‘Thanks, Peter,’ the American said, with a tired smile. ‘I owe you once again.’

Chapter 17

IN THE DEAD of night, forty-eight hours after I opened fire and slaughtered seven Bosnians sometime in the summer of 1995, a shifty-eyed and swarthy man who smelled of tobacco and cloves opened the door of a hovel of a workshop in a battle-scarred neighbourhood of Sarajevo.

He was the sort of monster who thrives in all times of war and political upheaval, a creature of the shadows, of shifting identity and shifting allegiance. I’d learned of the forger’s existence from a fellow peace keeper who’d fallen in love with a local girl who was unable to travel on her own passport.

‘Like we agree yesterday,’ the forger said when I and the Serbian girls were inside. ‘Six thousand for three. Plus one thousand rush order.’

I nodded and handed him an envelope. He counted the money, and then passed me a similar envelope containing three fake passports: one German, one Polish and one Slovenian.

I studied them, feeling pleased at the new names and identities I’d given the girls. The oldest was now Marta. Teagan was the middle girl, and Petra the youngest. I smiled, thinking that with their new haircuts and hair colours, no one would ever recognise them as the Serbian sisters that the Bosnian peasants called the Furies.

‘Excellent work,’ I told the forger as I pocketed the passports. ‘My gun?’

We’d left my Sterling with him as a good-faith deposit when I’d ordered the passports. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was thinking just that.’

The forger went to a locked upright safe, opened it, and took out the weapon. He turned and aimed it at us. ‘On your knees,’ he snarled. ‘I read about a slaughter at a police barracks near Srebrenica and three Serbian girls wanted for war crimes. There’s a reward out. A large one.’

‘You stinking weasel,’ I sneered, keeping his attention on me as I slowly went to my knees. ‘We give you money, and you turn us in?’

He smiled. ‘I believe that’s called taking it coming and going.’

The silenced 9mm round zipped over my head and caught the forger between the eyes. He crashed backward and sprawled dead over his desk, dropping my gun. I picked it up and turned to Marta, who had a hole in her right-hand jacket pocket where a bullet had exited.

For the first time I saw something other than deadness in Marta’s eyes. In its place was a glassy intoxication that I understood and shared. I had killed for her. Now she had killed for me. Our fates were not only completely entwined, we were both of us drunk on the sort of intoxicating liquor that ferments and distils among members of elite military units after each mission, the addictive drink of superior beings who wield the power over life and death.

Leaving the forger’s building, however, I was acutely aware that more than two days had passed since the bomb had hurled me from the Land Cruiser. People were hunting for the Furies. The forger had said so.

And someone had to have found the blown-up and burned vehicle I’d been thrown from. Someone had to have counted and examined the charred bodies and figured out that I was missing.

Which meant that people were hunting for me.

Maybe, I decided, they should find me sooner rather than later.

Chapter 18

AT THREE-TWENTY THAT Thursday afternoon, Karen Pope and Peter Knight crossed the courtyard and climbed the granite front steps of the venerable British Museum in central London. As they entered the museum, Knight was grinding his teeth. He liked to work alone because it gave him enough silence to think things through during the course of an investigation.

Pope, however, had been talking almost non-stop since they’d left Private London, feeding him all sorts of trivial information he really had no need to know, including her career highlights, the creep Lester she’d dated in Manchester, and the travails of being the only woman currently working on the Sun’s sports desk.

‘Got to be tough,’ he said, wondering if he could somehow ditch her without adding to Jack’s problems.

Instead, Knight led them to an older woman at the information desk, where he produced his identification and said that someone from Private had called ahead to arrange a brief interview with Dr James Daring.

The woman had sniffed something about the curator being very busy, what with his exhibit about to open that very evening, but then she gave them directions.

They climbed to an upper floor and walked towards the rear of the massive building. At last they came to an archway above which hung a large banner tha

t read The Ancient Olympic Games: Relics & Radical Retrospective.

Two guards stood in front of a purple curtain stretched across the archway. Caterers were setting up for a reception to celebrate the opening, with tables for food and a bar in the hallway. Knight showed his Private badge and asked for Daring.

The guard replied, ‘Dr Daring has gone to take a—’

‘Late lunch, but I’m back, Carl,’ called a harried male voice from back down the hallway. ‘What’s going on? Who are these people? I clearly said no one inside before seven!’

Knight pivoted to see hurrying towards them a familiar handsome, ruggedly built man wearing khaki cargo shorts, sandals and a safari-style shirt. His ponytail bounced on his shoulders. He carried an iPad. His gaze jumped everywhere.

Tags: James Patterson Private Mystery
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