“I’m keeping an open mind. Why don’t you show yourself first?”
“Certainly.” He stepped out, away from the wall, but it had grown too dark to see clearly. And suddenly the uncertainty was cracking the icy shell surrounding her.
“Do you have a light?” she asked.
“Why? Do you want a cigarette?”
She would have killed for a cigarette. Quite literally. “I’d like to take a good look at you before I come any closer.”
“A wise precaution,” he said. “After all, I’m considered to be the most dangerous man in the world. Didn’t Time call me that?”
“You shouldn’t believe your own press clippings.”
“Mahmoud!” He raised his voice, and the small child appeared, carrying a lantern. The man took it, raising it with one hand and holding out his other. “Satisfied, Madame? I’m unarmed. Harmless.”
She stared at his illuminated face, and the relief was so powerful she almost felt dizzy. How could she have made such a mistake? He was nothing at all like Killian. Killian was dead, and had been for eighteen years. The only thing this man had in common with him was his height. And the fact that he was a terrorist.
His eyes were dark, almost black, and Killian’s eyes had been green. His thinning black hair was liberally streaked with gray. Half his face was covered with a salt-and-pepper beard, framing a mouthful of blackened teeth. He had a paunch, a generous ring of flesh around his belly that suggested years of good living.
“Do I look harmless enough?” he asked when she’d completed her long, shocked perusal.
“I’m not a fool, Mr. Serafin,” she said. She couldn’t afford to let her relief lower her guard. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“Indeed,” he said. “Are you going to show yourself?”
She stepped into the light, the 9 mm semiautomatic held tightly, trained at his chest. If she had to shoot she’d go lower or higher—the throat was efficient, the groin almost as painful. Both caused much more suffering than a bullet to the heart or the head, and if anyone deserved to suffer it was this man.
There was no expression in his flat black eyes as he looked at her and the gun. “Are you going to kill me?”
If this man had really been Killian, she would have been tempted. But she’d been wrong…plus tired and emotional and deluded. “Not until you give me reason to.”
“You mean I haven’t already? Given my activities during the last twenty years?” He was goading her, amused by her.
She hated killing, hated it with a sick, deep passion. But when they learned everything they needed to from this miserable excuse for a human being, she was going to enjoy putting a bullet in his head.
“Right now, you’ve got a free pass,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Are you ready to go? My Jeep is waiting, and we’d do better to travel in the dark. We’re heading down the coast highway to Mauritania and catching transport there.”
“I don’t think so. They’ll be looking for me in Western Sahara, and I don’t trust women drivers on these roads. We’ll head east and go through Algeria.”
“The border’s closed.”
“And that creates a problem?”
She controlled her temper. “You asked us to get you out of here and safely back to England. If you already made plans, then why did you bother with us?”
“I need cover. I need someone at my back, dubious as you now appear to be. And I need the resources of the Committee to get resettled in a new life. You’ve agreed to do that, much as it galls you, because of the intel I can bring to the table. We go through the mountains into Algeria. I drive. And I take Mahmoud with me.”
“The arrangement was for you alone, not your plaything. You’re not molesting children on my watch.”
“What a cynic you are, Madame Lambert. I don’t like young boys. I hate to deny you one more example of my infamy, but I’m not interested in raping children.”
“What do you rape? Or is it only the soldiers you control who get to torture and murder?”
There was a long silence. “You knew who I was when you made the deal. It’s a little late to change your mind.”
“The most dangerous man in the world,” she said, her tone mocking.
“But not, perhaps, the most evil man in the world. There’s a difference.”