Absolution Read online

  Leine shrugged. “You’re right. I should have known.” She’d been idealistic then, assumed everyone around her felt the same way she did. She’d been wrong.

  Lesson learned.

  Simms took another drink and set the glass on the bar. “Look, I’m in, whatever you decide. Consider it my penance for being a jaded, crusty old assassin who assumed everyone was out for themselves and decided to get my share. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  “How do you feel about enhanced interrogation?”

  6

  Static erupted in Leine’s earpiece as she searched the busy boulevard for her objective. Low clouds hung over the posh West London neighborhood, threatening rain. Art Kowalski was once again acting as overwatch and had apparently spotted someone or something nearby.

  “Two o’clock. Dark blue hoodie.”

  Leine glanced down the sidewalk, past the trendy cafés and pubs, searching for the man who could lead her to Salome. A guy in his mid-twenties wearing a navy blue hooded sweatshirt and black jeans walked toward her. White wires sprouted from his ears like anemic spaghetti as he bobbed his head to the music coming through his earphones. Memories surfaced of when she’d first encountered him and another of Salome’s henchmen in an alley in Tripoli. The two thugs were about to kill Jinn, a ten-year-old street kid with sticky fingers. For a cell phone. Leine had knocked out Damil and killed the other—the man holding a gun to the child’s head.

  No lost sleep there. At the time, if she’d known of Damil’s role in the attack in Paris she would have eliminated him, too. But there’d been enough killing that day and she had let him live.

  “Got him.” Leine zipped her leather jacket closed and adjusted her sunglasses as she waited for Damil to narrow the distance between them. She positioned herself for economy of movement—no point in alerting passersby. She closed her fingers around the grip of the Beretta in her pocket and slid it free, careful to keep it out of sight. The pistol was an effective means to compel him to do as she asked, even though it was the middle of the day and there were too many witnesses—not the best environment for an abduction. She would have to lure him off the main thoroughfare and into a waiting van.

  “Easy, now. Don’t scare him off.” Art’s voice echoed in her earpiece.

  Damil came abreast of her position. Leine stepped forward, grasped his arm, and poked the barrel of the gun into his ribcage. He stiffened and pulled away, but she kept a tight grip. He yanked out one of his earbuds.

  “Do as I say and you live,” Leine said in a low voice, her smile intended to diffuse questioning looks from passersby. “Walk.” No one appeared to notice the intimate drama playing out on the busy sidewalk.

  “What do you want?” Damil said, as she prodded him down a deserted residential side street.

  “I knew your uncle, Henri.”

  Damil swiveled his head, trying to get a good look at her, but Leine shoved the gun hard into his side and he quickly abandoned the attempt.

  They walked to an idling white van parked near a row of upscale brick homes. The door slid open, and Zarko jumped out. His tattooed forearms, multiple piercings, and penetrating stare gave him an intimidating look. Damil slowed, obviously anxious about the new addition.

  “What’s going on? What do you want?” he protested, unease lacing his words.

  Leine shoved him forward. Zarko caught him by the shoulders and turned him around, expertly wrapping his wrists with flex cuffs. He patted him down and discovered a knife, a loaded semiauto, and a mobile phone, which he tossed to Leine.

  With a quick glance to make sure no one was nearby, he brought out a black fabric hood, which he pulled over Damil’s head before he shoved him into the cargo area and slammed the door closed. He then ejected the magazine from Damil’s gun, wiped the weapons clean, and dropped the items into a plastic shopping bag.

  With a nod at Leine, Zarko moved around the back of the van and got in the driver’s side. After a quick scan of the contact list, Leine removed the battery and sim card from Damil’s phone before she climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. A metal cage separated the prisoner from the front seat. Damil sat ramrod straight with his back against the side door.

  “That was too easy,” Zarko commented as he pulled away from the curb. Leine tossed the battery through the window, hitting the rim of a nearby rubbish bin.

