His macabre vigil resumed. He couldn’t leave until he was sure that the body was totally incinerated. If any part remained intact, there was still the danger that the Russians or Lock’s people might analyse it and discover the secrets it contained…
A bird chattered in alarm. Chase looked around, raising the gun. He saw nothing, but had a gut feeling that the disturbance had been caused by something more than an animal. ‘All right!’ he shouted, crouching behind the log. ‘I know someone’s out there. Come on, show yourself!’
A pause, then: ‘Chase!’ Lock’s voice. He couldn’t see the American, but estimated that he was about forty yards distant behind some bushes. That meant Hoyt and his men were also nearby… ‘If you hand over Natalia, I’m willing to let you live.’
‘Come and get her,’ Chase shouted back, checking the other approaches to his position. If Hoyt hadn’t already sent his team to surround him, he would be in the middle of doing so. He was not surprised to spot movement in the undergrowth. ‘Oi, you behind the bush! Yeah, I see you.’
‘And I see you,’ said another voice, closer. Hoyt. Chase spun to see the skull-faced mercenary rounding a tree twenty yards away, an AK pointed at him. ‘Don’t move. Drop the gun.’
Chase did so, then put his hands up. Hoyt cautiously advanced. ‘Move in,’ he called to the others. Four men in dark clothing rose from the undergrowth and closed on the Yorkshireman. Hoyt’s gaze flicked suspiciously from side to side. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said. ‘This was another goddamn decoy, wasn’t it? Where’s the girl?’
‘She’s here,’ said Chase, letting an angry bitterness into his voice.
‘Where?’
‘Are you fucking blind? Right in front of you.’
Hoyt looked at the fire, still wary — then his eyes widened in shock. ‘What the— Motherfuck!’ he gasped. ‘Boss, get over here!’ He turned back to Chase, his expression for once completely devoid of its usual arrogance. ‘What the fuck did you do?’
‘What she asked me to,’ Chase replied.
Hoyt stared at him, still stunned, then yelled to the nearest of his men. ‘Bonnell, watch him! If he moves, shoot him.’ The mercenary guarded Chase as his leader ran to the pyre.
Lock made his way through the trees. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Natalia?’
Hoyt put one hand to his head in dismay. ‘She’s… she’s here, on the fucking fire! She’s fucking dead!’
Lock froze. ‘What?’
‘He’s burned her! And — son of a bitch!’ He snatched up his empty backpack, fruitlessly shaking it out. ‘He’s burned all the research I took from the Ruskies too. Jesus!’
The goateed man’s jaw dropped open as he looked at the shape in the flames. ‘Holy Christ. What did you do, Chase? What the hell did you do?’
Keeping his hands raised, Chase slowly straightened. ‘Natalia knew she was going to die young anyway, thanks to that shit her grandfather infected her with. And she told me she’d rather go out how she chose than like her mum and her grandma. She wanted to save lives. And by stopping you from getting hold of what’s inside her, she has done.’
‘So you killed her? You actually put a bullet in her?’
He looked down at the ground. ‘Yeah. I shot her.’
Hoyt shook his head, something almost approaching a smile of admiration on his lips. ‘I underestimated you, Chase. Never thought you’d be stone-cold enough to do something like that.’
‘It’s not like I enjoyed it,’ Chase said angrily. ‘Unlike you. Fucking psycho.’
Lock shook his head. ‘No, no way. I don’t believe this. It’s got to be a trick. Put that fire out and check the body. And see if you can recover any of the research.’
The other mercenaries used the butts of their rifles to knock apart the base of the pyre branch by branch, then kicked and scattered the burning wood. Hoyt probed the laptop’s remains with a stick. ‘This thing’s toast. So is all the rest of it.’
‘What about Natalia?’
One of the men gagged as the flames faded and he got his first clear view of the burnt body. Lock’s face twisted in disgust, but he leaned closer to look at the blackened skull. ‘Okay, definitely human… and one hell of an exit wound.’ A chunk of the dead woman’s face was missing, a ragged hole in the bone running from above her right eye down into her left cheek. ‘Dammit, everything’s been burned… Wait.’ His gaze flicked to a dark stain on the ground beside the fire. ‘Got some hair in the blood spatter here.’
He picked up a twig and very carefully used it to snag the dirty strands, then tipped his prize into a cupped hand. ‘Has anyone got water?’
One of the mercs produced a canteen. Lock poured a few drops on to his hand, then delicately ran the hair through it before using his fingertips to wipe away the caked blood. ‘It’s blond.’ He brushed the hairs from his palm and turned to Chase. ‘Jesus, you actually did it. You burned everything.’
‘To stop you,’ said the Englishman, stone-faced.
‘We’re on the same side, Chase! America and Britain, the special relationship! Remember that?’ Lock stalked towards him, the mercenaries following. ‘We bake the cake, and you get our crumbs. That’s the way it works. We had a chance to set back the Russians by years and give our own work a huge boost,’ he stabbed a finger at the empty backpack, ‘but thanks to you, we’ve got nothing!’
‘Good! Natalia told me all about what her grandfather did — and nobody should have that fucking stuff. Not you, not the Russians, not anybody.’
‘That’s not for you to decide.’
‘No. It was for her to decide.’ He looked past Lock to the remains of the pyre. ‘She decided what she wanted to do. And I helped her. God fuckin’ help me for doing it.’
‘Funny you should mention God,’ said Hoyt. ‘You’ll be seeing him soon enough. If Natalia’s dead and 201’s research is gone, then we’re done here. The only thing left for us to do is clean up after ourselves.’ He glanced at Lock, who nodded. ‘This is all your own fault, Chase. If you’d just done what you were being paid to do rather than play the bleeding-heart hero, you’d be on a plane out of here by now. Instead, well… we’ve already got a funeral pyre. No sense wasting it.’
He brought up his gun. Chase tensed. ‘Do I get any last words?’
‘Only if they’re quick,’ said Lock. ‘And if I don’t like them, you’ll never get to finish your sentence.’
Hoyt sneered. ‘Well, what you got to say?’
Chase took a deep breath, trying to control his fear. ‘Just that… at least I kept my promise.’
The tall American snorted sarcastically. ‘I’ve heard better.’ His finger curled around the AK’s trigger—
‘Nobody move! Drop your guns!’
Hoyt spun at the unexpected voice, his team doing the same — to find weapons aimed at them.
Men emerged from the undergrowth. Most were Vietnamese, but the man who had shouted was not.
Chase recognised him immediately. It was the commander of the encampment, the lean, pale-eyed Russian. With him was the sweaty younger man with the weak moustache who had found Chase and Hoyt in the cabin. ‘I said, drop them!’ the leader called again, firing a shot over the group’s heads for emphasis.
Hoyt looked to Lock for instructions, his expression suggesting that he was willing to risk shooting his way out of the situation, but his boss urgently shook his head. The mercenary reluctantly lowered his gun. ‘Put ’em down,’ he told his men. Rifles thudded to the wet ground.
The new arrivals advanced, collecting the fallen weapons. The Russian stood before the suited man. ‘Mr Lock. I did not expect ever to meet the deputy director of the BSA in person.’