Rules of Betrayal

31

Balfour walked the length of the hall and passed through the anteroom into his bedroom. The desk was too neat for his liking. The global arms bazaar was busier than ever, but his share of it was diminishing rapidly. The sum total of orders from Libya, Sudan, Malaysia, and Georgia reached a paltry $10 million. His commission was 10 percent of that. He leafed through the papers with growing disinterest. His days as an arms merchant were behind him. His clients could not follow him into his new life.

He flipped open his laptop and logged on to his account at a private bank in Geneva. The balance stood at $90 million. With disgust, he observed the red asterisk placed at the top of the page and the notice that read, “Funds in account are frozen until future notice, pursuant to Judicial Order 51223, Office of the Federal Prosecutor, Bern.”

The Swiss government had slapped a freeze on his funds the day Interpol placed his name on its Red List. Accounts in other countries were likewise blocked. His only accessible funds were the commission he’d earned from Prince Rashid and the money he kept in his local accounts. It wouldn’t last long. Monthly operating costs ran to $100,000 for Blenheim alone.

Balfour considered how his good fortune had run out, the fruits of his years of hard labor yanked out from beneath him. But he was a shrewd man. He had a plan. If all went well, in a few days he would be guaranteed years of anonymity and safety lived in the plush style to which he was accustomed, and which he so richly deserved.

Balfour pulled off his jacket and kicked his shoes onto the carpet. Two inches shorter, he crossed the room and opened the French doors. A sweeping vista of the foothills and mountains of the Hindu Kush greeted him. Somewhere up there was Emma Ransom. She had radioed that she was en route to the site of the weapon. In hours, she and her team would begin dismantling the missile.

Balfour returned to his desk and unlocked the top drawer. There, on top of his personal papers, lay the photograph of the American cruise missile. If the nuclear core could be successfully removed and brought down the mountain intact, its sale would earn him enough to live comfortably for quite some time.

One last deal and Ashok Balfour Armitraj, a.k.a. Lord Balfour, would disappear. His Swiss plastic surgeon would arrive shortly, and Count Francois-Marie Villiers would be born.