Will slammed the vehicle’s trunk shut, glanced at his watch, checked that his harness and leg holster were firmly in place, and held his submachine gun in one hand. “It’s time.”
Alfie took a last drag on his cigarette, flicked it away, took a step toward the mountain path, then stopped. “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“For bringing me along.”
Will smiled. “I needed all the help I could get.”
“Maybe. But another thing struck me about that Google Earth thingy. If you were on yer own, or with blokes half my age, you’d be scaling the mountain to get to the bastard rather than”-he pointed at the five-mile road leading to Schreiber’s mountain residence-“making this suicide run.”
“Alfie, I. .”
“It’s alright, sunshine.” Alfie grinned, his eyes moist. “You don’t need to say anything.” He thrust out his hand.
Will gripped it firmly.
They nodded at each other.
Both knowing that there truly was nothing more to be said.
They put the butts of their guns into their shoulders.
And moved up the mountain road.
Kronos kept scouring the rock inclines for signs of men in white arctic-warfare clothing, using ropes and other equipment to scale the mountain. But he saw nothing. He wondered if Cochrane had ignored his instruction not to use the north face. Perhaps the MI6 officer wanted to assault the castle without being seen by Kronos, for fear that Kronos had other motives for luring him here and would easily pick off him and his men. But that didn’t make any sense.
He returned his attention to Schreiber’s residence. Since 1995, he’d monitored the movement of all of the men present at the Berlin meeting. Schreiber was the canniest of them alclass="underline" constantly changing locations within Europe, buying new properties to live in, sometimes purchasing properties with no intention of staying there. None of his bases were listed under his own name; instead they’d been bought using one of his numerous aliases or one of his cover companies. But the manifold layers of subterfuge hadn’t prevented Kronos from establishing Schreiber’s various locations. Some of those places were still under observation by SVR operatives who worked for Mikhail Salkov. But they didn’t know about this place. No one did, apart from him and Will Cochrane.
He checked his watch. 1210 hours. Was Cochrane late? Not coming at all?
He checked his cell phone. It was the number he’d given Cochrane. No missed calls or messages.
He squinted through the thermal scope and moved the gun inch by inch to the right.
He froze.
Two men.
Halfway up the mountain road.
On foot.
Carrying guns.
The big man was Cochrane.
The other man was. .
Twice his age.
Urgently he moved his scope right and left, searching for other men.
Nothing.
Between gritted teeth, the German assassin muttered, “You mad, mad men.”
Anger flashed across Kurt Schreiber’s face as one of his guards burst into his vast living room. “You’re supposed to knock!”
The man shook his head, was breathless, looked agitated. “Mr. Schreiber. Two men, halfway up the mountain path, both carrying guns.”
“Game hunters with rifles?”
“No. Men dressed in white, carrying submachine guns. One of them is Alfie Mayne.”
Schreiber chuckled. “And the other is a big man in his thirties.”
“Correct, sir.”
“Will Cochrane and Mayne are coming here to have a chat with me about what I did to Betty.” He smiled, removed his rimless glasses, and polished them with a silk handkerchief. “How many men do we have?”
“Now that the others have returned from the U.K., twenty-six.”
He placed his glasses back on, and his smile vanished as he stared at his employee. “I would have thought that was more than enough to deal with this trivial matter. Kill Cochrane and Mayne; bring their bodies to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man was about to dash out of the room, but stopped when Schreiber jabbed a finger against the coffee table. “And if you ever come in here again without knocking, I’ll ensure that your dead body is laid alongside those of the men you’re about to kill.”
After the guard left, Schreiber lifted two files. One of them contained the profiles of the men who’d been present at the Berlin meeting in 1995. Now that Dugan, Scott, and Ballinger had been sentenced and executed, Nikolai Dmitriev and Kurt Schreiber were the only surviving attendees of that meeting. One day that would change-he’d issue orders for Dmitriev to be located and killed. But for now, Dmitriev remained in protective custody, and in any case Schreiber needed to lay low. He didn’t mind. Dugan had paid him fifty million dollars to oversee the activation of Kronos. And that meant he could stay off the radar for a long time.
He tossed the file into the fire and turned his attention to the second file. A file that was empty, and had only the letter K on its front. Kronos’s failure to kill Dmitriev had utterly shocked Schreiber. If only he’d known the assassin had lost his touch, he’d have used one of the others for the job. But between Kronos’s failure and Dmitriev’s testimony, there was no time to do so. He sighed, thought about the fifty million, then smiled and threw the file into the fire. “Once, you were our finest. It appears that’s no longer the case. Good luck living with that realization.”
Will moved slowly up the narrow mountain road, Alfie right behind him. Both men held their machine guns high, ready to fire. All along the right of the twisting road was a thirty-yard-high vertical rock escarpment; to their left was the drop to the tranquil valley. They’d been walking for four miles. One mile ahead and high above them was their destination, appearing and disappearing with every bend in the road.
The icy air caused their breath to steam; their bodies were tense. They knew that at any moment they could be struck by a hail of gunfire.
Will glanced to his left. On the far side of the valley were more mountains. The closest was approximately eighteen hundred yards away. He wondered if that was where Kronos was waiting. It would give him perfect sight of Schreiber’s residence, of the long road leading to it, and of Will and Alfie. What would the professional assassin be thinking as he looked at the two men cautiously making their way up the track? No doubt, he’d believe they were idiots. Or had a death wish.
Right now Will didn’t care about death. Or life. All that mattered to him was getting Alfie in front of Schreiber. Sarah was right. It was his fault that Betty had died. He had to make amends for that, regardless of the consequences.
Alfie was breathing fast, but at no point had he slowed or complained. Instead, the ex-SAS soldier had kept silent, expertly covering the angles with his gun, working with Will so that both men could open fire with maximum impact when assaulted. Sheer determination and a desire to get his hands on Schreiber’s throat were enough to keep the retiree moving along the steep road.
Will gestured for them to stop, and crouched down. “Around the next bend, we’ve got five hundred yards to reach the house. There’s only one small bend to give us cover, but aside from that it’s a kill zone.”
Alfie’s aching limbs throbbed as he crouched next to Will. “Okay, just give me a few seconds.” He breathed in deeply several times, winced as he stood, patted one of his legs, and muttered to himself, “Five hundred yards and the house. That’s all I need from you, old boys. After that, you can both fall off for all I care.” He sucked in a big lungful of air, lifted his gun, and nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”