Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

“Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie,” Jana barked as the driver climbed in behind the wheel, giving him the street address of the Hotel Queen Elizabeth. The man nodded, then pulled away from the curb, merging with the gleaming black stream of corporate limousines leaving Le Bourget and heading into Paris. Jana pressed a button on her leather armrest and raised the partition between them.

A French breakfast was laid out on the small bar: a selection of pastries on a china plate, a thermos of café au lait , butter in the shape of a rose, tiny jars of lavender honey and apricot conserves flanked by delicate silver spoons. Enough to feed a small nation, Jana thought, the excess making her suddenly uncomfortable.

Ignoring the food, she reached under her seat and pressed a small and discreetly placed lever. Immediately, the armrest popped open, revealing a Hawlen 9mm with a matching silencer and a half a dozen spare clips. Jana took the pistol from its hiding place and fingered it lovingly. Here, at last, was a luxury she could appreciate.

Harold Middleton opened his eyes to a roiling cloud of greasy black smoke. He couldn’t have been out for more than a minute or two, but in that brief amount of time the drafty villa had been transformed into hell on earth. The ceiling, where it still existed, was crawling with flames, the walls baking hot to the touch. The air smelled faintly of burning flesh.

Middleton struggled to his feet, trying to orient himself. He’d lost the Yarygin in the explosion, but that was the least of his problems. The stairway he’d come down just moments earlier was gone, replaced by a gaping hole. A burning beam lay across the doorway, his only exit. Moving quickly, Middleton sloughed off his jacket and tossed it across the beam, hoping to temporarily douse the flames and create a narrow passageway for himself. The tactic worked, if barely. Seizing the brief window of opportunity, he leapt over the beam and barreled out the doorway.

The situation outside was only slightly less dire. Looking around him, Middleton was reminded of the puzzles Charley had loved when she was a little girl: drawings where everything was slightly off, where you could look and look and still not see the man wearing the shoe on his ear or the bicycle wheel that was really a button. Bodies lay scattered across the courtyard, several of them burning, one missing its head, another an arm. The Niva was engulfed in flames. Shards of glass and other debris from the villa littered the ground. The tall iron gate at the courtyard’s entrance had been blown off its hinges.

An ordinary explosive device couldn’t have caused this much destruction, Middleton knew, his brain slowly beginning to function once again now that he was out of immediate danger. No, this much damage had to be the result of a thermobaric bomb.

As he picked his way through the debris, heading for the gate, Middleton listened for the sounds of approaching emergency vehicles. It was only a matter of time before the fire department arrived and he didn’t want to be there to welcome them. But, strangely, he didn’t hear any sirens.

In fact, he suddenly realized, he couldn’t hear anything. Not the roar of the inferno. Not the howls of pain from the guard by the gate with the metal rod stuck in his thigh. The explosion had numbed his eardrums.

Fighting back a wave of panic, trying to focus on anything besides the fact that he was stone deaf, Middleton forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.

“Wait here,” Jana told the driver as they pulled to a stop outside the front door of the hotel.

The man reached for the key, but Jana stopped him. “Keep it running,” she said, opening the door for herself, swinging her black leather boots out onto the curb. “I won’t be long.”

It was not quite six o’clock when she stepped into the Hotel Queen Elizabeth. Her timing, if not perfect, was propitious. Half an hour later and she would have had to contend with a doorman and a bellhop, but at this early hour there was just a lone receptionist behind the front desk.

“May I help you?” the man asked, glancing up from his computer screen as Jana made her way across the small but elegant lobby. He used the formal vous to address her, but the tone of his voice was pure contempt.

Jana knew exactly what he was thinking: What is this Arab whore doing in my hotel? He was about to find out.

“Give me the key to Charlotte Rosewald’s room,” Jana demanded, approaching the front desk.

The receptionist raised a single black eyebrow. “Would Madame also like the combination to the safe?” he asked, with caustic sarcasm.

“The key!” Jana snapped, pulling the Hawlen from beneath her jacket, raising the silenced barrel to the level of the man’s heart. “Now!”

Calmly, he glanced at the gun. “We don’t use keys,” he said, holding up a plastic card for Jana to see. His nails were perfectly manicured, coated with a thin layer of clear gloss. “I will have to program it for you.”

“Do it,” Jana told him, keeping the 9mm trained on his chest.

Charley put her ear to the bathroom door and listened with satisfaction to the sound of the shower running. She understood Leonora’s reluctance to leave the hotel, but she was starting to go stir crazy. If she didn’t get out and get some fresh air soon, she felt like she might hurt someone.

She wasn’t asking for much, just a quick run and a stop at the patisserie across Avenue George V for something other than the disappointing croissants the Queen Elizabeth served. Once Tesla tasted a real pain au chocolat , all would be forgiven.

Besides, it wasn’t like she was sneaking off. She’d left Leonora a note explaining where she’d gone and that she’d be back in an hour or so with breakfast. Still, she felt a twinge of guilt as she slipped into her running clothes and let herself out into the hallway.

The elevator was just outside the door of their room, but it was notoriously slow and creaky. More often than not she opted to take the stairs instead of waiting for it to creep upward. But for some unknown reason-lack of sleep affecting her brain, perhaps-she pushed the call button. Somewhere far below in the bowels of the building, the aged mechanism rattled to life.

The receptionist tapped the keyboard a few times, then swiped the card through the encryption device next to the computer before handing it to Jana.

“The room number?” she asked.

“Two nineteen,” he sneered.

“How many guests?”

“Two women. One older and Madame Rosewald.”

He was still sneering when Jana pulled the trigger.

Shoving the receptionist’s body out of sight behind the desk, Jana headed for the stairs, sprinting for the second-floor landing. As she stepped in the hallway, she heard the elevator door slide shut. An early riser, she thought testily. No doubt there would be others. She’d have to work quickly.

Methodically, she made her way down the corridor, checking the room numbers as she went: 215, 217. Stopping in front of 219, she paused to listen. She could hear the elevator laboring noisily downward. And inside the room, the faint whine of water running.

With her left hand, Jana slid the pass card into the electronic lock and watched the light change from red to green. Keeping the 9mm ready, she turned the brass handle and let herself inside. So two occupants: Charlotte Middleton and presumably some babysitter her father had brought in.

Jana closed the door softly behind her and made her way across the small sitting room, moving toward the sound of the shower. Her wrists were locked in place, her finger light on the trigger of the Hawlen, her mind sharp. She nudged open the half-closed bedroom door and stopped, scanning the room, the two unmade beds.