Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

“Such as?”

“You can understand why I might want to share that solely with Colonel Middleton.”

“And you can understand why that won’t happen.”

Barrett-Bone feigned a sulk. “Pity.”

“You’ll talk to us.”

“And if I don’t? Please don’t throw out idle threats. Your reputation precedes you. That’s the problem with being honorable, you know. Damn hard to scare people.”

Tesla took his face in her hand, squeezing till his lips pursed. “You tried to kill an innocent woman.”

He shook off her hold, but for a moment his insouciance wavered. “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. The people I represent and I had nothing to do with that. That was Sikari’s cock-up. A woman on his payroll named Jana. South Asian lass, lovely to look at, nasty disposition. None too trustworthy, either.”

“And what people do you represent?”

“I think you missed a subtle hint in what I just said. This Jana, she’s none too trustworthy. She’s a bit of a loose bird. She’s playable, if the conditions dictate. And the price is right.”

“Why should we believe you?”

“Well for fuck’s sake, luv, why should anyone believe anybody?”

Tesla leaned close. Whispering in his ear, she said, “If you call me luv again, I’ll shoot you for the sheer pleasure of it.”

He regarded her with mock horror. “What is it with American women?”

“What people do you represent?”

“Look, I’ve already put a few cards on the table here.”

“Who’s the Scorpion?”

He withdrew behind a mask of coy bemusement. “I’m not sure I know who you mean. Sounds like a comic book hero to me.”

“A villain, I’m betting.”

He shrugged. “The narcissism of minor differences.”

The driver honked at a wayward cyclist, who responded with a hand-flick to the chin. Tesla said, “You work for him. The Scorpion.”

“I’m here, talking to you, on my own graces. And just to confirm my bona fides, I’m going to fill you in on a little detail that should make it clear I know of what I speak.”

He cocked an eyebrow. The two women waited.

“You’ve seen a bracelet, no doubt. You took it off the body of a poor sod named Kavi Balan. Jana was the one who blew him up-the old exploding cell phone ploy. Understand she damn near got you with the laptop.”

“So she was the one at Cap D’Antibes.”

“That’s right. The bracelet has a certain significance, a meaning, if you will. The elephant, the spray of water-”

“The moon,” Tesla said.

“Quite.”

“Tell me what the moon means.”

Barrett-Bone cocked an eyebrow. “And you’ll…?”

“I’ll consider your request to speak with Colonel Middleton more mindfully.”

He sighed. “You’re a tough one, miss.”

“The moon. Tell me.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve realized it has nothing to do with Islam. Sikari being Hindu and all.”

“Go on.”

“The crescent moon as a symbol predates Islam, actually. Byzantium chose it long before Mohammed ever came upon the scene, as it were. It represented the goddess Diana. She was a huntress-stop me if you know the story-but she was also a protector of the weak and vulnerable. A heavenly light in the darkness, oh my.” He fluttered his hand, a music hall wave. “Sometimes you see her as a torchbearer, lighting the way for others. She was regal, proud, majestic, driving her chariot through the wilderness.”

“What does that have to do with Sikari?”

He shook his head. “The question you should be asking is: What does it have to do with Jana?”

“Well?”

“She’s looking for the Scorpion. Everyone’s looking for the Scorpion.”

“Sikari too, I assume.

“What if I were to tell you that Sikari’s dead?”

Tesla struggled to conceal her shock. The man who was the center of the Volunteers’ mission-dead!

Barrett-Bone continued, “And killed by his own son, it seems. But Jana’s still a loose cannon.”

“Looking for the Scorpion.”

“And maybe that’s not all.”

“Go on,” Tesla snapped. “Tell us.”

“Look, one more hint, then I’m finished. Have you heard about the Baglihar hydroelectric dam?”

Despite herself, Charley Middleton stiffened. Wiki had been hacking and cracking nearly round-the-clock the past few days, trying to break through encryption codes and fending off countermeasures-Trojan Horses, root kits, backdoors, key loggers, bots, zombie attacks-in an attempt to determine what Sikari’s next move would be. That effort had revealed the existence of the Scorpion-though no details about him-as well as turning up mentions of the Baglihar dam.

Tesla shrugged. “It’s a dam being built in India.”

“Kashmir,” Barrett-Bone corrected. “More precisely the Jammu region of India-administered Kashmir.”

“The area Sikari comes from.”

“Quite.”

“What about it?”

“You know there’s a bloody serious dispute over the thing.”

Pakistan had protested to the U.N. that the dam threatened irrigation from the Chenab River, on which the country’s agriculture relied. It even went so far as to accuse India of deliberately going ahead with the project simply to deprive Pakistan of the water it needed to survive. Negotiations between the two countries had broken down over the issue of Islamic terrorism in the region, and so the World Bank, which brokered the 1960 Indus Water treaty for Kashmir, had appointed an arbitrator to review the dispute. Just recently the arbitrator had issued his determination: India, which claimed the dam was needed to provide much-needed electric power, was fully within its rights to finish the project, with a minor concession of lowering the spillway five feet.

Tesla said, “What does the dispute have to do with Sikari? His side won.”

“Did it now?” Barrett-Bone sank back into the seat, arms crossed, winking. “I’m afraid that’s all I’m prepared to say. For now. Till I get my face-to-face with the fabled Harold Middleton.”

As prison cells went it wasn’t half bad-one of those vast drafty rooms in some provincial estate house on the outskirts of Moscow, or possibly out in the neighboring countryside, a relic from the Romanov era, showing all too well the inevitable wear and principled neglect of the socialist century.

The floorboards were dull and pitted, the walls dingy and water-stained. The windows had been sealed up, leaving a musty smell of mildew and rot, tinged with the scent of wood smoke seeping in from somewhere. Not here-no wood in the fireplace, no warming blaze, just a ridiculously clap-trap space heater resembling a helmet with a red-hot face behind the grille. It gave off about as much heat as a nightlight. Except for three rickety chairs, it was the only piece of furniture in the room.

Middleton gathered his coat tight around his body, breath purling out from his nostrils in airy plumes. His lips felt numb.

How many hours had they kept him here? How many more to go-and what then?

At least there’d been no torture, not for him. He’d heard the cries from elsewhere in the large house-the woman with the buzz-cut hair, he supposed, his attacker. Ruslan’s killer. They’d spare her no excess. The questioning would almost be secondary.

He glanced up at the ceiling, a stained expanse of yellowing plaster blistered and cracked to the point it resembled a contour map. He’d sat there staring up at it for hours at a time, creating an imagined landscape, tracing the rivers, the feed-streams and tributaries, the floodplains, the drainage basins, the terraced hillsides and marshy wetlands and vast beckoning steppes. Where would the cities reside, he wondered, where the outlying villages? From which direction would the Mongol horsemen-or the Nazis’ vaunted Sixth Army-invade?