kicked, trying to get his feet under him, and grabbed and slapped at Konstantin’s hand in between screams and howls of pain.
Konstantin threw him across the room and just stood there over him, watching Devere scramble around naked.
“I never break a promise,” he said. “It is a Russian thing, all about honor.”
“Please,” Devere said, looking up and at the same time trying to draw his entire body in on itself to present the smallest target he could to the Russian.
“Please? Please what?” Konstantin mocked. “Please don’t kill me?” Konstantin shook his head. “Not interested in that. Not interested in pleasing you at all. I was in Berlin. I saw what your money did. I saw them dragging the bodies out of the subway, all of those innocent people. Do you think they begged as they suffocated from the gas?”
“I didn’t…” Devere pleaded.
“Yes you did. Have the balls to admit it. Maybe if you repent desperately enough in the next few minutes, God might forgive you, but I doubt it. I think there’s a special place in hell reserved for scum like you.”
“What do you want me to say?” Miles Devere looked pitiful, shivering, naked, clutching his legs under his chin, trying to hide his penis and his vulnerability, and utterly lacking any kind of spine or dignity. This was the real Devere stripped of all the power money could buy. This was the man stripped down to skin and bone and found wanting.
“I want you to do more than just ‘say,’ Miles. I want you to do what you do best… I want you to buy me. I wat you to buy your life from me.”
Devere’s eyes lit up, his face suddenly feral in the moonlight. “Name your price. Anything.”
“Five thousand,” Konstantin said. “No, make that ten. Ten thousand.”
Devere almost laughed. “Ten thousand? Is that it? Not a million. Not a house in the Bahamas and a yacht? Ten thousand? Have you got no imagination?” Devere was in his element suddenly, bargaining, haggling, trying to fix a price, looking to capitalize on tragedy. “I can give you more. I can give you more than you can imagine. I can give you so much money it’ll make your Russian dick hard just thinking about the numbers. Try again, name your price.”
“Ten thousand,” Konstantin said and sniffed. He started to undo the buttons of his shirt and peel it off.
Devere shook his head. “You don’t get it. I can give you everything, all you want and more. Your wildest dreams. It’s only money. I can always get more money.”
Konstantin draped his shirt over the back of the leather armchair. “You haven’t asked ten thousand what.”
Devere shook his head, suddenly unsure as the ground shifted away beneath him. “Ten thousand what?” he asked, his voice quieter now, like he didn’t want to hear the answer.
Konstantin kicked off his shoes one at a time.
“People. Ten thousand dead people. I want you to give them their lives back. You’re to blame for their deaths-give them back their lives. You owe them. If you can’t do that, then you’ve got nothing I am interested in.”
Devere shook his head. “It’s impossible… You can’t bring people back from the dead. You can’t.”
“Then I think our business here is done, don’t you?” Konstantin asked.
“No. Please… please.”
Konstantin didn’t listen.
He undid his belt and stripped out of his trousers and boxers.
And naked he went to war.
He took his time, watching the clock slowly move around to five in the morning while he made Devere hurt. He beat him until he was bloody. He beat him until the flesh of his face caved in. He beat him until he couldn’t breathe because his body was ruined. He beat him until he gave up begging and just wanted it over. He beat him until he was covered in his blood. Devere was right. No amount of beating would bring them back. No amount of pain could put right all of the hurt he had caused with his relentless pursuit of money. Konstantin didn’t care. This was about making good on a promise.
He beat Miles Devere to death with his bare hands.
It was the Russian way. No distance between them. No advantage. It was man against man-naked, raw, like gladiators of old. He pretended it meant he had given Devere a chance. He hadn’t. When he was done he went through to the bathroom and washed Devere’s blood off his naked body, then dressed.
He left the apartment by the front door.
30
Noah was desperate. Time was merciless and Monsignor Gianni Abandonato was a ghost. The Vatican refused to open its doors to him. He had no legitimacy. That was the drawback of going off the books. When things were desperate, when the clock was ticking and all hell was waiting to break loose, there was no one he could turn to. Not that he was inclined to ask for help.
Noah was a lone wolf, an old-school warrior. Not one of those team players like Frost. He had spent his time as a professional soldier doing the job no one would officially admit existed but everyone knew did. Officially he had been classified as a marksman. That was a nice word for sniper, which in turn was a nice word for assassin. He killed people the government wanted dead. He didn’t need to justify himself by saying he was only following orders. That might have been true, but Noah believed in what he did. He wondered how much pain the world would have been saved if he had been given bin Laden, back when he was called Usama, not Osama, and he wasn’t the poster boy for global terrorism. Or Hussein. Of course it wasn’t that simple.
Back then Usama had been our best friend against the bigger enemy, Russia. He’d been a rising star in the Mujahedeen, a local warlord who was making spectacular inroads against the Red Army. The West wanted Russia out of Afghanistan, and getting into bed with the likes of Usama was the cost of that. They called it The Greater Good. Noah believed in the Greater Good. The Greater Good would have been served if someone had fed bin Laden to his mountain goats tasty morsel by tasty morsel. The Greater Good would have been served by purging Iraq of the family Hussein after the first Gulf War when we started to hear the truth of his reign. The cold, hard truth was that the Greater Good was hardly ever served in the real world. People were too frightened, or their hands were too tied. That was where he had come in. That was where he still came in. He had a different uniform and didn’t salute anymore, but the missions hadn’t really changed all that much.
One bullet was all it would take, but to actually fire that bullet he had to find Abandonato.
Nine days ago, when he had walked out of the basilica of St. Peter’s and gone looking for the priest, he had actually been worried for the man. His first thought was that he had been taken. That somehow one of Mabus’ people had got to him while Noah chased his quarry in a merry dance across the streets of Rome all the way toicide in St. Peter’s.
It had taken him longer to realize the truth.
He should have worked it out sooner, but sometimes he wasn’t the quickest thinker. It had never been a prerequisite for his chosen career. He did what he was told, which implied someone had to tell him what to do, and more often than not, what to think.
Then he started to think for himself. Nick Simmonds couldn’t have survived inside the Vatican alone. A simple volunteer wouldn’t get access to the right parts of the archives and the right texts no matter how much help the holy librarians were in need of. There were too many secrets down there they wanted to protect. Abandonato had almost said as much. But like most people who didn’t want to get caught into giving themselves away, he had checked himself. Simmonds would have needed someone to sign off on his assignments, someone to oversee his work.
There was no way a group of people so used to protecting some of the most precious and unique records of the written and printed word, the very thoughts of people thousands of years dead in some cases, would let just
