Lethal Profit (34 page)

She willed him not to ask her anything else about that encounter.

‘What happened to your arm?'

Eva followed his gaze to where Daniel had torn off her sleeve. ‘Daniel also developed the algae to carry a virus,' she said quietly, still looking at her arm. ‘It was the same thing that I injected into the man in the park in Paris – that they tried to inject into us. That was what killed him in that awful way.'

Leon continued to stare at her and she watched his face as the realisation dawned on him. Eva looked at the floor. She didn't want sympathy. ‘Check your arm,' she said, suddenly looking up. He put one hand up the sleeve of his jumper and felt the area at the top of his arm. He gazed back at her. ‘Only one mark.'

Eva dropped her gaze to the floor again. Why only her?

Slowly, she raised her eyes and looked at Leon. He was flexing his arms, trying to bring full sensation back to his muscular body after the effects of the sedative.

‘Leon, who are you?'

He looked at her surprised.

‘I mean really, who are you?'

He didn't reply.

‘Every time I ask you a personal question you dodge it and I still don't know what you do or how you came into my life,' she continued. ‘I want to know why you have been helping me – what's in it for you?'

Silence filled the inhospitable room.

‘I don't think you have anything to lose now,' Eva said, indicating the mark left on her arm where the virus had been injected.

Leon gazed at her for a second then shook his head and sighed. He rubbed at his wrists where the plastic bonds had been.

‘I'm a mercenary,' he said finally.

‘A… what?'

‘A gun for hire, a contract killer, a thug.'

Eva wasn't surprised that he didn't work as a bank clerk or a gardener. But neither had she been expecting that.

‘I don't understand – what does that actually mean?'

He looked at her, as if to try and understand if she was joking. When he realised she wasn't he continued. ‘People hire me to do things for them – things which aren't necessarily within the law – kidnapping, warnings, tailing, occasionally termination if the money's good enough.'

‘Did you kill Jackson?'

‘No.' He seemed affronted. ‘We were kindred spirits, I would never have done that.'

Eva got up and walked over to the other side of the room, running her fingers through her long hair.

‘How long have you done this for?'

‘Ten years. I used to have an intelligence job but I have… episodes. They have made it difficult to hold down a career like that.'

‘Episodes.'

‘Times when I need to lose myself. That's how I met your brother – in rehab. We both seemed to suffer from the same need to escape.'

‘Into drugs and drink.'

‘Yes.' He looked at her defiantly. She stared back. Once she might have judged Leon for this obvious weakness, but not any more. It was frightening that someone would just allow that to be their life on an ongoing basis – normal life with periods of self annihilation – but who hadn't done it to some degree or other?

‘Look, I'm sorry… ' she began.

‘It's the life I've chosen,' he interrupted, ‘I'm good at what I do and I earn a lot of money. Don't be sorry.'

They looked steadily at each other for several seconds. It was time to talk about something else.

‘OK, Valerie,' said Eva suddenly. ‘I overhead the conversation you had with her at her flat that day. You knew her.'

Leon shook his head and sighed and then dropped his head into his hands again. He clearly didn't enjoy being put on the spot. ‘We worked together,' he said meeting her gaze once again.

‘You mean she was the same as you?'

‘I don't know.' He looked up. His eyes were huge and dark, his pupils massively dilated from the chemicals in his system.

‘I mean, obviously I recognised her immediately when Jackson introduced me to her. We had worked together and she got several of our team killed by changing the agreed plan on one of the jobs to protect her own interests. In fact, I never really found out if she wasn't working for two parties at the same time. Her behaviour then triggered the episode after which I met Jackson.'

‘So you knew what she was?'

‘Look, Eva, I had a vague idea but people change you know. Jackson seemed so happy with her and at first I couldn't figure out whether she was still that person. She even told me that she had left all that behind her – all the deceit. Of course, she hadn't.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘About three months after Jackson introduced me to her, I think she became scared that I would tell Jackson what I knew about her. She asked me to meet her in a hotel one night to talk about the old times, to set it all behind us. She offered me a “pick me up”, we drank, I should have seen it coming.'

