Silver

29

Konstantin Khavin didn’t know whe he was.

There was a glass of water on the table, a tape recorder and microphone, and two chairs on the other side of the table. He was alone in the room. They worked him in shifts, refusing to let him sleep. They had taken his prints and run him through the system. They knew who he was. Worse, they knew what he was. They wanted to know who he was working for, who else was with him in Germany, why he had killed the Pope. Then someone came in with a security photograph of him in Berlin on the day of the sarin gas attack.

They put it on the table in front of him and asked, “Is that you?” He couldn’t deny it. It was a good picture. It caught all of his features in full frontal. Any half-decent facial recognition software would identify him. There was no point lying. “Yes.” He said and suddenly they were looking at a two-for-one deal on a sociopathic killer.

Because they knew who he was, they knew all about his training. They knew he was versed in interrogation techniques and torture. And they knew his experience wasn’t just theoretical.

They came back in.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” the woman said, taking the first seat on the other side of the table. “Things don’t look good for you, Konstantin. You story does not check out.”

Her partner, a straight-faced bodybuilder in a suit, sank into the seat beside her.

“That’s her polite way of saying you’re screwed. We’ve got hundreds of witness testimonies, video evidence, your prints on the weapon, all the physical evidence we could dream of, including the sworn testimony of the Swiss Guard who tried to stop you. That’s what she means by ‘things not looking good.’ It gets substantially worse when we add your own story to the mix. A Russian defector, Konstantin? Do you have any conception of the word loyalty? Or is that it, you’re some sort of sleeper agent? Did they plant you on this side of the Wall and wait for you to grow? Maybe this was always your mission? Is that it, Konstantin? Were you ‘let go’ so that you could do this all these years later? Did they think the humiliation of another defector was worth it in return for the death of the Holy Father? How did they sell the mission to you? Or are you programmed to obey?”

Konstantin stared straight ahead. He didn’t so much as twitch. The words didn’t register on his face. He gave them nothing, knowing it would frustrate them. People were behind the one-way glass watching the whole dance.

“In Moscow they would have brought a doctor in by now,” he said, looking at the woman.

“Why?”

“To elicit a confession,” Konstantin said.

“You mean soften you up with sodium pentothal to weaken your resolve? We have ways of making you talk and all that bullshit,” the man said, full of scorn.

“I see you watch the movies,” Konstantin said.

“I suppose they’d send the muscle in next to beat the confession out of you if the drugs didn’t work?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps they would let the doctor use the instruments of his trade. A lot of truths can be learned under a doctor’s scalpel.”

“That’s barbaric,” the woman said.

“It is one of the reasons I left Moscow. Not the only one. It was another world back then. Do not think you can intimidate me with threats like your colleague is trying. I come from a different world, one where violence is commonplace. I do not fear pain. I do not fear torture. But if you want to hear it, I will tell you the truth of torture, officer.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Everyone talks. That is the truth. Everyone talks even if they know it is going to kill them in the end. They just want the pain to end. The movies where the square-jawed hero doesn’t break is just that, a movie. The reality is he will foul himself. He will cry snot and tears. He will piss down his legs and he will scream, and in the end, he will beg you not to hurt him anymore; he will tell you everything you want to know and more; he will offer secrets you didn’t know he had, just to lessen the pain for a little while.”

“Are you telling us to torture you?”

“Would you if you thought it would give you the truth?”

“We have the truth,” the man cut across their little dance. “It’s on bloody film for the entire world to see.”

That is not the truth,” Konstantin said.

“You’re insane. Do you know that? You’re a freakin’ sociopath! So what, you want us to waterboard you?” The man shook his head in disgust.

“There is no way I can convince you. Even if you open my stomach and reach in with your bare hands to pull at my guts, my truth will not change. I did not kill him.”

“Easy to say,” the man said. “We can all be brave when it’s only words.”

“Then cut me,” Konstantin said. “My people will not save me. I am alone here. I have nothing to gain by lying and nothing to lose by telling the truth.”

“I don’t believe you, Konstantin,” the man said. “You’re a liar. One way or the other. Either you lied to your people when you fled to the West, or you lied to us when we welcomed you? Which one is it?”

“Silence is not a lie.”

“Why did you do it, Konstantin?” the woman asked, taking over the interrogation. Her voice was calm, honeyed. She smiled at him. It was a “we’re all friends here” smile. It was the biggest lie of the day so far.

“I didn’t do it.”

“We know you did, Konstantin. What we don’t know is why. We’ve got a lot of other questions as well, things we don’t understand, like, how does killing the Pope link in with the Berlin subway attack? And how are you tied to Rome and the people who burned themselves alive in London and all of those other cities? We’re only seeing part of the picture, Konstantin. Help us see all of it. Talk to us. If you help us, we can help you.”

