The Armageddon Protocol (A Harry Bane Thriller)

by Rob Jones

  They left the café and walked south for a few minutes into the Gros Caillou district north of the Eiffel Tower.

  “According to my phone, we can’t be far from where we saw the birds,” he said.

  “I just want this to be over.”

  “Then you’re in luck,” Harry said quietly. “It’s just through here.”

  They weaved through another labyrinth of backstreets before crossing the Avenue Bosquet and finally arriving at a plush apartment block. It was classic Paris – a sycamore-lined boulevard dotted with cafés and expensive boutiques – and the atmosphere was casual and relaxed as Parisians enjoyed lunch in the various cafés and bistros.

  They stopped outside a modest residential building four or five storeys high. “This has to be it,” he said. “The skyline matches up perfectly, except for one thing. This was filmed from much higher up. By the looks of it I’d say the top floor.”

  He looked at the neat row of door buzzers and his eyes widened when he saw it. “Only one apartment on the top floor – an Anton Zeman. Fake name maybe.”

  “You think this is our man?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Harry pushed the buzzer next to the large black door.

  No reply.

  Lucia sighed and ran her hands through her hair. She looked tired and anxious, and she shuffled from foot to foot in a bid to keep warm. Paris was several degrees colder than Madrid at this time of year. “What now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not in, so what do we do?”

  “We break in, of course.”

  “I don’t know...”

  But before she had finished protesting, Harry had already opened the door with his bump key and was now gesturing for her to enter as if he were a doorman. “Ladies first.”

  “You’re a lot of trouble, you know that Harry Bane?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  He followed her inside and gently closed the door behind them. Now, he thought, we’re getting closer to the truth.

  EIGHTEEN

  Harry led Lucia into an old-fashioned but beautifully restored cage elevator and pushed the button for the third floor. They rode up in awkward silence until the bell pinged and he swung open the manual accordion gate and stepped out.

  The hall was dimly lit but expensively decorated, with black and white pictures of 19th Century Paris on the walls. Parlour palms in white ceramic pots were stationed on the shining oak parquetry floor either side of a crimson-coloured Persian runner rug which led the way to the apartment door of Anton Zeman.

  “Follow the red brick road,” Harry said.

  They reached the door and after knocking to make sure no one was home, Harry worked his magic with the bump key and gently pushed open the door.

  The apartment was empty and silent, except for the gentle whirring of a ceiling fan, which Harry thought meant this Zeman wasn’t too far away. Everything in the place gave an impression of old, quiet money – the original Degas sketch above the fireplace, the wine rack in the kitchen, the antique carriage clock on the drinks cabinet. It reminded Harry of the officer’s mess back in England, before he traded that life in to become a spook.

  They walked to the back of the apartment and entered what was obviously the study.

  “Maybe they got to him too,” Lucia said, lifting a cold coffee cup from a table beside a leather armchair.

  Harry shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so – at least if they did then it didn’t happen in here. No sign of a struggle.”

  “Are we sure this is even the right place?”

  “Oh for sure – check this out.”

  He pulled back a net voile in the window and gestured toward the view.

  Lucia joined him and gasped when she saw it. “It’s the view from the video!”

  “The exact same view – just as I thought. I think it’s a safe bet that Anton Zeman and Andrej Liška are one and the same.”

  “Harry! I hear someone opening the door!”

  “Keep calm and stay here. I’ll go and welcome him home.”

  Harry darted out of the room and into the corridor, snatching up a small but heavy bronze sculpture of Artemis as he went. He pushed himself up behind the front door and held his breath as it slowly opened.

  A solid man in his sixties shuffled into the hallway. His sloping shoulders told Harry he was carrying the weight of the world on them, but as the old man turned to toss his keys in the bowl and shut the door, Harry stepped out and raised the small statuette.

  “Oh God!” the man said, his eyes full of terror. “Don’t kill me, please!”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Harry said. “I’m here to help you. We both are.”

  And then Lucia stepped out into the corridor.

  Anton Zeman looked at them for a long time. He was judging them – measuring how trustworthy they were. That was fine, thought Harry. I’m doing exactly the same thing to you.

  “Come away from the door,” Harry said, and they walked into the main living area. Without warning, the man turned on his heel and fled. Harry gave chase, tearing through the apartment in his bid to catch him, but slipped on one of the rugs and crashed over into the drinks cabinet. “Bugger!”

  “Get up, Harry!” Lucia screamed. “He’s getting away!”

  “No, no,” Harry said as he got to his feet. “He’s just popping along to the kitchen to make us a cup of tea.”

  She rolled her eyes, hands on hips. “Idiota.”

  Harry raced toward Zeman who was now halfway to the apartment’s entrance. The fleeing man lashed out and knocked his coat-rack over in a bid to slow Harry down but he got his jacket sleeve caught in one of the pegs.

  As he struggled to free himself, Harry caught up and rugby tackled him to the ground. Zeman screamed out and tried to punch Harry, but to say the former soldier and MI6 man had dealt with worse was a tragic understatement, and seconds later the old man was subdued, but spitting with anger.

