The rifle trembled in his hands, his face distorted in passion as he chanted the words of praise into the lens of the camera, imagining the terror that would seize hold of the viewers. The Pakistanis joined in the chorus, their voices ringing across the floor of the convention center, echoing off the concrete walls. This was the moment they had lived their lives for, the fulfillment of destiny. “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”
Long live death…
“It was a brilliant plan, really,” Harry announced, circling the bound Andropov. “Some people would have kept it simple — just brought in a bombmaker, but you anticipated every eventuality, didn’t you?”
The oligarch remained silent. His confidence had evaporated after the execution-style slaying of his bodyguards, replaced by a sullen defiance.
“Sergei Korsakov is expensive enough…” Harry paused, watching the man’s eyes for any sign of recognition. Just a momentary flash, almost gone before he caught it. “But you hired his entire team, ex-Spetsnaz all. That tells me that money was no object — that your cut was large enough that you could afford to hire the best. Overkill even, but that always was what you Soviets were best known for.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vasiliev smile. His glance flickered to the opposite side of the room, where Andropov’s mistress sat, gagged and bound to a chair. If the incident with her had meant anything, it had only confirmed that he couldn’t trust the Russian.
Fortunately, trust was something he could work without. “Are we ready?”
A nod from Vasiliev. Harry walked over to Andropov’s desk, unfolding one of the thick, plush hand towels they had taken from the master bathroom. He dropped to one knee, plunging the towel elbow-deep into one of the five-gallon buckets of water he had carried up to the study. Alexei had tried to help, but with his arm…
“You know what I’m going to do, don’t you?” Harry asked, walking back around to the front of the oligarch, sparkling drops of water dripping all over the carpet.
“Da,” Andropov admitted grudgingly. “Do you think it will work?”
Harry smiled, pushing the oligarch’s chair until it tilted back against the desk, Andropov’s feet in the air. “I think we’ll both find out, now won’t we?”
He reached behind the man’s head, tying the towel tight back of the ears and arranging it over the forehead and eyes.
“Time to boogie, Valentin. Unless you’d rather save me the trouble?”
Drip. Drip. Drip. He felt the water splash against his bare cheeks, cold water, his brain registering the chill. The towel began to moisten, growing heavier as it hugged his face.
Drip. Drip. A calloused hand running over the bottom of his face, up his cheek until it met the edge of the towel, tugging the wet cloth down over his nose, then mouth. Drip, drip, drip.
The water was coming faster now, the soaked, heavy fabric sealing off his air.
Andropov closed his eyes against the blackness, forcing himself to focus. To remain calm.
Droplets trickled down his throat as he struggled to breathe, his oxygen-starved lungs inhaling the water instead. A burning sensation overwhelmed him, pain searing through his body.
Drowning, one of man’s most primal fears. He gagged violently, thrashing uncontrollably against the restraints that bound him to the chair.
He felt the metallic taste of blood in his mouth and realized through the near-unconscious haze that he had bitten his own tongue.
The darkness seemed to reach out, enfolding him, drawing him into its bosom. Almost gone — the cloth was ripped back suddenly, leaving him to gasp in huge mouthfuls of air.
The masked face appeared over him, hazy, almost as if he were hallucinating — seeing double. “You know what they all say about waterboarding, that it’s ‘unreliable’ — makes people lie, tell their interrogator whatever he wants to hear? Well that leaves you in a bit of a bind, Valentin…because you have no idea what I want to hear, and I will know if you lie to me.”
Before he could even think of a response, the towel descended again, plunging him back into the depths of hell.
They had been inside well over an hour, Carol thought, glancing down at the clock in the lower right-hand corner of her computer screen. A pre-arranged signal of shades opening and closing in an upper window was their only assurance that Harry and Vasiliev had been successful.
Successful? She wondered for a moment what was going on across the street, then decided it was probably better that she didn’t know.
In her desire to get to the bottom of her father’s murder, she had unleashed the forces of destruction. And there was as much hope of capturing the wind as reining them in now.
A beeping sound emitted from the computer, a program that she had set up as an early warning system monitoring the online police bandwidth.
We have a possible four-one-five, neighbor reporting a domestic disturbance. The address was for the Andropov estate.
Raising a hand, she waved Han over to where she sat. “We’ve got a new problem.”
“I really don’t enjoy doing this, Valentin,” Harry announced, pulling the wet, blood-flecked towel away from the Russian’s nose and mouth. “But then it doesn’t matter what I enjoy, does it? Because this is business — and I can keep it up all night unless you give me what I want.”
Andropov shook his head, his eyes still defiant against the ghostly pallor of his face. “No, you can’t.”
“Care to tell me who is going to stop me, Valentin Stephanovich?”
The oligarch coughed, spitting bloody phlegm onto the carpet of the study. “You are.”
Harry inclined his head to one side, regarding him incredulously. “Is that a fact?”
“Da.” Andropov managed a weak, yet contemptuous smile. “I have been trained to resist torture, but the human body can only take so much. We both know that.”
His chest heaved in another fit of coughing, his face distorted in pain as he endeavored to continue. “Keep this up much longer, no matter how careful you are, and I will begin to suffer brain damage. You’re not prepared to risk that, are you? To take the chance that the information you need so desperately could be gone forever?”
The worst of it was that Andropov was dead right, pinpointing the one thing they could not afford to place in jeopardy. Their weakness. Harry and Vasiliev exchanged glances. How far?
At that moment, Harry’s earpiece crackled with static. Carol’s voice. “Harry, you have a police cruiser inbound. Apparently someone contacted them regarding a domestic disturbance.”
“How did that get out?” he demanded softly, walking to the far side of the study so that Andropov couldn’t hear him. “I thought you had everything locked down.”
“I did. I don’t know how it happened, but you both need to get out of there now.”
His face hardened. “That’s not an option. How much time do I have?”
Being a cop in Beverly Hills sounded a lot more glamorous than it was, Deputy Joshua Lambert thought, guiding his Crown Victoria up the darkened street.