The Secret of Excalibur

by Andy McDermott

  ‘Fuck!’ He peered through the gaps between the slats, but Dominika was no longer there.

  She’d had an escape plan all along. And he’d fallen for it, ending up trapped while she got away.

  He turned, seeing the gallery visitors also locked in the room regarding him with faces of absolute terror. He grinned sheepishly. ‘She’s . . . a modern artist, you can tell by the hair. Really doesn’t like old-fashioned paintings.’

  His attempt at levity didn’t change any expressions. Sighing, Chase slumped against the archway, hoping Nina was all right.

  She was anything but.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ she screamed as the limo accelerated towards a crawling double-decker bus, swerving at the last moment to squeeze between it and the cars going the other way.

  Sparks sprayed up as the limo’s left side screeched against the bus. Nina lost her grip, the thin chrome strip snapping in her hand. Kruglov hauled the limo back round the bus. She swung helplessly across the roof, about to slide off into oncoming traffic . . .

  Her forefinger hooked into one of the bullet holes.

  Gasping as the torn metal cut into her flesh, Nina pulled herself back on to the roof.

  Sirens ahead. She saw flashing lights at the edge of Trafalgar Square, a police car followed by a van moving to block the road ahead. The limousine had already passed the only side street, to the left—

  Kruglov went right, throwing the limo into a skidding turn on to the paved plaza in front of the National Gallery. People dived out of its way, a couple of luckless tourists sent flying with bone-breaking cracks.

  Nina clung to the roof, appalled by the carnage but unable to stop it. All she could do was hang on and hope the police intercepted Kruglov at the other side of the square.

  The Russian swerved again - and sent the limo hurtling down a broad flight of marble steps into Trafalgar Square itself.

  The car was airborne for a moment before crunching down nose first, the chassis buckling. Nina was thrown loose and tumbled on to the bonnet. The engine roared, Kruglov keeping the pedal to the floor. She saw one of the square’s fountains rushing at her—

  The limo slammed into the fountain’s thick basin, catapulting Nina forward. She landed in the pool, the water only partly cushioning the impact as she hit the bottom and bounced across it in a stinging spray. The far wall arrived all too quickly; she thumped against it shoulder first, head cracking against the stone rim.

  Dazed, pained, she lay unmoving, completely soaked by the cold water. The spotlit pillar of Nelson’s column loomed above her, a spear jabbing into the dark sky. Someone grabbed her arm and she looked round in fear, thinking it was Kruglov coming to finish her off. But it was just a bystander trying to help.

  Kruglov—

  Nina struggled upright, legs wobbling as water streamed from her clothes. The limo was crumpled against the other side of the fountain, the driver’s door open.

  No sign of the Russian. Or the metal case.

  He had Excalibur.

  ‘Where’d he go?’ she slurred, staggering out of the pool. The man helping her looked bewildered, as if she were speaking in tongues. She pushed him away, groggily searching for Kruglov, and spotted a running figure shoving through the crowd, a flash of aluminium in his hand.

  She tried to run after him, but dropped to her knees as her legs refused to co-operate. Pain overcame the brief numbing effect of the cold water, flooding in from all over her body. ‘Okay,’ she said, plaintively, ‘guess I’m not going anywhere.’

  Shouting from behind her. She turned to see several policemen running at her.

  ‘Bad guy went that way,’ she tried to tell them, pointing after Kruglov - only to be thrown face first to the ground and rapidly handcuffed. One of the policemen shouted something, but the throbbing pain in her head reduced it to an incoherent garble. She was roughly hauled to her feet.

  ‘Oh, jeez, not again,’ she muttered as she was carried away.

  ‘Well, this isn’t entirely unexpected,’ said Peter Alderley, barely able to suppress his laughter. ‘You ending up in jail. Again!’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, Alderley?’ Chase growled as the policeman brought him out of his cell. After being arrested, he had been taken first to Agar Street police station a quarter of a mile away, before later in the night being transferred to New Scotland Yard. Having only had a couple of hours’ sleep he was already irritable, and Alderley’s smugness did nothing to improve his mood. ‘I called Mac, not some tosser from MI6.’

