If Bascomb-Coombs went missing and his lordship fell over with a stroke or heart attack, then Peel would be in the clear, nobody to tell tales. He might not be rich, but he would still be marketable. With a spotless record under his lordship, some other rich fool would find him worthy.
Victory was better than defeat, but there were times when you had to cut your losses and retreat, to survive long enough to try another tack. He had pulled in Ruzhyo because he needed a goat for taking out the old man; but now, given the change of situation, it was better that Goswell die of natural causes, so his security chief wouldn't look bad.
Bascomb-Coombs would simply disappear in such a way that nobody would ever find him.
Peel smiled. Yes, this was all unfortunate but not beyond repair. Time to fix things and get on with it. Kill them all — God will know his own. One of the early Popes had said that, hadn't he? Better them than me.
Chapter 34
During a lull in the increasingly frantic activity at MI- 6, Toni got on the com to call Carl Stewart.
"Hello?"
"Carl?"
"Ah, Toni. How are you?"
"Fine. Look, I'm up to my eyebrows in work, and I can't see any way to get out of it for class tonight. Sorry."
"Not a problem. We'll miss you, but I understand."
"Thanks."
After a short pause, he said, "Well, you do have to eat, though, don't you? Perhaps we can have lunch or dinner later this week?"
Toni's stomach did a small lurch. It wasn't the words but the tone of them that raised the alarm. Was he asking her out on a date? That would have been her most direct question, but Toni wasn't quite ready to ask it. Should she follow that up? Or brush it off? It was moot if she said she was too busy. But, no. She had been doing more waffling lately than she liked. It was time to start facing these things head-on.
"Are we talking about two silat students getting together for a bite, Carl? Or are we talking about something else?"
"Well, I was thinking along the lines of two people who found each other's company interesting and who had a deep interest—pentjak silat—in common."
A date.
Toni's knee-jerk response was to tell him she was involved with somebody and decline politely. The window for her comment opened… and stayed open. He was a vital man, attractive, and he had a skill she much admired. If she and Stewart went to the gelanggang—the fighting floor — for a serious match, he would win; she did not doubt it. She couldn't say that about many people she knew. She was sure that even her own guru, now in her eighties, was no longer up to her level, and she was pretty confident she could keep up with most martial artists, men or women, when it came to one-on-one, however egotistical that might be. But she knew she couldn't defeat Carl. And that was, in its way, a large part of the attraction. She had a momentary vision of what it might be like to lie naked on a bed with this powerful and skilled man, and it was not an unattractive daydream. Not at all unattractive.
She felt a shard of guilt stab her. "I'm pretty much involved with Alex, Carl, and I appreciate it, but I think maybe we ought to keep things strictly professional."
"Ah, too bad. But certainly I understand. I appreciate your candor. Do let me know when you can come back to class."
"I will. Thanks."
After she hung up, Toni had a sick feeling, a cold stirring in her gut. It had, for a moment, been tempting. More so than she wanted to admit. She could have gone down that path, and it bothered her that she had even considered it. She admired Carl, maybe even had a bit of lust for him, but she loved Alex, and there was a world of difference between those two things. For just a moment there, however, she had wondered, had felt indecision, had considered it.
"Can't hang you for thinking" was an old saying that was true because nobody could know what was in your mind, but you couldn't fool yourself for very long. How could it have even crossed her mind? This was bad. Bad.
Ruzhyo adjusted the 9mm Firestar pistol in the clip-on holster on his hip under his windbreaker, canting the butt forward slightly to make it more comfortable. The previous handgun Peel had furnished him, the American-made Italian.22, was at the bottom of the Thames, wiped clean and broken into pieces, the frame and the barrel of which were separated by more than two miles. If anybody happened to dredge the parts up before they rusted out, assembled them, and if they ran ballistic tests and determined that the bullet in the dead man in the bookstore had come from the pistol, it wouldn't matter, since there was nothing to connect Ruzhyo to it. But if you left nothing to chance, then chance would not be so likely to sneak up behind you and fasten its teeth in your back.
He did not much care for the new weapon, but he could use it. It was solid, well-made, a single-action, chrome-plated steel semiautomatic that operated much like the old Colt.45 military models, a reliable, small, if somewhat heavy, piece. The gun carried seven jacketed hollowpoints in the magazine and one more in the chamber with special, scored noses that would expand in a human, causing much damage. The thing had not been designed to punch paper at a range or to plink old cans in the woods but to shoot soft targets and seriously damage or kill them.
Ruzhyo smiled. For the last several years, especially in the U.S., gun makers had been under legal attacks by antigun forces. The more recent tactic had been to sue the manufacturers for not providing adequate safety devices or warnings of danger. He could not believe how foolish this was. Carried to its extreme, there would be similar warnings necessary for automobiles, knives, even matches: Caution! You might be killed if you collide with a big truck while driving this small car! Warning! This knife has a sharp edge. Do not press it against your throat! Danger! Matches can create fire that can burn you!
This gun labeling scheme seemed to him monumentally stupid to anyone with half a working brain. It was one thing to require a lock that children could not easily open, another thing to stamp on the barrel of a gun: Caution! Do not point at someone and pull the trigger! Anybody who did not understand what a gun was and what it did would not be able to read such a warning anyhow. It reminded him of the old advertisement that used to be on the electric buses in Chetsnya when he'd been young: "Are you illiterate? If so, please contact…"
The 9mm would do the job for Ruzhyo, and there was the umbrella to back it up. In addition, he had bought a Benchmade tactical folder, a knife that could be flicked open with a thumb, to lock its four-inch tanto-point blade rigidly into place. Given the local laws, with two guns and a knife, he was probably armed better than almost anybody walking around in this country, including most police officers. As he had in the Nevada desert, Ruzhyo felt the need to have the weapons. Things were about to go bad here; he could feel it.
He considered leaving. Simply catching a boat or train or plane for a short hop out of the country, then heading home, staying on the round to avoid directional tracking. He could do it, and Peel wouldn't miss him in time to stop him, even if he wanted to.