Tori let out the breath she’d been holding.
Hermes turned a screen around so Tori could see a report from Sky TV that was coming through. ‘Hold that phone up, Swyft. I want Frankie’s good eye to see this.’
Russia’s strongman, President Maxim Tushkin, has committed suicide … leaving behind a videoed confession that will rock world capitals.
Despite earlier reports that placed Tushkin inside the Sagrada Familia, Sky TV can confirm he was definitely on board his plane when it exploded …
‘That’s what you told me, before,’ said Tori. ‘But how did he sneak out from the church?’
‘He didn’t. It’s his double in there, and that version of Tushkin is still in there. Poor fellow sold his soul, and his face, for a few pieces of Tushkin’s gold.’ Hermes began to frown. ‘Damn those Sky bastards! They’re refusing to play my video.’
‘You play it for me, then,’ said Tori, still hoping to eke out a little more time.
‘I would, but with those cops you brought here about to breathe down our necks, we’ll just go with Sky’s summary.’
Tushkin confesses that he was behind the gruesome murders this morning of Greenland’s Prime Minister Nivikka Petersen and Chinese diplomat Rao Songtian. The Arctic accord the two countries reached yesterday, he said, was a direct threat to Russian supremacy in the Arctic.
His operatives held a gun to their heads and forced them into a depraved orgy, which Tushkin ordered to be videoed …
‘It’s only a matter of time before people work out that your video was a deepf—’
‘Swyft, shut the fuck up and listen. You’re witnessing high art here.’
The only thing true on the video, said Tushkin, was that his assassin – the now infamous woman in the polka dot dress – was indeed the fugitive currently being sought by Barcelona police, the renegade ex-CIA officer Dr Victoria Swyft …
‘Unbelievable!’
‘There’s more.’
Tushkin goes on to say that he collaborated with eco-terrorist group Endz of the Earth to crush any ambitions the United States might have of stepping into China’s Arctic shoes …
Hermes muted the report.
‘That last part is a little bit true. The full truth is that Endz of the Earth are a total Tushkin fabrication. And now I’ve made them my fabrication. That way, it’s them, fanatics aligned with a rogue Russia, who are holding world leaders hostage, demanding action on climate change they should get but never will and ripping a huge ransom out of the bastards as minor recompense.’
Tori took a deep breath. ‘Very clever. You can make anyone believe anything. So why should I believe you’ve really got Frank? Why should I play that game?’
Hermes looked at her pityingly. ‘Oh, honey. Do you really want to take that chance?’
The silence stretched out between them. Then very slowly, so as not to alarm Hermes, Tori began bending her knees. She placed her pistol and the phone on the floor. She rose just as slowly, showing Hermes that her hands were empty. ‘You win, Hermes.’
‘Good move,’ said the assassin, smiling. ‘If you’ve made your choice, let’s hear it. We don’t have all day. Who gets the chop? Lover-boy or the quivering masses at Mass? Tick, tick, tick. And your answer is?’
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said before,’ said Tori as she shot her left hand forwards, Akono’s taser in her grip, firing its two barbed darts into Hermes’ torso, the electroshocks crackling the air.
Hermes fell to the floor, convulsing, squirming, screaming as the fine copper wires delivered 50,000 volts into her body.
‘That misdirection thing,’ said Tori, keeping her finger pressed down on the taser trigger, ‘that was a great tip. Thanks.’
Tori crouched, grabbed her gun with her other hand and shouted into the phone at her feet. ‘You people with Frank. Put that blade anywhere near him, and your boss here gets 9 mm of steel in her fucking brain. Untie him and remove his gag. I want to hear him speak. Now!’
121
Suddenly, Hermes leapt to her feet, seemingly oblivious to the electric pulses still going into her. A two-metre silver cane materialised in one of her hands and she whipped it through the air, right then left, whacking both gun and taser out of Tori’s grip, then lashed the cane back again to whack it against Tori’s right ankle then her left.
