The Armageddon Protocol

ONE

Pablo Reyes stepped off the bus and looked over his shoulder as he emerged into the Spanish winter sunshine. The man in the leather jacket and aviator shades was still following him, he was certain of it.

Pablo wasn’t usually a nervous man, but this was the third morning in a row he had been trailed by this man and he was starting to grow unsettled. He knew he had enemies — serious enemies… but no one knew he was here in Madrid. No one here even knew his real name — not even Andrej… not even Lucia. When he took the job at the museum he’d given them a fake name — his real name was Gabriel Ramirez. There were lots of people who wanted Professor Gabriel Ramirez dead, but he couldn’t think of a single one who wanted to harm the simple night watchman Pablo Reyes.

And yet he was still being followed.

And there was only one reason why anyone would be following him home from his new job at the museum every day. His new identity must have been compromised and somehow they had found him. His heart raced at the thought, because he knew better than anyone what that meant — he would have to go on the run again. Another change of name, more weeks on the road — but at least the code was safe.

His heartbeat quickened as he stepped across the street and greeted his new friend Manuel. The old man ran the small corner café at the base of his apartment block and was setting out tables on the terrace ready for another day’s business.

As he approached Manuel, his friend lit a cigarillo and warmed his hands.

“Pablo, how are you today?”

Pablo shrugged, momentarily relaxed by the friendly face. “I’m tired,” he said briskly.

Manuel dragged on the cigarillo. “Night work is not good work, my friend.”

“Tell me about it,” Pablo said. As he spoke he saw the man in the reflection of the café. He was leaning on the wall of the bank opposite his apartment building. “But art restoration training isn’t cheap,” he added more nervously, one eye now firmly fixed on the stranger monitoring him from across the road.

“Ah — of course. I had forgotten your studies — working all night and studying all day.” He nodded and rearranged one of the menus. “You are inspiration to us all.”

“Perhaps…”

“When do you sleep?” Manuel said with a laugh.

“Whenever I can,” Pablo said, wishing he could feel the simple joy of relaxation once again. “You expect a good day, today?” he asked, still watching the man.

“Maybe, maybe not. It’s hard to tell these days.” Now Manuel shrugged and gave Pablo a warm smile. “A quien dan, no escoge…”

Pablo offered a polite laugh and nod of the head, but inside he felt only fear as the pursuing man pushed off from the bank’s wall and drew ever closer. He waved goodbye to his friend and shuffled inside the building. Climbing up the steps to his apartment, he paused and turned to check the man — but he registered with confusion that he had now gone.

They were playing games with him.

He felt happier when he inserted the key into his door and opened it up. Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing after all. He moved swiftly into the apartment, locking and bolting the door behind him. He was always relieved to be home these days, after what those bastards had done to him.

Turned him into a ghost.

Once he’d been at the vanguard of neuroscience, but now he was working as a security guard on the night shift. He had enrolled in an art restoration degree to make his life more bearable, but he understood he would have to move on if they ever tracked him down. Now, it was starting to look like that had happened. Could he start over again? Would Lucia come with him? He exhaled sharply as he kicked off his shoes and walked through to the kitchen. He sighed when he thought about the young Spanish physicist leaving everything behind to go on the run with him. She didn’t even know who he was.

Or what terrible things he had done in the name of science.

He made himself some coffee and watched the television news. This was his routine. He would work for an hour on his studies, and then sleep until after lunch when he would rise and work further on his art course — this is how he would seek redemption for his crimes against humanity. Then, he would ride the bus to the Prado Museum and sit in silence all night, thinking about his theories and where it had all gone wrong. He used to work on them on paper, until his supervisor told him it looked like he wasn’t concentrating on his security work and to stop it. After that he carried the equations in his head.

It wasn’t easy for a man of his abilities, but working in a university or industry in his specialist field would be suicide. They had probably already searched all of those places for him, and would never give up until they hunted him down — but that didn’t mean he had to turn his back on his life’s passion. He had a responsibility to stop this madness.

What he had seen would rock the world to its core, and it was up to him to make sure everyone knew the truth, however disturbing and terrible it was. They could hunt him all over the world but they couldn’t silence him forever. All he had to do was find someone — anyone — who was in a position of power and who wasn’t one of them, and then the world would know.

