The old man came out of his bed, struggling to bring his legs around so they reached the floor. The wheelchair was beside the bed, but getting to it was agony. He reached out, trying to claw at the frame and drag it closer, and as it butted up against the bed frame he struggled to stand. Every muscle in his arms shivered as he labored, shifting his weight forward onto legs that wouldn’t hold him. Then he twisted and came down hard, falling rather than sitting into the chair.
Sweat trickled down the side of the old man’s face.
He looked around the room. His walking stick was on the window side of the bed.
His service revolver, a 1963 Webley Break-Top Revolver-one of the very last commissioned for the armed forces-was in the desk drawer on the far side of the room, under lock and key. It was a fragile lock, but he was an old man. And from the chair it was doubtful he could get the leverage he needed to yank the drawer out, breaking the brass tongue of the lock or the wood around it. There was a box of ammo in the drawer as well. He had hoarded them after the pistol was retired in ’63. Two cartridges per man, per year, was the old joke. By the time the gun went out of service ammo for it was in short supply. The double-action revolver could pump out twenty to thirty rounds in a minute, more than the chamber could hold and more than the old man had. The box of ammunition contained twelve cartridges.
It was one or the oer. The panic button was beside the walking stick, the phone on the desk.
He held his hands out in front of his face. They were shaking, and not just from the exertion of getting into the chair. Even if he broke the drawer open, his hands were so unsteady there was no guarantee he could load the revolver without spilling the shells all over the floor. Then again, he would only need one shot.
It wasn’t much of a choice.
He made a decision.
He steered the wheelchair toward the desk. It bumped against the side of the bed and off the carved legs of the desk itself, rattling everything on the top. He pulled at the drawer, but it refused to budge. He pulled at it again, more desperately this time. The entire desk shook with the force of the movement, but still the drawer didn’t budge. He couldn’t get any better purchase on it, or exert any more pressure on any of the stress points.
He heard footsteps in the hall outside.
The old man pulled so hard on the drawer he nearly pulled the entire desk down on him. The lock held. He slammed his hand off it, spitting a curse, then stopped trying. He gripped the chair and tried to angle it back toward the window.
The door opened behind him.
He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. He could see the intruder step into the room through the mirror above the desk. Wearing a black knitted balaclava with a ragged slash where the mouth had been cut out, and two narrow eye slits. Black curls slipped out from beneath the bottom of the balaclava. Even clothed head-to-toe in sexless black the woman’s well-defined curves gave her gender away.
Her left arm was considerably thicker than her right, misshapen. The old man realized it was sheathed in a light cast. He remembered Frost’s initial report from the house in Jesmond. This was the woman he had interrupted while she turned Sebastian Fisher’s apartment over. He had broken her arm in the struggle. And here she was breaking in again. The old man reached for the phone. He knew he couldn’t call, but knocking the handset out of the cradle would open a line, and an open line would blink on every telephone in the house. All he could do was hope that someone would see it. But who would see it? Max? Lethe? He had heard gunshots a moment before. She wouldn’t have just fired at an offending umbrella stand. Max would have gone to investigate the noise. Max. The old man couldn’t allow himself to regret or mourn. Max was dead or Max was alive; either way worrying about it now was pointless. He had his own sorry carcass to worry about/span›
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the woman said. She had an accent. It wasn’t distinct, but it was there even though she did her best to hide it. Middle Eastern, Israeli, or possibly Lebanese. Given the trail of breadcrumbs they’d been chasing back to Masada, Israel was the more likely of the two. The accent almost certainly meant it was the same woman who had got the jump on Frost in Jesmond, the old man realized.
“So Devere sent you to kill an old man in his chair?” Sir Charles asked, meeting her eyes in the backwards land through the looking glass. It made sense that Miles Devere would send one of his flunkies after him. It was all about power, showing Sir Charles that no matter how connected he was, no matter who he worked for or who he called friends, Devere could reach him. That was what the third call had been about. He had called London to arrange this little visit. “I’m flattered.”
“You should be,” the woman said, closing the door behind her.
“Perhaps we can make a deal?”
“I don’t make deals.”
“Everyone makes deals, my dear. There is a saying in my game, never send someone to kill a man with more money than you. I have a lot of money, believe me. Whatever Devere’s paying you I’ll double to send you back to his door. How does that sound?”
“Like a desperate man,” she said.
She was right. That was exactly how he sounded.
But then, that was how he wanted to sound. Any man in his situation ought to sound desperate. Desperate or resigned; he wasn’t resigned. He wasn’t that kind of man. He made things happen. That only left him with the option of sounding desperate. A desperate man with money would look to strike a deal, so that was exactly what he had done. If she was as good as she no doubt thought she was, she would have been able to see it in his eyes, the shifting gears as one gambit was rejected, thinking quickly, looking for another alternative, anything other than the bullet in the back of the head. It was in-field thinking-reassess, redeploy, react.
He stopped himself from reaching for the phone.
The chair meant he lookup at her through the mirror. It added to the illusion of helplessness. All she saw was an old man in a wheelchair. It would have helped if he had managed to open the drawer, but guns weren’t the only solution.
“Aren’t you going to increase your offer? Isn’t that what people like you do? Beg, plead, offer me riches beyond my wildest imagining?”
“No,” the old man said. “Not today. Today I am going to ask you if you are fond of life?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“No matter how good you think you are, do you really believe you can walk in here, kill me and walk out again without consequences?”
“And here we are again, the dying man’s twelve-step program. Denial, bargaining, and now we’re into the threats. For some reason, the way my client described you, I thought you might be different. This is disappointing. He made you sound like some colossus. I hate to break it to you, but step twelve is always the same. You die.”
“So it is pointless, my telling you about the security here, and what happens when my heart stops beating? My boy Lethe is a computer genius. Did Devere tell you that? Everything in this place is routed through the circuitry of my chair, dependent upon my heartbeat. My heart stops for some reason and Nonesuch goes into lockdown. There is no way out. When my team returns they will find you here. The good news is there is plenty of food, so you’ll be well fed at least.”
“You expect me to believe this is the Bat Cave and I just killed Alfred? It’s more creative than saying you’ve got the place surrounded by armed guards just waiting for your signal, I’ll give you that. But correct me if I am wrong, I don’t remember Bruce Wayne being a cripple?”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, isn’t that what they say?”
“Some do, I am sure, probably the same ones who also say they booby trapped the entire house and have a remote detonating device in the arm of their wheelchair.”