Riske was on the train. To an extent, he was already her captive. She could dictate the terms of their encounter. She’d never have a better chance to eliminate him.
It came down to her following orders.
Kill Riske at the first opportunity.
Her hand dipped into her pocket, feeling for the fountain pen inside. It was more than a pen. A twist of the cap filled its sharpened nib with a dose of cyanide and strychnine, fatal within sixty seconds. The device was standard issue, the natural descendant of the umbrella used to poison the Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov on Waterloo Bridge in London in 1978. One jab, hardly more than a pinprick, and Riske would be dead by the time she was back in her seat.
Valentina put on her sunglasses and entered the car. Head lowered, she made her way through the crowded dining car. He was not among those standing at the snack tables. She slid past the order line, the corridor narrower here, room for two abreast. She caught a patch of trimmed dark hair, a navy blazer. The man turned toward her. Glasses. Mustache. It wasn’t Riske.
She reached the end of the car and looked behind her, double-checking. It was only then that she realized she was holding her breath. She gathered herself and continued across the connecting area. To her left, the door to the restroom opened and a woman stepped out, nearly bumping into her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“After you,” said Valentina.
The woman turned and opened the door to the next car.
It was then that Valentina saw the streak of blue in her hair.
Chapter 45
Simon had exchanged his phone for his laptop.
“We only get one shot at this,” he said. “Next time the prince logs in, he’ll know he’s been hacked. He’ll change the password back, or shut down the account. I’ll copy anything interesting, but we need to move fast.”
Nikki crowded next to him, eyes on the screen as he pulled up the Saudi Arabian website. As instructed, he used the temporary password to log into the prince’s email.
“Here we go.”
The prince’s mailbox appeared on the screen. A notation indicated that there were two hundred seventy new messages. Simon began scanning the headers. Nearly all were written in Arabic.
“Can you read it?” he asked.
“Can’t you?” said Nikki. “You were speaking Arabic a minute ago.”
“The operative word is ‘speaking.’ I picked it up when I was doing my time.”
“Let me,” said Nikki, pulling the laptop closer. “Half the families in my neighborhood were Libyans.”
“I’m thinking the stuff we’re looking for will be in English.”
Nikki scrolled through the new messages as Simon looked on. Most appeared to be from the prince’s family: brothers, sisters, cousins. Lots of names ending in “bin Saud.” He saw nothing related to the prince’s government job. That, Simon figured, would be in a different mailbox.
“What are we looking for?” Nikki asked.
“Anything that can help us learn what’s in the envelope.”
“Why do you care so much? Isn’t it enough that your client told you to get it?”
“If I’m going to lose even one drop of blood for something, I want to know what it is.”
“Any ideas?”
Simon shrugged. “Whatever it is, it has people in Washington and Moscow worried.”
Nikki scrolled down the list, going back one day, then another. A few messages in French popped up. There was one from the manager of the George V thanking him for his visit and offering his sympathy about the robbery. And a similar note from the manager of Cartier.
“Something’s wrong,” said Simon. “Two hundred seventy unread messages.”
