Chapter 2

Caradoc's phone rang just as he raised the glass of chianti to his lips, and he frowned as he removed it from his pocket and answered the call with a swipe. "Yes?" he asked, holding it to his ear.

"I need you back at the s-"

"I told you, this is a private evening. There aren't any jobs or anything that concerns me, and I told you not to call me."

"This concerns you," Oberon said, his voice hard. "You have to come back to the safehouse with Val, ASAP."

"Moment." He removed the phone from his ear and looked at Gawain, who was sipping her own drink. "Oberon wants us to see something."

She sighed. "Can't it wait?"

"It's important, apparently." He raised the phone to his ear again. "Sorry, can you tell us what exactly is going on?"

"Holly and Jonas just came back with Diana Vex in the trunk of their car. I'd rather have you here when we interrogate her."

Caradoc furrowed his brow. "...that name rings a bell. Refresh my memory, please."

"Fine, just start walking while I do this."

He stood up from his chair, indicating for Gawain to do the same with one hand. "Heading to the car."

"Okay. Remember when the Stockholm team got wiped out?"

"I'd rather not," Caradoc said, recalling the late Tristan's tale of how Geraint had suddenly snapped, slaughtering his entire team and setting the ship on fire. "What's this got to do with tonight?"

"Before I...well, before I got knocked into a coma, I sent you files relating to Geraint's mental conditions. I'm going to just assume you read it."

"I actually read it." He opened the door to his Benz and got into the driver's seat, while Gawain did the same thing to the passenger seat.

"Thing is, Diana Vex was Geraint's substitute psychiatrist, when the actual doctor called in sick."

"No shit?" He stomped on the accelerator.

"No shit."

"Who's working on him right now? Holly or Jonas?"

"Nobody yet. But Holly's very, very tempted to go and beat Diana's face in, so I think you better get here quickly and stop her."

"Yeah...ah, police car, I'll talk to you later." He tapped a button to end the call, and put both hands on the steering wheel."

"What is it?" Gawain piped up from beside him.

"Diana Vex just got caught by Holly and Jonas."

"You're kidding me."

"I like how everyone remembers who she is but me. No, I'm not kidding you, and Oberon wants us to get back before Holly decides to kill her with her bare hands."

"Jayzus, that girl...wait, does she still punch you?"

"No comment." Caradoc made a turn down a quiet neighborhood street. "What about Jonas? His grades good?"

"You should see the other guy."

"...wow, I never even imagined that sentence in a context other than fighting."

"Focus."

"Yeah, yeah, alright." He pulled into the driveway of one of the houses, which looked identical to the others, and turned the key in the ignition, bringing them to silence once more. Caradoc opened the door and stepped back out in the night air.

Slowly, the garage door opened, sliding up into the ceiling. Oberson stood with his tablet clipboard in one hand, absently swiping at the screen. "They're waiting for you downstairs."

"Great, thanks." Gawain put on hand on the garage wall to their left, and a beep was emitted, a part of the floor next to the wall sliding back to reveal stairs leading down.

Caradoc took the steps three at a time, reaching the door at the bottom in no time and swinging it open to Holly and Jonas, who were taking turns throwing darts at each other and catching them. "So which one of you is going in?"

Holly simply pointed to one of the tables in the room, where a man in a lab coat was flicking through a thick sheaf of papers.

"Holy shit," Gawain said. "Doctor Estok!"

He looked up from the papers, blinking. "Good evening, Valerie. And you, Dirk."

Cradoc blinked back at him. "How are you here? We never told you where we were going next."

"I was actually driving and I saw Miss Beckett mowing the lawn, so I offered to do it for her." He tapped the papers on his table. "But I don't think it's the right time to worry about that."

"I didn't know you were familiar with interrogation techniques." Caradoc narrowed his eyes, which followed Estok to the heavy metal door of their holding cell.

"I'm familiar with a lot of things." Estok opened the cell door and slipped inside.

Jonas turned the dial of a speaker on his desk. "I'd be the one doing that if you guy got here just a minute earlier."

"No," Gawain said. "This is too important anyway."

Holly hushed them and turned the dial even further.

"Ms. Vex, isn't it?" Estok was asking.

"I'm very pleasantly surprised," Diana said. "I've never seen you before, even in our files. What's your designation?"

"Oh, I don't have one. I'm not Kingsman."

"Really, Beumers? Letting outsiders do your job for you now? Garth really must have caused some damage last year."

"Why are you in Amsterdam?"

"I don't wanna talk to you anymore. Send in Mr. Beumers please."

"What's the Cabal planning next?"

"I'm not saying anything until you let Dirk talk to me. There's some...very crucial info I've to share with him."

"He's listening."

"I think face-to-face is more polite."

A moment of silence, and then the heavy door opened once again, Estok waving at Caradoc to come in.

He strode past the doctor into the padded white room, to Diana, who was sat in one corner, restrained by her straitjacket. "You better start talking or I'll let Holly in here."

