Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Getting inside the complex was easier than Lexi had anticipated. Her first thought was to use the door she had seen ‘Ben’ exit from when she set the alarm off in the yard, but when she got there it was shut again, and locked. Clearly they knew the island was now under attack and had initiated some kind of silent lockdown.

She had finally gained entry to the place via a skylight in what turned out to be the food stores. She lowered herself gently to the tiled floor and after helping herself to a sip of bottled mineral water from the shelf, she refocussed her mind and readied her weapon for the next stage of the mission.

Her attempt to obtain any kind of schematics for the complex had failed miserably — it was as if the place didn’t exist. There were no authorities on the island she could ask after all, and every one of her foreign intel agency contacts had come to nothing. This meant that from this stage onwards she had to feel her way forward step by step — improvising as she moved silently along the complex’s corridors in search of her final target. Anyone who got in the way between her and Eden would also have to be eliminated.

She stalked down a long utility corridor leading from the food stores to what was obviously the generator room. For a while she considered sabotaging it and plunging the place into darkness, but while that sounded like a good idea at first it would not only give away her current position inside the complex, but also give her a disadvantage. The ECHO team knew this place better than she did and they would certainly have access to better night vision tech than her handheld monocular.

In the cool, air-conditioned silence of the complex, her mind drifted back to her training back in Beijing, and the monstrous figure of Shi Keyu. Shi was her boss and chief training officer, and his fondness for ancient Chinese military strategy was well-known in the academy.

“Remember, Xiaoli,” he had said. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

If his scowling, pock-marked face hadn’t been less than ten inches from hers she would have rolled her eyes. His endless quoting of Sun Tzu, the Spring and Autumn Period Chinese military strategist and commander, was also well-known in the academy.

Now, she couldn’t shake him out of her mind.

The time he had caught her smoking in her room and made her do a hundred push-ups. Even now she could still see the reflection of her face in the polished toecaps of his boots. The time he had reprimanded her in front of everyone after she had failed to recite accurately Sun Tzu’s five basic factors of military strategy. She could still see his bloated, sweating face even now after all these years.

She glanced at her watch — she had been on the island less than half an hour so far. She smiled and thought of Shi Keyu one last time. Shi Keyu who was dragged kicking and screaming from his Jiaozi dumplings one night to face execution by firing squad for crimes against the state. As she closed in on her objective, she heard the ancient voice of Sun Tzu as he whispered in her ear: Quickness is the essence of the war.

Ahead of her she heard whistling. She stopped in a heartbeat and pushed herself up against the wall, hiding in the shadows of a Chinese windmill palm. Good choice, she thought, but her appreciation of the plant-life was cut short when she saw the unmistakable figure of Maria Kurikova as she glided across the small window in the kitchen door and opened the refrigerator. It was definitely the Russian woman — blonde hair tied back, blue eyes, tall and elegant. Too elegant for an FSB goon, she thought. Perhaps she was descended from the Russian aristocracy.

But Kurikova’s provenance hardly mattered now. All Lexi was thinking about was how to take her out of the equation. As far as she was concerned she wouldn’t be able to have a serious shot at taking Eden out until the Russian woman was out of the way. She might look like a Tsarina, but Lexi had seen her in action and it was no joke. Her assessment of the situation was that if she tried to hit Eden while Kurikova was still standing things might get nasty.

She racked her mind thinking of possible plays, and then the ghosts returned to her once again out of the ether. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected…

Not expected, indeed.

Looking above her she saw an air-conditioning duct grille. Standing on the side of the palm pot she pushed it open and climbed inside until she was concealed within the duct, and then she shuffled forward slowly and silently, dragging both Shi Keyu and Sun Tzu behind her.

Over the kitchen now, she peered down through the grille in the ceiling and watched as Maria finished making her sandwich. Lexi noted that she had left her gun on the couch in the sunken living area.

Big mistake, she thought. This is too easy.

Taking a deep breath, she coiled her legs up and then released them like a spring, powering the grille out with her boots and dropping through the hole behind it. The grille clattered to the floor with a metallic crash and Maria almost jumped out of her skin.

Lexi hit the ground and Maria reacted in half a second, just as Lexi knew she would. She spun around and reached out for the gun but it was too late. She had left the weapon too far away and made herself defenseless.

Lexi raised her gun and squeezed the trigger without a second thought, blasting Maria dead-center in the stomach.

Maria screamed in shock and agony. “What have you done?!”

“It’s war, Maria, and you’re dead.”

Without blinking, Lexi fired a second time across the chest and Maria screamed in pain and she staggered backwards toward the fridge, staring in horror as her white shirt turned blood red. “How could you?!” she screamed, her voice trailing away.

But Lexi was already gone, running up the circular staircase on her way to the upper levels. She knew this was the location of Alex Reeve’s research center, and consequently the nerve center of the ECHO team, and aside from Eden himself it was the highest value target on the island.

All warfare is based on deception, Xiaoli said the ghost of Shi Keyu. Lexi ignored it as she climbed silently up some wooden steps and moved along the mezzanine toward the research center.

“Lexi?” Alex looked startled as she turned from the computer to face her. Her face changed when she saw the gun in Lexi’s hands. “Listen, just take it easy, all right? You don’t have to use that…”

Lexi had heard enough. An ice-cold darkness had descended over her mind once again, just like the one she had felt when she’d called the Ministry’s Internal Affairs Department about Shi Keyu’s extra-curricular activities with a woman from the Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency. He was arrested a day later.

Without a moment of hesitation she fired the gun at Alex, striking her across the chest and upper arms and sending her flying around in the swivel chair. Alex screamed in shock, but it was over faster than she knew.

It wasn’t something Lexi wanted to linger over, so without glancing back, she moved stealthily along the corridor on her way to Eden. She’d already calculated that at this time of night he would either be in his bed or in his study, and the bedroom was her first port of call. She silently opened the door and switched on the lights, but the bed was made and empty, which meant only one thing — Sir Richard Eden had run out of hiding places.

Lexi Zhang raised her gun and stalked silently along the corridor to the final objective. Her mission’s end was behind one more oak-panelled door, and she intended to see it through to its logical conclusion.

She saw there was a low light on inside the study. Was he still awake — reading perhaps? Not a crazy idea, she thought. Maria and Alex had still been awake after all. But then again Eden was older than they were — perhaps he’d simply fallen asleep with the lamp on. For a long time she simply listened at the door but after a few minutes she decided he must be asleep.

She pushed the door open slowly and saw she was right. There, stretched out on his long leather couch beneath the Louvre windows at the side of his desk, was the mission objective: Sir Richard Eden MP.