Hart nodded slowly. It looked as if she had more to say. Finally, she spoke. “So you had doubts?”
“Yes — but never that Liz was the target! She was just a translator in the MOD, Olivia! Why would anyone want to kill her? What possible reason could anyone in Hanoi have to put a professional hit on her?” He stared once again at Lea, snuggling into her seat beside the far window. Outside the morning sun was lighting the tops of the clouds purple and pink. It would have been beautiful except for the bombshell that had just been dropped on his life.
“Joe, I want you to promise me you’re not going to go crazy when I tell you this.”
He felt the crushing feeling once again, and gripped the armrest of his seat with all his strength. “What?”
“It had nothing to do with Hanoi. The kill order came from the UK.”
Hawke almost felt dizzy. Now he had heard it all.
“From the UK?”
She nodded grimly. “The Brigadier told me that Liz was the target, that the order came out of London, and…”
“And what? Is there a name?”
“No, but… he told me that it was called Operation Swallowtail.”
“It was an actual operation?” Hawke couldn’t take it all in. A codenamed operation meant premeditation, planning, organization and money. It meant authority and reach. It meant trouble.
“Yes, but forget about researching Swallowtail. I’ve looked into it as far as you can go, and so did my army friend, and there’s just nothing out there. We have no idea who was behind Swallowtail.”
“You mean who was behind the murder of my wife.”
“Yes… I'm sorry, I…”
“Forget it. If it wasn't for you I wouldn’t know any of this. I’d still be in the dark, like the proverbial mushroom, being fed bullshit from above.”
“Joe…”
“Swallowtail…” his voice seemed far away now. His mind was awash with fresh images of Liz — how they met, the jokes they shared, their wedding day on the coast and how excited they were when they boarded the plane to Vietnam. The way she looked at him when she first saw Vietnam. “Swallowtail… some bastard plotted my wife’s death and had her gunned down right in front of me.” He was silent for a long time.
“It was a long time ago, Joe.”
“It was, but you know what the funny thing is?”
“No. Tell me the funny thing.”
“That the piece of shit who ordered the kill thinks he got away with it.”
“I know what you’re going through — you know I do. But your mind has to be focused on Sheng now, Joe. You know that. Remember your training. I only told you now I case I don’t make it. If there’s revenge to be had over what happened to Liz then you’ll have it, but now’s not the time.”
Hawke frowned and stared out the tiny porthole. He knocked back another swig of the baijiu. Yes, he thought, the Commodore was right as usual, and on both counts.
Yes, it was time to focus on Sheng.
And yes, he would get his revenge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Sheng felt a wave of nervous energy cut through him as Mr. Luk led a small army of mercs into the lobby of the Mausoleum. A moment earlier they had invited themselves into the massive building with some plastic explosives and a Type 67 general purpose machine gun. Now he was closer than ever to the map and his loyal Lotus was waiting to annihilate Tokyo on his command. This was the meaning of the word fate.
“We are so close!” he said to Luk as they marched through the lobby toward the main part of the mausoleum. All around them were the dead bodies of the mausoleum’s security detail.
Now, he and his men were surveying the vast aircraft-hangar sized enclosure that housed the terracotta soldiers. From where they had stood their silent vigil for so many centuries, thousands of them now stared back at Sheng but all he saw when he returned their gaze was his destiny.
“The main tomb is over there!” Luk pointed his submachine gun across the heads of some of the soldiers to their right.
Sheng didn’t need Luk to tell him where the main tomb of the Emperor Qin had stood for the last two thousand years. No one had studied the great leader more than he had, and no one had more right to take what had been hidden from mankind within that tomb since antiquity.
Sheng turned to his men and gave them their next orders. “Move forward!” Soon the mausoleum would be crawling with police and PLA officials.
They moved forward through the ranks of silent terracotta statues until they reached the tomb, and it didn’t take them long to find the sealed-up entrance so recently discovered by archaeologists. It was in the floor at the base of Qin’s tomb, and they lifted it to find steps descending into darkness beneath the sarcophagus.
“This must be it,” Luk said, kicking the Do Not Enter sign over with his foot. “Bring me the glow-sticks!”
Sheng looked on as Luk ordered some men into the darkness under the strictest instructions not to lose their nerve. They lit their way with the glow-sticks, which now cast a gentle amber light inside the narrow stone tunnel.
A moment later one of the men returned and told them the way looked clear. With a look of incipient triumph on his face, Sheng gently pushed Luk to one side and began his descent into the hidden tomb.
Hawke tried to focus his mind. This wasn't the kind of mission where you let your thoughts wander. If you did that not only would you get yourself killed, but you’d get those around you killed too — those who depended on you for leadership and guidance.
And yet his mind buzzed with everything Hart had told him about Liz.
Operation Swallowtail.
It was almost impossible for him to believe. It wasn’t hard for him to accept that there existed in the world people who wanted him dead. He left a trail of embittered, defeated people behind him like a line of stale breadcrumbs, but the thought of anyone hiring a professional hit man to assassinate Liz was beyond comprehension.
Now, not only did he have to face the fact that the person who ordered her murder was still alive, but that she had been killed for a reason, and that the hit that day had nothing to do with him. The thought almost tore him in half.
It meant she had been lying to him.
She had told him she was a simple translator working in the Ministry of Defence, and that story had never evolved into anything else in all the time they shared together. Not like the day he decided to tell her the truth about his career — that he wasn't a simple sailor in the navy but in fact a former Royal Marines Commando and an elite Special Forces operative in the Special Boat Service.
She had never heard of it — or so she said. He explained they were like the SAS only more clandestine and tougher. He couldn’t help saying this — it was part of the rivalry between the SAS and the SBS. But now he began to question everything that had passed between them, including when she told him she had never heard of them.
If she somehow merited a professional hit, hired from within the British Government, then she must have known about the SBS — it was one of the two most elite forces in the British Armed Forces.
So she had lied again.
And what else had she lied to him about?
He fought hard to push the thought away. The thought that his entire existence with her had been a lie, that she had been holding the truth back from him, in the way he knew Cairo Sloane and even Lea were doing to him right now.
What was her true story? He didn't know, but he was damned sure he was going to find out, and he didn't care how many dirty stones he had turn over to get to the truth.
“Wake up, dreamer.”
It was Lexi. She smiled at him, and in a flash his mind was with her back in Zambia that night when they had first met. Like everyone else in his life, she seemed different now too.