Pinchot let out a theatrical sigh. “Do you want to judge or stop a terrorist attack?”
That gave Nash pause. Was he talking about the same terrorist attack Harry had found a reference to deep within the bowels of Tartarus? The one that would lead to Cavendish’s lauded grand scheme. Was all this connected?
The expressions exchanged around the room echoed Nash’s feelings. This wasn’t going the way they’d expected.
Claude pulled out his phone and pressed a button. “Boss, you better get in here.”
He hung up without another word being spoken. Sophia soon arrived and was brought up to speed. Once done, she and Nash spoke no words but silently exchanged a progression of looks and came to the same conclusion: Pinchot would not give up his secrets easily. She asked Claude to cover the entrance in case Pinchot was stalling for a rescue. Nash, Sophia, Eva and Bishop remained. Sophia rolled her hand, indicating Nash should take the lead.
“Who was Yousif?”
“Does it matter?” Pinchot settled into his chair, decidedly relaxed. “He’s dead.”
It was late and Nash was so out of sorts with time zones he didn’t know if he was exhausted or wired. He may as well press his luck and lay it all on the table.
“We know Cavendish was sprouting his grand scheme as the salvation to Tartarus’s fuck-ups.” Nash scrutinised Pinchot’s face and saw the reaction he’d hoped for. It was Pinchot who’d been the instigator of said fuck-ups. He wasn’t nonchalant anymore. “And we know he’s planning a terrorist attack under the absolutely subtle name of Ultimate Sacrifice.” There was the slightest twitch in one of Pinchot’s eyes—there was the tell Nash had been looking for, confirming the American was familiar with the operation. “The scheme is to fool an existing terrorist cell into believing their organisation is supplying the plan and means to carry it out. For them, everything would seem genuine; the bombs, the target, everything. I’m guessing your friend Yousif back there was part of the cell. What Yousif and his cohort didn’t know, however, was that Tartarus will warn the legitimate spy agencies of the imminent attack. And when they are dismissed and the attack succeeds, Tartarus will claim the biggest I-told-you-so in history, putting them well on their way to being a respected and legitimate private spy organisation. Did I miss anything?”
Folding her arms and leaning against a bookshelf, Sophia’s brow creased into an impressed frown.
“Not bad for an Englishman.” Regaining his earlier arrogance, Pinchot released a sinister leer. Straightening his back, he inhaled deeply. “Most of it is accurate. You missed some important steps, but you have the idée générale.”
Nash shot Sophia a glance. She hadn’t been introduced, nor had she spoken. None of her team had, other than Claude’s phone call to bring her in, and he’d done a reasonable job at a neutral accent. The sprinkling of French meant Pinchot was aware this was at least in part a DGSE operation.
“Why am I here, Pinchot?”
“Why are any of us here?” He waved his hands around with a shit-eating grin.
“This isn’t a coincidence.” Nash sat at the edge of the desk, his mind swimming through the thousands of possibilities until he saw the solid land of what he concluded was the most likely scenario. “You made it possible for us to find the information about Ultimate Sacrifice. We used your login, after all. Then you dropped clues so the DGSE could find me. You even provided them intelligence as to where you were. You stage-managed all of this. The next question is, why?”
There was another possibility Nash didn’t verbalise. The individual in front of him was wily, canny and murderous, never someone to turn your back on. This whole situation could all be an elaborate trap.
Pinchot gave Nash an expression that was close to admiration. “I know this may come as a shock to you, but there are not many people in the world I can trust anymore.”
“Diddums.” It was the first time Eva had spoken in some time.
Pinchot’s eyes narrowed. “But I do know a group of individuals who share my goals, though we don’t share the same principles. I thought it prudent to rally them, and you, to assist in a task impossible for an individual, albeit it a highly talented and intelligent one, to perform by himself.”
“You want our help to stop a terrorist attack?”
“No.” Pinchot leaned forward, his voice low. “I want your help to kill Cavendish.”
Nash needed to walk around the block to quench his powerful impulses. Pinchot had an uncanny ability to draw out the worst in him. At every turn he’d been influenced by the man in some way. It was Pinchot who’d first embroiled Nash in this mess when he’d sent assassins after him at Devil’s End. He’d tried to kill Nash multiple times and orchestrated Tartarus’s worst crimes. But here he was holding all the cards, again. They hadn’t been hunting Pinchot, he’d been hunting them. The master manipulator had struck again.
Nash needed more. He needed to know what lay beneath Pinchot’s words. With him, there were always schemes within schemes. He returned to the study to extract more from the man who was the mirror opposite to Nash.
“You told me the next time we met you were going to kill me.” Nash tried to sound as casual as possible, not the easiest of tasks when talking about your nemesis’s death pact.
“Maybe the time after that.” The subject seemed to amuse Pinchot. “I’ve still got a few years in me. Never say never.”
“Why are you doing this?” Nash asked, feeling the others’ eyes on him. “And before you say revenge, there has to be more to it. You could have escaped to a tropical island somewhere and lived out the rest of your life drinking cocktails and lying on the beach. You could have disappeared.”
Nash was reminded that he’d tried to do exactly that with less than stellar results.
Pinchot shook his head vehemently. “I’m fucked no matter what I do.” He waved his hands in the air. “Tartarus are after me and they’ll never stop. Never. My own government’s the same. Either way I’ll be dead before the year’s out. I’ve got nothing left. Except revenge.” He savoured the word. “My final poetic act will be to take out the bastard who’s been lying to me for years, manipulating everything from the shadows with me clapping along like the good dancing monkey I am, only to be stabbed in the back when he didn’t need me anymore.” As if as an afterthought, he added, “Oh, and for killing the board. Fuck Tartarus and fuck Ramsay Cavendish. That son of a bitch is going to die screaming for everything he’s taken from me.”
Nobody said anything for a moment, letting the anger subside. Nash wasn’t one for revenge. He’d seen souls hollowed out chasing it. On his journey to becoming a better man, Nash had learned to let the pursuit of retribution fall by the wayside. It was never the answer, though it always pretended to be. Revenge wasn’t the end of one’s torment, only the harbinger of more. Pinchot had not learned that lesson, and for an instant Nash felt pity for him. It was fleeting.
“Cavendish is here in New York?” Sophia asked.
She’d let Nash lead the questioning. Multiple cross-examiners could be a useful tool when you wanted to discombobulate the target, but they needed Pinchot as lucid and focused as possible. He was irritated enough without numerous people interrogating him. Luckily Sophia had asked the question that was next on Nash’s list.
“He is. I’m guessing he doesn’t trust his underlings to carry out the attack without fucking it up. He made sure Tartarus hired the best in the world but here he is getting his manicured hands dirty. I know when and where he’s going to poke his head out of the trenches and the precise moment you can stop the attack and I can get to him.”
“Where’s that?”
Pinchot swung his index finger from side to side: not yet.
He was playing them and Nash didn’t like it. He folded his arms. They knew more than they had before, but they still weren’t in control. Nash was sure they couldn’t trust Pinchot, ever.
“Who’s carrying out the attack?” Nash thought he could at least get that.
“Yemen terrorists. An offshoot of an offshoot an Iran-backed Hezbollah cell who think they’ll raise awareness about the ongoing conflict between the righteous and just freedom fighters and the Republic of Yemen’s evil government under the leadership of their idiot president. In reality they’re working for Ramsay Cavendish, a man they’ve never heard of. They have no idea he’s the one who’s really guiding them to meet Allah at the gates of heaven. Poor ignorant bastards.”
Nash took the information onboard and decided to change tack, bringing the focus a little closer to home for Pinchot.
“You know what happened to the board?”
