“Mila may be dead.”
He sat. “She works for the Round Table.”
“Round Table? Like King Arthur’s Round Table?”
“Mila likes to pretend they date back to a distant time, but it’s simply a name. They’re a group of powerful and wealthy people who have joined forces over many years, and I don’t know more than that. I do know I can make phone calls and certain resources are arranged for Mila, or for whoever is working for her.”
“Okay, I am working for King Arthur.” I nearly laughed. With all the insanity of the day, I felt on edge.
“No, sir.” Kenneth seemed alarmed that I believed this.
“And the Round Table owns the bars? Adrenaline, De Rode Prins in Amsterdam?”
He nodded. “Under a front company.”
“Why do you work for them? What’s your background?”
He studied me for a moment. Then he said, very formally, “Ten years ago I was accused of murdering a former girlfriend. I was innocent, but I was convicted and I went to prison. Mila’s employers helped me prove my innocence and they found the real killer. I owe them. And I have an interest in justice now I did not have before.”
“Is that Mila’s background, too? Falsely accused and saved by the Round Table?” Just like me.
“I cannot say because I do not know. Does it matter, right now? We must help Mila.”
“All right. I need transport to the United States. For me and for a prisoner inside that room. I can’t cart her through first class in chains. Can you arrange that?”
“Yes. I can put you on a private plane.” Kenneth went to a phone and picked it up to make a call. He hesitated. “Do you think Mila’s dead?”
“I hope not. I hope I’m going to get her. Because I think whoever has her wants to know about this Round Table.”
“They won’t break her.” He said this with certainty.
Mila was Edward’s bonus. He knew that he and his employers were facing a formidable enemy in whoever Mila and I worked for. It was the only reason she’d been kept alive. Edward was, if anything, a constant opportunist.
I stared down at Lucy. “We’re going to go get on a plane shortly. If you try and break away from me, or create a scene, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand me, sweetheart?”
“Yes, monkey.” Lucy held up her wrists. “I understand you.”
95
The cabin was bare but functional. Me, Lucy and the pilot and copilot. They did not ask questions about our guest in chains.
“They’ve been told that she’s a prisoner of the CIA,” Kenneth said. “I thought you would appreciate the irony.”
“Thank you.”
Lucy ate the sandwich that I gave her and drank from a bottle of water.
The plane left England behind, soaring out over the dark heavy steel of the Atlantic.
“I have a question for you. How exactly does the chip get the DNA?”
“I could bore you with the detailed science, but you put a hair or a blood sample on the chip and it encodes the bullets with the target’s DNA. Then the bullet’s like a guided missile.”
“But he shot at you and missed.”
“He didn’t have my DNA on the chip. It acts as a normal gun without the DNA enhancement.”
“Does he have a chip with your DNA?”
She started to answer and then fell silent.
“He could and you don’t know.”
“If he’s smart he does. Edward won’t let anyone betray him.”
“I’ve been thinking hard about why you turned traitor, trying to see how someone like Edward, a psychopath, could lure you away from your life with me.”
“Well, when you were investigating these criminal networks, I used to see the numbers you crunched. You look at these crime rings, you see how much money they make. Billions and billions. Twenty percent of the world’s economy comes from illicit goods now. It’s easy money. You just need the right mix of skills. Smugglers, hit men, hackers. The right network. And then…” She looked at me coolly. “I’m a businessperson. They offered me some money. I knew I could clean it through Company accounts and make it vanish. At least, I thought I could. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone, giving them the files.”
“Tell me about Novem Soles.”
“I have a contact. He got me my money, but I’ve never met him.” She finished her sandwich. “I don’t even know how they got their name. But I found an old legend about nine suns on the Internet. Chinese. It says that there were once ten suns, but they wouldn’t come out just one at a time during the day. All ten would come and their heat and power would incinerate the world.” Her voice had grown very soft. “The emperor asked the father of the ten suns, Di Jun, to ask the suns to appear just one at a time, so the earth would not be remade in heat and flame. But the suns refused. So Di Jun sent an archer named Yi, with a magical bow and arrow, to frighten the suns, to make them obey. Instead Yi shot nine of them, so only one sun would remain.” She risked a smile. “Because the nine suns, returning, would destroy the world, annihilate whoever tried to tame them. I don’t even know if that story has anything to do with the Nine Suns, or why they use a Latin name if it’s based on a Chinese legend.” She smiled but there was no joy in it. “Nine people who could remake the world, that’s how they think of themselves.”
“Is Edward one of the nine? Or is he a flunky?”
“I don’t know.”
“These fifty people. What’s special about them?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No, it’s not.” Lucy drew her knees up to her chin. She peered at me above them. “When you asked me to marry you, I almost said no. Not because I didn’t want to marry you. I did. But I felt like you wouldn’t be enough. I wanted a lot from life. I wanted money. I wanted respect. I wanted to work hard for ten years and then have enough to live on. Not work my fingers to the bone clawing up some male-run bureaucracy, not putting my life in danger for a bunch of ideals.” She slid her legs out in front of her and for a moment we were back in London, drinking lager in our apartment, talking about our future. “I knew you didn’t care about that. And for a time I thought I could live without the money. I couldn’t.”
I didn’t say anything. She was quiet for nearly forty minutes and I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “I think I will tell you a little bit about who I work for.”
“Why the change of heart?”
“Because do you think the Company’s really going to welcome you back? Even if you help them? Maybe they’ll give you a pardon. Maybe. But they’ll never, ever, let you work for them again. They won’t trust you. They won’t think you can follow orders. Orders trump all.”
“Are you telling me this to offer me a job?”
She stretched out a leg. “Consider it a lifeline. I think the Company will simply kill both of us when they’re done.”
“No.”
“Oh, not them officially. But there are rogue groups running inside.”
I looked hard at her. Could I have been so wrong for so long? The thought was a fist in my chest, in my brain. “I wasn’t enough for you. Marrying me wasn’t enough,” I said.
“Marrying you was… Marrying you was the right thing to do. I loved you. It was an act of optimism.”
“I don’t believe you loved me.”
She raised an arm, slid up the sleeve, and I saw a trio of round, brutal burns on her upper arm. “That was the