  ‘There’s gratitude for you,’ Alderley replied, a smirk visible beneath his drooping moustache. ‘I’m here as a favour for Mac. C wanted him for a little chat about why someone he vouched for keeps ending up in the nick.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a problem if the bloody woodentops ever arrested the right people,’ snapped Chase, shooting the policeman an annoyed look. ‘For fuck’s sake, how hard is it to spot a woman with green hair?’

  ‘Well, you’re out now. Personally, I would have left you there, but that would have been unfair to Nina, since you seem to come as a pair.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Chase demanded. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine. A bit bruised, I think, but nothing too bad.’

  Alderley led him to a reception area. Chase saw Nina waiting on a bench and hurried to her, doing a double take when he got a proper look.

  ‘Don’t even start,’ she said, raising a warning finger. Her hair had been left unwashed overnight, and had dried into a crinkled frizz. Her clothes were also stained from the strong chemicals in the fountain.

  ‘I’m just glad you’re okay,’ Chase said, embracing her. He sniffed her hair. ‘Been swimming?’

  ‘I told you not to start!’

  ‘Well, this is all very romantic,’ said Alderley with a disparaging sigh, ‘but you have an appointment at the American embassy. Whatever this absolute balls-up is about, the Yanks want to talk to you about it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I want to talk to them,’ said Chase. ‘About the fact that the bloke they put in charge of the operation was a fucking traitor!’

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ Nina said, shaking her head. ‘He was working for Vaskovich the whole time? How did DARPA miss that?’

  ‘He’d just better hope that they find him before I do,’ Chase rumbled, clenching his fists. ‘Because I want to have words . . .’

  Alderley took them to the embassy, driving through the building’s side gate to be met by Peach. ‘Well, so long,’ said the MI6 agent cheerily. ‘If you need SIS to do anything else for you in future, please . . . don’t. By the way, have you set a wedding date, Nina? I’m still waiting for my invitation.’

  ‘Goodbye, Peter,’ said Nina firmly, climbing out of the car. ‘Mr Peach, hi.’

  ‘Good morning, Dr Wilde.’ Peach looked more flustered than ever. ‘Mr Chase. I’m glad you’re both okay.’

  ‘Yeah, us too. What’s going on?’

  ‘Please, follow me.’

  They headed through the embassy to the office overlooking Grosvenor Square. Nina’s heart sank: the first thing she saw after Peach opened the door was a line of newspapers on the table. ‘Not again!’ For the second time in a week she was front-page news, in one picture jumping on to the limo’s hood, in another clinging to the roof as it surged away from the Empire.

  Several suited men were waiting for them, Hector Amoros stepping forward to greet her. ‘Nina! God, I’m glad you’re all right. You too, Eddie.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone back to the States?’ said Nina, surprised to see him.

  ‘I did. And then I came right back - I’ve been called to appear before a parliamentary committee to answer questions about everything that happened yesterday. Which could take some time. This operation didn’t turn out quite as we’d hoped.’

  ‘Understatement of the year,’ Nina said - then froze when she saw who was standing amongst the group of men.

  Mitchell.

  Face bruised, a bandage
on his cheek . . . but not a prisoner.

  ‘What the fuck is he doing here?’ she shouted.

  Chase’s reaction was more physical. He charged at Mitchell. It took three of the men to hold him back. ‘Oi! Twat! I’ll fucking kill you!’

  ‘Yeah, I kinda thought you’d react that way,’ said Mitchell irritably. ‘Hector?’

  Amoros cleared his throat. ‘Nina, Eddie, there’s something you need to know. Eddie, cut that out.’ A commanding military tone entered his normally pleasant voice. Chase reluctantly stopped struggling and shrugged himself free of the men. ‘Yes, Jack was going to give Excalibur to Vaskovich . . . but DARPA knew all about it.’

  ‘DARPA approved it,’ Mitchell added. ‘Vaskovich thought I was a double agent. I’m not. I’m a triple agent - I was working for DARPA the whole time. Who did you think the “reliable source” inside Vaskovich’s organisation was? It was me!’

  ‘You mean this whole thing was a set-up?’ Nina gasped.

