Shrinking away from the chaos, Marc slammed into Grace, bringing down his zip-tied hand in a sharp, jerking motion that snapped the plastic lock and freed him. Grace tried to traverse her own weapon towards him, but both of them were too afraid of being hit by Sigalov’s uncontrolled gunfire to do more than avoid it.
Shots from the Stechkin punched through the lift controls and the doors hissed shut before it sank back down the shaft. The gun’s slide snapped open, every round spent, and Marc had an instant to reflect on the miraculous fact he was still alive before Grace clobbered him with her pistol.
He staggered back, almost falling over the dying man on the floor. She threw herself at him, and more by luck than judgement, Marc met her midway. Grace was smaller than him, and she didn’t have the training that Sam Green had possessed. If she had been Sam, this would have been a harder fight.
Marc threw a vague punch that did little but move things around, and Grace bounced off the elevator controls. The lift obediently halted with another melodic chime, and she took the opportunity to knee Marc squarely in the balls.
He swore loudly and hit her again, this time with feeling. Grace fell back, out through the open doors and into an office level. Rubicon staffers working nearby fled when they saw the weapon, and Marc slammed the flat of his palm into the door close pad as Grace fired a three-round burst in his direction.
The shots clattered off the closing doors and the lift began to rise again. In the sudden quiet that followed, Marc teetered on the brink of adrenaline crash, slumping against the wall.
The bald guy was dead, staring blankly into nothing, dark blood pooling around him amid drifts of broken plastic and spent shell casings. Marc wrenched the Stechkin from the mercenary’s clawed fingers and searched him for ammo. As he got back to his feet, the lift returned to the crisis centre once again.
He exited warily, finding Lucy off to one side with the smoking shotgun still in her hand.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Assim spoofed the level counter in the elevator,’ she explained. ‘Made them think they were going where they wanted, when he was really bringing them to me.’
‘You saw us on the camera, then?’
‘So that was her?’ Lucy peered past him, dispassionately surveying her handiwork inside the lift car. ‘Where’s she at now?’
‘Still mobile,’ he admitted. ‘She’s not who I thought.’
‘Tell me later.’ Lucy beckoned him to follow. ‘Assim has the exit plan good to go.’
‘No, I do not!’ the hacker said hotly, as they crossed the room to where he was hiding, boxed in beneath a desk with his laptop open before him. ‘I told you, I had to put that aside to keep tabs on Marc.’
‘Appreciated,’ said Marc, ‘but, mate, we have to go right now. Grace is gonna ring the dinner bell any second and then everyone will be coming up here.’
‘It’s not ready,’ Assim insisted.
‘So we’ll run it on the go,’ Marc told him. ‘Come on, what do we have to do?’
‘Have you ever had an electric shock?’ Assim gave them both a worried look.
‘Yes.’ Marc and Lucy replied in chorus. They had been on the wrong end of tasers and cattle prods more than once.
‘Well,’ he said, offering up the words in his clipped, careful English, ‘if we screw up, this will make that look like baby kisses.’
FOURTEEN
‘You made the intelligent choice, Henri.’
McFarlane’s assistant stepped up to walk alongside Delancort.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
Delancort quickened his pace up the wide spiral staircase leading to the Rubicon tower’s apartment levels.
Finlay showed an expression that he seemed to think was friendly.
‘It’s not easy to do what we do, is it? Be the confidant, the aide-de-camp? They expect our loyalty.’
‘And who are you loyal to?’
Delancort cut him dead with his waspish retort.
A few steps behind them, Lau and one of his black-jacketed thugs were following, but the old man moved with effort and it slowed him down. Lau and his men couldn’t hear the exchange going on ahead of them.
‘I put my employer first.’ Finlay’s fake emotion dropped off his face. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I suppose that depends who exactly is writing your cheques.’ He shook his head. ‘Why are you even here?’
‘To keep an eye out.’
Finlay gave an arch sniff as they entered the next atrium, and gestured towards Solomon’s executive rooms.
