by David Caris
Like mini cities, Kovac thought.
Then it would be forest again, on and on, a blur of trees broken only by stations, which always hit with the force and surprise of a punch.
The journey was four hours and three minutes, and it hadn’t been difficult to get a train. From what Kovac had seen, they departed every hour or so. No one had checked his identification or ticket, and he had no luggage that could breach the company’s policy demanding tags on all items.
He eventually disembarked at Gare de Lyon, half expecting another message from Malone. But it wasn’t to be. His phone remained lifeless.
Unsure what to do, Kovac fell into the Paris crowds. He started a long walk, tracking a thick cluster of train lines. He walked until the crowds fell away, which didn’t take long. Soon, it was just him and an old lady with a small trolley. He wasn’t in a rush. Given he had no destination, he was content to let her set the pace, and she did. The downhill was slow, the uphill even slower.
Truth be told, Kovac was trying to walk off his trepidation. He needed this meet – if that’s what it was. He didn’t know what it would bring exactly, but he knew his enemy now. Bibi Dauguet. He didn’t know why she was his enemy. He couldn’t think what he or Curzon had done to provoke her wrath. But it was clear now she had gone to extraordinary lengths to wreak havoc on the company’s networks and associated infrastructure. Her hand in this possibly even extended to the online action and terror threats.
Or was this an ambush?
The question kept coming to him out of nowhere. But an ambush only raised the same old questions. Why go to all this trouble? Why capture him, drug him…? Why dictate his travel as they had, leaving nothing to chance? He had traveled here on an exact itinerary, a puppet at the behest of puppeteers. There had to be a reason for all that, and Kovac couldn’t help but feel the answer lay here in Paris.
Unless of course Paris was just another waypoint…
No, the answer lay here. He could feel it.
A meet. Possibly even a negotiation.
After all, things hadn’t gone smoothly for Bibi the past few days. She had failed to get hold of the last remaining domain controller, and she had been forced to reveal herself while trying. Then the accident. There had been more details released online. Were it not for the kindness of strangers, Bibi would’ve drowned. As it was, she had been the woman they pulled out of the water. Kovac didn’t know what her injuries were, but she was under arrest in a hospital in Vienna.
She was on the back foot, trapped?
Maybe.
And maybe she was now using an intermediary to haggle.
But what did they want from him?
His identity?
Yes, perhaps – in return for the one remaining domain controller.
If so, Kovac wasn’t buying. His identity was already in the wild, attracting bids from enemies he hardly remembered, but who all obviously remembered him. He could see no other explanation for someone hiring the gangbanger Anton Sanz to take a shot at him.
At this thought, he refocused on his surroundings, his mind running the 360-degree surveillance Bishop and the Navy had hardwired into him in his youth. He had followed the old lady into a side street, which was deserted.
His phone suddenly buzzed. It was Malone, sending an address that required very little deviation from the path Kovac was on.
He doubled back to the train line, then pushed on in the direction he had first chosen.
Malone was definitely tracking him. The text had come as soon as Kovac made a wrong turn.
Kovac had been toying with the idea of using the phone he had received from Malone to contact Megan and inform her of Bibi’s role. But this phone was certainly tapped. And even stopping at a store selling burner phones ran the risk of scuttling his meet.
If this was a meet.
According to his GPS, he had a little over a mile still to walk. The area wasn’t exactly postcard-worthy. The street was wide and lined with cars, and the buildings were large and austere. A lot of them looked like they might be public housing. On the lower levels, he passed auto dealers and mechanics, and a few shops selling scooters and scooter accessories. Then it was a solid wall off to his right, shielding the train line.
The weather was good at least, and the trees were a brilliant green.
He sat at one bus stop for a while, contemplating a bus to break up the walk and provide some cover, but no bus came. He resumed walking. It was helping him think anyway, and if someone was going to take a shot at him it was best to vary his pace and mix things up.