  ‘Yes. My mission was to put Vaskovich’s weapon out of commission. I would’ve taken Excalibur to Russia, used that as proof of my loyalty so he’d take me to his earth energy facility, and boom.’ He glanced at the newspapers. ‘Only now, you two have screwed everything up in about the most public way possible - Vaskovich has Excalibur, and I had to blow my cover to keep you alive!’

  Nina’s own anger began to rise. ‘And why the hell didn’t you tell us this in the first place? People have died because of this plan of yours!’

  ‘If you’d known, there was a risk you would have given me away. Not that it made any goddamn difference, as it turned out!’

  ‘So why didn’t you just let them find the sword on their own?’ Chase demanded. ‘Nobody would have got hurt.’

  ‘You sure about that? They killed a priest in Sicily to get the first piece of Caliburn, they killed Bernd Rust, they would probably have killed Staumberg and his butler in Austria as well. These people aren’t boy scouts. And I had to be involved, because Kruglov didn’t trust me - if I didn’t personally give Excalibur to Vaskovich, there’s no way he would have taken me to the facility. Which meant I had to involve Nina so I could find it first.’ He gave Chase a hard look. ‘I’m sorry. But it had to be done - we couldn’t let the Russians find Excalibur on their own.’

  ‘If you’d told us what was really going on, I’d never have got Mitzi involved,’ Chase said bitterly.

  ‘If Vaskovich thought you were going to give the sword to him,’ asked Nina, ‘why the hell were Kruglov and the others after it too?’

  ‘Like I said, Kruglov didn’t trust me.’

  ‘So now what?’ said Chase. He pointed at the newspapers. ‘Kruglov’s all over the front pages; it’s not like he can deny any of this. Christ, one of the coppers told me he killed some poor bastard in front of about five hundred witnesses.’

  ‘You seriously think the Russians would hand him over?’

  Mitchell asked. ‘The way relations are right now, with this polar territory dispute? He’s the right-hand man of one of the most powerful men in the entire country, who also happens to be a personal friend of the Russian president. They’d never give him up, no matter how much diplomatic pressure was put on them.’

  ‘So he just gets away with it?’ Chase said in disbelief. ‘He murders people, then gets to hide out in Russia laughing at us?’

  ‘He’s not even hiding. Mr Callum?’ Mitchell turned to one of the other people in the room, the white-haired man whom Nina and Chase had met at the embassy the previous evening, and took a photograph from him. It was taken with a telephoto lens, showing Kruglov in the back seat of an SUV as it entered a gate set into a high wall. The figure beside him was only visible in silhouette, but it appeared to be Dominika.

  ‘This was taken a couple of hours ago,’ Mitchell said. ‘It’s Vaskovich’s mansion, southwest of Moscow. We had our intelligence sources in Russia looking for Kruglov as soon as we realised he’d left England.’

  ‘How the hell did he get out of the country?’ Nina asked.

  ‘The guy used to be a spook. He knows all the tricks - and he’s got Vaskovich’s billions backing him up. If you’ve got money, border controls don’t mean shit.’

  ‘So your spooks knew where he was going, but couldn’t bag him before he got there?’ said Chase. ‘Christ, and I thought MI6 were useless.’

  ‘There wasn’t time to arrange a snatch team,’ Mitchell said defensively. ‘Also, the CIA weren’t happy about us running our own intelligence operation behind their backs.’

  Chase made a disgusted noise. ‘And now Vaskovich’s got the sword? He’s probably going to his base to blow up the world already!’

  ‘He’s not going anywhere,’ said Mitchell. ‘At least, not until tomorrow.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Nina.

  ‘He’s holding a party tonight, at his mansion. And not the kind he’d be willing to blow off, either,’ he continued, forestalling the obvious questions. ‘It’s been planned for months, it’s a way for him to consolidate his influence - all of the new Russian elite are going to be there.’

  ‘You sure about this?’ Chase said. Nina looked at him; she could tell he was formulating a plan.

  ‘I was actually invited,’ Mitchell told him. ‘Although somehow I doubt I’m still on the guest list. But there’s no way he’ll cancel it, even now he’s got Excalibur. In fact, knowing Leonid, he’ll probably want to show it off.’

