“And?” Hans Steiner sounded irritated.
“I’m watching her. She and the Englishman went to another apartment — a friend’s, I guess. He just stepped out and walked to a pharmacy on the street corner.”
“A pharmacy?”
“I cut him.”
“I see.”
“Should I kill her now?”
“Not yet.”
Aleksi paused for a few moments, wondering what Steiner wanted to hear. He was never an easy person to read, or second-guess.
“So what are my orders?”
“I’m holding you responsible for this, Aleksi.” The Austrian said flatly. “We have only a few hours. If you fail me again, I will refer the matter to Mr Szabo. Is that clear?”
“How was I to know he would have a heart attack?”
“I mean it, Karhu.”
“I will not fail you again.”
The Austrian cut the connection and Aleksi returned his phone to the seat beside him. He knew the threat against his life was not idle, and Mr Szabo did not have a reputation for mercy. He had witnessed that personally on more than one occasion. What had made the Hungarian that way he had no idea. All he knew was he had met some savage men in his time, but none could hold a candle to Zalan Szabo. He also understood he was being given a second chance to prove himself. Reyes had to be killed for his treachery, but it was a mistake letting him die before locating the code.
The code that was almost enough to destroy the world, but almost enough wasn’t good enough, and a few metres away in a cheap, old apartment were the two people who could help them complete the puzzle. Aleksi was certain he would be ordered to kill them both when all this was done, but until then he would just have to be patient.
He returned his gaze to the apartment. All those years ago, when he killed his first man, he could never have envisioned that it would all end like this. He didn’t care. He had never cared about anything except his mother and his sister, neither of whom were still alive. He was hardened by all those years he had spent in an Iranian prison cell being tortured for information. He recalled those long years with a tight scowl of hatred on his face, being beaten and starved unless he talked, but he never did. He had survived those years as a mercenary thanks to his army training, but now all that was in the past. He was one of the chosen few who would survive to see the new dawn.
Harry Bane and Lucia Serrano would not be so lucky.
NINE
Harry returned from the pharmacy with a bag full of bandages and drugs, and was met at the top of the stairs with the aroma of frying vegetables, paprika and rosemary. He stepped into the kitchen to find a young woman steeping saffron in some warm water, her serious face partially obscured by the clouds of steam emanating from the pans on the cooker.
She looked up at him, startled and grabbed a long kitchen knife in self-defence. “Get back!”
“Easy! It’s just me — Harry. I’m here with Lucia.”
She took a closer look and then lowered the knife as she saw the pharmacy bag and the blood on the slashed arm of his suit jacket. “I’m sorry… Lucia told me about what happened,” she said. “I thought you might have been the man who killed Pablo. Lucia is very shaken up. I know she hadn’t known him very long, but when you find someone like that, with his throat…” she shivered and then her eyes fell on the wound on his arm once again.
Harry nodded and waved the paper bag at her and gave a hesitant smile. “I just went out for a few goodies to fix the wound.” He lifted his bloody arm for her to get a better look.
“I’m Marta Gomez, by the way,” she said quietly, and lifted a much-needed glass of wine to her lips. “Sorry to meet under such circumstances.”
Harry’s eyes danced over the bewildering array of ingredients on the worktop. “Coffee and toast would have done the job,” he said with a hesitant smile.
“I’m a chef, Harry,” she said, removing the steeped saffron from the warm water. “I have more ingredients in here than the local market. I’m sure you won’t say no to a quick omelette.”
“Not at all. Where’s Lucia?”
Before Marta could reply, Lucia stepped into the kitchen wearing nothing but two towels — a large, fluffy white one around her body and a red one wrapped around her hair. “Hola, Harry. I’m glad you’re back safe.”
“Hi, yes…” Harry said, unsure where to look.
Marta snatched an olive from the salad and turned on her heel, walking over to the frying pan. After checking the eggs she moved to her right and blocked Harry’s view of the kitchen door and the receding figure of Lucia Serrano. “You want a drink?”
He watched her stir the saffron in and pour a large glass of white wine. “Why not? I see you keep a well-stocked drinks cabinet.”
“A simple Galician albariño,” she said, pouring a second glass and pushing it across the counter to him.
He took a sip. The wine tasted as good as it looked.
Lucia returned to the kitchen. The glamorous red dress was gone, replaced by a pair of Marta’s jeans and a thick, white pullover. She had tied her hair back into a bun and not replaced the makeup that the shower had washed away.
Marta served the omelette on two plates and finished her wine. “I’m going for a shower now. It’s been a long day. Help yourselves.”
Harry watched her leave the room and he took a greedy forkful of the eggs. “Pretty good. You should have something too.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He watched her now. She looked sad, and frightened and without saying another word she moved closer to him and tipped her head to one side as she studied the knife wound on his arm. “Let me clean your wound before we eat. It looks bad.”
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “Just a graze. I was lucky.”
“It still needs cleaning — even if you think you’re a lucky man.”
“You make your own luck, don’t you think?”
She shrugged her shoulders as she washed her hands in the running water over the sink. Then she unpacked the bag from the pharmacy and laid out the items he had bought — saline, gauze pads, sterile bandage. “If that’s true, then I certainly don’t know how to make luck. Take your shirt off.”
From his position sitting at the breakfast bar, he looked up at the Spanish woman as she drew closer to him with a bowl of clean water. She soaked the gauze in the water as he removed the shirt, and then she began to dab at the wound. The blade had sliced cleanly across the surface of the extensor digitorum muscle and was less than two inches in length and around half a centimetre in depth.
After she cleaned the wound with the water, she dipped some more gauze in the saline solution and Harry flinched as she dabbed it on the cut. “Don’t be a baby,” she said in a whisper. He could feel her eyes on him as she concentrated on cleaning the wound.
She patted the graze clean with a dry towel and then wrapped the sterile bandage around his upper arm. “I’m all done. You can put your shirt on.”
“If you say so,” he said, and reached for the blood-stained white shirt now hanging over the back of one of the chairs.
It was then that she began to relax a little, and pulled the omelette toward her, taking a few bites and even a small sip of the white wine Lucia had left on the table. “Is all this really happening to me?”
Harry nodded. “Looks like it, but I bet we can get out of it.”
“You bet? So says the gambler.”
Slowly he buttoned the shirt up. “I enjoy taking risks sometimes.”
“You sound arrogant. Are you good at what you do?”
Harry thought about what she had said for a moment. “Here, watch this.”
He pulled a deck of cards from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and shuffled them for a minute. Then he handed them to Lucia. “Shuffle them like I just did.”