"Poor little Charlotte."
At the sound of Jana's voice, Tesla's eyes swung back to the dark-eyed woman pressed against the wall.
"Shut up!" Tesla hissed.
Jana managed a swollen smirk. In French she said, "The daughter does not have the courage of the father."
"I said shut up!" Tesla swung and hit Jana hard with the back of her hand. The cut on Jana's lip ripped open, spraying blood on the wall.
"Stop it!" Charley cried. "No more, Nora, please!"
Tesla stared at her. What was this? Where was this coming from? For the last fifteen minutes, as Tesla had interrogated Jana, Charley had been quiet. Even as Jana's moans of pain had grown deeper, Charley had not moved, not made a sound. Now, suddenly, she was coming apart.
"No more, Nora," she whispered. "Please. Please. I can't take this. I can't do this anymore."
Suddenly, Tesla knew. For all her bravado, Charley had never witnessed anything like this--the interrogation and torture of another human being. A woman, no less. Despite Harold's willingness to let Charley play around the periphery of the Volunteers, he had never brought her into the violence of its world. Charley Middleton had hacked computers, done research. Her reality was virtual. Her hands were clean.
But her own past was clouded with violence. The brutal murder of her mother by her father's enemies. The betrayal and death of her husband. The loss of her baby.
Another thought flashed through Tesla's head. Yesterday, in a cafe, Charley let her guard down long enough to talk about her mother's death and what she said after. I know you and Harry were lovers and I used to hate you for that but I don't now. I admire you, Nora.
And second flash of memory. The threat she had made to Ian Barrett-Bone yesterday in the taxi as Charley listened: I'll kill you for the sheer pleasure of it.
Charley's sobs filled Tesla's ears. She glanced back at Jana, whose dark eyes glittered with hatred.
"Poor little Charlotte," Jana said, her voice almost maternal. "Death is around you. Mother, husband. Your baby cut from your--"
Tesla spun and smacked Jana hard, sending the woman into a spasm of coughing and spitting blood.
A soft thud. From the corner of her eyes, Tesla saw Charley slump to the carpet.
One second of diversion but it was enough. Jana brought her bound wrists up in a quick jerk, catching Tesla under the jaw and sending her reeling backwards. The letter opener went flying.
A second blow hit Tesla in her wounded shoulder. White knives of pain sliced through her body. For a second, the room swirled gray-going-black and she felt herself drop down to her knees.
Jana was just a blur, flailing and pulling against the electrical cord on her ankles.
Tesla fought back the waves of pain and nausea, one thought in her head. Gun . . . get the gun.
Tesla threw herself toward Charley's body. The dark barrel of the gun was just visible beneath the blue of Charley's running suit. Tesla grabbed the Hawlen, jerked to a kneeling position and leveled it, finger curled on the trigger.
She blinked the room back into focus.
Nothing. Just a flash of black boots and white trench coat disappearing behind the open door of the hotel room.
Jana stumbled down the stairs but when she hit the hotel lobby, she froze. A large man in a green windbreaker and ball cap was standing at the desk. His face was red and he was banging the bell on the desk.
"Hello? Hey, anybody here?"
From her vantage point, Jana could see the shoes of the dead clerk behind the desk but the American could not. A commotion at the door as a fat woman tried to drag a huge suitcase through. Beyond the window, Jana could see the open trunk of a taxi and the driver, letting loose a stream of crusty French as he pulled out more luggage.
The taxi was double-parked, blocking her limo. And there was no one behind the wheel.
Where the hell was her driver?
Then she spotted the Moroccan across the street buying cigarettes at a tabac. Jana cursed as she gently touched a finger to her seared cheek.
A sound behind her on the stairs. The bitch was after her. There was no time.
She bolted down the narrow hallway to the back. The tiny kitchen was a blur as she threw open the door and stumbled out into the cold morning air. A quick look told her she was in an impasse with one exit.
No choice. She would have to take her chances on the street. Jana began to run.
In the lobby, Tesla quickly assessed the situation. Body behind the desk, two bewildered and bedraggled Americans. But no Jana.
