The Armageddon Protocol

EIGHT

After pacifying the terrified woman with the mace, Harry sprinted to the rear of the bus and counted the police cars. “Three uniforms and an unmarked Léon… we have to get out of here.”

“Harry! Up there!”

Lucia raised her arm and gestured at the buildings opposite Pablo’s apartment. She was pointing at a man who was now racing along the rooftops in a bid to escape. It was the assassin who had killed Pablo and tried to murder Harry.

“I see him!”

“But what can we do?”

Before he could reply a police helicopter wheeled around and shone its arc light at the fleeing man on the roof. A second later all the police officers switched their focus to the surprising sight of the assassin as he leaped across the rooftops, and then trained their guns on him.

Harry seized the moment and sprinted down the stairs of the bus with Lucia a few steps behind him. They slipped out of the rear door and into the shadows of a side street.

“Now what?” Lucia asked.

“We can’t go back to Pablo’s apartment, that’s for sure,” Harry said. “And the same goes for yours — they’ll know who you are by now. Know any friends who live nearby?”

“A few, yes.”

“I mean people you can trust.”

“Yes, we can go to Marta’s. I’ve known her for years and would trust her with my life.”

“Then lead the way,” Harry said, straightening his tie and making sure the Epistola was still in his jacket pocket. Something told him that little book was just about the most valuable thing in the world right now.

Marta was out when they arrived at her apartment, but Lucia knew where she kept her spare key and soon they were safely inside and trying to gather their thoughts.

Lucia peered out of the window and glanced up and down the street while Harry opened the small book from Reyes’s apartment and put it on the kitchen table.

She closed the window and drew the curtains. She felt the warm air from the reverse cycle vents in the ceiling blow on the back of her neck. Switching on the television, she watched a reporter standing outside Pablo’s apartment and deliver the news of his brutal murder to the people of Spain. Police were swarming in and out of the building and the whole scene was washed in the flashing blue strobe of the emergency vehicle lights. “Any luck?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said, and then nodded his head at the TV. “What are they saying?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said wearily, and muted it.

“So nothing good?”

“They’re not saying what a beautiful evening it is tonight, if that’s what you mean. I still can’t believe any of this. Poor Pablo…”

He sighed. “I can take it, I promise. What are they saying, Lucia?”

“You lie so beautifully, Harry. You always did.”

“Tell me.”

“It says we’re wanted in connection with the murders of Pablo, Mariana Vidal, and two police officers who were killed at the scene of the crime. One was Chief Inspector Cristina Fernandez.”

Harry’s eyes darted up to Lucia. “They’re not mentioning the CNI involvement — hardly surprising, but why would Spain’s intel agency be involved with this?

“Don’t ask me, this whole thing is a nightmare… oh! They even have a picture of me — look.”

Harry raised his head and glanced at the image on the TV screen. They were showing an old passport photo of Lucia. “You used to have much shorter hair,” he said. “It suited you.”

“Is that all you can say? They think we killed four people — they think I killed Pablo! I have never harmed a thing in my life.”

“I still think it’s a little odd that CNI are involved. What does it say about me?”

Before Lucia could reply a grainy image of Harry Bane crossing the lobby of his hotel was on the screen.

“They have all your details too — from the Casino de Salamanca where you are staying.”

“Damn it all — they’ll use that as an excuse to blacklist me.”

“Blacklist you?”

He nodded glumly. “I’m banned from most of the world’s top casinos.”

“I don’t understand — because you cheat?”

He rubbed the knife wound on his arm and offered a repressed snort of amusement. “Hardly. They ban you if you win too often — honestly or not.”

“I see… so you count cards?”

“Sometimes, but I play all the tables — backgammon, 21, poker, you name it. It’s how I make a living now, I suppose you could say… just drifting from one casino to the next.”

“And that’s it? Sounds sad.”

“Not at all. I’m too much of a drifter to stay in one place for too long.”

“You didn’t used to be.”

“That was a long time ago, Lucia.”

She was silent for a while. “How can you make a living if they ban you for being too good?”

“There are things you can do — quit a hot deck, let the boxman see you blow a load of cash at the craps table, even wear disguises, but they make it hard for you. They’re in the business of staying in business and the last thing they want is someone who can beat them at their own game.”

“Sounds more complicated than physics.”

Harry laughed, more warmly this time. “But definitely less compicated than working for MI6…. anyway — I’m hungry.”

He got up and rummaged around in the refrigerator for a few moments in search of something to eat. He hadn’t eaten since lunch nearly twelve hours ago and his stomach was telling him to get busy and find some food, but the fridge was a desolate place offering only half a dozen eggs, and a few vegetables.

“Not exactly a foodie, is she?”

