Red Ice

by James Phelan

  Then his phone rang. His sister. He almost cried when he heard her voice.

  “Alina?” he said. “Where have you been? Where are you?”

  “There!” Zoe said into Fox’s ear. “Two o’clock, at the bar, on a mobile phone.”

  On the other side of the room, Fox saw a familiar face—no mistaking it, he was the guy from Paris. Through the crowd, Fox couldn’t make out if he was carrying the document, but chances were …

  “What if he doesn’t have it on him?” Fox asked her.

  She looked at him, then texted on her BlackBerry.

  “Then we ask him where it is,” she said, pressing send. “I’ve just notified my French colleagues next door—they’ll be on their way over.”

  “And if he doesn’t want to tell you?”

  She smiled, her eyes glinted, “I can be very persuasive. Come.”

  Fox scanned the crowd as they started moving. Nothing but middle-aged delegates in little groups.

  Zoe started to head for the man.

  Fox caught her, his hand wrapped around her slender bare arm.

  “Wait,” he said into her ear, motioning the other side of the room. Three men in cheap suits, serious men in the business of violent negotiations, were making a beeline for their guy.

  Malevich set his coffee cup down on the timber bar. He hung up the call and was still smiling about his sister when Lavrov appeared beside him.

  He stood close, invading his personal space. He was smiling, but there was something very off about him, something dangerous. He didn’t shake Malevich’s hand or hug him in greeting, nothing of the congratulations he’d expected. Too late, Malevich thought, I should not have delivered this in person …

  Lavrov asked, “Where is it?”

  Malevich bent down, pulled the leather cylinder from his shoulder bag, handed it over. Lavrov pulled the top off, inspected the document—smiled again, just as dangerous but this time genuine happiness behind it too.

  “You know, I had thought this was going to be harder,” Lavrov said. “When you didn’t show at Shanghai Airport—when you took another flight—I thought you’d not show here.”

  Malevich nodded, swallowed hard. He put his bag over his shoulder, ready to leave. He never wanted to see or hear from this man again. That was the original deal. Job done. He was out. Money to facilitate that.

  “Stay for a drink,” Lavrov said. It wasn’t a question. “Come, we have a suite.”

  “I have to go.”

  “To Malta?” Lavrov asked, then tilted his head slightly, watching him. “To your sister?”

  Malevich felt sick—he had to go, but he was hemmed into the corner of the bar by these men. He looked across towards the lift lobby—and couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Fox stopped behind the one doing the talking. Russians.

  “You must be Babich’s friends,” Fox said. His jacket was open and he readied himself for whatever might go down.

  The guy turned around. Thick-set, a good fifteen years older than Fox, looked like he could handle himself, but he’d be slow. The other two guys looked twenty per cent bigger and faster. Zoe bumped in close to Fox. The guy from Paris looked shit scared.

  “You have that … What is it, Zoe?” Fox asked. “A certain kind of je ne sais quoi about you.”

  One of the two heavies opened his jacket, revealing a holstered snub-nosed MP5 that with a few quick sweeps could take out thirty or more guests in the room. He shook his head as a warning and Fox put out a hand to stop Zoe from reaching behind for her hip-holstered sidearm—she turned to him, annoyed, but before she could object he took a beer bottle from the bar and launched it at the ceiling—

  It smashed out a sprinkler, setting off the fire alarm and a chain reaction of powerful showers.

  Bleep … Bleep … Bleep.

  The room moved as one, running for the lift lobby—

  The Russian pulled out his MP5—Fox broke the guy’s arm and then his face, brought the MP5 up towards the other, who Zoe had already flipped onto his back and knocked out with her boot. Fox brought up the weapon and sighted the other two as they made a run for the fire stairwell in the corner. He hesitated on the shot—as they disappeared, Fox noticed that the older one had a pistol in the back of their Paris guy.

  Fox and Zoe were right on them—through the fire door after them, before any of the evacuating party got through.

