She clasped her phone tightly and made for Carver, who seemed bewildered. He sat on a metal equipment chest and caught his breath. His detail bristled as she approached, and a couple of agents stepped toward her.
“Please stay back, ma’am,” one of them said.
“She’s okay,” Greg told his colleagues, but his words didn’t really register because Wilson yelled over him.
“Get this woman out of here! She poses a security risk.”
“Henry?” Carver said.
“I think she’s been working with the people behind all this,” he replied. “The people who just tried to shoot you. She knew about the attack in advance. She caused a distraction when it happened.”
“Me?” Justine said in disbelief. “Why would I warn you about an attack I was a part of?”
“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” Wilson responded.
“You’re the one who’s behind this,” Justine said. “You’ve been helping Roman Verde.”
“I knew she’d do this,” Wilson said with an exasperated sigh. “She’s trying to make the people in this room distrust one another. Which is why she needs to be placed under arrest and taken away from here. She’s the outsider. She doesn’t belong. And she’s dangerous. Get her out!”
Obviously tired of talking, he stepped forward and grabbed Justine’s wrist, which was still sore from being manhandled by Greg. She wasn’t about to allow herself to be assaulted by a man she suspected had betrayed his country and employer, and who had likely played a role in her own abduction and the attempted murder of her and her friends.
She slipped his grasp and slapped him hard.
He staggered back for a moment, but when his shock evaporated, he lunged for her, swinging his fists.
Justine ducked and dodged his wild punches, and Greg stepped in and responded to the attack with a right cross that caught the smaller man on the nose and knocked him on his backside.
“What the hell is happening?” Carver asked.
Henry Wilson wiped his bleeding nose gingerly and tried to stand, but Greg pushed him back down.
“Stay there,” he said, before turning to Justine. “You wanted to look at his arm. Which one?”
“No!” Wilson protested. “You can’t do this.”
“Both,” Justine replied.
He tried to resist as Greg came at him.
“Pete, can you get hold of this guy?” Greg asked, and one of his colleagues stepped forward, squatted and put Wilson into a chokehold.
“It’ll be easier on you if you cooperate,” Greg said. “But you don’t have to be conscious for this.”
Henry Wilson stopped struggling while Greg ripped open his shirt and pulled his jacket off to expose his bare upper arms.
There, tattooed on the inside of Henry’s upper right arm, where the skin was at its softest and most sensitive, was the fleur-de-lys inside the Jerusalem Cross, the mark of Propaganda Tre.
Chapter 85
“It’s just a tattoo,” Wilson said.
“I know exactly what it is,” Carver responded coldly.
His aide’s indignation and anger melted away to be replaced by shame. He started shaking and seemed to shrink as he cowered on the floor of the store.
“Why, Henry?” Carver asked, gesturing at the tattoo. “What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer. Tears filled his eyes. He looked like a child caught out in a lie, and Justine’s experience told her the shame he felt was for his exposure, not his wrongdoing. Criminals who repented rarely did so immediately, and this kind of reaction was grounded in self-pity and a sense of humiliation rather than genuine contrition.
“I can answer your questions, Mr. Secretary, but right now I need your help,” she said. “Jack’s trying to find someone, and he believes they were in communication with this number.” She held out her phone and showed him details of the most recent call. “I need you to run a trace as fast as you can.”
Carver nodded. “Do it,” he said to the man called Pete, who’d had his arms around Wilson’s neck.
Pete approached Justine and took a photograph of the number displayed on her phone screen.
“Thanks,” she said. He remained impassive.
With the air of someone who rarely smiled, he stepped into the far corner of the room and typed a message into his phone.
Justine turned to Carver. “Jack suspected they were going to use him to target you because he could get close. They gave him a 3-D printed resin gun and bullets to circumvent security. The other shooter was meant to be a backup, but he became their primary after I escaped, didn’t he?”
Her question was directed at Wilson, who didn’t respond.
“But this was a contingent trip. It would only take place if the summit ended early. And it wasn’t known outside your immediate circle, which is why we suspected someone was working against you, feeding information to Philip Duval, who was sending it on to Propaganda Tre. I never expected that person to be a member of the group too.”
Carver looked as though he’d been punched. “Is this true, Henry?”
He couldn’t even bring himself to look at the man he’d betrayed.
“I bet an investigation will find he has a secret phone he used to send coded messages giving information on your movements to another phone in Duval’s possession.”
Wilson’s expression of shame seemed to intensify.
“Your friend and colleague set you up, Mr. Secretary,” Justine said, noting Carver’s pained expression. “The only thing I don’t know is why.”
“They didn’t tell me,” Wilson responded, finally breaking his silence. His eagerness to talk suggested to Justine he was lying. “I’m low down in the organization.”
Carver’s face hardened. It was one thing to hear Justine’s explanation and speculation, quite another to hear a confession. The Secret Service detail closed around the disgraced aide and Justine could feel their anger. She guessed they weren’t just enraged by the betrayal of their principal, but also by the fact the aide had put them in the line of fire.
“I don’t think he’s telling the truth,” Justine said. “I think he’s lying and that he knows why you were targeted, Eli.”
Wilson scowled at her.
“I want him taken into custody,” Carver said. “I want him on the next plane home, and I want him to be given special VIP treatment. And when he’s told us everything he knows, I want him to stand trial.”
Carver pushed his way through the gathered Secret Service agents and stood over Wilson.
“I’m going to make you regret you were ever born.”
Pete looked up from his phone. “We have a hit, sir. The number Ms. Smith gave us was used to call a phone in Monaco. I’ll have a location in a few seconds.”
Chapter 86
We waited impatiently. I sat at the stern with the outboard motor idling, while Stamp was in the bow of the RIB, holding the line loosely looped around a cleat to keep it connected to the Sunset Prince.
I could feel the determination radiating off him, as though sheer force of will would bring him the location of his wife. I sympathized. That had been me a few days ago, when I’d been frantic and would have done anything to get Justine back. I doubted I could have sat as patiently as Stamp was doing now and could only admire the man’s external stoicism in the face of what I knew was inner turmoil.
I regretted Michel’s death and that of the other guy I’d kicked down the stairs into the galley. It turned out he wasn’t unconscious; the fall had broken his neck, killing him instantly. This meant there was no chance of extracting Angie’s location from either man, and instead of facing justice for their crimes, both had experienced quick and relatively painless deaths, which felt too much like an escape.