by Asher, Adele
“Why would you trust him given he is not Van Sant!” I replied.
“Mister Van Sant has impeccable credentials. I can assure you.”
“I’m sure he does. That doesn’t mean he is Van Sant though does it?” I said and looked at Nick for approval. He nodded. “I think you’ll find Johnny Van Sant is dead. The man you are talking to is called Roy. He’s an electrician. From Luton.”
“It’s a lie!” yelled Sergei. “They are trying to trick us!”
“No lie. He is a conman. He stole Van Sant’s identity so he could steal my money. He’s using my money to buy your arms.”
“It does not matter to us who he is or how he pays,” the Russian replied.
“Maybe so. But you have to ask yourself who is he working for? MI6? CIA? The FSB? Interpol? If you don’t know who he is how can you trust him?”
“That is not your concern!”
“Well maybe not. But I still want my bloody shoes back!”
I fired a volley of bullets down the corridor from the MP5 to reinforce my demand.
“I wish I’d brought an M4A1.” Nick told me glumly as he checked his diminished magazine.
“Or a rocket launcher,” I said jokingly.
“Now there’s a plan,” Nick said and jumped across the gap in the hallway and handed me his MP5.
He took out two hand grenades. I looked at him surprised.
“Sweet Jesus! That will make a mess of the plasterwork. Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I said.
Nick shrugged his shoulders.
“Hold your fire!” Nick told them. “I just want to talk.”
“Very well,” the wiry man said. “No tricks or funny business!”
Nick pulled out the pins of the grenades and handed them to me. He gave me a serious look.
“If this doesn’t work out take the stairs and get out of here.”
“If this doesn’t work out I doubt there will be any stairs. We’re in this together. To the death,” I told him kissing him before he walked off into the corridor with the grenades concealed in each hand.
The wiry man emerged flanked by his two guards. They both walked down the corridor meeting Nick just short of the suite.
“What do you propose Mister Salinger?”
“At a guess the hotel staff already called the police and being Swiss they will be on time. We can all stay and shoot it out, end up dead or arrested or we can agree to call it a day.”
“What makes you think you have anything to bargain with?” the wiry man asked pushing his thin rimmed spectacles back off his nose.
“Let’s just say we’re in a highly explosive situation.” Nick told him revealing his hands held two grenades in them. “Short fused. You won’t make the lift. I promise you that.”
The wiry man had a look of terror on his face as the guards pointed their guns at him. I fired up the laser on my MP5 and aimed it straight for the wiry Russian’s forehead.
“You want to kill yourself?” the wiry man asked Nick incredulous.
“You aren’t having the girl and she wants her shoes back.”
“You’re crazy!” he replied.
“What’s it going to be Ivan?” Nick asked.
The wiry man reluctantly nodded.
“It seems we underestimated you Mister Salinger. I can assure you we won’t repeat the mistake again,” he said before he shouted at Sergei and his escorts in Russian and started to back away towards the lift. Sergei appeared with his two gorilla colleagues at the suite. He scowled at Nick as he passed.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Sergei said to Nick.
“Sergei!” the wiry man yelled.
Sergei reluctantly retreated to join his other comrades in the lift. As the doors closed Nick threw both of the grenades at him into the lift.
“Catch!” he shouted at them. They all scrambled desperately trying to catch the bouncing grenades.
“Get down!” Nick shouted at me as he came running back.
He pushed me to the end of the corridor. We hit the floor as the lift shaft at the opposite end exploded violently shaking the entire building. The lift doors blew off sending a large fireball and compression charge of air down the corridor. Windows shattered broken glass everywhere. Plaster and debris exploded from the ceiling as the whole floor filled with smoke, fire alarm sirens shrieking. I coughed and spluttered from the acrid smoke and dust.
“Come on,” Nick told me pulling me to my feet. “We don’t have long.”
“You just blew the hotel up!” I said in shock coughing on the dust.
Nick dragged me through the debris-strewn corridor to the entrance of our suite where the doors were now hanging off.
“You blew the hotel up to get my shoes back?” I asked him.
“No. I blew the hotel up to kill the Russians. Getting your shoes back was a bonus. Pack quickly, the police will be here soon.”
Nick grabbed our bags and we started hurriedly packing, he tucked away our MP5’s into a bag and grabbed my hand.
“We should probably take the express check out option,” I told him.
We headed for the service fire corridor since the passenger lift had been reduced to rubble by Nick’s handiwork. We ran down the stairs that were now full of dazed and confused staff members, the explosion in the lift shaft having ripped through the entire of the hotel on every floor.
We exited through the service corridor and down the alley - a scene of utter chaos as hotel staff evacuated from the burning hotel. Police and fire engine sirens filled the air. Nick took my hand and ran to the car park. He quickly threw the bags in the boot and took out an MP5.
“You better drive,” he said.
I leapt in the drivers seat and fired up the engine as Nick got in the passenger seat and reloaded the gun. I sped for the car-park exit and stopped at the entrance. A large police roadblock had been setup outside the hotel and police cars were heading from the opposite direction.
“Which way?” I asked.
“Left!” Nick instructed me.
