Ice Storm Read online

  It looked as if no one had lived in the town of Nazir for years, perhaps decades. The doors with their faded blue paint were shut, the dusty streets empty, and for a moment she wondered if she’d come to the wrong place. Had her Intel been faulty? Or was she walking into a trap? No trap—her instincts, on high alert, told her nothing worse than Killian would be waiting for her in the abandoned rubble. Though she wasn’t sure there was anything worse. She pulled the Jeep behind the ruins of an old mosque, climbing out and stretching. She was a tourist who’d gotten lost—if she ran into anyone asking uncomfortable questions she could fend him off quite easily. If she had any sense, she would have come in disguise. Someone younger, dizzier, so that her tale of getting lost on the road to Mauritania would seem plausible. But young and foolish was just a little too close to the woman Killian had known long ago. Even so, he would never recognize her. But she’d know. It would make her vulnerable. Leaving the Jeep, she moved aimlessly down the deserted street. She had a knife at her ankle, a handgun at the small of her back, and the ability to kill swiftly and silently with her bare hands. No one would touch her, no one would get the upper hand....

  “Hey, lady.” The young voice came out of nowhere, and she jumped like a startled kitten, too unnerved by the child’s unheralded appearance to even draw her gun. Which was just as well—to any hidden observer she was simply a foolish tourist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Lady,” the child said. She looked down at the collection of rags and dirt in front of her. He was the size of a six-year-old, with the eyes of an ancient. “Lady, you come.”

  “Come where?” She hadn’t missed the gun he was holding. An AK-47. An early model from Russian surplus, she guessed. She’d seen child soldiers before, but she’d never been able to get over the shock of heavy machinery held so easily in such small hands.

  “You come, lady,” he said again, seemingly the sum total of his English.

  She touched the gun at the small of her back, to remind herself it was there, and followed the pitifully thin figure down the deserted streets. Killian ought to pay his stooges better, she thought, deliberately distancing herself. The child was skin and bones, held together by dirt. It was a wonder he could even lug that machine gun around with him.

  They walked past crumbling buildings, some without roofs, the ubiquitous blue paint on the few remaining doors faded by the bright desert sun. She’d heard somewhere that blue deterred mosquitoes. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any around. She hated bugs of any sort. Just one of the many reasons she lived in England.

  The sun was a shrinking orange glow on the horizon, and already, in the east, a few stars were visible. She’d left her flashlight in the car—probably not a smart idea, but she’d wanted her hands free. She still wasn’t quite sure for what. The child came to a stop outside one of the larger houses. No windows looked onto the street, so there must be a courtyard within. The door was hanging on one hinge, and everything was silent.

  The boy pointed with his gun, an unnerving gesture. “You go, lady.”

  Isobel looked at him for a long, contemplative moment, then did the only thing she could do. She went. A man stood at the far end of the courtyard, a silhouette against the darkening sky. Isobel moved forward, keeping to the shadows, letting the cold settle within her. Since her first moment of shocked recognition she’d felt nothing, nothing at all. Now she was ice.

  “Where’s Bastien Toussaint?” His voice was that of a stranger—a mixture of ethnicities, a bit of Australian and South African, a touch of Spanish. Nothing like Killian’s smooth, deep voice. “He’s retired” she said, skirting the open courtyard. “I’m here in his place.”

  “And who sent you?”

  “I sent myself. I’m Isobel Lambert, head of the Committee.”

  “Madame Lambert herself? You must really want me.” His tone was mocking, and her certainty was wavering. Had she been wrong? Even cleaned up, the grainy footage had been unreliable. Maybe it was a wild hallucination on her part; Peter had told her she was working too hard, burning out as everyone did, eventually. They burned out or were killed.

  What she truly looking at a dead man? Or had the stress of her life finally caught up with her, making her see things that weren’t real?

  Her voice gave nothing away. “You have valuable information, Mr. Serafin, and you know it. You’re bartering that information for your life. If it was worthless I wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of you.”

  “How ruthless.” The comment was light, mocking. Nothing like Killian.

  “I thought the days of Harry Thomason were long gone. No more random terminations.”

  “Most death sentences are the result of careful deliberation and examining all the options. You, Mr. Serafin, are a no-brainer. Blink, and I’ll shoot you.”

  “I promise not to blink. Are you pointing a gun at me, Madame Lambert? You’re skulking in the shadows. Maybe you’ve already made up your mind that what I have to offer isn’t worth the price of letting me live’

  “I’ll be keeping an open mind. Why don’t you show yourself first?”

  “Certainly.” He stepped out, away from the wall, but it had grown too dark to see clearly. And suddenly the uncertainty was cracking the icy shell surrounding her.

  “Do you have a light?” she asked.

  “Why? Do you want a cigarette?”

  She would have killed for a cigarette. Quite literally. “I’d like to take a good look at you before I come any closer.”

  “A wise precaution.” he said. “After all, I’m considered to be the most dangerous man in the world. Didn’t Time call me that?”

  “You shouldn’t believe your own press clippings.”

  “Mahmoud!” He raised his voice, and the small child appeared, carrying a lantern. The man took it, raising it with one hand and holding out his other. “Satisfied, Madame? I’m unarmed. Harmless.”