She wasn’t particularly good. She wasn’t one of the A team, Konstantin thought, listening to her. Neither was her partner. They were the breakers, the waves sent to crash against the shore just to wear him down. They were never meant to get the truth out of him. It was all about weakening his resolve. They were the sodium pentothal, figuratively speaking.

But they could ask all the questions they wanted, they could badger and push and probe; they were never going to catch him in lies, because he wasn’t lying.

Or he could give them something.

“You want another truth?” he asked.

The woman nodded eagerly, like Pavlov’s detective.

Konstantin’s memory was good. It had to be. He remembered the zero plate from the car in Berlin.

He gave it to them. It was up to them what they did with it.

“Who does the car belong to? Your boss? Your contact?”

Konstantin shrugged. “How would I know? But the car is connected. It all is. Everything is connected.”

“Very zen of you, Konstantin,” the man said.

“Find the owner of the car, find the Berlin cell. Everything is connected.”

The woman glanced toward the glass. Konstantin knew that behind the mirror people were frantically trying to connect the dots, work out who the car belonged to and if Konstantin was telling the truth. They had no reason to assume he wasn’t, and every reason to believe he was selling one of his collaborators out. That was the way they broke terror cells, one small confession at a time. If Konstantin gave them the man behind Berlin, it would hardly prove his innocence, though. If anything, it would only serve to compound his guilt as far as they were concerned.

“Find Berlin and you will find Rome, or London or Madrid or Paris. Everything is connected. Information travels down channels; it isn’t just plucked out of the air. Everything is connected. It has to be, because of the precision. The suicides had to know when to burn themselves. The poisoner in Rome had to know when to poison the water. He didn’t want people dying early. He didn’t want the deaths blending in with the deaths in Berlin. He didn’t want the majority dying the same day the Pope was killed. Everything had to be separate. Forty days and forty nights of fear, see?”

Still, the clock was ticking on another day. Mabus had promised forty days and forty nights of terror, and nothing told Konstantin that had changed just because the Pope was dead. Now was the perfect time to increase the intensity of the attacks. So it didn’t matter if they thought he was guilty or not. If he had something that could help save innocent lives, even something as simple as a registration number, he was always going to share it, even if it meant damnmself. That was his sacrifice.

The woman came back alone the next time. She brought him a warm cup of black coffee. It was a trade, he knew. She gave him warmth and sustenance-he gave her another truth, quid pro quo. It was straight out of the good cop/bad cop handbook.

He didn’t complain. He warmed his hands on the cup, then sipped at it slowly.

“They found a body in the Moselle this morning.”

Konstantin looked up at her. “And you think I killed him as well?”

She smiled that smile again. “Difficult. The coroner puts time of death almost a full day after we took you into custody, so I think you’re safe on this one.”

“Then why tell me about it? I assume you have a reason?”

“I do. His name was Emery Seifert. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Konstantin shook his head. “Should it?”

“He was a member of the Swiss Guard. More pertinently, he was one of the guards on the stage when you killed the Pope.”

“I didn’t kill the Pope,” Konstantin said, reflexively.

She smiled at that. Again.

“Can you think why anyone would want to kill Seifert, Konstantin?”

Only one reason, Konstantin thought. He looked at the woman, trying to decide if she was deliberately trying to lead him into this line of reasoning. If she was, he couldn’t see what she stood to gain from it. “Because he saw what really happened on the stage,” Konstantin said, “or because he suspected.”

“Either way we have all of this video evidence, so it’s just one voice against the maddening crowd.”

“And yet here you are telling me all about it.”

“Maybe I want to believe you, Konstantin?”

“Maybe you do, maybe not. Either way won’t change the truth.”

“You’re a strange man. You don’t want legal representation. You don’t want to confess. You aren’t spouting any religious propaganda. You aren’t trying to convince us that you had to strike for Lucifer to rise again. In fact you seem disturbingly rational. Yet you know things you clearly shouldn’t know, such as the license plate of a diplomatic car that is registered in Berlin to the Israeli Ambassador’s personal staff.”

“Who? Who’s it registered to?”

She looked at him, surprised by the sudden intensity of his question. For a fraction of a moment the implacable calm of Konstantin Khavin came down and she saw the real man beneath. It was like seeing the wizard behind the curtain.

“Lieutenant General Akim Caspi of the Israel Defense Force.”

Konstantin closed his eyes. He had been that close.

“Caspi’s dead,” Konstantin told her.

“Did you kill him?”

He let out a slow breath, shaking his head. “No, the man in the car pretending to be him almost certainly did. Caspi died in June 2004.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t kill him,” she said reasonably. “One fact does not contradict the other.”

“Check my service record with Ogmios.”

“And again, you know we can’t. As far as we can ascertain this Ogmios is a figment of your imagination.”an›

“Do you believe that?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, Konstantin.”

“And yet here you are,” he said again, “telling me about a dead body in a river that could go some way to validating the truth of my story.”

“Or, you could have had one of your people kill the guard for that selfsame purpose.”

