Edge of Danger Read Free Page A

second man,
    jambiya raised, emerged from the darkness, but this
    time he was instantly overwhelmed by the guards.
    ‘Alive!’ Paul called in Arabic. ‘Alive!’ He turned
    to George. ‘Who is he, where does he come from -find out.’
    George ran to the struggling group as they held the man down, and Paul helped Kate up. ‘Are you all right? You’re not harmed?’
    She held him close and spoke in Arabic. ‘No, my brother, thanks to you.’
    He embraced her. ‘Leave this to me. Go to bed.’
    She turned reluctantly and Paul Rashid went into the shadows and squatted beside the second assassin, now pegged out on the ground. The man’s face was lined and drawn. The pupils of his eyes were like pinpricks and there was foam around his mouth.
    ‘A hired assassin drugged with quat,’ George said.
    Paul Rashid lit a cigarette and nodded. Quat was a narcotic found in the leaves of shrubs in Hazar. Many of his people were addicted to it. For some, it lent false courage.
    For this man, it would lend only death.
    ‘Do what you have to do,’ he said to George.
    He went back and sat by the fire, drank more coffee, and Kate appeared and sat at his side. A cry of pain came from the shadows, a sudden scream, then silence. George and Michael appeared.
    ‘So?’ Paul asked.
    ‘The Sultan arranged it for the Americans and Russians. They couldn’t afford us staying alive.’
    ‘What a pity for them,’ Paul Rashid said, ‘that they failed.’
    There was a pause. Michael and George sat down. ‘What happens now?’ George asked.
    ‘First, I think it’s time for a new Sultan. Your speciality is working with our people in Hazar,’ Paul told him. ‘See to it. But there’s a larger issue at stake. Do we let these mighty powers do this to our people? Do we let them destroy our land? Do we let them strike at us? No, I think we must strike at them.’
    At that moment, his mobile phone rang. He took it from his robe. ‘Rashid.’
    He sat there in the firelight and his face changed before them, his eyes turning to bleak holes. He said, ‘We’ll be there as soon as possible.’ He switched off the phone and handed it to Kate. ‘Call Haman. Tell them to have the Gulfstream ready for immediate departure. We’re leaving in the helicopter now.’
    ‘But Paul, why? What happened?’ Kate demanded. ‘That was Betty Moody. Something terrible has happened to Mother.’
    Something terrible indeed. Driving home to Dauncey Place, Lady Kate had been involved in a head-on collision with a car driving on the wrong side of the road. The Rashids made it to the hospital ten minutes before she died, time enough only to stand, the four of them, and hold her hands.
    ‘My lovely boys,’ Lady Kate said in her bad Arabic, always the family joke. ‘My gorgeous girl. Always love each other.’ And she was gone.
    Michael and George broke into a storm of weeping, but not Kate. She clutched Paul’s hand as he leaned down to kiss his mother’s forehead and her eyes burned, but there were no tears. Those would come later - after she discovered the man responsible for this.
    But when the name came, there was only more bad news. A Chief Inspector of the Hampshire Police told them that, yes, the other driver, one
    Igor Gatov, had been driving on the wrong side of the road on his way to London from Knotsley Hall, which was owned by the Russian Embassy. And, yes, he had most certainly been drunk, and miraculously had been able to walk away from the crash with only minor injuries. But unfortunately, he was also a commercial attache at the Russian Embassy in London, which meant that he had diplomatic immunity. Their mother’s killer could not be tried in an English court.
    In deference to their mother’s Christianity, they buried her in the mausoleum at Dauncey village church on a March afternoon. One of the most important Imams in London graced the proceedings with his presence and, standing there, the three Rashid brothers and young Kate had never felt