The Armageddon Protocol

TWENTY-THREE

It was raining by the time they got to the back of the building and followed Zoey as she sprinted along a cobblestone side street. It was standard Parisien fare, with neat lines of plane trees, stripped bare by the winter and slick with the frozen rain now tumbling down from a leaden sky.

Parked outside a shabby tabac that lurked in the gloom of a soulless modern, concrete residential block was a dirty Citroën C3. As they approached it a chubby man in a puffy black raincoat with the collars turned up twisted his face around to see them. A second later the orange indicator lights flashed and the locks blipped open.

Zoey skidded to halt by the front passenger door and clambered inside. “Get in!”

Lucia and Andrej shared a glance and then followed Harry’s lead as he climbed into the back seat. With some effort the large man turned in the driver’s seat and smiled at them as they jumped in the back. “Hallo! I am Niko.”

Zoey glanced in the mirror. “Guys, this is Niko the Asshole Lookout. Niko the Asshole Lookout, this is the guys.”

“Pleased to meet you all!” Niko said, trying to turn in the driver’s seat to shake their hands.

Zoey sighed. “Niko, we’re on the run from les flics — maybe save the social niceties for later on over a schnapps or something, yeah?” She turned to Harry. “Niko’s Swiss,” she said, as if that explained everything.

Harry, Lucia and Andrej buckled up as Niko indicated and slowly pulled onto the avenue.

“What are you doing, Niko?” Zoey said.

He looked at her, confused “What?”

“Why are you driving like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re a total idiot on your tenth driving test.”

“Oh, that’s not nice,” Niko said. “You shouldn’t say such things. I’m very disappointed in you, Zoey. One must always obey the traffic regulations.”

Zoey glanced in the mirror. “Cut the shit, Nikky,” she said, her voice suddenly hard and cold and humourless. She didn’t sound like the vulnerable wise-cracker Harry had met at the station, and he wondered which one was the real Zoey Conway. “They’re right on our asses. Move over.”

Niko stared at her. “Move over where?”

“To my seat. I’m driving.”

“But you are in your seat,” he protested meekly. “How can I move into it?”

“Didn’t you have any fun as a teenager?” she said, unbuckling her belt and clambering up over the top of him. “Guess not, with you being from Geneva and everything.”

“You’re blocking my view you crazy woman! And it’s Zurich… I am not a Genevois — we don’t even speak the same language!”

“Whatever. Like I said — move over, you weenie.”

The C3 began to swerve violently all over the avenue, forcing a car in the other lane off the road. It crashed through a launderette window as the sound of police sirens rose in the distance behind them.

Now, no one was in control of the Citroën, and in the back, Andrej Liška covered his eyes. “This is it. We’re going to die.”

“No one’s dying, Chekov,” Zoey said, climbing down into the driver’s seat. Beside her, Niko had reached the passenger seat and was desperately buckling himself into it. He turned to Harry and the others in the back. “I don’t like to use bad language, but if you want to see what a total idiot really looks like when driving a car — then look no further.”

“Bad language?” Harry said.

“Niko’s very polite,” Zoey said. She rammed the C3’s manual transmission down into second and the engine howled like a stuck piglet. She took the next corner so fast the car almost tipped over onto two wheels, and clipped a number of coffee tables out the front of a café. The tables went flying, sending cups and bottles and menus all over the street. The patrons of the café leapt back to save themselves and then rushed forward full of waving fists and threats.

“The French,” Zoey said, as if once again that explained everything. She gave a dismissive headshake and returned her attention to the police car on their tail. “These guys are pretty serious about catching up with us,” she said suspiciously. “Something tells me they’re not after a common thief. You guys sure you’re not mass murderers?”

“Mass murderers?” Niko said, his face growing visibly paler.

“We’re not murderers,” Lucia said with a sigh. “We already told you — someone is trying to frame us.”

Niko sighed and shook his head. “I’m very uncomfortable about this Zoey.”

“Oh, can it, Niko. You’re as crooked as they come.” She changed up into third and gained some speed along the Avenue de Tourville, screeching past Les Invalides before swinging the wheel around to the left hard and heading south towards the Church of Saint-François-Xavier. “Don’t pay any attention to Niko here. He’s what you might call my technical back-up assistant. In other words, he neutralizes security systems before I break into buildings.”

“True story,” the Swiss man said with pride. “Why do you think all of the CCTV cameras around the police station were redirected to face the walls?”

Harry was silently impressed. “That was you?”

“Ja. I’m good at what I do.”

“He sure is,” Zoey said. “Oh — and did I mention — he’s also supposed to keep a lookout for me in case anyone comes home earlier than expected.”

Niko turned in his seat and faced them again and gave an explanatory shrug. “I fell asleep — just one time.”

“Sure, the one time I raid the Saudi Ambassador’s Parisian apartment.”

“The Saudi Ambassador?” Lucia asked.

“Sure. Aim for the stars, Jeb, and you might just hit the moon, right?” As she spoke the rainclouds blew to the west to reveal a bright winter sun.

Harry saw her smile as she pulled some sunglasses out of a case in the side pocket and slip them over her green eyes. “Now, let’s get these assholes off our tail.”

Zoey Conway checked her rear-view but almost wished she hadn’t made the effort. Two Paris police Peugeots were in close pursuit, sirens flashing and horns wailing. Checking ahead, everywhere she looked Parisians and tourists alike were pointing iPhones in their direction and filming everything they could get.

“You really sure you guys didn’t murder anyone?” She slammed the visor down to block the low winter sun which was now beaming though a low split in the rain clouds racing across the black sky.

“Very sure,” Harry said. “Why?”

