He tried the bell a third time with the same results.
Reflexively his hand slipped to the knob and turned it. The door creaked open. Chris entered without hesitation and closed it behind him. Obviously the girl had gone out, leaving the door unlocked for his expected arrival. Those would have been Burgess’s instructions.
Locke moved into the foyer and froze. The girl hadn’t gone out at all.
Her naked body dangled from the high ceiling, toes about even with Chris’s head, suspended from a light fixture by a rope strung in layers around her throat. Her face was purple and her bulging, crossed eyes seemed focused on the black, misshapen tongue hanging out between her lips.
Locke stumbled backward and fell. His breath had gone and his eyes couldn’t leave the girl’s corpse. Then the room spun briefly into darkness and he shook himself from the spell.
He had clawed his way back to his feet just as the front door burst open and three men in suits rushed in, tackling him hard. Locke knew he hit the floor but never felt it, nor did he bother to resist. The hands treated him roughly, grasping and pulling. Then he was yanked back to his feet as a fourth man stepped through the front door. He had silver hair and looked tired.
“Christopher Locke, I presume,” the man said plainly, extracting an identification wallet from his suit jacket.
Chris just stared as the picture ID stopped inches from his face.
“MI-6, Mr. Locke,” the silver-haired man continued. “The name’s Colin Burgess and I’d like some answers.”
Chapter 24
“I’m not sure I follow this.”
The Secretary of State lowered his eyes back to the portion of the file Calvin Roy had handed him.
“Simply stated, boss, somebody exchanged mud for manure in Charney’s file. Damn thing’s been doctored.”
“How?”
“It’s obvious, ain’t it? Six pages detailing all of Charney’s field assignments with never more than one month between entries, except here,” Roy said, standing up and touching his finger to the section of a page the Secretary was looking at. “Seven months missing, boss, and if that don’t tell us somethin’ I don’t know what does.”
The Secretary’s eyebrows flickered. “You checked further into the missing seven months?”
“Sure did. Dug up Brian’s old travel vouchers from records. Took some time but it was worth it when I got to the bottom of things: Charney was in England for almost the whole period bumped off his file.”
“We lost Locke in England.”
“Yup, because we checked all of Brian’s contacts there except the right one. Somebody wanted to make sure we missed him.”
“Find out who it is yet?” the Secretary asked.
“The contact, you mean? Cross-checkin’ now, boss. Won’t be long till we know but it won’t matter much ’cause it’s too damn late. Fact is, though, we got snookered good.”
“By somebody high up,” the Secretary acknowledged.
“And I don’t like it one bit. Access to these kinda files goes a long way beyond simple restricted. Only a few fingers in the whole city can call up this kind of info on their boards … and erase it.”
The Secretary looked straight ahead. “We’ll have to find the person behind those fingers, of course.”
Roy held his stare. “Already working on that too, boss.”
“And Locke?”
“We think he’s headed back for England. He called a certain number there from both Liechtenstein and Rome. We handed the info over to MI-6. They got a watch on the place, probably a safe house arranged by Charney’s British contact whose name was yanked off his file.”
The Secretary sighed. “What in hell did this Locke get himself into over there, Cal?”
“It’s what we got him into, boss, and now we gotta get him out. And it’s not just over there either. I pulled his family out soon as I could but I missed one. His son’s disappeared.”
“We’re dealing with pros, then.”
“We’re dealing with maggots, boss. Something superbig’s about to go down and lots of people, startin’ with Lubeck, have been killed to keep us from knowin’ what. Hell, there’s bodies all over Europe buried with pieces of what’s goin’ on, and I’ll bet the barn Locke’s the only one who can put them together.”
“What’s your next step?”
Roy didn’t hesitate. “I’m gonna trace the snookerin’ with Charney’s file back to the fucker responsible. When I find him, he’ll lead me to the rest of the maggots.”
“What about Locke?”
“I’ve had a man on his phone twenty-four hours a day. So far he hasn’t called home. That might mean he’s dead already.”
“Then you better get to it, Cal. Pull out all the stops.”
“That’s the idea, boss.”
As soon as Calvin Roy had left the room, Secretary of State David Van Dam reached for his phone.
“You’re who?”
Locke heard himself ask the silver-haired man the question but it didn’t register. He felt himself tilting back on his heels and might have tipped over if it wasn’t for the men holding him at either shoulder.
The man calling himself Colin Burgess grabbed Locke’s lapels and yanked him so close that Chris could feel the heat of his breath.
“Look, you bastard, I’m in no mood for games. I’ve got scores to settle here and they might as well start with you.”
“No,” Locke pleaded, “you don’t understand. I thought you were dead. But it wasn’t you. It was—”
Burgess shook him hard. “What in hell are you talking about?”
“The other Colin Burgess. He helped me but it must have been a setup to make sure I’d get where they wanted me to go.”
“Make sense, boy!”
“Brian sent me to him — to you.”
Burgess’s fingers, locked on Chris’s collar, almost choked his breath off. The foyer’s only light, the sole break in the darkness, danced across Burgess’s enraged face.
“Brian Charney?”
Locke tried to nod. “He recruited me. He was dying so he gave me your address. Bruggar House in Cadgwith Cove.”
Burgess’s grip slackened. “I haven’t been to Bruggar House since my wife died. That’s over a year ago.”
“They knew that and used it. You don’t realize who we’re dealing with here. They’re capable of anything. Anything! Oh, God, they must have had this all planned out from the start.”
“And just who are ‘they’?”
“The Committee.”
Burgess released his grip altogether. His eyes clouded with uncertainty.
“I think it’s time we got this whole thing straight, mate.”
They headed through the misty darkness for Plymouth and the Holiday Inn in Armada Way. It contained a restaurant Burgess had used for important meetings in the past. He referred to the establishment as “safe,” but Locke knew nothing was safe, not so long as the Committee was moving closer and closer to implementing its plans. Their conversation began in the backseat, with two of Burgess’s men in the front and two more in a car following.
“They’ve got my son,” Locke said desperately, “maybe the rest of my family too.”
“Just your son, according to the latest reports we received. The rest of your family is under government protection. You can speak with them later.”
“Oh, thank God.” Locke sighed, feeling relieved for the first time in longer than he could remember. “Wait,” he said suddenly, alert again. “Latest reports? What are you talking about?”
“Operatives from every major intelligence service in the free world have been looking for you, mate. Man named Roy in the States seems determined to bring you in.”