Ice Storm (Ice 4)

“You look rattled,” Peter said, his voice cool and devoid of sympathy, as she needed it to be.

“I’m fine. It’s just been awhile. Any sign of Taka’s cousin?”

“Not yet. You had some calls.”

There was something about the tone of his voice that twisted her stomach into a small knot of dread. She turned her impassive face back to him. “I imagine I did. Harry Thomason, I suppose?”

“Among others.”

There were only the two of them in the Ken

sington offices of Spence-Pierce Financial Consultants, Ltd., their very effective cover. Anyone who managed to get through to them had every business doing so. More mundane matters were conducted at a distance.

Isobel took the leather club chair opposite Peter’s desk, crossing her legs. Good legs for a woman in her sixties. Good legs for a woman in her forties. Not even bad for someone her real age.

“You may as well tell me.” She pried the lid off the coffee and took a drink. “I’ve never known you to spare my tender feelings.”

Peter laughed, a sound she was slowly getting used to. In the first ten years she’d known him she didn’t think she’d ever heard him laugh. “Sensitivity was never my forte,” he said. “Thomason wants to know what you’re going to do about the situation with Serafin.”

“Thomason can blow himself,” Isobel said sweetly. “Who have we got on him?”

“No one. Bastien did some of the preliminary work, as did I. But things stabilized and we had more important situations to deal with.”

“Serafin,” she said. “The Butcher.” Her day had gone from bad to worse. “I thought he was just going to fade away like Qaddafi.”

“No such luck. Only the good die young, and Josef Serafin doesn’t fit that category.”

She glanced longingly toward her office. She could go in there, close the door behind her and put her head down on the massive teak desk. Maybe bang it a few times for good measure. Peter was watching her, reading her mind. That was the problem with working with someone like Peter—he was smart enough and intuitive enough to know what she was thinking at all times.

She wasn’t going anywhere. “Fill me in,” she said. “Tell me we’re finally going to get to kill him. Please.”

“I’m afraid not. We’re going to have to save the son of a bitch’s life.”

“I hate this job,” Isobel said, leaning back and closing her eyes for a moment. She gripped the coffee tightly. If her hand revealed even the faintest tremor, Peter would see it. “Details. Everything we know about Serafin, and why in God’s name we have to keep him alive. Maybe I’ll figure a way around it.”

“I doubt it. He’s got nine lives. Even Bastien wasn’t able to take him down when he was ordered to.”

“I forgot about that. Details,” she said again, wearily.

“Josef Serafin, somewhere in his early forties. It’s anybody’s guess where he was born—probably in a slum in Latin America. He first appeared on the scene in the late nineteen-eighties, part of an arms smuggling operation to the Congo. He branched out, became part of a drug cartel out of Colombia, just missing the big takedown in Cartagena, moved on and hired his services out as an assassin. He worked with the Shining Path in Peru, the Red Brigade in Italy, he’d worked in Croatia, Somalia, North Korea. Just about everywhere in the world where bad things happen. He’s moved away from crime lords to politics, serving as second in command to three of the most ruthless dictators in recent history. He’s managed to escape, unscathed, right before their governments came crashing down, and for the last five years he’s been reported to be working in Africa, overseeing ethnic cleansing and political purging.”

“Lovely man,” Isobel murmured. “And we’re supposed to save his life?”

Peter didn’t bother to answer her question. “He’s hiding out in Morocco for the time being, but we don’t know how long that will last. He’s got more enemies than bin Laden. Fouad Assawi was his most recent employer, but he was killed, part of the reason Serafin’s on the run. Vladimir Busanovich is probably the biggest danger. He holds a grudge, and the last time Serafin worked for him he screwed up. Apparently something went wrong with the last round of executions, and at least three hundred of Busanovich’s worst enemies escaped, right under Serafin’s nose. Busanovich is not a tolerant man.”

“And we’re saving Serafin because…?”

“Because of the intel he brings with him. He knows just about all there is to know about the major players in the world of terrorism, and he’s willing to trade that information for safe passage out of Morocco. That’s where we come in.”

She could always say no. She was the titular head of the Committee—in the end her word was law. Orders were handed down by a shadowy group of old men, the actual “committee,” and her nemesis and former boss, the newly knighted Harry Thomason, had joined their ranks. She’d like to blame this mess on Thomason, but then, his major drawback had been his readiness to eliminate anyone on the slightest pretext, and Josef Serafin should have been dealt with long ago. Thomason himself had ordered hits on Serafin half a dozen times, but no one, not even Bastien or Peter, had ever been able to get close to him.

Until now. Mistakes happened—Serafin wouldn’t be seeking asylum if he hadn’t screwed up his deadly orders.

“So what’s the plan?” she said, smoothing her perfect blond hair back from her face. “And don’t tell me you don’t have one—I know you too well. Who are we going to send? We’re shorthanded right now, and Genevieve would cut my throat if I tried to send you.”

He flashed another of those rare, unexpected smiles that still managed to surprise her. “And then she’d cut mine. I thought of Taka, but he’s still cleaning up the cult mess in Japan. Besides, we haven’t been given a choice in the matter.”

She raised an eyebrow, waiting for it. “They want you to go,” he said. “In fact, it’s a direct order. You’re to get to Morocco, make contact with Serafin, extract him and bring him to London, where we can debrief him.”