Konstantin nodded slowly. He couldn’t help it, he rather liked this woman. She thought about things. She didn’t leap to conclusions based upon what she could or could not see. He needed to find a way to get her to call the old man. He could give her all the truths she needed.

“You want me to give you names?”

She shrugged. “Rather depends whose names they are, doesn’t it? You could start by telling me who you were working with in Berlin, and who helped you in Koblenz.”

Konstantin slapped his forehead. He had thought for just a minute that she believed him, for what good it would have done him. She was just as blind as her partner.

“I work for Sir Charles Wyndham,” he said. That was all she needed really. One name. If she was good at her job, she would ignore official channels and go to the old man directly. Of course, he didn’t expect her to do that. Why would she? As she kept telling him, they had screeds of evidence against him. They could place him in Berlin at the time of the subway attack and on the stage with the silver dagger in his hand as the Pope died. They didn’t need anything else. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask,” she said.

“How long have I been in here?”

“Four days,” she said.

“They’ve taken the Pope back to Rome?”

She nodded. “It was on the news this morning. They are preparing Saint Paul’s for over six million people to make the pilgrimage to see Pope Peter lying in state.”

“Have there been any other attacks since the Pope? It’s been three days. Forty days and forty nights of fear. That’s what they promised.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Which rather supports the idea that with you stuck in here there’s no one out there to coordinate the attacks, doesn’t it?”

“Or it means that Orla got Mabus.”

She looked at him. She had obviously heard what he said but didn’t know either of the two names, and because she didn’t know them, that turned the simple sentence into something that made no sense to her.

He tried to think through the chain of events. They would have returned the Pope’s body to the Vatican. The Cardinal Camerlengo would have officially declared him dead, calling out his real name three times. It was all ceremony, but that was part of believing, holding to the old rituals even as the world turned. Then the Camerlengo would have shattered the Papal seal of Peter II and split the Ring of the Fisherman, so that no one else might use it in the dead man’s place to forge papal decrees. Then the Church would enter Sede Vacante, the Empty Seat. There were nine days of mourning between the death of the Pope and the conclave that would elect his successor. There were precedents for moving the conclave of the Cardinals forward in times when the Church and the faithful were at the greatest risk, but they would resist that at all costs. Moving the conclave forward would show the world they were frightened by Mabus and his terrors.

That meant there were five more days until the conclave would convene.

Five more days. And he was stuck in this interrogation room, helpless to do anything, while Mabus and Caspi and Devere moved into their endgame.

It disturbed him that there had been no more attacks since he had been taken. Terrorists needed to make good on their threats, otherwise the fear they instilled would be diluted. Cities would rally. Berlin and Rome would be stronger for their suffering, just like New York and London. There should have been something else, something more.

Five more days for the Disciples of Judas to strike the most decisive blow of all.

They had promised to shatter the world’s faith.

Killing one man would not do that.

He had no idea what would.

And then he realized what this was: the calm before the storm.

Everyone in the world would think this was it, that it couldn’t get any worse. They’d seen cities ruined from within and without, and then the Father of the Catholic Church struck down.

He looked at the woman across the table from him. “Do you think this is over?”

She didn’t answer him for a long moment. She genuinely seemed to be thinking about her answer rather than glibly saying yes. “We have no reason to suspect more attacks,” she said finally, like she was parroting the official press release.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You have very good reason to expect more attacks, because they told you they were coming. Forty days and forty nights of terror in every city in the West. Wasn’t that what they said? Something like that. Not just Berlin and Rome.”

“But the threats in Rome and Berlin were different.”

She was right. Lethe had pointed that out. They were. “So that’s what you’ve decided? The threats were all about assassinating Peter II?”

“We have no reason to suspect otherwise.”

“Until they give you a reason.”

“They won’t,” she said, with surprising certainty.

“What about the promise to destroy the faith of the world? Are you just discounting that?”

“How do you destroy someone’s faith?” she asked in all seriousness. “There are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, 2.1 billion Christians. How could you possibly shatter the beliefs of a third of the world’s population?”

“Not by killing one man,” Konstantin said, trying to force home the point.

“No, and every scientist who stands up to decry there is no god and has evidence to support his claim doesn’t change the fact that these people believe. Evolutionary biologists can call them stupid for believing, they don’t care. They still believe. So how do you do it?”

“You prove it wrong.”

“But that’s what the scientists are doing, isn’t it?”

“Then how do you do it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I am not worried about it. That’s why I am much more interested in much more mundane questions like who you work for and who you are working with.”

“I’ve told you, I work for Sir Charles Wyndham. The project is codenamed Ogmios. Ask him,” he said again, willing her to just go and track down the old man herself.

The next time she came into the interrogation room she brought something for him. It wasn’t a cup of coffee. She put the silver dagger on the table between them and said, “What’s this?”

He looked at it. It was the first time he had seen it properly. It was obviously old. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

“Try me.”

He shrugged. “It’s a dagger.”

