The fifth man in the group was Jon Hines, Fox’s personal bodyguard. As always Hines walked just behind him, a half step back. At six feet, nine inches tall, he wore two hundred sixty pounds of sinewy muscle like an athlete.
Like a weapon.
Hines was English, forty-one years old, and a former boxer. He carried an FN pistol on his hip under his jacket, and he knew how to use it, but all seven of the men he’d killed in his life to date he’d done with his bare hands, and he’d never once drawn his gun in a fight, simply because he’d never seen the need.
* * *
• • •
Anthony Kent stood in the doorway of the west wing; he waved the group over to him. As the group converged the Englishman looked around, trying to identify the man he’d spoken with on the phone, although he had no idea what he looked like.
It was hard to take his eyes off the massive frame of muscle in a suit looming just behind the smaller man in the goatee, but when the smaller man extended a hand, Kent looked to him and extended his own. “Mr. Fox?”
Fox shook Kent’s hand without smiling. In a British accent he said, “Yes. What the hell is this place?”
“It’s safe,” Kent said. “Been comin’ here for years for a wee bit of quiet.”
Fox stepped with Kent into the building. His men bracketed them front to back.
“The prisoner?”
Kent said, “We have him inside, haven’t told him anything.”
“Has he offered anything?”
“No. He’s scared.”
“Good,” Fox said, and he pushed past the smaller Englishman. His men did the same, and Kent followed.
“Have to say it, sir. I was worried we’d been workin’ for the fucking Russians. Nice to see that a proper Englishman is in charge. Don’t much care for the bloody Russians who’ve taken over London with their flash and their mess.”
Fox made no reply.
Kent went ahead, directing them through the west wing into the large room with the stage. The entourage walked up to the three in the center of the room standing over the hooded prisoner. Fox did not acknowledge the three, only reached over and yanked the bag off Dirk Visser’s head.
The man looked up at him, sweat dripping from his face.
“It’s him,” Fox said, then added, “Kent, take your men out into the corridor. I’d quite like to speak with my new friend here alone.”
The four Englishmen did as ordered. This was the man paying their wages, after all.
When the British were gone, Fox looked down at Visser. “I’m from London, and you might not yet know why I am here. I will tell you what I am not here to do. I am not here to fuck about. We know CIA picked you up in Luxembourg, which means they know you are the banker tied to a particular account at your bank that is of interest to us.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Visser said, helpfully. “The British or the Americans have a mole in my bank. It’s the only thing that makes sense. They identified the account and recognized I was the one maintaining it, converting amounts to Bitcoin and then transferring them to the U.S.”
“What have you told the CIA in the time you’ve been their captive?”
“Nothing! I haven’t said a word. And I won’t say anything. Not to the Americans, the British. I’m just a banker, I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Fox knelt down slowly, all the way to Visser’s face. “I told you I wasn’t here to fuck about. I know there’s more. I know you have been doing some looking into the owners of the shell company that made recent deposits into the account you manage.”
The banker cocked his head, a genuine show of surprise. “What do you mean? I know nothing about the depositor. I don’t know if it’s a shell or not, nor how the shell is run. But I know how it works, normally there is no true principal as a signatory to the articles of incorporation. It’s all done by nominating agents, lawyers working for lawyers, shells within shells. Even if I wanted information about the company, I wouldn’t be able to get it.” Visser smiled a little. “That’s how everyone stays safe.”
“Yeah, and yet here you are,” Fox said. “Not too bloody safe, are you, mate?”
“Yes, but I haven’t told anyone—”
“I’m going to say a name,” Fox interrupted. “When I say it I want you to tell me where you heard it.”
A half nod from the seated man.
“Feodor Zakharov.”
Visser shook his head slowly. “I don’t . . . think I have ever heard that name. Should I know him?”
The man in the goatee stood back up now and looked to the huge man standing with him. Still to Visser he said, “Two nights ago the CIA picks you up. Then last night the CIA looks into a fourteen-year-old file of this man, a man known to us.”
“He is . . . he is somehow involved with the account I manage, or the company that deposited into the account?”
Fox looked up at Hines. “Jon? Will you remind Visser here that I am the one asking the questions?”
The big man instantly fired an open hand out. The whack of palm against face echoed through the cavernous main hall.
Stunned and in pain, Visser looked back up at the men looming over him with terror in his eyes, as if he just now realized the danger he was in.
Fox said, “You told them about Zakharov. How did you know? Who else did you tell?”
“I swear to you, I don’t even know that name. Perhaps there is a mole in your organization. Perhaps they found out some other way.”
“No, Visser. No other way. You talked.”
Hines’s hand whipped out again, slapping the man even harder, and this time the banker screamed.
CHAPTER 12
Court heard a distant scream echoing through the massive hospital. He’d been moving through a nurses’ break room, carefully bypassing a man patrolling up the hallway with a flashlight. He stopped in his tracks, and when the next scream came he was able to identify the sound as coming from up the hall to the west. He moved to the doorway and lay down, waited until he heard the footsteps of the patrolling sentry begin climbing a staircase nearby, then scooted on the floor until his head was outside in the hall and he was facing in the direction from where the screams came.
One hundred feet up the hall he saw a group of four men standing in a wide shaft of window light in front of double doors opposite from the main entrance to the hospital. He tapped his audio-enhancing earplugs and immediately began picking up the whispered conversation of the men as it echoed off the tile and plaster in the long empty space. Court had missed the beginning of the conversation, but he quickly got the impression that the helicopter he’d heard land had dropped off a group, and they were now with the prisoner through the door that was behind the four men in sight.