CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Vincent Barringer enjoyed the comforts that money brought him, without a trace of guilt from his Puritan ancestry. After all, he worked hard in the service of his country, he’d devoted his entire life to his work, eschewing the distractions of family and friends. He deserved every penny he had amassed over the years.

He wasn’t enjoying flying first class. After years of hitching a ride on military jets, the almost lavish comforts of first class travel seemed almost obscenely indulgent, and he had to remind himself that he more than earned it.

He still couldn’t believe that the Gargonne brothers had failed. They were notoriously brutal, with a higher kill-rate than anyone else in Europe, with the possible exception of the Committee under Harry Thomason’s heyday. The Committee had never had to deal with Congressional oversight and budget cuts. Barringer could pride himself on the spectacular success of his sub-branch, given his handicaps. It was a legacy to be proud of. Too bad that legacy was buried in secrecy. Few people would know the hard decisions Vincent Barringer had made for the good of the Western World.

He folded the damask napkin, having made an excellent dinner of braised lamb and tiny peas. He’d refused the wine, of course. He never touched spirits – too many mistakes were made under the influence of alcohol. They would arrive at DeGaulle airport in another three hours, and he planned to sleep until then. He had enough of delegating the business of MacGowan. If he wanted the job done right he’d do it himself.

In fact, he’d lost his patience. It was a rare thing. He was used to unexpected glitches getting in the way of his plans, but he was steady, determined, and in the end had always triumphed. But the house on Chesapeake Bay was calling to him, and by now he no longer cared about getting Thomas Killian back. Finn MacGowan had become the enemy, with his cocky disregard of anything Barringer had sent his way. He wanted MacGowan dead, even if it put paid to the idea of finally returning Killian. It had become an obsession.

LeFevre would meet him at the airport, with a comfortable car and the weapons he’d requested. Once, long ago Barringer had been a sniper, one of the best in the business. He’d always been vigilant about keeping his skills, and he had no doubt he’d be able to blow MacGowan’s head apart from a distance of fifteen hundred feet if necessary. It was unfortunate that he needed to take out his companions as well, but the Pennington woman and the movie star’s son had been on borrowed time the moment they set foot in South America.

He would get the job done and be back in Washington in forty-eight hours. And that very day he would announce his retirement. Enough was enough.

His pulse was racing, just slightly, and he frowned. There was nothing wrong with looking forward to being in the field again, but he frowned on emotional reactions. He needed to get himself back under control.

According to LeFevre’s intel, once MacGowan landed at the Committee safe house, the one they thought no one knew about, he intended to stay put for a few days. There would be no hurry. In fact a day or two of downtime would be useful to lower his defenses. He thought he was safe at Merrais-sur-le-Pont. Big mistake. No one was safe from the reach of the CIA. At least, not from Barringer’s small, secret branch of it.

Someone always had to do the ugly work. The wet work, ridding the world of evil. And there were times when it wasn’t just evil that had to go. Complicity, whether innocent or deliberate, had to be rooted out as well.

The Committee understood that. His replacement wouldn’t have too much trouble with the Committee – even without Thomason the organization understood and accepted the needs of its allies. There would be a few heated conversations but in the end this would all settle like dust. Peter Madsen was too much of a pragmatist to do anything about it, and besides, MacGowan was gunning for Madsen. He was doing the man a favor.

The stewardess took his tray, offered him an aperitif, and moved away. No, they didn’t call them stewardesses anymore, did they? He preferred the no-nonsense care of the enlisted men who looked after VIPs on the transatlantic military flights. Clean young men who understood the value of discipline.

He moved his seat back. It turned into a pod-like bed, but he decided that was ridiculous. Perhaps he’d try out that configuration on his way home. For now, like a child on Christmas morning, he was too excited to sleep.

In ten years the farmhouse hadn’t changed much. The greenery was a little taller, a little more tangled, and they’d installed a sensor device hidden under the dirt road that led to it. If MacGowan hadn’t been driving a car equipped with the right piece of technology the road would have blown up beneath them, sending them all to hell.

Good thing he’d been in touch with Bastien instead of trying to make it here on his own. Then again, on his own he wouldn’t have driven up even the well-hidden driveway, he would have approached on foot, and he doubted they’d mined the place. It was too easy for a stray animal to wander by, and once an explosion marred the stillness of the area there’d be no using it again.