Hopping from foot to foot, her hands and legs stinging, Tori screamed, ‘How—’
‘Boys,’ Hermes shouted, directing her voice up to the ceiling cameras, ‘give Frank a taste of a tase. On three. One—’
‘No … Please!’ yelled Tori. ‘Leave him. Please.’
‘Two. In my world, Swyft, actions must have consequences. You taser me, I taser Frank. Three. Tase him.’
Tori squeezed her eyes shut as the moans and crackles came out of the phone.
‘Enough, boys. Now, Tori, listen and learn. In my business, appearances count, which is why I use only the best dressmakers. Like the one who made this jumpsuit.’ She splayed out her hands and curtsied. ‘A stunning cut, don’t you think? Makes me look like a potential Miss Universe, right? But its real magic is in the fabric, not the cut. This material,’ she said and snapped the sleeve at her wrist, ‘is one of man’s wonders. It’s a wafer-thin sandwich of stretchy Lycra and a multi-thread carbon fibre, making it the world’s finest anti-stun-gun textile. If a taser’s charge hits these fibres, like yours did, they absorb it and the electricity never reaches my delicate skin.’
‘You were convulsing on the floor. I saw—’
‘One distraction deserves another. My yin for your yang, or whatever.’ She yanked the taser’s two prongs out of her stomach and flicked them and the wires away from her. She picked up the tablet and tapped the screen. ‘Time’s running out.’ She pointed to the cops on the street-cam, one speaking into his radio mic, the other walking across the road towards the dumpster. ‘We don’t have a lot of time, Tori, and my five hundred church mice are getting restless, as am I, so I’ll make your choice for you. Despite you tasering me, Frank gets to live but in … ninety seconds,’ she tapped the screen and held it up so Tori could see the countdown, ‘my slaughterbots blow up the Sagrada Familia and all who wail in her.’
Tori, her ankle and wrist pain agonising, tried to work out what to do. If she went for her pistol she risked Hermes shooting her first or changing her mind about Frank, or both.
‘Tori, I want you to picture another video, one recording how it was the already reviled Dr Swyft who pressed this button. What’s the countdown at so far? Ah, 81. Anyway, the video shows you setting the very timer which, 90 seconds later, activates the signal that gets those birds to kill all those fine people. Sure, I was the monster who actually pressed it, but that’s a secret between two girlfriends. Tori, because I’m such a fine individual, I’m going to give you one chance to alter that history I’ve pre-made for you.’ She held the tablet up again. ‘The big red button that started off with the number 90 – now, look, it’s 66! It’s kind of thrilling watching the digits count down, don’t you think?’
‘Get to the point,’ said Tori, no angle coming to her mind.
‘Sure. We’re done here,’ Hermes began to step backwards, ‘so here’s the deal. If you do somehow manage to give this button a second tap before the number reaches zero, you’ll get to do some abracadabra stuff yourself. You’ll have reset my little birds and instead of Tori Swyft committing mass murder, you’ll see them whoosh out of the church’s windows and wing it to an altitude of three hundred metres, where they’ll self-destruct. Do that and all those people in there get to go back and continue making a mess of the world.’
The number was down to 41 seconds.
Hermes was a desk-length away from the balcony when Tori dropped to the floor and went for her gun.
‘That dumb move just cost Frankie his life,’ said Hermes placing her free hand on the rim of the orange trash chute at the window, the other still hanging onto the tablet. She dared a stare at Tori as she backed on
e foot into the chute behind her, then the other. ‘Boys,’ she called out, ‘slice his throat.’
Down at Tori’s feet she heard the shick of a knife and a loud gurgle. ‘You promised he’d live,’ she said, her voice a whimper. She bent down to pick up the phone and went to look at Frank but couldn’t. Dazed, distraught at what she’d done, she put it into her pocket.
122
The timer on the tablet was down to 23 seconds. The upper half of Hermes’ torso was still out of the chute. ‘Actions have consequences, Tori. I did warn you. Time’s running out, girl, so I’m out of here. If you want some friendly advice, you better scoot too or you’ll end up the same way as your buddy … ex-buddy, I guess. Hey, here’s an idea for you,’ she said, and tossed the tablet, its cover flapping as it flew out through the balcony doors. It hit the flag and seemed to tangle in the halyard.
