Free Kingdom of Darkness by Andy McDermott Page B

really his name. Jaekel also had a fake passport, from the same source.’
    ‘Koenig came to New York first?’
    ‘And then travelled on to LA, yeah.’
    ‘Looking for you,’ Eddie suggested. The idea did not make Nina any more comfortable.
    ‘Jaekel had been tracking him – we found texts on his phone listing the flights he’d taken,’ Petrelli noted. ‘We’re trying to identify the sender, but it looks like they came from a burner. All we know is that they originated in Italy.’
    They continued across the bridge into Manhattan, then headed to the United Nations. Nina expected them to go to the Secretariat building, home to the offices of both Oswald Seretse and the International Heritage Agency, but instead they stopped outside the much lower sweeping block of the General Assembly. The two FBI agents led the way in.
    ‘Wow,’ said Nina as she entered, stopping in momentary disorientation. The previous day she had been in a replica of the visitors’ lobby on the other side of the continent; now she was in the real thing. ‘It’s like I never left.’
    ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Eddie muttered.
    Nina was about to ask him exactly what he meant by that when someone called her name. A tall figure in a blue suit strode towards the group. ‘Oswald!’
    ‘Good morning, Nina,’ said Oswald Seretse, shaking her hand. The Gambian diplomat, who in addition to his duties at the United Nations was acting as the IHA’s interim director following Nina’s resignation, was immaculately presented as always, despite signs of sleeplessness around his eyes. ‘I’m glad to see you again. Although obviously the circumstances are far from ideal.’
    ‘You’re not kidding,’ said Eddie. ‘Hey, Ozzy.’
    Vexation and amusement fought for dominance of Seretse’s expression, the latter just winning out. ‘Good to see you too, Eddie.’ The Englishman grinned and shook his hand.
    ‘Late night?’ Nina asked.
    ‘There was a Security Council meeting concerning the Iranian nuclear programme. As ever, these things do tend to drag on. I had to excuse myself to meet you.’
    ‘What happened to us must be a big deal, then,’ said Eddie.
    ‘It certainly is. If you’ll come with me, there’s an office where we can discuss matters.’ He headed back across the lobby.
    Eddie looked up at Foucault’s Pendulum as they followed. ‘Got to admit, Grant’s version of diplomacy is more interesting than the real thing. Even if his writers know fuck-all about how bullets work.’
    ‘If you mean “interesting” in the Chinese proverb sense, then yeah,’ said Nina. ‘I’d rather real-life diplomats stuck to sitting at tables talking things out, though.’
    ‘I dunno, sometimes you just have to shoot a bugger.’
    ‘That would explain the enormous backlog of IHA incident reports prominently featuring your name that I inherited from my predecessors,’ Seretse said as they reached the security checkpoint. IDs were quickly checked, and they went deeper into the building. ‘In here.’
    The windowless room was a secondary conference area, a place for the small print of treaties to be hammered out by functionaries while their masters argued the bigger picture in the far more impressive main hall nearby. ‘Before we start, Oswald,’ said Nina, ‘I want to thank you for acting on my phone call so quickly. If you hadn’t got the State Department to intervene, God knows how long we would have been stuck in a police cell.’
    The normally unflappable diplomat looked uncomfortable. ‘I must make an admission, Nina. I did call the State Department after we spoke in the hope of intervening on your behalf, yes . . . but they still have not replied to me. I suspect that I had little, if anything, to do with your release.’
    ‘Then who did?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Eddie regarded the FBI agents. ‘You?’
    ‘We got orders from the top,’ said Petrelli. ‘But who gave them . . .’ He shrugged.
    ‘Looks like we’ve