“I can see that, so that hardly counts as unbelievable. So tell me, what’s so special about it?”

“It’s two thousand years old for a start,” Konstantin said. He didn’t want to say more, saying more meant he knew more. Knowing more only implicated him further. He breathed deeply. What did it matter? He wasn’t walking away from this. He might as well tell her what he knew, if for no other reason tha talking to her kept her partner away. The man’s constant badgering and boorishness as boring.

“Go on.”

“It’s silver.”

“I can see that.”

“Silver’s not usually the stuff of weapons. Too soft. It’d break, maybe not the first time it’s used, maybe not the second, but it would break. And no fighter wants to go to war knowing his weapon could fail him at any time.”

“Makes sense.”

“Because it is sense. Common sense.

“So it’s ceremonial?”

“You’d think, but no. I think it is more accurate to say it is commemorative.”

“That’s an odd choice of words, don’t you think? Are you saying the dagger used to murder the Pope was a commemorative dagger? So what, it was made for a King’s Jubilee? Something like that?”

He did like this woman. She was sharp. “Something exactly like that. A king two thousand years ago.” If he said two thousand years often enough she’d make the intuitive leap. He knew she would. “That’s one thing that makes this dagger special-it’s silver, it’s two thousand years old. What kings do you remember from two thousand years ago?”

She spread her arms wide.

“Think,” Konstantin said. “King of the Jews, two thousand years ago?”

“Jesus? You’re telling me this dagger was made to commemorate the life of Jesus?” She didn’t laugh, but he could see she wanted to.

“How does silver fit into the story?” he guided her. “Think.”

“Silver?”

“Come on. You know this. Every one learns the story when they’re kids. Thirty pieces of silver.”

She shook her head. “No bloody way. Not possible. I don’t believe you.”

“You asked me. I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You didn’t say I wouldn’t believe, because it was ludicrous though, did you? So, tell me, how did you get your hands on a dagger forged from Judas’ silver? Hell, I can’t even believe I am asking a question like that. Jesus, Judas, we just wandered off into criminally insane territory. Is that what this is? Are you fashioning your defense? Going to plead the Devil made you do it? That you heard the voice of Judas telling you to strike back? To punish the unfaithful for treating him so badly?”

“No,” Konstantin said.

“Then what? Talk me through it, Konstantin. Help me understand, because right now I’ve got a murder weapon, a murderer, and a truckload of evidence, but something doesn’t fit when I think about it. It’s a niggle. The old cop instinct, if you like. I want to say I don’t think you did it, but I’ve watched the footage a thousand times; you’re as guilty as sin. So I don’t know why I keep coming back to the fact that I want to believe you.”

So Konstantin told her everything-Masada, Mabus, the two Akim Caspis, the prophecies and the threats, and his involvement in it. He told her about the gun in the apartment and the timer and the birdseed in the trees meant to cause a distraction. He told her about trying to fight his way through the crowd to save the Holy Father and being too late. He told her about the Swiss Guard and begged her to put his face out across the wire, to warn people. Because he was still out there, and the body in the Moselle proved someone else had witnessed the murder and he’d silenced them before they could talk. He told her about Humanity Capital trading on tragedy, about Miles Devere, about the hostages in England. He told her everything.

It felt good to confess it, to put the burden onto someone else, because it wasn’t over yet. He knew that as surely as he knew the sun was going to rise on the ninth day and the College of the Cardinals would enter conclave to elect the next Pope. It wasn’t over.

“What are you going to do with the dagger?” he asked her.

She looked at him. He couldn’t read her face. He didn’t know whether she believed a word he had said. What she couldn’t argue with was how it all hung together. He couldn’t have made up a story like that while they had him trapped in the interrogation room. “It’s a murder weapon. It’s evidence.”

“When it’s over?”

“Why?”

“Like you said, it’s evidence, but not just of murder. In a weird kind of way it’s proof, isn’t it? Proof that Jesus and Judas existed, proof in the stuff they want us to believe. It’s the kind of treasure the Vatican will want, no matter how tainted it might be.”

He lost track of the time between visits. He was beyond tired. But they wouldn’t let him sleep. Not properly. Only snatches here and there. That told him they had cameras on him and someone watching him at all times. Whenever he started to doze they returned, like clockwork.

They kept coming back, working away at him. Softly from the woman, great hammer blows from the guy. He kept trying to tell them they were wasting their time, that the real assassin was out there, still safe in his position inside the inner ring of the papal guard, but they refused to believe him.

He still didn’t know their names. They were just the woman and the man. It kept it impersonal, stopped him from thinking of them as friends. If he had been running the interrogation, the first thing he would have done was make it personal. Sometimes he did not understand the logic of these people. If they wanted him to trust them, surely they should be using every trick at their disposal to convince him there were bonds between them. They couldn’t bring in the torturer, so what else could they do?

This time when they came for him it was different.

They weren’t alone.