  “We caught him by surprise. According to Henri, he was never much of a fighter. More like a thuggish errand boy.”

  “He’s still a terrorist. You can’t be too careful, in my opinion.”

  Leine gave him a sidelong glance. “You think he’s bait?”

  Zarko shrugged.

  “Take us somewhere and check.”

  A few minutes later, Zarko pulled to the side of a tree-lined park six blocks from the main thoroughfare. There was no pedestrian activity—the small greenspace appeared buttoned up for the day, most likely due to the probability of rain. He exited the vehicle and came around to the side of the van where he slid the door open. Damil turned his head toward him as he climbed inside.

  “What are you doing?” Damil’s muffled voice had an edge.

  “Taking off your shoes.”

  “I can’t breathe.” Damil’s ragged panting became more pronounced. Zarko lifted the hood.

  Leine slid her pistol free and aimed it through the cage at the man’s chest. The movement distracted him, and he turned to look at her. Recognition lit Damil’s eyes and he sneered.

  “You’re the bitch who killed my uncle.” Hatred sparked from his narrowed gaze and he spit in her direction, missing her by a mile.

  “Not exactly,” Leine replied. “But I’m not here to argue.”

  Zarko seized him by the calves and yanked him closer. He proceeded to pry off the well-worn leather boots and then zip-tied his ankles together. Using his own knife, Zarko sliced through the soles and interior until the shoes were shredded. He reached inside his front pocket and pulled out a short black wand. He flicked a switch, creating a low hum. Waving it over the shoes, he checked the readout on the bug detector. “Nothing here.” He tossed what was left of the shoes into the corner of the van, then felt the hem of Damil’s jeans and hoodie.

  “Anything?” Leine asked.

  Zarko shook his head. “No.” He tugged the hood back down over the prisoner’s face.

  “Check his arms and legs.”

  Zarko pushed Damil’s sleeves up and ran the wand along his arms, searching for signs of an embedded tracker. He did the same with his calves and feet.

  “Nothing. You want me to continue?”

  “Yeah.”

  Salome wasn’t someone to be trifled with. Their lives and the life of the prisoner depended on making sure they weren’t tracked.

  Leine kept the gun trained on Damil as Zarko stripped him to his underwear to search him more thoroughly.

  “Nothing.”

  “Better safe than sorry, right?”

  “Yep.” Zarko tossed Damil’s clothes in a corner and returned to the driver’s seat.

  Art’s voice came through her earpiece. “Well? How’d it go?”

  Leine keyed her mic and said, “We’ve got the package. ETA is—” She glanced at Zarko.

  “Thirty minutes, give or take.”

  “Thirty,” Leine confirmed.

  “Copy that.” Art’s tone was all business. “See you then.”

  7

  Thirty-five minutes and several countersurveillance moves later, Leine and Zarko pulled into a garage on a quiet street on the outskirts of London. Leine exited the van and rolled the garage door closed.

  Zarko cut the plastic tie around Damil’s ankles, and he and Leine marched the prisoner into the house, up a flight of stairs, and through a reinforced steel door which opened onto an empty kitchen. They moved through an archway into a large, barren living room. In the center of the room, a large roll of sheet plastic was visible on the floor next to a wooden chair.

  The scuffed and pitted plank floors were worn to a dark patina, and the place smelled of mildew and questionable circumstances. There didn’t appear to be any heat in the obviously abandoned building, and the cool fall weather was making its presence known. Narrow, floor-to-ceiling windows stretched across the far wall, covered in thick, dust-filled drapes that did little to alleviate the chill. Even the soundproofing Art added to the walls and ceiling couldn’t stop the insidious damp. Lit by a lone floor lamp, the place sported chipped, buff-colored paint covered by dots of black mold.

  Art waited for them near a card table positioned several feet from the chair on the plastic. The tanned and fit sixty-five-year-old warrior’s alert blue eyes reminded Leine of a hawk’s gaze. His close-cropped, steel-gray hair conjured an earlier life in the military. Relaxed but alert, he wore a loose-fitting, dark blue windbreaker over a blue and white plaid flannel shirt, a pair of jeans, and black crepe-soled shoes.

