The Armageddon Protocol

SEVENTEEN

As they walked down the hotel’s stairs, Harry bent the coathanger into a long piece of wire with a hook on the end, and then when he got outside he chose an old Nissan model with zero anti-theft devices.

He pushed the hooked end of the wire between the window and the black rubber trim seal until he had found the catch and yanked it up. They heard a metallic clunk and then the door was open.

“I never knew breaking into a car was so easy,” Lucia said.

“Easy when you know how,” Harry replied. “And when there’s an old car around. If you have a sparkplug you can smash a piece of porcelain off of it and throw it at the window. The tiniest piece will break the window, every time. It finds the weakness in the glass. That’s why I looked at the lamp in the bedroom but any noise made smashing it to get the piece might have drawn unwanted attention our way.”

Lucia looked at him for a moment without speaking or moving as the cold wind blew through her hair. “I’m glad I found you tonight, Harry.”

“Oh, me too,” he said with a wink. “I could be sitting in a warm bar with an Armani model, but instead I’ve been stabbed, strangled, and shot at. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. It reminds me of…”

“Of your days in MI6?”

“I was going to say boarding school, but that too, yes.”

A brief smile flashed on her face as she locked her eyes on him, but then it faded as if a light had gone out, and she looked away. “We need to go.”

“Agreed.”

Inside the car, Harry smashed out the kick panel beneath the ignition keyhole and located the connector and identified the battery voltage supply wires. “Pass me one of your hairclips.”

“A hairclip?”

“Yes, and fast.” As he spoke he raised his head from beneath the steering column and scanned the street for any trouble. Up ahead he saw a man walking toward them along the sidewalk on the other side of the road. He was about to pass in front of the Hostel Goya when Harry grabbed Lucia and pretended to kiss her.

“What are you…”

“We’re passionately in love, remember, darling?”

Lucia saw the man was now staring at the two of them in the Nissan and immediately played along. When he had passed she moved away from Harry, but they both noticed the slight hesitation.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “But one suspicious glance and the whole show’s over.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said as she pulled her hairclip out. “It was a good idea.”

She passed him the clip as he pulled one of the wooden buttons off her coat.

“Hey, this is Marta’s!”

“Sorry, but we need to use the button as an insulator.”

He threated the clip through the button holes and then used it to jump the connections between the car’s electronic control module wires and the power coming from the battery. Then he used the second clip and button to jump connect the body control module with the same power supply. Immediately all of the dash lights blinked to life.

“Are we done?”

“Nearly,” he said. “I just have to touch together these two starter wires and… voila!” The engine burst to life with a gentle, low-rev rumble as he broke the steering wheel lock with brute force.

“I’m impressed, but now get out of the way. This is my town and I’m driving.”

Harry knew when he’d been told, and this was one of those times, so he jumped out of the car and jogged around to the passenger side while Lucia slipped over into the driver’s seat and buckled herself in.

“How does it feel driving your first stolen car?” he asked.

“This isn’t the first time I drove a stolen car,” she replied with a glance, and then steered out of the space and hit the road.

A few minutes later they were driving north out of the city. Lucia had used her local knowledge of Madrid and Spain to get them out of the country as fast as possible, and after swapping over in Bordeaux at dawn, Harry had taken the wheel and driven north on the final stretch to Paris.

After cruising through the southern suburbs — Orsay, Orly, Arcueil — the ancient city began to rise around them as they drew closer to its heart. Now Harry was using his knowledge of Paris to the same effect.

Lucia watched him change lanes as he fiddled with the radio dial. “You know Paris?”

“More or less,” he said.

“Maybe this is where you gamble your money away?”

He glanced at her and then checked over his shoulder. “Hey, you live your life and I’ll live mine, all right?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Anything you say. I just want this over.”

“That makes two of us,” he said flatly.

It was true that he knew the city well — there were several casinos he liked to use, and he’d met his ex-girlfriend Grace in the city so he felt at home as he turned into Maison-Blanche and navigated the backstreets of the 13th Arondissement.

Slowly they moved through the traffic into the 7th Arrondissement. His experience in MI6 told him all he knew about the European Arrest Warrant and he knew by now all of the other European Governments’ relevant authorities would have been informed of their fugitive status. That was why he was listening to the French news. For this reason they used the same technique they’d used in Madrid and checked into a dive he knew from long ago. It was on a cobblestone side street similar to the Hostel Goya, but had an even less savoury clientele.

After freshening up they stepped back out along the street and walked over to a wide boulevard where they ordered croissants and coffees in a small café. Everyone he glanced at was a potential threat — a spy with a grudge, an Interpol agent… whoever was behind the disaster in the lab and those dead carrion crows.

Lucia shivered in the cold and pushed Marta’s scarf up around her face. Harry had insisted they sit outside so he could smoke a cigarette, and the modest outside heater was doing little to alleviate the icy breeze that was blowing along the boulevard.

Now, as Lucia tore open a croissant and dipped it in the hot coffee, Harry was poring over images of the Paris skyline so he could narrow down the location of the apartment they had seen in the video.

“We came here when we first starting seeing each other,” Lucia said. “We’d both been before but never together, and he thought it would be romantic. We only stayed one week, and in the mornings I would lay in bed and read while Pablo walked to the shop to buy baguettes and tobacco for his pipe.” She sipped the coffee and shivered again. She looked troubled.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Harry said quietly.

“And what am I thinking?”

“That maybe he was meeting with this Andrej Liška on those walks and stopping off at the shops on his way back?”

“Yes, I am thinking that.”

“Did he ever come here on business trips, or anything like that?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She set her cup down and sighed. “Have you found anything useful yet?”

“Maybe,” he pushed his chair closer to hers and turned the phone so they could share the screen. “There are a few moments at the very beginning and a couple at the end of the film when you can see the skyline in more detail. It looks to me like we need to walk south from here to get the Eiffel Tower in the right place, so to speak.”

They left the café and walked south for a few minutes into the Gros Caillou district north of the Eiffel Tower.

“According to my phone, we can’t be far from where we saw the birds,” he said.

“I just want this to be over.”

“Then you’re in luck,” Harry said quietly. “It’s just through here.”

They weaved through another labyrinth of backstreets before crossing the Avenue Bosquet and finally arriving at a plush apartment block. It was classic Paris — a sycamore-lined boulevard dotted with cafés and expensive boutiques — and the atmosphere was casual and relaxed as Parisians enjoyed lunch in the various cafés and bistros.

They stopped outside a modest residential building four or five storeys high. “This has to be it,” he said. “The skyline matches up perfectly, except for one thing. This was filmed from much higher up. By the looks of it I’d say the top floor.”

He looked at the neat row of door buzzers and his eyes widened when he saw it. “Only one apartment on the top floor — an Anton Zeman. Fake name maybe.”

“You think this is our man?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Harry pushed the buzzer next to the large black door.

No reply.

Lucia sighed and ran her hands through her hair. She looked tired and anxious, and she shuffled from foot to foot in a bid to keep warm. Paris was several degrees colder than Madrid at this time of year. “What now?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s not in, so what do we do?”

“We break in, of course.”

“I don’t know…”

But before she had finished protesting, Harry had already opened the door with his bump key and was now gesturing for her to enter as if he were a doorman. “Ladies first.”

“You’re a lot of trouble, you know that Harry Bane?”

“That’s what they say.”

He followed her inside and gently closed the door behind them. Now, he thought, we’re getting closer to the truth.