There were six other men with them. Konstantin watched them file into the cell. It was like the tiled wall had been replaced with muscle. The muscle didn’t talk. They didn’t acknowledge his nod. I was as if he didn’t exist to them. That suited Konstantin.

“Get up,” the man said.

He didn’t move.

“I said get up.”

Konstantin placed his hands flat on the table and pushed the chair back, dragging the metal legs across the floor so they grated. He stood up slowly.

“What’s going on?” he asked the woman.

She didn’t answer him. She looked at the man.

“You’re being moved.”

He looked at the woman. “How many days has it been?”

This time she answered him. “Eight.”

He had been out of touch with reality for eight days. Eight days. Anything could have happened in that time. Akim Caspi could be dead. Mabus could be dead. A third of the world’s population could be dead. He wouldn’t have known. All he did know was that tomorrow the novemdiales would be over.

If the Sicarii were going to strike tomorrow, it would be the perfect moment. For nine days the world would have mourned Peter II, and the victims of Rome and Berlin along with him, and each new dawn would be a day further away from the tragedies. Nine days was enough for the numbness to have receded. Nine days was enough for the world to think that final attack wasn’t coming. Nine days was enough to make a fool out of everyone.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Russia, Italy, London? Does it matter? One cell looks pretty much the same as another wherever it is,” the man said.

“I’d like to know.”

“Berlin,” the m “The fun stuff’s over. You’re going to be held accountable for what you’ve done, and then we’re going to bury you way down deep. And when the world has forgotten about you we’ll whisper in the right ear and someone will find you in the showers or shiv you in the yard. It won’t matter to us. But I am sure we’ll find someone who really wants to hurt you; maybe an ex-countryman of yours? Or maybe someone who isn’t enlightened enough to turn the other cheek. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me. Justice will have had its way, and the world will have its blood, so everyone is happy.”

“Except for me,” Konstantin said, as they came around the table and grabbed his arms. Two men forced them behind his back and cuffed him. They cuffed his ankles and ran a chain from one cuff to the other, meaning he could barely shuffle more than a foot at a time.

“And who the hell cares if you’re happy?” the man asked.

The muscle bundled him into the back of an SUV and drove.

They left the man and the woman outside the BKA offices in Wiesbaden. They didn’t talk until they were more than thirty minutes outside of the city, then the driver switched on his blinkers and followed the traffic off the next exit ramp, leaving the Autobahn. This wasn’t the way to Berlin.

For a moment Konstantin thought that perhaps they had decided to do it the Russian way, drive him somewhere remote then finish him, cleaning up the problem he posed. He licked his lips.

The driver pulled over to the side of the road.

It was a remote spot, far enough away for his body not to be found quickly. Remote enough the local wildlife might take care of that problem altogether.

There was little in the way of passing traffic. No one would accidentally see anything from the side of the road.

It was a good place to kill a man.

The driver leaned forward, opening the glove box.

Konstantin was suddenly aware of his breathing. It was hard. A regular push in, out, in, out. He looked at his options. There wasn’t a lot he could do. He couldn’t very well fight from the back seat of an SUV with six other slabs of solid muscle surrounding him. Well, he could, but he wouldn’t win. He wasn’t Superman. He couldn’t run. The back doors would be child-locked to prevent him from opening them from the inside. So, he did the only thing he could do: nothing.

The driver pulled a padded envelope from the glove box. It didn’t look bulky enough, or heavy enough in his hand, to contain a service revolver, and they wouldn’t have risked a close-combat weapon like a Korshun knife or a SARO machete. He turned in his seat and looked straight at Konstantin. “We’ve got a message for the old man from Control,” the driver said in a coarse Manchester accent. “This is it, all debts paid in full. He’s kept up his end of the bargain, but this is the end of the road. You’re cut off, as of now. You understand?”

He handed Konstantin the envelope.

It contained a passport with his picture on it in the name of John Smith, just about as English as names came, and a plane ticket from Frankfurt Main back to Heathrow, leaving in six hours. There was also a billfold with about 300 Euros in it.

“You get yourself caught, you’re on your own.”

“How are you going to explain this?” Konstantin said, meaning the plane ticket. “They’re expecting me in Berlin.”

“Yours is not to reason why, soldier. Yours is to get your ass home. End of story.”

He nodded. He knew enough not to ask operational details. No doubt the real wall of muscle was arriving right about now at the BKA building and the man and woman were scratching their heads, wondering who the hell they’d just turned him over to if it wasn’t the good guys. Or maybe only one of them was scratching his head. The woman had said she wanted to believe him. Maybe that had been enough to convince her to make the call? Had the simple act of telling the truth set this entire chain of events into action like the first domino going over?

One thing Six could do was paperwork. This crew would have presented every necessary piece of paper, with every i dotted and every t crossed. In and out, no one any the wiser until the real prisoner transport team arrived, hence the thirty minutes of driving rather than taking him straight to Frankfurt Main or the military airport at Wiesbaden. Six didn’t want the Germans knowing it was Her Majesty who’d sprung their suspected papal assassin. It wasn’t exactly good form for a monarch to be getting her royal hands dirty like that, even if she didn’t know what was actually being done in her name.

