Free The Game by Tom Wood Page B

early riser.’
    He ignored her and moved to insert his own key card in the slot.
    Muir took a rapid step back. ‘Why don’t I wait for you downstairs while you take a shower?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘You really hum.’
    He looked at her.
    She said, ‘Shall we say I’ll see you in the lobby in about twenty minutes?’
    ‘We have nothing further to discuss. If you had managed to get clearance to answer my question you would have said so by now.’
    ‘You’re right. I don’t have clearance. I spent half the night trying to get it.’
    Victor pushed open his door. ‘Have a good flight back to Washington, Miss Muir. I trust you understand it’s in your best interest to forget you ever met me.’
    ‘Wait,’ she said, and went to grab his arm.
    Her fingers didn’t find their target. Instead they were twisted back on themselves, and her wrist joint hyper-extended. She gasped and sank downwards as he applied pressure. He released her before any serious damage was caused, but only just.
    ‘Go back to Washington, Miss Muir.’
    ‘Wait,’ she said again, grimacing as she rubbed her wrist. ‘I haven’t got clearance, but I’m going to answer your question anyway. I’m going to break the rules because I need your help and I don’t have time to waste waiting for a guy in an office to grant clearance on facts you’ve already worked out for yourself.’
    ‘That’s a sensible attitude to take.’
    ‘I thought you’d agree. I’ll tell you everything you want to know downstairs, okay?’ She sucked in air between her teeth and tried to rub the pain from her wrist.
    ‘Not in the lobby,’ Victor said. ‘But I’m going to get some dinner when I’ve cleaned up. You can join me if you wish.’
    She glanced at her watch. ‘Don’t you mean breakfast?’
    ‘I’m unlikely to get the two confused.’
    ‘Sure, okay. Let’s go get some dinner. At six a.m.’

FOURTEEN
    Dinner consisted of two hotdogs loaded with onions and ketchup bought from a street vendor. Muir settled for a cream donut, along with a black coffee into which she added three sachets of sugar. Two brown. One white. The sun shone through wispy clouds and they walked along the river, where it was quiet. It was windy and Muir wore a band to keep her hair back. Joggers passed them by on occasion.
    Victor saw nothing of Muir’s team. There were still three he hadn’t identified and he knew they wouldn’t be far; nor would the young guy who had been waiting at the bus stop, the sportswear-clad fifty-year-old called Beatty, and the one disguised as a businessman. They would be tracking Muir easily enough with GPS via her cell phone. Beatty would have argued they needed to maintain visual contact but she would have insisted otherwise. She knew as Victor had spotted them the first time that he would so again, and she didn’t want to antagonise him. He appreciated that uncommon courtesy.
    ‘The diplomat who was killed in Yemen was CIA,’ Muir said, looking away. ‘Non-official cover operative. A NOC. Stanley Charters. Guy was a real hero.’
    ‘What was he doing in Yemen?’
    ‘He was running agents linked to the black market plutonium trade. Which I’m sure you can appreciate is a very rare and complex operation. Anything radioactive automatically becomes the hardest illicit commodity to identify and track. And not just because the traders go to such great lengths to hide it.’
    ‘Because more often than not it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.’
    Muir nodded. ‘There’s a million bad guys out there who want to get their hands on it so there are countless opportunists claiming to have access to hidden Soviet stockpiles and suitcase nukes. It’s ridiculous. Have these people never heard of a half life? Even the few genuine traders out there are mostly trying to sell junk that stopped being denotable over a decade ago, else it was never weapons grade in the first place. As long as the Geiger counter crackles, most buyers don’t know any better.