In his right hand he carried a pen. That was all. A pen. A ricin-and-botulism-loaded pen? Definitely mightier than the sword? She knew it was madness, the stuff of movies, but these people had history. David had been there. Haas could prick the chancellor and inject her with deadly poison. She would reel, but would it be seen as an attack? He would apologise and move on. Could he get away with it?
The tannoy continued with its announcements.
“Einen Master in Finance. Herr Ramhart Haas!” Another round of applause.
In a split second her policeman dithered. Sam pushed him forward, the double doors burst open, and she followed on. Haas was on the top step and about to reach the platform when the policeman launched himself at his legs. They connected, a bundle of two grown men, both of them falling left off the stage and onto the floor in front of the main crowd.
There was immediate uproar in the hall, but Sam tuned it all out. She was just behind the policeman as he and Haas struggled on the floor. In the octopus of arms and legs, Sam saw the pen jab the policeman through his sleeve—he immediately started to lose the fight. To her right on the stage, the chancellor and the other dignitaries were on their feet; one or two were screaming and pointing. The noise from the whole hall was deafening. Sam was focused on Haas, but out of the corner of her eye she couldn’t help noticing mass movement—a swish of black gowns and feathery coloured hoods as the crowd collectively flinched backward, toward the main doors.
In less than a second, Haas had thrown off the floundering policeman, and with a quick glance at Sam—all flared nostrils and wild eyes—he was on his feet. He shot a look to his left. Sam followed his eye line. The chancellor was still standing and still exposed. Haas placed one hand on the stage and started to vault the four-foot-high step.
Instinctively, Sam dropped to the policeman’s side and fumbled for his pistol. I have to stop Haas. She had the pistol in her hand and was turning to take a shot when the blast of war reverberated around the hall.
Crack! The sound of a shot—immediately recognisable in a hall that was already a cacophony of screams and shouting.
Haas went down, his face scrunched on the carpet that covered the stage—eyes open, but lifeless. As he fell and in the gap left behind, Sam saw a man in a suit holding a smoking pistol. He had pushed the chancellor to the floor and was standing over his leader. Worryingly, the man was re-aiming. She was clearly his next target.
Time slowed.
As Sam dropped to avoid the bullet, she heard the crack of a second shot. The distinct, single sound overcame all the noise in the hall. It was louder than any person could shout, louder than all the screaming put together—all the noise.
But it didn’t hit her. She crouched tighter, her back to the weapon. She waited for another shot—a double tap, like any professional hit. But there wasn’t one. The sound in the hall took over again, swamping her senses: screams, shouts, and palpable fear. She couldn’t hear herself think, but she needed to do something. She turned and stood up in one motion, releasing the pistol as she did. What is happening? In among darting and running bodies on the stage, two people were motionless. One was the shooter—Sam guessed a BfV special agent. And the other was the chancellor, who was now standing. The man’s pistol arm was forced upward, smoke gently rising to the ceiling from the short barrel, like a Cuban cigar. It was held there by the hands of the chancellor, pushing the pistol toward the ceiling and away from the shooter’s intended target: her.
The chancellor nodded at Sam, the earlier connection resonating between them. She mouthed, “Sorry.”
Sam smiled and, without noise, mouthed back, “Thank you.”
Epilogue
Three Weeks Later
Albert Ward, St. Thomas’s Hospital, London
David sipped from his cup, sitting semi-upright in his hospital bed in a private room on Albert Ward. He was, he admitted thankfully, feeling a good deal better. He could make it to the bathroom without assistance and was now eating and drinking, although his appetite was not huge. “Little and often,” his wife had continuously encouraged.
“So, what about the air crashes and the madcap theory that your German friend coined: kill many, murder one?” he asked.
He had Jane and Sam visiting. They had been in most days since he had been allowed visitors. Today was the first day that he’d felt strong enough to be back-briefed on Op Greyshoe. It had been an extraordinary sequence of events.
