Chapter 17
Chapter 17
After placing all the mini surveillance cameras around the ballroom, Catya focused her attention on the attendees. Over the past twenty-four hours, she’d looked up many of the guests in an attempt to memorize their faces so that when she ran into them at the party, she’d recognize them.
She wanted to see who they mingled with, who they shook hands with and who they met with over drinks.
Walter Sykes appeared in the ballroom without Ace’s announcement. Although, if he’d been in charge of the security surrounding the estate, he would have come much earlier to get set up and assign his people to different locations.
But then, why would MI6 provide the security for a private party? Wouldn’t Stanhope have to pay out of his own pocket to protect his home?
Catya kept Sykes in view, observing who he talked with and how long he spent. He made his way around the room, speaking with dignitaries from various countries in short bursts, then moving on quickly.
Catya recognized the Vice President of Mozambique, Antonio Barros, as the one Sykes spoke with at that moment.
Once Sykes moved on, Barros set his drink glass on a tray and headed for the door in the side of the ballroom.
Earlier, one of the wait staff had mentioned to Catya that the toilets could be found through that door. Still, a niggling sense of urgency made her turn to Dmytro. “I’m going to the toilet.”
He nodded and rubbed his stomach. “I will be here.”
As Catya walked away, a man walked up to Dmytro, talking about recipes.
Catya held back a smile.
Dmytro didn’t cook. Being questioned about the ingredients he used in certain recipes would be an entirely new level of hell for him.
Sykes had disappeared into the shadows of the doorway.
When Catya stepped through, she looked both ways and saw nothing. The bathrooms were further down the hallway. Barro couldn’t have gotten there that quickly. Yet, Barro had disappeared. Footsteps on stairs echoed in the hallway leading upward.
Catya followed the sound to what appeared to be a built-in display shelf with a variety of decorative vases and statuettes placed several inches apart on each level. The sound of footsteps came from behind the unit.
Catya leaned against the structure. It didn’t move. She touched one of the vases and tried to move it, only to realize it was glued to the wood. She tried moving a statue. It tipped forward, and the entire unit swung inward, exposing a secret passage and a set of wooden stairs.
Catya gathered the hem of her dress, flung it over her arm, ducked low and crossed into the secret room.
Voices sounded from one of the bathrooms down the hallway, and a door swung open.
Quickly, before she was seen, Catya pushed the door closed. As soon as the unit was back in place, a light blinked on overhead.
Catya stood very still as two women talked and laughed as they passed by, completely unaware of the secret passage.
The footsteps that had led her to this point had faded into silence.
Curious about where the steps led, Catya crept upward, placing each foot carefully so as not to make a sound.
At the top of the staircase was a long, tunnel-like hallway that lit up when she stepped into it, illuminating a dark wooden door at the very end. Catya glanced down the stairs.
She should go back to Dmytro and let him know about the hidden staircase and the disappearing vice president of Mozambique.
After taking one step downward, she froze. The shelf-unit door slowly swung inward. Joaquin Guzmán ducked his head and stepped into the secret room, followed by two more men Catya recognized as dignitaries from Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan.
Catya stepped up into the hallway. She couldn’t be found there, or she might blow the team’s cover. Lifting her skirts again, she ran down the long hallway as quietly as she could to the doorway at the other end.
She twisted the handle, eased the door open and peered into what appeared to be the backside of a walk-in closet. Suits and formal gowns hung on a rod. Shoe boxes and a couple of suitcases took up floor space on each side.
With the men nearing the top of the staircase behind her, Catya had no other choice but to step into the closet. Voices sounded from the room on the other side of the closet.
She couldn’t go in there, and she couldn’t get caught by the men now coming down the long hallway. Catya dragged several ballgowns toward her and slipped behind a large suitcase. She squatted and pulled the gowns closer to hide her from the view of anyone passing through the closet from either direction.
Her breath caught and held as the door opened, and the three men passed through the closet into the room beyond.
Letting several moments pass, Catya finally moved, silently letting go of the breath she’d held.
A voice in the other room caught her attention. A man was urging people to be seated and that they would begin once everyone had arrived.
They were expecting more people?
Catya pushed to her feet and inched toward the room beyond the closet.
Pushing a suit jacket aside, she peered into the room on the other side of the closet. It had an old sofa and wing-back chair and not much else. The voices Catya was hearing came from the next room.
More footsteps sounded in the long hallway.
Catya dropped low behind the large suitcase, covered her position with the gown and waited.
Two more foreign dignitaries passed through the closet. A moment later, Walter Sykes came through, announcing, “That’s the last of them.”
“Good, we can get started,” another man said. “You all have been here before. You know how it works. We’ll begin bidding at one thousand pounds. Gentleman, if you’ll direct your attention to the first item on the screen. Several cases of AK-47 rifles, new, never been used. Starting at one thousand pounds.”
The voice droned on, the price of the AK-47s rising.
The people in that room were bidding on weapons. Stanhope had brought them there to bid on illegal arms, and the Deputy Prime Minister and the MI6 director were knee-deep in it.
Catya eased out of her hiding place and tiptoed to the door into the hallway. She had to get back to the others and let them know what she’d found. Or rather, who she’d found having a secret auction under the guise of a party at the rich man’s house. Meanwhile, everyone in the ballroom below circulated happily, eager to meet the celebrities. No one would notice that several of the foreign officials had suddenly disappeared.
Her hand stilled on the doorknob. What if she went down to warn her team, but by the time they got back to the hidden room, the people in there were gone? Who would believe her—an assassin and Russian spy?
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Catya pulled her cell phone from her pocket, brought up the camera application and slipped through the closet into the small sitting room, clinging to shadows and hiding at the edge of the doorframe. She peered around the edge to find a room full of buyers seated in folding chairs, looking up at a monitor displaying a rocket launcher.
