Red Wolves

by Adam Hamdy

  ‘Hey!’ Pearce yelled to the guards who were pulling him away. ‘He’s killing them!’

  They looked at Narong, who was fighting his way through the crowd, touching one person after another with his deadly glove. The first woman was already flailing on the ground, gasping for air.

  ‘The patches,’ Leila said. ‘Use the patches.’

  Pearce glanced at the messenger bags he’d taken from Ziad and the huge guy in the men’s room. These things were a curse, but for people who were going to die anyway, they were a blessing.

  ‘We can save them,’ he shouted at the security guards, who were transfixed by the unfolding horror.

  Over a dozen people were on the floor, choking, and the surrounding crowd had started to panic. Pearce recognized the beginnings of a stampede as people fought to get away from Narong.

  ‘Give them these,’ Pearce said, grabbing a handful of patches and some latex gloves from inside one of the bags. ‘Don’t touch them without their wrappers. Use these gloves. These things will save those people’s lives.’

  The guards released their grip, and Pearce handed out the patches and gloves. He pulled on a pair himself.

  ‘And stay away from him,’ Pearce said, pointing at Narong. ‘He’s the Midas Killer. If he touches you, put one of these patches on.’

  Each guard took some of the patches. They all put on a pair of gloves, and gave Narong a wide berth as they crossed the arena to help the fallen. Narong didn’t pay them any attention; his eyes were fixed on Pearce.

  The music was building to a crescendo, which masked the clamour of panic in their little pocket of the arena. Realizing what he was capable of doing, people had cleared out of Narong’s path, and he ran at Pearce.

  He threw a punch, which Pearce dodged, but the glove came up fast and swept the air inches from Pearce’s face. Pearce kicked Narong in the shin and then leaped up and drove his knee into the man’s jaw, still swollen from their encounter at the Islamic centre. The bone crunched, and as Narong fell, Pearce drove a fist into the same spot and felt a mess of bone and flesh. Narong’s jaw was broken and presented Pearce with a point of weakness, which he targeted even as the assassin fell back in terrible pain. Pearce kicked Narong in the side, catching him in the ribs, and as he bent to absorb the impact, Pearce smashed another fist into the assassin’s face. Something gave, and the left side of Narong’s jaw hung loose, held on only by sinew and skin. But the assassin still didn’t fall. Instead he took a few steps back and reached into his bag. As Narong turned, Pearce caught sight of the edge of a black patch beneath his T-shirt. It clung to Narong’s back just above his kidneys. Narong showed Pearce what he had in his hand; a canister like the one he’d used in the Al Aqarab prison break. If it was detonated in here, it could kill hundreds, if not thousands. There was no way Pearce had enough patches to save them all.

  He sprang at Narong and threw a combination of punches, forcing the assassin back. But hatred gave Narong strength and he replied with a flurry of punches and kicks that left Pearce reeling.

  ‘For Chatri,’ Narong yelled. He held the canister aloft and was about to pull the pin when he was sideswiped by a fire extinguisher. Pearce looked round to see Ziad Malek wielding the bright-red heavy cylinder. Pearce rushed forward as Narong regrouped and kicked the canister from the assassin’s hands. It clattered across the arena floor and Narong turned to chase it, but Pearce reached out a gloved hand and tore the patch from Narong’s back. When Narong looked back in horror, Pearce grabbed the man’s messenger bag and ripped it away from him.

  Narong lunged, but Pearce stepped away, and the assassin fell to his knees, choking. He turned and crawled towards the canister, but he was running out of oxygen. Pearce walked over to him, and as his shadow fell on the man, Narong rolled onto his back and stared up. He was crying, but he held Pearce’s gaze until the last tears left his eyes and his body fell still.

  Pearce looked at the men and women who’d been touched by the Midas Killer, and saw they were recovering. All of them, including the very first woman Narong had touched, were wearing patches given to them by the security guards. Pearce picked up the discarded canister and put it in one of the three messenger bags he carried.

  The music stopped and the house lights came on as a voice spoke through the public address system. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Lightstar Arena regrets to inform you there has been a security incident at tonight’s event. The threat has been contained, but we need you to evacuate the building in an orderly fashion.’