  The metal doorjamb by Fox’s head pinged from a bullet ricochet—Babich’s guy, firing up through the metal balustrades.

  Fox with his MP5, fired a three-round burst down the stairwell in reply, the sound reverberating in the silence for a second as they headed down—just before a surge of guests flooded from the bars a few levels above. The fire door to the next level was just closing—Zoe leaned over the stairs, looked and listened—the crush of evacuating guests coming behind them.

  “They went onto this floor,” she said. They braced either side of the door, readied themselves, burst out. Fox down low on one knee, scanning the guest-room floor, saw their targets rounding a corner down the hall—and they sprinted after them.

  They stopped at the corner—Fox peeked around, down low, MP5 leading—nothing. Shit. They ran again.

  The lift lobby, both guys there—Took fire, Fox and Zoe ducked back, waited, then he fired blind around the corner.

  They had the two guys cowering, hunkered down as Fox kept a barrage of bursts tearing into the wall above them.

  He motioned to Zoe to head towards them as he kept up the cover fire—

  PING!

  Six heavily armed men from the Chinese security force rushed out of the lift. They looked otherworldly, armoured ninjas. They started shooting—

  Oh shit …

  Fox ducked and kept low as bullets ricocheted all around him. Crawling, rolling, he followed Zoe out of the area, firing at the glass doors that separated the lift lobby from the guest rooms, the glass smashed around the Chinese force’s heads—Fox and Zoe hurried away, trying to keep from being flanked.

  Click.

  MP5 out of ammo. He tossed it, pulled his SOCOM pistol, flicked on the radio.

  “Al, Hutch, I’m on the ninety-second floor, taking fire from the lift lobby, half a dozen guys!” he called, before firing a few booming rounds from the .45 SOCOM.

  The other way down the hall—the two Russian guys with the secret protocol.

  “Come on,” Fox said, laying cover fire as they moved out in pursuit, Babich’s guy firing back at them. They rounded the corner—straight into the Chinese crew with their guns trained at head height. Fox and Zoe dropped their firearms and raised their hands. The security team rushed towards them. Fox stood still, but it didn’t matter—one of them clocked him against the side of his face and he fell to the ground, Zoe too, and in seconds his arms were behind his back then he felt FlexiCuffs zipping closed.

  “Okay…” Fox said, for the benefit of the microphone. “You’ve got us.”

  103

  EAST CHINA SEA

  A command centre had been set up for Hutchinson’s operation in one of the USS New York’s briefing rooms. Five men in the darkened room, a communications technician working a laptop’s keyboard.

  “The fire alarm triggered the Chinese security’s response measures. All cell and landline phone systems have been cut,” the technician said.

  “Fox—what happened to Fox?” Hutchinson asked, alarmed.

  “The comms are down.”

  “What?”

  “His radio is turned off, we’ve got nothing but the last-known location—bringing it up now.”

  Hutchinson watched as a projected image on the wall changed from the Park Hyatt security footage to a rendering of—

  “This is the schematic of the building, and tracking dots on Fox and Gammaldi’s radio sets show them … there.”

  Hutchinson looked at the flashing dots on the wire grid blueprint of the Shanghai World Financial Center buil
ding.

  “Call in the Delta boys next door!” Hutchinson said to the comms tech. “Get them over there!”

  He turned to the captain of the Force Recon Marines.

  “Get your grab team and aircraft ready. Soon as we get eyes on the prize, we roll.”

  104

  SHANGHAI

  Outside, the view was amazing. Inside was a different story.

  Fox sucked in deep breaths. Blood poured from his nose and a cut eyebrow, spilling sticky and hot across his bare legs. Turned out the Chinese security were Babich’s Chinese security. They’d stripped Fox down to his underwear, removed the radio wire taped under his shirt, and bound him to a chair. His anger was barely contained—it was everything he could do not to struggle against the ropes.

  Roman Babich leaned forward, a coffee table separating him from Fox and Zoe.

