The Financial Terrorist

by John Gubert

  Charles recalled a small cupboard in the hall and nodded at Maria to stay. He slipped back the way they had come and opened the cupboard. The control panel was there. A key operated the alarm and it was in the lock. He hoped he would not activate the whole thing by switching it off. He turned the key. The light indicated the alarm was deactivated.

  He returned. Maria whispered, “We have two minutes maximum. The alarm could be linked to a control back at the main house. They would wonder who had switched it off at five in the morning. Go quickly.”

  They moved to the cell. The light fell on the face of the sleeping man. It was Rastinov. It was the face Charles recalled on his one and only meeting. This was a face he would never forget. He looked at the drip above the bed. He stared at the machines.

  “Dialysis of some sort” whispered Maria. “The brute must be ill. This is really some sort of sick bay. But he actually is alive.”

  “That means he rules. We kill him.”

  Before he could move, Maria had drawn her knife and slit his throat. She did it without hesitation. Remorse wasn’t needed.

  Charles’ one slight fear always, when he saw Maria at work, was that she never knew remorse. It didn’t matter who the victim was. If she were ordered to kill, she obeyed blindly.

  Charles loved Maria in a strange way. It was not like the love he felt for Jacqui. It was born out of the excitement from the chase and the kill. It was almost like a throwback to a previous life. One that he felt, one day, he would need to discard for good. Those thoughts flashed through his mind as he prepared the plastic explosive and attached it to the cell and then to the room beyond.

  “It’s going to be hard for anyone recognise him after this,” said Maria who was attaching explosive to the body itself. They set the whole thing for one minute. And they moved back to the hall. They listened carefully by the nurse’s room, but all was quiet. They crept to the door. This time they were not worried about sensors. If you are close to a major explosion, that’s the least of your worries. Especially if you only have thirty seconds or so to go before the whole show starts.

  They ran from the building. The lights were activated. Then a siren sounded. Lights went on in the house. But, by that time, they were well into the grounds. Both of them were running steadily, hands on the machine guns that hung from their shoulders. They had covered several hundred yards, perhaps less, when the explosion tore through the air.

  There was an enormous blast. Then there was a rush of air. It was followed by the sound of frightened birds, leaving their nests for the safety of the skies and calling anxiously to each other. Then they heard the voices. Orders were shouted. But there was panic in the voices. That would give them a bit more time.

  They ran on. They knew they had a mile of rough terrain to cover. But they would head in the same direction. For the wall on the inside was only a couple of metres off the ground. Outside the drop was more. That meant they could scale it without ropes. Maria would need Charles to climb it first and then give her a helping hand.

  They then heard the dogs. They would be able to run faster than they ever could. They had run over a minute by then, perhaps two. They had estimated they needed six or seven. They ploughed on. The barking became louder. Maria ran faster than Charles and called for him to go on. “When the dogs get closer, I’ll shoot them. Go ahead and then give me cover if more appear.”

  He ran on. He felt lonely without Maria next to him. The trees looked larger. The whole of the grounds took on a more ominous feeling. There was something about fleeing on your own that is so much more menacing than doing so together. He heard the crack of the sub machine gun. He stopped and turned. Maria was some hundred yards back and he could see a dog jumping towards her. The crack of the gun seemed to come after the moment when it was stopped in its track and fell back in the air.

  Maria ran on towards him. She was alone. Then he heard more barking and a large black dog came bounding towards her. It looked ominous in the pale light morning. Its jaws were open and seemingly waiting to get hold of her flesh.

  Charles straightened his gun. Maria was running towards him and the dog was coming in from the left to grab her. That allowed him to have a clean line of fire. The dog closed on Maria. She approached Charles. He waited. The closer they were, the more likely he was to kill the beast. Maria was now twenty yards from him. She must have known what he was doing. Her face though was a deathly white. Her breath was coming in gasps. He opened fire and the bullets sliced into the dog. They slowed him, and then he stumbled to his knees and fell.

  All was quiet other than Maria’s breathing. Charles turned and led the way again. This time they were running faster. She gasped at him, “I killed two dogs. I didn’t see the third till it was too late.” He signalled her to carry on running. They must have covered half the distance. They ran on. There was no sign of others pursuing them but they pushed on as fast as they could.

  He looked over to Maria. She was running, her mouth open as she gulped in air. Her chest heaved up and down with the exertion as she ran and stumbled over the uneven ground. Charles could feel sweat pouring down his face as he struggled to keep up with her. He was pushing himself to run faster than before. He kept the image of the fangs of the dog he had killed in his mind. It served as a reminder of what could happen if he fell or flagged.

  In the distance they saw the wall. Just a couple of hundred yards of scrubland separated them. They ran on. They could hear shouts again but they seemed quite a way off. Maria made the wall seconds before him. He carried on running and jumped, pulling himself up to get to the top. His arms felt weak but somehow he managed. He sat astride, leant over and held out an arm. As Maria grabbed it and seemingly ran up the wall, the voices approached. Some men ran out of the trees.

