Even while she sat there gunning her engine, waiting for Chapel to respond, a legion of cops were descending on the Bentley, weapons drawn. Overhead a helicopter chewed up the air, its spotlight drooping toward the stopped car. When the light bounced off the shining hood it was enough to make Chapel wince and cover his eyes. No, Fiona wasn’t going anywhere. She was lucky she wasn’t in handcuffs already.
Chapel ducked around the front of the car and opened the passenger side door. Climbing in, he heard something move behind him. Expecting an assassin to come lurching out of the backseat, he spun around and started to draw a weapon.
But it was just the boys, Daniel and Ryan. They were curled up in the backseat, holding each other. They looked terrified.
“I’m sorry,” he told them. Daniel—who had stabbed Chapel twice with a pocketknife—met his eye with a glare of defiance that didn’t quite cover up the way he was shivering in fear. It was enough to make Chapel’s heart throb with guilt. The kids didn’t deserve what had happened to them, to their family, their life.
Chapel turned to look at Fiona. “If you surrender to me right now I can try to help, a little. I can at least make sure they get wherever you want them to go,” he said, nodding at the boys. “Do you have any family in the area, or—”
“I’m not surrendering. I’m going to drive out through the gate in a second and nobody is going to arrest me.” She didn’t look like it was a suggestion.
“Really?” Chapel asked.
“Yes, really. I’m going to leave here and not come back. I don’t want to be followed, or harassed, or questioned. My boys need me, not some nice policewoman with a blanket and maybe a chocolate bar. They need their mother. I had to work very hard to get these two, and I’m not giving them up now.”
Chapel kept his mouth shut. He guessed there was more.
“I have something to offer in exchange,” she said.
“Okay, I’m listening,” Chapel said, though he doubted it would be enough. Law enforcement didn’t make the kind of deals she was asking for.
“I can tell you everything I know. It may not answer all your questions, but I assure you—Jim—that in the years I’ve been married to Ygor, I heard more things than he thought I did. Far more than he would have wanted me to hear. So there’s that.”
“It’s not enough,” Chapel said.
She nodded. Her hands were still on the steering wheel, as if she was going to start driving at any second and needed to be ready. It also meant they stayed in plain view so none of the police around her would think she was reaching for a weapon. Chapel had known she was smarter than Favorov gave her credit for. She stared out through the windshield at the road ahead. At freedom, and safety.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Chapel waited patiently.
“I’ve been a loyal wife. I’ve done everything he asked of me, right from the start. I know my place in the world, Jim. I know what people think I am, and I tried to prove I was better than that. I’m not just a trophy wife. I was a partner to him. For years. I never betrayed him.”
“That’s admirable,” Chapel said.
“My boys, though. They come first.” Fiona wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You let us go, you give me what I asked for, and I’ll take you to him. I’ll take you right to Ygor, right now.”
33
Time was of the utmost essence. If there was even the slightest chance Chapel could still catch Favorov, it was going to come down to a matter of minutes, not hours. Still, he could only think in silence for a few seconds as he considered what she was saying. “If you can’t deliver what you’re promising it could go very badly for you,” he said finally. And your children, he thought, but it sounded like she knew that already.
Fiona turned to look into his eyes, with all the confidence of a model on a catwalk. “I know exactly where he’s going.”
In his ear, Angel said, “Chapel, just because she’s beautiful doesn’t mean you can trust her. This could be a trap! I know you’re a guy, and guys think with their—”
Chapel tuned her out. “Drive,” he said.
He had to lean out of his window to flag down the officer in charge of the SWAT teams, to tell the man to stand down and clear the gates. Luckily there was no argument—Chapel had total oversight on this operation, thanks to Director Hollingshead. It had been clear from the start that his orders were to be followed without question.
They had to move a SWAT van away from the gate so the Bentley could get out. That was SOP, Chapel knew—you blocked any exit from the perimeter, to stop any overconfident or desperate people from trying to make a break for it. Now it just slowed them down. Eventually, though, Fiona took the long car out onto the drive and hurried down toward the main road.
“Where are we going?” Chapel asked.
“I’ll tell you when we get closer,” Fiona answered, her eyes on the road.
Chapel bridled and started to demand that she tell him that instant, but she reached over and patted his artificial arm.
“You don’t trust me, and that’s understandable. I don’t trust you, either. When we’re well out of the way of all these policemen, I’ll talk.”
“You’ll talk right now. You don’t want to tell me where we’re going, I can’t make you. But you said you had other information. Things you’ve overheard.”
“Yes,” she said. She drove south until she reached a road that ran along the coastline, on top of a line of cliffs. The same cliffs that had sheltered Favorov’s secret boat launch. She turned west along the cliff road, picking up speed. “Ygor is a secretive man, of course, and he never told me anything directly. But it’s amazing the things men will do and say in front of their women. They treat us like we’re too stupid to understand what they’re saying. I heard phone calls, saw Ygor give orders to his servants. I saw people come to the house, and because I’m a good hostess I made sure I knew who they were before they arrived.”
“Russians?”
“Only once, and then in the middle of the night. About five years ago. Pavel Galtachenko. A very furtive little man. He reminded me of a mouse that thinks it’s a rat. He went into Ygor’s study but only stayed there for about fifteen minutes. I was in the process of bringing him a drink when he stormed out. I heard the tail end of their conversation.”
In Chapel’s ear Angel got excited when she heard the name. “Galtachenko’s a low-level diplomat, a flack for the Russian delegation to the UN. He’s also a known KGB agent.”
“I’m familiar with the name,” Chapel said, though he’d never heard it before. Fiona didn’t need to know where he got his information.
“He came to put an end to things. To stop Ygor from selling any more guns. He was very worried that it was going to reflect badly on his government. In the end, though, he couldn’t stop Ygor. He didn’t have the authority. He left empty-handed.”
“Interesting,” Chapel said.
“I’ll say,” Angel interrupted. “If whoever is supplying Favorov with guns has more authority than the KGB, that means—”
“It doesn’t mean anything on its own,” Chapel said, because he wasn’t ready to draw any conclusions.
“No,” Fiona replied, assuming he’d been talking to her. “But Galtachenko wasn’t the only visitor he had. Most of the time he met with clients. Americans. Very polite but rather uncultured men who wore ill-fitting suits and smelled of cheap cologne.”
“You have names for them?” Chapel asked.
“Some. Terry Belcher. Andrew Michaels. Vince Howard, those are the ones I remember.” Fiona peered forward into the halogen light coming from the Bentley’s headlamps as if she could see the names written out there on the road. “I noticed that they always kept their shirts buttoned up, both at the throat and the cuffs, even on very hot days. It took me a while to realize they were covering up tattoos.”