One of the reasons he’d hired me was because I had rescued an American soldier over in Iraq. Saved his life. I don’t talk about it, but he had known the real story behind it. Suffice to say I wasn’t following standing orders – could probably have been court-martialled and dishonourably discharged.
Might have been better that way. Eventually I was invalided out and had to ride a wheelchair for a while. Jack Morgan had checked my references pretty thoroughly. Going so far as to talk with the injured young GI I had carried through a kill zone to medical help.
The fact that I had killed two other American soldiers who had shot him and were raping a suspected bomb maker’s wife didn’t faze him. He knew why, even if the people who gave me a medal for the rescue didn’t. And I sincerely hope they never did. But Jack Morgan approved, he knew the circumstances and he wanted to have a man capable of making his own decisions heading up his London operation. Getting the job done – whatever it took – and living with the consequences.
I guess I had proved that I could do that. To him, at least.
For me, though, things are never as black and white as I would have liked. Moral certitude is something that gets blown away pretty damn quickly when you take the King’s shilling and march overseas to another man’s war.
Or fly.
Like I was doing.
Chapter 3
On the steady tarmac of the JFK runway, I resisted the urge to drop to my knees and kiss the ground.
People were watching, after all, and small children were running ahead of me laughing and giggling as if they hadn’t been through seven hours of ordeal. Too young to realise the dangers, I rationalised, and headed for the airport entrance.
An hour later and I was waiting in the Blue Bar in the Algonquin, sipping on a chilled Peroni. I’d been treating the woman serving behind the bar to some of my wit but it was like bouncing pebbles off concrete. But suddenly she smiled.
Not at me. She was looking at the entrance and the man who was walking up to join me at the bar.
Jack Morgan.
He’s used to it. Let me tell you, Jack is a man to have as a friend not an enemy – but you don’t want him by your side if you’re in a bar looking to meet a nice lady for a dance.
‘Dan,’ he said, smiling, and stuck his hand out.
‘Jack,’ I said back and shook his hand. He was about an inch taller than me but built bigger. Could have played pro ball, one of his colleagues once told me and I didn’t doubt it. His uncle owned the Raiders for a start which probably would have helped.
He smiled at the woman behind the bar. ‘I’ll take my usual, please, Samantha,’ he said to her.
‘Coming right up, Mister Morgan.’
She flashed her dentistry again. That’s something the Americans are definitely world class in. Teeth.
‘I appreciate you coming out here, Dan.’
I turned back to Jack and shrugged. ‘You’re the boss.’
‘You’re the boss of London. I guess you’re wondering why I needed you for a simple babysitting job.’
‘I am a little curious,’ I admitted. ‘Couldn’t someone from the New York office have brought her over? We could have met her at the airport.’
‘The truth is,’ he replied, ‘there’s nothing simple about this case.’
Chapter 4
‘What do you know about Hannah Shapiro?’
‘Nothing at all. Your assistant said you’d fill me in, just told me to meet you here.’
‘Good. This is clearly on a need-to-know basis. Safer that way.’
Jack took the drink from the bar lady and laid his briefcase on the counter. Popping open the locks. ‘Apart from her first name, she has a completely new identity – surname, passport. Everything.’
‘Witness-protection programme?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Only not government-sanctioned?’
‘In fact it is.’
‘She’s how old?’
‘Hannah is nineteen.’
‘And I’m taking her back to England?’
‘You are.’
‘For how long?’
‘Three years, Dan.’
I looked at him quizzically and took a sip of beer. Then nodded. ‘Long enough to get a degree, I guess?’
Jack Morgan nodded, pleased. ‘You catch on fast.’
‘Where’s she going to be studying?’
‘Chancellors.’
I nodded right back at him. One of the oldest, one of the best. I looked down at the documents. Money was clearly not a problem. Private didn’t come cheap – even if it was for just a hand-holding job on a flight over the Pond.
‘This isn’t just a hand-holding exercise, Dan.’
I fought the urge to react. ‘It’s not?’
‘She’s extremely valuable cargo. I need an eye on her the whole time she’s over there in England. Looked after discreetly.’
‘Hard to be discreet if she goes round like Madonna with a crew of bodyguards the whole time.’
‘Indeed. Less of a bodyguard, more of a companion. Let us know if she starts falling in with the wrong kind of crowd. Discreetly. Eyes and ears.’
‘So discreet even Hannah herself doesn’t know about it?’
‘Right again.’
‘When’s her course start?’
‘September.’
I took a sip of my lager. ‘I might need some strings pulling.’
‘Way ahead of you.’ Jack nodded at the briefcase. ‘I’ve spoken to the dean of admissions.’
‘What’s she going to be reading?’
‘Psychiatry.’
I nodded thoughtfully again. ‘That could work.’
‘She’s had some issues in the past that I can’t talk about. Maybe this will help her deal with that.’
‘And we make sure she has the space to do so.’
‘Her father is a major client of ours, Dan. Seven figures major. So she’s important to us.’
‘What does he do?’
Jack looked at me with a small quirk of a smile. ‘He pays the bills.’
‘Like you said. Need-to-know basis.’
‘You got it, bubba.’ He clicked his glass against mine and drained it. ‘Okay. Let’s go meet the million-dollar baby.’
Chapter 5
I had expected the precious cargo I was going to be babysitting to be just that.
West Coast precious. Serious money, serious Valley attitude. I had her pictured pretty clearly in my mind’s eye – young, tanned and beautiful.
She was young, I got that much right at least. Looked even younger than she actually was.
Hannah’s hair was mousy brown, tied back. She wore tortoiseshell glasses, a simple skirt and blouse with a cardigan, flat shoes. I don’t know the name of the geeky girl from Scooby Doo, but she was like a thinner version of her without the confidence. Maybe a taller Ugly Betty. No make-up discernible to my eye, and my eye was pretty good in that respect. Nervous.
Hannah Shapiro looked like she wouldn’t say boo to a waddling duck, let alone a goose.
‘Hi, I’m Dan,’ I said. ‘Dan Carter.’ I held out my hand.
She shook it with her own small, delicate hand but didn’t say a word or make eye contact.
Maybe it was down to the confident air of masculine authority I exude. Maybe – but she looked as though a strong wind could knock her over. If she was going to be studying psychiatry I was surmising she had ambitions for the research side of the business. I couldn’t see her as a practitioner, with the couch and the reassuring voice and the leading questions. You had to be comfortable around people to do that kind of work.
Perhaps she was right to be nervous – she was standing next to Del Rio, after all.
Del Rio, one of Jack Morgan’s right-hand men from the West Coast office. He’d done four years’ hard time at the state’s pleasure, and looked perfectly capable of doing so again. But he was on our side of the law nowadays, if not exactly working within it.
But that was the whole point of Private, after all. We weren’t constrained by the same rules and regulations that restricted our uniformed counterparts. That was how we earned our money. And if half the rumours I had heard about Del Rio were true, he was more than willing to take the law into his own bare hands – take it with lethal consequences.