by Tom Cain
It was after one o’clock in the morning when he got the word from Max telling him the Russians were on their way. He saw them a few minutes later, riding up on a flashy black bike. Jesus Christ! Max hadn’t mentioned that one of them was a bird. She was wearing her skirt pulled right up to her waist so that she could straddle the bike, leaving every inch of her thighs exposed to his gaze. She got off, giving him a quick flash of her panties, then pulled the skirt down over her backside, giving it a little wiggle on the way. Colclough swallowed hard. He wanted to know if the face was as good as the body. Pity the daft tart still had her helmet on.
Now the bloke got off the bike, grabbed the girl’s hand, and hurried her toward the door. Filthy little monkeys couldn’t wait to get at it. Well, sod ‘em. They were about to get a blow job all right.
He watched them go in, then called in to base.
“They’ve arrived,” he said.
“Stay on the line,” came the voice from the other end. “I’m betting Carver set his explosives with short-delay fuses. He’ll want to get the targets into the apartment before detonation. Shouldn’t take long. Are the lights on yet?”
Colclough looked up. “No. The dirty beggars probably stopped for a quick one on the stairs. Oh, hang on. The lights have just gone on. Shouldn’t be long now.”
Colclough was half right. The place was about to blow, but Carver and Alix had not hung around on the stairs; they’d raced up. Just before they went into the apartment, Carver stopped. He took her black bag off his shoulder, felt inside it for any weapons, then, satisfied, gave it to her.
“You may need this. Remember, we’ve got exactly sixty seconds, and you’ve got to look different when we leave. Go straight to the bedroom, get changed, grab what you need, and get out. Ready?”
Carver opened the door, walked in, disabled the alarm, and turned on all the lights. As Alix ran into the bedroom, he went into the living room, drew the curtains, and took off his helmet, which he placed on the floor in the middle of the room.
Twelve seconds gone.
He strode across to the bookshelves, cut the speaker wires, and put the speakers in the fireplace. The Claymores would still go off, creating the explosion he wanted, but the solid brick and stonework of the chimney-breast would absorb the back blast and restrict the spread of ball bearings. The neighbors should survive okay.
Twenty-six seconds.
He retraced his steps back out into the hall, breaking into a run, and crossed into the bedroom. Alix was just slipping on the dress that had been in her case. She had nothing on but a pair of white panties slung low beneath a smooth, flat, pale brown stomach. Her breasts were small and neat with perfect rosy brown nipples. They rode up her chest as she raised her arms and let the ice blue dress slither down her body like mercury.
Carver didn’t give her a second glance. He went around to the far side of the bed, took the Claymore from the wall, and shoved it down between the end of the bed and the mattress, with the rear of the mine facing into the mattress to dissipate its energy.
Thirty-nine seconds.
It took three more seconds to get into the bathroom and another five to rip the bomb out of the cistern, take out the detonator, and place both in one of his jacket’s side pockets. On the way out, he grabbed Alix’s makeup and wash bags, lobbing them toward her as he went back into the bedroom.
Alix was bending down, slipping on the white sneakers.
“Thought you might need these,” he said with a wry grin, as her startled face looked up at him across the bed.
She shoved the cosmetics into her black shoulder bag, picked it up, and dashed from the room, her dress fluttering around her thighs. There were ten seconds left as Carver followed Alix out of the bedroom, along the hall, and through the door of the apartment. Carver closed it behind him, and ran for the stairs.
Five . . . four . . . three . . .
Colclough had seen the lights go on. Nothing happened for a while. He wondered if something had gone wrong. He could sense Max’s impatience in the silence at the other end of the line. Then the windows of the top-floor apartment exploded outward, showering wood and glass across the street. There was a sharp, pattering sound on the roof and windows of Colclough’s car—tiny steel balls raining down like metal hail.