Leon looked genuinely pained at this point. ‘She got me so high I was out of my mind and then we slept together. The next day I got a message telling me she had recorded the whole thing and, if I ever mentioned it, she would tell Jackson I tried to seduce her. She sent me this edited version of what she had and it really did look like that was what I had tried to do!'

He laughed bitterly. ‘Clever bitch. After that there was nothing I could do other than watch. Those photos I showed you – I took those during one of my ‘surveillance' missions. I couldn't talk to Jackson about it but as soon as she made that tape I knew there was something wrong with the situation so I started keeping tabs on her. I don't know if she knew I was on her case but she didn't step out of line, not even once – it was confusing, I couldn't decide one way or the other. But when Jackson disappeared… I knew she had to be right at the heart of it.'

‘Do you think she killed him?'

‘I still don't know. I thought she might have, until she was attacked by the men who took you. Why do that?'

‘A cover? They were working for Daniel.'

‘And for Joseph Smith also. Valerie's the only loose end… '

‘I should have done more you know,' said Leon, interrupting her. ‘I could have done more.' His head was in his hands again.

‘I don't know, Leon.'

He looked up suddenly. ‘I
could
,' he said aggressively.

‘So why didn't you.'

‘Jackson changed a lot, Eva. In the last few months before he disappeared he was like a different person. I thought he was using again.'

‘What happened?'

Leon dropped his gaze from hers and stared at the floor. ‘The signs were all there as far as I was concerned. He was going on about all these crazy theories – he said he couldn't tell me the details as it was confidential, but that there was danger, so much danger – and some kind of murder plot. He told the same stories as when I met him in rehab – different details but the same kind of tales of being pursued by killers and being almost like a spy. I just felt like he was fantasising about his being in danger because he was using drugs again – it seemed to feed a really dark side of his imagination.'

Eva remembered what Irene Hunt had told her about Jackson's recruitment. Leon was much closer to the truth than he realised.

‘What did you do?'

Another pause. ‘Nothing.'

‘But don't you think he needed your help?'

‘Eva, you have to understand, I was so angry with him. We had made a pact to stay clean – other than Valerie's interference I had been free of it all since rehab – and it was a promise to each other I thought we'd never break. I
needed
him not to break it. When it seemed that he'd done just that I… I just couldn't bear to be around him any more.'

Eva tried to be sympathetic but such sentimental weakness from a man like Leon….it was hard to believe there wasn't more involved. And she found it interesting that he took no responsibility for that night with Valerie, that whatever he had taken was not his fault.

‘So did you find out if he was using?'

‘Yes.'

‘And was he?'

‘No. But by the time I knew it was too late.'

Eva looked wearily at Leon. Could he have saved Jackson?

‘I had my own demons, Eva. I had to stay away from him. I didn't want to get sucked back in.'

Eva nodded slowly. What was the point of going over it now anyway, it was all just far too late.

But Leon didn't stop talking. It was almost as if he felt the need to confess. ‘The night before he disappeared he called me and he left a message saying he had to see me, a matter of life or death. He sounded distraught, frantic.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I met him like he asked and that's when he started talking about protecting Valerie and Sophie. He left me this list of instructions and contacts for Sophie – at the time I didn't even know who she was so it seemed crazy. He was nervous, sweating, too hyper.'

‘And that convinced you that he was using again.'

Leon nodded. ‘It seemed so ridiculous – I mean, the things he was saying sounded ridiculous. Even though I knew what I knew about Valerie, the details of what he was claiming – which we now know are true – were so fantastical and the details he gave me were so disjointed. At the time, it didn't seem possible that the threat I thought he was imagining could be real.' Eva said nothing.