  “Let me go!”

  “Just calm down, Andrej!”

  The man cocked his head and took a breath. “How do you know my name? No one knows my name! I am Anton Zeman!”

  Harry sighed. “I know lots about you, including your real name, Andrej, and I’m not here to rob you or hurt you, all right?”

  Liška’s breathing slowed but his face was still purple with rage and fear from the chase. “So you say now, but...”

  “It’s true, and I’ll let you go to prove it if you swear you won’t run again.”

  Liška seemed to think the proposal over, and then Harry felt his body go limp as he finally gave up the struggle and relented. “All right, fine. I swear.”

  Harry slowly moved away from Liška and got to his feet. As the man stumbled up to his knees and then stood up, Harry closed the apartment door and locked it, putting the man’s key in his pocket. Liška looked aghast. “Just a precaution in case you change your mind.”

  “What do you want?” Liška said, moving his head from Harry to Lucia. “Why have you broken into my apartment?”

  “We just wanted to talk to you,” Lucia said. “That’s all.”

  “When most people want to talk to me they usually use the telephone,” he said, his breathing returning to normal again. “They don’t break into my home.”

  Lucia pointed her chin at Harry. “I’m sorry, Mr Liška, but my friend here likes to do things a little differently than most people.”

  “I want a drink,” Liška said, and then turned to Harry. “I take it I’m allowed to make myself a drink, if this is okay with you?”

  Harry nodded. “Knock yourself out, and I wouldn’t say no either.”

  Liška snorted. “You have some nerve, whoever you are. I’ll give you that.”

  “My name is Harry Bane, and this is Lucia Serrano. We’re friends of Pablo Reyes.”

  Liška stopped pouring the Scotch halfway. “Pablo?”

  “That’s right,” Lucia said gently. “I was
his lover.”

  “What do you mean were?”

  “Pablo was killed last night in Madrid.”

  The man bowed his head and closed his eyes before muttering, “Poor Gabriel...”

  “Gabriel?”

  “Pablo’s real name.”

  Lucia sat down in shock as she realized the level of deceit she had been living with, but before she could respond, the man spoke again.

  “How did you find me?” The whisky had calmed him now, and revealed the true man behind the false defenses. He looked like a nervous, broken man.

  “We found something that led us to you,” Lucia said.

  Liška looked aghast. “You found what? What did you find?”

  “Pablo wrote your name in a book.”

  “A book?” He lowered his voice to a mumble. “The clue...”

  “The what?”

  “Gabriel and I swore that we would leave each other clues that only we could solve – based on our interests. We both loved renaissance art, as you can see.” He swept his arms at the array of reproduction paintings on his walls. “We told each other we would leave clues based on that. The clue I left him was very clever – only he could have solved it, but now it’s all too late.”

  “We know that Pablo...” Harry paused, glancing at Lucia. “Sorry, Gabriel, was hiding a NAND chip. We’ve seen its contents. It contains a strange film of birds dropping dead out of the sky above this apartment. This is how we were able to find you.”

  “An experiment of mine that he recorded – something we were trying to reverse but it didn’t work...”

  “What are you hiding, Andrej?”

  “I cannot tell you – I am in grave danger.”

  “Who is putting you in danger?”

  “Don’t you understand? If you found me then they can find me!”

  “Who are they?” Lucia asked.

  Liška looked like he was about to be sick. He sank the Scotch in one gulp and poured another before getting up out of his chair and nervously looking out of the window. He began pacing up and down, shaking his head and muttering to himself.

  “Mr Liška,” Lucia repeated. “Who will find you?”

  He stopped in the center of his room and sank the second Scotch. “The Ministry.”

  NINETEEN

  Harry’s sharp eyes darted back to the Czech scientist as he studied the broken man who was now slumped down in his favorite leather wingback. “What’s the Ministry?” he asked.

  Andrej looked up, startled for a moment at the blunt way the Englishman had asked the question. “I know very little about the Ministry, but one thing I know is that they wanted Gabriel and me dead. Now they have killed poor Gabriel. I am next.”

  Harry frowned. “Not good enough.”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this…” Liška said, and then began mumbling in Czech. “You saw what they did to poor Gabriel, and I will be next.”

  “Then you’d better speak up because right now it looks like we’re the only people who can help you,” Harry said.

  “I don’t know…”

  “They murdered Pablo!” Lucia said. “If you know who did it then you owe it to him to help us find them and have them punished!”

  Liška gave a scornful laugh. “You do not punish the Ministry.”

  Harry paced up and down the room for a moment before sitting down opposite Liška and fixing his eyes on him once again. The firm eye contact was important when you were interrogating someone. They had to know your attention was on them and nowhere else. “If you don’t tell us what you know, then we can’t help you and you really are on your own. I’ll just get up and walk. Right now.” As he finished his sentence he pulled a cigarette from his packet and fired it up, blowing a cloud of smoke out into Liška’s room. “No bluffing.”