  He nodded to the man named Lavrov.

  Fox closed his mouth tight. Didn’t take his eyes off Babich. Knew what was coming.

  Lavrov hit him in the face. He went with it so it would have less chance of breaking his eye-socket.

  It didn’t work.

  The pain behind his right eye was deep. He was on the carpeted floor, the pain resonating, then he felt hands tipping him and his chair back upright.

  Immediately, he could feel his eye was swelling. His face felt heavy and he had trouble holding it up. He felt himself blacking out …

  He was unbound, water was poured over his head. Babich pushed a bucket of ice across the table.

  “As usual, you take the gung-ho approach,” Babich said, the cylinder in his hands. He’d already glanced at the secret protocol and then tucked it away again. He shuffled it from side to side, a gleeful child with a brand new toy.

  Fox leaned back in the chair, held a wet towel of ice against his face. He counted one thick-necked Russian goon nearby, and could see the Chinese bigwig named Zang hovering up on the mezzanine lounge with six armed guys. The ones who’d brought them to Babich. The Russian guy adjusted a snub-nosed MP5 on a strap over his shoulder as he brought Babich a bottle of vodka from the bar. Babich poured three glasses; Fox gulped his down, coughed through the pain as it bit at his split lip. Zoe didn’t touch hers.

  “You are resilient. Tenacious.” Babich leaned forward, poured Fox another drink. “Seems not so long ago we sat across from one another in Italy.”

  Fox looked away from Babich, over at the guy they’d been chasing in Paris, who he now knew to be named Malevich. He was sweaty and nervy. Seated by the window, across from Lavrov, who was evidently Babich’s right-hand man. Babich noticed Fox’s gaze, looked over his shoulder at them and back.

  “He did his job well, but you—you made me worry,” Babich said, tapping the cylinder. “Right down to the wire, hey?”

  Fox looked across to Zoe, who was listening intently. He could tell she was busting out of her skin to make a move, but they had no weapons, and there was the thick-necked Russian hovering with the submachine gun. Fox wondered if he could toss him out the window before the Chinese super soldiers got a bead on him.

  “I’m very glad you showed up,” Babich said, a slight tick in his eye—old scar tissue—as he spoke. “I wanted you to; it’s fitting. Some might call it destiny.”

  “There’s no way you could have known I’d come here tonight,” Fox said, nursing his drink. He glanced across at Boris again—he seemed tired, beaten even, as if he was also here against his will. “No way.”

  “Maybe I know you better than you know yourself, hmm?” Babich said. “I knew you’d make it here like I knew you’d make a mess before you came around to see what needed to be done. You have … You have that uncanny knack of being at the right place at the right time.”

  “That’s a different way of putting it.”

  “No matter where I go, there you are.” Babich touched the rolled-up document still in his grip, caressed it, shifted it from hand to hand. “Finally, I will make that fact work for me.”

  “So what is it?” Fox said, acting nonchalant. He could see Boris’s gaze fixed on the armed Russian standing near them. “I guess you—what—you expect me to die now, in front of you? That it?”

  “No, no, no, Lachlan!” Babich said with a big grin as he sat forward on his chair. “I expect you to live!”

  The last thing Gammaldi had heard was Fox’s capitulation, and then the scuffling noises as he’d been disarmed and the radio set had been switched off. Agent McKee stood by the door, assault rifle cradled in her arms, adamant that they stay in the hotel room and ‘let the pros handle it.’ He suspected that, charged with their safety, she was not going to let any of them leave.

  Gammaldi paced up and down.

  “You can’t stop me leaving, though, right?”

  The agent looked to Kate for support.

  “Al,” Kate said, leaving Jacob’s side and walking to him. “They have specialists going to Fox now, he’ll be okay.”

  He looked at her; the worry, the sincerity, the concern in her face that belied her words.