Hermes slid the rest of her body into the chute and, as her head disappeared, she started singing the chorus to Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.
Tori desperately wanted to collapse, to curl up into a ball and sob, to bang her fists on the floor and scream out Frank’s name but when she saw the tablet work itself loose of the halyard, she remembered the photo of the Falling Man and knew what she had to do.
She sprinted across the room and flung herself headfirst over the balcony railing, arms back in a swan dive.
‘Holy crap,’ said Cardona down on the street, grabbing Virella’s arm and pointing to the upper floors.
‘Officer down. Officer down,’ Virella yelled into his radio. ‘Dispatch an ambulance. An officer’s been pushed off a sixth-floor balcony.’
Tori plummeted. The tablet was spinning and tumbling, its cover flapping, just out of reach. After what seemed an age but was less than half a second, she stretched out a hand and snatched it, slipped it inside her hi-viz jacket. The lowest corner of the flag flicked her face. She grabbed hold of the fabric, knowing it would rip but hoping it would slow her down. She swung herself towards the lowest balcony as the flag shredded, twisting her body at the last second so it was her shoulder and not her head that crashed through the French doors, splintering the wood, shattering the glass. Instinct cut in and somehow she managed to arch herself forwards, tuck in her head and manoeuvre herself into a dive roll.
Spread out on the floor, her heart thrashing a mile a minute, blood pounding and sweat pouring out of her like a broken dam, it was so hard to breathe she feared she was about to black out. Knowing time was not on hers or anybody’s side, she reached into her jacket for the tablet and, with … 13 seconds left, she jabbed her finger on the red icon.
… 12 …
She jabbed again.
… 11 …
She pressed her finger against it again and again, but the countdown wouldn’t stop.
The 11 became a 10.
‘Fuck you, Hermes!’ she screamed.
The two cops looked up, their mouths open. ‘Who the hell was that?’ said Cardona. ‘Superman?’
‘Superwoman,’ said Virella. ‘Do you think it was Akono?’
123
Isabel Diaz, like everyone, sat firmly in her seat. She wasn’t taking any risks, not with her boy beside her, not with the birds flying to and fro and intimidating the crowd.
A few minutes ago, when a man further back stood up to stretch his legs, five slaughterbots dropped from above without warning, swarming and buzzing around his head like bees until a woman sitting beside him dragged him down and, to the relief of the entire church, the birds darted back up to perch at the tops of the columns. Waves of murmurs and snuffles and sobs were still washing over the crowd.
Isabel had no idea what was coming, what her security team was doing outside, but she knew they’d be throwing every resource into this.
Stuck here, she had no choice except to keep a steely face and maintain her dignity – her country’s dignity – and keep Davey safe. What she’d wanted to do, what she felt was her duty, was to activate the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and put Vice-President Spencer Prentice in charge, except with her comms down she had no way to do it. Agent Jenkins, sitting over at the left side of the transept, had signed that all comms were down, his included.
Jenkins was a man who always went the extra mile. He had been learning ASL in his spare time to be of better service to Davey. Isabel had never dreamt that one day, and so soon, it could be of vital use.
Tushkin, seated two down, was fiddling with his smartwatch, constantly checking and re-checking it. If he was anyone except the world’s tough guy Isabel would swear it was nerves. The man who famously never let a smile cross his face was hunched over, head low and – was that a sob? It was, she was sure of it. Tushkin was cracking. Instinctively, she reached across Davey’s lap and put her hand on the Russian’s leg and gave it a squeeze. He looked back at her, his eyes glassy, a corner of his mouth quivering. He unstrapped his watch and, under the guise of a stretch, he slipped it to her.
The four full bars of signal she saw on it made no sense, but then neither did Tushkin the Terrible passing her the only working communications device in the whole building.
She glanced back at him, confused, and he pursed his lips like he was steeling himself. He reached over Davey and tapped the screen. The Cyrillic letters changed to English.