Konstantin pocketed the passport and the ticket.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t thank me, mate. I’m only doing what I’m told. Thank the old man for calling in every favor he had with every man, woman and child from here to Timbuktu. Without him you’d be rotting away in Berlin for the rest of your natural, pal.”

He broke one of the smaller Euro notes at a kiosk, buying a phone card.

It took him the best part of an hour to find a working pay phone.

He called in to Nonesuch.

Lethe answered on the first ring. It took a moment for the line to connect and then both of them were talking without the other hearing. Then the line opened. Konstantin started again, “I am on the evening flight from Frankfurt Main to Heathrow. When I land I am going to call again. By then I want you to have found Miles Devere for me.”

He hung up before Lethe could get a word in.

It was an uneventful flight, both on the ground and in the air. A lot could happen in nine days it seemed, including people forgetting a face, or half-recognizing it and not being sure where from, even when it was a face they had seen day after day on the news reels and in the press. He wasn’t a film star and he wasn’t a pro ball player. What that meant was when they looked at him a few people did a weird sort of double-take, then shook their heads as though dismissing him. They had recognized him on some subliminal level, just like any other famous person, but they had filed him as just that, a famous person. Logic told them he had to be one, and who was he to argue with logic?

The fact of the matter was that the BKA were hardly about to announce to the world that they’d lost him. Airports, train stations and bus terminals would be swarming with agents on the ground looking for him-but they weren’t looking for John Smith.

As it was, he landed in London refreshed from the flight and disembarked the plane. On the way along the metal passage back toward the gate, he asked one of the ground crew where the nearest pay phone was and made the call to Lethe.

“Welcome home, Koni,” Lethe said, even before the phone had started to ring in his ear. “We were worried about you.”

“Touching, I am sure. You have the address for me?”

“The old man told me to tell you he wants you here for a debriefing first thing.”

“Second thing. First thing I have a promise to keep.”

“Whatever you say, man, I’m just passing on the message. Second thing it is.”

“The address?”

“He’s in England. He entered the country the day after the assassination.”

“England isn’t small. Where in England?”

“I just want you to appreciate my brilliance for a moment, Koni. I found him for you, just like you asked. But think about it, if I say he’s in London, that means he’s one of seven and a half million people spread over thirty-two different boroughs. That’s a lot of people and a hell of a lot of streets. That’s your needle in a haystack right there.”

“Where is he?”

“Well, out of all those millions of buildings, I found the one he’s in. That’s how good I am at what I do, Koni. He has a place in the heart of London, Clippers Quay, off Taeping Street. You can take the DLR to Mudchute and walk from there in a couple of minutes. Most of the houses are built around the old Graving Dock. There are four apartments in the block. The penthouse is his. You can’t miss it.”

“A graving dock? Isn’t that appropriate,” Konstantin said.

“It doesn’t mean they used to bury people there, Koni,” Lethe said in his ear. The phone line started to beep, but he talked over them.

“Well it does now.”

Konstantin hung up and went to keep a promise.

He left the train and walked quickly down the stairs that ran between the up and down escalator. He was the only person left on the train by the time it reached the Isle of Dogs. This part of the city was called Little Manhattan because of the mini-skyscrapers that had been built all along the riverside development of Canary Wharf. The Devere Holdings building was in there amid all of the merchant banks and import/export offices. Mudchute rather matched its name. Despite its nearness to the skyscrapers, it was like something out of the ’50s and owed its curious name to the fact that when it was being built the country was suffering from football factories, and its hooligans were the fear of Europe; otherwise, it would have been called Millwall Park, after the football team.

He followed the road around. Twenty years ago this part of London would have been full of kids kicking tin cans and pretending to be Teddy Sheringham and Tony Cascarino. Tonight it was quiet.

There was more building going on on the other side of the tracks. The metal skeleton of the building was slowly being wrapped in bricks and mortar.

He didn’t have a weapon. No doubt he could have climbed over the wall and dropped down onto the building site and found a decent sized rock. Or maybe a piece of steel pipe or rebar, a chisel, hammer or other tool. He decided against it, not for any ethical reasons-he had no problem with stealing from a construction site. No, he wanted to do this with his bare hands. He didn’t want anything between him and Devere as he beat the life out of him.

Konstantin found the building. Lethe was right, he couldn’t miss it. It was one of those carbuncles on the face of the city Prince Charles had been railing about for years while no one paid the slightest bit of notice to his royal raving.

He had lost his bump key when the BKA took him into custody, so getting past the security was going to be a little more complicated. He stepped back, standing just out of the puddle of light from the streetlight, and looked up at the facade. There was a fairly substantial drainage system on the outside of the house, with pipes running all the way down from the roof. He’d never understood why the British put their water pipes on the outside of their houses, when the cold came they were always going to crack, maybe not for ten years, but eventually they would. Freeze, thaw, and all of that. Pipes on the outside was asking for problems. Good metal pipes properly set into the mortar were asking for an entirely different set of problems.

