The Armageddon Protocol

THIRTY-NINE

Zalan Szabo waited impatiently as Steiner fiddled with the combination locks on the aluminum case. A few seconds later it popped open and the Austrian raised the lid to reveal a small laptop inside, built into the housing of the case. He turned it on and a black welcome screen invited the entry of a password. Both of them had heard the fighting outside as their men tried to stop the police from getting to them.

It was of concern to Szabo that his instructions to the Home Secretary had been ignored, but that was a problem for the future. No doubt, the Home Secretary would apologize profusely for his transgressions right before his execution. They always did.

“Fetch our guest,” Szabo ordered Steiner. “He will want to see this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Steiner stepped away and Szabo took over, typing in a long series of numbers and letters from memory. A plain desktop screen was revealed a few seconds later, with only one icon: a small black triangle which represented the program controlling the Armageddon Protocol.

The Hungarian licked his lips in fear and swallowed hard as he slowly typed in the activation code that Steiner had retrieved from the traitor and his friends back in Paris. “In doing this, I obey the sacred vows I gave to the Ministry.”

“Hold it right there, Szabo.”

The Hungarian froze in place and turned his head slowly to his right. Walking across the room was Harry Bane, a man he considered of no more significance than a cockroach… a man he thought had frozen to death in Chamonix several hours ago.

“How are you still alive?” he said coolly.

“Thanks to me,” Maja said stepping into the room.

Szabo made no move. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “I always had my suspicions about you.”

“Of course you did.”

“This is quite the place,” Harry said, glancing around the plush apartment. “You must have a few gold mines tucked away here and there.”

“You don’t dig for gold if you want to make money in a gold rush, Mr Bane.”

“No?”

“No.”

“So what do you do?”

“You sell shovels, of course.”

Harry noticed some movement behind Szabo and then saw two figures emerge into the room from a door. The first man he recognized as Hans Steiner, but the other man was less familiar — he was sure he had seen his face before but he couldn’t place it.

They reached Szabo and the Hungarian smirked when he saw the confusion on Harry’s face. “He seems to be having some difficulty placing you, my friend,” he said to the man.

The man gave a businesslike smile and said, “I’m Rafael Ruiz.”

“Means nothing to me,” Harry said.

“Perhaps if I told you we met in Madrid, in a manner of speaking.”

And then it clicked. He knew where he had seen this man before. He was the lead CNI officer who led the assault on Pablo’s apartment. He narrowed his eyes in confusion. “But this isn’t your jurisdiction, and what are you doing with him?”

“Mr Szabo is my senior within the Ministry.”

“And the Ministry comes above all other obligations,” Szabo said with a smirk before turning back to Steiner and Ruiz. “Is it ready up there?”

Steiner nodded. “All ready to go.”

“And the devil’s eye?” Szabo said.

Another nod.

For a brief moment, Harry almost felt physically sick as their words sunk in and he realized once and for all that Andrej Liška had been right all along, and that everything he had said about the Ministry and its long, hideous claws was right. At first he had wondered if the Czech scientist had allowed his fear of being hunted for the nanodust warp his sense of judgement and make him paranoid, but no… it was all true. The Ministry was everywhere and there was no way he could trust anyone in the same way ever again.

He felt his heart sink as he realized he was already doubting those around him — even Leo — how much did he really know about any of these people? No, now he was being paranoid and it had to stop. You had to trust someone in this world and those he had shared this nightmare with had risked their lives to help him.

His mind raced with crazed thoughts as he fixed his eyes back on Szabo. The contempt he felt for the man standing a few yards ahead of him was almost overwhelming… he could almost taste the hatred he felt on his tongue. He knew Szabo had to face justice, but now the truth in what Andrej had said meant there was no hope of a fair trial. The truth was Szabo would be out of the country and living on some private island somewhere under a new name in hours while the public would be fed lies about his sad and untimely death.

There was only one way Harry could know for sure that a creature like Zalan Szabo wouldn’t live to pursue the Ministry’s insane agenda, and that was to end things permanently, now.

And yet it wasn’t that simple. Harry was no cold-blooded killer. He’d killed in the line of duty both during his time in the Pathfinders and while working overseas as an undercover agent for the SIS, but they were state-sanctioned executions. If he took out Szabo now it would be nothing more than murder, and he would be no better than the very evil he was committed to fighting.

Szabo stared at him and an icy grin broke out on his wrinkled face. It was as if he could read his mind, and Harry’s blood ran cold when he stared back into those dark, slate eyes.

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll activate the nanodust.”

Harry raised his gun. “Not with a bullet in your head, you won’t. Now take your hands away from the laptop and raise them in the air, nice and slowly.”

Szabo remained perfectly still. “No.”

“I’ll aim to kill, Szabo. You know I will.”

“But I have a much better idea. Why don’t you lower your guns or I will activate the protocol? My finger is less than one inch from the button. Even if you shoot me dead here and now you will not be able to stop the canister dispersing the dust. There is no way you can get to it in time.”

Harry’s face dropped.

“What?” Szabo said with a grin. “You thought we would be stupid enough to keep the nanodust here with us at the launch center?”

