Lee Child - MatchUp

Her eyes closed. She smelled pine trees.

Escape.

She heard water trickling.

A stream?

A forest?

Some kind of camp?

WASHINGTON, D.C.

FOR THE TENTH TIME, SIMON childs scanned the items on the restaurant’s breakfast menu. Yet again, he glanced past the hostess toward the entrance. Once more he looked at his watch—a vintage Rolex that Liz knew he admired and that she’d given him as a prewedding present.

Twenty minutes to ten.

He and Liz had made plans to meet here, in Georgetown, for breakfast at nine and then go to a final meeting with their wedding-reception caterer. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t phoned to tell him she was going to be late. He’d called her three times but had reached only her voice mail. Amid the clink of silverware and the murmur of conversations, a voice interrupted his worried thoughts. He looked up, surprised to see the hostess standing next to him.

“Mr. Childs, this arrived for you.”

She handed him a small box wrapped in silver wedding paper. He frowned, seeing his name on an attached card.

“A messenger delivered it,” the hostess explained. “He pointed toward you and said to tell you that Ms. Sansborough apologizes for being late.”

“Thank you.”

As she returned to greeting more guests, there was a faint buzzing sound from the box in his hand. It vibrated. In an instant, he realized why. He tore off the bow, ripped off the wrapping paper, and yanked off the box’s lid. Inside was a cell phone. He pressed the Answer button and held the phone against his ear.

“Liz?” he asked.

“She’s been detained,” a female voice said.

His chest tightened. “What do you mean ‘detained’? Who is this?”

“Someone who’s concerned about your fiancée’s welfare.” The woman’s voice had a Russian accent and the confidence of someone accustomed to exerting authority. “I sent you a video attachment. Unless you want to disturb people sitting near you, I suggest that you watch it outside. I’ll call you again in three minutes.”

The transmission went dead.

He walked swiftly toward the door, sidestepped a couple entering, and hurried out to the parking lot. Ignoring the cold morning air he scrolled through the phone, found the video attachment and pressed it.

And saw Liz lying on gravel.

“Say something,” a man’s voice ordered. “Say, ‘Help me, Simon.’ ”

Liz looked groggy, stunned. But managed to say, “Go to hell.”

A hand with a jagged scar on it streaked into view, the palm crashing into one cheek, then the palm of the other battering her other cheek, drawing blood. “Say it. Goddammit.”

The image abruptly changed to one in which Liz slumped on a padded bench. There were zip-tie cuffs on her wrists that were looped around some kind of metal pole. Both cheeks looked raw and swollen. Blood smeared her nose and chin.

The same scarred hand clasped her injured cheeks.

“Let’s try again. You know what I want.” The camera moved closer, her blood-covered face filling the screen. “Say it.”

The hand squeezed so hard that its knuckles whitened.

Her eyes widened.

She tried to scream, but the hand kept squeezing. Crushing.

She writhed, managing to say past the hand, “Help . . . me . . . Simon.”

The video ended.

But he continued to see Liz’s battered face.

The phone vibrated.

He jabbed the Answer button and said, “I will find and kill you.”

“You don’t have time for useless threats,” the woman’s voice said. “Last night, in Washington, the FBI arrested an associate of mine. His name is Nick Demidov. I want him released.”

“We don’t have anything to do with the FBI.”

The woman’s harsh laughter reminded him of an old Russian expression— the ruthless walk over the dead .

“You’re an MI6 operative on temporary assignment to the FBI for a special Russkaya Mafiya task force. And your fiancée used to work for the CIA, probably still does. I’m giving you less than twelve hours to get Nick free, so use your influence. Call in favors. It should be easy. He’s not important. The FBI will admit that they just swept him up because they hope he’ll lead them to someone higher.”

“If he’s that low level, why does he matter to you?”

“He’s my brother. Our mother is upset, as am I. Poor Nick isn’t smart, which is obvious, given that he allowed himself to be arrested. But he’s family. You’ve got until nine o’clock tonight to deliver him.”

“But—”

“Keep the phone I gave you. It has an open mic. Even when it’s turned off, the phone transmits everything you and anyone near you say, so don’t even think about warning your buddies at the FBI about what’s going on. If I even slightly suspect you’re playing games, the next video will show your fiancée’s ears being cut off.”

“I want a video report every half hour to prove Liz is alive and healthy,” he demanded.

“Every two hours is often enough. Remember, the world won’t end if the task force lets Nick go. But your world will end, if they don’t. Give me my brother, or I’ll give you your fiancée’s dismembered corpse.”

LIZ AWOKE TO POUNDING PAIN in her face.

Keeping her eyes closed, she reached to hold her burning cheeks, but her wrists were secured to something. She was slumped on a padded surface. As she struggled to remember where she was, the sound of voices penetrated her foggy mind. With a chill, she recognized them as those of her kidnappers. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she’d heard them talk to each other and to someone else, a woman, on what sounded like a speakerphone. The woman had addressed one of them as Rudy and the other as Max. Breathing deeply to fight the pain, she made herself focus on them.

“John J. was on TV last night,” Rudy was saying.

“ ‘John J.’? What are you talking about?” Max asked.

“John Rambo. You know, First Blood, ” Rudy said. “When I was growing up in Moscow, I got better at English by watching the movies.”

She noticed the slight hissing of his s ’s, a characteristic of some English-speaking Russians.

“Rambo hardly says a word. How could you learn English from those movies?” Max asked.

“From the other characters.”

“After the way the third Rambo movie made us Russians look, I’m surprised you watched any of them.”

“I admit the third one isn’t the best, but that first one was great.”

She was learning nothing from them, so she forced her eyes open and saw that she was lying on a weight lifter’s bench beside a massive Nautilus machine. As her mind cleared, she realized that the plastic zip-tie cuffs on her wrists encircled one of the machine’s metal poles, holding her arms up. The restraint was so tight it cut into her skin. She studied the pole and the multigym station with its pulleys, handles, and weights, wondering whether there was a way to twist free. It didn’t look hopeful, and if she succeeded, she’d still have to deal with the two bastards who’d grabbed her.

“If you wanted to learn English from Rambo, you should’ve read the novel,” Max said.

“There’s a novel?”

“He dies at the end.”

“No, the police chief’s still moving at the end. You can see him twitch when they put him in the ambulance.”

“Not in the novel,” Max said.

“The police chief dies in the novel?”

“And Rambo.”

“Stop bullshitting me.”

Following the sound of their voices, she peered across the room and saw that this was some kind of security center—the two men were sitting in the middle of a long curved desk, while above and around them rose five levels of closed-circuit TV monitors displaying views of a steel gate, a driveway, the exterior of the log house, and a chain-link fence, most in dense woods. Because the majority of screens showed the fence, she guessed it surrounded the property and there must be many forested acres.