  He loosed his gun and fired a round towards the pursuers. They threw themselves onto the ground. He saw Maria had one leg over the wall and then the other. He fired off another round and dropped over the wall himself. As he disappeared out of view, the wall reverberated with the sound of bullets tearing into it and then over it. Maria grabbed his arm. “Move,” she called as they headed down the road, skirting the perimeter.

  They continued until they heard the car. Both threw themselves into the long grass and shallow ditch they had noticed before by the side of the road. Charles rolled on his back, as did Maria, in anticipation of a battle. The Uzis were in their hands and ready to blast anyone who approached. But the car disappeared into the distance. Maria lifted her head carefully in case there was another. But there was no trap. They got up again and jogged along the road. All was peaceful as they came to the curve where they had parked their car.

  They approached it carefully. It was there just as they had left it.

  Maria suddenly muttered, “Shit,” and pulled Charles away and down on the ground. They had walked into open view of a jeep. It was parked just over the brow of the hill with three men scouring the countryside. They were parked at an angle. He realised they would not be able to see the car. They couldn’t have seen them either yet or they would have fired. But they were not well covered and if the jeep kept on the scrubland and off the road on the way back, they would be totally visible.

  They waited and held their breath. There was no noise, no movement. Then they heard a low murmur. The jeep engine started and seemed to approach them. Then it turned away, and they could hear it moving along the tarmac in the distance. They waited a few minutes. Nobody seemed to be around.

  They eased their way to the car and checked again. All seemed to be clear. Charles jumped into the driving seat and Maria got in beside him. He threw the car into gear and drove off. He jammed his foot down and drove at top speed down the quiet road and back through Uzes into the area around the Pont du Gard.

  “Hotel,” said Maria. “Let’s get in through the window. Park in the street. If all’s clear, we duck into the grounds.”

  All was clear. Charles slammed the car shut and they ran to the
window of their room. Maria pulled it open and they got back inside. The bed was still unmade, and all seemed as they’d left it. Maria checked the door.

  “We can’t head off now. Someone could check out unusual movements. Tomorrow looks like being a nice day. We should move out with the weekenders who’ll come here for lunch. That means we kill time till three or four in the afternoon.”

  “The best thing is to check out late morning,” said Maria. “Then we can grab lunch. But it better be at one of the tourist restaurants. Not one of your normal Michelin starred joints. That would be too noticeable. We blend with the crowd and then head off. We’re not going to make the plane from Nimes. We’d do better driving to Valence and jumping on the TGV.”

  Charles thought through her plan. The TGV would get them into Paris around seven or eight in the evening. And they should be able to make either a late flight to London or a train from the Gard du Nord through the Channel tunnel. They would be back in London, where the time was an hour behind Paris, by midnight.

  He looked at his watch. It was just before six. “That means we have three or four hours to kill.”

  “And so we can have a decent breakfast. I’m hungry. We’ve had nothing to eat since lunchtime yesterday other than the odd bar of chocolate.”

  “Maria, breakfast won’t be on offer for an hour or more.”

  “We better clean up then.”

  “But we’ll wake the neighbours. And it’s Sunday. You heard the plumbing earlier.”

  “What do you suggest then?” she asked in an amused voice.

  He looked around the room. “There isn’t that much we can do here. But there is one thing and it just happens that I couldn’t think of anything better even if there were enormous choice.”

  And with that he stepped forward and took her in his arms. He felt again the warmth of her body. He sensed once more her softness. He breathed in again the bitter sweat smell of her perfume. He shivered as their bodies clung to each other in memory of the excitement and the chaos of the previous hour or so.

  The crash of splintering wood shook him out of that reverie. He dived to his right to the gun on the bed where he had thrown it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Maria grabbing for hers. The door flew into the room, or at least pieces of it did. At the same time, the shattering of glass was accompanied by a shower of splinters and jagged pieces of window.

  Charles had the gun in his hand and blasted it towards the window, raking the area from left to right. One hand held the gun and the other ripped open his body belt. He got ready to reload the gun the moment it stopped firing.

  Maria had let off a round at the door in a similar way. Somehow, by instinct they had realised what the other would do. It was logical as an afterthought. Charles was closer to the window. She was nearer the door. A man half stumbled through the hole that used to be a door. Maria held her handgun in one hand, the Uzi, now strapped over her shoulder, in the other. The handgun blasted the already injured intruder, punching holes into his chest as he took one step and then another before he crashed, lifeless, to the floor.

  Once Charles gun stopped firing, he ejected the spent clip and slammed in a new one. He waited but there was silence. It was strange. There were no cries, no movement. There was nothing. It was as if the hotel were dead to the world. It seemed as if nothing had happened. Where were the other guests? Where were the attackers? Where were the night staff? They couldn’t have slept through that din. They just seemed to be stunned into a ghastly ghostly silence.