He passed a park on his left, then hit a new section of road that was all modern builds with fetching curves and mirrored glass. The cars were a little nicer here, and two buses passed him traveling in the opposite direction, one puke green, the other a sleek grey.
He arrived at a busy intersection and stopped. There was a bistro with a sign promising pizza, and he realized he was hungry. Thirsty, too. He wanted to arrive with energy in reserve and caffeine in his veins, but he was too close and too curious to delay.
He kept walking, and soon arrived at the building. He had memorized the address and didn’t need to check the phone. It was old, with scaffolding on its facade – undergoing some kind of renovation. Plastic sheeting flapped in a gentle breeze.
Kovac had to use a buzzer, which clicked to life straight after he pressed the button. He heard a male voice, sounding distracted, as if he were working on far more important things. ‘Kovac? English, yes?’
Kovac said nothing.
A security camera moved overhead, and Kovac heard the tiny whine of a zoom.
The door clicked loudly. ‘Come up. Level three.’
It sure as hell felt like a meet.
The building’s elevators were out of order, which didn’t bother Kovac. He preferred stairs to locking himself in a tiny box anyway. He climbed to the third level and paused at the door. He was unarmed, still fighting off the last of the drugs in his system… did he really want to go through this door?
Yep.
He listened. He heard a chopping sound and a bubbling sound, and a clanging of some kind which cut out just as fast as it started.
He opened the door an inch, moving cautiously, and was confused by what he saw. There was no table, there were no chairs. No Malone that he could see, either. Instead he was peering into a busy industrial kitchen.
It’s only occupants… three men with hair nets.
Kovac opened the door the rest of the way and stepped in. He looked for any sign of Malone, but it was just the three men: a fat chef who was clearly in charge and two cooks, one white, one black. The chef was cutting up raw fish with an enormous knife, while the other two were completing menial tasks. One was washing a large plastic crate filled with oranges, the other adding vegetables to a vat filled with some kind of brown stew.
The stew smelled good, whatever it was.
Kovac looked around, confused. The entire kitchen was stainless steel. Stainless steel fridges, stainless-steel freezers, stainless steel cookers. There was a fire extinguisher on one wall, but otherwise it was a featureless industrial kitchen. Utilitarian, clinical, sterile.
This impression was confirmed by the man working on the oranges. He nodded for Kovac to change into an apron and put on a hair net, then pointed towards a strange machine over in the corner of the room. It looked like a tiny car wash. There were white gumboots there, and Kovac had the impression he was meant to put the gumboots on and then put them into the tiny car wash, with its two bright green roller scrubbers. He did no such thing. Instead, he made his way quickly through the kitchen, past countless packs of meat in plastic packaging and a hot grill, towards a large collection of canned food. He paused at a pack of eggs that had been left out on a bench with two or three different oils.
What the fuck was this?
He noticed a small plastic bag, containing a little stew. He picked it up, wondering why it had been put over here, separate from the rest, and the chef s
topped chopping and shouted at him to put it down.
Kovac turned on the spot, confused, looking again for Malone. But it was clear now he wasn’t coming.
Kovac had been lured in here, but why?
He didn’t like it.
The three men in the kitchen had stopped working and were staring at him, as if he were insane. The chef asked a question in French, but Kovac couldn’t make much sense of it. They pointed again to the equipment he would need, as if they were expecting him to work for them. They were expecting an employee?
Using English, Kovac tried to tell them there had been a mistake. This only intensified their frowning and frustration.
Pointless.
He gave up, turned and walked out, but one of the men followed. The one who had been overseeing the vat full of stew. He asked Kovac something, using a language that wasn’t French or English. Arabic. Kovac recognized it from one of his earliest jobs. After leaving the SEALs and faking his own death, Kovac had undergone surgery to alter his face. The aim was to fool facial recognition, which hadn’t been too difficult in those days. Half the time, the software fooled itself, even with a perfect hit. While recovering, Kovac had stayed with a family in Egypt. He had practiced a little Arabic in the morning with the husband and wife there – or really, with the wife. The husband had never been very interested in talking.