  Fox was puzzled by Babich’s words, intrigued, but was unsure whether to show it. Why would he want me alive? Better to test it. He’d noticed that Malevich was nervously playing with his hands and scanning the room like he was about to do something dumb. Fox took a sip of his vodka, stood, walked over to Boris and gave the rest of the glass to him. The Russian looked at Fox, his eyes softened just a little—and he drank half, seemed a little resolved by it. Fox went back to his chair, mindful that Lavrov and the Russian with the submachine gun never took their eyes off him. He took a Foster’s from the ice bucket on the bar, opened it, took a long pull. That armed guy by the door was as alert as Fox had been when he’d had his morning coffee all those hours ago in Giverny—and here Fox was, tired as shit, and being watched from the mezzanine by trigger-happy Chinese storm-troopers as well.

  “So, Roman, what’s the plan?” Fox asked. “I’m going to somehow clear your good name? Say I was wrong about you all this time, that we all were, that the problem’s really in Russia? That it? You want me to explain how your arrest and trial were all some big set-up to make sure you couldn’t enter Russian politics?”

  Babich leaned back, appraising Fox, then Zoe. He spoke quietly.

  “You are going to help me with this, Lachlan Fox,” Babich said. “And you know why?”

  “No, but I’m dying to hear.”

  “I worked out your price,” Babich said, pleased with himself. “You are a truth-seeker. You worship at its altar, and I respect that—I respect that because I can see it, because I can use it. You are going to bring this treaty amendment, this protocol, to the light of day—and I will conveniently be in a position to benefit from it.”

  “It’s never gonna fly, no matter what happens.”

  “We will see,” Babich said. “Worst case, you don’t help me? Well, it’s a good thing that I have options, isn’t it?”

  Gammaldi paced over to the window. Far down below it was pandemonium outside—people were still pouring out of the building onto the street. Several fire crews had arrived in response to the alarms. The lifts would be out of action now.

  He needed to do something.

  “You know how long I’ve watched state terrorism committed by my government and turned a blind eye?”

  “About as long as you’ve been in that business yourself?” Fox replied, seated opposite. “You’re behind much of that, we both know it. Only difference is you’re outside the government. You can try and sell your countrymen this lie, but not me.”

  “They’re buying it,” Babich said. “They will have no alternative. As we speak, things are happening in Moscow. You know this is how the last government came to power, through terrorist activities—”

  “I know about—”

  “You don’t know the half of it!” Babich said. “You know they caught two FSB agents planting sacks of RDX in a residential tower—why would the FSB bomb a Russian ap
artment block? Well, we know why, don’t we? The FSB director called it a ‘training run,’ because they were caught by local authorities … A training run! Planting a bomb that didn’t go off and then getting caught in a roadblock?”

  “And what, you want to bring all these conspirators to justice?” Fox said. “Then what, fill the power vacuum with your own guys?”

  “Don’t you see, they never would have let me see a trial,” Babich said. “Russia won’t let me talk, not those in power, because of what I know … but I’m not afraid. I’m taking them head on.”

  Gammaldi’s earpiece crackled. He adjusted it.

  “Al, it’s Hutchinson.”

  “I read you.”

  “We’re headed in real soon, hang tight,” he said. “Delta boys have just entered the building. We have your location and Fox’s too, we’re tracking the radio sets—make sure you keep it on your person.”

  “Got it.”

  “You say they do this,” Fox said, “but what do you call what you’ve been doing? South Ossetia. India. Nigeria. You’ve been doing the same.”

  “Your media never bothered with them because they are a government, they have economic and military clout!” Babich said. “The West are too addicted to Russia’s energy resources to speak out. You’re not a fool, Lachlan. You care about this, about getting me—but those men did far worse. They continue to do far worse!”

  “Well, I can do something about you, Babich,” Fox said.

  “You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Babich was red in the face and it flushed down his neck. “I deserve this moment! Russia deserves this!”

  Fox weighed the beer bottle in his hand, wondering if he could take it to Babich’s neck before the armed guys got the drop on him.