  Pearce glanced round and locked eyes with Ziad, who was looking at Narong’s fallen body. Pearce moved towards him, but Ziad registered his approach and took a step back. Pearce could see his intent written all over his face, which was awash with tears. Ziad reached under his shirt and ripped off his patch. Almost immediately, he began to splutter and choke.

  Pearce raced towards him as he collapsed and did the only thing he could think of. He punched Ziad, knocking him out, and pulled a patch from one of the messenger bags. He peeled off the wrapper and stuck it between Ziad’s shoulder blades. He wasn’t going to let the man take the easy way out.

  ‘Make sure the cops take this one in cuffed,’ Pearce said to the nearest security guard.

  The man looked up from tending one of Narong’s victims, clocked Ziad, and nodded.

  Pearce got to his feet and joined the crowd of people heading for the exits.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Leila asked.

  ‘He didn’t touch me,’ Pearce replied. He drew some puzzled looks from people who’d seen him fighting, but he soon pushed past them into the main throng, where he was just another face among thousands.

  ‘You’re a hero, you know that?’ Leila remarked.

  ‘Don’t go getting soppy on me,’ he replied.

  ‘Just this once,’ Leila said. ‘And if you ever tell anyone, I’ll deny it.’

  Pearce smiled and joined a line of people heading towards a fire exit.

  Epilogue

  The events in Seattle had created an international scandal. The United States had accused the Chinese government of trying to smuggle a chemical weapon into US territory to target American citizens. To prove it was not complicit, Beijing had purged the Red Wolves. Anyone associated with the group had been arrested and the Qingdao Consumer Products factory had been destroyed. Only Li Jun Xiao and David Song, the two ringleaders, had escaped capture, but Brigitte Attali had been on their tail for three weeks. The patches she’d taken from the Elite Voyager kept her alive, but there was a huge government initiative, spearheaded by Redpoint Labs, one of Huxley Blaine Carter’s companies, to develop a substitute synthetic PTH. A total of eighteen people been affected at the Lightstar Arena. Clifton had arranged for the Centre for Disease Control to receive the contents of the bags Pearce had recovered from the arena, and Seattle police had found six more messenger bags in a minivan parked in an arena loading bay. Almost a full box – it was sufficient supply to keep the eighteen victims alive for fifty-five weeks, which would hopefully be long enough for Blaine Carter’s researchers to develop an alternative.

  Brigitte looked across the room at Echo Wu, the brilliant woman who’d helped her track her targets. When Brigitte had found her, Echo had been down to her last patch, and with the Chinese authorities having destroyed all manufacturing and stockpiles, she’d had no way to replace it. Echo had already resigned herself to death and had said her farewells to her husband and children. She’d broken down when Brigitte had presented her with three hundred patches from the Elite Voyager supply. Once the reality of a second lease of life had sunk in, Echo had sworn her everlasting gratitude and had joined Brigitte’s quest for vengeance.

  Echo smiled and stroked the QSZ-92 pistol on her lap. They were in the living room of a mansion in Shashubay on the shores of Lake Balkash in the east of Kazakhstan. The six-bedroom house was full of marble, gilt and smoked glass. It was the kind of showy decoration Brigitte despised, but she expected nothing less from the men who live
d here.

  She heard a car pull up outside, and checked her weapon one last time. She flipped the Glock’s safety and tightened the suppressor. The front door opened and Li Jun Xiao and David Song entered the open-plan hallway, accompanied by two bodyguards. Their faces widened in surprise when they recognized Echo and Brigitte.

  The bodyguards reached for their guns, but Echo shot the one on the left, and Brigitte killed the man on the right.

  ‘Very good. We should have known the extent of your abilities by the way you deceived us into thinking you’d gone to Paris,’ David Song said. ‘We would—’

  Brigitte shot David Song before he could say another word. She wasn’t interested in anything the man had to say. Pearce had tried to persuade her to bring them in for interrogation, but he’d soon realized it wasn’t an argument he could win. These men had done a terrible thing to her.

  Li Jun tried to run as his companion pawed at the bloody wound in his gut, but Echo shot him in the back of the head.