The street was almost empty. The restaurants had all closed; the tourists had all gone off to their hotel beds. There were just two people wending their way home when the blast went off. The woman screamed. The man grabbed her and tried to shield her with his body as the debris rained down around them. They didn’t seem to have been seriously hurt, but the woman was weeping helplessly while the man just stared around him, dazed and uncomprehending.
“Bleedin’ ‘ell!” Colclough shouted. “Whoever you got to do that job, he doesn’t do nothing by half!”
Max didn’t seem too excited. “So, there’s been an explosion?”
“Yeah, there bloody has. Hang on a minute, I’ve got company.”
A woman was running from the front door of the apartment building, a blond in a blue dress. She ran toward the car, her eyes wide with panic, and pressed her face up against the glass. “Help! For God’s sake, you must help!” she screamed. She spoke English. Sounded like a Yank.
Colclough could hear Max’s voice on the speakerphone: “What’s happening?”
“Just some bird got caught up in the blast. Nothing serious. Bit hysterical is all.”
He pressed the button and opened the window. The girl leaned in and started tugging at his sleeve.
“Come quickly, please. It’s my mother! She’s . . . Oh God, I think she’s dead!” she cried.
Colclough did not hear the passenger door open beside him. The first he knew of Samuel Carver’s presence was the cold metal of the gun pressing behind his ear and the whispered voice that said, “Keep talking. I’m not here. Got it?”
The ex-policeman’s balding head nodded up and down.
“Now tell the girl to piss off, nice and loud.”
“Er, er, sorry, love,” stammered Colclough. “Be happy to help. But I’m busy, see? Got things to do.”
Max’s voice snapped over the speakerphone: “Oy, Colclough, get this sorted!”
“You got it guv’nor,” Colclough replied. “Listen, love, you heard the man. Naff off.”
Alix smiled and patted his cheek. “Good boy,” she mouthed, then got into the car herself, sitting behind Colclough.
Carver tapped Colclough’s shoulder with his gun to get his attention. With his free hand he pointed at the phone, mounted on the dashboard. Then he pulled his finger across his throat. The meaning was clear: End the conversation.
Colclough turned back toward the phone. “She’s gone,” he said. “I’m returning to base. Over and out.”
“Right,” said Carver. “Sit on your right hand. Wedge it under nice and tight. Good. Now put your left hand on the wheel. Don’t move.”
“Or what?”
Before Carver could answer, Alix leaned forward and brought her arm around the back of the driver’s seat, her fist balled. She gave a gentle squeeze of her hand and a high-carbon stainless-steel blade sprang out from between her thumb and forefinger. She pressed the tip of the blade against Colclough’s neck.
“Or I teach you to show a woman respect.”
Having made her point, Alix relaxed back into her seat and snapped the blade back into its handle. Carver looked at her, startled, unable to hide his surprise. He saw a mocking look cross Colclough’s face and felt the surprise give way to anger, mostly at his own stupidity.
He reached into one of his pants pockets and pulled out another plastic cuff strip and handed it to Colclough.
“Loop one end around the steering wheel. Pass the other end through it. Then pull it tight.”
Colclough did as he was told. One half of the cuff was now attached to the wheel, the other half dangled free.
“Now put your left hand through there,” said Carver, gesturing with his gun at the empty
cuff. “Tighten it with your right hand. Good boy.”
Colclough was now cuffed to the steering wheel. He wasn’t leaving the car until Carver cut him loose. Carver patted him down, looking for a weapon.
“Maybe you should have done that to the bird, eh?” Colclough sneered. “You might’ve enjoyed it an’ all.”
Colclough was balding, maybe twenty pounds overweight. His shirt was white polyester. He was wearing gray trousers, with a matching jacket hanging from a hook behind the passenger seat. His shoes were black lace-ups. He wasn’t carrying a gun or knife. There was nothing in his jacket.
Carver looked at Colclough with a wry, contemplative smile on his face, then glanced down at his gun. Without warning, he lashed out, smashing the pistol into Colclough’s face, cracking his cheekbone and drawing blood. Colclough bent over, holding his face in his uncuffed hand. He prodded his battered cheek with a fingertip and winced.