Konstantin picked a path up to the first balcony. It was a long affair that actually ran around half of the frontage, then turned right to catch some of the lowering evening sun. The second story balcony repeated the pattern. It was the same for each of the four stories. The water pipes threaded through the narrowest of places, where the balconies didn’t over lap. Once he got to the first one it would be relatively easy to climb to the next. Of course there was no guarantee that when he got there the balcony doors would be open-and if they weren’t, hell would freeze over before Devere stopped playing Little Pig and let him in.

He could always try the buzzer trick again, but there were only three buzzers and no lights in any of the lower apartments. He didn’t waste any more time. He shimmied up the drainpipe, scuffing his feet off the wall, and hooked his hand onto the first balcony so that he could pull himself up. Second to third was almost as easy. He stood on the balcony rail and reached up. The next level was six inches out of reach, so leaning out over the drop, he jumped.

Konstantin caught the concrete base of the balcony and hauled himself up as though he was doing chin-ups, then swung, hooking his leg up onto the balcony railing and climbed onto the third story balcony. He repeated the maneuver for the fourth story and stood there for a moment, looking in through the huge plate glass doors and dusting his hands off.

The television was on, casting shadow shapes across the contours of the lounge.

Miles Devere was slumped in a leather armchair. He had his eyes closed and rested in the posture of someone who’d slipped into sleep.

Konstantin wanted him awake for the fun.

He checked his watch. It wasn’t quite midnight. There were chairs on the balcony, good cushioned chairs with high backs. Konstantin settled down into one of them. He was going to do this the Russian way. That meant coming late, four o’clock, coming in fast and hard and scaring the living crap out of Devere before he made him beg and plead and offer to pay anything, to give up his fortune, anything, and everything. Konstantin wasn’t about to be bought. When Devere was through begging he would beat the man to death and leave him in his fancy skyscraper city apartment surrounded by all the fine things money could buy.

He had the patience of a saint when it came to keeping a promise.

He looked out over the river, watching the city at night. It was a curious beast. It never quietly slept. He couldn’t understand the appeal of it. It was dirty, smelly, over-crowded, just like any other city in the world. He scanned the rooftops from The Tower to St. Paul’s distinctive dome and over the rooftops to The London Eye and, almost on the edge of what could be seen, Big Ben. The night lights made it seem like a different place. Like a fairy tale city. They might soften the sharp edges of the architecture, but they couldn’t hide the fact that right now murder was the only tale of the city worth telling.

He checked his watch again.

Two a.m.

Soon, he promised himself. The ambient light from the television went out.

Two hours passed slowly. Konstantin didn’t mind. Some moments were worth savoring. This was one of them. The moon was full and bright.

He stood up and walked the length of the balcony, looking for a makeshift tool that would help him break the lock open if he needed it. Three out of ten burglaries in the city required no force at all because the occupants were too dumb to lock their own doors and windows, but Konstantin was working under the impression that Devere was security conscious. Rich men usually were-to the point of paranoia. Whatever he was, Devere wasn’t a keen gardener. There was no ready supply of tools for turning the soil and planting bulbs in the window boxes.

He walked back slowly to the balcony doors. The basic locks that come with balcony doors are usually brittle and quite soft, meaning they will break under pressure. It didn’t matter how tough the glass was if the lock was going to shatter under a decent amount of leverage. A broom handle was enough to break most of them, but thankfully, most of the people sleeping soundly out there under the soft lights in fairy tale city didn’t know that. If they did, they wouldn’t have been sleeping at all, never mind soundly.

The door was locked, but he couldn’t see any additional locks or security-meaning Devere thought living four flights up made him safe. He wouldn’t live to regret that mistake.

Konstantin found what he was looking for: a metal rod from the clothes hanger Devere used to dry his designer shirts.

He slipped it through the lock handle and applied a little pressure, testing it out. He felt the resistance, then pressed again, a little harder this time, working the lock. It split on the third try, with a crack like a gunshot.

He tossed the metal rod aside and slid the door open on its runner.

He went inside.

The apartment had that eerie four o’clock silence. He moved quickly through the place, walking from room to room. The decor was spartan, Scandinavian minimalist. It had absolutely no stamp of personality on it, and that wasn’t just because of the dark. It wasn’t actually that dark inside; the full moon painted everything silver.

Each white wall had a single piece of art on it. Konstantin couldn’t tell if they were cheap prints or expensive originals. He wasn’t much of an art lover. He recognized some pieces, especially by the old masters, but the new stuff, not so much. He liked his artists like he liked his enemies, dead.

Devere didn’t look like a paranoid man. There were motion detectors in each room at strategic points, and the little red light blinked every time Konstantin moved, but no alarm sounded. Like most people, he obviously didn’t set the alarm when he was in the apartment.