I checked the road was clear. We both spotted the four very angry looking Russians waiting by a black Mercedes S Class outside the hotel. They noticed us and started yelling in Russian and bundled into their car.
“How many more of them are there!” I said flooring the throttle and exiting with a lurid power slide to the left.
The Mercedes pulled out and gave chase as I weaved between the stationary cars whose drivers had stopped and got out to watch the hotel which was now partly on fire and crumbling into ruin.
I swerved between the oncoming police cars and headed down the side of the lake doing my best to get through the clogged late afternoon Geneva traffic. Nick checked behind and the Mercedes was giving chase.
“We need to lose them,” Nick told me.
“So which part of your plan did you not understand?”
“What?”
“I seem to recall you giving me express instructions to not kill the boss.”
“Ah yes.”
“Which seemed to be the plan right up to the point you decided to blow him up in the lift along with half the hotel.”
“Collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage?”
“I had to improvise,” shrugged Nick.
“So when I improvise I get told off. When you improvise it’s collateral damage?”
“Keep your eyes on the road,” Nick turned round. “They are gaining on us.”
“I know that!” I said.
“Well drive faster then!”
“Right…” I said annoyed.
I dropped two gears and floored the throttle and pulled out down the wrong side of the road past a stream of slow moving traffic into the path of an oncoming bus. Nick pulled his seatbelt on and looked slightly disturbed. At the last possible minute I swerved in to avoid the head on collision sending the bus careering off the road and into a parked car. The Russian’s Mercedes managed to avoid the ensuing mayhem and find a path through the carnage clippin
g a van as it did so. I continued to weave between the slow moving traffic but it was clear the tenacious Russians were not going to give up the chase without a fight.
“It’s no good Nick. There is too much traffic!” I said exasperated.
“Okay,” he replied. “Just try and get some space on them.”
We continued the cat and mouse chase for a further several kilometres until the traffic thinned out and I was able to use the Aston’s superior handling and speed to gain a lead on the much bulkier S Class.
“This is going well.”
“I think so,” Nick replied.
“Are you going to sit cuddling that or do something with it?” I asked nodding at the MP5 in his lap.
Nick dropped the passenger window and undid his seatbelt. He leant out of the window, cocked the MP5 and opened fire on the trailing Mercedes. Bullets sparked off the bonnet and shattered the windscreen. The Mercedes veered to avoid the gunfire but continued its pursuit as Nick emptied the remaining magazine into it. As he finished firing the rear-seated Russians appeared from the panoramic sunroof and returned fire. I swerved to avoid them but the bullets smashed into the back window and peppered the boot with holes.
“That’s not going to polish out you know,” I told Nick as he reloaded the magazine.
“They’re quite persistent aren’t they?” he said exasperated.
“They’re Russians. They have anger issues. But then you just blew half of them up in a hotel lift so it’s not a surprise is it?”
“We’re running out of ammo.”
Nick leant out the window and started firing again. The Mercedes swerved but he managed to hit one of the two rear passengers who collapsed back into the car covered in blood. With smoke pouring out of the Mercedes bullet ridden radiator they finally started to slow down. The remaining rear seat passenger continued fire at us so I swerved between two cars to avoid us taking further damage. Nick climbed back in the car and discarded the MP5 into the foot-well.
“Out of bullets,” he said and took out his pistol and cocked it.
“Grenades?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Bloody hell Nick,” I told him “If I’d known we were going to get in this much trouble I would have left my shoes behind!”
“It’s a bit late to worry about that now.”
“How far is it to the motorway?”
“Maybe another five kilometres. I don’t think we are going to make it that far.”
Nick and I looked at each other. We had no way of knowing how much ammunition the Russians had to expend on us and we were down to our pistol magazines with three of them still in the fight.
“It’s down to you now,” he told me.
I spotted my opportunity as I saw a large articulated truck approaching. I swung onto the opposite side of the road to drive at the truck straight on. The truck started flashing its horn and lights at us before its tyres erupted in smoke as the driver tried to slow down. With all wheels locked the weight of the trailer began to fishtail widely blocking the entire carriageway as the truck jack-knifed. I floored the throttle and aimed for the diminishing gap between the end of the truck and the steep embankment - we both braced for the impact. The Aston managed to squeeze through the narrow remaining gap but the fishtailing back end of the truck caught the rear three quarter panel on the passenger side and smashed into it with a sickening thump knocking us sideways into an uncontrolled spin. I tried to correct the slide but at more than ninety miles per hour the kinetic energy of the impact overcame any grip the Pirelli tyres hoped to offer and the Aston slid sideways before the inevitable physics took over and flipped us into the air.
The airbags exploding in unison as we collided with the crash-barrier. The kerb sent the car into a violent set of barrel rolls before we finally came to a rest more than two-hundred metres down the road in a mess of broken, twisted carbon fibre and aluminium. The Aston was smashed beyond recognition with a trail of expensive broken parts littered in our wake.
