would be standing by for the location of the safe house, and then disconnected the call. After she did this she screamed in the car. “Shit!”
She hated the position she’d been put in working for Hanley, and told herself that once she plugged the leak named Marty Wheeler, she would begin putting all her efforts into finding a way out of this morass before she ended up dead or in prison.
* * *
• • •
Hightower ran in his Western roper boots, finally catching up to Wheeler as he tried to cross Knightsbridge Road, but was forced to stop because the traffic was too heavy. The big blond American with the beard and sideburns reached out and grabbed the thin white-haired man by the neck, then pulled him along the sidewalk.
Zack sucked in a few breaths before speaking, then said, “Not a big fan of runnin’, Martin, gotta be honest with ya.”
He kept his hand on his prisoner’s neck, tight in back, pushing him onward quickly now.
Wheeler himself was wheezing from the forty-five-second sprint. “What . . . what do you want?”
“To shoot you in the motherfucking heart for making me chase your ass, but I’d probably just get in trouble. So instead, you and I are gonna go to the embassy. The U.S. one, not the Peruvian one.”
“I don’t know what you are talking—”
“Save it for someone who wants to hear your whiny spiel about how this is all some kind of an honest mix-up. I’m not in the mood, asshole.”
Police cars raced by, paying no attention to the two men on the sidewalk.
Zack’s earpiece beeped and he answered it. A minute later Brewer picked them both up in her Ford Taurus. Zack shoved Wheeler into the back. Climbing in next to him, he resumed his rough hold on the back of the man’s neck.
Wheeler said, “Suzanne! You know I didn’t—”
Zack elbowed Wheeler hard in the mouth, then leaned forward to talk to Brewer. “To the embassy?”
She started driving off, and she shook her head. “I just spoke with Hanley. We are taking him to Wimbledon.”
“For tennis?” Zack asked. “What the fuck?”
“No, not for tennis. It’s the name of a neighborhood to the southwest of London.”
“Why are we going there?”
“We are to deliver ADD Wheeler to an agency black site we have established in a warehouse.”
Wheeler snorted. “C’mon, Suzanne. Who do you think you are dealing with here? I’m a Support exec. I know all the black sites, and we sure as hell don’t have one in London.”
“We didn’t until we snatched you, Mr. Assistant Deputy Director. But Hanley knows a place, and says it will work fine for his purposes.”
Zack smiled now and looked at Wheeler, who was clearly uneased by what Brewer had just told him. “You hear that, Mr. Assistant Deputy Director? Sure you did, and you know exactly what that means. You aren’t getting the aboveboard treatment. Nope, you’re about to go down the rabbit hole. From this moment on, anything can happen to you, and nobody will know unless and until Hanley decides to put you in the system.”
Wheeler looked at Zack, then made a pained expression. Zack smiled at the man’s discomfort, but he quickly realized what was happening. He grabbed the man’s head and turned it forward, just as Marty Wheeler vomited, covering himself with bile and partially digested coffee and croissant from his in-flight breakfast.
Suzanne Brewer looked back at the scene and shook her head. She just could not understand how her career, her life, had fallen so fucking far, so fucking fast.
* * *
• • •
For the first several hours after her father left her in Belyakov’s mansion, Zoya Zakharova waited under relaxed guard. She was given ample food and drink but told nothing, not until Fox entered and informed her that the helicopter that was going to take her to her destination would be arriving shortly. Eventually it landed, and Zoya was walked to the large black aircraft, surrounded by Fox, the big blond-haired man she had heard referred to as Hines, and a pair of Russian security men with high-quality gear and weapons.
No one told her where they were going, but she could see the setting sun to her left, so she realized the helo was heading north.
They flew into a gray evening, the clouds forming around them. Soon she could see nothing of the terrain below.
After several hours the helo slowed and descended under the clouds.
She’d tried to calculate how long they were in the air, and she