Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Princess

He was wrong.

“Come on, Ryan,” Knight beseeched the man at the other end of the line. “We’ve used your company for years. Where’s the loyalty?”

“Well, that’s exactly it, Peter. Even if I knew where Flex was, I couldn’t tell you. Me and him were in the regiment together. Maybe if you told me what this was about.”

“I can’t,” Knight said, closing his eyes in frustration. “Just trust me, Ryan, this is not a guy you want to be associated with.”

“I do trust you. But Flex has built up a lot of trust with me too. We were in the sandpit together, so you understand why I can’t rat him out, even if I did know.”

Knight rubbed at his face. The blind loyalty of the soldiers running these companies was a brick wall that a civilian could not penetrate.

“What if I told you he hurt another soldier?” Knight tried, tiptoeing around the subject. “A decorated one.”

“Then get them to call me. If we have a few friends in common, and they vouch for them, then we’ll see.”

Knight swore under his breath.

“Something big is about to happen,” Knight told the man, sensing failure. “And you’re about to fall on the wrong side of it.”

“Nah, mate. I’m standing back from it, well out of the way.”

“Goodbye, Ryan,” Knight said, hanging up the call. “Bollocks!” he shouted out, crossing off the last name on his list. Not one of the companies’ leaders would speak about Flex.

Frustrated, Knight screwed up the paper and threw it at the wastepaper basket. It missed. Swearing, he crossed to pick it up, but as he did so a red mist of anger descended before his eyes, and instead of picking up the paper, he kicked the basket as hard as he could and let loose a howl of rage. A rage that had built inside him since Jane Cook had been killed in cold blood. His agent. His friend. Killed in cold blood.

“Bastard!” Knight roared, wanting nothing more in that moment than to rip Flex’s heart out with his own hands. “Bastard!”

Eliza Lightwood had done a good job of destroying Knight’s office. Now the angered man did the rest. He threw books, kicked cabinets and punched the walls. He grabbed at his face, pulled at his hair and cried down his cheeks.

He remembered Jane.

“No!” he shouted at everything and nothing. “No! No! No!”

The grief and rage that he’d bottled up hit him like an avalanche. He had been so caught up — so busy protecting Morgan and worrying about him — that he’d ignored his own emotions. Now, faced with the dead end from the security companies, he could no longer hold back the irrepressible savagery of his heartache. As his chest heaved and swelled like an angry ocean, Peter Knight sank to his knees and wept.

As was his plan, Jack Morgan abandoned the Audi parked on the Knightsbridge street, instead leaving the area by foot and collecting a bag of clothing bought at the twenty-four-hour supermarket that he’d secreted in a dark alleyway that led to a park. There, he quickly changed jacket and trainers, and pulled tracksuit bottoms over his trousers. A peaked cap was the final item to complete the outfit change, and with the pistols in his pockets, Morgan struck out of the park.

He pulled a phone from his new jacket — a black windbreaker. The phone was a cheap model bought at the store, and kept with the change of clothes — the one that it had replaced now resided in a drain. Morgan knew that the Audi would eventually draw suspicion. Even if he dispatched someone from Private to collect it, the vehicle would show up on the CCTV footage that officers would scour as they investigated the shooting. Of course, by the time they did, Morgan believed he would have carried out his mission, or died trying. To that end, he dialed a number from memory.

“I need to meet you, and off the streets.”

Morgan then listened as he was given an address.

It wasn’t a hard one to remember, and he flagged down the first black cab that he saw.

“Where to, mate?” the cabbie asked.

“I’ll give you directions.”

Compared to the modern behemoths that arched toward the sky, the Tower of London seemed hardly fitting of its name. More a collection of buildings, walls and ramparts than a singular tower, its tallest point stood at twenty-seven meters. By contrast, the Shard, on the opposite bank of the river, climbed to three hundred and ten. Even the neighboring apartments dwarfed the building in height, but scale was only half the story, and what the Tower lacked in vertical bombast, it more than made up for in history and sheer regal majesty. Heavy black gates sat daunting in the stone walls. Flags flew proudly above the lit-up towers and ramparts, snapping in the wind as if to attention.

Morgan stepped out of the cab — the third he had taken, anxious to avoid being followed — and took in the building that sat with gravitas alongside the Thames, the river itself spanned by the grand vision of Tower Bridge, lit-up cables hanging between its iconic twin towers. Jack Morgan had visited the place before as a tourist, and such history reminded him of how small was his own place in the world, and the events of man. The oldest parts of the building were almost a thousand years old, and within the walls, enemies of the state had awaited judgment and been delivered to death. Beneath the beauty was a nation’s past soaked in treason, blood and violence. Morgan could not help but wonder if De Villiers had asked to meet him here for just that reason.

The chance to ask him arrived as the Colonel removed himself from the shadows.

“Why here?” Morgan asked.

“It’s secure,” De Villiers replied. “Police. Soldiers. These walls? You won’t find a safer place in London. You found what you were looking for?”

Morgan evaded a direct answer. “I don’t have anything on me,” he told the man, having hidden the weapons between cabs.

“Good.” De Villiers turned and led Morgan toward a door that was set in the stone beside one of the imposing gates and flanked by armed guards, who stood to attention at the approach of the Colonel, clad in civilian attire though he was.

The cold stone tunnel was ten feet deep, and as Morgan emerged at De Villiers’ back, he saw that much of the interior was cast into darkness.

But there were voices in the night.

“Stop for a moment,” said the Colonel, his voice calm.

“What is it?” Morgan asked quietly.

“Just be quiet.”

Then, clear as day, Morgan heard a young voice cry out into the night. It was a confident voice. The voice of a soldier.

“Halt!” he demanded. “Who comes there?”

A second voice answered, rich with years. Following the sound, Morgan saw the uniform of a Yeoman Warder — a Beefeater. “The keys!” he replied.

“Whose keys?” the young sentry questioned.

“Queen Elizabeth’s keys!”

“Pass then!” the soldier allowed. “All’s well!”

And Morgan watched silently as the Yeoman, under escort of bayonet-toting soldiers, their silhouettes made long by tall bearskin hats, marched by the young sentry and out of sight.

At that moment, Morgan realized he’d been holding his breath, and let it go silently. He could not explain why he had done so. Only that he knew he was watching something ancient, archaic and special. A moment that was timeless. A throwback to past days.

“What was that?” he asked De Villiers, as the tramp of the men’s boots faded into the darkness.

“The Ceremony of the Keys,” the man explained. “They’re locking up the Tower.”

“They do this every night?”

“For centuries,” De Villiers confirmed. “The only thing that changes is the monarch’s name. You’re very lucky to have seen it. Very few do.”