Kingdom of Darkness

17

It took Leitz over thirty minutes to see all of his guests out; with men this rich and powerful, pleasantries were expected. But eventually only his security detail remained as company. The extra men he had brought in to ensure privacy could now be dismissed, but he decided to do that once he had concluded the day’s business.

He went upstairs to his office. A cool breeze blew from the balcony through the elegant room as he entered—

The door slammed shut behind him.

Leitz instantly knew from its speed and force that something more than a stray gust had closed it. Without even a glance back, he lunged for his desk, right hand darting underneath it to find—

Nothing.

‘You after this?’ said a voice from the balcony.

Eddie stepped into view, holding a gleaming chrome automatic. ‘Nice little gun,’ he told the frozen Leitz. ‘Sphinx 3000, innit? Don’t see many of these.’

‘Don’t move,’ Zane said from behind the middleman, thumbing the hammer of his Barak.

Leitz took the click as intended: a warning. He slowly raised his hands. ‘What do you want?’ he said in a level but cautious voice.

‘Information. Move away from the desk, to your right.’

Leitz cautiously stepped sideways. Zane patted him down, finding that he was unarmed. ‘All right,’ said the Yorkshireman as he entered the room, aiming the Sphinx at its owner’s chest, ‘since you’re dressed as the Man from Del Monte, you’d better fucking say “Yes!” to everything. Okay?’

‘I should say yes, I suppose,’ Leitz replied, regarding him icily.

‘Good lad. Now, first things first: what the fuck has that fat Nazi bastard done with Nina?’

‘He means Dr Nina Wilde, in Alexandria,’ said Zane, seeing the broker’s incomprehension. ‘Your client Erich Kroll said he took the statue from her — the statue that tells you how to find the Spring of Immortality.’

Leitz narrowed his eyes. ‘You heard our discussion? That is unfortunate.’

‘Yeah, for you,’ said Eddie. ‘Where is she?’

No answer was immediately forthcoming. Zane stepped closer to the white-suited man. ‘If you don’t talk, he’ll kill you for personal reasons. Or I’ll kill you for professional reasons. Either way, you’ll be dead, and we’ll still get what we need from your computer.’

‘Your accent,’ said Leitz, eyeing him. ‘Israeli. You are with the Mossad?’ For the first time, there was unease beneath his even tone.

‘Not me,’ said Eddie firmly. ‘I’m just a concerned citizen.’

‘Answer the question,’ Zane ordered.

‘Very well.’ Leitz turned back to Eddie, though he kept Zane in his peripheral vision. ‘Yes, Kroll’s men took back the statue earlier today.’

‘And what’d they do with Nina?’ Eddie demanded.

The answer emerged with reluctance. ‘Dr Wilde and two others, a man and a woman, are still alive. I know this because I was asked to arrange transport for them.’

Relief flooded through the Englishman. ‘Thank God,’ he said, glancing at Zane. ‘And the other woman must be Macy. They’re okay!’

‘For now,’ the Mossad agent replied. ‘But the only reason they’re still alive is that Kroll wants something from them. Once he gets it…’

The fear for Nina’s safety returned. ‘Okay, where are they going?’ Eddie demanded, rounding the desk to face off against the broker. ‘You arranged transport — to where?’

Leitz’s expression hardened. He ignored Eddie, instead addressing Zane. ‘If you are with the Mossad, and you are here, now… then you are a member of the Criminal Sanctions Unit, are you not?’

‘Answer him,’ Zane ordered.

‘I believe that Benjamin Falk was in charge of the CSU.’ For the first time, Leitz’s expression revealed something other than cold restraint: a small, sneering smile. ‘Until recently. Very recently.’

Zane advanced another step, raising his gun at the other man’s face. ‘You shut your mouth.’

The smile coiled more tightly. ‘It is a shame. All those years of faithful service, only to die on the streets of Egypt. Very sad, very sad indeed—’

Zane lashed out with the Barak, striking Leitz’s head and knocking off his glasses. The broker staggered. ‘I told you to shut up!’