"You don't need to intimidate me." She smiled. "I'm happy to share whatever I know about the Cabal's current operations with you."

"Then why call me in here?"

"I just wanted to see your face again. You can tell a lot by looking at someone's face." She raised an eyebrow. "Did I interrupt you by getting here?"

"What?"

"You're pissed. And not because I refused to talk to your friend over there. Were you in the middle of something?"

"None of your business. What do you want?"

"I've been kicked out of the Cabal." She stared at the ceiling lights. "And I want you to kill all of them for me."

Caradoc took a step back, then a deep breath. "How the hell do we know you're not their mole with a tracking device or some bullshit like that?"

"Your friend scanned me. Just ask him."

"I will. Okay, say you really want us to take down the Cabal. What can you give us that'll be an advantage against them?"

"Ooh." She whistled. "For one, the identities of every single cabinet member, and a few of their underlings. You could take them out one-by-one. Like it's hunting season for you. But…" She grinned. "There's a catch."

"Cut the bullshit."

"I'll give you the names one at a time. You kill the first one, I'll give you a second. It's in order of who I hate most to who I actually like."

"Or you could just give us all of them," Estok suggested.

"And then what? You'd just kill me. Think of it as my life insurance, as you will."

Caradoc shook his head. "I need a moment." He swept out of the room, crashing onto one of the ergonomic chairs.

"We did scan her," Jonas said. "Clean, like she said. The car was also rented under a false credit card, so I don't think anybody knows she's here."

"She's going to stab us in the back. I just know it!"

"Give it a break," Gawain said. "This is probably our only lead in months."

"I agree," Holly said. "If we can take down at least some Cabal members, we'd be able to hurt them like they hurt us."

"What if she gives us the names of innocent people?" Caradoc asked. "Then we'd just be killing whoever she wants us to kill."

"We'll run background check on all of them." Gawain put a hand on his shoulder. "Trust me on this one. If they're not Cabal, we'll know."

"I don't trust her."

Jonas scoffed. "She's wrapped up in a straitjacket and stuffed into the corner of a high-security cell. There's no way she can get out."

Caradoc opened his mouth to speak, but his first words were drowned out by Oberon's loud footsteps down the stairs.

"Something's gone down in Paris," he said, pressing a button on his tablet. The largest screen in the room lit up with news footage of a large, block building that was on fire. "That's La Santé, one of the largest prisons in Paris."

Holly stood up to get a closer look at the video. "You gotta be crazy to attack a place like that. What happened?"

"Someone flew a jet straight into the southern complex."

"A jet?" Caradoc stepped closer to the screen. "Who the hell's crazy enough to do that shit?"

"Gotta be Cabal," Gawain said.

"That's not important right now," Oberon said, pausing the clip. "I think it's a distraction. A really elaborate one." He flicked at the tablet again, bringing up the record of a French ex-Legionnaire registered to the prison. "He's in the north."

"Marcel," Gawain whispered. "It's got to be Cabal."

"I'll ask her." Caradoc stormed back through the door, grabbing one of the tablets, flipping it open and tuning in on Oberon's signal.

Diana stopped humming when she saw him. "Back for more?"

He raised the screen at her, do playing Marcel's file. "A plane just crashed into a prison in Paris. The one he was in. Is it your friends doing this?"

She squinted at the screen, struggling somewhat with the stiff jacket. "He's allergic to seafood? Never knew that."

"For someone who just offered to help, you're fucking useless."

"You haven't accepted my offer yet. And this isn't part of the deal."

"Tell us and we'll help you. Did the Cabal do this?"

Diana sighed. "No, I'm afraid. If we did anything like this it'd just draw attention to ourselves. Oh, sorry, if they did anything like this it'd just draw attention to them."

"Then who did?"

"No idea. But if you want my guess, it's probably a third party. Someone you haven't met yet."

Caradoc said nothing.

"Are you going to help me now?"

He grunted. "Fine. We'll help you."

"Then listen very, very carefully." She wiggled and shifted to lean against another wall. "Have you figured out the patrol boat thing?"

"If I remember correctly, it's Singaporean. One of you is a Singaporean naval commander or something?"

"Close. Try the Prime Minister."

Cradoc did a double take. "Are you serious? Who else is there, the President of the United States?"

"He didn't seem like the kind of person who would choose the world over the American people, so we didn't ask him."

"So if we kill him, you'll give us another name?"

"Yes. I'm not without honour, you know. Oh, and it's a she, not a he."

"What's she planning?"

"Nothing. She isn't the one in charge - that'll come later. Now off you pop."

Caradoc turned to Estok. "Get her a pillow or something. You gonna stay up?"

He shrugged. "Whatever helps, I guess."

"Good." He looked back at the bound Diana. "If you're lying and we kill an innocent woman, I'm going to personally strangle you to death, understand?"

To his surprise, she only laughed.