He looks down at the twins as he raises his beer. ‘Pretty kids. It’ll be a real shame when we have to kill them.’
121
Owain closes the study door and listens carefully to Mitzi’s account of how her children were abducted.
By the time she finishes, it’s plain she’s in need of some reassurances. ‘As an investigator, you know the note means that the kidnappers intend to make contact with you. Probably sooner rather than later.’
Mitzi nods and stops biting a thumbnail. ‘I need to call my boss and tell her what’s happened. The FBI has a special unit that deals with this kind of thing.’
He gestures to a Victorian desk of golden mahogany. ‘Feel free to use the phone. Though you may want to consider waiting another hour. I’m sure these people will reach out directly to you.’
‘I can’t wait.’ She gets to her feet. ‘I’m already crazy with worry. These are my babies. They’re everything that matters to me.’
‘I understand.’ He gets up and walks over to her. ‘I’ll leave you while you make the call.’
She picks up the phone and hears no tone. ‘How do I get an outside line?’
‘Zero, zero.’
‘Thanks.’ Her fingers shake as she enters the numbers for her boss’s direct line.
Owain walks down the corridor into the west wing. He passes through a full-body scan operated by two armed guards. Only then is he allowed into the suites of private offices that contain SSOA staff and the order’s main data banks and network systems.
At a curved desk, topped with a fan of high-definition 3D screens, the ambassador talks to Lance Beaucoup. ‘Lieutenant Fallon is in the guest office talking to her superior on the phone. Her children have been abducted.’
The Frenchman punches a button and Mitzi’s voice pours out of a black speaker grille built into the desk.
She sounds strained. ‘No, I haven’t spoken to anyone but Ruth. We need to get a female officer over there to support her.’
‘See it as done,’ says her boss. ‘Soon as you hang up, I’ll talk to the Kidnap Unit and get traces set up on your sister’s phones and your cell.’
‘I have to tell their father.’ Mitzi makes the announcement as much to herself as to her boss. ‘He’s going to lose it when he finds out.’
‘Give me a location and we’ll send an officer to wait outside his dwelling, then he can follow up as soon as you’ve told him.’
Owain signals to his colleague. ‘Turn it off. I don’t need to listen to any more of this.’
He kills the volume. ‘You want me to put a team on it?’
‘Straight away. Who was the young operative who did the background for me on Fallon and that Irish policeman?’
‘Ross Green. He was working with Eve Garrett. They’re both ex-cops who I’m sure will one day make Inner Circle members.’
‘I hope you’re right; we always need new blood. Put him on this — and her if she can be freed up.’
‘I’ll talk to Gareth and fix it.’
‘And tell him to make sure they take care. You can rest assured Mardrid is pulling Marchetti’s strings and he’s going to try to use Fallon’s girls to pull ours.’
122
An under-tens soccer match is finishing at the Met Oval in Queens, a public ground hailed as the oldest continuously used soccer facility in America.
Brooklyn Knights are two-nil up against Westchester on a pitch that boasts a skyline view of Manhattan and lies just a third of a mile and a three-minute walk from Zachra Korshidi’s house. Stood among the small crowd of cheering parents is Gareth Madoc. On the opposite touchline are two armed members of his team. Six more are stationed along the approach roads to the ground.
Zachra is twenty minutes late for their secret meeting and Madoc is getting nervous. South of the pitch, he sees the shadowy shape of a black burqa slide through a patch of trees. He whispers into the transmitter clipped to the cuff of his baggy brown pilot jacket. ‘Standby. We have target approaching from south side.’
Bodies move in the crowd. Unseen hands click the safety catches off their weapons. Zachra may be being followed; she may not. No one is taking any chances.
Madoc makes sure she sees him, then wanders away from the cheering parents and up a bank heading back to the streets. He slips into the shade and watches.
In one hand she carries a brown paper bag bearing the Burger King crest, and in the other a half-empty beaker of cola. Through the slit of her black niqab he sees her fearful eyes flicking everywhere.
‘You okay?’
The covered head nods.
‘Anything you can tell me?’
‘My father ordered my mother and me out of the house. He said he’d be receiving a very important guest and we were not to be there to shame him. We had to clean the back room, then he told us to stay away until he calls.’
‘Did you ask how long that might be?’
A laugh tumbles through the head cloth. ‘You don’t ask my father things. You just do what he tells you.’
‘Did you manage to fit the devices I gave you?’
Zachra doesn’t answer. She lifts her cola, forces a bent straw into the slit in her headdress and takes a long drink.
Madoc watches the liquid rise and notices the knuckles of her right hand are swollen. He glances at the bag held in her left hand and sees her other fingers are also damaged.
Zachra catches his stare. ‘He beat me for being in his room. The back room where you wanted me to go. He made me kneel like a dog, then stamped on my hands.’
Madoc’s heard enough. ‘We need to take you to hospital.’
‘Hospital can wait.’ There’s steel in her voice. She throws the finished cola into a trash bin and lifts up the Burger King bag so he can see it. ‘I’m taking this somewhere quiet to eat.’ Before she turns and walks away, she adds, ‘And yes, your camera and microphones are now hidden in his room.’
123
Mitzi puts the phone down and sits in stunned silence. The door opens and Owain walks in with George Dalton.
It’s just her luck that the man she has most wanted to interview turns up when she can least afford to talk to him.
‘I heard about your daughters.’ Dalton looks genuinely sympathetic. ‘I’m very sorry about what has happened.’
She addresses the ambassador. ‘I need to leave right away and catch a flight back to California. Can you tell me what’s the nearest airport?’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s not necessary. My helicopter will get you to Heathrow and from there I have a jet that will fly you across the Atlantic.’
She looks shocked. ‘That’s very kind. Thank you.’
‘There’s no need to thank me. Please excuse me while I make arrangements.’
Mitzi watches him go. Her eyes settle on Dalton. If nothing else, she’s going to throw one question at him before she leaves. ‘Did you kill Bradley Deagan?’
He takes a long beat before he answers. ‘Sir Owain informed me that you know a little about our cause. About the good we try to do.’
She strides into Dalton’s space. ‘I have your DNA.’
The consul’s face reddens.
‘I lifted the bottle you drank from when we met in London and ran it through the labs. Guess what? It matches the DNA found mixed with Deagan’s on the washroom floor in the All Night All Right diner off Dupont Circle.’
He thinks for a moment. ‘I’m not sure what you are surmising from that. I have already told you that I was there.’ He looks unconcerned. ‘The bathroom would have been filthy. I imagine there was DNA from a hundred other people as well.’