No Remorse (10 page)

“I have told Rubi to look after you as she would a sister,” he began. He looked over at Rubi, who nodded and gave the girl an affirming smile. “If you promise to behave and comply with orders, and not try to escape or harm yourself, you will be well cared for at the resort.”

“Like you took care of Danni?” Sophia said. “I can still hear her screaming.”

Rubi spoke quietly to him in Arabic. “Danni was the one used in the ritual.”

He nodded, keeping his expression friendly so as not to give away his feelings. “Your friend has a good pair of lungs,” he said in English, and smiled. “But she is somewhat stubborn. Defiant. That is unacceptable to many in our culture.”

Sophia frowned. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“She was purchased by one of my guests.” That was close to the truth. The girl had finally accepted conversion after almost an hour and, in accordance with the ritual, mercy had been shown. The Bangladeshi, Bashir Alsadh, had been willing to take her as a house slave.

“But the auction was over… They were making her scream.”

Khalid hesitated as he considered a plausible response, then gave a soft laugh. “The man who bought her is from Saudi Arabia. A Prince. He would not demean himself to bid at auction. Danni refused to dress in the traditional
burqa
, as he required. She struggled and kicked. She bit one of my men quite badly. And yes, she was beaten several times until she complied. She screamed.”

“She sounded like she was in pain.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps she was? I cannot say. As I said, she fought like a cornered cat. That was her choice, not ours. But she will be well treated in the Prince’s household.”

Sophia stared at him, her eyes narrowed, as though she didn’t believe his story. He kept his expression impassive. He knew from experience that his face was attractive to women, and this naïve girl would not see through the confidence of a powerful man.

“Your doctor. He…” She swallowed, hesitating to utter the words.

“Yes?”

“He… he forced himself on me.”

“What?” he said, turning to Rubi who was shaking her head, apparently unaware of this. He rose to his feet, quick to sense anger. “You are no longer a virgin?”

She hesitated, now clearly petrified at the consequences of her answer, and pulled a face. “No… Yes. He… did it in my mouth.”

Khalid’s shoulders relaxed. He sat down again and laughed, waving his hand dismissively. “Come now, girl, you have never done that before?” He shrugged. “Well, you have teeth, do you not?”

She lowered her head and said nothing.

“Very well.” Khalid turned to Rubi and pointed at Sophia’s robe. Switching back to Arabic, he said: “Take her to the market in Kimba before she further inflames the desires of the crew. She must remain under close guard here until we return. Buy her some clothes and whatever she wishes, and put her in the secure wing of the resort. We’ll be back in a few days after visiting father. Then I will take another look at her.”

He turned to the girl. “Rubi will take you shopping for some nice clothes. Would that make you feel better, Sophia?”

“Can I call my mom and tell her I’m alive, at least?”

He almost laughed, but then decided to play along. It might make her more amenable later. “Well, how about this… You can make a video recording, and I will make sure it is delivered to her. But no saying where you are or who you are with, are we clear?”

The girl’s mouth turned up a little tentatively at the corners. “Thank you.”

Khalid smiled. “You will refer to me as Highness.”

Sophia hesitated, her lips pressed together, then muttered, “Thank you, Highness.”

Anastia Slabekova lay on a grimy rooftop in Sofia, Bulgaria, eight hundred yards from where her target was due to show. She was dressed in black leather and concealed inside a specially constructed canvas hide with an opening at the front. Her weapon was a Russian VSS silenced sniper rifle. This particular rifle had once been used by a Russian Army sniper in Chechnya, but she’d replaced the weapon’s original PSO 1-1 sight with a Zeiss Diavari telescopic sight. She would see the target’s head clearly as she blew a hole in it. It had a ten-round clip. She had loaded three but was intending to fire only one.

Her partner, Anton Nastayev, hadn’t warned her of any threats. His soft breathing sounded sexy through the Bluetooth headset. He was on the roof of a building that was closer to the target, but at a thirty-degree angle to hers, which would confuse witnesses as to the location of the shooter.

