“Well, no, obviously I had to help.” He tossed the rest of his Scotch back. “But it’s ironic that a US weapons unit bought it. I gave Jed the weapon he used against us—”
“I’m sure you didn’t give it, I’m sure he must have paid handsomely for it.”
“Not handsomely enough.”
She placed a pen in front of him. “Is all of this why The Society was after us?”
“No.”
“Explain it to me.” It was too hard to look at him. She fussed with picking up the A4 envelope from Kristina’s desk and drawing out the contents.
“My former colleagues, Tony Banks, Aleksandr Oblov and myself, we instructed them to kill Jed Carson when Duncan disappeared.”
“Duncan?”
“Someone else I trained with. He vanished about a month ago, his body still hasn’t turned up. We took out a contract on Jed Carson in self-defence. But the money I was counting on to pay my share of their fee, well, CJ kept more of the broker’s fee for arranging the sale of my process than he should have, so I came up short. You don’t mess with them, we short-changed them, so they came after us in retaliation. We’re very fortunate to be alive—”
“You’re alive, Charles, because I got the contract on you cancelled.” Eva snapped. “Though I expect Jed’s team is still after you. Isn’t killing the President treason?”
He moved in his chair in something resembling a shrug. So cold-hearted?
Eva distracted herself by pouring him another drink. “What about the other leaders you murdered, almost forty at last count, their partners, aides, half the hotel guests? What about the Moroccans you killed? How do you live with that?”
He leant forward to take the glass, “it was just like a drug trial. There are always casualties in those, but the knowledge gained and the leap ahead is worth the price. The greater good wins.”
“It was too high a price.”
He took a mouthful of scotch, drank it slowly before replying. “Scientific advancements cost.”
The effort of holding herself so tightly in check so she said nothing tensed her back, shoulders, jaw to breaking point.
She laid the document on the desk in front of her. “One last question, why the charm school? Why pretend to be British? The Americans are our allies, aren’t they?”
He half-laughed. “You think so. There’s a distrust even between allies, we all feel more comfortable dealing with one of our own. Suspicion never falls on them, only on the outsiders, and you Brits are the worst for that.”
She pushed the divorce papers across the desk to him and he signed by the pencilled crosses reading none of the text. “You always wanted to be like your father,” he laid the pen down parallel with the top edge of the document. “My parting gift to you is to say if you’d known the first thing about who he was as a person, you wouldn’t chase your starry-eyed version of him. He was egotistical, he’d stoop as low as he needed to get the jump on someone for his exclusive.”
Eva looked an icy warning at him. “Maybe I’m exactly like him. I know there’s enough evidence that was how he could be. But he would never knowingly have done harm to anyone. I knew the real him better than anyone, so did my mother. Why do you think she practically abandoned me when he died, let me raise myself? Because although she’d always looked elsewhere, she knew what she’d lost, that she’d never find it again, that mix that delighted, magnetised people to him, a heart that was pure.”
“You can twist any evidence to say what you want it to.”
“That’s not very scientific.”
He downed the rest of his drink and made to stand up but she held up one finger, who knew it was such a powerful gesture. “One thing you might like to know, for scientific purposes.”
“What’s that?” He leant forward in his chair.
“Did you ever test your agent in anything other than water?” She held back all her emotions, channelling nothing other than innocent curiosity.
“I told you it can be adapted to be used in anything.”
“How do you feel, Charles?”
His gaze snapped to the bottle on Kristina’s desk. Eva tossed the lid to him, the tiny puncture hole in its centre made by a syringe clearly visible.
“But, you wouldn’t.” He slumped as the realisation hit him.
“I think you’ll find I did.” She moved the bottle to the side. “It works well in alcohol, in case you were wondering.”
He stared at her untouched drink, sweat breaking out on his forehead.
“It was so helpful of you to leave your holdall behind at the riad. The compound and agent are being reverse engineered by British Intelligence. But I took a bit, for a road test. The agent’s in the Scotch. Our scientists weren’t sure it would work, thought alcohol might kill it but I can tell them the test has been a success. Or not, depending on who you are right now.”
“But you, you,” he conjured up a shout from somewhere.
“You can come in now.” Eva didn’t need to raise her voice, her quiet statement was heard by her audience on the other end of the muted phone and down the camera feed watching the scene from behind her.
Charles whipped round at the door opening but he wouldn’t recognise the tall brown-haired man in a black leather jacket and jeans who came in.
“This gentleman is going to escort you to where you’re going.” Eva told him.
“What, take me where?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Who hates you the most, Charles?” Eva asked. “You have your whole journey to figure it out. Is it the Moroccans? Maybe the Russians, could be any one of the countries whose leaders you killed. What about Britain? In all your learning how to be English, did you forget we don’t like being embarrassed? What about your countrymen? They don’t like their President being assassinated. Thinking it over should keep you occupied.