It was almost light when he finally pulled up to the remote old farmhouse, staring up at the shuttered windows. He hadn’t had time to have more than a brief conversation with Taka, so he had no idea what kind of shape the place was in. In the past they had someone on payroll who kept it ready at all times, but for all he knew Isobel might have changed it. Now it was up to that sodding bastard Peter Madsen. Hell, he might even be walking into a trap. It was something he’d be capable of doing to a man who wanted to kill him. Madsen was just as ruthless as he’d ever been. Maybe more so. He would never have left someone to rot in the jungle of South America, no matter what the cost.

But Taka wouldn’t stand by and let him walk into a trap. No, he could be relatively sure they were safe for at least a few days, long enough for him to figure out what to do next. Whether he needed to kill Peter Madsen or Vincent Barringer first.

He pulled the car up in front of the stone house and put it in park. He could hide it in the cul-de-sac later – right now he just needed to get his charges indoors. Funny, that he’d kept them with him. Funny, that Beth had chosen to come. That was something he could think about in the next few days, after he’d managed to get some sleep. Assuming he even could sleep. She was right – he’d killed too many men. There were some things you couldn’t walk away from, and that was one of them.

He opened the back door and scooped Beth up. She was too thin – she’d lost weight in the last week, which was no surprise, and despite her height she was an easy burden. She woke for a moment, and he half expected her to start fighting him, but she simply looked at him, closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

The farmhouse even smelled the same. Lemon polish and centuries-old French cooking. Nothing had changed, though he saw they’d put a new cover on the sofa. A good thing – Bastien had bled all over that sofa while MacGowan had removed a bullet from his leg. Good times.

In the end he didn’t really think about it. He carried her up to the pretty room on the second floor, holding her as he tried to pull down the covers. That was when she reacted. “No,” she mumbled. “Too dirty. Just put me on top of the covers.”

He didn’t bother arguing. She was covered with dust and dirt, and he could see the streaks her tears had left on her face. She’d faced death before without crying. Had she finally reached overload, or had she been crying for something else? “You’re not dead,” she’d said dazedly when he’d hauled her back out into the sunshine. Had she been crying for him?

He found a throw and tossed it over her. She was sound asleep again, and he stood over her in the stillness of the morning air. The closed shutters let in only a trace of sunlight, but he could see her quite clearly, and he reached out and pushed a strand of her silver-blond hair away from her grubby face.

He wanted to climb into bed with her, hold her in his arms. He wanted her arms around him, he wanted to press his face against her breasts and god help him, he wanted to weep. He really had reached the end of his tether. Time to give it up. He hadn’t cried since his bastard of a father had starved himself to death. Why would he want to cry now?

He closed the door quietly behind him and went back down to find Dylan stumbling sleepily through the kitchen. “Hey, dude, there’s a bedroom down here. Mind if I take it?”

It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Privacy with Beth? Or the last thing he needed, temptation? It didn’t matter. “You can stay in any room you want, though Beth is already asleep in one on the first floor.”

“First floor? Or second floor? I can never get used to that,” Dylan said sleepily, opening the refrigerator and peering inside. From his vantage point MacGowan could see that it was well-stocked, including his favorite Guinness.

“Your second floor, my first,” he clarified. “You’re on the ground floor now, brat.”

“No, man, I’m in bed,” Dylan said sleepily, grabbing a Coke and heading back in the direction of the room he’d chosen.

MacGowan hid the car, then slipped back into the house, making sure all the doors were unlocked. A lock wouldn’t slow anyone down, but it could make the difference between life and death if they needed a quick escape. He grabbed a Guinness, pried it open, and then headed up the narrow stone steps to temptation.

She was sound asleep. Of course she was. And he could take the bedroom he’d been planning to give Dylan, at the end of the hall and around a corner, down two steps and up three. Enough distance that he’d have to think long and hard about going to her, with plenty of things to slow him down and help him change his mind.

He could take the room three doors down, close enough to save her ass if someone managed to find them, far enough way that he could maybe shut her out of his mind.

He opened the door to the adjoining room and closed it behind him, going to sit on the double bed with its utilitarian cover. He’d never run from anything in his life and he wasn’t about to run from Beth Pendleton. He’d already ensured she wouldn’t let him anywhere near him. If he decided to change her mind, and he’d have to be incredibly stupid to do that, then it wouldn’t matter where he slept, and this was closest to the bathroom.