Speaking seemed to take all Leon's energy out of him. He stood up and walked to the other side of the cell, where he sank down to the floor with his back against the wall and just stared into space. Eva didn't ask any more questions. She felt torn between sympathy for him and anger that he might have saved her brother's life. But she was weary; and he was only a flawed human being just like everyone else. The conversation had at least been informative. Now she understood his connection to Valerie, his violent, erratic behaviour and the strange, unstable air that surrounded him. Perhaps he'd had an ‘episode' in the time she had known him – it would fit with the way he swung so quickly from crazy to sane.

But that didn't change anything for her right now.

She laid her head against the cold metal of the bed and shut her eyes. She thought of the virus that occupied her body. She felt like clawing her skin off to try and get to the poison. She was living on borrowed time and she had no idea how much.

‘W
AKEY,
WAKEY,
RISE
AND
SHINE
!'

Suddenly Daniel was at the door to their cell and it was being unlocked by one of his men. ‘Time for your starring role, Eva,' he said, laughter dancing in his cold, blue eyes.

Leon jumped up straight away, but maintained his distance when Daniel produced another tranquilliser gun.

‘Bind her hands again,' Daniel said to the man nearest to him who proceeded to carry out the orders, leaving Eva once again immobilised.

‘And him.' Daniel pointed to Leon and then kept the tranquilliser aimed at him until he was completely tied up. Then they were taken into another grey room with rough-edged walls, high ceilings and an enormous skylight, under which a large screen had been set up, as well as a table supporting several computers. In the middle of the room was a single chair with the video camera in front of it.

‘If you'd like to take a seat there,' Daniel said to Eva, indicating the chair as if she had a choice. Eva's heart began to sink. Slowly she sat down on the chair in front of the camera and tried to compose herself. She wondered how she should be feeling in this situation. She felt oddly calm.

Daniel gave an instruction and the screen in front of them flipped to life revealing four conservatively dressed men, three white, one of African origin. All were in the grip of middle age, but they were well-preserved, expensively suited and two had recent tans. They were sitting around a curved conference table and all four wore the same acorn pin that Eva had seen on Daniel's jacket in Paris. Two of them flinched when they saw the set-up.

‘This was meant to be a private discussion,' said the man sitting on the far right, a standard white male of average height with brown hair and a large pale face. ‘We've warned you before about this.'

‘Are you talking about her?' Daniel laughed. ‘Oh don't worry about her, she won't be a threat to you. Have you seen the news?'

‘Yes.' This time one of the tanned men in the centre answered. ‘Congratulations. Four years of development have certainly paid off.'

‘But we have seen no evidence of the virus,' said the first man again. ‘You know that was the main purpose of this exercise.'

Exercise? Eva was trying to work out who these people were and what they were talking about. She couldn't place them and now she couldn't understand how they were involved or what the aims of an ‘exercise' might be.

‘Who are they?' she asked, figuring she had little to lose by speaking up.

He spun around to face her. ‘Be
quiet
,' he hissed right in her face. ‘This is
my moment.
'

The four on the screen stared implacably at the camera, waiting for him to continue. They seemed to view Daniel in the same way as one might a petulant grandson with a science experiment.

Eva felt incredibly confused.

‘Ah yes, the virus, the final piece of the puzzle – the
pièce de résistance
, if you like,' Daniel said theatrically. ‘Will you tell them about it or shall I?' Daniel was looking at Eva as he spoke. She stared back at him.

‘Oh very well then,' he said holding up a syringe.

Eva gave a start. She looked quickly down at the two marks in her arm. If she had already been injected with the virus then what was in that syringe?

‘This, my friends, is the virus we have developed at your request. It delivers a blow to the body that none have yet survived – a combination of two diseases of old age, one of which weakens every muscle in the body, including heart and diaphragm, until they just give up. And the other which rapidly fills the lungs with fibrosis, or bodily tissue, until there is no longer any space in the victim's lungs for her to breathe.' He turned to Eva, jabbed the needle into her arm and drove the plunger of the syringe down to the hilt. She closed her eyes as she felt the liquid disperse under her skin.