The Secret of Excalibur (28 page)

A hand suddenly clapped against her butt and squeezed it, sweaty flesh squeaking over latex. Nina choked back an obscenity-laden tirade and turned to see the fat man she had encountered earlier, two champagne glasses clutched clumsily in his free hand and an expectant grin on his florid face.

‘Oh, hi,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘You again.’

‘Hello, Pamela!’ he said drunkenly, before dropping back into Russian as his groping hand slowly clambered round from her backside towards her chest. He tried to push one of the glasses into her hand.

She reluctantly accepted it, realising that if he tipped it any further the contents would end up in her cleavage. ‘Thank you. Hey! Easy, tiger,’ she added, batting his wandering hand back down.

‘What’s going on?’ Chase asked, in a voice that suggested punches would have been thrown by now had he been there in person.

‘Nothing, just a very, very friendly man . . .’ It occurred to her that she might be able to make use of the inebriated oaf. She clinked her glass against his, then indicated the doors. ‘Do you want to go somewhere private?’ He stared blearily at her. ‘Private? God damn it.
Shhh
,’ she said, putting a theatrical finger to her lips and glancing at the doors again. The message finally sank in, and he gave her a pop-eyed smirk, hooking a pudgy arm round hers and leading her into the next room.

The main hall had been standing room only; this was a lounge, guests chilling out on modern leather armchairs around glass tables. Nina saw the remains of a white line of cocaine on one. If anything, the sickly swirl of cigar smoke was even thicker. Trying not to cough, she peered through the haze, seeing a door at the rear of the room. A waiter bearing a tray of empty glasses hurried through. She nudged her companion towards it.

A brightly lit hallway was beyond - as was another tuxedoed guard, who with an expression of forced politeness moved to block their path. The fat man huffed and began what was almost certainly an outburst along the lines of ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

Nina shushed him. ‘Dmitri said okay,’ she told the guard, hoping he would understand two out of the three words. ‘We get champagne?’ She mimed holding a bottle and then flicking off the cork. ‘Pop!’ The guard regarded her dubiously. ‘Dmitri said okay,’ she repeated.

The guard finally stepped aside, saying something to the drunken man, who responded with a dismissive, ‘
Da, da.
’ Apparently only the top floor was strictly off-limits. Nina saw another waiter coming back with a full tray. She tugged at the fat man’s arm, leading him in that direction.

The scent of food replaced smoke. They were now in the mansion’s kitchen and service areas, opulence toned down to mere elegance. A side room turned out to be for cold storage, walls lined with glass-fronted refrigerators filled with hundreds of bottles of champagne, more crates of vintage Dom Perignon and Krug waiting to be chilled. There was another door at the back of the room; it was ajar, darkness beyond.

Nina slipped free of the man and entered the storeroom, taking a bottle from one of the fridges and sliding a suggestive hand up and down its neck. The man chortled, downing the contents of his glass in one swig. She indicated the darkened room. He waddled to the door and shoved it open. Nina followed him inside—

There was a flat
dunk
as the champagne bottle came down on the back of his head. The Russian pitched forward and collapsed on some cardboard boxes. Nina hurriedly checked his pulse, finding it steady, then put the bottle down next to him. ‘The pleasure was all yours,’ she told him as she left. ‘Okay, Jack, I’m alone. Finally. Where do I go?’

His voice crackled in her ear. ‘Find the kitchen entrance, but don’t go in - go past it. There’ll be a door on your left when you reach a right turn.’

‘Got it.’ She strode through the hallways, waiters checking her out as they passed but doing nothing to stop her. Swinging double doors and the sizzle of cooking meat marked the kitchen entrance; she continued onwards until she reached the promised right turn. ‘Okay, I’m at the door.’

‘Go inside.’ She did, finding herself in a small and chilly room with a heavy wooden exterior door opposite. A metal cabinet on one wall hummed ominously. ‘There should be a junction box.’

‘Got it. Won’t it be locked, though?’

