“But if he does call?”

“I’ll intercept the call and handle it,” Ziggy said. “Get your feet off the table. You stink.”

Hicks winked at him.

Milton turned back to Ziggy. “Where’s Jackson now?”

“Manchester. His days are all pretty much the same: get up late, go to the warehouse, go to the club.”

“Keep an eye on him,” Milton said. “We’ll have to move quickly if López takes the bait.”

“What’s next?”

Milton started to the kitchen. He was hungry.

“We wait.”

II. Wednesday

Part II

Wednesday

7

Milton was in the Alps. He was in the woods, crouched on a hill. He could almost smell the trees—the tall pines and spruce and fir—grouped closely enough to provide shade against the sun. The road was an aged asphalt ribbon, flecked with potholes and cracks, grass and moss at the edges.

He heard the car and readied himself. He aimed the rifle and waited as the BMW turned into a lay-by for a rendezvous that was never going to happen.

Milton remembered it all.

The squeezes of the trigger.

The shattering of the windshield and then the window to the side.

The blood across the glass.

The gendarme—another shot and the man lying in a pool of his own blood.

The walk back to the first vehicle, the warning chime noting that the driver’s door was ajar. The child in the back seat, terrified. A boy, perhaps seven years old, dark hair and his parents’ features, a smear of blood across his forehead, a final gift from his father. Deep brown eyes, wide and terrified.

* * *

He sat bolt upright, his torso bathed in sweat and his muscles cramping hard. It took him a split second to readjust, to realise he was in the bedroom of the penthouse in Amsterdam. He took deep breaths, in and out, afraid to close his eyes again.

He pulled back the covers and swung his legs out of bed. He sat there, his face in his hands, for a few moments as he tried to recall what he had remembered.

He remembered the child and what he had almost done.

He had suffered from nightmares for years. He had found peace in the rooms, and, eventually, they had stopped. But now that he had temporarily put the support of the Fellowship to one side, the dreams had returned with an intensity that left him hollowed out and drenched in sweat every night. He knew the cause: it was his guilt. Lying in bed had become an exercise in waiting for the inevitable. The recollections, as real as if he were living through them all again, one after another after another. There was a lot of material for his unconscious to draw upon.