Red Ice

by James Phelan

ELYSÉE PALACE

  Fox pulled Zoe into an office and ducked down as two blackclad paramilitary cops ran along the corridor.

  They’d stopped outside the office. Fox could see their boots, then heard them talk on their radios.

  Zoe shook her head, signalled it was okay. She had her SIG pistol in one hand and the cylinder in the other.

  The two cops ran back the way they’d come, Fox heard them shouting at someone and the noise of a spray of automatic gunfire rang out, then silence.

  Fox and Zoe ran through a connecting office until they came to an open door. The gas outside had dissipated enough to see down the hall. The two cops were visible, on the ground, motionless. Two guys were standing there in firemen’s uniforms, one of whom had a submachine gun pointed down at the cops.

  Fox pulled Zoe up close under the frosted glass wall of the corridor.

  One of the firemen moved into the doorway and Fox looked up into a mouth of gold teeth.

  Fox was on him fast, twisting his gun wrist and giving him an uppercut that sent the just-fired P90 out of his grip. The guy fell back against the wall, dazed. Fox turned and glanced over to Zoe—she’d just sent the second guy sprawling backwards.

  Fox turned back and saw Gold Teeth pulling up an FN pistol to fire. Fox was still turning—all his weight moving in a single fluid attack—a sweeping kick that spilled the pistol and slammed the guy back into the frosted glass wall. The safety-glass shattered with the impact, the man caught the metal-frame doorjamb on the way down and was already re-balanced, snatching the P90 and bringing it up to fire—

  Fox grabbed its foregrip as a full auto blast tore into the ceiling above him creating a plaster-dust storm until the gun clicked empty—

  Fox pulled the firearm away and tossed it, landing a good punch in his attacker’s sternum—the guy winded, but still fighting back, both hands swinging at Fox … Kill or be killed. Fox’s attacker pulled a knife—Zoe screamed and Fox looked over to see she had been knocked to the ground, kicking up at her attacker. Standing above her was the guy from the Louvre. The one who’d taken Renard’s satchel.

  Gold Teeth lunged—Fox parried, shifted and pulled the guy into a wall—he hit hard, head first. Fox brought down his heel onto the back of the man’s leg—SNAP!—the leg bone shattered and the guy was on his knees trying to fight back, but Fox turned him face-down with a wrist and shoulder lock and landed three jackhammer elbows into his back—crack-crack-crack. Gold Teeth pushed himself and picked up his knife, but Fox slammed his head against the doorjamb—blood spraying from his nose—sending him out cold—and Zoe—

  Zoe was writhing on the ground—gasping for air—

  Fox bounded towards her as she struggled to reach her SIG pistol on the floor. Her attacker had his booted foot pressed down on her throat as he reloaded his pistol—

  Fox crash-tackled the guy over a desk. He started to rise up to punch him—but he saw figures approaching down the corridor. Six RAID guys, heavily armed.

  Machine-gun fire tore down the corridor, shattering the glass partitions around them as Fox rolled one way, the guy the other, towards Zoe. The guy grabbed Zoe’s pistol—so fucking fast—and he had it right up against her forehead—right on the edge of pulling the trigger—he is, he’s gonna shoot her—

  “Don’t do it!” Fox yelled.

  The glass wall shattered next to Fox.

  “Where is it?” the guy screamed at Fox. “The document, where is it?”

  The RAID guards fired another volley at them, tearing up the walls they were shielded behind.

  “There,” Fox said, motioning under the window where the document had rolled against the wall.

  Another burst of fire, some shouts from up the hallway—

  The attacker shot off four quick rounds around the wall, grabbed the cylinder that was just within arm’s reach, took a gas grenade off his uniform and tossed it down at the RAID team.

  “Don’t follow me!” he yelled, sprinting off, bullets tearing up the hall in his wake. He shot across the opening, past Fox, down the corridor, towards the hole in the wall.

  73

  WASHINGTON, DC

  “… If not, I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes,” McCorkell said, ending the phone call to Kate and turning to Valerie. “Fox and this cop, Zoe, are in the palace retrieving a document. Babich’s guys have been after it all morning.”

  “They’ve got it?”

  “Not yet,” McCorkell said. He looked over at Bowden’s guys, conferring around a map of Paris, setting up blocks for when Fox emerged from the palace. There was commotion up the other end of the room. Already dozens of local response vehicles were headed to the scene of the explosion and getting a CIA grab team to covertly pull Fox out was going to be hard. A small break.

  “Fox is going to have to start doing things quietly,” Valerie said.

  “He does,” McCorkell said. “It’s the guys pitted against him—he’s only as loud as the forces he goes up against.”

  “Let’s hope this is the end of it,” Valerie said. “What are our options for getting him to safety?”

  “I don’t want them out in the open yet, not with Bowden’s order out there on the streets,” McCorkell said. He had no doubt that if Fox made a beeline for the embassy now, one of about forty assets in the Paris area would be ready, waiting for the ‘kill shot’ should he not come in quietly. “And the cop—I told Kate to be wary of her.”

  “What’s her take?”

  “Not much beyond a personal dislike. Kate’s pissed at Fox too.”

