calls. Peter’s T-shirt had a dinosaur design. Back in Algiers Kooi had bought a statuette: a carved wooden reptilian man. Juvenile design. Victor had thought Kooi to have strange tastes, but he’d been wrong. Kooi had bought a present for his son.
So Kooi hadn’t abandoned his family. He had stayed away from them because he operated in a dangerous world and he had been protecting them from something like this. But he’d failed.
The clicking of heels announced Francesca’s arrival before she stepped into the pressing room. She wore an A-line black dress made from crushed velvet that reached her ankles. It had a slit that opened almost to her hip. Light sparkled on the jewellery adorning her ears, wrist, fingers and neck. Her dark hair was pulled back and held up with clips. She’d never looked better.
Victor ignored her and said to Leeson, ‘What do you want?’
‘For you to do as requested. Wear the vest. Accompany Francesca to the party. There is no metal in the vest so you will have no trouble getting through security. Then simply plug in a mobile phone, stand within twenty feet of Mr Prudnikov and when the phone makes or receives a call: boom. You won’t feel a thing. In return, your family will be driven back to Andorra and they can carry on with their lives.’
‘Let them go,’ Victor said again. ‘Let them go and I’ll kill Prudnikov. I don’t need the vest.’
‘You said it was impossible.’
‘I’ll find a way. I can do it. Just let them go.’
‘I’m afraid that’s no good to me. One does not assassinate the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service if he values his own life and liberty. As you said, it’s suicide. I have no wish to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. The only way to pull off such a job is if no one believes an assassination has taken place, which they won’t if Prudnikov just happens to be one of the many unfortunate victims of a terrorist attack by Chechen nationalists. After you have blown yourself up these five fine nationalists right here will use the ensuing chaos to storm the building. In the aftermath those that matter will believe the bombing’s primary role was to give the team a means of entry. No one will ever think – nay, ever imagine – that it was an assassination. So you see, it wouldn’t work to have you kill him any other way than to blow yourself up. But don’t think of it as killing yourself, think of it as saving your family. After you’ve used the vest to kill Prudnikov, Lucille and Peter will be released without harm. Fail or deviate from the plan in even the smallest way and they will be killed. Refuse to comply and watch them die right now. But I’ll do you the kindness of letting you be the one to decide in which order they take their final breath.’
There was nothing to gain by revealing he wasn’t Kooi. He had met Leeson as Kooi and pretended since that moment to be Kooi. Denying it now would seem like desperation, the kind of desperate claim a man fearing for the lives of his loved ones might make. Or perhaps he would convince Leeson of the truth, but that would achieve nothing save his immediate death and the deaths of Kooi’s wife and child.
‘How do I know you’ll let them go if I do what you ask?’
‘You don’t,’ Leeson said, like a reasonable man might, ‘but I have no reason to kill them unless you force my hand. I assure you I have no desire to be responsible for a child’s death if it can be avoided. But if you don’t believe me they are certain to die.’
Victor looked at Francesca. ‘You’re going along with this?’
Hart laughed. A deep, malevolent mirth. ‘Going along with it? Funny, kid. Using your family was her idea.’
Francesca said, ‘I told you I didn’t need your help, Felix. I don’t really know why you thought I was so different from you. Maybe I used to be a good person long ago, but where does that ever get anyone?’
‘You want the death of a child on your conscience?’
She shook her head. ‘Of course not, but if you do what they tell you to do then I won’t have one.’
Victor turned to Coughlin, who said, ‘Don’t even bother, okay? Just do your job and I’ll do mine.’
Dietrich laughed. ‘Couldn’t have happened to a