Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

He threw his covers back, but before he could even push himself out of bed, he heard the rattle of a key. His door flew open.

“Quick! Get dressed. You must hurry!”

It was the guard who had brought him his dinner the evening before, but unlike last night, he was now carrying a machine gun. Behind him was another guard similarly equipped.

Middleton jumped out of bed and felt around for his clothes in the semi-darkness.

Outside the gunfire intensified. It was hard to tell how close it was, but the fact that there were two guards anxiously waiting for him to get dressed told Middleton all he needed to know.

As he pulled on his final shoe, the first guard said, “Come. Come.”

He grabbed Middleton by the arm and shoved him into the hallway.

“That way!”

The guard pulled him forward and started to run. Middleton had no choice but to do the same. From elsewhere in the house, he could hear people yelling orders and feet racing down other hallways.

The guard whipped him around a corner then angled toward a wide stone stairway. Instinctively, Middleton veered for the flight leading down, but the guard yanked him to the left.

“No. Up. Up.”

They took the stairs two at a time, racing upward, not stopping until they reached an open metal door. Beyond it, Middleton could see the night sky and the flat surface of the mansion’s roof.

As they stepped through the door, the intensity of the gunfire increased.

“This is a dead end,” Middleton said. “What are we doing-”

Suddenly another sound drowned out the sound of the bullets. It was loud, rhythmic and familiar. Middleton turned in time to see the helicopter rise up from the rear of the mansion just high enough to clear the lip of the roof. He realized it must have flown in low over the rear of Chernayev’s estate, keeping out of sight of the attackers out front.

As soon as it touched down, the side door flew open.

Middleton didn’t wait for instructions. He immediately began heading for the helicopter. As he climbed aboard, the pilot motioned for him to take the seat farthest from the door and strap in.

As soon as his safety harness was buckled, Middleton looked up, and gave the pilot a wave to let him know he was ready.

But the helicopter didn’t move.

The runners remained firmly on the roof.

Then movement beyond the open door caught Middleton’s attention. Someone else had come onto the roof. But this had barely registered on Middleton when the sky flared bright from a large explosion. The noise was deafening, even momentarily overpowering the sound of the rotors.

The moment the noise subsided, he leaned toward the pilot and yelled, “We’ve got to go!”

“Yes, Kiril. It’s time.”

Middleton turned toward the sound of the voice. Pulling himself through the doorway was Chernayev.

As soon as the Scorpion was seated, the helicopter took off. It left as it had arrived, flying low away from the firefight.

Once he felt reasonably sure they weren’t going to get shot down, Middleton looked over at Chernayev. “What was that?”

“My apologies,” Chernayev said. “Seems we didn’t get all of them the other day.”

“The Group?”

Chernayev shrugged. “Of course.”

Middleton sat silently for several moments. “So where we going?” “Same destination I told you about. India. The only difference is that I’ve decided to come with you.”

The doctor had asked no questions. He was used to the kind of patients that appeared at his back door with any number of injuries from broken ribs to third-degree burns to knife wounds. So when Tesla showed up with a gunshot wound to one shoulder and Charley Middleton propping her up by the other, he had not even flinched. He had merely quoted a price, then did what he could to repair the damage.

Afterward, the two women took a room in a small hotel near the Latin Quarter where they hid out, venturing into the streets only when it was necessary. Most trips were for food, but once they had appropriated a laptop. The owner, probably a student, had left it unattended in a café near the Sorbonne while he went to the toilet. Charley only agreed to help if Tesla promised they would later find the student and return it when they were done. She then kept watch while Tesla slipped it into an oversized bag and casually walked out to the street.

Back at the hotel, they reestablished contact with Wiki Chang.

“Any word?” she asked.

“Nothing. The boss’s phones are both out of commission.”

Tesla sighed. The two of them then worked to come up with a plan to track down the person who had sent the text to Jana’s phone wanting to know what had happened with Charley.

Tesla had a pretty good idea of who it might be. Ian Barrett-Bone had said that Sikari was killed by his son and that Jana was in on it. Tesla guessed the person was either the son or someone working for him.

The sender wanted to know when Jana would arrive. Where, he didn’t say. But Tesla gathered from the tone of the messages that there was more than a business relationship between Jana and the sender. This made her guess that it had to be the son. And if it was, it was even more important that they get a fix on his location.

“Hey, this isn’t exactly easy,” Chang said. He had been at it for several hours.

His image was in a box that filled the upper right corner of the laptop.

“You say that every time, then you figure it out,” Tesla said.

“Yeah, well… ”

“You’re not going to tell me the sender’s phone doesn’t have GPS on it, are you?” Tesla said.

“I’m sure it does, but every time I get a lock on it, it moves from Belize to Japan to Mali to Denmark to wherever. He’s using software that’s bouncing his location all over the place and making it impossible to get a fix on him. Locking in on his transmission signal isn’t giving me any better results. He’s only sending text messages as far as I can tell. That usually shouldn’t be a problem, but the origin of the messages is being immediately obscured the moment they’re sent.”

“So there’s no way we can get a lock on his location?” Tesla asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Wiki said.

Tesla couldn’t tell, but it almost looked like Wiki was smiling.

“What have you got?”

“Well, if we can’t follow a message out, then I thought we’d just have to follow a message in. I’ve rigged it so I can send a text to Archer directly from my computer that he’ll think is coming from the phone you have there. It’ll be carrying a tracer packet to follow that’ll send me back a location just as it arrives.”

Tesla’s eyes widened. “So why haven’t you texted him already?”

“Do you really want me to write the text to him? I mean, what would I say?”

Tesla started to laugh, but stopped abruptly as her shoulder started to bark in pain. Instead she gave Chang a smile, then told him what to send.

Archer had been expecting a text from Sanam for almost 24 hours. It was almost a disappointment that it had taken the Pakistani so long to figure out there was a problem. But no matter, the contact had been made, the meeting set.

Archer chose a remote spot a kilometer and a half north of an old Hindu shrine that had fallen into neglect.

While Sanam would be traveling by car, Archer would be arriving via helicopter. This would give him the opportunity to scan the area around the meeting point for any heat signatures that might indicate a possible trap.

It wasn’t that he thought Sanam would try to pull something. The Pakistani was blinded by the belief they were working toward the same goal, but it was just a good practice to be cautious. As his father had taught him, there was no such thing as paranoia in their world.