Her target was Viktor Rusolev, a notorious criminal who owned a chain of supermarkets and a number of flashy nightclubs that fronted for prostitution and drug distribution. He’d been implicated in an organized operation that was kidnapping girls and sending them to France, Britain and Germany as sex slaves. Previous attempts by the police to bring him into line had failed, and after the Interior Minister was recently blown up in a car with his wife and daughter, the Bulgarian Cabinet decided to authorize SANS, the State Agency for National Security, to eliminate the problem. And she and Anton were SANS’ contractors of choice, even if they were more expensive than their competitors. They had nineteen previous successes under their belt, as the newly democratic Bulgaria used them to clean out the stubborn elements of the corrupt post-Communist oligarchy.

Anton had discovered that Rusolev would be coming to his favorite club—one that he owned, of course—to meet a man known as The Frenchman. They knew that The Frenchman was already inside. Finally, after four hours of trying to keep warm, Anton’s calm voice spoke through her earpiece.

“This looks like him. Good luck, my darling.”

She didn’t need to reply.

A convoy of six black vehicles drove up fast. Bodyguards stepped out of the first two cars and the last two. Anastia saw a small movement from the gunman with a rifle on the roof of the nightclub. He’d been placed there to protect Rusolev and they could do nothing about him—that’s why she needed to succeed with one bullet. Between Rusolev getting out of the vehicle and entering the building, she’d have about eight seconds.

Two cars hadn’t opened their doors. Rusolev could be in either one. She shifted her aim to the rear door of one, then the other, knowing the bodyguards could not spot her inside the black hide. After studying the surroundings, the bodyguards gave the thumbs-up. One of them opened the rear door of the third vehicle. Three women appeared, under the influence of something, judging by the way they staggered up the steps. A man emerged with a woman on each arm. Ten seconds. The man had wavy black hair and was the right height.

Anastia eased pressure on the trigger. Something was wrong. It was the man’s walk. Not the confident swagger she was expecting. His eyes were darting around. A car horn sounded from the street below. The man glanced in her direction, revealing his face for just a moment in her crosshairs. It wasn’t Rusolev.

The decoy went into the club as the rear door of the fourth limousine opened. Two mountainous bodyguards emerged, followed by two women who were glammed-up like the others, but were walking sober. A third man, his head hidden under a fedora, emerged with a fourth man and woman in tow. Eight seconds. Two possible targets. Moving fast. Six seconds. The car horn sounded again. One of the men looked, the other with the fedora kept walking. Just before he entered the building he turned and raised his head slightly to speak to a tall bodyguard. They were his last words.

She squeezed the trigger smoothly. The nine-millimeter bullet was heavier than normal and the hardened tungsten core could penetrate body armor. It travelled at subsonic speed but carried considerable more impact energy than lighter, faster rounds. It entered Rusolev’s forehead above his left eyebrow. There was no sound of a gunshot. Just his head exploding. Blood and brain matter splattered everyone nearby. All hell broke loose. Wild gunfire opened up from outside the club and from the gunman on the roof.

Anastia pulled herself back out of the hide, hearing the muffled pops of Anton firing to cover her escape. She allowed herself a few deep breaths as she unscrewed the telescopic sight, leaving the rifle and the hide. She took off the medical gloves and scurried, bent double, to the stairwell. She knew that after emptying his clip, Anton would dump his rifle in the water tank and be out of the building well before the police arrived.

“Nice shot, darling,” Anton said to her a few minutes later, as she drove them to the airport. “How did you know?”

“His fedora. But your little trick with the remote car horn sealed it. The other guy looked. Rusolev didn’t.”

They laughed. It was a ruse they’d used before, to good effect.

Anton checked the messages on his cell phone. “It would appear that Yuri has brokered us another contract. Urgent. But paying top dollar, my love.”

Anastia glanced at him and smiled. “No women or children?”

“Of course not, darling. Just some old Arab Prince.”