He found Devere’s room.

He listened to the sleeping man’s gentle snores through the door for a moment, checking his watch again. It was four o’clock sharp. It was time to raise some hell. Konstantin kicked the door open, yelling bloody murder as he charged into the room.

Miles Devere thrashed about in the starched white sheets of the bed. Brutally woken, he came up into the sitting position with his right hand across his heart.

Konstantin didn’t give him a second to work out what was happening.

He flew at Devere, straight across the room and into his face like some sort of hellion out of his worst nightmare-and that was exactly what Devere would be thinking for those few seconds as the mad shrieking silhouette charged at him. He hit Devere once, a back-handed left across the side of his face, then grabbed his hair and dragged out of the bed.

By then Devere had worked out what was happening.

It didn’t help him.

Konstantin bundled Devere to the floor and laid into him with his booted feet, kicking him again and again until the naked man was crumpled up in a fetal ball trying to protect himself. He didn’t say a word, he just stepped back, giving himself room to drive another kick into Devere’s back.

He bent down and grabbed a handful of Devere’s hair and dragged him through to the living room. Devere kicked, trying to get his feet under him, and grabbed and slapped at Konstantin’s hand in between screams and howls of pain.

Konstantin threw him across the room and just stood there over him, watching Devere scramble around naked.

“I never break a promise,” he said. “It is a Russian thing, all about honor.”

“Please,” Devere said, looking up and at the same time trying to draw his entire body in on itself to present the smallest target he could to the Russian.

“Please? Please what?” Konstantin mocked. “Please don’t kill me?” Konstantin shook his head. “Not interested in that. Not interested in pleasing you at all. I was in Berlin. I saw what your money did. I saw them dragging the bodies out of the subway, all of those innocent people. Do you think they begged as they suffocated from the gas?”

“I didn’t…” Devere pleaded.

“Yes you did. Have the balls to admit it. Maybe if you repent desperately enough in the next few minutes, God might forgive you, but I doubt it. I think there’s a special place in hell reserved for scum like you.”

“What do you want me to say?” Miles Devere looked pitiful, shivering, naked, clutching his legs under his chin, trying to hide his penis and his vulnerability, and utterly lacking any kind of spine or dignity. This was the real Devere stripped of all the power money could buy. This was the man stripped down to skin and bone and found wanting.

“I want you to do more than just ‘say,’ Miles. I want you to do what you do best… I want you to buy me. I wat you to buy your life from me.”

Devere’s eyes lit up, his face suddenly feral in the moonlight. “Name your price. Anything.”

“Five thousand,” Konstantin said. “No, make that ten. Ten thousand.”

Devere almost laughed. “Ten thousand? Is that it? Not a million. Not a house in the Bahamas and a yacht? Ten thousand? Have you got no imagination?” Devere was in his element suddenly, bargaining, haggling, trying to fix a price, looking to capitalize on tragedy. “I can give you more. I can give you more than you can imagine. I can give you so much money it’ll make your Russian dick hard just thinking about the numbers. Try again, name your price.”

“Ten thousand,” Konstantin said and sniffed. He started to undo the buttons of his shirt and peel it off.

Devere shook his head. “You don’t get it. I can give you everything, all you want and more. Your wildest dreams. It’s only money. I can always get more money.”

Konstantin draped his shirt over the back of the leather armchair. “You haven’t asked ten thousand what.”

Devere shook his head, suddenly unsure as the ground shifted away beneath him. “Ten thousand what?” he asked, his voice quieter now, like he didn’t want to hear the answer.

Konstantin kicked off his shoes one at a time.

“People. Ten thousand dead people. I want you to give them their lives back. You’re to blame for their deaths-give them back their lives. You owe them. If you can’t do that, then you’ve got nothing I am interested in.”

Devere shook his head. “It’s impossible… You can’t bring people back from the dead. You can’t.”

“Then I think our business here is done, don’t you?” Konstantin asked.

“No. Please… please.”

Konstantin didn’t listen.

He undid his belt and stripped out of his trousers and boxers.

And naked he went to war.

He took his time, watching the clock slowly move around to five in the morning while he made Devere hurt. He beat him until he was bloody. He beat him until the flesh of his face caved in. He beat him until he couldn’t breathe because his body was ruined. He beat him until he gave up begging and just wanted it over. He beat him until he was covered in his blood. Devere was right. No amount of beating would bring them back. No amount of pain could put right all of the hurt he had caused with his relentless pursuit of money. Konstantin didn’t care. This was about making good on a promise.

He beat Miles Devere to death with his bare hands.

It was the Russian way. No distance between them. No advantage. It was man against man-naked, raw, like gladiators of old. He pretended it meant he had given Devere a chance. He hadn’t. When he was done he went through to the bathroom and washed Devere’s blood off his naked body, then dressed.

He left the apartment by the front door.