Holy hell, they weren’t just selling rifles; they were selling the big guns.
She held her cell phone out enough to get the camera lens past the doorframe and snapped several photos, including some of Walter Sykes. In her brief glimpse into the room, she hadn’t seen Deputy Prime Minister Blackhurst or Lord Stanhope.
She needed photos of them at the auction for proof of their involvement.
Had she missed them?
Catya peered around the corner again.
No. She hadn’t missed them. They weren’t there.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
Before she could react, the cool, hard barrel of a gun pressed into her back.
“Move a muscle, and I’ll shoot,” a gravelly voice said into her ear.
Catya’s breath lodged in her throat.
That voice was undeniable.
The man behind her was the same one who’d killed her parents.
“Want me to shoot her?” the man asked.
A voice behind them said, “No. We might need a hostage to get out of here. But take her cell phone. We can’t have those photos she took getting out.”
Catya turned her head enough to see the other two men behind the one with the gun.
There they were.
Lord Stanhope and the Deputy Prime Minister Blackhurst.
Walter Sykes appeared in the doorway and cursed. “What the hell? How did she get in here?”
“You tell me,” Blackhurst demanded. “You were in charge of security, yet there wasn’t a guard on the secret passage when we came through.”
Sykes’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Catya. “Wait a minute.” He shook his head. “Bloody hell.” The man’s hand snaked out, grabbed Catya’s wig and yanked it off her head. “It’s the assassin we sent to Rosolino’s. The one that fucked it up.”
“Ah, Walter Sykes. I should have known you were behind the multiple attempts to kill me.” Catya hoped her listening device was working and Ace was recording everything being said. She just had to keep them talking. She glared at Sykes. “You say I fucked up the operation?” She gave a bark of laughter. “You and your buddy here, Deputy Prime Minister Blackhurst, sent three assassins to kill one defenseless preschool teacher. She didn’t deserve to die.”
“An assassin with a conscience? How novel.” Blackhurst laughed. “It’s a good thing we sent more than one to get the job done.”
“Except you didn’t die when you were supposed to,” Sykes added. “Then Atkins welched on the deal to get his daughter back.”
“Seems your choice of operatives didn’t work out so well,” Blackhurst said.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t see you coming up with a plan,” Sykes said. “The Rosolino girl had the data. She could just as easily have sold it like Rocco threatened to do. Everything would have been all right if he hadn’t mailed that disk to his daughter when he got scared.”
“I doubt he’d have done it if he’d known it would be her death sentence,” Blackhurst said.
Sykes snorted. “We were lucky she contacted MI6 first instead of Interpol.”
“Well, we’re not so lucky now,” Blackhurst said. “Your assassin has a boyfriend. I’m betting he’s among our guests and looking for her as we speak.” Blackhurst turned to Stanhope. “So, Stanhope, do you have an exit plan?”
Stanhope raised an eyebrow. “Of course. We end the party and send everyone home.”
Blackhurst and Sykes frowned.
“How are you going to do that without alarming the guests?” Blackhurst asked.
“I want them alarmed.” Stanhope lifted his chin toward the room full of foreign buyers. “Sykes, escort our dignitaries to the ballroom.”
“Back the way they came?”
Stanhope nodded. “Once they’re all back in the ballroom, trigger the fire alarm. While the guests are running out the front of the house, we will make our exit out the back and head for the helicopter pad on the other end of the formal gardens.” Stanhope pulled out his cell phone and dictated a message. “Have the chopper on standby, ready to lift off in ten minutes.” He clicked a button, and the message was sent. “We have exactly ten minutes until liftoff. And go.”
Sykes spun and marched into the room full of restless foreigners, wondering what was happening. Sykes herded them through the closet and into the secret passage.
Catya had hung around as long as she had, praying Ace, out in the communication van, was listening to everything and recording. They had enough to nail the three men in court. Now would be a good time to get away. Once the last of the buyers had all gone through, she’d make her move.
Up to that point, Catya had been compliant with the murderous bastard who had his gun pressed to her back. He wouldn’t be expecting her to do anything rash.
Catya didn’t do rash. But she did do fast.
She spun, knocked the gun from the man’s hand and performed a sidekick, landing a stiletto in his gut.
The murderer with the gravelly voice flew backward and hit the wall.
With the other two men blocking her escape through the tunnel, Catya dove for the room where the auction had taken place.
In seconds, she realized her mistake. There were chairs, a screen and no doors leading out of the room. If she wanted to escape, she had to get past Stanhope, Blackhurst and now a very angry killer.
Hunkering low, she charged like a bull in a fighting ring, aiming straight for Stanhope, who stood with his hand in his pocket.
As she came within reach of him, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and jabbed something at her, hitting her with a jolt of electricity that turned her muscles to jelly. She dropped like a rock to the floor and lay motionless, her mind working, but her body incapacitated.
“Bring the girl and hurry,” Stanhope said. “The effects of the taser won’t last long.” He walked into the auction room, punched a button on the wall and waited while the screen rose into a slot in the ceiling, revealing a door behind it.
The murderous bastard slung Catya over his shoulder and followed the other two men.
Stanhope led the way through a maze of hallways and rooms to a staircase leading to the ground level and the servants’ quarters.
Catya bounced along, her body flopping against the man carrying her. All the while, she willed her muscles to respond. By the time the fire alarm went off, she could feel movement in her fingertips and toes. She’d need a whole lot more control of her body if she was to get out of this alive.
What worried her most was that she hadn’t heard anything in her headset since she’d started up the hidden staircase. All hope of Fearghas finding her vanished. She was on her own and powerless.