Scarecrow (25 page)

Knight's modifications to his Pilot, however, included a search program that allowed his device to access—wirelessly—
any
computer that he could get within ten feet of.

Which meant he could do something very special indeed: he could hack into standalone computers. If he could get close enough.

The castle's gates opened.

Monsieur Delacroix appeared, dapper as always.

‘Captain Knight,' he said formally. ‘I was wondering if I might be seeing you.'

‘Monsieur Delacroix,' Knight said. ‘I had a feeling you'd be the assessor. I was just saying to my associates here what a charming fellow you were.'

‘But of course you were,' Delacroix said drily. He eyed Schofield and Gant in their IG-88 gear. ‘New helpers. I did not know you had been recruiting from Monsieur Larkham's fold.'

‘Good help is hard to find,' Knight said.

‘Isn't it just,' Delacroix said. ‘Why don't you come inside.'

They passed through the castle's showroom-like garage, filled with its collection of expensive cars: the Porsche GT-2, the Aston Martin, the Lamborghini, the turbo-charged Subaru WRX rally cars.

Delacroix walked in the lead, pushing a handcart with the three head boxes stacked on it.

‘Nice castle,' Knight said.

‘It is rather impressive,' Delacroix said.

‘So who owns it?'

‘A very wealthy individual.'

‘Whose name is—'

‘—something I am not authorised to divulge. I have instructions on this matter.'

‘You always do,' Knight said. ‘Guns?'

‘You may keep your weapons,' Delacroix said, uninterested. ‘They won't be of any use to you here.'

They descended some stairs at the rear of the garage, entered a round stone-walled anteroom that preceded a long narrow tunnel.

Delacroix stopped. ‘Your associates will have to wait here, Captain Knight.'

Knight nodded to Schofield and Gant. ‘It's okay. Just don't be shocked when the doors lock.'

Schofield and Gant took a seat on a leather couch by the wall.

Delacroix led Knight down the narrow torch-lit tunnel.

They came to the end of the forbidding passageway, to a well-appointed office. Delacroix entered the office ahead of Knight, then turned, holding a remote in his hand.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

The three steel doors in the tunnel whomped down into place, sealing Schofield and Gant in the ante-room and Knight in the tunnel.

Knight didn't even blink.

Delacroix set about examining the heads—heads that were originally captured by Demon Larkham in the caves of Afghanistan: the heads of Zawahiri, Khalif and Kingsgate.

Laser scans, dental exams, DNA . . .

Knight stood inside the long stone tunnel, trapped, waiting.

He noticed the boiling oil gutters set into its walls. ‘Hmmm,' he said aloud. ‘Nasty.'

Through a small perspex window set into the steel door, he could see into Delacroix's office.

He saw Delacroix at work, saw the immense panoramic window behind the Swiss banker's desk revealing the glorious Atlantic Ocean.

It was then, however, that Knight noticed the ships outside.

On the distant horizon he saw a cluster of naval vessels: destroyers and frigates, all gathered around a mighty aircraft carrier that he instantly recognised as a brand-new, nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle-class carrier.

It was a Carrier Battle Group.

A French Carrier Battle Group.

Schofield and Gant waited in the ante-room.

A whirring sound from up near the ceiling caught Schofield's attention.

He looked up—and saw six strange-looking antennas arrayed around the ceiling of the round ante-room, embedded in the stone walls. They looked like stereo speakers, but he recognised them as deadly microwave emitters.

He also saw the source of the whirring sound: a security camera.

‘We're being watched,' he said.

In another room somewhere in the castle, someone was indeed watching Schofield and Gant on a black-and-white monitor.

The watcher was gazing intently at Schofield, as if he was peering right through Schofield's bandages and sunglasses.

Monsieur Delacroix finished his tests.

He turned to Knight, still captive in the tunnel.

‘Captain Knight,' Delacroix said over the intercom. ‘Congratulations. Each of your heads has carded a perfect score. You are now $55.8 million richer.'

The Swiss banker pressed his remote and the three steel doors whizzed up into their slots.

Knight stepped into Delacroix's office just as the banker sat down behind his enormous desk and started tapping the keys on his standalone laptop computer.

‘So,' Delacroix said, hands poised over the keyboard. ‘To which account would you like me to wire the bounty? Am I to assume you are still banking with Alan Gemes in Geneva?'

Knight's eyes were glued to Delacroix's computer.

‘Yes,' he said as he hit the ‘
TRANSMIT
' button on the Palm Pilot in his pocket.

Instantly, the Pilot and Delacroix's computer began communicating.

In the stone-walled ante-room, Schofield saw his Palm Pilot spring to life.

Data whizzed up the screen at dizzying speed. Documents filled with names, numbers, diagrams:

Schofield saw the last document, recognised it.

The bounty list.

The Pilot continued to download other documents. Careful to keep it concealed, Schofield clicked on the list, opening it.

