Private Rogue

Chapter 83

I was back in the mountains of Afghanistan, struggling for breath as I followed Joshua Floyd through the trees. He was running too fast for me to keep up, and seemed not to be bothered by the thin air. I was going to get left behind. I heard a furious sound behind me, the roar of some ancient, fearsome creature, and glanced over my shoulder to see two rockets tearing through the sky, propelled by hellfire. When I turned to look ahead, Floyd had gone, but how would I escape without him? I didn’t know where the cave was. I made it to the cliff face and pawed frantically at the rock, searching for the entrance, but I wasn’t going to make it. The rockets detonated and I was caught in the blast. I was tossed into the air and felt myself being consumed by the flames...

“Jack.” Justine’s voice cut through the nightmare. “Jack!”

I woke to find myself lying on her lap in the meeting room. I remembered she’d put me on the couch. She’d set my head in her lap and stroked my hair until I fell asleep.

“How long have I been out? I asked.

“Little over two hours,” she replied.

“How are your legs?” I said, sitting up.

“They’ve been better.” She stood and stretched them out. “What’s a little lost circulation? You’ve got a visitor.”

I glanced round to see Mo-bot at the door.

“We’ve got something you should see.”

I stood up and walked off the stiffness in my muscles. I could have done with another twenty-four hours’ sleep, but that was a luxury I wasn’t going to have for a while.

Justine and I followed Mo-bot through the quiet office. The lights were on energy save and most of the place was lost to shadows, which was just as well because my eyes were raw and struggled to adjust to the light.

We went through a security door into the corridor that led to the computer room. Another door and then we joined Jessie in a climate-controlled room full of servers and terminals.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“I probably needed the rest,” I replied. “I do feel a little better for it.”

Mo-bot slid into the seat beside Jessie. Justine and I stood at her shoulder.

She opened an image file to reveal a photograph of a pale man with the puffy face of an alcoholic crowned by a mop of thick black hair. If he’d ever had a soul, it wasn’t on evidence in this photo. His eyes were windows to a cruel void.

“Konstantin Roslov,” Mo-bot said. “Colonel in the Russian Army before an honorable discharge. He went into commodities. Similar profile to Andreyev. Made a fortune buying up mining businesses that specialized in precious and heavy metals.”

Mo-bot opened a file window to show the website of the Roslov Fund, a venture capital firm.

“He used money from his industrial empire to start a venture fund that invested in businesses all over the world. Same as Andreyev. It’s a pattern. I think they figured out the way to beat capitalism is to get inside it. According to the CIA, the Roslov Fund is a front used to launder money to Russian-backed interests all over the world.”

“Where is he now?” I asked. “Still in Belarus?”

Mo-bot shook her head. “He’s dead, Jack.”

She opened a Russian newspaper article and ran it through Google Translate. It featured a long-distance photograph of a corpse under a sheet, surrounded by police officers. It looked as though they were in a scrap yard.

“His body was found in a recycling facility outside Minsk,” Mo-bot revealed. “The day after the raid on his house.”

“Punishment for carelessness?” I suggested.

“Whoever killed him removed his limbs. The Belarusian police believe they were amputated while he was alive,” Jessie said. “So it was either a punishment or a warning.”

“Or maybe both,” I remarked.