  Brigitte got to her feet and walked into the hallway. David Song fell to his knees, moaning and clutching at his chest. Brigitte said nothing. The man wasn’t worth her precious breath. She took a black patch from her pocket and stuck it to his cheek for a moment. She looked him in the eye and tore it off his face.

  ‘Please,’ he said, but he managed nothing else, and began choking as the toxin took hold.

  A few moments later, his face turned blue and he toppled forward, dead.

  Satisfied with their work, Brigitte and Echo left the house.

  Leila sat in the dusty tent and waited. As painful as it had been to postpone the search for her sister, it had been the right choice. Huxley Blaine Carter had kept his word and had thrown his vast resources at the hunt. His investigators had tracked down an aid worker who remembered Hannan, and Leila was now waiting to meet the doctor in a medical tent in the vast Zaatari Refugee Camp.

  Gohar, the local liaison, entered, followed by Dr Miriam Abboud, a thin, harried woman.

  ‘Dr Abboud, this is Leila Nahum,’ Gohar said.

  Dr Abboud shook Leila’s hand.

  ‘Dr Abboud, I believe you met my sister.’

  Leila’s heart filled with joy and she choked back tears of relief as Dr Abboud nodded and started talking about Hannan.

  Unblemished sky rushed by, giving no sense of speed or distance. It was only when Wollerton sat up that he saw the rugged Snowdonia landscape rolling and folding its way down to the sea. The little two-carriage train rattled along the line that connected Machynlleth with Aberdyfi, following the curves of the coast where the valleys met the waves.

  A few minutes later, Wollerton joined a handful of travellers who alighted at Aberdyfi Station. The small station house was closed, but there was a basket out front offering second-hand books in exchange for donations. Wollerton paid it no mind and hurried along the quiet street towards the main road. He pulled his coat tight against the winter chill and strode through the picturesque seaside town.

  The butterflies in his stomach made him feel like a first-time lover, but this was no romantic trip. He navigated the back streets, passing grey-stone terraces, and headed up a steep single-track lane towards the high edges of town. Two hundred yards along the lane was a terrace of four Victorian houses. Each stood four storeys high and backed right into a granite cliff that loomed above them. Their elevation, halfway up the cliff face, gave them a grand view of the town, the dunes and the sandy beach, which was being lost to a choppy incoming tide.

  Wollerton went to the last house and knocked on the double-width front door. He heard a rush of footsteps and the door swung open to reveal Freya, his eleven-year-old daughter. She was all smiles, and rushed out to embrace him. Luke, his thirteen-year-old son, came out hesitantly, but Wollerton pulled him into a bear hug and tousled his mop of brown hair. The boy had shot up since he’d last seen him.

  ‘You’re a giant now, Luke,’ Wollerton said, and his son smiled bashfully. ‘What’s your mother been feeding you?’

  Wollerton felt tears threaten as he held his children close to him. He’d kept a promise he’d made to himself in Qingdao, and never intended to go without his kids again. They were his joy.

  Wollerton looked up to see Esther emerge from a doorway. She looked softer somehow, as though all the anger and frustration that had blighted their last few months together had dissipated.

  ‘Hello, Kyle,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come in?’

  Pearce stood in Huxley Blaine Carter’s huge living room, admiring the majestic view of the Alps. Early snow had capped the nearby peaks in thick powder and gave the scene a picture postcard quality. It was a sight Rasul Salamov would never see. He was facing life in prison for the murder of Detective Evan Hill. As for his father, Deni Salamov, no one had seen or heard of him since the night Essi had been killed. Despite reminding himself of their long history of villainy, Pearce often found himself feeling sorry for the suffering the Salamovs had endured. Ziad Malek had been arrested, and, following multiple suicide attempts, had been hospitalized pending an evaluation to establish whether he was fit to face trial for his crimes.

  Pearce heard a door open behind him, and Robert Clifton entered with Huxley Blaine Carter. The billionaire smiled, but Pearce sensed worry and unease.

  ‘Mr Pearce,’ Blaine Carter said. ‘You did well.’

  ‘How did your father die?’ Pearce asked.