Kovac recognized a few words now, but he hadn’t learned enough to know what this man was saying to him. ‘English?’ he asked.
The man shook his head. He gave Kovac a shrug, then turned and slipped back into the kitchen.
Kovac continued down the stairs. Two minutes later, he was back at the door leading out to the street, none the wiser. He looked down at the phone Malone had given him. No message, no last-minute change of venue, nothing. What the hell was he meant to do now?
He pushed open the door to exit the building, but paused. He threw the phone out, but didn’t follow it. Whatever this was, Kovac was done taking instructions. It was time he started thinking for himself.
Chapter 46
Megan had left Juliette in the capable hands of doctors in Vienna and – following Kovac’s advice – had allowed Curzon to scoop her up and shuttle her back to London. It was now lunchtime, and she was back in the familiar cocoon. She had a crisis management team in her ear every thirty seconds, and plain-clothed security staff saying “we strongly advise no” for every request she made. She was back in her office, back with her head to the glass, back welcoming vertigo as she stared down at the street. She could see a voracious British press pack being held back by uniformed guards. There were other guards too, bodyguards, armed and waiting at what looked like a motorcade.
All this made sense. A few quick searches online had revealed that she was front-page news. Remarkably though, there weren’t many photos of her. The few that had been taken since the hack were mercifully confined to the London office and her apartment, and none of them contained Kovac.
She decided maybe this wasn’t so remarkable. No one had been looking for her in Vienna.
A lot had happened during Megan’s escape from this glass prison. PR had been in overdrive and there were countless drafts of at least six different press releases awaiting approval. Megan had skimmed three of them and all three made the same fundamental error. They targeted the general public. That would need narrowing. Today, she would thank the company’s employees, then speak directly to its clients. This hack wasn’t going away. With Juliette out of action, and the company’s one remaining domain controller in the European postal system, things were in a state of limbo and would remain so for weeks if not months. She needed her employees calm and focused, and her clients reassured that Curzon had their back and would pick up the tab for any short- to medium-term losses.
She would’ve loved nothing more than to schedule one-on-one interviews with the press, shared out among her senior management and media relations team. But Kovac was right. The company’s statement had to come from her, and the best way to do that was an honest-to-God, no-holds-barred press conference.
That was another problem with the press releases drafted so far, she now realized, adding it to a mental list that was rapidly spiraling out of control. They all promised a swift return to business as usual.
Megan phoned Juliette’s parents and boys, asking what they needed and making sure they had it. They had landed in Vienna and were already at the hospital with Juliette, who was heading into a second surgery but hanging in. Megan told them she was available any hour, then rang her father. The call didn’t connect. She put her cell down and used her desk phone to call Nix. ‘Dad’s not answering, do you think you could check with his security at Pemberton and see if –’
‘You haven’t been told?’ Nix said. ‘He’s using the 777.’
‘The what?’
‘He organized it for you. It was meant to be a surprise but, oh well. Surprise.’
‘Nix, I don’t have time for games. Make sense.’
‘It’s a business jet, Megan. A really big one. Even by your rich-girl standards.’
‘And?’
‘It has a 12,000-mile range.’
It took a moment for his meaning to click. ‘He’s flying here? He’s meant to be resting up and enjoying his fucking retirement, Nix.’
‘When you vanished and we couldn’t get a hold of you, he –’
‘– felt compelled to take off and take over. Yeah, I’m familiar with the pattern, Nix. Can you get him on satellite?’
‘I’ll try. Give me two.’
She hung up, frustrated. But then, who did she have to blame but herself? She hadn’t been handling this. That’s why she had six shitty drafts for a public statement, and complete paralysis at every level of her management and PR teams.
That, and an inbox which had honest-to-God exploded.
