Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

Jana held up her silenced pistol. “You do not get to ignore my question without me destroying your kneecap, so I hope you are prepared to answer me. Where is Charlotte Middleton?”

Tesla forced herself to grin broadly. “Why, she’s right behind you.”

The ploy ought not to have worked, indeed it would not have worked, had Tesla not looked so supremely satisfied when she spoke the words. All of this woman’s training and instincts-and Tesla did not doubt they were considerable-failed in the presence of what seemed to be real human emotion. She turned and looked.

Though it caused her the greatest agony she had ever known, hoped she would ever know, Tesla sprang to her feet and slammed into the woman with her good shoulder, ramming into her like an American football player. She struck the assassin just below the ribs, and the pain was fierce in itself, but it reverberated throughout her body and felt as though someone had thrust a hot poker into her bullet wound. Tesla cried out, but so did the assassin.

The dark woman stumbled back and collided with a chair, which she tripped over, falling and hitting her head hard upon the carpeted floor. The carpet was not thick and the concrete below was heavy. Tesla heard the woman’s teeth snap together and a trickle of blood began to flow at once from her mouth; Grover’s daughter had undoubtedly bitten into her tongue. She still held onto the gun, however, and Tesla could not afford to wait to discover how stunned the assassin might be. In a sweeping gesture, graceful and excruciating, she raised the wooden chair as far as the wound would let her and smashed it down against the assassin’s back. She wanted to stun her, to incapacitate her, but hopefully not to kill her. She wanted the woman alive and able to answer questions, but Tesla would kill her if she had to.

The pain rocked through her and she thought she might faint, but she willed herself alert, willed herself to ignore the agony. She hardly noticed that her towel had fallen off. She lifted the chair again, this time no higher than her waist. It felt impossibly heavy and she felt herself stumble both from her diminished strength and from dizziness. Her vision went black around the edges as she raised the chair, preparing to strike again. That was when the door opened.

Charley Middleton, her face glowing with perspiration, walked into the room carrying bags from a Parisian bakery. She froze, and Tesla could only imagine how shocking things must seem-this strange woman, motionless on the floor, mucusy blood oozing from her mouth, and Tesla herself, naked and bloody, wielding a chair like a club.

Tesla dropped the chair, fell to the floor and burst at once into tears and insane laughter.

By all rights Archer should have been afraid. Any sane man would be afraid. Well, he amended, any sane normal man, but he had never been a normal man, could not understand what it would be like to be a normal man. His brother Harris had been a normal man and Harris was dead. There was much truth to be learned from that simple fact.

He sat around a low table in a small village outside Jhelum in Pakistan, near the border of the Jammu and Kashmir. He sat with three men, all dark-skinned South Asians, and understood his own fair complexion was his greatest obstacle. He had always known it would be and he had calculated the solution. It seemed hardly possible to Archer that these men, with their suspicion of outsiders-their suspicion of everyone, really-could outmaneuver his calculations. Even so, for a moment Archer envied Sikari and the easy passage his appearance had brought him. He, a devout Hindu, had fooled these Muslims-fools, but clever fools. It could not have been easy for him and now Archer’s task was that much harder.

Well, what of it? He had made it his life’s work to deceive. He had deceived his brother, almost every day, greater and greater deceptions, only to see what he could get away with. No, Harris, I don’t know what happened to your books. No, Harris, I have no idea how the stolen whiskey bottle ended up in your room. No, Harris, I did not subscribe to those pornographic magazines in your name. They were little things, of course, childish pranks, but then they had been children. But he’d taught himself how to lie, how to explain away the impossible, to make others believe him when his falsehood was so obvious.

Now he sat with the three men in the dark hovel. There was but a single light above them, a naked bulb powered by a generator that hummed outside. All three stared at him in hot suspicion and dull curiosity, but mostly only one spoke, their leader, a man named Sanam. He was very tall and painfully thin, with a long beard and very intense eyes. He wore the same white robes and taqiyah as Archer.

Sanam sipped his tea. “It is all very sudden,” he said in Urdu. He had been switching all night from English to Urdu to Kashmiri to Arabic as if to keep Archer on his toes, to make him slip up, but Archer spoke all of the languages perfectly, just as Sakari had made certain he could.

“Death is often very sudden,” said Archer. “My father’s death is a terrible blow to me personally and of course to our cause, but it is also the will of Allah. My father has died and I will mourn him, but I will also honor him by continuing his work. It is unfortunate that he should die just as events are coming to a head, but we must not let our trials stand in the way of our goals.”

“I do not love to hear this fair-haired American speak of Allah or the Prophet or the holy Koran,” said Umer, one of the other men. Of the three men, he was the most uncomfortable with Sikari’s disappearance from the scene. “All night you have sprinkled your conversation with such things as though you were salting your meat, but are we children to be so easily deceived? You do not look like a Muslim. You look like an American underpants model.”

Archer sensed Umer would be his greatest obstacle. “I do not see how my European ancestors must keep me from following the path of Islam,” he said, speaking now in Arabic. “My father raised me as a Muslim man ought to raise his son. That I am adopted is no matter.”

Sanam nodded. “It would be a sin to doubt his faith because of his appearance. Nevertheless, you must understand our suspicions. These are dangerous times. We are hunted by the Pakistani government, your government, India’s government. We must be cautious. We must be convinced you are who you say you are.”

Archer laughed. “Who else could I be? I know my father spoke to you of his sons, so my existence cannot surprise you. Perhaps I am an agent of the CIA, an organization whose highest ranks concluded that the best way to infiltrate your organization would be to send a fair skinned, blue-eyed man. And, of course, the CIA has no higher priority than infiltrating groups that are primarily interested in the future of Kashmir.” Continuing his sarcasm, he added, “And it is well known that the CIA has many agents who speak Arabic, and of course Urdu and Kashmiri.”

Sanam snorted. “You raise good points. Your skill with languages ought to be enough to convince us you are not an American agent. Your knowledge of our ways and customs is impressive and seemingly natural, and the information you have offered us is not only vital, it corresponds with what we have been able to glean. My only question is, why should you care? Your father cared because he came of age in Kashmir and understood full well what it means to have our land in the hands of the infidels. You are, however much a Muslim, still an American. What does Kashmir matter to you?”

“It matters to me,” said Archer, “because it mattered to my father. It was my father’s jihad and so now it is mine. Is there one among you who thinks this is not reason enough?”