Lucia said, “I’m sorry?”

“I said your friend isn’t exactly a foodie.”

Lucia stepped over to the fridge. “What are you talking about? There is plenty of food here, and look — the freezer is full as well. What you mean is you cannot see a Burger King in here. Now, get out of my way and go to the pharmacy while I cook. You need to dress that wound on your arm.”

And that was him told.

On the other side of the street outside Marta’s apartment, Aleksi Karhu sat low behind the wheel of an old Seat Inca van. Its original owner was now lying in a pool of his own blood on the concrete floor of a garage a few blocks away — his fifth murder of the night.

To a man like Aleksi, such a method of vehicle acquisition was just part of the job, in the exact same way as was cutting a professor’s throat for treachery or fleeing across the rooftops. Evading the Madrid anti-terror units has been easy for a man of his experience, and trailing the traitor’s girl and her new English friend back to this apartment had been easier still — even easier than following them back inside the traitor’s apartment.

A moment ago one of the nearby taxi drivers had asked him to move away, but he had waved him off with a flash of his knife. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the police arrived, especially given the heightened state of alert in the city after the events back in Chamberí.

There were rigorous laws banning armas blancas, or fighting knives in Spain. It was permitted to own such a weapon, but not to carry it in public. His was a Finnish Army issue Puukko with a 12 cm blade and left little to the imagination. He had used it to kill, skin and butcher more reindeer than he could remember. He should have used it on the Englishman back in the traitor’s apartment instead of that lame boning knife.

As he sat in the dark, watching Marta’s apartment, he knew the arrival of the Policía Municipal de Madrid was both certain and imminent. But nothing really mattered anymore, not even the police. The whole world would be occupied with something far more lethal in a few hours.

Now, he watched the taxi drivers talking behind the van in the rear-view mirror, and then as expected one of them made a phone call, pointing at the registration number of the van.

Aleksi picked up his own phone, which was lying on the seat to his right. His eyes drifted from the apartment to the glass facade of a restaurant on the corner of the block. It was busy now. The Spanish were night owls and often ate la cena, or their evening meal, anytime between nine and midnight. Even now well-dressed couples were climbing out of taxis and being welcomed into the restaurant by serious-looking men in gray suits and red ties. It was not the kind of place Aleksi was very familiar with growing up in a small rural town in the Oulu province in north-central Finland.

The wide cherry tree-lined avenue outside the apartment was still busy with cars despite the late hour. In his mirror he could see the hideous steel, glass and reinforced concrete monstrosity of the Caixa bank offices, illuminated in the amber glow of the Madrid night-lights. Yet more evidence of mankind’s folly. He pushed a number into the phone and relaxed in his seat, his eyes fixed on the window of her apartment.

“And?” Hans Steiner sounded irritated.

“I’m watching her. She and the Englishman went to another apartment — a friend’s, I guess. He just stepped out and walked to a pharmacy on the street corner.”

“A pharmacy?”

“I cut him.”

“I see.”

“Should I kill her now?”

“Not yet.”

Aleksi paused for a few moments, wondering what Steiner wanted to hear. He was never an easy person to read, or second-guess.

“So what are my orders?”

“I’m holding you responsible for this, Aleksi.” The Austrian said flatly. “We have only a few hours. If you fail me again, I will refer the matter to Mr Szabo. Is that clear?”

“How was I to know he would have a heart attack?”

“I mean it, Karhu.”

“I will not fail you again.”

The Austrian cut the connection and Aleksi returned his phone to the seat beside him. He knew the threat against his life was not idle, and Mr Szabo did not have a reputation for mercy. He had witnessed that personally on more than one occasion. What had made the Hungarian that way he had no idea. All he knew was he had met some savage men in his time, but none could hold a candle to Zalan Szabo. He also understood he was being given a second chance to prove himself. Reyes had to be killed for his treachery, but it was a mistake letting him die before locating the code.

The code that was almost enough to destroy the world, but almost enough wasn’t good enough, and a few metres away in a cheap, old apartment were the two people who could help them complete the puzzle. Aleksi was certain he would be ordered to kill them both when all this was done, but until then he would just have to be patient.

He returned his gaze to the apartment. All those years ago, when he killed his first man, he could never have envisioned that it would all end like this. He didn’t care. He had never cared about anything except his mother and his sister, neither of whom were still alive. He was hardened by all those years he had spent in an Iranian prison cell being tortured for information. He recalled those long years with a tight scowl of hatred on his face, being beaten and starved unless he talked, but he never did. He had survived those years as a mercenary thanks to his army training, but now all that was in the past. He was one of the chosen few who would survive to see the new dawn.

Harry Bane and Lucia Serrano would not be so lucky.