Minotaur

8

Chapel’s eyes were just starting to focus again as he was dragged into another room and thrown on top of a pool table. He was recovering other senses as well. He could smell alcohol—wine, the fumes burning in his nostrils—and he realized that Fiona had struck him across the back of the head with the bottle she’d been holding. He hoped there weren’t any jagged shards of glass sticking out of his neck.

Two servants, presumably Stephen and Michael, were in the room with him. Their faces were still blurry but he could make out their hands, and the fact that they weren’t holding guns. Not that it made much difference. He still felt weak and incredibly dizzy, and he knew it would be some time before he fully recovered. If he had a concussion it might be days.

Something was sticking into the small of his back, something round and hard and it hurt. Without thinking about it he used his left hand to dig a pool ball out from under him. His artificial hand. Interesting. His right hand was still too weak to make a fist but his prosthetic arm was controlled by a whole different set of nerves—it was wired to the nerves in the stump where his left arm used to be, and he controlled the arm by twitching muscles in his shoulder. The onboard computer in the arm was smart enough to interpret those twitches and translate them into moving the fingers, the wrist, the elbow of the artificial arm. It had taken him months to learn how to control the simplest movements but now, ten years later, it was as easy as controlling his healthy right arm. Even more so now as his nervous system slowly recovered from the shock it had taken.

It seemed neither of his two guards had noticed that his left arm had moved. They didn’t react, anyway—nobody had tried to tie him up yet. He made a point of keeping his left arm still so as not to give the game away.

They left him there for a while, nobody speaking to him or doing anything with him. He used the time to make an inventory of what he had to work with. He moved his tongue around in his mouth. He thought maybe he had regained the power of speech. That was something. He could probably move his neck, too, though it hurt like hell. Well, if Favorov would be kind enough to lean over Chapel’s face, he could head-butt the man to death. Maybe.

The thought made him chuckle. The sound made his guards nervous.

“He’s awake,” one of them said, sounding panicky.

“Shit. What do we do?” the other one asked.

“You could,” Chapel said, though each word he spoke exhausted him, “help me… get out of here. That way you won’t go to… prison with your… boss.”

He could just see the two of them glancing at each other with frightened eyes. Were they actually considering it?

It didn’t matter. At that same moment the door of the billiards room flew open and Favorov came storming in. He had Chapel’s cell phone in his hand. If I were James Bond, Chapel thought, then Angel would be able to overload the phone or something, make it act like a taser and stun the bastard.

Of course, James Bond wouldn’t have let Fiona sneak up behind him. He probably would have already seduced her by now. Chapel had never been any great shakes in that department.

Favorov beamed down at him. The Russian didn’t quite lean over far enough to let Chapel put his head-butting plan into action, but he let Chapel see every inch of his gleaming white teeth. “It didn’t take very long. They did not so much as make me sweat.”

Chapel wasn’t sure what he meant. But then the phone in the Russian’s hand spoke, and Chapel heard Rupert Hollingshead on the other end of the line.

“Chapel? Son, can you speak? I need to make sure you’re unharmed before we start negotiating with this man.”

Chapel stared up at Favorov. What the hell? What had Favorov said to Hollingshead to make him bend like this?

“Come now, speak for your master,” Favorov said.

Chapel chose his words carefully. He knew he wouldn’t get a second chance at this. “Sir,” he said, marshalling his strength to get the words out, “let me die—don’t let this son of a bitch get away with—”

A strong hand pressed down on Chapel’s mouth and shut him up. It belonged to either Stephen or Michael.

Chapel expected Favorov to fly into a rage and strike him or something. Instead the Russian just shrugged. “Mr. Pentagon,” he said, “would you care to explain what is going on to your lackey?”

Hollingshead’s voice on the phone sounded defeated. Resigned. Chapel hated hearing the man like that. Hollingshead was a father figure to him, more than a boss—and he was a good man, too. A strong leader in a time when the military needed exactly that. It was heartbreaking to hear him admit he’d already lost.

“Son, Mr. Favorov has explained what’s going to happen. He’s going to leave the country on his private yacht. We’re going to let him reach international waters. We’re going to let him go. You’re just too valuable to sacrifice.”

No, Chapel thought. No, I’m willing to—

“I know you won’t like it, but I need you alive,” Hollingshead said. “For now, we’re going to have to play this the way it lies.”