Thinking about it, he grew more nervous. For a while he’d forgotten about the man who had followed him back and forth to work for three consecutive days. He didn’t look Spanish, whoever he was. He got up from his desk and moved to the French doors of his apartment. He opened them and looked outside across the rooftops of Chamberí. It was an expensive and beautiful area of the city, made available to him by a friend, but for how long he would be able to enjoy it, he had no idea.

If they attacked him they still wouldn’t get what they were looking for. That was hidden somewhere no one would ever find it. That thought alone brought him a little solace. They might kill him, but they couldn’t kill the truth. With this happy thought he drifted to sleep in the late morning — the fate of all night workers.

He woke a little after midday when Lucia came around. Every day he saw her she looked more beautiful than the last, and he counted his blessings that at least something in his new life was better than before. They spent the afternoon talking and smoking, and then the young woman said she would make some food, but he said no and offered to make something instead. She was an angel — an angel who had no idea of his past, other than he used to be a scientist who wanted to change the world… like they all did.

Tonight they were meeting one of Lucia’s old flames, but this was la hora del aperitivo, and for Tapas hour tonight he was preparing fideuà, a seafood tapas made with calamari, shrimp, squid ink and pasta noodles from his native Valencia. He sighed as he ran his hands over his stomach and cursed the dry cleaners for shrinking his trousers yet again. Worse, tonight the plan was to take Lucia’s friend to his favorite restaurant for their famous paella — monkfish, tiger prawns, paprika, baby squid, Calasparra rice — and he intended to drink more than advisable if he could get away with it.

He looked outside. Winter’s night had fallen early on the city, and then Lucia washed her hands and put the salad bowl in the fridge. “I’m going for a shower.”

She walked out of sight and Pablo lit a cigar. He stepped out onto his modest balcony to smoke it in the night. No stars tonight, instead the lights of the city reflecting off the bottom of a bank of low cloud, so he watched the traffic as is trundled along the avenue outside their apartment.

The doorbell rang.

Distracted by the smell of the fideuà and the third glass of valdepeñas, Pablo walked to the door and looked through the spy hole.

Señora Vidal was standing in the hall, and she looked nervous. She was a good neighbor and an easy person to get along with but tonight something in her eyes made him afraid.

Pablo raised the cigar to his mouth and unlocked the door.

“What’s the matter, Mariana?”

The response was a devastating gunshot to her temple.

Her dead body slumped to the floor and then a man in black charged into view, a smoking gun in his right hand.

It was the man who had followed him from the museum.

All his night terrors of the last few months were now a cold, hard reality and racing toward him with a snarl on its face.

He tried to slam the door on the man but it was too late. The assassin was stronger and had wedged his boot over the threshold. He fired a series of shots from the silenced pistol and the bullets ripped through the acoustic tiles of his drop ceiling and planted themselves into the plaster behind them. The man grunted and angrily threw the gun down to the floor, indicating to Pablo the small mercy that it was empty, but then the assassin wrenched a large knife from a holster on his belt and made a second charge toward him.

Pablo fought back, forcing the door against the man’s arms. The assassin howled in pain, but he was stronger and with a second effort the door was smacked back against the hallway wall and the man in black was now inside his inner sanctum. His broad chest heaved like an animal’s, and Pablo caught the smell of beer and Schmalzler snuff as the man padded forward and took a swipe at him with the knife. The flash of the blade in the low light made Pablo gasp with terror at the realization this was really happening, and worse, would Lucia be next?

The man swiped the knife again, and this time Pablo stumbled backwards, knocking ornaments off his shelves and tables and nearly tripping over in the process. He felt his heart rate quicken and his breathing became shallow and panicked. So they had found him at last. He had not been as careful as he thought.

Or someone had betrayed him.

He had spent the past few months dreading this moment, but had always told himself he was clever enough to avoid detection.

Now he knew different, and Mariana Vidal was dead because of his complacency.

The man lunged forward and grabbed his neck. They fell to the floor in a macabre tumble and Pablo hit his head on the floorboards, nearly knocking himself out. The sound of the Buena Vista Social Club drifted peacefully through his concealed speakers, its relaxed tempo mocking the horror of the moment as he fought for his life.