‘Why?’ Chase asked. ‘It’s the guy’s own house.’

She tried the handle, and the cabinet indeed opened without any trouble. ‘Huh. Okay, I see loads of complicated electrical stuff.’

‘You need to find the switch that controls the security cameras,’ said Mitchell. ‘Don’t worry about the labels being in Cyrillic, just look for one with the number 201. Don’t push it yet.’

‘How do you know all this stuff ?’ Nina asked as she scanned the ranks of switches and fuses.

‘The company that installed the system emailed the plans to a subcontractor. We snagged them on the way. DARPA
created
the Internet, remember.’

‘I’d better be more careful about what sites I look at while Nina’s out, then,’ said Chase. Nina wasn’t entirely sure he was joking, but forgot about it when she found the right switch.

‘Two-zero-one, got it,’ she said. ‘Now what?’

‘Okay, here’s what’ll happen,’ Mitchell told her. ‘Pushing that switch will cut off power to part of the security grid. But the system’s not stupid - if there’s a fault, it runs a diagnostic and tries to reboot the affected sections. If they’re not back up after thirty seconds, it goes into alert mode. So Eddie has twenty-nine seconds to get over the wall, cross the grounds and get inside the mansion - without being seen by any of the guards - before you push the switch back.’

‘Two hundred metres in twenty-nine seconds?’ said Chase. ‘Piece of piss.’

Nina wasn’t so certain. ‘Eddie, are you sure you can do it?’

‘I’ve got to, don’t I?’ he replied, more serious. ‘I’m not leaving you alone in there.’

‘Do you know the routes of the guards in the grounds?’ Mitchell asked.

‘What do you think I’ve been doing for the past ten minutes? I’m not watching films on my iPod here. I’m freezing my bollocks off in a tree!’

‘Well, get ready to warm them up. Eddie, soon as you’re clear to go, count down from three. Nina, when he reaches zero, throw the switch. I’ll count down the seconds. Up to you, Eddie.’

Nina nervously raised her finger to the switch as Chase spoke. ‘I can see the door, and the nearest guy’s about to go round the corner.’ She heard a rustling noise as he changed position. ‘Okay, get ready. Three, two, one . . .
go
!’

She pushed the switch.

Chase sprang from the branch. The wall was topped by razor wire; his leading foot landed not on the brickwork but one of the metal supports for the bladed coils. It bent under his weight, the wires hissing metallically, but by then he had already jumped, flying through the air with his legs kicking.

He hit the ground—

And stumbled.

The earth was uneven, impossible to see in the low light. Momentum carried him forward, about to pitch him on to his face . . .

He threw out his hands. His fingertips hit cold ground, pain crackling through every joint as they took his weight for an instant. Then he launched himself forward like a sprinter at the starting line, still staggering but no longer falling. Two strides, and he regained his balance. How much time had he lost?

‘Twenty-four. Twenty-three . . .’

Mitchell’s voice in his headset pushed him onwards like an explosion. Over a hundred and eighty metres to go, no margin for error.

He was sprinting now, arms pumping like pistons. Nina had opened the back door for him, a dim rectangle of light. The lawn rolled past beneath his feet. Look to the right. No guard. Left—

Shit!

A figure at the corner of the building. Looking away from him - but for how long?

‘Fifteen. Fourteen . . .’

Not even halfway. A hundred metres in twelve seconds. Could he do it?

In theory, yes, but this wasn’t a running track—

The guard was still facing the front lawn. Despite the cold, Chase now felt heat racing through his entire body, exertion and adrenalin and fear.

‘Seven . . .’

Fifty metres, forty, the ground just a blur. He pushed harder,
harder
, lungs burning.

‘Three . . .’

Left. The guard was turning, about to walk down the side of the mansion.

Towards him—

‘One—’

No time to slow. Instead Chase dived through the door, landing hard on the tiled floor at the instant Nina closed the switch. He skidded across the room and slammed against the far wall.

‘Zero,’ said Mitchell. ‘Did you make it? Eddie, Nina - answer me, dammit!’