  She stared at his illuminated face, and the relief was so powerful she almost felt dizzy. How could she have made such a mistake? He was nothing at all like Killian. Killian was dead, and had been for eighteen years. The only thing this man had in common with him was his height. And the fact that he was a terrorist. His eyes were dark, almost black, and Killian’s eyes had been green. His thinning black hair was liberally streaked with gray. Half his face was covered with a salt-and-pepper beard, framing a mouthful of blackened teeth. He had a paunch, a generous ring of flesh around his belly that suggested years of good living.

  “Do I look harmless enough?” he asked when she’d completed her long, shocked perusal.

  “I’m not a fool, Mr. Serafin,” she said. She couldn’t afford to let her relief lower her guard. “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “Are you going to show yourself?”

  She stepped into the light, the 9 mm semiautomatic held tightly, trained at his chest. If she had to shoot she’d go lower or higher—the throat was efficient, the groin almost as painful. Both caused much more suffering than a bullet to the heart or the head, and if anyone deserved to suffer it was this man. There was no expression in his flat black eyes as he looked at her and the gun. “Are you going to kill me?”

  If this man had really been Killian, she would have been tempted. But she’d been wrong...plus tired and emotional and deluded. “Not until you give me reason to.”

  “You mean I haven’t already? Given my activities during the last twenty years?” He was goading her, amused by her.

  She hated killing, hated it with a sick, deep passion. But when they learned everything they needed to from this miserable excuse for a human being, she was going to enjoy putting a bullet in his head.

  “Right now, you’ve got a free pass,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Are you ready to go? My Jeep is waiting, and we’d do better to travel in the dark. We’re heading down the coast highway to Mauritania and catching transport there.”

  “I don’t think so. They’ll he looking for me in Weste
rn Sahara, and I don’t trust women drivers on these roads. We’ll head east and go through Algeria.”

  “The border’s closed.”

  “And that creates a problem?”

  She controlled her temper. “You asked us to get you out of here and safely back to England. If you already made plans, then why did you bother with us?”

  “I need cover. I need someone at my back, dubious as you now appear to be. And I need the resources of the Committee to get resettled in a new life. You’ve agreed to do that, much as it galls you, because of the Intel I can bring to the table. We go through the mountains into Algeria. I drive. And I take Mahmoud with me.”

  “The arrangement was for you alone, not your plaything. You’re not molesting children on my watch.”

  “What a cynic you are, Madame Lambert. I don’t like young boys. I hate to deny you one more example of my infamy, but I’m not interested in raping children.”

  “What do you rape? Or is it only the soldiers you control who get to torture and murder?”

  There was a long silence. “You knew who I was when you made the deal. It’s a little late to change your mind.”

  “The most dangerous man in the world,” she said, her tone mocking.

  “But not, perhaps, the most evil man in the world. There’s a difference.”

  “I don’t really care. I don’t have to like you. I just have to get you back to England. Alone.”

  She felt it—the sight of a weapon trained on the back of her head. She trusted her instincts implicitly. Someone was pointing a gun at her, someone who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot, served woman in her fifties, and there was absolutely no way he could prove otherwise.

  “So, we’re agreed? We’ll take the mountain route into Algeria, heading toward Bechar. I drive, Mahmoud conies along, and we’re a happy little family.”

  “You don’t give me much choice.”

  Somehow he must have seen behind her cultivated blankness. “You’d like to tell me to fuck off, wouldn’t you? But you don’t have that luxury. War makes strange bedfellows, Madame Lambert. You ought to have learned that by now, given your great age and experience.”

  There wasn’t even a hint of mockery in his voice, but she still felt uneasy. “Hardly bedfellows, Mr. Serafin.” she said. “Partners in crime, perhaps.”

  His smile exposed those darkened teeth behind the graying beard. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.” He looked past her. “Mahmoud?”

  Her language training had included only the most basic Arabic, and she barely understood his orders, but the meaning was clear. Mahmoud darted past her, machine gun swung over his back, and picked up Serafin’s battered duffel bag.

  She could’ve reached out, snatched the gun from his shoulder as he went, neutralizing him long enough that they could get out of there without an albatross. The mission was going to be difficult enough with Serafin’s meddling, and in the end a child soldier was still only a child. But she didn’t. The day she couldn’t handle an over-the-hill mercenary and a young boy was the day she’d retire. And that day wasn’t in sight, no matter how worried Peter seemed when he looked at her.

  “I take it you’re ready to leave?” she said.

  “Whenever you are, princess.”

  It was too dark for him to see the fleeting reaction that managed to crack her perfect reserve. And the fact that she tripped was understandable—there was rubble underfoot. Unless he’d done it on purpose, he wouldn’t know his casual word had been like a knife to the belly.

  But it had been casual, automatic. She’d heard Killian call any number of women “princess”—from a toothless crone in Marseille to a White Russian countess in Nice, and they all preened just as she had, when he was inside her and whispered the word against her sweat-damp skin.

  “After you.” she said now, no catch in her voice, as she followed the first man she’d ever killed out into the twilight shadows of Morocco.

