‘See what you missed? said Felicity. ‘Now who’s getting fucked, Mr Novichok Institute?’
And she pul ed the trigger.
Once again the 321 clicked and beeped.
‘Bugger!’ she yel ed.
She looked down the sight and saw the message, Handprint recognition paused, and a counter winding down from 45 seconds.
220 ≥ GIRL WHO FELL 1
Override it, Hebe, she commanded.
Insufficient data, said Hebe, in her German accent. It’s a human function—covered on the training that you skipped.
Whoops!
Despite being barely conscious and in deep pain, Grinin looked up, and their eyes met. His body shook in what must have been an excruciating attempt at a laugh.
‘The best laid plans,’ he rasped.
Shaking with fury, Felicity grabbed her bag, whipped out a garrotte wire, and slipped it round the old man’s neck.
As she turned the wooden pegs full force, Grinin gagged, and grabbed for the wire on his neck with his one hand; it was already cutting in.
His face turned first red, then purple, behind his beard.
He struggled to his feet, his massive body tossing Felicity about, and covering his face and housecoat with blood running from his neck and from her leg.
But he was no match for a 20-something OhZone, even a wounded one. Felicity clung to him, almost tenderly, and tight-ened the garrotte in the prescribed way.
Grinin’s face turned gray. His writhing slowed, and with Felicity’s weight on his back she brought him down like a big-game-animal, massively coughing in his final need for breath.
She held the garrotte tight as he made his ultimate struggle for life, blood gurgling from his mouth and soaking the beard.
Silent and stil , his grotesquely twisted face froze and he stopped coughing.
Felicity savored his expression before she undid the bloody wire, wiped it clean on the secret carpet, and slipped it into her bag.
R A E C H E L S A N D S ≥
221
For the first time it was quiet enough for her to hear the end of the record Grinin was playing.
If he had been alive, he would have pointed out how the tempo of Mussorgsky’s movement 13: With the Dead in a Dead
Language slowed toward a standstil .
She lifted him—her OhZone strength made it easy—and carried him over to the aquarium. With a heave she dumped his body face down over the glass and into the tank. He plunged to the bottom in a swell of bubbles and bloody froth with the alarmed fish swimming around him. Grinin’s body then bobbed back up to the surface, face up, and a couple of bolder fish started to investigate him.
‘You wanted to feed your “pretty ones” ’ she mocked.
She casual y looked into Grinin’s dead brown eyes with a cold, scientific objectivity.
His lifelessness is proof of your power over him, said Hebe.
We have won.
Felicity’s mind flashed to Diana’s blue eyes, and then to the twins’ brown eyes. Were their eye-color alleles identical too?
Soon she would be able to find out.
She reached into the aquarium, and felt Grinin’s hair and beard.
‘I wil take good care of them,’ she told him.
As she was about to touch the surface of his eyes, the Sig pistol in her bag gave three loud beeps and came back to life—making her jump. She froze. A strange sensation overcame her.
These eyes, can they stil look at me, see me?
She didn’t believe in reincarnation, but she did believe in other worlds or dimensions. Looking away, she grabbed Grinin’s one arm, and flipped his body over—so that it was face down in the water again. She didn’t want him coming back to life on her.
222 ≥ GIRL WHO FELL 1
Felicity took the key from her purse, and turned her back on the sea of red. Grinin’s body a grotesque whale amid scurrying sea-life.
On his desk, his cel phone rang. The cal er ID said: Diana.
To the strains of Mussorgsky, Felicity stared at the blood making bizarre modern art out of the pattern on the carpet.
The purple blood real y makes it, said Hebe.
Felicity unlocked the door and opened it, listening to the sound of the Scalectric cars racing.
She looked past the antique table towards the playroom and reached into her bag.
She took out an MI6 forensic pouch and removed the Emma and Olga badges. Then she produced another, and took out two bags of American candy from the orphans’ carnival.
Für die Kinder [for the children], Felicity told Hebe. My little brown-eyed Zwilinge.
Ours, said Hebe. Ours.
Holding her fine-featured head high—despite the bloodied side of her face, still the cat with the cream—Felicity walked slowly into the hal , the pain from the bullet wounds in her leg and foot making her wince. Sensing something behind her, she glanced over her shoulder into the lounge.
The intercom in the hall buzzed loudly, making her jump.
‘Emma, Olga!’ a voice shouted. ‘This is Blanka. Run and hide!’
Looking toward the elevator in panic, Felicity crashed into the antique table.
R A E C H E L S A N D S ≥
223
The Toby jug of the Queen wobbled, then toppled to the floor. It smashed into pieces, while the tranquillizer syringes landed softly amidst the jagged chunks of china.
Another voice came from the speaker, more restrained.
‘Olga, Emma, this is Nearby. The woman in the apartment is not your Nanny. She wants to hurt you. Lock your bedroom.
Don’t let her in. We’re coming!’
‘Who let those bitches in?’ Felicity said.
Hebe laughed eerily inside her head.
She pressed the talk button and hissed into the mic.
‘I’l see you in hel first.’
Then she ripped the intercom out of the wal .
Just the two of us now then, said Hebe. And the little girls, of course. Für die Kinder, La Bombe.
The End of the First Book
The story continues in:
Girl Who Fell 2: Refugee Rising
Hail the Queen®
RAECHEL SANDS
Raechel Sands is a new author
writing offbeat and thought-provoking
women-centred thrillers
for the 2020s.
The novels in her HAIL THE QUEEN
saga were best sellers in 2019
in both Great Britain and the United States,
and she has been rated one of the
top Science Fiction writers in the U.S.A.
Her books are not simply SF,
but blend genres—embracing noir,
spy thriller, lesbian fiction, satire,
epic, and Dan Brown-style
religious mystery.
Raechel’s website is www.girlwhofell.org
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Tango Romeo is an imprint of Goldheart Ltd a UK company Second edition published by Tango Romeo 2019
First published in e-book in 2018 by Tango Romeo First published in Great Britain and the USA in 2017 by Tango Romeo Copyright © Raechel Sands 2017, 2018, 2019
The right of Raechel Sands to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with s. 77 of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988
Hail the Queen is a registered trade mark of Raechel Sands and/or her associates Cover and book design by Richard O’Casey, Keith Sheridan, Sarahjane Jackson Cover illustration and sword watermark by Sophie Petch Photograph on page 130 by the author; taken at Liverpool Street station featuring the bronze public sculpture Für das Kind by artist Flor Kent Babes in the Wood watermark from ‘Babes in the Wood’ by Randolph Caldecott; (200
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Document Outline
START HERE
THE BEGINNING OF THE SAGA
CHAPTER LIST
HAIL TO THE QUEEN
CODENAME C
MAJOR GRININ
THE FIFTH OPTION
TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE
IT'S REALLY NOTHING LIKE JAMES BOND
THE PROPHECY
THE GIRL
I HAVE MY ORPHANS
THE IDES OF MARCH
THE LITTLE-BLACK-DRESS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT & LEGAL
Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series) Page 19