“We’re still not completely sure. The deputy director reckons that the Church of the White Cross was funded by massive ownership in stocks of the big six oil companies—large enough to influence board-level decisions. As a result, any emerging energy industry, such as solar and nuclear fusion, that might negatively influence those stock prices needed to be contained—maybe even slowed. His view, which they haven’t yet been able to corroborate, was that the oil giants would remain supreme no matter the cost.” Jane was sitting on one side of David’s bed—Sam on the other. Since the Köln incident, Jane had continued to oversee both Operation Greyshoe and Operation Glasshouse, as well as her usual portfolio. David thought she looked to be holding up well.
“And did they kill critical personnel in the emerging industries, hiding their murders among the deaths of many?”
“The Americans aren’t sure. As you know, nobody in any authority survived the breaking of the siege at Abilene. So there was no one whom they could question as to how the money had been managed and whether the stock prices had been kept artificially high. Or if someone had sanctioned the bringing down of commercial aircraft to hide the death of an individual.” Jane shrugged her shoulders in a “beats me” fashion. She glanced across at Sam who was helping herself to one of the chocolates they’d brought in for David.
“What about Miles Johnson?”
“Still at large. So far they’ve not been able to pin anything on him. There is an emerging dossier against him, as I understand it. The DD, along with his FBI oppo, is keen to get a bulletproof case before they try to take him down.”
David breathed out heavily. His brain was working, that was for sure. He had blank sections, much of it from his earlier life, but he reckoned his powers of reasoning were still pretty sharp. The doctors had briefed him that he might not get all his faculties back after what he had been through. Although he wasn’t sure he would need them all when he was pottering around the garden, attending his roses.
“The Church of the White Cross is now defunct in the United States . . .”
Jane interrupted him. “And in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Pretty much dismantled.”
“But its assets are still live, and there are people like Miles Johnson at liberty to use those assets?”
David looked across at Sam. She was staring out of the window absently, now apparently bored with the whole thing. Her face was contorted—she was using her tongue to remove some toffee that was stuck in her teeth. She did make him laugh.
“The FBI people have frozen what assets they can find, but they can’t be sure they have everything. And, yes, there are probably a number of Johnsons out there still pulling some strings.”
David paused for a second.
“Ralph Bell? Do we know what’s happened to him?”
Jane led again. “No idea. He’s now top of the USA’s wanted list.”
David looked to Sam.
“What about you, Sam? When are you heading back over to Germany to collect your Cross of Honour?”
Sam stopped staring out the window and fidgeted a bit. She was clearly uncomfortable with the question.
“Sometime next month, I think.” She nodded nonchalantly as she answered.
“And will the German chancellor present it to you personally?” David pressed.
“I don’t know. It’s all a bit of a fuss about nothing.”
“Oh really . . .” David said with a touch of sarcasm. “I’m not sure that’s how the German leader sees it, nor the chief. I believe he was pretty pleased with the way things went
.” David sipped some more of his tea.
“How’s the spiked policeman?”
“He’s OK, as I understand it. Because we had your history, the medic at the scene was able to take control of the situation really quickly. I think the policeman had a blood transfusion within an hour, which limited the damage of the poisons.” Sam’s reply was more engaging when she spoke about something other than herself, David thought.
“And Mauning?”
Jane led. “Waiting trial for numerous offences. The chances are he will go down for between five and ten years. I get the impression from the BfV that that is as much as they will be able to manage.”
“And the Manning/Mauning linkage?”
“We’re a hundred per cent confident they have the same bloodline. It didn’t take my team long to establish that they were originally from the same Prussian family. Manning is a bastardisation of Mauning, which his family took on during the Second World War in the United States—trying to hide their previous nationality.” Jane stopped for a second, as if taking a breather. “GCHQ has established a continuous comms link between the two over the past decade. It is clear that they were in this together.”
David nodded, closing his eyes as he did. God, I’m tired.
One last question.
“And Sam, what about your German friend?”
Sam smiled, a half smile, and gave out a little sigh.
“He’s recovering, physically, that is. We’ve spoken on the phone a couple of times. He’s still really struggling with the death of his mother.”
“That’s understandable.”
