The Armageddon Protocol

TWENTY-ONE

In the station, Petit laboriously searched his jacket for a Gauloises Brune, found one and placed it on his lip while he patted himself down for a lighter. Behind a large computer, desk Sergeant Barbier looked at the prisoners glumly for a few seconds and then scratched his head. He opened a file on the computer and turned to the Englishman.

“Name?”

Harry nudged his chin at Petit. “Your friend here has our passports.”

The man yawned and gave Harry a disappointed glance. “Name?”

Harry knew there was no point playing games. “Henry Bane.”

Barbier nodded and tapped the information into the computer.

“Date of birth?”

Harry reeled off his birthday and Barbier turned to the Spanish woman standing beside him.

“Name?”

“Lucia Serrano.”

“Bon. Date de naissance?”

Lucia gave the information and Barbier finally turned to Andrej.

“Et vous?”

“Anton Zeman.”

“Date of birth?”

Zeman gave his real birthday, and Barbier tapped the details into the computer for a few seconds before stopping with a frown. “There is no one of this name on here.”

Petit leaned in. “Hein?”

“At least not with this birthday.”

Petit turned to Andrej. “Are you sure about these details?”

“Of course — I know my own name and birthday!”

Barbier frowned and inputted the data one more time. “Still nothing.”

Petit got the passport out and frowned as he studied it once again.

Barbier leaned over and looked down at it and then Petit began to study it more carefully, bending it back and forth and holding it up to the light.

Both men looked at one another and spoke at the same time: “Fake.”

“It is no such thing!” Andrej protested without much conviction.

“What is your real identity?” Petit asked, much more seriously this time.

“Anton Zeman!”

“If you are lying to us you should know that giving false details to the police is a serious offence in France.”

Andrej refused to talk, and after a short exchange in French, Barbier yawned and rubbed his eyes. “We’re done here.”

Petit gave a shallow nod and turned to Harry. “You will stay here until we have the necessary transport to take you to more secure facilities awaiting your extradition back to Spain. As you are aware, there is an EU arrest warrant out for both of you regarding the murder of several people, including…” he glanced at the sheet. “A man named Pablo Reyes, a woman named Mariana Vidal, a police officer by the name of Sergeant Carlos Rodríguez Alonso, and also a Chief Inspector Cristina Fernandez.”

“We didn’t kill any of those people,” Harry said.

“I loved Pablo!” Lucia protested. “How could I kill him?”

Petit shrugged. “Crimes de cœur are not so unusual…” The French inspector turned to Andrej. “You will stay here in France while we try and work out what your part in all this is.”

“We’re not going back to Spain,” Harry said, fixing his eyes on Petit.

“Not now, no. Not until the morning. Now you go to the cells. Monsieur Zeman will stay and answer more questions.”

Rafael Ruiz was in his office when the telephone rang. Last night had been a disaster, resulting in the murder of two colleagues and the disappearance of the Englishman and Serrano. He swallowed two Norvectans with a gulp of mineral water and lifted the phone to his ear.

“Si?”

“Señor Ruiz?”

“Si.”

“This is Capitaine Arnaud Petit of the Gendarmerie, in Paris.”

Ruiz managed half a smile as he spoke his next words. “Is this about the warrant for the fugitives?”

“It is. We have them both in custody, plus a third man we believe may be a conspirator.”

“His name?”

“He calls himself Anton Zeman, but we believe it’s fake.”

Ruiz breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the gods for the EU Arrest Warrant. The EAW was barely ten years old but it had massively expedited the complicated process of international arrests and prosecutions across the borders of various European countries. There had been a structure in place before, created back in 1957 when the European Convention on Extradition had allowed governments greater ease when moving wanted criminals from one state to another, but the EAW had made the process much simpler. Now it had worked just as it was designed to do and delivered the fugitives back to him after his abysmal failure in Madrid last night. His superiors would be delighted.

But he had to be sure. “Both Henry Bane and Lucia Serrano?”

Petit sighed. “Yes, they are both under arrest here in Paris.”

“Where are they now?” Ruiz asked. “We must arrange transportation of them back to Spain at once.”

“Naturally,” Petit said. “They are at my station for now but they will be moved to various prisons across the city soon. As soon as the formal process of extradition has been completed, we will arrange transportation. This is now over to our superiors.”

“Of course” Ruiz said.

When the call ended the Spanish CNI officer slumped in his seat for a few moments and thanked heaven for small mercies, and then he picked up the phone. His superiors would need to know about this at once.

In keeping with the rest of the station, the cell bock was small and mostly empty. Harry counted half a dozen cells on either side of a small room, and only two of them occupied — the two nearest the door. The cells were three walls of bricks and plaster with the front wall made only of bars. It was a low-grade, small-time jail in a Parisian police station and Petit wasn’t bluffing when he’d told them they would be farmed out to bigger prisons while the extradition process was underway.