Holding the Hawlen at her side, Tesla scaled the mountain of luggage blocking the door, ignoring the American man's yelling. She slid to a stop on the street.
Tesla mentally clicked through the options with computer-speed.
Taxi? You couldn't hail one on any Paris street and there were no cabs at the nearby stands.
Metro? The nearest was George V, a good five-minute hike.
No, Jana would try to contact the person who had sent her.
Tesla gave the street a quick scan. Even at the busiest times of day, rue Pierre 1er de Serbie was a staid street of stone-facade apartment buildings. Now, at seven on this cold October morning, there was only one cafe owner out, the crank of his unrolling shutters breaking the quiet.
Except . . .
A lone figure in white just disappearing around the far corner. Tesla took off in pursuit.
But when she reached the corner, she came to an abrupt stop.
A swirl of motion, sound, smells and people.
Damn. Saturday. Market day.
Tesla started down the narrow aisle, eyes darting between the overflowing stands of vegetables, fruits, fish and cheeses. The crowd pressed close--young women pushing strollers, old women toting straw baskets, boys on mopeds. Tesla was careful to keep the gun down, hoping her loose slacks offered some cover. The last thing she needed was a panicked crowd.
She pushed on, her eyes raking the crowd for Jana. The woman couldn't go unnoticed for long. Her face was a pulpy mess and her white trench coat was covered in blood.
Where the hell was she?
Tesla grimaced in pain. She caught a glimpse of herself in a cafe window. Wild hair and a fresh stain of blood on her blouse from her seeping shoulder wound.
Her reflection was framed by orange and black crepe paper hung from the cafe window. Paper skeletons and black cats. Halloween. Today was Halloween, a holiday the Parisians had just recently appropriated from Americans. Tonight the Champs d' Elysees would teem with drunken kids in vampire teeth and theater blood.
Two women stumbling down the street drenched in the real thing would hardly get a glance today.
Twenty yards away, a flash of white amid the riot of color at a far stall. Tesla reached the flower stall just as Jana disappeared again. To the left was a narrow alleyway, just like the impasse back at the hotel. Tesla made a quick choice and raced to the open door about half-way down.
Kitchen. Deserted.
A brush of a heavy drape and she was in the bistro's small dining room. A thin man in a white serving coat had been folding napkins but now was just staring.
"Where did she go?" Tesla demanded.
The young man's eyes widened when he saw her gun.
"La femme dans blanc! Ou est-elle allee?"
"La bas." He pointed to a spiral staircase.
Removing the silencer, Tesla drew in a shuddering breath and started down the narrow stairs.
She quickly searched the two small toilets. Nothing. There was a third door. It opened into a small dark storage room. Tesla slapped the cold wall and her hand found a switch. The small room came to life under the single hanging bare bulb. Rough stone walls, a cracked tile floor. Piles of old tables, broken bistro chairs, boxes and crates. It was filled with junk, except for a path leading to the wine rack that stretched across the length of one stone wall.
Tesla swept the gun slowly across the shadows. She knew Jana didn't have a weapon but she wasn't taking an
y chances. She crept through the debris, her two-handed grip on the Hawlen tight.
She stopped and stood perfectly still, listening for any sound.
Nothing.
But then she felt it. A hard stream of cold air at the back of her neck.
She spun and leveled the gun toward the bistro chairs. She approached carefully, her eyes alert for any movement behind the ten-foot-high tangle of legs and shredded rattan seats. The stream of air grew stronger.
Tesla grabbed a leg atop the pile and gave a sharp pull. The top chairs clattered to the tile, one clipping the hanging bulb, sending it swinging wildly.
Jesus.
A small open door in the stone wall. With each sway of the bulb, Tesla could glimpse what lay beyond.
Tunnels. Not stone but some rough gray-white material. A low curved ceiling not more than six or eight feet above the dirt floor.
A dusty stench poured out.
What was this?
But then the odd smell registered. Chalk?