  She’d worked with Art during a tense rescue operation in Greece the year before, and she’d come to trust him and his team. His long experience as a personal protection operator and several years as a member of foreign intelligence active in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan made Art uniquely qualified to locate people who didn’t want to be found. If it hadn’t been for him and his team, the delicate balance of power in a tense geopolitical conflict would have been destroyed, leading to war.

  Another of Art’s guys stood off to the side, his arms crossed. He went by the name of Jorge and wore similar attire to Art’s. His shaved head accentuated a tattoo of the Rod of Asclepius running up his neck. The team medic, Jorge was an immensely effective operative, and both Leine and Zarko had worked with him on the operation in Greece.

  Zarko led Damil, hooded and still clad in only his underwear, to the lone wooden chair across from Art and sat him down. He secured the prisoner’s arms and legs to the chair with tape, yanked the hood off, and tossed it on the card table. Damil squinted in the dusty beam of light cast by the floor lamp. An involuntary shiver racked his shoulders.

  Leine walked over to a canvas bag on the floor next to the table and pulled out a metal box. Three plastic-coated wires with alligator clips on each end trailed from one side with a set of controls and a blank digital readout on the other. She set the box on top of the table and uncoiled the attached power cord, which she connected to a power bank already set up on the floor. The readout blinked red several times before settling on zero.

  Damil watched all this with increasing alarm, his eyes growing ever larger as the import of her actions began to sink in.

  Exactly what Leine intended. She leveled her gaze at him.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he asked her, nodding at the device. His voice rang hollow in the empty space. Despite the chill in the room, tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

  “That’s up to you.” Leine picked up the three long wires and separated them, checking each clip. Then she fiddled with the knob until the box emitted a low hum. She reached into the bag and brought out a metal screwdriver with a rubber grip and touched the end to one of the clips. The surfaces arced and popped.

  Damil’s gaze was riveted to the metal box. Leine put the screwdriver down and stepped toward him. He tore his gaze from the electrical device, his breath quick and shallow.

  “It should be me who is questioning you,” he said, his voice thick with false bravado.

  Leine raised an eyebrow. “Oh? How do you figure that?”

  “After years of working with him, you killed my uncle. Why?”

  “I didn’t actually kill him.”

  “Liar.”

  “Didn’t he tell you? Your uncle set me up. He told your employer where and who I was and she agreed to fund a contract.”

  “Liar!” Damil said again. “He would never have betrayed a friend.”

  Leine almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.

  “I hate to break it to you, Damil, but Henri was all about the booty—both in business and pleasure.” The woman he’d selected to kill her had been a protégé of Henri’s, although Leine was pretty sure he had hoped to get the twenty-something into bed. Of course, the bounty Salome put on Leine’s head after Henri revealed that Leine was the notorious assassin known as the Leopard might have had something to do with his betrayal.

  Luckily, his attempt failed. When Leine confronted him, his security force made the mistake of trying to neutralize her. One of the rounds meant for her found a home in Henri. Leine couldn’t say she was sad it happened, although he had been a damn good arms dealer.

  Leine shrugged. “Believe what you want. How do you think I got your name? Your precious uncle gave you up faster than you can say ‘family.’ It’s not like Salome called and told me who you were.”

  Doubt shadowed his features for a moment but was quickly replaced by his default bluster. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know where your employer is.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  Leine nodded at Zarko, who picked up two wires and advanced toward him, snapping the clips together like tiny dinosaur teeth.

  “I think you do.”

  Damil’s lips hardened into a straight line and he glared at Leine. “I will not tell you anything.”

  “Yes, you will. Everybody breaks—at some point. It just depends on how much you’re willing to endure for the cause.” Leine would have preferred a more finessed interrogation, but Art had argued that the longer it took to draw the information out of him, the less coherent or reliable his answers were likely to be. Reluctantly, Leine had agreed.