  ‘So you know where he’ll be tonight, and you know where the sword’ll be tonight?’

  ‘Yeah. Why?’

  Chase shot him a humourless grin. ‘’Cause if he’s having a party . . . I think we should crash it.’

  23

  Moscow

  Although only a few degrees further north than London, the Russian capital was noticeably colder. Even the brief time Nina spent moving between the State Department jet and a waiting Lincoln Navigator left her feeling chilled.

  ‘Should be here in winter,’ Chase said as they were driven to the city. ‘You think New York’s nippy? It’s like Bermuda in comparison.’

  ‘You’ve been here before?’

  ‘Couple of times, yeah. On business.’

  ‘Is that how you met your friend, the one you called from the plane?’

  Chase snorted. ‘He’s not my friend. He’s a perverted scum-sucking little parasite who deserves a good kicking.’

  ‘Oh, he’s a he?’ said Nina, raising an eyebrow in amusement. ‘You mean there’s actually a country where you don’t have an attractive young woman on call?’ She remembered the moment she spoke that there was indeed now such a country - Switzerland - and was about to apologise for her lack of tact, but a single, somewhat sad look from Chase told her she had been forgiven.

  ‘Actually, I do know someone in Russia,’ he said after the unspoken moment had passed, ‘but she wouldn’t be right for the job. This bloke is, though.’

  ‘So who is this guy?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Sounds like you don’t even trust him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and last time I saw him he was such a fat bastard I’d have a job even lifting him. But as long as there’s money at the end of it, he’s more or less reliable. So I hope you brought your wad. He’s a cash-only sort of bloke.’

  ‘What’s he called?’ Nina asked. ‘And what does he do?’

  ‘His name’s Pavel Prikovsky, and trust me, he really is a total prickovsky,’ said Chase. ‘Used to be an officer in the GRU, Russian military intelligence. Ran into him a couple of times when we were on opposite sides before he went freelance to specialise in “executive protection”.’

  ‘Like you did,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘Not even fucking close,’ Chase replied, offended. ‘I looked after people. He took care of people, if you get what I mean. But that’s how he got started, only he branched out into other stuff when he realised he could make a lot more money from the same clients without risking getting his head blown off. Now he arranges entertai
nment for rich guys’ parties.’

  Nina pursed her lips. ‘By entertainment, I’m guessing you don’t mean funny hats and balloon animals.’

  He smiled sardonically. ‘Not exactly.’

  They drove down the highway, the traffic increasing as they approached central Moscow. Nina had never been to Russia before, and watched the city pass with interest. Most of it looked exactly how she’d imagined a communist-built metropolis, grey and blocky and joyless, huge concrete apartment buildings dominating the landscape.

  But there were surprises amongst the uniformity: churches with ornate spires and traditional onion-shaped domes of gold and oxidised green copper; giant Soviet bureaucratic monoliths designed to cow onlookers into insignificance beside the power of the state; and their modern equivalents, gleaming corporate sky-scrapers and towering apartment complexes for the new Russian millionaires and billionaires. Moscow had leapt from relative poverty to become one of the world’s most expensive cities within just a few years, yet it was clear that the vast majority of that wealth was concentrated in the hands of an elite few. Nina imagined Lenin would be spinning in his tomb so furiously that a generator connected to him could power half the capital.

  They reached the heart of the city, the high walls of the Kremlin sweeping past before they crossed a bridge over the Moskva river and headed south. To her disappointment, she was only able to catch a glimpse of the colourful cupolas of St Basil’s cathedral in the distance before it was lost to sight.

  But she wasn’t here for sightseeing. They continued south, eventually stopping outside a warehouse, its small yard surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire. Security cameras stared down conspicuously, covering every angle of approach.

  ‘This is it,’ said Chase. ‘Wait here.’

  He got out and went to the gate, looking up into the blank eyes of the cameras. Prikovsky was expecting him, but would undoubtedly make him wait, a crude attempt to show who was in charge. An intercom was mounted on a steel post beside the entrance; he pushed the button. Eventually, a woman answered in Russian.