She led them to a blank access door a few steps down the corridor from the roll-up gate, tapped in her security code and when the electronic lock disengaged, turned the knob.
“I probably shouldn’t be letting you in like this,” she said, but her curiosity was now burning even brighter. Maybe if Carutius was distracted with this pair, she’d be able to figure out why he had really closed the exhibit.
The corridor beyond was conspicuously bland in contrast to the public areas, but it was a short walk to another door that opened in the rear of the exhibition hall. As she reached for the doorknob, Julia became aware of a low buzzing sound, like the noise of fluorescent light fixtures, but amplified several times over, emanating from beyond. Waves of resonance vibrated through the metal skin of the door.
“That’s strange,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. The woman and the girl didn’t seem to grasp how unusual the sound was. Shaking her head, she opened the door.
The atonal sound was considerably louder now, setting Julia’s teeth on edge. A moment later she spied its source, an array of portable speakers lined up in front of the display case containing several pieces of debris from the Sakyamuni Buddha-the smaller and older of the two carvings.
Carutius stood nearby, hunched over a computer monitor, and was so completely focused on what he was doing that he failed to notice the new arrivals. Julia’s attention was drawn to the table and to a bank of little plastic disks that had been positioned to face the display case. She recognized the disks from her time spent in radiometry laboratories; they were film badge dosimeters, designed to warn the wearer of exposure to a potentially lethal dose of x-ray or gamma radiation. Surely he’s not performing the dating tests here, she thought.
“It is you!” The girl had to shout to be heard over the droning sound, and before Julia could think to forestall her, she dashed forward to confront Carutius. “What are you doing here?”
The big man spun around, clearly startled. Julia braced herself for the outburst to come, expecting to be the focus of his rage. She didn’t care; he was up to something, and it was her duty to find out, even if it meant drawing fire from her superiors.
But the flash of anger-if it was even there to begin with-faded as soon as Carutius’s gaze lit on the girl’s face, replaced by equal parts recognition and alarm.
“You?” he gasped.
Julia looked anew at the teenager, wondering how it was possible that this wide-eyed American Indian girl could possibly know the European financier. When Carutius spoke again, Julia realized that whatever the explanation was, it was something beyond her wildest imaginings. It wasn’t so much what he said as his grave demeanor that sent a chill down the curator’s spine.
“Fiona.” His ominous whisper was strangely audible despite the ambient humming. “You shouldn’t be here.”
16
As soon as he heard the thunderous detonation, Timur Suvorov opened the door to the office and swept into the room in a low stance, his silenced Uzi machine pistol, an untraceable black market purchase, leading the way. The improvised flash-bang grenade he had tossed into the small room a moment before had probably incapacitated everyone inside, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He pivoted to the right, scanning the corners of the room, even as his teammate, close friend, and second-in-command, Ian Kharitonov rushed in behind him and cut to the left.
The tactical entry proved unnecessary; the four occupants lay motionless, clustered together in the center of the room. Suvorov allowed himself a satisfied smile. This was going well.
The original plan had called for a dynamic assault on the riverboat, with his small team taking out the sizable security force and then herding the rest of the passengers together in the casino. While the audacious scheme was well within the ability of his Spetsnaz team, Suvorov had felt no small measure of relief when his lookout-an SVR operative who had infiltrated the event-had radioed him with the news that the target had left the main casino and moved to an office belowdecks. Suvorov had deftly crafted a contingency that would minimize their visibility and increase their chances of success by an order of magnitude. The former consideration was particularly important; although they would be leaving a false trail that would point to the raid being the work of a criminal gang, there would nevertheless be a scrupulous investigation by the gendarmerie. There was no telling what telltale clues they might have left behind that would lead back to the Spetsnaz, the GRU and the Russian government. His encounter with Julia Preston at the Louvre for example, was just the sort of thing that could have unexpected consequences. Keeping the mayhem to a minimum would reduce some of the public demand for a comprehensive investigation into the night’s events.
The original plan also would have resulted in dozens of casualties-security personnel, passengers, possibly even members of his team-and while Suvorov understood that was simply the cost of victory, he was pleased that such a level of violence would not be required. It was easy for the politicians, safe in their houses of power thousands of miles away, to say ‘whatever it takes,’ but it was the soldiers who had to live with the consequences. Spetsnaz training had hardened him against the emotional toll of taking lives, but there was no way to exorcise the ghosts of innocent victims lost to collateral damage.
Of course, it was much too early for self-congratulation. Locating and securing the target had been the easy part. Getting off the riverboat with their human prize would be another matter entirely. The noise of the stun grenade would almost certainly bring more security guards running. It was time to get moving.
He hastened to the center of the room and scanned the faces of the unmoving men to identify the target. The picture he had was from an old SVR file; the target had done a very good job of hiding his identity, avoiding surveillance cameras and even erasing all traces of his existence from digital archives. Still, there was enough of a similarity between the man lying before him and the grainy image in the photograph to verify that he had indeed found his prey.