Ironic, she thought, waiting on her father. The whole bloody company collapses and email’s the first thing to come back.
Her cell phone buzzed. She checked it.
A lunch invite, from Nicholas Shearing. With everything that had been happening, she had almost forgotten Nicholas Shearing existed. The last time she thought of him was back when she caught him in the lie about paying for a meal.
She didn’t trust him.
And anyway, she had bigger problems.
She put down the phone without replying, her mind returning to Curzon’s leadership vacuum. She knew exactly what was going on. No one wanted to step up because that would attach their name to the clusterfuck that was the past few days. Everything was in a holding pattern, waiting for a member of the Curzon family to step in.
The phone on her desk rang. She snatched it up. ‘Dad?’
‘Me again,’ said Nix. ‘He’s currently on the phone to Daniel.’
‘To Daniel? Why?’
‘Daniel’s been covering for you – while you were… wherever you were.’
‘Okay. Then I need another favor, Nix.’
‘Name it.’
‘Ring Daniel as soon as you can get through to him, and tell him if he says another word to anyone – about anything – I’ll give Kovac his address.’
‘Give who his address?’
‘Kovac. K – O – V – A – C.’
‘Got it. Who’s –’
‘Have you confirmed the location I wanted?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay. Send out the details. One crew per invited network. I need you to constrain the reporters, Nix. A media scrum and we look like we’ve lost control. Especially the cameramen. They’re always the ones that lose their shit. Mark out set spaces, names on seats, and make sure we have plenty of staff who can show them –’
‘I’ve got it, Megan. I promise to treat them like a class of Grade 1s. You just focus on what you’re going to say.’
‘What we’re going to say. You’re going to chair this panel of two. It’s me and you, Nix. One hour and we’re on.’ Megan hung up and crossed to the window. She was asking a lot, but N
ix was Nix. She wouldn’t ask if she didn’t think he could manage it.
For a minute or so, nothing happened. Then the press pack suddenly broke up and began to disperse.
Like freaked-out ants, she thought.
The word was out. Press conference coming!
Chapter 47
This time, Kovac entered the kitchen with purpose. He had no interest in cooking. He was here to do damage and get answers.
He was still unarmed, but all the marching up and down stairs, combined with a little adrenaline, had served to tamper the drugs in his system. Best of all, he had his layout now. The chopping sounds, the bubbling sounds, the clanging sounds, they all sat like GPS dots on his metal map.
On entry, Kovac found himself in front of the same three men with the same three hair nets. Two looked confused, one looked scared. The one who looked scared – the Arabic-speaking guy from the vat, Stew Boy – went for a knife. He tried to shake the chef down, because the chef was still standing over the raw fish; he had the best knife in the kitchen. But now that the three men were under attack, the chef shook his head. He’d be keeping his knife, thank you very much.
Stew Boy was forced to rifle through an open drawer, constantly glancing up at Kovac, who closed in fast. He tried on a spatula for size only to throw it aside, settling on a meat thermometer. He stood straight with it, holding it in a reverse fist grip, so that the thermometer’s dial sat atop his thumb and forefinger, and the spike ran down the inside of his forearm.
Kovac didn’t have a drawer he could rifle through – or a meat thermometer. Just two gumboots, which he’d grabbed on the way in. He threw them at Stew Boy while closing the distance between them, giving him little to no time to plan an attack. The guy washing oranges – seeing gumboots flying now – scrabbled backward. He almost tripped over himself as he retreated, while the chef went for a phone towards the rear of the kitchen.
Stew Boy ducked the first gumboot and actually cowered to absorb the harmless blow from the second. He was trapped by all the stainless steel: the fridges, the freezers, the cookers. Kovac grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and threw that, too, followed by the packs of meat and a few cans of food. He pitched these last items like baseballs. They hit Stew Boy’s chest and upper arms with satisfying thuds, and he cowered and edged backward.