Black Ice - Anne Stuart [9]
“Thank you very much, Marie. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Marie merely raised her eyebrows, setting Chloe’s misgivings into full play once more.
3
Someone had made a very grave error in sending that young woman into the lion’s den, Bastien thought. She was far from the accomplished operative needed to work in such an intense situation. He’d known within seconds that she understood every language spoken in the room, and probably more besides, and she hadn’t been that good at hiding it. If it had taken him mere moments, it wouldn’t take some of the others much longer.
The question was, who had sent her, and why? The most dangerous possibility was that she’d come to ferret out his identity. As far as he knew no one suspected him, but one never took anything for granted. The part he was playing was a dedicated womanizer—sending a nubile young female into the mix was the perfect bait, like staking a young deer in the jungle to lure a hungry panther. If he went for her he’d be playing true to form.
She was dangerously inept. That veneer of sophistication was wafer thin—one look in her brown eyes and he’d been able to read everything. Nervousness, shyness even, and an unwanted spark of sexual attraction. She was in way over her head.
Then again, she might be much better than she appeared to be. The hesitant, slightly shy demeanor might be all part of the act, to put him off the scent.
Had she come for him, or someone else? Was the Committee checking up on his performance? It was always possible—he hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that he was weary beyond belief, no longer giving a damn. Life or death seemed minor distinctions to him, but once you went to work for the Committee they never let you go. He’d be killed, and probably sooner rather than later. Mademoiselle Underwood, with her shy eyes and soft mouth, might be just the one to do it.
And there was only one question. Would he let her?
Probably not. He was jaded, burned-out, empty inside, but he wasn’t about to go quietly. Not yet.
On the surface his mission was simple. Auguste Remarque had been blown up by a car bomb last month, the work of the covert, antiterrorist organization known, by a very few, as the Committee. But, in fact, the Committee had had nothing to do with it. Auguste Remarque was a businessman, motivated by nothing more than profit, and the powers that be in the Committee could understand and adjust for that. All they’d had to do was keep an eye on Remarque and the arms dealers, keep abreast of who was shipping what to where and make their own pragmatic choices as to when to interfere. A shipment of high-powered machine guns to certain underdeveloped countries in Africa might lead to civilian deaths, but the greater good had to be considered, and those poor countries had little of interest to the superpowers. Or so his boss, the venerable Harry Thomason, had told him.
Of course, Bastien knew why. Those countries had no oil, and they were of little importance to the Committee and its powerful, private backers.
It had been Bastien’s job to keep tabs on the arms dealers, posing as one of them. But Remarque’s assassination had changed all that. Hakim, Remarque’s right-hand man, had set up this meeting, and they were looking at redividing the territories and choosing a new head. Not that these were people who played well with others, but the leader of the arms cartel also took care of the tiresome business details, leaving the others to concentrate on the acquisition and shipment of the most dangerous weapons yet devised.
Hakim had been in charge of the petty details, but he’d gotten a little too ambitious. He wanted to take Remarque’s place, including taking his lucrative territories. And there lay the problems. Through decades of dealing, assassination and bribery, the late Auguste Remarque had controlled most weapons shipments