As Barbier walked them into the cell block, Harry saw the cell on the right was occupied by a man in a torn raincoat. He was sleeping with a battered fedora over his face and there were holes in his shoes.

Barbier put Lucia in the cell beside the man, and Harry in the cell opposite her. Beside it in the next cell he caught a glimpse of a young woman sitting on the bed. She was slim, with high cheekbones, straight, dark-brown hair and sharp, green eyes. As he looked at her she looked right back with a visible degree of suspicion.

“Welcome,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “My house is your house.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. “And what a lovely home it is.”

The burly sergeant locked him in the cell and casually sauntered back to the door which he slammed shut behind him.

“Name’s Zoey Conway,” the woman said.

“You sound American,” said Harry.

She nodded once. “Vegas.”

“From Vegas, eh?” he said.

“No one’s ever from Vegas, Jimbo — they only ever go to Vegas. I’m a New Yorker originally.”

His eyes darted down to the trident tattoo on her shoulder, and she caught the glance. “Sagittarius. The stars know everything about our destiny, don’t you think?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it… What are you in here for?” he asked. “And it’s Harry, not Jimbo.”

In the cell opposite, Lucia stood close to the bars as she listened to the conversation between her former lover and the American.

“They say I was trying to break into an apartment on the Avenue Bosquet.”

“Don’t tell me — you’re innocent?”

She shook head. “Hell no, I’m as guilty as the devil himself. I was trying to get to a safe owned by some rich guy with a lot of gold and jewels. I’m what the nineteen-fifties used to lovingly call a cat burglar.”

“But not a very good one or you wouldn’t be in here.”

“As it happens, I’m the best,” she said with a theatrical bow. “Always lucky is my mantra.”

“And are you?”

“Sure, but no one’s perfect. Perfection is impossible.”

“You think so?”

She nodded, stared at the bars and sighed. “The way I see it is, if you want one hundred percent of anything you’re just going to spend your whole damn life disappointed. Better to go for eighty, if you ask me, Chief.”

“Eighty?”

“Uh-huh. The other twenty percent is for someone else, you know? That twenty percent is part of someone else’s eighty.”

“But you’re still in here.”

Another sigh. “Apparently my lookout isn’t as sharp as I thought he was. Boy, am I gonna kick his ass when I get out of here.” She took a step back and gave Harry and Lucia another look. “So what about you two — why are you here?”

“Quadruple Murder,” Harry said bluntly.

Zoey took a further step back from the bars and receded into the shadows of her cell. “Woah, leave me out of that shit.”

“We didn’t kill anyone!” Lucia said from further down the cell block.

“It’s true,” Harry said, unsure why he was justifying himself to a total stranger. “We’re being framed and we’re trying to find out what’s going on.”

The door opened and two policemen walked in either side of a subdued-looking and handcuffed Andrej Liška. They placed him in the cell beside Lucia and left the room.

“Andrej — what happened?”

“Petit doesn’t believe me. He says I am a suspect because I knew Pablo and I was liaising with his killers.”

“We’re not his killers!” Lucia said.

“I know that!” snapped the Czech. “But they don’t, and they’re serious about deporting us all to Madrid. They say we are involved in some kind of international conspiracy. It’s total fiction!”

“We’re being framed, Andrej,” Harry said with a sigh. “Of course it’s fiction.”

“This is like a nightmare,” Andrej said.

“The thing about nightmares,” Harry said as he pulled something from the lining of his silk tie, “is that sooner or later you’re going to wake up.” He began fiddling with the tiny object, and after biting it gently with his teeth he put it back into his tie.

“What’s that?” Lucia said with a nod from the opposite cell.

“Just thinking ahead of time,” he said. “Always thinking ahead of time. It’s an army thing.”

A few long hours passed as they waited for the machinery of government to decide their fate, and then finally Petit strolled in, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. “So — I have some great news. Earlier I spoke with the authorities in Madrid and told them of your arrest. They are very happy with my work. The trucks are coming to take you to prison where you will stay until the details of your extradition to Spain are organized. You’re going to three different locations, so say your goodbyes.”

“How very kind of you.”

Petit offered a sarcastic smile. “Tell me — why did you kill those people in Madrid, and what does it have to do with Paris?”

“We never killed anyone!” Lucia said from behind Petit.

Without turning to face her, the Frenchman addressed Harry one more time. “If you tell me, perhaps I can make this process easier for you.”

“Lucia’s right,” Harry said. “We’re innocent.”

“Oui, je vois…”

Barbier leaned his head inside the door at the far end. “Le transport est ici.”

“Eh, bien,” Petit said. “Then it is time for your transfer to the prisons.”

“Good luck!” Zoey said.

“Save the luck for yourself,” Petit said. “You’re going too.”