He took a quick shower, finishing the Guinness when he emerged. Hot water was still the most wonderful of all the pleasures of civilization, and he could have stayed under there forever if part of him didn’t feel he was still on the job. He should have sent them away with Taka, he thought again. If he had, he’d be alone in this rambling old house, alone with his memories, and it wouldn’t matter how much hot water he hogged, how much time he spent there, or who was sleeping in the next room. He should have said no.

He had nothing to sleep in. Taka had provided him with old men’s boxers, a joke on his part, and MacGowan was tempted to throw them out the window. Instead he put the ridiculous things on, just in case Beth woke in a panic. He took one last look out the shuttered window, into the broad light of early morning, climbed beneath the cool sheets of the double bed and fell asleep.

“So who the hell doesn’t carry a spare tire?” Mahmoud demanded, leaning against the side of the Porsche. It was cold, with the promise of winter on the air, and not only did Peter not have an extra spare, he didn’t have gloves, a hat, or an extra coat. He’d forgotten how infernally cold it could be in this part of France.

Mahmoud was bundled up in the windbreaker he carried in the trunk, but he didn’t look any too happy. “I have a spare tire,” Peter said in an acid voice. “I just don’t have two. You’ll note that we have two flat tires?”

Mahmoud gave him a snarky smile. “I noted,” he said, his voice a perfect mockery of Peter’s icy tones. “So you want to tell me why we’re out in the middle of nowhere, with no mobile service, no highways, no towns? I don’t think I remembered that the sky could be this dark. Reminds me of home. Without the bombs and ruins and terrorists, of course,” he added fairly.

Peter gave him a sour look. “I don’t think I need to justify my decisions to you.”

“Don’t need to,” Mahmoud said cheerfully, “but Genny will give you shit. It’s good to see you’re pussy-whipped.”

“I am not pussy-whipped.”

“It’s not a bad thing if Genny is the p ….” He stopped at Peter’s quelling expression and grinned. “Yeah, I know, she’d kill me if she heard me talking like that. What I meant to say was, if you’ve got someone like Genny you need to listen to her.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed in the last three years since your ungrateful carcass was dumped on me, I do listen to her. And I’d tell you this was simply the first time she was wrong, but I can’t even say that. She’s right, I shouldn’t be here, I can’t fix things. But irrational or not, I needed to come.”

“See,” Mahmoud said. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Peter growled low in his throat. Mahmoud drove him mad. Like all teenagers he was obstreperous, confrontational, superior and obnoxious. Peter had had no choice in accepting him into his household, and he’d kill anyone who tried to take him away. Mahmoud might have little use for Genevieve’s husband but Peter had long ago accepted the little monster as his son. Even if Mahmoud disagreed.

He sighed. “We were going on back roads so we couldn’t be traced. I told you, the CIA is watching for signs of Killian and Isobel, and we need to be careful.”

“They’re coming back?” Mahmoud kept his voice neutral, but Peter knew what he was thinking. Killian had been the first reliable male in the young Mahmoud’s life. It didn’t matter that Mahmoud had pledged to kill him as soon as he was old enough – in Mahmoud’s world that constituted a solid bond.

Besides, he’d passed that pledge on to Reno when he’d first arrived in England, and as far as Peter knew Killian was in no danger from anyone but the CIA. And of course any country where he worked undercover and managed to bugger up most of their operations.

Peter took a deep breath. The countryside smelled different in France, even in a winter-dead season. It smelled like fresh herbs and grapes and the hint of salt breeze from the sea over sixty miles away.

“I hope he’s not coming back. I told them to stay away – too many people still want him dead, and they’re willing to pay good money for his murder. In particular the CIA have a jones for him, and they’d go through anyone to kill him. Innocent or guilty, young or old, they’ll kill to get him. I warned him, and for our sake I think they’ll stay away. If he does show up you keep your distance.”

Mahmoud grinned. “Yes, abouya.”

Peter didn’t bother to ask him what that meant. He’d used it a number of times, and he had little doubt it was Mahmoud’s way of insulting him. “We’re going to have to walk, pal,” he said.

“You walk. I’ll stay in the car.” Mahmoud reached to the passenger door, but Peter grabbed his arm and hauled him back.

“You signed on for this, kiddo. You get to suffer along with me. What do you think, head back the way we came or go forward?”

“The last village we passed was too small for a mechanic. The last one with a gas station was more than 25 miles back. And don’t tell me someone will give us a ride. If you wanted seclusion you chose wisely. I haven’t seen another car in at least an hour.”

“Good,” Peter said. “That gives us time to bond.”

And he didn’t need a dictionary to translate Mahmoud’s surge of profanity.