  “How did you find me?”

  He was playing for time. Leine wasn’t about to tell him that Spencer Simms followed him from the pub he frequented for lunch to his flat in an upscale neighborhood in West London. Routine was an operative’s Achilles heel. He should have known that.

  Zarko squeezed one of the clips open and lowered it toward his left pectoral muscle. “This is going to hurt.” He clamped the little metal teeth onto his nipple and Damil drew in a sharp breath. Squeezing his eyes shut, he took several deep breaths. Zarko connected the second clip to his other nipple and stepped away.

  “Hold on a minute,” Leine said. “I almost forgot.” She nodded at the roll of plastic beside the chair. Zarko grabbed one end, unrolled a large section, and then slid it across the floor in front of Damil.

  “Body fluids have a tendency to spray out during this kind of questioning,” she said as Zarko rocked Damil’s chair back on two legs and tucked the plastic underneath. “Things can get a little messy.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Art said. “Remember when that guy’s testicle exploded? Better make sure it’s covering a wide enough area.”

  Zarko nodded as he tugged the plastic under the back of the chair. “Like the lady said, messy.” Damil stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched.

  Leine signaled Art, and he fiddled with the dial on the metal box.

  “Make it count,” she said.

  As soon as the current reached the clips, Damil’s body went rigid and his fingers curled around the armrests. Art let the machine do its job before cutting the power several seconds later. Damil hung his head and slumped back in the chair.

  Not waiting for him to recover, Leine asked, “Where is she?”

  “I told you I don’t know who you are talking about,” he wheezed.

  Leine sighed. “Okay. If that’s the way you want to play it.” She twirled her finger in the air, giving Art the go-ahead to continue.

  The second time wasn’t as gentle, although could be tolerated by someone Damil’s age and size. Earlier, when they were planning the abduction, she and Art had decided how much to increase the current each time based on a healthy twenty-five-year-old male, then added their previous experiences to the mix. Leine had been subject to a similar ordeal back in her assassin days, and she knew well the excruciating jolt of electricity that barreled through such a sensitive area.

  Damil tried not to scream, but the current was too much and he wailed in agony. Art cut the juice, and the prisoner collapsed against the chair, gasping.

  “You’re lucky,” Leine said. “When I got to experience this little exercise, I was soaked to the skin and hanging by my arms from a chain on a freezing cold trawler.”

  The prisoner whimpered through shallow breaths. Leine stepped closer. She grabbed his chin and brought his head up so she could look him in the eyes.

  “Where is she?”

  Pain and misery were obvious in his gaze, but so was something else. Resignation flickered in the depths. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Damil shook his head. “I—can’t. If I tell you she will kill me,” he whispered.

  Leine bent down close and in a quiet voice said, “We’ll kill you if you don’t.” She waited, allowing him room to reach the only conclusion he could. When he hesitated, she glanced at Zarko. “You’re going to have to connect the third one.”

  Grimacing, Zarko picked up the third wire and walked over to Damil. He opened the clip and reached for his crotch.

  “No—wait.” The prisoner closed his eyes and shuddered. He took a deep breath. “She has changed her appearance.”

  “How?”

  “Her nose and chin.”

  The reconstructive surgery wasn’t a surprise. Facial recognition was hard to avoid, especially in airports and train stations. Salome might have found some wealthy backers who could provide a private jet or possibly a boat, but at some point if she was on the move, she’d have to appear in public. CCTV cameras were ubiquitous, especially in European cities and airports, not to mention the borders.

  “Why are there so many of your compatriots in London? What’s she planning?”

  Damil shook his head. “I don’t know. I just know what she told me.”

  “And what was that?”

  “To meet her in London. She rented me an apartment.”

  “What else? Where is she now?”

  Damil shook his head. “She’s never in one place for long. She’s—how do you say it? Paranoid.”