  “You read her latest phone transcript?”

  “Not yet,” Bill said, looking at the fresh print-out on his desk of her last phone call to the number in China. “Is it—”

  “Seems a legit personal call. Wouldn’t want to be Fox, though.”

  “We just gotta hope he gets out and keeps his head down long enough to use this cop, Zoe. She’d know the area well—if they could slip out…”

  “Through the Almighty’s net,” Valerie mocked and smiled at the thought. “Bowden will go berserk.”

  “He does what he does,” McCorkell replied, smiling as well. He knew that if you couldn’t keep your sense of humour in this kind of work, it’d kill you.

  An FBI agent approached the desk and leaned in close. He was all smiles too.

  “It’s Babich,” he said. “That deadline? I think I now know what it is—and it’s definitely in Shanghai.”

  74

  ELYSÉE PALACE

  “Move!” Fox yelled at Zoe as gunshots raked the corridor.

  He picked up the FN Five-seveN, fired the full clip into the floor towards the RAID team to keep them at bay and received a few full-auto assault rifle bursts in reply.

  “And call Al in!” he yelled, as they moved back through the offices in a crouched run, pulling Zoe along by the hand while she dialled.

  Their route opened up to a conference room. Fox jammed a chair under the door handles leading in and ran to the windows along one wall. Ten metres below was the courtyard—a sheer drop and crawling with cops.

  “We’ve got to use the hole in the outer wall, the same way that guy did,” Zoe said, her BlackBerry still to her ear.

  Fox nodded and they headed back out to the corridor. The RAID team would be in the offices, stalking them. The opening was up ahead, on the opposite side to the central courtyard. The hallway floor here was a ragged mess. Fox hugged the wall, peered around the opening, looked down to street level—

  The floor’s edge gave way and Fox was dangling six metres above the rubble below—one hand clutching the corner of a joist. Zoe helped him up and back onto the first floor. He caught his breath. There were gunshots on the street, a van visible down the end of the road—that gas worker’s van, cops shooting at it—KLAPBOOM!

  The vehicle erupted in a bright flash of light. The force flattened Fox and Zoe, blasted through the glass of all the hallway windows, flame
s licking into the building.

  “Come on,” Fox said, coughing, crawling around the hole in the floor and getting to his feet.

  They raced around the corner to the palace’s western wing. He tucked the pistol into the back of his trousers.

  “Tell Al to pick us up here!” he yelled as he opened a doubledoored window inwards. The avenue outside was quiet, treelined.

  “Avenue de Marigny!” Zoe said into her phone. “We are coming from a window, on the first floor!”

  She hung up, nodded that she was ready.

  There was a little wrought-iron handrail on the window. Fox climbed over it—

  The drop to the street was a good five metres—to his left was one of those phone-booth-like guard shelters.

  “Zoe.”

  She looked over to where he motioned with a tilt of his head. “Think you can make that?”

  She nodded. He lowered his legs down, found purchase on the ground floor’s top window ledge. The palace façade was made of large stone blocks with at least a couple of centimetres of paint-work in between—a good grip for fingers, lousy for squeezing the toes of Fox’s size thirteens in. Fox had never been good at rock-climbing exercises—he tended to lean back too much—but he kept close to the wall now, inching across to his left, his feet leaving the reassuring ledge of the window below and his fingers having to do all the work of holding his weight. He swung across and dropped onto the roof of the little guard shelter then jumped down another three metres, rolling onto the bitumen pavement.

  Zoe moved out the window like a cat, fast and agile, as though she had no weight and was all strength. He watched her cross the ledge in a line that wasn’t there for him, climb down the stonework like it was a ladder, and land on top of the guard shelter to the side.

  She jumped down into his arms. He held her for a second more than he had to and she smiled at him.

  In a screech of brakes, Al stopped the car in front of them. Kate was stony-faced in the front as they climbed into the back seat.

  “Drive!” Zoe said. “Back the way you came!”

  75

  GARE DU NORD, PARIS

  Malevich emerged from the bathroom in his civilian clothes. He wove through the crowded arrival hall to the RER trains. He checked his bag on the escalator, making sure that the zip was fully done up, the precious cargo safe and sound. He slung the bag over his shoulder and fished his vibrating mobile phone out of his pocket.

  “Yes?”

  “You sound surprised. The hour is up, time for your call.”

  “Time flies.”

  “Do you have it?” Lavrov asked. He sounded like he was speaking from inside a tin can.

  “Yes.”

  “You are a hero to your country! Anything you want—”

  “We’ll get to that,” Malevich replied, boarding the train. “I know what it is you’re after now. I can only imagine what it must be worth, although how you intend to use it, to enforce its legality … I don’t want to try to comprehend. In the meantime, I have a request…”

  He could tell that he’d caught Lavrov off-guard. It was fine for him—he was off the grid, far away from this frontline. Malevich was the one they’d be after. He was the one who had been through all this …

  “Like I said,” Lavrov began, “you will be—”

  “This was much more dangerous than anything I’d been prepared for,” Malevich said, finding a clear space to sit for the twenty-minute journey to the airport.

  “Boris, you will be well compensated.”