She flicked her eyes at the mirror for a second and watched as the police cars rocked up behind them. “Seems like the heat’s a little high around here and it ain’t for me.”

She swerved in the traffic and managed to put a Volvic delivery truck in between the C3 and the police Peugeots pursuing them. Ahead of them now was a Mia Electric car pootling along as the driver searched for a parking space. Zoey blasted the horn and dropped down again before violently swerving the C3 out into the road.

She ripped past the Mia in a hail of exhaust fumes and skidded wildly back onto the right-hand lane just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a heavy-duty DHL van dead ahead.

“Oh my God!” Lucia said, wide-eyed. “You nearly killed us.”

“Relax, Dolores… I just saved our asses.” She glanced in the mirror at the terrified Spaniard. “You can thank me later.”

“Thank you? You are crazy.”

“It’s been said before, hun. I’ll put my hands up to that.”

To underline the point, she powered through a set of red lights, causing Lucia to scream. Andrej Liška looked like was about to pass out, but Niko was shaking his head and chuckling. “This is why I normally do the driving.”

“Hey!” Zoey said. “I’m a great driver but it might help if I knew where we were going.” She turned in her seat and fixed her eyes on Harry. “So where are we going, Tex?”

“You’re talking to me?”

She shrugged. “Sure I am.”

“It’s just that you have a very annoying habit of assigning people nicknames that’s beginning to get on my nerves.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“I had no idea. Is that true, Niko?”

“Of course.”

“Shit… I’ll try and watch that,” she said, turning an insincere face to the Englishman. “Sport.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m still waiting for some strategic direction here,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“I have no idea whatsoever.” Harry turned in his seat and locked his eyes on an increasingly panicky Andrej Liška. “You said you hid the dust, Andrej. Where?”

A pause.

Zoey took another corner at speed and sighed as she checked the mirror. “Dust? Is this some kind of joke?”

“No joke,” Lucia said, but Andrej remained silent.

Zoey increased her grip on the steering wheel and navigated through some slow-moving traffic, weaving in and out of the lanes like a pro. “Any time this century, Chekov.”

Liška looked deflated. “The Catacombs.”

“The Catacombs?” Harry said. “As in the tunnels under the city?”

Liška frowned and nodded glumly. “My sister is married to one of the guides there. He helps the tourists. He helped me hide it.”

“Where is it, exactly?”

“In a vault beneath one of the tunnels.”

“You can find it?”

He nodded. “It was many months ago, but yes… I think so. Pablo and I knew we had to keep the research and activation codes separate from the weapon itself, and that is when we made the decision to hide them so far apart. I took the Perses canister and hid it deep inside the catacombs and Pablo took the research notes and codes and hid them inside the painting. He knew they would stop at nothing to find it, so he chose somewhere they would never find. Turn right here…” As he spoke they raced past the Montparnasse Tower and swerved onto the Avenue du Maine.

“After seeing what happened to his apartment I can believe it,” Harry said.

“But now we have the NAND chip with the codes, and when we get the canister out of the catacombs, the weapon and its launch codes will be together. This is what we always wanted to avoid. This will be a very dangerous time. Maybe we need to keep it hidden.”

“Wherever you hid it, it’s not safe,” Harry said. “Wherever it is they’ll find it eventually, or someone else will. I know people in the Government who we can trust. We need to get the canister to them at once, Andrej.”

“I’m not so sure… perhaps trying to take it to safety is a bad idea. Maybe we should leave it buried with the dead.”

The heavens opened and the rain fell, and Harry kept his thoughts to himself. He could see Andrej was nervous about it, and he understood why, but a weapon like this had to be protected by the right people, and whether Andrej liked it or not, that meant a government-level operation. His thoughts were interrupted when the C3 swerved violently to the left and nearly mounted the kerb.

Zoey spun the wheel back and returned the car to the correct lane. The police Peugeots were even closer now and the sirens and horns had attracted the attention of even more Parisians and tourists alike who were now lining the route and holding up their phones to film the chase in even greater numbers than before.

The lead police car understeered and raced forward, mounting the pavement for a few seconds in an attempt to get around the C3 but was forced to swerve back in to avoid smashing into a vintage kiosk covered in movie posters.

Zoey changed down hard, third to second and the engine growled. Now they were shooting out of a side street and she was spinning the wheel to the right to join another wide boulevard. A black Passat travelling east on the boulevard raced up behind them and nearly hit the back of their car.

Harry checked the mirror and shook his head with doubt. “It’s only a matter of time before they put up a roadblock or deploy a stinger.”

“A stinger?” Lucia said.

“It’s a retractable device they throw across the road that bursts the tires to shreds. Then it’s game over. How far away are we from the Catacombs?”

“Not far,” Andrej said, turning in his seat and staring with two wide, panicked eyes at the police cars.

“We can’t let them know where we’re going,” Harry said. “So we’re going to need to ditch the car and lose them in the side streets.”

“I like crazy times,” Niko said, chuckling to himself. “Once at an IT conference I attended in Stuttgart…” he stopped as the chuckling increased. “We rewired the buttons on the elevator control panel so it went to all the wrong floors.” He shook his head in disbelief of the act. “It was like — somebody stop me!”

Zoey was now shaking her head as she watched the portly Swiss man in the mirror. “Nikky?”

“Ja?”

“Stop talking, hun.”

“Of course.”

“Oh shit!” Zoey said.

Harry craned his neck to look behind the C3. “What?”

“They’re gaining on us, and I think I spy a chopper coming up behind them.”

Lucia squeezed Harry’s arm. “We’re not going to make it!”

“Sure we are,” he said. “We just need to think ahead of time.”

“Well, get thinking, Chief… because that’s not a police helicopter — it looks military and someone’s hanging out of it with a gun.”