“If you’re found guilty of treason you’ll be executed by the Americans.” Chapel sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “Your choice.”
Favorov started to reply.
Chapel didn’t hear what he was going to say, though. Because just then a sharp burst of pain hit him at the base of his skull and he slumped forward, unable to see anything, unable to think straight.
“Chapel?” Angel called from his earpiece. “Chapel? I’m getting really weird data from your hands-free unit. Chapel? Are you okay?”
Someone grabbed the hands-free unit out of his ear. He heard it drop into the tureen of soup with a terrible plopping sound. And then Angel was gone.
7
Chapel never fully lost consciousness. The idea you could knock someone out by hitting them on the back of the head was a myth. It could stun someone, leave them reeling, make them temporarily blind. It could leave them disoriented and confused. It could give them a concussion or even brain damage.
But it didn’t just put somebody to sleep. Chapel lost the ability to see straight, but he could still hear everything going on in the small dining room.
“I’m sorry—Ygor, forgive me, I’m sorry! I panicked!”
He heard Favorov rise stiffly from his chair, heard him walking around the table. Chapel realized he must be on the floor, that he must have fallen when he was struck, because his reeling vision showed him two pairs of feet. He saw Fiona’s feet in her elegant heels, and then he saw Favorov’s penny loafers.
One of which came right at his face. Chapel was helpless, unable to move as the kick landed hard on his cheek.
“Piece of American trash,” Favorov said. “My dear, you just did the stupidest fucking thing in a lifetime of empty-headed blunders. Do you have any idea what is going to happen now? To me? To you? To the children?”
“Ygor—please—please—I—”
Chapel heard a meaty thwack and he knew Favorov must have struck his wife across the face. Sounded like he’d used an open hand.
In his dazed state he felt strangely detached from what was happening to him. He was able to feel sorry for Fiona, though. She wasn’t stupid at all, from what he’d seen, and all she’d done to deserve that slap was try to defend her husband. He tried to say something in her defense but his tongue wasn’t working right and he only managed to groan.
Favorov must have bent over him, then—his voice sounded much closer. “Looks like you didn’t kill him.”
“I just wanted to—”
“Shut up,” Favorov said. “In a long life of pointlessness and vacuity, you did one smart thing, you know that? You married the right man. There is a way we can control this situation. Call in Stephen and Michael. We’ll take him to the billiards room—there are no windows there. And get me my satellite cell phone. It’s time to call in some favors.”
“Of course, Ygor, I’ll go right away,” Fiona said. Chapel heard a door open and shut again.
He tried to move. Tried to get his arms under him so he could push himself up, somehow get to his feet.
It didn’t work.
He felt practiced hands search the pockets of his jacket. “Unarmed,” Favorov said, with a surprised grunt. “Interesting. I assumed you had orders to kill me if I refused you. That’s how the CIA would have handled this, back during the Cold War. Perhaps your masters have lost their nerve.” Favorov chuckled. “That may bode well for you. Ah. Here’s your phone. I imagine I don’t even need to dial, do I? They’re already listening. Do you hear me, Pentagon? Are you receiving me? I have your man. I have him hostage. If you want him back alive, call me. There will be certain conditions.”
The door opened again. Rough hands dug into Chapel’s armpits and hauled him off the floor, then started dragging him away.
He had no idea what Favorov was planning, no idea what his fate was going to be. He did know one thing—he was expendable. If Favorov planned on using him as a bargaining chip, he was going to be disappointed at the response. Too bad Chapel wouldn’t live long enough to see the look on the Russian’s face.
8
Chapel’s eyes were just starting to focus again as he was dragged into another room and thrown on top of a pool table. He was recovering other senses as well. He could smell alcohol—wine, the fumes burning in his nostrils—and he realized that Fiona had struck him across the back of the head with the bottle she’d been holding. He hoped there weren’t any jagged shards of glass sticking out of his neck.
Two servants, presumably Stephen and Michael, were in the room with him. Their faces were still blurry but he could make out their hands, and the fact that they weren’t holding guns. Not that it made much difference. He still felt weak and incredibly dizzy, and he knew it would be some time before he fully recovered. If he had a concussion it might be days.
Something was sticking into the small of his back, something round and hard and it hurt. Without thinking about it he used his left hand to dig a pool ball out from under him. His artificial hand. Interesting. His right hand was still too weak to make a fist but his prosthetic arm was controlled by a whole different set of nerves—it was wired to the nerves in the stump where his left arm used to be, and he controlled the arm by twitching muscles in his shoulder. The onboard computer in the arm was smart enough to interpret those twitches and translate them into moving the fingers, the wrist, the elbow of the artificial arm. It had taken him months to learn how to control the simplest movements but now, ten years later, it was as easy as controlling his healthy right arm. Even more so now as his nervous system slowly recovered from the shock it had taken.
It seemed neither of his two guards had noticed that his left arm had moved. They didn’t react, anyway—nobody had tried to tie him up yet. He made a point of keeping his left arm still so as not to give the game away.
They left him there for a while, nobody speaking to him or doing anything with him. He used the time to make an inventory of what he had to work with. He moved his tongue around in his mouth. He thought maybe he had regained the power of speech. That was something. He could probably move his neck, too, though it hurt like hell. Well, if Favorov would be kind enough to lean over Chapel’s face, he could head-butt the man to death. Maybe.
The thought made him chuckle. The sound made his guards nervous.
“He’s awake,” one of them said, sounding panicky.
“Shit. What do we do?” the other one asked.
“You could,” Chapel said, though each word he spoke exhausted him, “help me… get out of here. That way you won’t go to… prison with your… boss.”
He could just see the two of them glancing at each other with frightened eyes. Were they actually considering it?
It didn’t matter. At that same moment the door of the billiards room flew open and Favorov came storming in. He had Chapel’s cell phone in his hand. If I were James Bond, Chapel thought, then Angel would be able to overload the phone or something, make it act like a taser and stun the bastard.
Of course, James Bond wouldn’t have let Fiona sneak up behind him. He probably would have already seduced her by now. Chapel had never been any great shakes in that department.
Favorov beamed down at him. The Russian didn’t quite lean over far enough to let Chapel put his head-butting plan into action, but he let Chapel see every inch of his gleaming white teeth. “It didn’t take very long. They did not so much as make me sweat.”
Chapel wasn’t sure what he meant. But then the phone in the Russian’s hand spoke, and Chapel heard Rupert Hollingshead on the other end of the line.
“Chapel? Son, can you speak? I need to make sure you’re unharmed before we start negotiating with this man.”