London Twist: A Delilah Novella

nakedness and the lateness of the hour, the question was largely rhetorical, but it was also a huge relief. He hadn’t been expecting Delilah. She had leverage. She had a chance.
    “It’s on the desk. Take it and go!”
    He eased the door closed behind him. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Put your clothes on and come with me.”
    “No. You’ll have to kill both of us.”
    “I’m not going to kill you. But I’m afraid she’s a different story.”
    Delilah felt Fatima tremble in terror. “No, she’s not. Unless you want to explain to my colleagues how you killed me, too. Maybe your organization’s management could smooth that over with mine, I don’t know. But I assure you, my colleagues won’t be so understanding.”
    “I don’t mean to be unkind, but you’re hardly in a position to be issuing threats.”
    “It’s not a threat. It’s a statement of fact.”
    “I don’t think you understand. Do you know she had two operatives who were on their way in just as I arrived? Why do you think they were here? What do you think they were going to do to you?”
    Suddenly, she was confused. It didn’t make sense. But… who were those men? And they had been heading straight for the flat. She’d seen that.
    All at once, she understood why Fatima had said, ‘They’re not here for me.’ Why she’d been shouting in Urdu.
    A long, silent moment spun out. “Fatima,” Delilah said. “Is it… true?”
    Fatima sagged beneath her. “Not the way he says it.”
    Delilah felt like everything around her was spinning. “How did you know?”
    “Momtaz,” Kent said. “It was a test. You didn’t pass. A bit too cool for your good, I’m afraid. Too handy with that knife. I see you’ve got it right now, in fact.”
    “A test… but those men. One of them was hit so hard he could have died.”
    “What was it Cecil B. Demille said, when someone asked how he could afford all those stuntmen? ‘We use real bullets,’ I think that was it. Definitely ups the realism, doesn’t it, Fatima?”
    Another long moment went by. Fatima said, “I’m sorry, Delilah. I didn’t know.”
    Kent said, “Get out of my way.”
    She had to think of something. “But you don’t need her. It’s the brother you want, and the laptop gets you to him.”
    Fatima struggled again. “No!”
    “She’ll warn him,” Kent said.
    “What if she does? He’ll have to move. He’ll be out in the open. You can track him.”
    “No!” Fatima said again. She struggled to get free, but Delilah clung to her and pressed her down. If she got loose, Kent would drop her in a second.
    “The woman is a conduit,” Kent said. “Her brother runs the classes, true, but the woman is practically the admissions committee. Now, if you’d be so kind.”
    It wasn’t a good sign that he was referring to her as “the woman.” It was distancing, objectifying. The kind of thing many operatives needed to do before pulling the trigger.
    “Don’t do this,” Delilah said. “Her parents have buried two children already. Don’t make them bury another. Don’t become what you hate.”
    “Get out of my way,” he said again.
    He was too smart to close with her. As long as he kept his distance, she had no chance of disarming him.
    She thought of the hotel bars, the hide-in-plain-sight, the overconfidence about his lack of tradecraft generally. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had left.
    “Did you miss the surveillance camera on your way in? You took out the electricity, but are you sure there was no backup generator?”
    There was a pause. “You’re bluffing.”
    “Am I? Then go ahead and shoot us. But you better hope your people can retrieve that tape from wherever it backs up to before anyone finds our bodies. Of course, you’ll have to explain to them how you created the problem in the first place by missing something so obvious.”
    “I really don’t—”
    “And even if you can retrieve the tapes, are the London police such lapdogs to your organization? I hope so. Because two naked women with gunshot wounds might stir some detective’s conscience. Or a prosecutor’s. Do you expect your people to have your back then? Or will they turn on you for missing something so obvious as a security camera in a civilian flat?”
    He said nothing, but she could swear he was almost smiling beneath the night vision goggles.
    “The hell of it is, I actually want to believe you. And I suppose you have a way of persuading me I’ll be all right in