  Charles felt blood drip from his head onto his hand. He suspected it was a cut from the flying glass but ignored it. He concentrated on the window. His finger curled round the Uzi ready to push it into its deadly action once again. The curtains were still half drawn. Otherwise they would have been showered with more glass. But he knew that they might have protected him initially. Now they were a danger. He had no idea who could be hiding there, all he knew was that they had won the first round and the second would allow their attackers to act first unless they moved quickly.

  Maria must have sensed the same thing. The dead man on the floor must have destroyed the door. As she fired at it he must have been hit. When he fell through the door, wounded, perhaps even fatally, she finished him off. There would be more behind him. That much was certain.

  Charles exchanged looks with Maria and moved to the curtains. He grabbed one from the side and pulled it open. Maria loosed off more shots at the clear space but nobody was there. Charles pulled out another clip and threw it to her. She reloaded and covered the open doorway with her gun.

  Now there was noise. There was frightened shouting and screams. There was movement but it was far away. But there was no attack. They waited and still there was no movement.

  “We’re going to have some explaining to do if we stay here,” Charles muttered to Maria. “It must have been the Russians. They want us in the open. They know we can’t wait here. It’ll blow our cover. We have no choice. I’ll cover. Clean the room. “

  Maria quickly wiped the room clean and grabbed the guns, knives and papers they would need. They slipped the papers in their shirts and prepared for the battle. They both still had blackened faces, although that would not help them in the coming dawn light. Maria still held her sub machine gun across her body and in the other hand had a revolver. Charles was holding a sub machine gun by his side with a spare ammunition clip in his other hand.

  He took the last piece of plastic explosive and set it up in the room. It would cause a fair deal of damage without too much outside. He waited for Maria to signal she was ready and mouthed “fifteen seconds” to her. That would allow them to escape and find maximum cover from the blast. It would also mean nobody was likely to get to the room before the blast. They had enough problems on their hands without another murder charge.

  They had two options. They could leave by the door or the window. The window was too dangerous. They could get no cover. So they selected the door. Maria went first and then Charles. They moved down the corridor at a trot and turned the corner towards the lobby. The blast from the room seemed to rock the hotel. They heard the crash of falling glass and more screams of terror from the frightened occupants. Still they saw none of their attackers.

  They moved through the deserted lobby and into the entrance. Charles flung himself on the ground seconds after Maria as a volley of bullets brushed over their heads. Maria fired in their general direction but they knew that such random fire was unlikely to find its target.

  They moved outside and took cover from the cars parked in front of the hotel. “We need a getaway car,” called Maria. “Cover me as I try to get one.”

  She looked around and saw a sleek sports car. It would have power and that was what they needed. She drew her knife and manoeuvred it into the lock. The door swung open. She had opened the passenger side. Charles realised she would jump start the engine and then allow him to get in next to her as she drove away. He also realised that the light bodywork would offer little resistance to bullets and so they needed to ensure that no shots hit their mark.

  He saw movement in the bushes and stood up with the gun roaring. The stream of fire that spat out of the muzzle pointed to his target, who came crashing down into the bush to his left. There was further movement and again he fired, drowning out the sound of the car engine.

  He could see Maria crouched down and ready to go. He slammed another clip into the machine gun. He realised they were almost out of ammunition. Holding onto the open door, now half sitting in the car, he fired into the area where the movement had occurred. Maria pushed the car into gear and they screeched over the car park’s rough surface.

  At the main gate of the hotel, Charles pulled himself fully into the car. Wrestling with the force of the wind against the open door, he slammed it shut. Opening the window, he looked around the grounds. By the bush he had first fired at, a man emerged. He fired two or three shots at him but had little chance of hitting him f
rom the moving car.

  Maria swung into the road and accelerated away. “Make for the motorway as quickly as possible. We need to put distance between us and them.”

  “We’re being followed,” she called. “It’s a blue BMW with two or three occupants.”

  “Open the roof. It’s automatic. Then let them get closer and I’ll try to take them out.”

  Maria pushed a button and the roof started to open. The slow opening seemed to go on forever. The BMW closed in on them as they inevitably slowed down against the heightened wind resistance on the canvas top. Then they seemed to surge ahead again.

  Charles turned round and jammed himself against the dashboard to monitor the following car. They were increasing their distance from them with every minute. Maria was also an excellent driver, taking the bends smoothly.

  “Ahead, look ahead,” she shouted. He turned and saw that a large truck blocked the road. And he saw the guns that were pointed towards them.

  “Left,” he yelled. “Go down the slope.”

  She obeyed immediately and swung off the road and down the hillside. They bounced dangerously on the rocky surface, glancing a rock side on and then bouncing back. The car hit the road again and Maria struggled with the steering wheel.

  She realised she wasn’t going to make it and pointed the car down the next slope beyond the next bend in the road. This one was less steep but more bumpy. It was rocky and she forced the steering wheel right and then left again and again. Somehow, she steered them back onto the road.

  Once again, her foot went to the accelerator and they gathered speed. “Keep an eye up above. They may still be able to target us,” she shouted.

  “The BMW is following. It’s about three bends behind. Keep up this speed. Keep an eye on the warning light. You could have done some damage as we drove down the slopes.”