  Blaine Carter’s smile faltered. ‘They say it was a heart attack, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘And you believe the people who killed him were behind Seattle?’

  Blaine Carter nodded.

  ‘And we found links between them and London,’ Pearce said. ‘And the Midas Killer’s brother was one of the Islamabad attackers.’

  Blaine Carter’s strained expression relaxed and Pearce couldn’t help feeling as though he was in the presence of a proud parent. ‘You’re starting to see it, aren’t you, Scott?’

  ‘The MO is the same. Islamabad was an attack on the city, and Black Thirteen targeted kids. The Red Wolves were trying to poison American drug users. This is street espionage. They’re targeting civilians.’

  ‘Street espionage,’ Blaine Carter said. ‘That’s a good term for it. In the old days, malevolent actors would attack governments because it was only through the instruments of the state that they could reach people. But the world has changed. Imagine the pressure the American people would have brought to bear on the government if a million people’s lives had depended on the steady supply of those patches. It could have thrown the whole country into chaos. Who needs a far-flung war, when you can put civilians on the front line in their own towns and cities?’

  ‘Who’s behind this?’ Pearce asked. ‘The man in the arena, Elroy Lang, laughed when I suggested Russia.’

  ‘You’re still thinking in the old way,’ Blaine Carter replied. ‘Nation states aren’t what they once were. The world has moved on.’

  ‘If it’s not a country, how do we know who to trust? Or what they want?’

  ‘Both excellent questions,’ Blaine Carter said. ‘The last time I offered you a job, you turned me down. What do you say now? Will you find the answers to those questions? Will you find out what really happened in Islamabad? In London? In Seattle?’

  Pearce reached into his pocket and produced a folded photograph. He crossed the room and laid the picture flat on the top of Blaine Carter’s grand piano. It showed Elroy Lang getting into a towncar near the Lightstar Arena. After Pearce’s encounter with the man, Leila had used the drone to follow Elroy out of the venue. Before the tiny craft’s batteries had died, she’d managed to snap the image of Elroy climbing into his getaway vehicle. But it wasn’t Elroy or the car that interested Pearce. It was the man who was already inside the vehicle, whose face was just visible in the back. He wore a light-blue suit and had a long, unkempt salt-and-pepper beard and keen blue eyes.

  ‘When I visited Lieutenant Joe Spinoza in custody, I showed him this picture. He ident
ified the man as Andel Novak and said he worked with Eddie and Kirsty Fletcher and the Red Wolves,’ Pearce revealed. ‘The trouble is, I’ve seen this man before, at a Progress Britain meeting in Blackbird Leys. His name then was Markus Kral, Emeritus Professor of Geostrategy at Charles University in Prague.’

  Pearce paused and looked Blaine Carter in the eye. ‘Minutes after I saw this man at that meeting, two members of Black Thirteen kidnapped me. They tortured me and tried to kill me. So I’ll take your job, Mr Carter. And the first thing I’m going to do is find out exactly who this man really is and who he works for. And once I’ve done that, I’m going to kill him.’

  Author’s Note

  I started planning Red Wolves in December 2018, long before the world had ever heard of Covid-19. Writing this note in May 2020, we’re in the grip of pandemic and the future is uncertain. It seems likely we’ll experience a global economic downturn, and if previous recessions are any guide, we’re likely to see an increase in drug abuse, which means the suffering caused by synthetic opioids is likely to spread. If you or anyone you know has been affected by drug abuse, please don’t suffer alone. Reach out to one of the many organizations established to help people cope with drug addiction. Wikipedia has a useful international list of such organizations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Addiction_and_substance_abuse_organizations

  We don’t know how healthcare systems are going to respond to the challenge posed by Covid-19, whether a vaccine will lead to the eradication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease it causes, or whether we’ll be living with this threat for the foreseeable future. As a contemporary thriller writer, I’ve taken the decision to assume society will continue to function largely as normal through the use of mass and regular testing. This is the approach that has worked best in countries such as South Korea and Germany, and it seems reasonable to believe these countries will act as models for the rest of the world. If the future proves me wrong, I hope readers will forgive any divergence from reality.