‘He’s in there,’ he told Lau. ‘Just where you left him.’
Delancort saw another black-jacket standing in front of the door to Solomon’s apartment. The man had a canine look about him, and he was holding a gun out and ready in his right hand, his arms crossed before him.
‘Where are the police?’ said Delancort, but he already knew the answer.
They were elsewhere because Lau didn’t want Monaco law enforcement to see what was happening.
‘How does the server key operate?’ Lau was a little out of breath, but his tone was severe. ‘Explain it to me.’
‘An electronic card.’ Delancort knew there was no point in refusing or delaying his reply. ‘It enters a code, it reads my thumbprint. Then there is a voice authentication.’
‘You and Ekko must both do this?’ He nodded, and Lau pursed his lips in thought. ‘I will need to persuade him.’
The man guarding the door stepped aside as they approached, and Lau led the way in, his cane tapping across the floor.
Solomon rose from where he was seated in the middle of the open living room, adjusting the sleeves of his jacket.
‘Ah.’ He took in Delancort’s face with a curious expression. ‘It is done?’
‘You’re out of a job, Mr Solomon.’ Finlay couldn’t help himself, laying on a little smirk with the pronouncement. ‘The board voted.’
‘Of course they did.’ Solomon kept his eyes on Delancort. ‘Steps had to be taken.’
Lau halted by a wall, idly examining a Xhosa wood carving.
‘I want your Grey Record, Ekko. Surrender it.’
‘You know I will refuse.’
‘And you know I can find ways to compel you.’ Lau cast around, his gaze finding McFarlane’s assistant. ‘Are you going to make me prove it?’
For the first time, Delancort understood why Finlay was really there. Lau had to keep Delancort intact to use his key card, but the haughty Scot had no such protection. One of the black-jackets reached inside his coat and came back with a hand knife with a wide, spade-like blade.
Finlay blinked. He had yet to catch on.
‘You believe you hold the advantage, but you do not,’ said Solomon. ‘That has always been your failing, my friend.’
A garbled sputter of radio static issued out from inside Lau’s jacket, and he pulled out a walkie-talkie, still resting his other hand on his stick.
‘Report?’
Delancort heard a woman’s voice, a Russian accent speaking urgently. The two bodyguards tensed. Something was wrong.
And then he realised there were other people in the apartment with them.
*
‘Step away from the door,’ said Marc, sliding out from the shadows on the far side of the room.
He had a stolen Stechkin pistol aimed at the guard on the right, and even if the guy didn’t understand English that well, he got the inference.
The other one, the one with the dagger, twisted in place to meet Lucy as she came around a high rack of bookshelves. She had her compact shotgun cocked and ready to fire.
‘Drop it,’ she ordered, and the ALEPH operative reluctantly let his weapon clatter to the floor.
‘Ah.’ Lau mimicked Solomon’s earlier motion, adjusting his jacket and his balance on his walking stick. ‘Well done, Ekko. You always did know how to lay a good trap for me.’
‘This is not chess,’ said Solomon. ‘You have made this war.’<
br />
‘You did that!’ Lau’s face suddenly twisted into a snarling mask. ‘When you gave me up!’
‘We need to get out of here, sir,’ said Lucy, looking towards Solomon.
‘Yes, rather!’ said Finlay, becoming animated.
‘Not you,’ she added.
But Solomon did not move.
‘I have not been honest with you.’ He looked between Marc and Lucy, regret filling him. ‘About a great many things.’
‘He is a liar and a murderer,’ said Lau, bringing his moment of fury back to heel. ‘He betrayed me. He will betray you when the circumstances merit it.’
‘Sir,’ insisted Lucy, her attention shifting. ‘We have to go, right now.’
Later, Marc would recall this moment and see that Lau was savvier than he realised. The old bloke had been military, and he must have seen some of that in the way Lucy carried herself. Lau decided that the former sniper was the greater threat in the room, so he waited for that instant when she took her eye off the ball.
