Page 70 of Belgian Betrayal

Catya stepped up into the hallway. She couldn’t be found there, or she might blow the team’s cover. Lifting her skirts again, she ran down the long hallway as quietly as she could to the doorway at the other end.

She twisted the handle, eased the door open and peered into what appeared to be the backside of a walk-in closet. Suits and formal gowns hung on a rod. Shoe boxes and a couple of suitcases took up floor space on each side.

With the men nearing the top of the staircase behind her, Catya had no other choice but to step into the closet. Voices sounded from the room on the other side of the closet.

She couldn’t go in there, and she couldn’t get caught by the men now coming down the long hallway. Catya dragged several ballgowns toward her and slipped behind a large suitcase. She squatted and pulled the gowns closer to hide her from the view of anyone passing through the closet from either direction.

Her breath caught and held as the door opened, and the three men passed through the closet into the room beyond.

Letting several moments pass, Catya finally moved, silently letting go of the breath she’d held.

A voice in the other room caught her attention. A man was urging people to be seated and that they would begin once everyone had arrived.

They were expecting more people?

Catya pushed to her feet and inched toward the room beyond the closet.

Pushing a suit jacket aside, she peered into the room on the other side of the closet. It had an old sofa and wing-back chair and not much else. The voices Catya was hearing came from the next room.

More footsteps sounded in the long hallway.

Catya dropped low behind the large suitcase, covered her position with the gown and waited.

Two more foreign dignitaries passed through the closet. A moment later, Walter Sykes came through, announcing, “That’s the last of them.”

“Good, we can get started,” another man said. “You all have been here before. You know how it works. We’ll begin bidding at one thousand pounds. Gentleman, if you’ll direct your attention to the first item on the screen. Several cases of AK-47 rifles, new, never been used. Starting at one thousand pounds.”

The voice droned on, the price of the AK-47s rising.

The people in that room were bidding on weapons. Stanhope had brought them there to bid on illegal arms, and the Deputy Prime Minister and the MI6 director were knee-deep in it.

Catya eased out of her hiding place and tiptoed to the door into the hallway. She had to get back to the others and let them know what she’d found. Or rather, who she’d found having a secret auction under the guise of a party at the rich man’s house. Meanwhile, everyone in the ballroom below circulated happily, eager to meet the celebrities. No one would notice that several of the foreign officials had suddenly disappeared.

Her hand stilled on the doorknob. What if she went down to warn her team, but by the time they got back to the hidden room, the people in there were gone? Who would believe her—an assassin and Russian spy?

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Catya pulled her cell phone from her pocket, brought up the camera application and slipped through the closet into the small sitting room, clinging to shadows and hiding at the edge of the doorframe. She peered around the edge to find a room full of buyers seated in folding chairs, looking up at a monitor displaying a rocket launcher.

Holy hell, they weren’t just selling rifles; they were selling the big guns.

She held her cell phone out enough to get the camera lens past the doorframe and snapped several photos, including some of Walter Sykes. In her brief glimpse into the room, she hadn’t seen Deputy Prime Minister Blackhurst or Lord Stanhope.

She needed photos of them at the auction for proof of their involvement.

Had she missed them?

Catya peered around the corner again.

No. She hadn’t missed them. They weren’t there.

A floorboard creaked behind her.

Before she could react, the cool, hard barrel of a gun pressed into her back.

“Move a muscle, and I’ll shoot,” a gravelly voice said into her ear.

Catya’s breath lodged in her throat.

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