  4

  Peter Madsen looked at the man across from him, knowing that his own icy blue eyes gave away absolutely nothing. Sir Harry Thomason had never been able to read him, and he never would. It was part of what had led to Thomason’s downfall—his inability to realize what his operatives, including Bastien Toussaint and Peter Madsen, were capable of. That, plus his ruthless destruction of anything that got in his way. Peter had been a star pupil, and even Isobel Lambert could issue termination orders without blinking.

  There was one crucial difference between Thomason and the rest of the Committee. Thomason sacrificed everyone, operatives and enemies alike, with a total disregard for loyalty, and that could only carry him so far. It had carried him into forced early retirement and a seat on the Committee, the shadowy group of men who did their best to control the fate of the world.

  Thomason wasn’t nearly as good at hiding his resentment. He’d shown up at the Kensington offices the morning after Isobel had left, and Peter hadn’t managed to budge him. And he needed to. Now.

  “I was against this from the very beginning.” Thomason was saying, and Peter dragged his attention back reluctantly. “You can’t trust a woman in situations like this. We all know Isobel is more machine than human, thank God, but she’s not completely devoid of hormones, at least not yet, and sending her after Serafin could be disastrous. I’ve been able to uncover some recent information that makes the situation untenable.”

  “Information I don’t have?” Peter was frankly doubtful. As Thomason was kicked upstairs he’d also been stripped of his contacts. There was very little chance he had access to Intel Peter had missed.

  Thomason didn’t blink. He was the epitome of an upper-class English civil servant—ruddy skin, spidery veins across his nose, colorless eyes and thinning white hair. “You forget—I’ve been in this business since before you were born. I have resources you wouldn’t imagine.”

  “And you didn’t consider it important to pass those resources along?”

  “They won’t talk to anyone but me. Are you in sonic kind of hurry? You keep looking at your watch. If I’m boring you, I can always leave. Isobel is an old hand at this sort of thing, and used to surprises. She’ll probably survive.” In another lifetime Harry Thomason would be dead within minutes of walking in the door. Peter didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, which in the past would have been almost enough to find his death worth it. The fact that he wanted Isobel dead would have put him over the edge, and Thomason would be a corpse. But Peter didn’t do that anymore. For the sake of his wife, who was already waiting for him. For the sake of his old friends, who needed a stable presence in the Kensington office. Hell, for the sake of the new operative Peter was supposed to be picking up at Heathrow later that night. Sir Harry Thomason would live to cause trouble. So Peter kept his hand away from the drawer that held his Glock, the drawer Thomason knew existed, and leaned back in the chair. His leg was bothering him—the cold damp was getting to it. His limp would be more pronounced by evening, and Genny would fuss.

  “I don’t wish to be inhospitable, but I have a meeting.”

  “Don’t let me keep you. I’ll be fine here at the office, catching up on things. And don’t think for a moment you can kick me out. I’m your boss, as I always was. Just one step higher up. I have access to all the information in this office anytime I want it.

  “Then what are you doing here? Why don’t you go back to your country house, have a brandy and ferret through our Intel at your leisure?”

  Thomason’s smile was slow and annoying. “You don’t like me, Madsen. You never did, and I expect my ordering you to terminate Bastien Toussaint was the final straw. I didn’t realize you went both ways for pleasure as well as duty. I don’t imagine your wife or Bastien’s little hausfrau would be pleased to hear about that.”

  Peter merely looked at him. ‘Do you seriously believe you’ll annoy me with something a puerile as that? You’ve lost your edge in your retirement.”

  The pale pink in Thomason’s plump cheeks darkened. “Hardly retirement, dear
boy. And your sexual activities are of no interest to me.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. I’ve given up fucking for the Committee, so I’m afraid I’d have to turn you down.”

  That last was possibly a mistake. Thomason was a vindictive, petty man, and he wouldn’t like having his virility questioned, particularly since he was so well closeted he was practically immured. But he was an old hand at this game, a worthy opponent, and he barely blinked, his pouchy eyes darting like a lizard’s. “Let’s keep this civilized, shall we’? I know the veneer of breeding is particularly thin in your case, but I would hope it wouldn’t crack so easily. You aren’t so far removed from that bloody little brat who almost beat another child to death with his bare hands. Your talent for violence started early on, long before your pretensions to gentility. Just because your carelessness got you crippled and stuck in an office doesn’t mean your killer instinct is gone.”

  “You should keep that in mind,” Peter said, unmoved by Thomason’s taunts. “In the meantime, whether or not you’re my superior, I’m not leaving this office unlocked. If you’re allowed access to our files, then you should be able to bring them up on your own computer.” Thomason had always been a notorious technophobe, but it was also unlike him to trust anyone enough to help him. The life expectancy for his secretaries and personal assistants had been appallingly short. Thomason made a sound halfway between a grunt and a snarl. “Then I take it you’re not interested in the mess Isobel has gotten herself into?” “In the years I’ve known Isobel I’ve never seen her unable to deal with what has to be done.” Peter wasn’t sure just how much Thomason knew about her current assignment, and he wasn’t about to offer any information.