And with that came a flash of memory. Harold . . . that night five years ago when, in the highest heat of their affair, he had brought her here to Paris for a weekend. Dinner at Taillevent, a three-hundred-euro Haut Brion. And to impress her even more, a trip to the restaurant's wine cellar. There, the sommelier told them that the sleek vault used to be a dank cave, part of a network of tunnels below Paris that had once been the city's thriving chalk quarries. The tunnels ran for hundreds of miles below apartments, cafes and shops. All but a few had been abandoned and boarded up.
Tesla drew in a breath and stepped into the darkness.
The swinging bulb offered up moving slices of black and white. But beyond thirty feet, all light disappeared.
Tesla stood perfectly still, senses pricked for the slightest sound of movement. The drug-rush of adrenalin had dulled the pain in her shoulder.
She advanced slowly. With the dying sway of light, she could see now that the tunnel ahead branched off into two others.
A skitter. Rats.
A drip of something on her neck. Water.
A smell of something dead and close.
The blow came from the left, aimed at her bad shoulder. But she was quick enough to jerk away so the wine bottle hit her upper arm instead.
Tesla gritted her teeth against the pain and gripped the gun tighter.
A crash over her head and she was sprayed with glass and doused in something cold. Another bottle exploded and she shut her eyes against the sting of the wine in her face.
Nearby, a slap of wood against wood and Tesla saw Jana fleeing out a service door. Struggling to control the pain, struggling to breathe, the wounded woman followed her assailant as quickly as she could.
The foot pursuit, south through subdued streets of upscale townhouses and private hotels, seemed to last forever and ended only when Jana streaked across L'avenue de New York, making for Pont d'Alma. But despite her pain and exhaustion, Tesla closed in. And just as Jana made it to the bridge, she collapsed. Unable to see any further, hiding the gun, Tesla hurried through the traffic, heading directly for her assailant.
Jana managed to pull herself to her feet. She glanced up and saw that Tesla had now crossed the road and was getting closer.
Resignation and despair filled Jana's dark face.
Had Tesla not been in such pain, had she not seen in vivid memory the young NATO soldier's arm shredded by the blast Jana had ordered, had she not known what carnage this woman was capable of, she might've felt pity for her.
But Jana's face clearly explained that she knew the end had come and that she wasn't going to allow herself to be tortured any longer. She glanced over the side of the Pont d'Alma toward the Seine and noticed the approach of one of the famed bateaux mouches--the "fly boats" that take tourists up and down the river. Jana's eyes met Tesla's and they struggled up the railing of the bridge.
"No!" Tesla cried, thrusting out her hand.
Jana hesitated only a moment and then tumbled into the murky water, directly into the path of a boat. Tesla saw her vanish under the prow.
The ship passed, the captain unaware of the tragedy. The tour guide's voice echoed uninterrupted over the water. Tesla waited only a moment until she could see in the wake the outline of the woman's torso, floating on her belly, arms outstretched, head bent completely under the brown water.
A police car was just arriving as Tesla returned to the Queen Elizabeth hotel. She detoured to the impasse entrance and went upstairs. The door to their room wasn't locked.
"She's gone," Tesla whispered. "Dead."
Charley was curled on the sofa, hugging her knees. She looked up at Tesla, face ashen.
"It won't stop," she said.
Tesla set the gun on a table. Charley was in shock. She went and sat down next to her.
"It's OK, Charley," Tesla said.
"It won't stop."
"I know. But--"
"The phone," Charley said. "It won't stop."
Tesla's whole body ached and her head was spinning. But she realized that Charley was staring at something on the carpet. It was Jana's cell phone.
Tesla picked it up. The screen showed five calls and three messages. "Did you answer it?" she asked.
Charley just shook her head.
Tesla quickly scrolled through the calls. All from the same number but she didn't recognize it. She punched in the message retrieval. The first one was in Hindu, unreadable to her. But the second was in French: OU ETES-TU?
It was the third one that made her stop. It translated to REPORT CM MISSION STATUS.
CM? Charlotte Middleton? But what was the mission?
Tesla hesitated then punched in a text response in French: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Immediately, the cell hummed then the message appeared: ALIVE OR DEAD?
