Sabine was ten years old and apparently brilliant. A gifted student, she was also a talented artist and musician, although Nash was sure there was some parental bias on Sophia’s behalf. The photos showed a smiling, fun-loving child with mischief in her eyes—eyes that looked uncannily like Nash’s.
The likeness was unmistakable. Sabine had his eyes and ears; thankfully she’d inherited her mother’s strong jawline, flawless skin and cheekbones. She truly was an amalgam of the two of them, yet was entirely herself. She hadn’t inherited her arts inclination from either parent, though the rebellious streak was one Nash and Sophia knew all too well.
His first question was why Sophia had kept her pregnancy from him. He’d asked, strangled with emotion, why she’d never once contacted him. Sophia’s reply was a mixture of cliches and choked back tears. She didn’t want to burden Nash with a child they hadn’t planned for. They’d broken up, and she didn’t want to force him back with her choice to have the child. She was at a time in her life where she didn’t have many childbearing years left and couldn’t risk trying to find another man in that time, so decided to go it alone. She hadn’t told Nash due to a mixture of respect and selfishness. Whether to believe her was yet another paradox he’d wrestled with throughout the day.
In readiness for the raid to snatch Pinchot, they had all been told to sleep. Instead, Nash had carved a path on the floor with relentless pacing. So many thoughts piled on top of one another he found it impossible to keep up, let alone make sense of any of them. Though one thought stopped his pacing and made him sit down as his head swum.
The Nash line would no longer end with him. It would live on.
He placed both hands on the bed beside him to retain his balance. The idea of being responsible for the termination of the famed Nash lineage had slowly crept up on him over the last few years. The suddenness of the realisation that this would no longer be the case was yet another on the increasing list of swirling thoughts Nash had to deal with.
The knock on the door made him jump. He checked his watch. Twenty-two hundred hours. It was time to plan the extraction of Pinchot. It felt like barely an hour since Sophia had shocked him with the news of Sabine, but in reality, it had been over twelve.
“Coming.”
In a daze, he made his way to the back of the townhouse where his compatriots and the four DGSE agents sat in a modern kitchen and dining area. Everyone but Sophia was huddled around the large dining room table as Sophia made herself a cup of tea in the kitchen.
Her sheepish eyes were wide but hesitantly expectant, seemingly begging him to forgive her betrayal. He gave her a curt greeting devoid of any hint of affection. Sophia made her way to the table and was distracted by a question from her team member, Baptiste.
Eva grasped his forearm, concern etched in her features. “What’s wrong?”
Nash wouldn’t be surprised if he appeared shellshocked, and Eva had clearly picked up on it. “I’ll tell you later.” He patted her hand.
The look of concern on her face didn’t dissipate; in fact, it doubled down. Before she had the chance to say anything further, Sophia strode to the front of the room and the chatter stilled. Nash had to concede she knew how to control a room.
“The target is still holed up in the rented townhouse,” Sophia advised. “As soon as we arrived in New York, Alain here set up cameras covering Pinchot’s place. In the past twelve hours he’s only received one grocery delivery. No visitors. No one else has passed a window. As far as we can tell, he’s alone.”
“That’s an awfully big assumption.” Bishop stroked his moustache. “So, you’re saying the only intelligence we have is less than twenty-four hours old? Nothing before? Who’s to say who else is in there? For all we know there could be a bunch of angry groundhogs or Napoleon’s Imperial Guard waiting inside. You expect us to rush in and hope for the best?”
Instead of anger at Bishop’s questioning, Sophia replied, “Essentially, yes.”
She explained the plan. Once finished, Bishop leaned back and crossed his arms. “That could work.”
“That’s quite the compliment from the strategist of the group,” Sophia replied.
Bishop positively beamed until he received an elbow in the ribs from Eva. “Down, boy.”
The DGSE team consisted of Sophia, Baptiste the not-waiter, Alain and Claude. Thankfully, Baptiste had managed to quell the flamboyant hair he’d had on display at the wine bar. It turned out he’d worked for his father’s winery as a teen and was therefore deemed the best choice to pose as a waiter. In reality, he was the team’s armourer and demolitions expert. The grey-haired Alain was the logistics man and scrounger. The beefiest was Claude, the team’s muscle, who claimed to have trained with the Russian Spetsnaz, US Green Berets and British SAS. Given the size of his immense shoulders, the thickness of his neck and the way he held himself with various weapons, Nash wasn’t about to call him a liar.
Sophia did her best not to come too close or engage Nash in one-on-one conversation. He wasn’t sure it was to allow him space to come to terms with his sudden parenthood or to avoid confrontation over her having deceived him for a decade. Either way, it was unfamiliar for Nash to feel uneasy in Sophia’s presence.
To help keep himself sane he dove headfirst into planning. Pinchot was situated in a townhouse on Washington Park across from Fort Greene Park. They would hit early in the morning, and spent the next few hours devising various methods of ingress and contingencies. From their own surveillance photos, real estate listings and whatever else Alain had managed to find online, the layout was relatively straightforward, but it would be close quarters fighting should they encounter resistance.
As it neared midnight they called a break and the teams broke off to eat and chat. In a far corner of the back room, Bishop, Eva and Nash sat huddled eating sandwiches and drinking stale coffee.
“What’s going on, Nash?” Eva asked with less humour than usual. “You and Sophia were getting chummy again and now you’re frostier than Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’s nut sack. What gives?”
“It’s a…” he glanced back in Sophia’s direction, “very long story. Let’s get through this and then I’ll tell you everything.”
She held his gaze, seemingly accepting his answer for now. “Should we trust them? They’ve gone from kidnapping us to buddy buddy pretty quickly.”
“If they wanted us dead I think there are easier ways than some elaborate raid,” Bishop suggested before stuffing half a sandwich in his mouth. “They could as easily have thrown us out the plane over the Pacific.”
Nash tapped his thumb on his beard, accepting the statement. His thoughts once again turned to Pinchot. “Why New York?”
“Sorry?” Eva asked.
“Why New York? If he wants to hide out then why pick one of the most populous cities in the world with millions of cameras pointed in all directions?”
Bishop raised his coffee cup toward Nash. “You tried to live in a remote shitty little town off the beaten track in Nepal and it didn’t exactly work out for you.” There wasn’t maliciousness in Bishop’s tone, just matter-of-factness. “Maybe he knows this turf better. Home ground advantage and whatnot.”
It was plausible but it didn’t exactly ring true for Nash. He was overlooking something vital and it gnawed at his insides. What am I missing?
“Cavendish,” Nash said out loud.
“What?”
“Harry said on the conference call Cavendish was in New York. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Agreed, but what does it mean?”
Nash huffed. “I don’t know.”
Before they knew it, the time came for them to roll out. They packed their weapons, night-vision goggles and breaching gear and piled into a waiting van driven by Alain. The three blocks were traversed in silence, the usual state before any operation. Post-raid was the time for bravado and back-slapping, before is when you focus and go through every step in your head until it’s as natural as blinking.
Sophia and Baptiste were tasked with cutting the power and covering the rear of the townhouse should Pinchot make a run for it. Claude and Bishop were the breaching team; they’d burst through the front door and head straight for the upstairs bedroom, the likeliest place they’d find Pinchot at two am. Eva and Nash would follow, focusing on sweeping the ground floor. Alain would remain outside with the engine running as backup if anything went wrong.
The windows in the van misted with condensation from their collective breathing. Bishop checked his weapons, inspiring the rest to do the same. Safeties came off and masks went on.
