He hung his head, and, when he looked back up at her again, there was fresh blood soaked into his wild beard.

“You have one chance, Duffy. You and the others, you’ve all got a price to pay, and you’re going to pay it, but it’s Control I want. You tell me where I can find him, and I’ll make it quick and painless for you.”

“That’s not an appealing deal.”

“It’s the only one you’ve got.”

He squinted up at her. “He’s with us.”

“With Manage Risk?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“North Carolina. There’s a complex there.”

Beatrix knew all about Manage Risk’s American training facility. The company was headquartered there, and all of its staff passed through its proving grounds. “What does he do?”

“He’s on the board. Him and Jamie King, back in the day, they practically set the company up. Someone like him, with his contacts, can you imagine how valuable that is? No one’s ever asked how it grew so fast. That’s how. He had so much intelligence, before anyone else, and amazing contacts. He could pitch for business before the companies and the governments even knew they had a need for it. And look at it now. A multi-million dollar company.”

Beatrix felt the cough coming again. “How did you get involved?”

“When it was obvious that you’d found out what he’d been up to with the Russians, Control got spooked. He cleaned house and went straight to Carolina. Me and the other five all got reassigned out of the Group, and then, after a few months, he had us all meet him in New York and told us he had an idea. He was working with King, full-time, doing it properly, and he said we should work with him, too. We all said yes. Joyce worked in the nautical department. I came out to this hellhole.”

“What about English? Where’s he?”

“Coming after you. Control sent him here. He might be here already.”

Beatrix coughed. Three hacking rasps that subsided just as soon as they started. Faulkner looked across at her. “How much does he know about me?” she asked when she had recovered.

Duffy looked back at her with a new curiosity. “He knows about what you did to the three of them, to Spenser, Joyce and Chisholm. He knows you’re coming.”

“Get on your knees,” she said, but then she suddenly found herself short of breath. There was no cough this time, no tickle in the throat. It was a gasping emptiness that came on quickly, with no warning, and she felt the compulsion to breathe more quickly to compensate.

She started to choke.

Duffy didn’t kneel.

He looked at her with a glimmer of feral cunning.

A wolf smelling weakness.

“Are you alright?” Faulkner asked.

“Knees . . .”

It felt like she had liquid in her lungs. She tried to cough, but it didn’t help.