‘Get a grip,’ Eddie warned. ‘He’s still got guards hanging around, remember?’

Zane glared at him, but made a visible effort to calm himself. He grabbed Leitz by his lapel, shoving the gun hard against his chest. ‘Where is Erich Kroll? Where is he taking Dr Wilde? Tell us, now! Or I’ll kill you.’

Leitz seemed to acquiesce. ‘Okay, okay! Everything you need is over there.’ He gestured at the desk. Eddie and Zane instinctively glanced towards it. ‘On my… computer.’ The unexpected pause instantly put Eddie on alert, but he didn’t know why—

He found out a moment later. ‘Alarm!’ said Leitz — and a piercing siren shrieked as the computer’s voice recognition obeyed the command.

Eddie flinched at the aural assault, as did Zane—

Leitz moved with shocking speed, one hand slicing up to seize Zane’s gun and force it away from his own chest — towards the Englishman.

Eddie threw himself out of the line of fire, only for the toe of Leitz’s shoe to meet his kneecap as the broker whipped around to deliver a fierce kick. He reeled, crashing against a bookshelf. The Sphinx clattered to the floor.

The other gun was now at the heart of a battle for possession — which Leitz was winning. As the pair spun around, he shoved Zane backwards. The younger man’s momentary loss of balance gave his opponent the opening he needed to grip the weapon with both hands and twist it through a forceful half-turn — trapping the Israeli’s index finger inside the trigger guard.

Zane gasped in pain as the motion almost snapped the bone. He had no choice but to yank his hand back, skinning his finger against the metal as he pulled free.

But now Leitz had the gun. He flipped it around, his own finger closing on the trigger—

Eddie hurled a swathe of ledgers across the office. Volumes pounded Leitz’s arm, knocking the gun away from Zane — who responded with a kick of his own, spinning into a Krav Maga move that smashed a heel into the white-haired man’s stomach.

Leitz stumbled backwards against the table, knocking the laser printer to the floor, and tripped over the chair. It collapsed, sending him sprawling. The Barak skidded across the marble floor. Zane ran after it, bending to scoop it up—

A blizzard slashed at his eyes as Leitz snatched the paper from the printer’s tray and flung the sheaf into his face. Blinded, Zane groped for the gun, but his fingers found nothing but cold polished stone. He swatted away the last of the fluttering sheets — and was hit by the back of the broken chair as Leitz jumped up and threw it at him. He fell heavily near the balcony door.

Eddie recovered the fallen Sphinx. He turned to find Leitz standing over the Mossad agent, one foot drawn back to kick him in the face—

He snapped up the gun — but the white-suited man caught the movement, instantly abandoning his attack and launching himself at the balcony. Eddie tracked him, about to fire…

Leitz dived over the railing.

‘Holy shit!’ Eddie cried as his target plunged out of sight. Zane was equally shocked. The Englishman helped him up. ‘Did he just fucking kill himself so he wouldn’t talk?’

They rushed outside and looked down. The cliff they had ascended dropped away below… to a small cove at the foot of the near-vertical chimney beneath the balcony, at the centre of which was an almost perfectly circular splash. As they watched, a white figure rose from beneath the surging waves and surfaced. ‘He made it!’ said Zane in disbelief. ‘He actually made it!’

Eddie stared at Leitz as he swam for the jetty. ‘He’s either the luckiest bastard on the planet — or the best prepared. Diving about a hundred feet, into that? Jesus!’ He looked back at Zane, only to find that the younger man had already returned to the desk. ‘What’re you doing? He’s set off the alarm, we’ve got to get out of here!’

Zane grabbed the mouse. ‘I can find Kroll.’

Eddie hurried to him. ‘How?’

