He got out of the seat and walked to the drinks cabinet at the end of the plane. After a few seconds opening doors and drawers he located a bottle of vodka and some ice and made a pretty unhealthy drink. He knocked it back and felt it burn its way south. He didn’t flinch. What, after all, was pain like this compared with what he was going through in his mind?
He looked back up the slim jet and watched the Russian for a moment. She was sitting in her seat and staring forward, motionless. Perhaps her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was a liar. Sunlight poured through the tiny porthole and shone on her blonde hair.
He poured two more vodkas and shut his eyes tight. He didn’t like to close his eyes anymore. That world was where Liz lived, and now he realized he had never known her it tore him up to see her face in his mind’s eye. Right now she was laughing at a joke he had just made while they were rowing on the Serpentine… Now she was standing beside him on a balcony in Madrid as they clinked glasses to toast their decision to move in together.
Was it really all nothing but lies?
He walked the vodkas up the plane and handed Maria one of them. “Some people drink to remember, others drink to forget. What kind are you?”
She smiled and took the drink, but said nothing. Like other Russians and Poles he had known, she made short work of the vodka and set the glass down on the seat beside her. The smell of the spirit mingled with the scent of her perfume, and with the rush of the previous shot coursing through his veins and the shock of everything he suddenly saw her in another way — she was incredibly beautiful, for one thing, but she was smart, together, confident. A lot like Lea, except without the humor, maybe…
“What?” she said, half a smile crossing her red lips.
“Nothing. You just remind me of someone, that’s all. Listen, Maria. You told me that you knew about my wife’s murder, but all you’ve told me about is her background — that she was half-Russian, and her codename was Swallowtail.”
Another sympathetic nod, another bewitching smile. “I know.”
“Now I need you to tell me the rest.” He downed the vodka and swallowed hard. “I need to know about Operation Swallowtail.”
She looked at him for a long time before replying. He saw sadness in her eyes, and braced himself for what was coming.
“Joe, Operation Swallowtail was a highly covert mission to kill your wife, and I think you’ve already figured this much out.”
He nodded grimly. “Yes. A good friend of mine with senior contacts in the British military told me the kill order came from within the UK. Is this true?”
“Yes. The kill order was given by James Matheson.”
The words hit Hawke like a jackhammer and a stunned silence filled the cabin. His mind spun into dizzy chaos in his attempt to process the information he had just been given.
“James Matheson? Do you know what you’re saying, Maria?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“James Matheson is the British Foreign Secretary.”
“I know this.”
A raw, burning rage rose inside him like acid. He had personally met Matheson in a hotel room in Switzerland. He had shaken that son of a bitch’s hand and taken orders from him, and the whole time he had been the man who had ordered his wife’s execution. Now, thinking back to that day in Geneva, he recalled how Matheson had seemed anxious and on edge during their meeting, particularly when speaking with him personally.
He leaned closer to Maria. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”
“Yes, of course, I have evidence if you need it. Remember, she was a respected and valuable FSB asset. When the British killed her it upset many people in Russia with great influence. Her killers were identified within days.”
“Why did they kill her, Maria? And I want the truth.”
“Because she was getting too close to the truth, Joe.”
“The truth about what?”
“About Matheson and the Athanatoi.”
Hawke’s head began to spin. He felt almost drunk with confusion, dazed by the sheer amount of information he was supposed to digest and process and react to.
“Matheson knows about all this?”
She nodded. “We think so, yes. In fact…”
“What?”
“We think he might be a part of the Athanatoi.”
“This is… insanity.”
She moved closer to him and placed a hand gently on his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He pulled away from her and scowled. “No, I’m not okay. But I will be, in time.”
He walked to the window and watched the desert passing beneath them as they raced south to Luxor. For a moment he wondered if all this might be enough finally to bring him down, but then he remembered what his father had always told him — no matter what, never give in and never give up.
He turned back to Maria. “I was told the killer was a Cuban assassin called Alfredo Lazaro, and that he was killed in a raid in Thailand.”
Maria leaned back a little and narrowed her eyes in confusion. “The hit-man was Lazaro, yes, or the Spider as he calls himself, but he wasn’t killed in any ambush in Thailand. He’s not dead, Joe.”
“Not dead? Are you certain?”
“For sure. Because of what he did to Elizaveta, he’s on a lot of lists in Moscow. The sort of lists you don’t want to be on, you know? I can promise you he is not dead. He was last seen in Mexico about six weeks ago.”
Hawke nodded. He knew well enough that governments kept hit-lists of enemies of the state, but if Moscow thought it was going to get to the Spider before he did then there was going to be a lot of serious disappointment in the Kremlin. As for Matheson… that sort of treachery deserved the ultimate punishment.
He breathed out slowly and took another shot of the vodka. He had to calm himself, but it was tough when the problems kept mounting. Lea was gone, snatched by Vetrov, and now he had just discovered that the two men responsible for his wife’s brutal murder were both alive.
And that was a wrong that had to be righted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hawke knew Vetrov’s plaything was the A380, and noted with dismay that Luxor Airport’s runway was, at ten thousand feet, more than long enough to accommodate the giant Airbus both at landing and takeoff. This was confirmed when he looked down from the tiny Gulfstream and saw the A380 parked neatly on the apron to the east of the airport.
Vetrov had beaten them to it, and there was no way to know how far ahead they were. There was also no way to know if Lea Donovan and Bradley Karlsson were still alive. The anger rose in Hawke like a wave of lava as he thought about what he had seen Vetrov doing to Alex back at the dacha, and then imagined the same happening to Lea, somewhere out in the Nile.
Making matters worse was Maria. He was battling hard to put his wife and her slaying out of his mind, but every time he saw the Russian woman’s face he lost another part of that battle and had to refocus all over again.
The sleek Gulfstream hit the Luxor tarmac and deployed the reverse thrusters. Moments later it was taxiing to the airport and pulling up not far from the gargantuan A380. Hawke registered with disgust as he read the words VETROV INDUSTRIES written in black on the side of it.
As they walked down the steps of the aircraft, Eden was already on the phone, organizing back-up.
“Peter Henderson again?” Hawke asked him, referring to the British Ambassador.
Eden was hard to read, but there was something strange about the way he looked at Hawke when he replied. “No, an old friend of mine from way back — an Egyptian named Arafa. He’s more than half-way up the greasy pole of the Egyptian Army — a Brigadier General. He’s going to send a few chaps to help us out, but it might take him a few hours to sort it.”