Lau moved faster than a man of his age and in his condition had any business doing. He whipped up the metal stick in a flashing arc that knocked aside a table lamp, smashing the tip into a fire alarm trigger on the wall.
Hooting sirens and flashing strobes were set off, but Marc was barely conscious of that, as the guard he had drawn down on pivoted to attack him. The man was his size but he was all muscle and spitting violence. He ran into Marc with a shoulder-charge, shoving him back into the shadowed corner of the apartment.
Maybe the ALEPH guy was counting on Marc being caught off guard; maybe he had been told that Dane was just a tech and he didn’t have it in him to use a weapon in anger. It was true that most ordinary people, even when push came to shove, couldn’t kill someone up close. To do it, you had to have that hesitation about taking a human life burned out of you by training, or hard-earned experience.
Maybe the ALEPH merc thought that would happen, that he’d get the automatic pistol right off him. But when Marc looked back, what he would remember was no conscious thought, no actual pause between reaction and action.
With the Stechkin’s muzzle pressed right against the mercenary’s chest, Marc squeezed the trigger and the pistol released an angry, roaring burst. His would-be killer tumbled away, his torso turned into a mess of crimson.
He was aware of Lau knocking Finlay out of his way with another blow from his stick, the bony old man barrelling out of the door and back into the corridor. Across the room, Lucy struggled with her guy; the ALEPH operative put his hands on the shotgun and they were turning around it, wrestling the weapon back and forth between them.
It went off with a thunderous bellow, blowing through a glass coffee table, the sound and fury of it causing Delancort to throw up his hands to protect his face.
Lucy let the gun go – it was no good to her now, the chambered round spent – and the black-jacket was momentarily put off balance as he got what he wanted. The ALEPH merc was quick and he spun the gun into a club as Lucy ducked low, skidding over the floor, grabbing at the fallen dagger.
He hit her across the shoulders in the same second she buried the blade in his thigh, and the man fell with a scream.
Lucy wrenched the shotgun from his nerveless fingers and backed off.
‘Pull that and you’ll bleed out in five minutes.’ She pointed at where she had left the dagger lodged deep in his muscle, dangerously close to his femoral artery. ‘Ponimayu?’
‘Da,’ he gasped, panting and clutching at the oozing wound.
Marc walked away from the body of his assailant, shaky and sick at his own actions. The sudden brutality of the fight left him feeling like he wanted to vomit. He swallowed the impulse, breathing through his mouth.
‘Where’s Lau?’
‘He fled.’
Solomon helped Delancort to his feet, and waved towards the open door.
‘We should go after him—’
‘You killed that man!’ Finlay shouted over Marc, red-faced and caught between indignation and horror, desperately trying to claw back some composure. ‘Good God, it’s all true! You people are a bunch of wild dogs!’
Lucy looked up from where she was securing the injured ALEPH operative.
‘He’s not coming with us, is he? I don’t like whiners.’
‘No.’ Marc tore a length of electrical cable from the bottom of the smashed lamp and coiled it up. ‘Wrists,’ he told Finlay.
‘What?’
‘Show me your wrists!’
Marc realised he was still gripping the Stechkin in his hand, and he put it aside. His skin prickled where the gun’s hot exhaust gas and the back-spatter of blood had hit him.
Finlay obeyed and Marc used the cable as a quick and dirty restraint, securing the man to the table.
‘I’m not the enemy!’ said McFarlane’s aide. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘Because you’re not one of us.’
The explanation was simplistic, but it was true, and Marc saw a reaction in the other man’s eyes that told him he had struck a nerve.
‘You are making a big mistake.’ Finlay became stiff and formal. ‘Are you really going to let yourself get hanged for some rich man’s vanity?’
A rich man’s vanity.
The words brought Marc up short. Lau had used exactly that phrase when describing Solomon and his endeavours. Marc stepped back, studying Finlay with a new intensity.