‘The IP address of the videoconference — it’ll tell me where he’s located,’ he said as he brought up a window and rapidly tapped at the keyboard. ‘Okay, I’ve bypassed his encryption, so I just need to…’ More typing. ‘There!’ He pointed at a string of hexadecimal characters, eight blocks of four, separated by colons. ‘IPv6, harder to remember, but…’ He stared at it for a moment, then closed the window and jumped up. ‘Got it — let’s go.’

‘You remembered all that?’ Eddie asked in surprise.

‘What, you didn’t? Come on!’

The Israeli recovered his gun and ran to the door. Eddie followed. There was nobody on the landing. ‘Okay, so how are we gonna get out of here?’

Zane went to the staircase. ‘You’re supposed to be great at improvising — I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

‘Is that what my Mossad file says?’ the Englishman asked as they clattered down the stairs. ‘We’ll need a car, unless you want to run back to Amalfi.’

‘We’ll take one of Leitz’s. I saw aerial photos of the villa; he has a garage.’ They reached the hall, the Israeli pointing to a door in one corner. ‘That must be it.’

‘You sure? If it’s his laundry room, we won’t get far in a pair of his underpants!’

Zane yanked the door open, Eddie covering him. Glossy metal gleamed in the dimly lit space beyond: Leitz’s BMW parked alongside a second vehicle. ‘I’m sure,’ the agent announced with satisfaction.

‘All right, smug-boots.’ They rushed in, Eddie finding the light switch beside the door. ‘We need the key.’

‘Here,’ said Zane, spotting a nearby set of hooks bearing fobs. He picked one marked with a BMW logo, but Eddie reached past him to snag another. ‘What are you doing?’

The Yorkshireman grinned. ‘Take a look.’ Zane turned — and saw that beside the black 7 Series was something considerably more impressive. The second car in the garage was a bright red Ferrari 458 Spider, the roof retracted to turn it into a two-seater convertible. ‘Just what we need for a quick getaway.’

He started to round the BMW, but Zane half jumped, half slid over the bonnet of the 7 Series to land by the Ferrari, snatching the key from Eddie’s hand and vaulting into the driver’s seat without a pause. ‘I’m driving.’

‘Like fuck you are,’ Eddie protested. ‘You ever driven anything like this?’

Zane started the engine, the Ferrari’s V8 howling to life. ‘I’ve been trained by the Mossad! I can drive anything.’ He pointed at a control panel on the wall. ‘Open the door, and the main gate. Quick!’

Annoyed, Eddie slapped both buttons and hopped into the Ferrari’s passenger seat. The outer door began to rise. Over the rattle of the mechanism and the 458’s engine burble, he heard shouting from the hall. ‘They’re coming,’ he warned, bringing up his gun to cover the entrance.

Zane glared at the garage door as it ambled upwards. ‘Why are these things always so slow? Come on!’

‘Sav’lanut,’ Eddie said with a half-smile. The glare was turned upon him. ‘Okay, soon as you can fit this thing under—’

Movement in the hall — a man with a gun.

‘In qui!’ yelled the guard, raising his weapon. Another man sprinted across the hall towards the doorway—

Eddie fired a single shot to deter them, hitting the door frame at eye level and sending a blinding spray of splintered wood and plaster across the opening. Both men jerked back. A glance at the garage door; it still wasn’t quite high enough to let the car through…

Zane floored the accelerator anyway. The 458 shot forward, throwing Eddie back into his seat. He ducked as the top of the windscreen’s frame clipped the door — and the glass instantly crazed, the view ahead reduced to a cobwebbed haze.

Brilliant sunlight forced both men to screw up their eyes. Eddie squinted back at the house, glimpsing figures running into the garage. ‘Down!’

Bullets tore after them. One thunked against the raised bodywork behind Eddie’s headrest. Zane yanked at the steering wheel. The Ferrari swept past two more guards standing beside another BMW outside the villa and made a tight, skidding turn around an ornamental fountain before tearing up the steep drive. More shots followed it, but they smacked harmlessly into the cliff face behind the car.

