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  ‘Yeah, well we’re all feeling hot, and there’s nothing I can do about it: the air-con in this particular room is broken.’ His tone was hardly sympathetic. ‘The maintenance guys were all too busy making sure everything was ready for this damned reception to spend ten minutes fixing the air-con in one of the most important parts of the hotel.’

  ‘Well, can I at least get a drink of water?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Cooler’s over there,’ he grunted, indicating the transparent, cylindrical dispenser situated in the corner of the room.

  She rose to her feet and made her way over to the cooler. She wasn’t sure whether her attempt to feign an unsteady walk was cutting through with Schultz. Certainly, he wasn’t displaying any sign of interest in her condition. She guessed he was preoccupied with the far more pressing issues at hand.

  She took a paper cup from the stack alongside the cooler and filled it from the small tap at the bottom of the machine. As she took a few sips from the cooling water she made a pretence of steadying herself with her other hand against the water reservoir. ‘I really don’t feel that well. I’m not sure that I can—’

  ‘Shut up and sit back down,’ hissed the security chief. ‘You’re going to stay right there until Robert gets back.’

  She nodded, wiping her hand across her forehead once again, before moving, unsteadily, back across the room. As she drew alongside Schultz, she faltered, allowing her eyes to roll upwards in their sockets – a skill she had mastered as a little girl when she used to compete with her school friends to see who could do the most convincing fainting impression to get out of a boring Math lesson. She allowed her knees to buckle and began to pitch forward, the cup slipping from her grasp and spilling its contents everywhere.

  In spite of Schultz’s apparent disinterest in Carla’s condition he could not help himself when he saw her about to collapse. He rushed forward and thrust his hands beneath her armpits, preventing her from crashing down to a painful impact with the hard, marble floor. Struggling with her dead weight, he staggered the few paces necessary to set her back down on the chair where she had previously been sitting. As he stood back, panting for breath, his eyes became saucers and his jaw dropped. He was staring straight down the muzzle of a gun, held in Carla’s trembling hands.

  His hand flew instinctively to his shoulder holster, but it was empty. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

  ***

  The evening bag looked identical to her own but, as soon as Natasha opened it, she knew it had been switched. Inside, was a typical collection of items which would suffice for an evening event such as this: lipstick; mascara; a tiny, folding hairbrush; and a small pack of tissues. Crucially, it did not contain her mobile phone or the vital memory stick. As she ran her fingers along the hinge at the bottom of the bag, she also confirmed that the secret compartment for the concealed stiletto was not there.

  ‘Are you OK, ma’am?’ said the security guy. ‘You look a bit … well, shaken.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, recovering her composure, ‘… I just have a bit of a headache.’

  Her mind was racing now. Who was that woman? Had the whole incident with the spilt wine been staged in order to engineer a situation where she could switch the bags? How did she know that the memory stick would be in that bag, and why did she want it anyway? There were a million more unanswered questions swirling in her brain. Right now, though, the most important thing was to decide what to do next; the whole plan had been shot to pieces by this unexpected development, and there was no plan B.

  ‘Would you like me to call the hotel’s nurse?’ said the security guard, his face a picture of concern.

  ‘No,’ she replied, closing the bag – into which the security guard had barely glanced – ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’

  ‘Really ma’am it’s no trouble. I wouldn’t want you to—’

  But she was already hurrying through to the function room.

  Once inside the room she immediately spotted Ethan, and made her way over to him, forcing herself not to rush, or do anything to draw undue attention to herself.

  ‘At last,’ he said. ‘What the fuck have you been doing all this time? We need to get out of here as soon as—’

  ‘Shut up and listen! We have a big problem ...’

  Chapter 35

  The Colombian drug cartels were not the only ones who had an interest in ensuring Professor Mandelson’s discovery never saw the light of day. Mexico, too, had a thriving drug-trafficking industry, and the cartels there also stood to lose a great deal if a miracle cure for cocaine addiction ever became widely available. The largest of the Mexican cartels had, via its network of spies, learned of the plan by its Colombian rivals to steal Professor Mandelson’s research and then kill him, his billionaire sponsor, and several others associated with the project. If they were to succeed in getting control of the new addiction cure, they would be able to dominate the whole Central and South American illegal drugs trade. The Mexicans could not afford to let that happen; they needed to be the ones to get that research data.

  They were, however, running from behind. The Colombians had conceived a painstaking and elaborate plan, which they had initiated well over a year earlier. They had hired a crack English assassination team to inveigle its way into the professor’s confidence before stealing his research and killing all those involved in its creation. There was no way, starting from scratch, that they could beat the Colombians to the punch. But they could perhaps piggyback on their plan …

  ***

  Madison Taylor and Brett Freeman had grown up together in the Bronx. From the way that they always hung out together, most people assumed they were boyfriend and girlfriend. The truth, however, was that they were just two bright, ambitious kids, born in the wrong part of town, who shared a common desire to actually make something of themselves.

  It was a pretty rough neighbourhood, with few opportunities for kids like them to get on. As they reached their mid-teens, increasingly, they saw their friends turn to crime as the only way to make any serious money and, equally importantly, win some respect from their peers.

