Page 159 of Hang on St. Christopher

“I showed your photograph to the receptionist at the Hotel Borg, and she recognized you immediately because you’d complained that the curtains didn’t close over all the way in your room.”

He groaned again. “Getting sloppy in my old age.”

“And she had your name and address. Your real name and address after a whole bunch of pseudonyms, which I then immediately shared with the RUC Special Branch.”

He shook his head. “No, Duffy. No, no, no. Everything was going well. You were telling me the truth and I was believing you and we were building rapport. And now you make me do this.”

He put the gun and the coffee cup on his table, walked behind me, locked my head in his left arm until it was rigid and unmoveable, and then he pushed a gloved thumb into my right eye. He knew exactly what he was doing. The pain was excruciating.

“And that’s only a taste,” he said, sitting back down and picking up the coffee cup again. “Now, just the facts, Duffy, just the facts and we don’t have to have any more unpleasantness.”

My eye was throbbing in pain.

I took a half minute to get my breath back.

“I can’t breathe. I need my inhaler. It’s in the inside pocket of my leather jacket.”

“I want you to breathe. At least until you answer all my questions,” he said, reaching into the pocket to get the inhaler. The shoulders unbunched and the sleeves rolled down my arm.

The secret pocket was now accessible.

He put the inhaler in my mouth and I sucked deep.

“Better?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Now, who else have you told?”

“Nobody. The Inverness police knew I was going to Iceland, and the Icelandic police knew I was looking for someone. But I didn’t name you. Your name is only on my notebook back in the motel,” I said, speaking loudly enough to cover the sound of Velcro ripping as I took the lock pick out of its secret compartment.

“That’s it? You haven’t told anyone else my name?”

“I haven’t.”

“That’s what I thought. That’s your MO. Lone fucking wolf. You know what happens to lone wolves in the wild?”

“They get really sad at the annual wolf picnic when it’s time for the wolf wheelbarrow races?”

He smiled at that one and then shook his head. “They starve to death, Duffy. Wolves need the pack, and without the pack they are nothing. I’m not a lone wolf. I have an entire organization, an entire country behind me,” he said.

I put the lock pick into the handcuff.

And this I had practiced. I had done this a thousand times. You can unpick a set of handcuffs with a paper clip if you practice hard enough. And with a dedicated lock pick?

I coughed to cover the sound of the cuff unclicking.

“So what’s the plan? Are you going to kill me?”

“That would certainly be the most straightforward solution,” he said. “You’re a very irritating man, and you’re going to cause us nothing but trou?—”

Before he could finish the sentence, I sprang forward, and with my left hand I tipped the coffee mug into his face and with my right hand I grabbed the Glock off the workbench. Wilson was Company, and not just Company but SAD and therefore trained in all sorts of dark arts; he’d be faster than I and sharper than I and he’d probably get the gun back off me if I didn’t act immediately, so I shot him in the left ankle and kicked him off his chair before he could do anything.

“The next bullet goes into your brain! Facedown on the floor, hands behind your back!”

He complied and I cuffed him with his own cuffs. I examined the ankle wound. He would need a screw or two in the subtalar joint, but I had missed the artery that runs down the front. He wouldn’t bleed to death, but he would be hurting. Good.

I took a wallet out of his pocket. His credit cards, CIA ID, and driver’s license all said that he was actually someone called Kevin Donnolly, aged thirty-three years. He tried to get up, but I wasn’t going to let him pull the same arsey-varsey shit on me.