able to expose the monsters and slay them for the good of the Games when you cannot.
– Cronus
Chapter 16
AS HE FINISHED reading the letter a second time, Knight felt more upset, more anxious than before. Thinking of the letter in the light of what had been done to Marshall, Cronus came across as a madman – albeit a rational one – who made Knight’s skin crawl.
Making it worse, the creepy flute melody would not leave Knight’s thoughts. What kind of mind would produce that music and that letter? How did Cronus make it work together to produce such a sense of imminent threat and violation?
Or was Knight too close to the case to feel any other way?
He got a camera and began shooting close-ups of the letter and the supporting documents. Jack came over. ‘What do you think, Peter?’
‘There’s a good chance that one of the Furies, as he calls them, tried to run Lancer down this afternoon,’ Knight replied. ‘A woman was driving that cab.’
‘What?’ Pope exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’
‘I just did,’ Knight said. ‘But don’t quote me.’
Hooligan suddenly brayed, ‘Big mistake!’
They all turned. He was holding something up with a pair of tweezers.
‘What’ve you got?’ Jack asked.
‘Hair,’ Hooligan said in triumph. ‘It was in the glue on the envelope flap.’
‘DNA, right?’ Pope asked, excited. ‘You can match it.’
‘Gonna try, eh?’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Day or so for a full recombinant analysis.’
Pope shook her head. ‘You can’t have it for that long. My editor was specific. We had to turn it all over to Scotland Yard before we publish.’
‘He’ll take a sample and leave them the rest,’ Jack promised.
Knight headed towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Pope demanded.
Knight paused, not sure of what to tell her. Then he gave her the truth. ‘I’m guessing that first sentence is written in ancient Greek so I’m going to pay a call on that bloke James Daring – you know, the fellow who has that show
‘I’ve seen him,’ Pope snorted. ‘Nattering boob thinks he’s Indiana Jones.’
Hooligan shot back, ‘That “nattering boob”, as you call him, holds doctorates in anthropology and archaeology from Oxford and is the bloody curator of Greek Antiquities at a famous museum.’ The science officer looked at Knight. ‘Daring
Through the glass plate of her hood Knight could see the reporter twist her lips, as if she was tasting something tart. ‘And then?’ Pope asked at last.
‘Guilder, I suppose.’
‘His partner?’ Pope cried. ‘I’m coming with you!’
‘Not likely,’ Knight said. ‘I work alone.’
‘I’m the client,’ she insisted, looking at Jack. ‘I can trot along, right?’
Jack hesitated, and in that hesitation Knight saw the weight of concern carried by the owner of Private International. He’d lost five of his top agents in a suspicious plane crash. All had been integral players overseeing Private’s role in security at the Olympics. And now Marshall’s murder and this lunatic Cronus.
Knight knew he was going to regret it but he said, ‘No need for you to be on the spot, Jack. I’ll change my rules this once. She can
‘Thanks, Peter,’ the American said, with a tired smile. ‘I owe you once again.’
Chapter 17
IN THE DEAD of night, forty-eight hours after I opened fire and slaughtered seven Bosnians sometime in the summer of 1995, a shifty-eyed and swarthy man who smelled of tobacco and cloves opened the door of a hovel of a workshop in a battle-scarred neighbourhood of Sarajevo.
He was the sort of monster who thrives in all times of war and political upheaval, a creature of the shadows, of shifting identity and shifting allegiance. I’d learned of the forger’s existence from a fellow peace keeper who’d fallen in love with a local girl who was unable to travel on her own passport.
‘Like we agree yesterday,’ the forger said when I and the Serbian girls were inside. ‘Six thousand for three. Plus one thousand rush order.’
I nodded and handed him an envelope. He counted the money, and then passed me a similar envelope containing three fake passports: one German, one Polish and one Slovenian.
I studied them, feeling pleased at the new names and identities I’d given the girls. The oldest was now Marta. Teagan was the middle girl, and Petra the youngest. I smiled, thinking that with their new haircuts and hair colours, no one would ever recognise them as the Serbian sisters that the Bosnian peasants called the Furies.
‘Excellent work,’ I told the forger as I pocketed the passports. ‘My gun?’
We’d left my Sterling with him as a good-faith deposit when I’d ordered the passports. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was thinking just that.’
The forger went to a locked upright safe, opened it, and took out the weapon. He turned and aimed it at us. ‘On your knees,’ he snarled. ‘I read about a slaughter at a police barracks near Srebrenica and three Serbian girls wanted for war crimes. There’s a reward out. A large one.’
‘You stinking weasel,’ I sneered, keeping his attention on me as I slowly went to my knees. ‘We give you money, and you turn us in?’
He smiled. ‘I believe that’s called taking it coming and going.’
The silenced 9mm round zipped over my head and caught the forger between the eyes. He crashed backward and sprawled dead over his desk, dropping my gun. I picked it up and turned to Marta, who had a hole in her right- hand jacket pocket where a bullet had exited.
For the first time I saw something other than deadness in Marta’s eyes. In its place was a glassy intoxication that I understood and shared. I had killed for her. Now she had killed for me. Our fates were not only completely entwined, we were both of us drunk on the sort of intoxicating liquor that ferments and distils among members of elite military units after each mission, the addictive drink of superior beings who wield the power over life and death.
Leaving the forger’s building, however, I was acutely aware that more than two days had passed since the