At an internet café in Nice, two blocks from the Chanticle Hotel where Boris Brazhlov was staying, Tally was passing herself off as a backpacker, wearing tight yellow shorts that showed she exercised regularly, and a too-snug white cotton T-shirt that rubbed her nipples hard. Her hair was frizzed with her natural wave. Over her shoulder was a North Face daypack that had seen good mileage on past bush hikes.

She had checked out the computers in this particular internet café a few days earlier. They were fast enough and could be secured. Importantly, it used the same telephone exchange as the Chanticle Hotel, so they would be able to make it appear as though Bogdan Brazhlov was transferring his funds using the hotel’s internet. And there was no CCTV.

Rosco had arrived shortly after she’d sat down. He’d purchased some computer time and sat directly behind her to watch for any busybodies. There were only six others in the café and their heads were buried in their computers.

At her computer, Tally ran through a number of checks. First, she checked that there was no hardware attached that shouldn’t be. Next she inserted a USB stick and installed several small apps. One of these checked for viruses, and another ensured there was no keylogger program. A third loaded an ASTA remote communications application. She rebooted. Now she could log onto the ASTA network using the café’s broadband connection without being monitored.

Tally took a breath and glanced around her, rubbing her cracked rib where Austin’s punches lingered. Rosco gave her an inconspicuous signal that all was clear.

With the computer now a remote desktop linked to the ASTA servers in Montreal, Tally typed furiously. The Nice Telephone Exchange had an automated main distribution frame, which meant that she would be able to rearrange the switching of lines simply by hacking into the switching server. Using the TRAKCEPT application, Tally mapped the route connecting the host switch, the internet café and the Chanticle Hotel, then overrode the remote switch and configured the switching server so that the two locations appeared to be on the same concentrator. This small configuration change would make it appear, if anyone checked, that the person logging into Brazhlov’s bank accounts had done so from the hotel.

As she waited for Tony to call back, she wondered whether Mac would still be working with them after this operation. She felt a twinge of guilt for raising the ghosts of Mac’s past the way she had. Probably shouldn’t have said those personal things. She wasn’t normally that bitchy, but she’d been desperate not to have to work with him. Derek had told her later that she’d taken it too far, even as he laughed about how Mac had calmly eaten her carrots after she’d walked out. Actually, she decided, Mac had handled himself quite well in the circumstances. He’d displayed some emotion when she’d prodded him hard enough. But he wasn’t an Austin. Maybe she could work with him.

If they did end up working together, she’d need to be careful how she handled him, given his potential for impulsive behavior and his disastrous track record with women. According to his file, he’d had three serious relationships in the ten years since Susan, but mostly tended to have short-term, superficial ones. She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t trust women. She supposed the nature of his army life wouldn’t have been conducive to a stable relationship. Still, that was some chip he had on his shoulder.

She could understand how women might be attracted to the vulnerability behind those dark eyes, despite the tough face and the hard hands, but she wasn’t one who’d be distracted by that. She liked men who could have a conversation and laugh with her. To her, it was men’s intellect more than their bodies that appealed. Well, as a general rule, anyway.

Her cell phone rang. It wasn’t Tony. It was her sister, Benita.
Not a good time, Sis.
Then she scolded herself. Lately, it never seemed to be a good time. Ben had never recovered from their parents’ death. Collateral traumatic stress, her doctor called it. She called it another life destroyed. She took the call.

“Hi, Ben,” she said in her chirpiest voice.

“It’s been three days. I’ve been worried,” the shaky voice on the other end of the line complained.

“Sorry, I meant to call yesterday, but I was traveling. How was the concert?” She’d purchased the two tickets to encourage Ben to go out with a friend.

Benita gave a big sigh. “Oh, I wasn’t feeling the best, and I couldn’t find anyone to go with. And it was raining and…” Her voice drifted off.

“Ben—”

“Don’t get mad, Tal.” Benita’s voice raised its volume. “That’s not what I need right now… Anyway, you know I hate crowds. I’ll pay back the money for the tickets, okay?”

Tally was about to say something when her cell phone buzzed to show another caller.