“Flex wants me to put a bullet in your head and dump you.” Morgan eyed the trash on the roadside.
Herbert tried to speak through the tape. His eyes had calmed, and they pleaded with Morgan to let him talk.
“Don’t speak,” Morgan told him. “Just listen.”
The man ceased his movement and stifled words.
“You realize there’s a chance Flex just puts a bullet in us both the moment we arrive?”
Herbert nodded.
“I have an idea, but you have to play your part.”
The man raised his eyebrows.
“You’ll find out when we get there. Just do as I say. Flex is who I want, understand?”
The man nodded. He understood. Just as Morgan had felt no great personal animosity toward Joyce for helping to conspire to kill him, neither did he feel it toward Herbert. Jack Morgan lived in a world where people tried to kill him on a regular basis — it was an occupational hazard. It was when they involved the people he cared about that he began to see things personally. Herbert had not been there when Flex had pulled the trigger and killed Jane Cook. If he had, he’d be dead already. The man couldn’t know it, but being shot by Lewis had likely saved his life.
Morgan sighed, and looked along the empty street that was bathed beneath orange street lights. He thought about Peter Knight. How his friend was a captive of a man who had shown himself to be a murderer. How the father might soon make orphans of his children. How a professional investigative agent had allowed himself to be caught so easily by the people he was there to track.
With guilt, Morgan realized that he was angry with Knight. He tried to push the feeling away, but the sense that Knight had come between Morgan and justice for Cook would not shift. Hadn’t Morgan told him to send other agents to watch Flex’s office? Hadn’t he trained Knight, taught him, and trusted him? Now, when he needed him most, and when he was finally getting ahead through the capture of Herbert, Knight had flipped the field back in Flex’s favor. He was putting them all in Flex’s hands, and giving the man a chance to play his endgame. Morgan had only a wild card left to play, and if that failed, he was at best back to the beginning in his search for Flex. At worst, he was on his back with a bullet in his head.
The next hour passed in waves for Morgan. One minute there was anger at Knight, the next guilt that he could ever think that way. Then came sadness, then came grief, then came rage that Flex was at large. That rage led to the obstacle that now stood in the way of justice — Knight — and so began the cycle once more.
To break it, Morgan attempted to distract himself through meticulous checking of his two pistols. He broke them down one at a time — one always with a bullet in the chamber, and close at hand, should he need to use it — and inspected and cleaned every part of them to ensure there would be no malfunction when he needed them most. Morgan’s ammunition count stood at eight 9mm rounds for the semi-automatic pistol, and six .357 rounds for the revolver. Not enough for a protracted gunfight, but maybe enough to put Flex and Rider down if he drew first.
And was he willing to do that?
Rubbing the heel of his hand into tired, blood-red eyes, Morgan could not be sure. He hated Flex, and wanted the man removed from society, and the world, but Jack Morgan had always pictured himself as a defender — a man who took life in order to save others. Could he really draw his pistol first, and shoot Flex and Rider down in cold blood? For the sake of justice for Jane, he wanted that answer to be yes.
But deep down, beneath the anger and the pain, he admitted to himself that he just did not know.
Morgan finished assembling and reloading the pistol in his hands, cocked back the hammer, and pointed it at Herbert’s startled face.
Pull the trigger, he told himself. Pull the trigger. Find another way to get Flex. Find another way to rescue Knight. Knight put himself in this position. Why should Jane’s killers go unpunished, for his mistake? Pull the trigger! Morgan’s anger screamed at him. Pull the trigger, kill this son of a bitch, and then kill the others. Do it! Kill him! Now!
Morgan lowered the pistol, and turned to the front. Behind him, having seen the murderous intent in the American’s eyes, and believing his life to have run its course, Herbert began to whimper.
Before Morgan could tell him to shut up, his phone vibrated.
Chapter 100
The first location sent to Morgan was a waypoint. Morgan expected that Flex would hold the final destination until the last moment, but the muscle-bound murderer needn’t have worried — Morgan had no intention of alerting anyone who could stand between himself and Flex. His mind was as set as a Marine charging an enemy machine-gun nest, focused on nothing but the result of his actions — his own safety an afterthought unworthy of consideration.
Flex’s first direction sent Morgan to Brixton. The second, to Waterloo. Morgan was then instructed to proceed to Lewisham, until Flex called back with the location of the true meeting place: London Bridge.
At first the site of the meeting point surprised Morgan. It was public. It had limited access. Perhaps Flex really did intend to honor the swap? Or perhaps, like Morgan, he was ready to die to get what he wanted, and the bridge was the best bottleneck to make sure that happened.
“We’re going to go in on foot,” Morgan told Herbert, remembering the barriers that had been put in place to stop terrorists from driving vehicles into pedestrians, and knowing that any stopped car on the structure would draw instant scrutiny from the security services.
“You realize your best chance to live is by doing what I say?” he asked the man again.
Herbert nodded, and Morgan ripped away the tape that had covered the man’s lips. Herbert grimaced as pieces of skin tore away with it. The tape on the man’s hands would stay, covered by a coat, the hood pulled up over the man’s head and zipped in place to act as an impromptu straightjacket.
“I’ve counted my rounds. You mess this up, I’m holding one back for you.”
“I won’t,” Herbert promised. “All that crap that mental bastard told me about unit loyalty and honor, and then he goes and tells you to stick a bullet in me? Give me a gun and I’ll shoot him myself.”
Morgan smiled at the idea. “Out the car.”
They left the Focus in a disabled parking bay next to London Bridge station. Morgan had no intention of coming back to it, and had pushed the revolver into the front of his trousers, the semi-auto in the back. Herbert had said that Flex expected Morgan was behind the Knightsbridge shooting, and so it was safe to assume he knew Morgan would be packing heat as a result. What Morgan couldn’t guess was whether or not Flex would ask him to expose those firearms on the bridge, and to draw the inevitable attention that would bring.
“He won’t give you your mate.” Herbert shook his head. “He’s a nutter, and all he’s talked about for months is killing you.”
Morgan ignored him, instead taking in his environment. The area was quiet, but slowly breathing its way to life — early birds in suits made their way toward the station. A street sweeper cleared plastic glasses and cigarette ends from outside a pub. Looming above all this was a thousand-foot-high sentinel, the Shard, looking like it had been plucked straight from one of Tolkien’s fantasy worlds then clad in glass.
Morgan looked at his watch — 5:28. They would hit the bridge’s center at exactly the time of Flex’s request. The bridge itself was a flat expanse, the pedestrian pavement on each side as wide as its two traffic lanes. Across it came a dribble of cars and lonely pedestrians, people ensconced in their own worlds, with no idea that life and death was about to pass them by within meters.