  Brett and Madison started down the same path, initially with muggings. They usually targeted men – Madison was a strikingly-attractive girl and had no trouble attracting the attention of male passers-by. She would lure them into a doorway or the entrance to an alley, where Brett would be waiting. To begin with, Brett would threaten his victims with a kitchen knife. However, after about a dozen successful muggings – during which time he’d never had to make good on his threat to actually use the knife – he’d made enough money to buy a Smith and Wesson 9mm pistol on the black market. From that point onward, he didn’t bother with the knife, preferring instead to see the look on his victims’ faces as they stared down the muzzle of the gun.

  All continued to go well, until one day they encountered the guy who decided to fight back. When he tried to wrench the gun from Brett’s hand, he got a bullet through his eye for his trouble. For that murder, Brett and Madison earned a cheap digital watch, a credit card that they couldn’t use, an ancient pay-as-you-go cell phone, and fifty-four dollars in cash. The thing was, though, neither of them felt a great deal of remorse for their victim – just disappointment that the proceeds of the mugging had been so meagre. Once they realised just how easy it was to kill, however, they sought not to step back from this path, but merely to find a way to make it more profitable.

  Their first contract killing earned them two thousand dollars – more than they would usually make from a dozen muggings. From that point onward, they never looked back. As the years went by, they won more and more lucrative contracts, gradually honing their craft until they became one of the most sought-after hit teams in the entire USA. If you wanted a politician, a top businessman, or a crime boss disposed of, Madison Taylor and Brett Freeman were the assassination team that you approached first. The fact that, to date, they had never, ever, failed to fulfil the objective of a contract only served to enhance their re
putation.

  And now they had landed their most lucrative contract ever: it was worth twenty million dollars. It didn’t matter that the bomb which would kill Professor Mandelson, Bob Gench, and many more wasn’t actually going to be planted by them; as long as they procured the research data and made sure that its creators and sponsors ended up dead, then their Mexican paymasters would be happy.

  For this contract, they had been sharing a room in the Palm Grove Hotel for almost two weeks as they prepared their plan. The room had twin beds: in spite of their long association, Madison’s striking beauty, and Brett’s rugged good looks, they weren’t actually sleeping together. Their relationship was purely professional. In fact, neither of them had had any long-term sexual or romantic relationships in their entire lives; in their line of work, secrecy was important, and they couldn’t afford to let anyone else into their lives for fear of compromising that secrecy. So, their physical needs were catered for only by occasional one-night stands with complete strangers and if, by chance, one of their fleeting acquaintances should learn anything which they shouldn’t, then that was easily dealt with. It had only happened once so far, when a guy who Madison had picked up for the night turned out to be an off-duty cop who became a little too curious. His death was an unpaid job, of course, but they considered it to be a worthwhile investment to protect the future of their enterprise.

  And now, that bumper payoff was almost within touching distance.

  ***

  ‘So,’ said Madison, as they entered their hotel room, ‘Blondie ain’t quite so smart as she thought she was. Fell for the spilt-wine routine just like a first-time amateur.’

  ‘Yeah, well let’s make sure we’ve got that memory stick before we start gloating too much.’

  He went to take the handbag from her, but she shrugged him away. ‘Not so fast – she may not be so very smart, but she could have rigged the bag. Let me check it first.’

  They had been watching the English hit team closely for over a week; Madison had already seen the blonde woman carrying her distinctive Gucci evening bag at the party the previous Tuesday. She had no trouble, the following day, finding an identical bag in the upmarket Bal Harbour shopping mall for the purposes of the planned bag switch.

  She inspected the other evening bag carefully, checking, both visually and by feel, for any clue that it had been rigged. When she ran her fingers along the hinge line at the bottom of the bag, something didn’t feel right: there was a small protrusion around one third of the way along. As she turned the bag upside down to check it, she realised it was a latch of some kind. What was it? If the bag was booby trapped, she would have expected the trap to be triggered by opening it in the normal way – not by something on the hinge at the bottom. No, this surely had to be something different. Very carefully, she slid the latch back, which released a portion of the hinge from the rest. Taking great care, she slid it to one side.

  ‘What is it?’ said Brett, his voice tense.

  ‘Hmm, it seems that Blondie came prepared for trouble,’ said Madison. She withdrew the stiletto from its hidden compartment and held it aloft.

  ‘Ha!’ said Brett. ‘That little thing’s barely more than a toy.’

  ‘Not if you know how to use it,’ she retorted, twirling the weapon between her fingertips, watching the blade glint in the light cast by the table lamp on the desk, ‘and I’m willing to bet that she does.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said her partner, ‘come on – we’re wasting time here.’

  After a few more moments spent carefully inspecting the bag, she was satisfied that there was no booby trap. She released the clasp, carefully opened the bag, and tipped its contents onto the bed: a cell phone, a small hairbrush, a hotel key card, and various cosmetics.

  A worried frown began to grow on Brett’s face. ‘Where’s the fucking memory stick?’ he muttered.