The impact with our Aston had done little to stop the sheer tonnage of the trailer continuing on its path. The Russians foolishly had decided to follow our course and with no gap left their much heavier Mercedes was completely unable to slow enough to prevent its inevitable head-on impact with the trailer. The bonnet nosedived under the back before the windscreen smashed fully into the metalwork of the trailer bed bringing it to a complete halt with most of the car roofline crushed under the truck. The rear passenger unable to react to the impending doom didn’t have time to retreat to the relative protection of the cabin and was decapitated from the waist up as he was caught between the crushing sunroof aperture and the truck above him.
Nick was out cold having hit his head on the side of the car and we were both badly cut and bleeding from the showers of broken glass and debris. Having had the steering wheel to brace on I had been lucky to avoid any serious injury. Aware that potential danger still lurked from the nearby Russians my body summoned up whatever energy it could find in a rush of adrenaline to take flight from the scene of the crash.
I pulled my seatbelt off and tried to open the door, which was broken beyond recognition. I gave it a hefty shove and it fell off its remaining hinges to the floor below. I looked across to Nick.
“Nick!” I croaked, my ribs aching from the seatbelt making it hard to breath and speak. I gave him a shake to try and rouse him before checking the pulse on his neck to make sure he was still alive which thankfully he was. I dragged myself out of the tangled wreckage and surveyed the scene.
Taking out my pistol I hobbled back towards the Russians car. A trail of blood led from the back of it to what remained of the rear seat passenger who had been decapitated. The driver was clearly dead having been impaled on a steel guard-rail from the bottom of the truck that had struck through the windscreen. The front seat passenger who had survived the impact was trying to get out of the twisted remains. I walked over and calmly shot him twice in the head. The truck driver and onlookers who had gathered at the scene went running at this sudden burst of violence. Satisfied the pursuers had finally been eliminated I turned my attention back to Nick and thoughts of an escape plan.
I hobbled back to the crash scene and dragged open the passenger door and tried to release Nick from the wreckage.
“Nick. Come on. Wake up baby. We have to go. We really have to go.”
I gave him a good shove and he finally came round dazed and confused. He put an arm around me for support as I dragged him from the car, propped him up next to it then went round to the back of the car and kicked open what was left of the boot-lid, extracted our bags and dropped them next to Nick.
We needed a quick getaway. Passing on the line of mundane euro-box hatchbacks I decided a Swiss Banker in a Porsche 997 Turbo would make an ideal car-jacking victim and walked over and tapped on his window with the Beretta.
“Out the car mister!” I told him.
Seeing the pistol pointed at him he put his hands up and opened the door.
“Please! I have a wife. Children. I have a dog!” he whimpered.
“I had a dog. Some fucker stole him. And look where that’s got us. So jog on. bugger off. Shoo!” I gestured at him with the pistol to take a walk, which he did so running in terror.
I got in the Porsche and drove it up next to the remnants of the Aston careful not to cross the shattered lines of glass. Leaving the engine running I got out and retrieved our luggage, threw the bags in the back seat then went back for Nick
“Can you walk?” I asked him.
“I think so.’ he replied as I put an arm around him and helped him over to the car
“The Russians?” he asked.
“They didn’t do so well.”
I deposited Nick in the passenger seat and put his seatbelt on. The police sirens could be heard approaching from the other side of the truck so I hobbled round to the drivers side, got in the Porsche and reversed out. As Nick passed out in the passenger seat we made good our escape south to Mo
naco.
Chapter 15
WE HEADED south then east crossing the border into Italy. Once we were safely over the border we stopped at a small roadside motel and booked a room. It seemed prudent to take care of the injuries we had sustained in the accident prior to our arrival to Monte Carlo. Turning up at the Casino looking like extras Saving Private Ryan wouldn’t have been an especially dignified way to arrive in Casino Square.
Nick had come off worse in the accident and he was clearly in some discomfort. After we checked into the room I grabbed the first-aid kit from the stolen Porsche and did my best to patch up Nick’s injuries.
“Sorry. I guess you were right about my driving,” I said apologetically.
“Hey. We got away didn’t we? Shame the Aston didn’t but…shit happens.”
Nick grimaced as I applied the antiseptic to a large cut on his head.
“At least you car-jacked us a very nice replacement,” he said. I smiled. Nick lay down on the bed and shifted uncomfortably. “I think I broke a rib or something.”
“My poor baby,” I cooed as I massaged his chest gently and kissed him better then pulled a blanket over us to keep Nick warm.
“We’re running out of time. The Russians are going to put pressure on Roy now. They will presume we are something to do with him.”
“We need to get to Monte Carlo.”
“We are going to need more than this,” Nick said as he picked up the pistol and dropped the magazine out.
We had less than ten bullets left.
“Is there someone you can call?’ I asked him.
He shook his head.
“We passed that point at the hotel.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m in the intelligence business not assassination. There will be consequences for what I did.”
“We can’t go back can we? To London,” I asked. Nick shook his head. I nodded and rested my head on the pillow next to him. “If you can’t find a way out then find a way further in.”
“We have to get to Roy before he makes that deal with the Russians. Once the deal’s done he’ll go to ground. We’re on our own now.”
“Disavowed…” I said mournfully. Nick nodded. “I’m sorry.”