“What the ‘ell did you do that for?”
“You heard the lady,” Carver said. “Show some respect.”
“My hero,” said Alix, teasingly. She tossed the knife handle up and down in her hand. “It was in my boot,” she explained, “then in my hand. From the moment you set me free, I could have killed you anytime.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I still might.”
Carver ignored the remark and turned back to Colclough. He took the lump of C4 putty from his pocket and held it out.
“Do you know what this is?”
“I can guess.”
“Good,” said Carver. “Now, watch.”
He leaned down and stuck the putty underneath the side of the passenger seat, out of Colclough’s reach. Then he rummaged through another pocket and pulled out a timer detonator.
“Max is in town, isn’t he?”
Colclough nodded.
“Thought so. An operation like this, he’d have to control it on-site. So I’m guessing he’s not far from here, right?”
Another nod.
Carver held the detonator in front of Colclough’s face. “I’m setting this to fifteen minutes. You’ve got that much time to get us to Max. If we get there on time, I pull out the detonator, nothing happens. If we don’t get there, I open this door and leave. The lady goes out the back door. You stay locked to the steering wheel.”
He set the timer and skewered it into the putty. The sound of a fire engine siren echoed in the distance.
“Alternatively,” said Carver, “I reset it to thirty seconds and we get out now. What’s it going to be?”
Colclough didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His labored breathing and the sheen of sweat breaking out across his forehead told the story. He turned the ignition, stuck the car in gear, and pulled away from the curb.
“Good man,” said Carver. “Now, time we had a little chat. Let’s not piss about. Tell me where we’re going. Describe the place. How many people does Max have? Fourteen and a half minutes left. Talk.”
11
Carver repeated the question. “How many people?”
“I don’t know, all right?” Colclough whined. “That’s the whole point, ain’t it? You only know what you need to know. You only see what you need to see.”
“All right, what did you see?”
“It’s a big mansion. Old place. Proper flash. You get there and the building comes right up to the pavement, almost like a blank wall facing the street. There’s an arch with a driveway through it. That’s how you get in.”
“Security?”
“Gates. Metal gates.”
They’d made it back to the river again. Across the water, Carver could see the floodlit towers of Notre Dame. He ignored them, giving all his concentration to Colclough.
“You drive in and there’s a little guardhouse on the left, inside the arch, yeah? There was definitely an individual there, checking everyone in and out.”
“Cameras?”
“Couple at the front. Didn’t see any others. But there might be.”
“All right, then what?”
Colclough thought for a moment. “A courtyard. There’s like an old stables or something on one side they use for car parking. The front door’s opposite the entrance arch. It’s under cover, so you can drive right up, get to the door, and you don’t get wet. You go in, there’s a big, bare hall and a marble staircase right up the middle of the building.”
“That’s normal. It’s a hotel particular,” Alix interrupted.
Carver turned around in his seat. “Sorry?”
The girl explained, as if reciting from a guidebook. “A hôtel particulier. A classic Paris mansion, probably built in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.”
“How do you know about that?” asked Carver.
“Because I was trained to discuss such things.”
“In Russia?”
Alix nodded. “Of course. It was essential for my job.”
“Which was?”
She broke into one of her noncommittal smiles. “Conversation. So, if this is a typical hotel, all the main reception rooms are on the first floor. Is that where Max is?”
Colclough nodded. “Yeah, some kind of dining room. His guv’nor was next door, in some other room.”
Carver frowned. “What do you mean, ‘guv’nor’? You’re saying Max has a boss? Who is he?”
“How should I know? I never saw him.”
“How do you know he’s there, then?”
“Because Max was called into the next room. Went straight through, no argument. So the bloke must’ve been his boss. Logical, yeah?”
He looked at Carver with pleading eyes, desperate to be told he was doing all right, that everything would work out okay. His voice cracked. “Christ, I’m doing my best. I’ve got a wife, a daughter. I don’t wanna die. I mean, what’ve I ever done to you, for Chrissake?”