  “I know,” he said. “I also know that the Americans would like to get their hands on this. I can only imagine the lengths they will go to to stop this from—”

  “Listen, do you have it on you now?”

  Malevich paused, looked around, despite himself.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Good. You have done very well, you can have any role in my—”

  “I don’t want a job.”

  A pause.

  “I just want to be left alone. I do this and that’s it, I’ve done my job.”

  “Of course, that’s easy,” Lavrov replied.

  “It’s not that easy. They will track me down. They will have footage of me, and they will hunt me. My whole life has changed.” Malevich looked around the carriage. “There’s more.”

  “Yes?”

  “That reporter, the one you organised a separate team to fix; he is still alive. He was at the palace.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do not worry about him—he can’t do anything now. In fact, it’s better this way.”

  Malevich couldn’t comprehend that either, but he let it slide. To be safe for the future he’d need more than the meagre state compensation he was getting. He’d need money to fund his and his sister’s existence, way off the grid somewhere, hidden from reprisals or silencing missions. He’d heard too many stories of men like him who’d done work for the state and never made it back. They owed him. Big.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” Malevich said. “Change of plan. I want five million euros sent to my account.”

  There was silence for a beat and then laughter over the phone.

  “You’re a good boy—my kind of Russian, a ruthless capitalist,” Lavrov said, still laughing. “When you land, check your bank balance. Safe travels.”

  Malevich didn’t know what to make of it. Such a quick capitulation? No haggling? Before he could say anything else, the call was ended. Always no more than a minute.

  Maybe he should have asked for more? He put the bag down between his feet—the document was worth untold billions and power and prosperity for Russia. All that, right there, on the floor of this train. He tried his sister again; still her phone was switched off. He left another message for her to call him back. It had been a long morning, but he was almost there. He closed his eyes hoping the train would rock him into a calm state of being. Useless. He kept seeing blood. His heart would not slow. He imagined cops waiting for him at the airport. He imagined the prison in Siberia or wherever the motherland now sent its unwanted, where he’d perhaps end up for being greedy over the phone to Lavrov just now.

  The passenger next to him was reading the International Herald Tribune. The front page: a picture of Roman Babich. Bastards like him were everything that was wrong with his country today.

  76

  PARIS

  “Yeah, I know, we need to get out of here today…” Gammaldi said, as he drove under Zoe’s directions.

  Fox had Kate’s iPhone: “You’ve got no idea of the net falling around you in Paris,” McCorkell was saying on the other end. “The Agency operations leader here is convinced you’re part of this Umbra conspiracy—he’s been watching footage of you tearing up Paris all morning.”

  “Hasn’t he seen this other guy?” Fox asked. “The one at the Louvre and at the palace?”

  “We’ve got nothing but a few bad shots from the Louvre,” McCorkell replied. “You or your cop friend know who he is?”

  “No,” Fox said. “But we think he was the one who murdered the Russian Ambassador’s wife earlier this week.”

  “And the MO on the explosion at the Elysée Palace looks the same as the one used on the Russian Embassy.”

  “Exactly,” Fox said.

  “Listen, Lachlan, you need to lay low, disappear, don’t try and head for any mass transport hub—every cop in France is after you. Interpol, Europol, everyone.”

  “Too bad they’re not looking for the bastard who just took the secret protocol.”

  “We’re all working on that, believe me. Where’re you headed?”

  “As far away from here as we can get—take a breather and get a flight outta here—”

  “You don’t understand. Every airport will have your details.”

  “We’ve got one possibility that might work…”

  “Where?”

>   “I can’t say … It’ll tip them off.”

  “You think they’re listening?”

  “I know they are,” Fox said. “Umbra, the French, hell—probably NSA for all I know. That document come through yet?”

  “Hang on.” Fox could hear McCorkell checking his email. “Not yet.”

  “Look, if you could just buy us a little…”

  Fox trailed off. He’d been thinking if they could just make it to a small airport out of town, they could charter something, but …

  “How much time you need?” McCorkell asked. “Lach?”

  They were flashing across the Seine on Pont de la Concorde and Fox had caught a glimpse of a billboard on the side of a bus.

  “It’s okay, Bill,” Fox said. “I think a solution has just presented itself.”

  77

  SHANGHAI

  Jacob was onto his third pre-dinner drink. The Summit leaders would be having their own reception, then dinner. He was hanging out with the worker bees. Campari and soda, twist of orange, seemed the drink du jour. The view was pleasant, the company about as good as he could have hoped. Talk was simple, low-key, non-political. Tonight was about fun.

  “When did you get in?” the pretty reporter for Reuters asked. She’d approached him at the bar fifteen minutes ago, but he’d already forgotten her name and didn’t have the heart to ask it again.

  “Twelve days ago,” Jacob van Rijn replied. “I was with an advance team from the EU.”

  “Oh, you’re with a delegation?”

  “Don’t expect any scoops from me; I’ve had one too many of these.”

  He held up his empty glass.

  “Usually that’s when the scoops start flowing,” she replied, but let him off the hook. “It’s fine, I’m not working tonight.”

  “Good,” he replied. He signalled to the barman for another round—she was drinking vodka tonic, he remembered that.