Russia’s President Maxim Tushkin dies on plane after leaving video suicide note … reveals man in church is double …
Isabel glanced back at him in alarm but he turned away. She looked back down at the watch.
Tushkin confesses to a staggering conspiracy against China and Greenland … admits to assassinating Greenland’s leader and a Chinese diplomat … reveals ex-CIA officer, already wanted by Spanish police, is secret Russian agent … collaborated with eco-terror group Endz of the Earth …
The revelations kept coming. They explained a lot but not enough. She quit the news feed, tapped the voice recorder icon then coughed, an excuse to bring the watch to her mouth, hoping whoever was operating the cameras wouldn’t catch what she was doing. She whispered her message, typed in the Secret Service’s emergency number and pressed what she hoped was send.
124
The countdown icon was at 7 seconds.
It flipped to a 6. Sweat was pouring off Tori’s brow, stinging her lashless eyes, drops of perspiration falling off her face onto the screen.
She was messed up, a wreck. Who wouldn’t be after freefalling through the air, almost crushing her skull and snapping her spine? Worse, none of her jabs at the red icon were having an effect and Tori, not thinking straight, was at a loss.
She started damning herself for not shooting Hermes when she had the chance … if only …
Downstairs, men were yelling; the only words she understood were policia and Akono. The sweat kept stinging. She wiped her sleeve across her forehead.
… 5 …
More sweat dripped onto the screen … on her fingers … That, she realised through her haze, that was the problem. The same way Hermes’ jumpsuit stopped the taser, her sweat was also a conductor, soaking up her finger’s electric charge, shielding the touchscreen, stopping her touch from registering.
… 4 …
The empty room was echoing with the men’s shouts and the thuds of their boots running up the stairs. ‘Don’t step on Freddie Mercury,’ she muttered in her stupor as she wiped the screen across her pant leg and rubbed her finger dry.
… 3 …
The screen was smeary, she wiped it again, then pressed her finger down on the icon as her eyes closed and everything went black.
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Tori winced at the unwelcome stink of garlic in her face, the bed so hard that the lumps cutting into her back as she shifted around got her wondering how the princess ever solved the problem of the pea.
Her eyes blinked open and the forest of hairs straggling out of the man’s nose were way too close, his breath awful, his dark eyes concerned but lacking kindness and his beard speckled with greys and browns and an assortment of cr
umbs.
He was kneeling beside her. Was he a doctor?
She couldn’t tell if he was speaking in Catalan or Spanish, or English for that matter. He handed her a flask of water, his other hand sliding under her shoulders, raising her up off the – what? The floor?
This wasn’t a bed. She wasn’t in a hospital.
Her head was light and fuzzy, her body limp. She didn’t know where she was or how long she’d been out. She smiled at him feebly, twisted the cap off the flask and began to take a swig, the water cold, refreshing. She felt hot, sweaty, and held the flask to her forehead to cool herself down, poured a little over her head.
She looked back at him and the security pass pinned to his chest came into focus. Virella, it said. A cop. And everything rushed back to her.
She tossed the flask aside, a ribbon of water flinging out of it, and she sat up, her butt crunching into more of what she now realised was broken glass. She patted her hands around her, feeling for the tablet, but it wasn’t there, and scrambled to her knees.
‘The tablet!’ she shouted, drawing a rectangle in the air and wiggling a finger into the imaginary shape like she was swiping the screen. ‘The iPad, Galaxy, Surface, whatever the fuck you call them here. Where is it?’
A second cop came into view. ‘You search for this?’
Tori grabbed the tablet out of his hands, wrenched the cover open and saw the screen flashing with the red icon … frozen at 2.
She put it on the floor and leapt to her feet, ran to what was left of the balcony doors, slivers and splinters of wood hanging off the hinges.
The Sagrada Familia was still standing, hundreds of people were streaming out, some going to a line of ambulances, others to buses, and a pall of grey smoke was roiling in the air high above the tops of the spires.
‘I did it!’ she screamed and skipped back to the cop, kicking at chunks of glass and bits of wood like mini-footballs and giving him a hug.
Double Deal Page 27