So there was her answer. It was Harold's daughter they wanted. But why? Then she realized that she hadn't heard from Harold since he left--from either his regular cell or his encrypted one. Which meant he had either been apprehended--or killed. One call to Charley or her would have pinpointed their locations. Harold did not want his daughter's whereabouts discovered.
Tesla looked over at Charley, rocking slowly back and forth.
Bait, a distraction. That is what Charley was. They wanted to use her against her father somehow. She was his one weakness and if Harold thought she was in danger, they knew he would do anything to get to her.
Suddenly, Tesla knew what she had to do.
She punched in a text response. CM DEAD.
Tesla shut her eyes, waiting for the response. When it came, her blood chilled.
SEND PROOF.
Again, she looked to Charley. Could she do this? Could she get this shattered young woman to help?
Tesla went to the sofa and took Charley's hands in hers. "Charley, I need you to listen to me," she said gently.
Charley just looked up at her.
"Charley, I need to take a picture of you."
"Picture?"
Tesla scanned the wreckage of the room. She spotted the bloody blouse she had used as a gag on Jana. "Help me, quickly," she said.
Leading Charley by the hand, she picked up the blouse and took Charley over to where Jana had been sitting. "Put this on," Tesla said.
Charley recoiled. "What?"
"Please, Charley, we don't have much time."
"Why? What--"
"Charley, this will help your father. It will help Harry."
"Harry?"
"Put the blouse on."
Charley shook her head. "No, not unless you tell me why. Where's Harry? What's happened to him?"
Tesla bit back her impatience. She quickly told Charley that her father was in Russia and that he couldn't do what he needed to do unless he believed she was safe.
"Then why do you want him to think I'm dead?"
"Not your father. I want whoever sent Jana after you to think you're dead. Your father has to be able to . . . to do what he needs to do. Can you understand that?
"
Charley looked away.
"Charley, do you trust me?"
She nodded slowly but wouldn't look at her.
"Then please do what I'm asking you to do. Please."
Charley took the bloody blouse and slipped it over her t-shirt. But then she stopped and went to the desk.
"Charley?"
She scribbled something with bold strokes of a felt pen and brought the paper back to Tesla. "Put this in the picture," she said.
Tesla took it. Charley had written three words: GREEN LANTERN. EVAC.
"What is this?"
"When I was little, Harry and I made up a code in case I ever got in trouble. Mom thought it was stupid but we . . . " Her eyes filled with tears. "Green Lantern is our favorite comic book hero. 'Evac' means I've gone somewhere safe to wait for him to come get me."
Tesla hesitated then wrapped Charley in a hug.
It took just minutes to position Charley for the photograph. She posed, slumped against the wall, with the backdrop of Jana's blood on the wall and carpet. Tesla positioned the note so it looked like a harmless piece of paper spilled from a waste basket.
Tesla was sending the photograph by the time Charley emerged with her suitcase. Downstairs, they hurried out the kitchen, avoiding the quickly expanding crowd around the dead clerk in the lobby.
A plan was already forming in Tesla's head. She would send Charley on the first plane to the States. Once Charley was safe, she would find a way to get to Harold.
Jana's cell buzzed. As they exited the hotel and started along rue Pierre 1er de Serbie, Tesla glanced at the cell's screen.
One word in English:
BEAUTIFUL.
13
BRETT BATTLES
"You must know what Sikari has in mind," Harold Middleton said to Chernayev. His blood had run cold when the Russian had told him the U.S. secretary of state would be visiting the Baglihar dam. He told the man about the email message from Sikari to Kavi Balan--the plan for the Village. To blow up the dam with the thermobarics explosives from Florida. Middleton now understood.
Chernayev seemed to consider Middleton for a moment. "Sikari is dead," he said.
"Dead?" The American gasped.
"By his own arrogance, from what I understand. A man he called his adopted son has assumed control of Sikari's interests. Sikari's interests were in the dam itself. It is the son, Archer, who has seen the opportunity the secretary of state's visit will create."