“Where’s my physician?”
“In isolation, all of them, this is a nasty virus.”
“But I need something—”
The door opened and another suited, earphoned, Secret Service agent came in, had a quiet conversation with the first. Charles didn’t have much time.
He dropped his voice. “How’s Mack Hillard III these days?”
“We agreed never to speak of that.” Jed shifted on the couch, his forehead beaded sweat as though the air conditioning wasn’t on full blast.
Charles sat next to him.
“You’re not worried about catching it?”
“Not one bit. I just wanted to say a couple of words to you.” He turned to watch Jed’s reaction. “Nancy,” her name sighed out of him, “Tony, Hunter, Duncan.”
Jed waved a that’s not important gesture.
“I don’t understand.” Charles said.
“Does it matter? That’s all in the past.”
Conscious of the two itchy trigger fingers standing near the door of the suite, Charles locked away what he really wanted, needed, to say.
“What about the rest of us who helped you? Rory, Ted, Aleksandr, me?”
“You were safe enough, I’m not stupid enough to harm my money tree. I wanted to shake you up a little, remind you who’s calling the shots. We want more of what you just did, the poison thing, it’s the flagstaff product in the arsenal of our special weapons unit.”
Charles stared at Jed. He bought it? It was on him he hadn’t looked too deeply at the shell corporation that CJ had sourced as the buyer. But it had been Jed behind it?
Jed looked at Charles, he was growing greyer by the minute, his breathing becoming more laboured. But his eyes remained sharp, the knowing in them something Charles wanted to beat out of him.
“Ingenious by the way, we’d have paid more. Aleksandr,” Jed shook his head, “his wife, as I understand it, were perfect test subjects. Your wife not so much, we dodged an international incident there, got the wrong target.”
“You went after Eva?”
Jed pulled himself upright, not entirely succeeding. Another agent came into the room, right up to him.
“Are you okay, Sir?”
“Feeling a little rough, gotta admit, not bad enough to alert Owen though. Where’s that water?”
Charles would have been surprised if the Vice President wasn’t already aware.
“I’ll chase it, Sir.”
“You went after Eva?” Charles hissed again.
“I did think twice, innocent as she is in all of this. But, you were getting,” Jed coughed. “You needed a tighter leash.”
“You’ve overstepped.” The rant, the rage, the gloating over what was happening to his former friend, Charles wanted to let it all loose. But scrutiny from the doorway and strategic points in the room, held him in check.
“I’m holding the cards, Charles. I wasn’t going to tell you but hell, since we’re being so honest, you should understand your position completely. Your Nobel nomination, why you lost it, I did that, I told them you’d plagiarised it, sent them the specs you drew up to cripple Hillard’s product. All done under your birth name if you can remember, Maxwell Peyton, who had an unhappy meeting with the bottom of a cliff after you left the programme for the UK. A potentially brilliant man, life cut tragically short. So you see, your insurance, the one you were bleating about to Dennis, it’s useless, it’s already out there in the world. Any comeback over the Hillard thing can be explained away.”
But I killed you, Charles screamed it in his mind. Him knowing he’d got the last shot in, the one that counted, wasn’t enough. He wanted, needed, Jed to know it as he took his last breath. But if Charles gave into the white hot fury rampaging through him, his future would be worse than Jed’s. He needed to leave before he couldn’t hold it in check any longer. “I’ll get you something.”
“I’m just going to get some medication for the President, okay?” Charles told the agent. “I’ll be back momentarily.”
He walked towards the lifts. Over so quickly, after everything he’d expected to feel more.
58
“It was a clever idea.” Luke handed Eva a glass of freshly squeezed orange. “You’ve probably saved thousands of lives.”
But what about the ones who didn’t hear the warning in the call to prayer before they drank? Before every mosque in Marrakech picked it up and broadcast it? What about Lily who wouldn’t understand it?
She stared at the drink.
“I saw them make it, no water.”
The juice was sweet, delicious. Maybe it would stem her rising nausea, tensing panic.
The restaurant was crowded, the laughter and chatter all at odds with what she imagined was happening behind closed doors in houses downstream from the pumping station.
“Why didn’t you tell me we’re on the same side?”
Luke leant in towards her. “Gordon wanted you to be unbalanced, to keep Charles off guard. He wasn’t sure where his loyalties lay.”
Neither was Eva.
Luke’s mobile rang.
Please let it be something.
In the deepening chaos tearing through the city, a fan of banknotes was the best way to hail a ride. The man who stopped didn’t have a taxi sign on his roof, nor a numbered sticker on the door. Eva didn’t care.
Luke showed his phone, gestured with the notes, said something Eva had no hope of understanding. The man nodded and drove like the back of the car was on fire.
Dropped at the dead-end of a road, Luke rushed them on in the darkness where Google maps lit their path through a maze of pedestrian only walkways.
He stopped in front of a riad set below the pavement level. “This is it. But it could be nothing to do with Lily.”
Eva nodded, yes, yes, but it might.
The tile set into the wall beside a substantially padlocked wooden door read ‘Riad Lucky Eight’. How did this fit into Charles’ life? Who lived here?
She pulled at the padlock. Charles had locked
