Christopher Reich - Rules of Vengeance

One of the desk girls entered the room. “I’ve tracked down Hubert Lorenz,” she said. “He’s available, but he’s asking for one hundred thousand pounds.”

Lorenz was a German bounty hunter known in the trade for his precision and reliability.

But Connor didn’t answer. If anything, he drew nearer the television, his eyes transfixed by the pictures now being beamed live from the scene. The camera panned over several mangled automobiles and lingered on bloody victims lying on the sidewalks. The reporter announced that seven people were confirmed dead and at least twenty injured. Connor was surprised the numbers weren’t higher.

“I’ve got him on the line,” continued the assistant in her aggravating north-of-England accent. “He’s not someone who likes to be kept waiting.”

“Yeah, yeah, just hold on.” Connor turned up the volume. The reporter announced that the target of the attack was thought to have been Igor Ivanov, the Russian interior minister, and added that Ivanov had been taken to a nearby hospital, where news of his condition was expected at any minute. “And?” Connor whispered to himself, like a bettor with an interest in the game. “Is he dead or alive?”

“Mr. Connor, what do I do about Mr. Lorenz?”

Connor spun in his chair. “Tell him to fuck off! Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Get out. I’m fuckin’ occupied!”

The assistant beat a quick retreat.

Connor rose and opened the window. By now the smoke had spread into an ominous black pall that enveloped Big Ben and covered a good portion of the sky. Helicopters flitted low over the skyline. The wail of sirens sounded from every direction. Once again London was under attack.

And Frank Connor knew who was responsible.

Seated alone in the former linen closet that served as her office, Connor’s assistant hung up the phone and crossed the German’s name off the list of surveillance experts she had prepared for her boss. Suddenly she noticed that her hand was shaking and she put down her pen. Never once in five years had she heard Mr. Connor swear. At all times he’d been respectful, polite, and decent. In her diary she had called him a “nice bloke,” which to a working-class girl was high regard indeed. The outburst had shaken her. But it wasn’t the epithets that left her stunned and feeling weak in the knees; it was the savagery of his tone and the rage in his eyes. For a moment she’d felt certain he was going to harm her. Overcome, she sobbed and rushed to the ladies’ room.

“How many people?” asked Jonathan .

“Seven dead, so far,” said the woman, whose name was Kate Ford, a detective chief inspector for the Metropolitan Police. “Two dozen wounded, several critically. You’re in quite a bit of trouble.”

“Actually, you’re in more than that,” said Graves, who’d introduced himself as being from the counterterrorism wing of MI5. “As it happens, you are currently being viewed as an accomplice to seven counts of murder, as well as conspiracy to commit a terrorist act on British soil.”

Jonathan stared into the hard, expectant faces. He lay in a camp bed with metal rails at his feet, rough sheets, and a green woolen blanket. A portable sphygmomanometer sat near his head, next to an IV drip delivering a clear solution that he guessed to be either glucose or saline into his left arm. There was no television, no second bed. Just a guard at the door dressed in army greens, with a submachine gun hugged to his chest.

From London, Jonathan had been transported in a blacked-out ambulance. He’d ridden alone, except for the company of a police officer who’d told him to “shut it” every time he’d started to ask a question. Ten minutes before arriving, the ambulance had stopped and the driver had come into the rear bay and supervised the draping of a black hood over Jonathan’s head. Only when Jonathan had been installed in his bed had the hood been removed.

That was three hours ago.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Someplace quiet and out of the way,” said Graves. “Someplace where we can have a heart-to-heart discussion about this morning’s events without too many prying eyes and ears.”

“We need to make sure that this is getting through to you,” said Detective Chief Inspector Ford.

“Oh, it’s getting through,” said Graves, stepping closer. “Dr. Ransom is a clever man. No doubting that. Well, then, Dr. Ransom, let me begin by saying that there’s very little you can tell us that we do not already know. Namely, that you arrived yesterday morning on a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi, that you’ve come to attend a medical conference and are staying at the Dorchester Hotel, and that you’re planning to leave in two days’ time.” He paused. “All we want from you is an honest accounting of what you were doing at Storey’s Gate this morning.”

“We have a tape of the bomb going off,” said Detective Chief Inspector Ford. “In fact, we have three or four views of it going off from a variety of angles.”

Graves propped a portable DVD player on Jonathan’s bedside table. He hit the play button and the screen filled with a long shot of Storey’s Gate. Directly in the center of the picture was the gray BMW Jonathan had followed from North London. A few seconds passed and the driver’s door opened. Emma stepped out and walked toward the intersection of Victoria Street. Jonathan watched as she took up position at the crosswalk and stayed there as the light changed and the pedestrians around her left her side. The motorcycle police escorts arrived and blocked traffic. The first SUV came into the picture and zoomed around the corner. Then the second, followed by the pack of Mercedeses. Suddenly there was a flash. When the screen came back into focus, it showed smoke and flames billowing from the BMW. One of the Mercedeses lay on its side; another had crashed into a lamppost. But Jonathan didn’t spend time studying the wreckage. He was too busy staring at the intersection, looking for Emma, wanting to be sure it was really she whom he’d seen.

“She’s gone,” said Graves, as if privy to his thoughts. “Your wife, I mean. Emma Rose Ransom. That is who you were looking for, isn’t it?”

Here it was, then, thought Jonathan. Truth or fiction. Confess or deny. The moment he had to decide whose team he was really on. Tell them everything , Emma had instructed, twelve hours and a thousand years ago. They know it anyway . If only it was that easy. He weighed the facts as he knew them. Emma had knowingly planned and executed a car bombing that had taken the lives of seven people and grievously wounded many more. She had lied to him about her purpose for being in England. She had made him an unwitting accomplice to her deeds. All this against the loyalty a husband owed his wife.

“My wife’s dead,” said Jonathan. “She died in a climbing accident in the Alps six months ago.”

“So we’ve heard. When we were checking you out, we found a warrant for your arrest issued by the Swiss Federal Police in February. They sent over your file. It contained a photograph of your wife, presumed dead in a climbing accident, February the eighth of this year. Which makes her turning up in London a few days ago doubly strange.”

Days ago? Jonathan was unable to keep himself from reacting to the news. “That’s impossible,” he managed woodenly. “She’s dead.”

“Is that right? Why don’t we see about that? These pictures were taken in London thirty-six hours ago.” From a folder, Detective Chief Inspector Ford spread a series of photographs across the blanket covering his lap. They showed an elegantly dressed woman with auburn hair standing inside an elevator. In all of them, the woman’s face was lowered and it was hard to get a good read on her features. Still, it was glaringly obvious to Jonathan that the woman was Emma.