Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

“Is there news of Middleton?” she asked.

“Detained by the Russians. I doubt we need concern ourselves further with the amateurs.”

“They beat us with Balan,” she replied, “but we made that work to our advantage, no?”

It was the overhead mirror that betrayed Pierre Crane. Jana might not have noticed the journalist if she’d been scanning the room at eye level, but reflected in the ceiling mirror, the slight movement of the door to the suite’s living room was clear, as was its cause.

She neither lowered her voice nor changed her tone. “So then, when do we move the equipment?”

Archer said, “Soon. It is set. It will be done. The wise control the world.”

“The wise control themselves,” she said quickly, pressing the button that ended the call.

Jana returned the BlackBerry to the drawer and, as she unpacked her small duffle, thought of Crane, who lurked in the next room. She had mixed feelings about the reporter. Her sources had given her a lot of information about him. He wasn’t about money or power. He was about journalism and the Story-with a capitol “s.” Which meant she could trust him up to a point. Jana, though, never believed in trust; daughters whose fathers are murdered rarely do. But Crane had access to important facts.

And in this murky business, facts were what she needed.

Besides, the gawky reporter was lusting after her and therefore it would be easy to tap the spigot of what he knew about the Scorpion, Middleton and the others.

After the girl she thought was Charlotte Middleton had escaped in London, Jana had cut Crane free and he’d behaved just as she knew he would: like a puppy with no desire to stray from his mistress, leash or none. She’d tried to charm from him what information he had but he’d continued to withhold details, other than the lead was centered in Dubai. Jana had immediately sized up what was going on and suggested that they go there together. She’d find the connection to the Scorpion first hand while he continued his research for the story.

It’s what he’d been hoping for all along. He immediately agreed.

Now, Crane approached with deliberately noisy steps and knocked.

“Come in.”

“You people do yourselves well, Jana,” he said in French. “The bedroom on the far side of the living room is spectacular. Plenty of room. Lovely view, too. You can see all those odd little boats.” He changed gears quickly. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Questions,” Jana said, “always questions.”

“I gave you Dubai. You promised me the truth for my story. So?”

“Really, Pierre, yet another question? Can we concentrate on something other than talk? We’ve been on airplanes for hours.” Jana let her voice fall, but kept her eyes steady. She knew how to play this game, a matter of tone and body movement rather than words.

Crane took the bait. “You are a very attractive woman, Jana.”

“A compliment from a man who tells lies for a living-what is that worth?” Again, her words meant little.

“I’m a journalist. I don’t lie… Well, not very often. Besides, beautiful women don’t need compliments from homely men.”

“So now I am beautiful?”

“You know perfectly well you are.”

“Ah, but you call yourself homely? That’s absurd. To a woman, being handsome is about making a woman feel like a woman. I think you understand what I mean.” Smiling, Jana folded her arms under her breasts, giving them an unnecessary boost.

“Well, we do tend to try harder,” Crane said.

“But how could you and I achieve mutual trust?”

Jana’s eyes, Crane noticed, had flecks of caramel, almost gold, in the iris. Her lashes were long and thick, like her hair. “Perhaps we would have to start by searching each other,” he said.

Jana lifted her chin and lowered her lashes. “Really?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

She held his eyes for a moment, then slowly turned her back, lifting the heavy hair from the nape of her neck with her left hand, exposing the thin zipper that ran like a snake down the length of her navy sheath. “Women, as you know, must be carefully and thoroughly searched.”

The third time Connie Carson woke, she didn’t feel nauseous. She was aware she was recovering in a hospital room and the cool white light no longer terrified her. Nor did the lack of feeling in her right arm, an absence so strong she’d been afraid to look down, sure she would see nothing but a stump.

But she was startled by a face peering down at her. Langer, she thought, the Ken-doll cop.

“Do you think you can stand? Move?” he asked hurriedly.

The quiet intensity of his voice flooded her system with adrenaline.

“You sure stirred up a hornet’s nest.” He looked around as if he anticipated action. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”

If she hadn’t needed all her strength to sit up and swing her legs over the side of the narrow bed, Carson would have said, that’s exactly what I meant to do. Her phone call, and Middleton’s response, must have grabbed somebody’s attention.

“Let me help.” Langer reached for her left elbow.

“I can, thank you. Does Dr. Ahmed know you’re-”

“Ahmed’s way too interested in you already. He’s not our friend.” Now that she was standing on her own, Langer tossed her a robe, then quickly grabbed her chart from the end of the bed and tucked it into a carryall. “He’s been on the phone to friends in Pakistan.”

The room didn’t spin exactly. It did a lazy half-circuit, an aborted pirouette.

“Whoa, come on, Connie, stay with me.” Langer jumped to her side, arm around her waist, helping her don a blue chenille robe twice the size of her slender frame. “We’re on the third floor. We turn right out the door, twenty steps to the second door on the left, three flights down, handrail all the way. You hear me? Push-bar door at the bottom opens directly outside. There’s a black van at the end of the path. The back doors will open as you approach. There are clothes for you inside.”

“Why?” Carson whispered as she sank back onto the bed, deciding for the moment not to press the button that would summon a nurse. She was wondering whether Langer could be trusted-whether she had hallucinated the entire episode. Suddenly the door opened and he was back, this time pushing a gurney.

“Get on.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“What was the question?”

“Why should I trust you?”

Langer lifted her like she was a three year old and set her firmly on the gurney. She had already parted her lips to scream by the time his response reached her ear.

“Wiki Chang.”

“Wiki-”

“We’re trying to save your life, Connie.”

In bed, Jana thought of herself not as the girl in the movie, the slut who spread her thighs for any hero, any villain, but as the great film director. She was the girl, yes, but she was completely in control. Sometimes the girl looked like Jana’s own reflection, a sultry twin with shiny dark hair. Sometimes she was a younger Jana, a Jana as she had once been, the naïve younger sister of brothers who’d taught her too soon what girls like her were good for. Sometimes she was a remote ivory-skinned blonde. The director in Jana rarely enjoyed the kind of opportunity afforded by the Dubai suite: champagne glasses on the bedside table; satin sheets glinting in softly diffused light. This was no cheap porno reel, but a James Bond-like thriller, an upscale fantasia.

Crane, she admitted to herself, hardly looked the part. His long limbs were fish-belly pale. His hair was dull, his nose long, but he was surprisingly muscular, very sturdy. Jana watched the reflection in the ceiling mirror, studied the splay of Crane’s limbs as he lay across her dark skin.