  ‘Just wait,’ she said, trying to sound far more confident than she actually felt, ‘it’ll be in here somewhere.’

  Her heart was racing as she continued to pick through the various items on the bed. Perhaps the English bitch had given the memory stick to her partner or hidden it somewhere, before the bags had been switched. There was, however, one last chance: as the bag was identical to her own – apart from the hidden compartment containing the stiletto – she knew that there should be a small zipped pocket inside. She probed the lining with her fingers and felt that there was a small, hard, rectangular object inside the pocket; her heart jumped. Unzipping the pocket and retrieving the object inside brought a wave of relief.

  ‘You see?’ she said, as she showed him the memory stick, ‘I told you it’d be there.’

  ‘Good,’ said Brett, puffing out his cheeks as he exhaled a sigh of relief. ‘Now we’ve got what we came for, we need to get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Not until we make sure this is the right one: it could be a decoy.’

  He nodded, flipping up the lid of the laptop on the desk, before taking the flash drive from Madison and inserting it in one of the USB sockets. As he pressed the power button and waited for the machine to wake up, the two of them exchanged an anxious glance. This really had to be the genuine article, or they were in deep trouble.

  Ten minutes later, however, they had trawled through the list of file headings, and they were both satisfied that they did indeed have Professor Mandelson’s research data.

  ‘OK,’ said Madison, shooting Brett a satisfied smile, ‘now let’s get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Brett. ‘We need to be well clear of the hotel by the time that bomb blows.’

  ***

  Back in the function room, Natasha had told Ethan about the bag switch.

  ‘Fuck!’ he muttered, ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We have to get that memory stick back … and until we do, we can’t let that bomb go off.’

  He nodded. ‘OK, send the signal to halt the countdown.’

  She spread her hands helplessly. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘Because my phone is in my handbag – I don’t have it.’

  ‘Shit!’ he hissed. ‘And my phone doesn’t have the app to connect to the bomb.’

  ‘We’ll have to turn it off manually. You know how to do that, right?’

  ‘Well, yes … but we’ll have to get the side cover of the bathtub off to access the control panel.’

  ‘Then let’s not waste any time. My key card was in my bag; have you got the other one?’

  He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, feeling for the card. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let’s get back to the room right now. You can take care of the bomb while I grab the Glock and go after that bitch. I’ll make her wish she never tried to cross me.’

  ‘OK, how will I know when you’ve got the memory stick back?’

  ‘I’ll get my phone back – or take hers – and call you.’

  He nodded. ‘We can still do this,’ he said, locking eyes with her.

  Chapter 36

  When they returned to their hotel room, Natasha wasted no time in retrieving the Glock from the safe and setting off after the woman in the white dress. Now, Ethan needed to cancel the countdown of the bomb; he stepped through into the bathroom.

  Although he was a seasoned killer, the sight which met his eyes nevertheless took him aback for a moment. The pool of blood emanating from the head of the hapless security guard had now spread to cover about a quarter of the entire area of the bathroom floor. Nevertheless, he quickly recovered his composure and focused on the task in hand. It would be impossible, however, to get past the body and remove the bath panel without getting covered in blood. Things had now gone much too far now, though, to worry about getting a bit dirty.

  Ethan shrugged off his jacket and laid it on the padded stool in the corner of the room. He returned to the bathtub and bent down, placing one knee on the floor – doing his best to avoid the blood – while bracing his other foot against the side of the bathtub. He
hooked both arms over the security guard’s dead body and tried to roll it over and away from the bathtub. But the body was heavy; it wouldn’t budge.

  Taking a deep breath, he tried again, pulling harder this time; it still didn’t roll over, but it did slide an inch or two towards him. It was the blood: it formed a layer of lubricant between the body and the floor. With this realisation, he shifted position so as to pull directly towards the main part of the pool of blood. It was as if someone had untied an invisible tether; now the body slid towards him with relative ease, accompanied by a liquid squelching sound, overlaid with a metallic screech as the guard’s handcuffs, secured to his belt, scraped against the floor tiles After a couple more determined pulls, the body was far enough from the bathtub to allow unfettered access to the panel at its side.

  He checked his watch 8.07 p.m. He had thirty-three minutes before the bomb was due to detonate. He eyed the eight cross-head screws which secured the panel – it shouldn’t take more than five or six minutes to remove those, and then it was simply a case of removing the panel and hitting the manual override button to cancel the countdown. He still had plenty of time.

  He took several long, slow breaths to compose himself and then made his way to the closet in the bedroom. As he opened the door and surveyed its contents, his heart skipped a beat; the screwdriver wasn’t there.

  OK, he told himself, stay calm – it can’t be far away.

  He checked every shelf in the closet, but it wasn’t there. Natasha must have moved it. He checked the drawers in both bedside cabinets and the desk drawer. No luck.

  Where the fuck can it be? He couldn’t even call Natasha to find out; her mobile phone had been taken, along with the memory stick and everything else in her bag.

  How could he have known that the metallic scraping sound he had heard while moving the body was not due solely to the handcuffs, but also the screwdriver, which was trapped between the dead body and the floor?