Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

Slipping one hand into his pocket and grabbing the heating element, Middleton reached up and pulled the bag off his head.

Before the Russian could react, Middleton whirled around, jamming the jagged end of the metal element into the man’s eye. The makeshift weapon found its mark with a sickening thwack, lodging itself firmly in the guard’s upper cheek.

The man groaned in pain. Middleton caught his gun hand and wrenched it backward. Delivering a sharp blow to the Russian’s ribs with his free elbow, he pried the Yarygin free, then pivoted to face the others.

A split-second was all the time Middleton had to survey the situation, but it was long enough for him to realize that he was seriously outgunned. He’d been right about the five armed men, who were loosely gathered around a battered Niva, a low-rent Russian version of a Range Rover. What he hadn’t anticipated were the other four guards manning the tall iron gate that blocked the entrance to the villa’s courtyard. All were carrying light machine guns, Israeli Negevs from the looks of them.

One of the men by the Niva fired first, initiating a hail of gunfire. Fueled by a jolt of adrenaline, Middleton dove for the only cover available: the doorway he’d just come out of. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the beefy guard hit the ground, his chest riddled with bullets.

Crouched in the darkness, Middleton briefly considered his dwindling options. Fighting his way out of the courtyard, he knew, would be tantamount to suicide. The men had just shot one of their own; they’d kill him as soon as he stepped out the door. The only alternative was to head back into the villa, though this didn’t seem any more promising. Already he could hear footsteps above him. Desperately, he rose up on the balls of his feet, willing himself to act.

But before he could do so, a deafening roar filled the air. It was a sound Middleton knew all too well, the unmistakable snarl of an incoming RPG. There was a flash of white-hot light and a single, thunderous clap. The force of the blast knocked Middleton off his feet, slamming him into the wall behind him, showering him with plaster. The villa shuddered, swaying and pitching like a boat on a swell. There was a sickening snap as one of the beams holding the ceiling up gave way. Then, in an instant, everything went black.

“Can’t sleep?”

Leonora Tesla turned from the glowing screen of her laptop to see Charley Middleton framed in the doorway to the hotel suite’s bedroom. “Looks like I’m not the only one. You should try, you know.”

Charley smiled weakly. “So should you,” she retorted, padding across the room, settling herself on the sofa. “Besides, it’s morning.”

Tesla glanced at the clock in the bottom corner of her screen and was surprised to see that it was almost five. “Barely,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

“Just following a hunch.”

“You want to fill me in? I’m not going anywhere.”

The Queen Elizabeth Hotel, with its friendly, lived-in atmosphere and compliant staff, was a charming cage if ever there was one, but it was, for the time being at least, a cage nonetheless. After their confrontation with the well-dressed Brit, they were reluctant to venture outside the walls of the hotel. If that man could find them, Tesla knew, others could as well.

“I found out more about what your father was telling us about Sikari’s younger days,” Tesla said. “When he was a teenager, he was chosen, along with two other boys, to go to school in England. The whole thing was financed by an anonymous source. Six years at boarding school, then Cambridge. And after they graduated they were each given start-up capital. We haven’t been able to figure out why, but we think it was some kind of social experiment. All three boys were Hindu, but one was Pakistani, one was Indian, and one-Sikari-was Kashmiri.”

“Social experiment sounds kind of ominous,” Charley remarked. “What makes you think it wasn’t just plain old philanthropy?”

“That’s what we thought before we found out that Sikari was the only one of the three still alive. The Indian, a man named Sanjiv Das, drowned in New Delhi twenty years ago, and the Pakistani, Santash Grover, died after drinking bad well water a few years later. Are you starting to see a pattern?”

Charley looked skeptical.

“That’s not the only thing,” Tesla continued. “Guess what all three studied at Cambridge?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“You guessed it: engineering, energy and hydrology.”

“So who’s the source?” Charley asked.

“There doesn’t seem to be one. So far all Wiki’s been able to find is an impressive collection of shell companies. But that’s not what I’m interested in.”

“No?”

“There’s been so much focus on Sikari that no one’s bothered to find out about the two dead men,” Tesla explained. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do some poking around.”

Charley Middleton sat forward on the couch, propping her chin on her palms. “And? What did you find?”

Tesla scowled. “Not much so far. But then I don’t have a lot to work with.”

Charley pointed at black and white photograph of a group of people displayed on the screen. “What’s that?”

“It’s a ground-breaking ceremony. Some project Santash Grover’s engineering firm was working on. I just pulled it up from the Daily Dawn archives.” She pointed to a slim man in a western suit holding a shovel. “That’s Grover.”

“Who’s the little girl?” Charley asked, leaning closer to get a better look at the lithe teen who stood slightly apart from the group. The intensity of her expression was disarming.

Tesla squinted to read the caption. “That’s odd… ”

“What?”

“This says she’s Grover’s daughter, Jana. But nothing else I’ve found so far has mentioned anything about him having a child. His obituary in the Dawn didn’t list any survivors.”

“Maybe it’s a mistake.”

Tesla looked from Grover to the child and back again. The girl’s curly hair and mostly Mediterranean features were distinctly out of place in the predominantly South Asian crowd. But at the same time, her resemblance to Grover was uncanny. They both had the same high forehead, the same full lips.

“Or just maybe she’s gone to great lengths to conceal her identity.”

“What are you looking at?” Jana snapped as she ducked into the back of the limousine outside Le Bourget airport in Paris. Her young Moroccan driver had not been able to take his eyes off of her since they’d met outside customs, but now he quickly averted his gaze, looking down at the tips of his cheap dress shoes.

Normally, Jana might have welcomed the flattery, even from a mongrel like him, but she was in no mood for it this morning. She was furious she’d been forced to kill Crane and hadn’t able to interrogate him further.

She’d spent hours trying to learn what she could about the connection between the Scorpion and the BlueWatch security company. Curiously, despite her considerable talents, she’d been able to find out very little; the company was shrouded in layers of corporate disguise, like a Russian matryoshka doll. Fortunately, though, one of the reasons she hadn’t made much headway was that many BlueWatch employees had left the U.A.E. for a big mission. This in itself was an important find-all the more so when she learned that the flight plans had taken them to Mumbai and New Delhi.

She wasn’t sure what to make of this yet. But she had some ideas.

She fought exhaustion. But in just two days, Jana reminded herself, she’d have all the time in the world to sleep. But for now it was imperative that she focus on the task at hand. She and Archer agreed to follow one lead that Crane had provided: Jana would fly to Paris and take Charlotte Middleton, preferably alive, to neutralize any danger from her father and find out what information the man had. She’d convinced Archer that Middleton was indeed a threat. At the very least, she could kill the woman; her death would distract Middleton and perhaps make him give up his mission altogether.