Suvorov allowed himself a grim smile as he thought about the SVR and GRU interrogators in Moscow tripping over each other for the chance to get at the information in this man’s head. He knelt beside the supine form, pleased to see that the man was starting to regain his senses. “Sorry to cut short your party, but it’s time to go Mr. Brown.”
17
King’s ears were ringing from the detonation, but he could just make out a few of the words the newcomer had spoken. Russian, he thought, and that bit of information was enough for him to draw an obvious conclusion. Russian commandos, probably a Spetsnaz team-Russian Special Forces, arguably the deadliest unconventional fighting men on Earth-wanted Brown as badly as he did.
The flash-bang had gone off behind him, sparing his eyes from the blinding brilliance of the flash, but the concurrent shock wave had nonetheless left him disoriented and faintly queasy. He remained motionless as the two black-clad commandos hauled their captive erect and hurried from the office, but as soon as they were gone, he resumed his efforts at getting free.
Filled with a new sense of urgency, he twisted his torso back and forth until, with a satisfying crack, the chair to which he had been bound splintered apart. The intensity of his struggle also proved too much for the thin plastic strap that held his wrists together; the zip-tie, designed for nothing more strenuous than securing electrical wires and computer cables, broke apart, and suddenly he was free.
A throb of pain accompanied the return of normal circulation to his freed extremities. Blood immediately began oozing from ragged welts on both wrists where the plastic tie had cut deep into his skin, but he ignored the wounds, getting to his feet and lingering in the room only long enough to snatch up the Glock that Brown had dropped when the flash-bang had gone off.
He edged past the open door into the hallway beyond, ready to duck back into the office at the first sign of trouble. The noise from the casino, just barely audible through the lingering effects of the flash-bang to his auditory system, was diffe
rent now. No music now, just a dull roar of confusion. The partygoers had heard the sound of the stun grenade explosion, and King didn’t doubt that a gaggle of steroid-crazed Alpha Dog security men were already rushing down to investigate. For the moment however, the corridor was empty. With the Glock at the ready, he advanced at a jog and headed away from the source of the tumult, toward what he hoped was the path the Russians had followed.
Russians, he thought again, scowling as he ran. In the feverish quest to unmask Brainstorm, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that there might be other interested parties. That should have been obvious really; the Brainstorm network was global in nature, as were Brown’s schemes for world domination. Unfortunately, Brown’s capture would not mean the end of either. Now the Russians would control Brainstorm, with full access to Brown’s incredible mental abilities, his extensive network of operatives, and worst of all, the ability to execute the gambler’s audacious plans. King saw only two ways to stop that from happening; he either had to save Brown from the Russians or kill the man.
A door at the end of the corridor opened onto a narrow flight of stairs, which in turn led him onto the open foredeck of the riverboat. At each blind corner, King paused just long enough to make sure that he wasn’t about to run headlong into an ambush. As he emerged from the stairwell, his caution paid off.
He had barely peeked around the doorpost, exposing only a sliver of his body, when the bulkhead to his left exploded in a spray of wood and fiberglass splinters. King ducked back, but did not allow the knowledge of the danger ahead to mire him in inertia. He thrust the Glock into the open, squeezing off two quick shots, and then immediately somersaulted through the opening. As he came out of the combat roll, he immediately got the pistol up and started a visual sweep for the location of the shooter.
Nothing.
With each second that ticked by, each thump of his heart in his chest, the danger multiplied. He was out in the open, completely visible to a gunman who still remained invisible to him. But no shots came. The gunman had already moved on.
Not good, King thought. He rose from cover and hastened to the railing that ringed the perimeter of the deck.
The dark water of the Seine lapped against the low hull of the riverboat only a few feet away. In the darkness, hidden from the glare of the deck lights by the shadow of the railing, it was hard to distinguish the oblong outline of a boat. It looked like a semi-rigid inflatable Zodiac, though it was impossible to tell since the hull was black, the same color as the clothes worn by its two occupants. One man was just settling in at the prow, his right hand still gripping a compact machine pistol. His comrade sat at the stern, tending an idling outboard motor. In the instant that King’s eyes registered this fact, the man twisted the throttle control and the motor roared to life, the screws throwing up a froth of spray, stark white and glittering against the inky surface of the still river.
King didn’t even pause to think about what to do next. In a fluid motion, he planted his left hand on the rail and vaulted out into the night.
18
As King’s feet hit the hard fiberglass deck, the boat lurched forward, the thrust of the outboard’s screws finally overcoming the craft’s inertia. King pitched backward, stumbling over a low aluminum bench seat, and crashed into the man seated at stern. Their combined weight and the sudden forward thrust nearly sent both men into the river, but the commando managed to wrap his arms around the engine cowling to arrest his fall, and King knotted his fingers in the man’s dark combat uniform to prevent his own.