This list was slightly different to the one he had taken from the leader of Executive Solutions, Cedric Wexley, in Siberia. Some of the names on it had been shaded in. The full document read:

The dead
, Schofield thought with a chill.
It's a list of the targets who have already been eliminated.

And verified as dead
.

Schofield could have added Ashcroft and Weitzman to that list—Ashcroft had been beheaded in Afghanistan by the Spetsnaz bounty hunters, the Skorpions, and Weitzman had been killed on the cargo plane.

Which meant that, at the very best, only five of the original 15 names remained alive: Christie, Oliphant, Rosenthal, Zemir and Schofield himself.

Schofield frowned.

Something bothered him about this list, something he couldn't quite put his finger on . . .

Then he glimpsed the word ‘
ASSESSOR
' on one of the other documents.

He retrieved it.

It was an email:

 

SUBJECT: PAYMENT OF ASSESSOR'S COMMISSION

 

PAYMENT OF THE ASSESSOR'S COMMISSION WILL BE MADE BY INTERNAL ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER WITHIN AGM-SUISSE FROM ASTRAL-66 PTY LTD'S PRIVATE ACCOUNT (NO. 437-666-21) IN THE AMOUNT OF US$3.2 MILLION (THREE POINT TWO MILLION US DOLLARS) PER ASSESSMENT.

 

THE ASSESSOR IS TO BE
M. JEAN-PIERRE DELACROIX
OF AGM-SUISSE.

Schofield gazed at the words.

‘ASTRAL-66 PTY LTD.'

That was where the money was coming from. Whatever it was, Astral-66 was paying for this bounty hunt—

‘Good afternoon,' a pleasant voice said.

Schofield and Gant looked up.

A very handsome young man stood at the base of the stone stairs that led up to the garage. He was in his late thirties and clad in designer jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt which he wore open over a T-shirt in the manner of the very wealthy. Schofield immediately noticed his eyes: one blue, one brown.

‘Welcome to my castle,' the handsome young man smiled. His smile seemed somehow dangerous. ‘And who might you be?'

‘Colton. Tom Colton,' Schofield lied. ‘This is Jane Watson. We're with Aloysius Knight, seeing Monsieur Delacroix.'

‘Oh, I see . . .' the handsome man said.

He extended his hand.

‘Killian. Jonathan Killian. You both look like you've seen a fair amount of action today. May I get you a drink, or something to eat? Or perhaps my personal physician could give you some clean bandages for your wounds.'

Schofield shot a glance down the tunnel, searching for Knight.

‘Please . . .' Killian guided them up the stairs. Not wanting to attract unnecessary attention, they followed him.

‘I've seen you before,' Schofield said as they walked up the stone stairway. ‘On TV . . .'

‘I do make the odd appearance from time to time.'

‘Africa,' Schofield said. ‘You were in Africa. Last year. Opening factories. Food factories. In Nigeria . . .'

This was all true. Schofield recalled the images from the news—footage of this Killian fellow shaking hands with smiling African leaders amid crowds of happy workers.

They came up into the classic car garage.

‘You've a good memory,' Killian said. ‘I also went to Eritrea, Chad, Angola and Libya, opening new food processing plants. Although many don't know it yet, the future of the world lies in Africa.'

‘I like your car collection,' Gant said.

‘Toys,' Killian replied. ‘Mere toys.'

He guided them into a corridor branching off the garage. It had dark polished floorboards and pristine white walls.

‘But then I enjoy playing with toys,' Killian said. ‘Much as I enjoy playing with
people
. I like to see their reactions to stressful situations.'

He stopped in front of a large wooden door. Schofield heard laughter coming from behind it. Raucous male laughter. It sounded like a party was going on in there.

‘Stressful situations?' Schofield said. ‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Well,' Killian said, ‘take for instance the average Westerner's inability to comprehend the Islamic suicide bomber. Westerners are taught since birth to fight “fair”: the French duel at ten paces, English knights jousting, American gunslingers facing off on a Wild West street. In the Western world, fighting is fair because it is presumed that both parties actually
want
to win a given battle.'

‘But the suicide bomber doesn't think that way,' Schofield said.

‘That's right,' Killian said. ‘He doesn't want to win the
battle
, because the battle to a suicide bomber is meaningless. He wants to win a far grander war, a psychological war in which the man who dies
against his will
—in a state of distress and terror and fear—loses, while he who dies when he is spiritually and emotionally ready, wins.

‘As such, a Westerner faced with a suicide bomber goes to pieces. Believe me, I have seen this. Just as I have seen people's reactions to other stressful situations: criminals in the electric chair, a person in water confronted by sharks. Oh, to be sure, I love to observe the look of pure horror that crosses a man's face when he realises that he is, without doubt, going to die.'

With that, Killian pushed open the door—

—at the same moment that something dawned on Schofield:

His problem with the master list.

On the master bounty list, McCabe and Farrell's names had been shaded in.