‘What is it?’ said Delancort, seeing the change come over him.
‘We’re leaving,’ Marc replied, with finality. ‘Come on, Assim’s waiting.’
Lucy loaded fresh shells into the shotgun and waved it in the direction of Finlay and the surviving ALEPH operative.
‘Trust me, none of you wanna follow.’
But Solomon hesitated. He looked drawn, and for the first time in Marc’s memory, he seemed worn down and tired.
‘There is truth in what he said.’ He nodded towards Finlay. ‘You risk everything for me, and there is much I have not told you.’
‘Yeah . . .’ Marc knew there would have to be a reckoning, but this wasn’t the time or the place for it. ‘Explain later, though?’
‘Escape first,’ added Lucy.
*
The elevator deposited them at a floor that didn’t actually exist.
Lucy shot Marc a questioning look as the doors opened somewhere between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth tiers. He gave her a shrug and stepped out, with Solomon and Delancort following on behind.
Warm, machine-scented air hit her like a face-full of oily cotton, and there was an abrupt moment of giddy vertigo when she realised where they were. A skeletal metallic deck, little better than a glorified set of catwalks, crossed over the throat of the tall air chimney that ran down the core of the Rubicon tower.
Lucy looked through the steel grate supporting her boots and into a long concrete tube studded with spinning fans and metal baffles. The building’s elevator spine was built into the airway, part of a system that was designed to manage waste heat and keep the tower as power-efficient as possible. She remembered a little about it from a brochure she’d once read, but this was the first time Lucy had actually seen under the skin of the skyscraper.
The ‘ghost floor’ was built around a steel cube the size of a small car, held in vibration-dampening clamps in the middle of the shaft where air could flow freely around it. Thick cables snaked away, vanishing into the walls. Lucy circled the cube, seeing through vents in the side to racks of blinking electronic hardware within. It was a computer server, and by the look of it, the tech was high-grade.
‘Hardened against electromagnetic pulse,’ said Marc, stepping up beside her. ‘Self-supporting internal power supply. Inch-thick bulletproof and fireproof carbon-fibre shell. A digital bank vault.’
She frowned. ‘I was hoping for something we could, y’know, fit in a backpack?’ Her voice echoed oddly in the air shaft, and she patted the side of the cube. ‘This thing, we’d have to winch
it out with a helo, like back in Seoul.’
‘Trying to forget that,’ Marc admitted. ‘If we had the time, we could pull all the hard drives one by one. But that’s not really an option here, is it?’
‘No.’ Behind them, Solomon studied the cube gravely. ‘We cannot save this. And we cannot leave it for our foes.’
Lucy raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought we—’
‘Nope.’ Marc cut her off with a shake of his head.
‘You have the means?’ Solomon shot Marc a warning look. ‘I will not put our people at risk. There are still hundreds of Rubicon staff in the building!’
‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to blow up the tower,’ said Marc. ‘Well, I mean, that’s not Plan A . . .’
‘Hello!’ Lucy looked up as a shout filtered down to them. ‘Watch out below!’
She saw Assim, framed as a black shadow against an open hatch high up at rooftop level. He was guiding something through, and presently the ends of two thick, serpentine cables found their way down to the metal floor.
Solomon nudged one of the cables with the tip of his shoe and gave a slow nod.
‘Ah, I see.’
‘Can someone explain it to me, please?’
Delancort stood with his arms close around himself, moving nervously from foot to foot.
‘Those cables connect to the solar cell farm on the roof,’ said Marc, giving Assim a wave that the hacker returned. ‘Directly to the battery capacitors up there. There’s enough stored charge in them to run this building for days.’
‘Oui, I know, I wrote that press release.’ Delancort’s reply was testy. ‘What are you doing with them?’
Marc pointed to one side of the cube, where an access panel was situated next to a standby console.
‘You’re going to open that, and then we’re going to plug these in and run a few hundred thousand volts through that delicate silicon.’
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