outside the white and gold double doors of the hotel owner's suite on the floor above.

It was not called the Imperial Suite for nothing. An exact replica of Louis XIV's rooms at Versailles, it was the single-most expensive hotel room in all of Paris.

This fourth screen had a real-time feed, but the feed emanated from inside the doors of the Imperial Suite. He could toggle views from either of two hidden cameras. His engineer had done well. One downward-view camera inside the ceiling-mounted living room fire sensor, the other a rotating lens, swiveling 360 degrees inside a lightbulb in the master bedroom's chandelier. Images from the opulent bedroom now captured his rapturous attention.

He wore a headset with a lip mike so he could communicate quietly and instantly with a colleague currently waiting in the Place Vendome outside the ridiculously expensive hotel.

"Any time now," Smith said softly into the mike. "She just finished dressing."

"That's too bad. How much longer?" the man on the motorcycle said. "The natives are getting restless out here."

"Ten, fifteen minutes maximum. I see Dodi's cars are already waiting outside the hotel's front entrance."

"Just arrived. His black Range Rover HSE and his father's black hotel Mercedes."

"That could change. Keep your eyes open."

"Say the word, sir."

"Stand by."

The voyeur returned his attention to matters at hand. He had to smile at his all too predictable reaction to the partially dressed woman on the screen: damp brow, pulsing heart, the hint of an erection announcing itself.

Highly trained in the key indicators of human behavior, he should have expected his own involuntary reactions to the subject, of course. She'd always had this effect on him. She had this effect on everyone; the whole damn world was at her feet, so why should he be exempt from her charms? Still, such feelings were a bit disconcerting at this moment in time, all things considered.

The woman, still a fresh-scrubbed, dewy-eyed beauty at thirty-six, was sporting a healthy tan from a week's yachting off Sardinia. She stood peering at her body in the gilt mirror over the bureau. Satisfied, she slipped her slim tanned arms inside a short black frock coat. Smoothing it down over hips hugged by tight white Versace jeans, she leaned again into the mirror inspecting her makeup, puckering her lips, a new string of pearls swinging from her neck-

Smith slid the zoom button forward, going in for a tight close-up of that famous face.

Her face aglow after two or three glasses of champagne in the beautiful Ritz Hotel suite with her new lover, the princess looked like a woman who had found a momentary escape from the wreckage of her life. She looked like a survivor, wearied by the fray but determined to find a way out of her well-publicized maze of constant sorrow. An exit from all that, a port in the storm, that's how she saw her newest lover.

This new man provided that and more. And, in a fortuitous twist of fate, she'd managed to insert a razor-sharp political dagger into the hearts of those who had caused her enormous suffering. She could only imagine their horror at the notion of a divorced Egyptian playboy as the stepfather of the future King of England. How utterly delicious, even though it would never happen.