Howard Saint.
“T.J.,” he said, spreading his arms wide to show that he wasn’t packing, that he was no threat. “I was looking to call you, man. You heard what happened?”
T.J. nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. We heard.”
“I can’t believe it,” Micky said. “I never thought—”
“No,” T.J. said. “You didn’t think at all, did you?”
Those were the last words that were exchanged for quite some time.
In between punches, Micky tried to reason with the three men. It wasn’t his fault; his ass had been on the line, too; they could see that, couldn’t they?
Unfortunately, no such admission was forthcoming.
T.J. and his buddies manhandled him into the car. They sat him in the back, then manhandled him a little more. They stopped manhandling him long enough to march him up to the second story of Saints and Sinners, at which point they began manhandling him again.
When the beating finally stopped, Micky looked up to find that at some point during his ordeal, another man had entered the room.
The lights were down low. He had to squint to make out features—not Howard Saint, not one of the Verducci brothers, though this guy had a goatee, too, and was—
The man took a step forward, into the light, and Micky’s blood ran cold.
The newcomer was Quentin Glass.
If Micky hadn’t realized before how much trouble he was in, he knew it now for a fact. Glass was Howard Saint’s right hand—his knife hand, some people said. He did the dirty work. He enjoyed the dirty work, according to those same people. Enjoyed it as in enjoyed seeing people suffer.
Glass knelt down next to Micky and shook his head.
“You sell homegrown pot by the ounce, Micky, not by the barrel. You sell badly forged fake passports to Haitians. What inspired you to become the Mr. Universe of International Arms Dealers?”
Duka tried to gather his thoughts. He found he had only one at the moment: I don’t want to die.
“Micky?”
“I was infected by the virus of greed, Mr. Glass, but I’m learning my lesson. I swear I am.”
“Micky? You should apologize for the death of Mr. Saint’s youngest child.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He tried to explain. “Okay, I know how it looks, but Bobby, he buys pot from me, and when he found out what I was doing, he insisted on coming in. He put up half the cash! Came of his own free will!”
Glass’s face remained a stone mask, his eyes unreadable.
Micky was starting to sweat.
“If you’re going to kill me, would you leave my face alone—for my mother?”
Glass shook his head and stood up then. He motioned T.J. and the other two men forward.
The beating began again, much worse this time. Micky realized that they must have been holding back before. Or maybe he’d just had enough.
“Please,” he croaked. “Please—”
Someone grabbed his hair and lifted his head up off the floor. Glass again.
“We just made your bail,” he said, his voice icy calm. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have left you in jail where we have friends, and in some way that I can only describe as deeply pornographic, you would have been killed. But you’re a small piece of shit, and I don’t want the karma of your murder on my soul.”
Glass let go of the hair. Micky’s head hit the ground again—hard—but he didn’t care about that. Had he just heard right? Glass wasn’t going to kill him?
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Glass,” he sputtered. “Thank you I—”
Glass held a cigarette in one hand. He raised the other to stop Micky from talking.
“Shhh,” he said.
Micky shhh’d.
Glass lit his cigarette. Took a long, slow drag off it, then frowned.
“On the other hand, maybe I don’t believe in karma. In which case . . .”
Glass turned back to T.J. The big man smiled thinly, and smacked his fist into his palm.
“Guys?”
The three men started forward again.
“No,” Micky blurted out. “I’ll tell you anything you want.”
“Then this’ll be quick. I want to know one thing only. Who brokered the deal?”
“His name was Otto Krieg. And if it’s any comfort to Mr. Saint, he’s dead, too.”
Glass nodded.
“Good. Thank you, Micky.”
Duka let out a sigh of relief . . . and then noticed, for the first time, the door on the far wall, opposite the one he’d been brought through. It stood slightly ajar. Through it, he glimpsed a window, and through that, the Tampa skyline.
Silhouetted in the door frame, he saw the shadow of a man. The shadow stepped forward and spoke.
“Yes, thank you. But I’m afraid that it’s no comfort, Micky. No comfort at all.”
Micky looked up and met Howard Saint’s eyes—and realized that his troubles, far from being over, were just beginning.
FIVE
Cushioned leather seats. Single-malt scotch. Breakfast cooked to order . . .
Frank Castle, riding in far more luxury than he was used to, sat back in his seat, closed his eyes, and smiled.
“Tired?”
Castle cracked one eye. Across the aisle from him in the Gulfstream’s small cabin, MI-5 liaison Danny Jenkins raised his own drink—hot tea—to his lips, and took a sip.
“No. Too keyed up to be tired.”
Which was the truth. Frank doubted he’d be able to sleep for a while yet—even with the delay in Tampa, his mind was still filled with images from the shoot-out gone sour. The seared edges of his shirt where the squibs had exploded. Astrov, his bodyguards, and Bobby Saint lying dead on the pier, blood pooling around their bodies. Weeks, and Duka, and—
“I would think so.” Jenkins reached underneath his seat and pulled out a briefcase. “Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind having a look at the file now. It would save me a drive out to your place tomorrow.”
Castle managed a smile. Jenkins had flown all the way from London, via Miami, just to take this charter with him. The man had no doubt been instructed to pry Castle’s eyes open if necessary to make sure he reviewed the information tonight.
Frank held out his hand, and Danny put a file into it. Settling back in his seat, Castle began to read.
It was an MI-5 file on two Chechen extremists who had recently been tracked coming into the United Kingdom from Toronto. MI-5—Jenkins’s service—was asking for any FBI intelligence on the men. It was Frank’s job to determine whether or not to grant that request—to evaluate if any U.S. intelligence sources might be compromised in the process. He was supposed to be making that evaluation on English soil, from his new desk as London FBI liaison. A job that didn’t formally start for another two weeks. But the desk was empty until his arrival, and MI-5 needed the information now.
“Can’t give you a yes or no at this second,” Castle said, handing back the file. “But I’ll make some calls first thing in the morning.”
“Yes. Of course,” Jenkins said.
“But you knew that already. Danny—tell me you didn’t take this trip just to look me over.”
“I didn’t take this entire trip just to look you over.” The man smiled. “Though of course I did have a certain . . . curiosity. Especially after the way Litton raved about you.” Litton was ex-SAS; he and Frank had worked together in Bosnia, when Castle was Major Frank Castle of Delta Force. It was through Litton that Frank had gotten his new job. “No. What we really wanted, Frank, was to get you up to speed on the Chechen situation as soon as possible. It’s not just these two—there’s an entire group of them gathering in the U.K., and they’re definitely up to something
