“It’s the Americans we should be blaming for this,” one of the men was insisting. “I mean, if you’re going to throw your weight around, trample international law and go guns-blazing into someone else’s country, the least you can do is A: make sure your hostage is actually there and B: shoot the right bloke when you arrive. Instead, we now have Daley’s killer on the loose, Hunter Drexel still being held somewhere, and a bunch of murdered teenagers lying in a Bratislavan morgue.”
“They weren’t ‘murdered,’ ” his opponent shot back, apoplectic with rage. “They were military combatants, killed in action. Justified action I’d say, after what they did to Bob Daley. They were terrorists.”
“They were kids! The fella w
ho shot Bob Daley was a terrorist. But he’s not the one with a bullet in his skull, is he?”
“They’re all part of the same group,” yelled his opponent. “They’re all responsible.”
“Oh really? So are all Muslims responsible for ISIL?”
“What? Of course not! The two situations are not even remotely similar.”
“ ’Ere we are, mate.”
To Jeff’s relief, he saw that the cabbie had finally reached his flat on Cheyne Walk. Tipping the man more than he deserved, Jeff stepped out into the cool night air. The breeze coming off the river, combined with the softly twinkling lights of Albert Bridge, soothed his nerves.
Like many people in England, Jeff was gripped by the twists and turns of the Group 99 affair. On the one hand he found the lazy, anti-Americanism expressed by the first politician on the radio show to be both insulting and wrongheaded. Jeff had lived in England long enough to know that if it had been the SAS going in to rescue a British hostage, they’d have been hailed as heroes and Bratislavan territorial integrity be damned.
Then again, the SAS might not have made such a total balls up of the whole thing.
On the other hand, there was a part of him that agreed with the first politician, when he characterized the men shot dead at the Bratislava camp as “kids.” Up until Daley’s slaying, Group 99 had never been violent, and were rarely if ever referred to as terrorists. Was everyone who had ever joined the organization now to be tarred with the same brush as the monster who shot Daley?
Jeff Stevens knew he made an unlikely apologist for the Group 99ers. Back when it was trendy to admire them, Jeff had always found their politics crass and their so-called mission wildly insincere. These young men from Europe’s broken states might justify their actions under the banner of social justice. But from what Jeff could see, what really drove them was envy. Envy and anger and a growing sense of impotence, fueled by leftwing firebrands like Greece’s Elias Calles or Spain’s Lucas Colomar. Maybe Jeff was getting old. But in his day, the idea was to earn one’s wealth and then enjoy the hell out of it. True, Jeff had broken plenty of laws in his day. Technically, he supposed, he could be described as a thief. But he only ever stole from genuinely unpleasant people. And he did so at great personal risk to himself, boldly and daringly; not by sneaking into the back end of somebody’s computer system. To Jeff Stevens’s way of thinking, hackers were just a bunch of whining cowards who happened to be good at math. And as for targeting the fracking industry? Really! If there was one thing guaranteed to put Jeff’s back up it was a sanctimonious eco-bore. If Nicholas ever turned into one of those entitled, embittered little nerds, Jeff would die of shame. Not that that was likely to happen.
Taking the lift up to his penthouse apartment, Jeff felt glad to be home. The vast lateral flat was his pride and joy. With its elegant sash windows, high ceilings, parquet floor and spectacular views across the river, it felt more like a museum than a private residence. Over the years Jeff had filled the place with priceless antiquities, treasures from his travels, both legally and illegally acquired. The shelves were crammed with everything from ancient Egyptian vases, to first edition Victorian novels, to mummified pygmy heads creepily pickled in jars. There were coins and statues, fossils and burial robes, fragments of arrowheads and an entire Nordic rune stone mounted on a plinth. There was no rhyme or reason to Jeff’s collection, other than these were all unique items, things with a history that he loved. An ex-lover once suggested that Jeff surrounded himself with things to compensate for the lack of human closeness in his life, an observation that irritated him deeply. Probably because it was true. Or at least it had been, before he found Tracy again, and Nick came into his life.
Wandering into the kitchen, Jeff slipped a Keurig coffee packet into the machine and walked out onto his terrace while it brewed. Since giving up drinking, coffee had replaced whisky as his nighttime ritual. For some reason it never seemed to keep him awake, and childishly he enjoyed the gadgetiness of the new generation of coffeemakers, all the shiny chrome and buttons to press and the perfectly frothed milk.
It was the week before Christmas, and London was in the grip of a cold snap that covered everything with a sparkling gray frost. There was no snow, yet, but the park still looked like a Victorian Christmas card, timeless and peaceful and lovely. Jeff had always loved Christmas. It made him feel like a kid again, dreaming of candy and presents with his nose pressed against the store windows. Then again, as Tracy used to remind him, Jeff had never really stopped being a kid. The only difference was that as an adult he’d exchanged gazing through store windows for breaking in through the roof. “You’ve become a permanent fixture on Santa’s naughty list,” she used to say.
Smiling at the memory, and still half thinking about Nicholas—he missed him at Christmas more than usual—Jeff pulled out his phone and, on a whim, called Tracy’s number. Irritatingly it went to voicemail.
“It’s me,” he said awkwardly. Jeff had never liked leaving messages. “Look, I really want to see Nick. I know we said to give it some time, but I want to come out there. It’s been too long and I . . . I miss him. Call me back, OK?”
He hung up feeling annoyed with himself and went back inside to retrieve his coffee. He should have waited for Tracy to answer. Things always went better when they spoke in person.
A loud buzz from the doorbell made him jump.
Who the hell could that be at this time? Jeff’s stomach suddenly lurched. Surely not even Dean Klinnsman could have tracked him down that quickly. Or maybe he could. Someone at the club could have given him my address. It would only take a phone call.
Jeff darted into his bedroom, unlocked the drawer on his bedside table and pulled out a handgun. Keeping his back to the walls, he edged towards the front door of the flat and peeped nervously through the spy hole.
“Jesus,” he exhaled, opening the door. “You scared the crap out of me.”
Lianna stood alone in the hallway, wrapped up in a dark gray cashmere coat and winter boots.
“I thought it was your fiancée. Or one of his henchmen. Come to finish me off.”
“No,” Lianna smiled lasciviously. “Just me.”
Undoing the belt of her coat she opened it slowly, her eyes never leaving Jeff’s. Other than the boots, she was completely, gloriously naked.
“Where were we?” she asked, advancing towards Jeff like an Amazon goddess, her pupils dilating with lust.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, Jeff thought about how very, very foolish he would be to sleep with Dean Klinnsman’s girlfriend. Then he grabbed Lianna around the waist with both hands and pulled her into the apartment.
As long as Tracy Whitney was alive, Jeff Stevens’s heart was spoken for.