Harry’s mind raced with scenarios.

“It seems the misinformation I gave that fool Tóth has paid a dividend. You will never locate it in a city of this size…”

“Enough of this!” Baupin yelled, and raised his Glock. He fired once, striking Steiner in the upper leg. The Austrian screamed in pain and fired back, causing everyone to dive for cover.

From behind Szabo’s drinks cabinet, Harry fired back with his gun and blew out part of Szabo’s window wall. At nearly one thousand feet above London, the late December wind rushed in through the gaping hole and drove sleet into the apartment.

Szabo screamed orders at Steiner and Ruiz and a moment later the Austrian hurled a short-fuse grenade at Harry’s side of the suite. They rolled away hard as the device detonated behind a grand piano and blasted pieces of the Steinway all over the room.

Fire took hold of the velvet drapes and crawled into the plush pile and within a few short seconds their half of the penthouse suite was ablaze.

In the heat, smoke and confusion, Szabo slipped away with his underlings while Harry and the others struggled to breath in the burning apartment.

“I’m not digging the fire, Harry,” Niko said. “If it takes off we might find ourselves stuck up here.”

“That’s not going to happen — listen.”

Below they heard the sound of sirens, and Niko peered down through the smashed window to see several Mercedes Benz Ategos belonging to the London Fire Brigade racing toward the base of the tower.

“Something tells me their ladders aren’t three hundred meters long,” Niko said.

“They’re on it, Niko,” Harry said firmly, “and we’re on this, so focus.”

Lucia gasped. “What was that?”

“What?” Harry said.

“I saw something over there!”

Harry turned to see shadows flitting out of sight in a circular staircase that led up to a mezzanine. Behind the rail he saw the unmistakable sight of two burnished chrome elevator doors sliding shut. “That must go up to the viewing platform,” he said. “He’s going to try and activate the launch from the observation deck at the top of the building.”

“So we’ll follow them up.”

Above their heads, the sprinklers burst into life but the fire was too powerful and they barely touched the blaze. Harry led the others away from the flames and over to the bottom of the circular staircase on the other side of the suite.

“Something tells me this elevator is on a one-way journey and it’s not coming back down for us or anyone else.”

“He’s right,” Leo said. “They’ll shoot the control panel when they get to the top and disable the lift.”

“We have to get after them!” Baupin yelled.

“But he said the dust isn’t here,” Lucia called back, the wind whipping her hair across her face.

“He’s probably just lying his ass off,” Zoey said.

“No,” Harry said. “He’s not lying. He’s right — we were stupid to think they would concentrate everything in one place so close to the end of their mission.”

“What’s the difference?” Zoey said. “If we stop the launch it doesn’t matter where it is.”

“They’ll have a contingency in place,” Maja said. “I know these people. If the launch fails they’re not just going to give up the dust.”

“So where do we start?” Lucia said.

“Wait,” Niko said. “You remember that hideous painting in his ski lodge?”

“Ördög?” Harry said.

“Right.”

Lucia shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”

“Tóth told us he was the old Hungarian god of the Underworld, right?”

“Sure,” Zoey said. “Some kind of demonic, shape-shifting monster who created all the bad things in the world.”

Harry frowned. “What’s the point, Niko?”

“Do you remember I told you I’d seen that word before?”

“Yes.”

Zoey raised her hand to protect herself from the flames at the other end of the apartment. “We have to get out of here right now, so get on with it Nikky!”

“Now I remember where — it’s the name of the company that’s delivering the fireworks at this year’s New Year’s Eve display in London. Ördög Industries — they’re the pyrotechnic company in charge.”

Harry nodded. “I think you might be onto something, but they have several different launch sites all around the Thames.”

Niko grinned. “But don’t you remember what he said about the devil’s eye? Remember — everything to people like Szabo has symbolic significance.”

“Oh my God!” Harry said. “The canisters are fixed to the London Eye. They’re going to use the fireworks to blast the dust all over the sky and then control it from here.”

“Bastards,” Leo said. “There are tens of thousands of people gathered around it ready for midnight.”

Lucia locked her anxious eyes on his. “But what’s the Eye?”

“The Millennium Wheel,” Harry said, already calculating how long it would take to get there. “They call it a cantilevered observation wheel, but to the rest of us it’s the enormous Ferris wheel on the South Bank.”

“Five hundred metres from here, max,” Leo said, already stuffing his gun into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I can be there in less than ten minutes — how long have we got?”

Harry sighed. “Midnight is just a few minutes away, Leo… there’s no time to waste. With Rook and his men down you’re going to need some backup.”

“I’m going with him!” Zoey said.

“Me too,” said Maja.

Leo looked at the two women and then back to Harry. “Why do bad things happen to good people, Harry?”

“Piss off, Leo,” Harry said and watched his old friend, Zoey and Maja sprint through the billowing smoke and vanish from the apartment.

“What about us?” Lucia said.

Niko and Alain Baupin looked at the Englishman waiting for his lead.

Harry picked up a discarded MP5, checked its magazine, and pointed its muzzle to the ceiling. “We’re going up there, to the very top.”