“Okay,” said Carver, ignoring Colclough’s pleas. “One on the door. Max. His boss. Who else?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Not many. I was told to wait downstairs in some kind of pantry. There was food and coffee there. A couple of other blokes came in and out.”
“Armed?”
“Could’ve been. In fact, yeah, there was two of them outside the room Max was in, like guards. They had guns, definitely. Anyway, I drank coffee and did the crossword till about eleven. Then I got orders to take up my position. The rest you know.”
“Not quite,” said Carver. “Where’s the pantry, relative to this dining room Max was in? How did you get there?”
“There was more stairs that went down the back way. You know, like for servants.”
Carver thought. Call it four people to mount proper surveillance of the targets in the hours leading up to the hit. You’d need a couple of them to stay by the accident, monitor what happened, and follow the ambulance. That left two, plus the doorman, Max, his guards, and his mysterious boss. Seven against one. Not great odds.
He turned around to face Alix again. He’d disarmed her pretty easily at the bus stop. It wasn’t a great sign.
“How much armed combat training have you actually had?”
She shrugged and pouted. “Some. Basic self-defense, shooting, nothing special.”
“And knife work,” said Carver.
“No. That I taught myself. Every girl needs a way to scare off creeps.”
“Bit extreme, isn’t it?”
“So were the creeps.”
Colclough spoke. “Can I ask a question?”
Carver only looked at him in response.
“Why don’t you just get out of here? Trust me, I’ll stay schtum. I swear to God, on my girl’s life, not a word. Take this car. Head for the nearest airport. Fly as far away as possible.”
Alix nodded. “Or we could fly to different places. Separately.”
“Yeah, we could,” said Carver, “if you wanted a pain in the neck from looking over your shoulder for the rest of your short life and an itch in your back, waiting for the first bullet. The people who sent u
s wanted us dead. They’re not going to change their minds on that. So we’ve got an hour, tops, before the police discover there was no one in that flat and that body gets fished out of the sewers. We’ve got to assume that Max and his boss are either monitoring police communications or have people inside the force. They’ll soon know we’re still alive. We’ve got to hit them before then. And we’ve got to find out about their organization. I take it Max had some kind of IT/communications setup?”
“I s’pose so. There was computer screens on the table, but he wasn’t letting me anywhere near ‘em, so don’t ask me what they did.”
“I don’t have to. They ran the show. And the computer that ran them has everything we need to know. If we can’t get it out of Max, we’ll get it from the computer. You got that, Alix?”
A shrug. “I guess. But you should know, I’m not a soldier. Attacking a house? I did not get trained to do that.”
“Then just follow me, do exactly what I say, and watch my back. And look on the bright side. Those bastards wanted to kill us. We’re going to return the compliment.”
12
Colclough brought the car to a halt. They were in the Marais, directly across the river from the Ile Saint-Louis. Once, aristocrats and courtiers built their mansions here, to be as close as possible to the kings of France in their palace at the Louvre. They filled their homes with paintings, sculptures, and furniture of exquisite taste. They dressed in silk and lace. Yet behind the impeccable facades and courtly etiquette raged an unrelenting war for influence, wealth, and access to the throne.
When the old order vanished in the revolutionary frenzy of 1789, the Marais went with it. The area was neglected for almost two centuries, only to be revived in recent decades as a Parisian equivalent to New York’s SoHo or London’s Notting Hill. Now the rich and fashionable rubbed shoulders with the ethnic and exotic: exclusive boutiques next to Jewish delis, gay bars alongside Algerian restaurants. But many of the mansions remained, and one, at least, was still home to conspiracy and intrigue.
“It’s just there,” he said, pointing with his free right hand to a gateway about fifty meters ahead of them, on the far side of the road. Then he slumped in his seat and muttered, “I don’t know why I bothered. You’re gonna kill me anyway.”