That was all the help he got from the commando. The man freed one of his arms and immediately started pummeling King with his fist. The strikes were awkward, seemingly desperate, but the rapid impacts sent bursts of pain through King’s skull, further disorienting him and for a moment, all he could think about was holding on tighter. The assault abruptly relented and King felt the man shift in his grasp, trying for a better angle of attack. The next wave of blows would, he knew, be far more decisive.
Setting his jaw in anticipation of the pain he knew was coming, King pulled the man in close and thrust his torso up, ramming his forehead into the commando’s chin. Light exploded across his vision as he made contact, but even over the roar of the outboard, the satisfying crunch of the commando’s jaw breaking was audible. The Russian slumped in King’s grasp, his hold on the engine cowling slipping away, and he teetered back over the gunwale. King released his grip and pushed the man away, hastening the latter’s plunge into the Seine.
There was no time to savor the victory. King twisted around to find the second commando looming above him. Clad in black from head to toe, the man was almost invisible against the backdrop of night, but King had no difficulty making out the glinting steel of the knife in the man’s right hand as it slashed down toward him. He shrank away, pressing himself into the bilge space, but there was nowhere to go.
The knife slashed again but even as he felt its tip snag the fabric of his dinner jacket, King brought his own right arm up and caught the man’s forearm in the crook of his elbow. The commando reflexively tried to pull away, but King trapped his foe’s forearm with the heel of his left hand and then with a savage scissor-action, broke the man’s wrist. The commando howled in pain; the knife fell from his fingers and clattered into the bilge space. King, still on his back, did not release his hold on the injured limb, but drew his knees up, planted his feet squarely in his opponent’s chest, and used his legs to launch the man out into the river.
In the moment that followed, King wanted nothing more than to simply lay still and savor a few seconds where no one wanted to kill him, but he knew that, despite this initial victory, his real objective was slipping further away with every tick of the clock.
He rolled over and struggled to get to his hands and knees. The cramped bilge space at the rear of the boat conspired with the undulations of the craft as if bumped across wakes and ripples in the river’s surface to make it a ridiculously complicated task. He finally managed to grasp the control lever on the outboard and hauled himself into a sitting position.
The inflatable boat was moving at an almost perpendicular angle away from the floating casino. He could make out the city skyline in every direction, but everything in the foreground was shrouded in darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he could make out the ripples left by the wake of another craft. It was moving away in the same general direction he was now traveling, and he followed the ripples to their source: two more Zodiacs, barely more than shadows, a few hundred yards away, just passing under one of the many bridges that spanned the river and connected the city proper with Ile Saint-Louis. He adjusted the tiller to bring his boat into line behind them and opened the throttle wide. The bow of the craft came up as the burst of speed sent it rocketing forward, almost skimming across the surface of the Seine.
He could tell he was closing the gap on the retreating boats. If their operators were the professionals he guessed them to be, they would sacrifice speed for stealth. Unfortunately, that meant they would notice his approach, and if they didn’t already know that he had commandeered one of their boats and reduced their fighting force by two, they would at the very least be alerted to the fact that something was wrong.
He took stock of his tactical situation. The Glock he had taken from Brown was gone. There was no sign of the pistol in the bilge space, and he could only assume that it had gone into the river during the struggle with the commandos. His foes had likewise taken their guns with them into the Seine. The only weapon available to him was the knife that the second man had dropped. King retrieved the blade and gave it a cursory examination.
In the darkness, it was difficult to distinguish any manufacturing marks, but his fingertips probed the knurled metal of the cylindrical hilt-heavier than expected, making for a poorly balanced weapon-and the odd shape of the finger guard, which sported a metallic stud that reminded King of a gun’s magazine release button. It was, he realized, a ballistic knife. Depressing the stud w
ould trigger a blast of pressurized gas inside the hilt and simultaneously release a mechanism holding the blade in place, subsequently launching the blade like a crossbow bolt.
When he recognized the weapon, any remaining doubts about the identity of the commando team were swept away. The ballistic knife was the signature weapon of the voyska spetsialnogo naznacheniya, the elite special forces of Russia’s military intelligence directorate, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye.
If there was a Russian equivalent of Chess Team, it was the GRU Spetsnaz.
King knew the outcome of his first battle with the Russian commandos had been more a matter of luck than anything else, and as Brown had pointed out, luck was fickle.
He backed off the throttle a little, somewhat reducing the noise and fury of his progress across the watercourse. The longer he succeeded in not attracting the attention of the occupants of the other boats, the better his chances of surviving the next encounter. For that reason, he also pulled the lapels of his dinner jacket together, covering up the white shirt beneath, and sank down low, trying to hide as much of his face from view as he could.
He risked a quick glance over the bow. The nearest Zodiac was now only about a hundred yards away, the other at least fifty yards beyond that. If they were operating as he expected, Brown would be in the closer boat, with the lead craft acting as a vanguard to make sure that the landing zone was secure. That would work to his advantage; he would only need to subdue Brown’s immediate captors, and with a little luck, the men in the front boat would never even know that their comrades were in trouble.
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