Eddie leaned out to look around the damaged windscreen. ‘Might have known a kid like you’d suffer from premature acceleration,’ he sniped. The barrier at the top of the drive was rolling open — but not quickly enough. ‘Slow down or we’ll hit the gate!’

‘We’ll make it,’ said Zane, staring intently through the spiderwebbed glass.

‘No we won’t!’

‘We will!’ He adjusted the wheel, lining up the car’s nose with the slowly widening opening.

Widening — then it stopped.

‘Shit!’ cried Eddie. ‘They’ve pushed the bloody button to close it!’

Zane’s response was to jam the accelerator down harder. The Ferrari surged forward. ‘We can fit—’

The gate reversed direction.

‘No we can’t!’ Eddie cringed as the 458’s front wheels cleared the shrinking gap with a hair’s-breadth to spare—

A shrill crunch of tearing metal — and both men were flung forward as the closing gate sheared away bodywork before smashing against the rear wheels.

In a contest between rubber and steel, the result was inevitable. Both tyres exploded, one of the wheel rims being wrenched from the axle. The Ferrari careered out on to the road at the head of a comet tail of mangled wreckage, barely missing a car heading towards Amalfi, only to hit a Fiat in the westbound lane. Both vehicles slammed into the base of the towering cliff.

The Ferrari’s airbags had fired, cushioning the impact. Eddie straightened groggily. ‘Told you. You okay?’

The younger man grimaced. ‘My head hurts, but… yeah, I think so.’ He clambered from the car. ‘At least I fulfilled an ambition.’

Eddie climbed over the passenger door. ‘Which one?’

‘To drive a Ferrari. Even if it was only for twenty seconds.’

‘We need to find something else to drive, fast.’ The gate was opening again. A shrill of tyres told him that Leitz’s bodyguards were coming after them in the BMWs.

He looked around. The Fiat’s driver was uninjured, already gesticulating furiously through his battered car’s window. A small truck behind it had skidded as it braked to avoid the wrecked Ferrari, blocking both lanes. Horns blasted as more vehicles joined the jam.

No way back to Amalfi, then — they would have to go west. Eddie checked the first few cars in the other lane. Fiat, Lancia, Fiat: any would do, but they would need to make a U-turn to escape, which in the confined space would take time he didn’t have. He needed a bike, or…

‘Here!’ he shouted, running to the fourth vehicle in the line.

Zane hurried after him — only to stop in disbelief. ‘We can’t use that!’

‘We don’t have a choice!’ Eddie’s intended getaway vehicle was a three-wheeled Piaggio Ape, the little green pickup’s rear bed loaded with gardening equipment. Its driver, a slovenly old man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, watched Eddie approach with surprise, then fear as he saw his gun. ‘Scusi, signore, but we need-o your auto.’

The Mossad agent hesitated, but the roar of approaching engines convinced him. He ran to the Ape, elbowing Eddie aside before yanking the driver out of the single-seat cab. ‘I’ll drive.’

‘After what you did to the last car?’ the Yorkshireman hooted.

‘Just get in the back!’ Zane shoved the driver away and dropped into his seat.

‘Scusate,’ Eddie said apologetically to the bewildered Italian as he jumped into the pickup bed.

The Ape’s little engine revved hard, sounding like bees trapped in a tin can, then the vehicle jerked into motion. The Piaggio had handlebars rather than a steering wheel; Zane jammed them to the left to pull the vehicle out from the line of traffic. With a turning circle of just twelve feet, it had no difficulty coming about even on the narrow road — although the alarming amount of body roll warned its occupants that its stability did not match its manoeuvrability.

Eddie grabbed the cab’s rear and leaned over to help counterbalance the Ape as the first of the black BMWs powered out of the driveway. It barged wreckage aside and swung after the Piaggio as the second 7 Series emerged behind it. ‘Here they come!’

Zane twisted the throttle to its limit, sending the Ape zipping along the winding cliff road as the two larger — and vastly more powerful — cars roared in pursuit.