David thought before asking a supplementary. “And you and him?”
Sam stopped smiling and looked over Jane’s head, out of the window, across the river toward Big Ben. David couldn’t tell how the question had gone down.
“We’re not the same people who kicked this off together in the Alps. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve both moved on.” Sam was still wistfully staring out of the window. Quietly, as an afterthought, she added, “Which is a shame, because he lived in a very nice castle.”
David and Jane laughed.
She’s something else, this Sam Green. The woman who had, yet again, put her life on the line for a cause she didn’t wholly comprehend. Regardless, she had battled on, persevered, and won.
She would make a fine agent. Now there’s a thought.
Jane and Sam spent a further half an hour with David. By the end, he was obviously very tired. They said their good-byes and left the hospital to go back to the office.
“It’s so good to see him recovering,” Jane said absently.
“Mmm. Yes.” Sam wasn’t really tuned in to much. Since Köln, there wasn’t a great deal that kept her attention. But, when she thought about it, it was good to see David making a speedy recovery.
She felt sharp enough behind her desk, staring at the latest images of migrants still flocking westward, toward what they considered to be their salvation. In the afternoons she was still picking out would-be terrorists heading west out of the Middle East. And in the mornings Russian soldiers on the wrong side of the Ukrainian border. But, other than that, she felt her life was flat. Dull. The dank, grey British winter wasn’t helping.
They both weaved in and out of the late afternoon commuter traffic. Sometimes they were side by side; other times they were apart. At one point, walking down the Albert Embankment, they broke away from each other to pass a small group of young tourists who were standing in a huddle, staring at something in one of their hands. Sam glanced across at the group and realised it was an iPad they were looking at.
She didn’t know why, but she was drawn to the crowd. The group’s demeanour was a bond of shock and solidarity. Their expressions were laced with amazement, horror even—they certainly weren’t poring over the latest comic YouTube clip. One of the girls in the group had tears rolling down her cheeks.
Sam stopped on the edge of the group, looking for a gap. Jane walked on for a few metres before she realised that Sam was standing with the small crowd. She checked herself and came back to see what was going on.
The people in the crowd were talking in hushed tones. Among the murmuring Sam heard, “Mon Dieu!”
“What’s up, Sam?”
Sam didn’t say anything. She was on tiptoes, looking over the shoulders of one of the shorter men. A girl in the middle of the group held the iPad flat so they could all see what was on the screen. Sam saw immediately that it was a live news feed from CNN.
“Shit! I don’t believe it.”
“What, Sam?” Jane’s tone was immediate. She knew something wasn’t right.
Sam came off her toes, turned from the group, and walked a few steps to the grey block parapet overlooking the Thames. She put both hands on the wall as if recovering from a sprint. Her mind was a maelstrom of thoughts and questions—with no answers. She stared back toward the Houses of Parliament as if looking for some sense to it all.
“What is it, Sam? What’s happened?”
Nothing.
“Sam!”
“There’s been another one.”
“Another what?”
Sam turned toward Jane. She couldn’t stop the dampness building up around her eyes.
“Another plane. An Air France jet has come down in Spain on its way from Casablanca to Paris. Everyone on board is dead.”
Also by Roland Ladley—the very first Sam Green novel
Unsuspecting Hero
Sam Green’s life is in danger of imploding. Suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder after horrific injuries and personal tragedy in Afghanistan, she escapes to The Isle of Mull, hoping to convalesce. A chance find on the island’s shores interrupts her rehabilitation and launches her on a journey to West Africa and on a collision course with forces and adversaries she cannot begin to comprehend.
Meanwhile, in London, MI6 is facing down a biological threat that could kill thousands and inflame an already smouldering religious war. Time is not on anyone’s side, and Sam’s determination to face her past and control her future, regardless of the risks, looks likely to end in disaster. Fate conspires to bring Sam into the centre of an international conspiracy where she alone has the power to influence world-changing events. Blind to her newfound role, is her military training and complete disregard for her own safety enough to prevent the imminent devastation?
Fuelling the Fire Page 42