  Liška took the words in and then gave a long, low sigh. “I’m a scientist. My whole life has been dedicated to science, to technology, and for the last few years I worked for the Ministry. Not that I knew it, of course – that’s not how they do business. They live and move in the shadows. If they’re pulling your strings you won’t even know it. It’s been this way for centuries.”

  “Sounds like a hell of a puppet show,” Harry said.

  Liška stared at him, hollow-eyed. “We are all their puppets. Every last one of us.”

  “I’m no one’s puppet,” Harry said.

  Liška gave a low, sad chuckle and shook his head. “Maybe… but you said you were in MI6 once. How do you know who was pulling your strings? You would no doubt tell me the British Government, but your life will change if I tell you the Ministry pulls their strings, no?”

  “Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.”

  “No! It is no theory! It is a fact – a real conspiracy and I know it! They’ve been ruling our society for a very long time.”

  “If we’re all puppets,” Harry said coldly, “then tell me who is the puppet master?”

  Liška took a quiet, deep breath and tried to steady his trembling hands. He poured more whisky sloppily in the glass, splashing some onto the varnished surface of the antique table beneath it. “You don’t understand. When I found out what the Ministry really was, I was nearly sick – and so was Gabriel – or Pablo as you knew him.”

  “Pablo was a good man,” Lucia said.

  “But he was misled – we both were… and not just us! Gabriel and I were only the two senior men at the top, but there were dozens of scientists and researchers working for us in our teams. They were all lied to by the Ministry.”

  Harry sighed and dragged on his cigarette. “I’m still waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For the name of the puppet master.”

  “None of us ever knew information like that. It is strictly compartmentalized. There was a man called Hans Steiner who visited us from time to time, but he was merely a representative – just another puppet. I have no idea who was pulling his strings.”

  Lucia sighed and sat forward in her chair, bringing her hands up to her face to rub her eyes. As she breathed out a long, stressed exhalation, the Czech professor looked at her and spoke again, more calmly this time. “I’m sorry – he was a good friend to me, but of course you were closer.”

  “It feels like he betrayed me with his lies.”

  “I understand.”

  Liška and Harry listened intently as Lucia described how her life had turned to chaos in the last few hours. “I thought I knew Pablo – Gabriel… I don’t even know what to call him!” she said sadly. “Now I think everything we had together was a lie. I knew he was a physicist in his former life – we spoke about it all the time – but I really believed him when he told me he had turned his back on it and wanted to pursue his passion for art.”

  “But you must understand why he had to conceal the truth from you,” Liška said quietly. “He knew if any part of his old existence was uncovered then his life would be at risk. We now know how right he was.”

  Lucia nodded sadly and lowered her head. Wiping yet another tear from her eye, Harry moved closer and handed her a handkerchief from his pocket. She took it and glanced at him briefly as she dried her eyes. “Gracias,” she muttered. “I just can’t believe he’s really gone. His death was so violent. No one deserves that.”

  “Now the fear is you’re next,” Harry said, turning to Liška. “So we need to move fast. Whoever found Pablo was fast and meant business. I worked in international intelligence for many years, and I know a pro when I see one.”

  Liška let the words sink in and then replied with a sharp nod of his head. “So what is our next move?”

  Harry walked to the window and gently pushed the voiles to one side as he glanced down the street. Except for a woman who was allowing her Finnish Spitz to relieve himself on the front wheel of a parked BMW, all was normal – pedestrians walking along with their iPhones, a young couple holding hands, a young man pumping up a flat bicycle tire. He closed the voiles and after helping himself to another of Li�
�ka’s malts he took a seat. “You can start by telling me about what we saw on this chip.”

  Liška swallowed the last of his drink and winced as it burned its way down. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why did the birds all just drop out of the sky like that?”

  “The birds were exposed to a dust.”

  “A dust?”

  Liška nodded slowly and looked like he was about to cry. “Yes, a dust, of sorts… Oh God! What have I done?”

  “We need to know more about this dust, Andrej.”

  Liška sank into his chair and his shoulders slumped down low. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there forever. “The dust is not natural, you understand, but artificial – entirely manmade. Smart dust. They call it Perses after the Titan god of destruction. It’s a new kind of nanoparticle which Gabriel and I developed while working together in Sweden. We thought we were working for the Swedish Government with a view to advancing medical science, but the truth is somewhat darker.”

  “The truth being, you were making a weopon for this Ministry?”

  He nodded glumly. “Indeed.”

  As a former MI6 man, Harry Bane knew all about the Deep State, and what Andrej had told him about the Ministry sounded too similar to ignore. A state within a state, the Deep State was something that happened to a country when things were really falling apart. It was when the institutions of the state like the armed forces or other authorities like intelligence agencies went rogue and stopped obeying the elected leadership of the country.

  Working silently from within the darkest recesses of the corridors of power, warring factions of anonymous, unelected men and women worked to further their own agendas irrespective of the wishes of the government that was supposed to be leading them. It was as if a coup d’état had happened, only without there ever having been a single shot fired, and without the public having the vaguest idea that it had happened.