Читать книгу Look-Alike - Meredith Fletcher - Страница 10

Outside Suwan, Berzhaan

The Middle East

“Please! I beg you! Don’t kill me! I made a mistake! Just a mistake!”

Seated in the back of the luxury limousine, Vasilios Quinn listened to the man beg for his life. It was music to his ears. A return to days he hadn’t seen in many years.

Soundproof windows kept the man’s panicked cries from reaching the dark night outside the limousine. Less than five miles from Suwan, the capital city of Berzhaan, they were in desert highlands filled with hard stone ravines and shifting sandstorms.

It was the perfect place for an execution.

“I swear to you! It will never happen again! I will not allow myself to be so tempted!” Tears ran down the man’s quivering jowls. He was in his thirties yet covered in mounds of baby fat. He hadn’t known the hard life so many of his countrymen had suffered.

Berzhaan was part of the Middle East and had faced a precarious existence all its life. The current government, headed by Prime Minister Omar Razidae, suffered from internal strife. The United States was believed to support Berzhaan’s Kemeni guerrillas, who wanted control of the country. As a result, the native terrorist network—the Q’Rajn—attacked the government and the Kemenis alike to drive out the U.S., as well as American sympathizers. Death did a daily business in Berzhaan.

Quinn’s business was with the Q’Rajn. The man on the limousine floor had acted as go-between to the terrorists.

“I trusted you, Malik,” Quinn said.

Malik sobbed. “I swear, you can still trust me!”

“Unfortunately,” Quinn said, “trust is like virginity. Once given, it can’t be given again. You have to be careful whom you extend it to. I have been very careful. You—” he pointed the silenced Glock .45 at Malik’s nose “—are my first mistake in over twenty years.”

“I can fix it! I swear!” Malik clasped his hands in front of him. Held on his elbows and knees as he was, dressed in a robe and trembling, he was a poster child for subjugation.

Quinn had been at a soiree when his security team had called him to let him know they had Malik in custody. When he finished here, he intended to return to that soiree. His gray hair was carefully coiffed, and though he was a big man, his tuxedo fit him perfectly.

“You brought someone to our meeting,” Quinn said. “You knew I didn’t operate that way.”

“She won’t talk!” Malik said. “She’s just a girl! Young! She doesn’t know anything! I give you my word!”

Quinn almost laughed. The two bodyguards holding Malik grinned and shook their heads. Of course, they had already killed the girl and dumped her body.

Quinn’s cell phone rang. He wasn’t pleased at being interrupted. “Yes.”

“The breach in security may be more severe than we had believed.”

Quinn cursed and leaned back in the limousine. He’d thought dealing with Malik would be the end of it. “I thought you had a handle on this.”

“I still do.” The voice at the other end of the connection was calm and assured. The caller’s name was Arnaud Beck. He was a mercenary leader with international contacts, and Quinn had never met a more efficient killing machine. “Our competitors are working more quickly than we had imagined.”

The competitors were an intelligence team that Quinn hadn’t yet identified. His intelligence people had tracked them back to a nebulous agency that had ties to a Web site, www.AA.gov. The site appeared to be the home page of an all-girls school, but its advanced firewalls and security countermeasures had stymied every attempt Quinn’s people had made to crack it. Even the information brokers Quinn had access to had as much rumor as fact about the organization behind AA.gov. Maybe it was a cover for interagency information, or maybe—as a few reports indicated—it was an enforcement arm that stopped short of assassinations.

The most curious facet about AA.gov was the connection to the school just outside of the Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona, area in the United States. From circumspect investigation, Quinn had learned that the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women had many ties to the United States government. Many of the school’s select graduates went on to important positions within federal and state agencies.

“They’ve already placed an agent in the field,” Beck went on. “I’ve sent you a file.”

Turning, Quinn pulled the back of the seat down beside him, revealing the computer. A small dish at the back of the limousine connected him to a satellite array.

He opened the e-mail feature and decrypted the message, then linked to the Web site where Beck had posted his progress. One long minute later, a digital image flickered onto the LCD screen.

The woman was young, perhaps midtwenties, and beautiful. Her white-blond hair fell to her shoulders. Ice blue eyes. In the picture, she looked like a tourist, dressed in light summerwear. For some reason that he didn’t understand, she looked hauntingly familiar.

“Who is she?” Quinn asked.

“She’s in Amsterdam now,” Beck replied, evasive. “She made contact with a man who sells me information on a regular basis. She asked him about Tuenis Meijer. Once she had Meijer’s address, she went there. But, of course, Meijer hasn’t returned yet or I would have him.”

“How do you know she was asking about Meijer?”

“The man who sold her the information called me and gave me her picture.”

“What have you done about her involvement?”

“I’ve got two men on her now. She’s currently at the railway station awaiting an arrival.”

“Not departing?” That would be too good, Quinn thought. Too easy. And too much to hope for.

“She hasn’t bought a ticket. I tracked her arrival into Amsterdam through computer records. Her passport says she’s Crystal Downing. From Newark, New Jersey.”

“She’s not?”

“Her name is Samantha St. John. She’s an Athena Academy graduate. She fits the profile for the AA.gov background we have access to. I got her picture and name from a school yearbook.”

Cursing, Quinn closed the computer and stored it behind the seat again.

He struggled to remain calm. For over twenty years, his secret had been safe. At least, relatively safe. There was one woman who knew more about him than she should, a woman who some said was only a myth, a black widow who seduced and killed her mate and any man she found useless once she was done with them. For the last twenty-plus years, she had been blackmailing him.

That blackmailer was believed to have one of the most sophisticated information networks in the world, with secrets that could cripple or topple major corporations and nations. Despite years of searching, Quinn had not been able to find his blackmailer or discern her identity. Now, if he moved quickly, he had a chance to find that woman and kill her. Perhaps, if he moved quickly enough, he might even hope to learn the secrets she knew. They were worth a lot of money. But he needed Meijer.

“My path may cross the competition’s,” Beck said.

“If she gets in your way, kill her.”

There was no hesitation. “Yes, sir.”

“And let me know as soon as it’s dealt with.” Quinn hung up the phone and put it back in his jacket.

“Sahib,” Malik whispered tremulously from the car. “Please?”

Ruthlessly, Quinn knotted his fist in the man’s hair and yanked him from the limousine. Ten feet from the car, Quinn put the silencer to Malik’s head and squeezed the trigger. The body dropped onto the shifting sand.

Quinn breathed in the cool, dry desert air, held it a moment, then let it out. Everything is controllable, he told himself. With enough money, enough blood, enough determination, everything is controllable.

He would spend all to protect himself.