Black Ice - Anne Stuart [52]
“I delivered detonators to Syria last April. Seventy-three people were killed, including seventeen children.” His voice was neutral, but Thomason wasn’t fooled.
“Don’t tell me you’re still sulking about that! The fortunes of war, my boy. Casualties of the fight against terror. You never used to be so sentimental, Jean-Marc. You know the math as well as I do. Seventy-three dead, with the potential of thousands being saved. Sometimes you just have to make the ugly choice.”
“Yes,” said Bastien, watching through the curling smoke of his cigarette.
“I trust you, Jean-Marc. I know you’d never make the mistake of lying to me. If you say the girl is dead then I’m certain she must be. Besides, what reason would you have to lie? In all the years I’ve known you I’ve never seen you show any human emotion, any weakness. You’re a machine. State-of-the-art, finely tuned, indispensable.”
“Even a machine needs to rest,” he said. “Let someone else do the job, and I’ll just disappear. Jensen has already built up a solid cover—he can take care of Christos himself.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired.”
“People in our line of work aren’t allowed to get tired. They seldom get time off, they don’t get to rest. There’s only one way to retire, Jean-Marc. The way Hakim did.”
“Is that a threat?” he asked lazily, stubbing out his cigarette.
“No. Only a fact. The cartel will be meeting at the Hotel Denis tomorrow, with Christos arriving the next day. I leave it up to you. I have every confidence you’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Do you?”
“Don’t annoy me, Jean-Marc. You know how much is riding on this.” He rose, folding his newspaper neatly.
“The fate of the free world? Isn’t it always?” He didn’t bother to rise. “I think I’ve heard this all before. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and all that crap. You’ve been watching too much Star Trek.”
“I thought it was Star Wars,” Harry said.
“I know what’s at stake,” Bastien said.
“See that you don’t forget. Anything.”
Bastien looked up at him. His time was running out, and he simply didn’t care one way or the other. His luck had held far longer than he would have expected, and it wasn’t going to last much longer. He’d be dead by the first snowfall. Except that it was already snowing.
But before they got to him, he just might slit Harry Thomason’s throat. For old time’s sake.
12
She was gone, of course. He knew it even as he rode upward in the tiny elevator, but he went anyway, just to make certain. The place was dark, and she’d left a window open. Icy air was blowing in, laced with bits of snow, and he shut it and pulled the curtains before he turned on the light. He didn’t know whether they were watching, but he wasn’t in the mood to take chances.
There was no sign of forced entry, no blood. Her clothes were left behind, but his coat was missing, and someone had gone through his wardrobe. If they’d come to get her they wouldn’t have bothered dressing her. They wouldn’t have bothered taking her—she’d be lying dead in his bed if they’d found her.
Which meant she’d left of her own accord, and she was no longer his responsibility. He’d warned her, for some crazy, quixotic reason he’d tried to save her life. Even compromised his own cover for her, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
And she’d ignored his orders and disappeared. Good riddance.
She’d searched the place pretty thoroughly, which surprised him. What could she have expected to find here? Maybe she’d managed to fool him after all, maybe she wasn’t the innocent she’d convinced him she was. And then he remembered the look in her eyes when he’d made her come, and he knew she hadn’t held anything back. Harry Thomason was right about that much. No one could keep the truth from him, not if he was determined to find it.
She’d found the drugs, though she hadn’t touched them. He kept them as insurance—a marketable commodity for some informants who didn’t need money. He pocketed them, just in case, then went through the room with quiet thoroughness,