Private Dublin

Chapter 41

“When I’m done here, I’m going to make sure Justine Smith and your friends Maureen Roth and Seymour Kloppenberg are taken care of,” Chalmont gloated while I fought to disguise mounting anger. “They will suffer for what they did in Monaco and their roles in my ruin.”

This guy was born to privilege. The Chalmont family had more money than most people could ever hope to spend in a lifetime, and Raymond’s father had founded the eponymous casino, which he’d passed down to his son. This man had been given every advantage, but rather than being grateful, his sense of entitlement was so powerful that he had taken up with a devious political group bent on undermining society. Propaganda Tre was a strange mix of people. There were reactionaries bent on undermining liberalism; political and economic opportunists who saw the chance for their own enrichment or acquisition of power; and ambitious criminals who thrived on the chaos the group stirred up. I think Raymond Chalmont had started as a greedy opportunist, but had become something else because of our perceived “wronging” of him. And yet he’d willingly participated in a plot to murder Eli Carver, a man committed to upholding peace and stability in the world wherever possible. There was no way I would allow myself to die at the hands of this bitter, self-deluding fool.

“Your ruin will be complete if you pull the trigger,” I said.

He hesitated. “How so?”

“Every second of this conversation is being recorded,” I replied. “Mr. Raymond Chalmont, member of Propaganda Tre, is currently holding a pistol to my head. He is the man responsible for my murder.”

Raymond looked at the roadie. “Did you search him? I told you to search him.”

“I searched him,” the roadie replied. “He’s clean.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t know all our tricks.”

“Search him again,” Raymond commanded.

“It doesn’t matter,” I remarked. “The recording is being broadcast off-site. If anything happens to me, they will know who to come for.”

Chalmont seethed. “Search him again!” he yelled, and the roadie shook his head and moved behind me.

Chalmont inched closer and pressed the muzzle of his pistol against my forehead. Behind me, the roadie unlocked the handcuffs, relieving my wrists from their bite.

“On your feet,” he said.

I didn’t want to make it easy for them and saw there could be an advantage to me in remaining uncooperative. I stayed completely still and earned myself a crack on the shoulder from Raymond’s gun. Although painful, it was exactly the response I’d been hoping for.

“Get up,” the roadie told me, as the raw sting in my shoulder died away.

I didn’t budge.

When Chalmont raised his gun to hit me again, I jumped up, dodged to one side and grabbed his pistol arm. He fired instinctively and the shot hit the roadie in the gut. He went down screaming. Chalmont quickly recovered from the shock and tried to punch me with his free hand, but I sidestepped and he inflicted only a glancing blow on my back.

I stamped on his foot and he cried out and flinched, enabling me to knock the pistol from his grasp.

It clattered across the floor, and I was about to retrieve it when the sliding door opened and four men who could have been the roadie’s cousins came running in. They charged at me, brandishing pistols, and I pulled their boss into a chokehold, using him to shield my body.

“Shoot him,” Chalmont yelled. “Shoot!”

The men weren’t as reckless as he was and hesitated, aiming their weapons at me, but not daring to pull the triggers in case they hit their boss.

Chalmont tried to elbow me, but I backed clear and punched him in the ear, which made him yelp. I dragged him back a few steps, edging toward the fallen gun.

“Let him go,” one of the men yelled.

The roadie groaned in pain as he lay on the floor, clutching the wound in his stomach, and the other men looked from him to Chalmont uncertainly.

Taking advantage of the confusion, I pushed him toward his men, grabbed the gun and fired wildly in their direction as I ran for cover behind a rack of crates.

“Get him!” I heard, and the wood around me burst into a storm of splinters as gunfire erupted.

I kept running and saw an emergency exit at the back of the warehouse. I glanced over my shoulder to see Chalmont trying to wrestle a pistol from one of the gang. When he finally got it, he shot at me, the gun spitting bullets furiously, but he was too hasty and angry to find his mark, and his insistence on shooting from the front of the pack blocked the aim of the other men.

I burst through the fire exit into an alleyway and sprinted away from the warehouse. I didn’t stop running until I reached a busy street full of popular retail stores five blocks away. The sidewalks were packed with shoppers. I slowed to a jog and shoved the pistol into my jacket pocket. Scanning my surroundings, I settled into a walk and joined the crowds of people milling around colorfully decorated window displays, which caught the eye in the summer sunshine. Freedom had never felt so good.