‘He’s here, he’s here!’ Nina gasped. ‘Eddie, are you okay?’

‘Shut the door,’ he panted, weakly waving a hand. Nina closed it. ‘Bloody hell, I must be getting out of shape. Two hundred metres never used to take me that long.’

‘Did anyone see you?’ she asked, dropping to her knees to help him sit up. His heart was racing; she could feel it pounding even through his layers of clothing.

‘Give it five seconds, we’ll know.’ He took out his Desert Eagle, hand shaking as he pointed it at the door.

Five seconds passed. Ten. Nothing happened.

He let out a long, relieved breath. ‘Guess we’re okay. Jesus.’ He pushed himself to his feet, Nina assisting.

She kissed him. ‘God, I’m so glad to see you.’

‘Glad to be here. Oh, you’ve . . .’ He indicated her red lips. ‘You’re smudged it a bit. Still, suits your cover - like you just gave someone a blow job.’

Nina decided not to tell him that he now had on almost as much lipstick as she did. ‘I think Eddie’s fine, Jack,’ she said testily. ‘What now?’

‘For you, the best bet is to hide in plain sight - go back to the party. Eddie, I’ll guide you up to the top floor.’

Nina peered out into the hallway. Nobody was in sight. ‘Okay, it’s clear.’ She looked back at Chase. ‘Good luck.’

Chase stroked her arm as he passed. ‘See you soon.’

25

M
itchell’s directions led Chase to a small staircase at the back of the house. He quickly climbed it. If the mansion’s uppermost floor were off limits, there would be a guard. The question was, how would he respond to an unexpected visitor? The party was after all being attended by Russia’s most rich and powerful people; being threatened by a goon wouldn’t be appreciated.

If the guards were under orders to be polite but firm, that would give him an advantage. They wouldn’t be expecting gate-crashers . . .

‘Okay, I’m about to go in. I’ll call you back in a minute,’ he whispered into his headset before removing it and shoving it into his jacket. Earphones and a mike would raise the suspicions of even the most half-witted security guard.

He took a breath, then opened the door.

As he’d expected, there was a guard in the hallway, who hurriedly jumped up from a chair. Chase gave him a bleary look, pretending to be drunk and lost. The guard approached - then unexpectedly smirked.

Chase tensed, not knowing what had brought on the response.

Had the guard somehow recognised him? Then the man touched a finger to his lips. Chase did the same, and found a smear of sticky red lipstick on his fingertip. No wonder the guard had been so amused. He looked like a geisha.

He smiled back - then punched the man in the stomach. The guard doubled over, wheezing. Chase whipped out his Desert Eagle and clubbed him on the back of the neck. He collapsed face first on to his chair with such force that his head ripped right through the rattan seat. He fell to the floor, the chair round his neck like some strange angular horse collar.

Chase dragged the unconscious man to the top of the stairs, closing the door behind him, then put his headset back on. ‘I’m in.’

‘Was there a guard?’ Mitchell asked.

‘Yeah, but he’s sitting it out. So now where?’

‘On the security plans, there was a room with extra systems, probably for a safe.’

‘Wait, I’m supposed to crack a safe?’

‘Not if Vaskovich’s already opened it. Head for the front of the mansion.’

Chase got his bearings, then proceeded down the hallway. ‘Eddie,’ Nina’s voice hissed through his headphones, ‘that bitch who killed Bernd and Mitzi is here. So’s the big guy, Bulldozer.’

‘Do they know you’re there?’

‘I hope not! I’m staying as far from them as I can.’

‘Any sign of Vaskovich?’ Mitchell asked.

‘No, but I’m kind of keeping my head down.’

‘He could still be upstairs, then,’ said Mitchell, sounding hopeful. ‘Which means you’ve got a chance of catching him, Eddie.’ The American issued more directions, Chase following them and arriving at a turn in the hallway.

He cautiously looked round it. A set of double doors a few metres away were half open, another guard standing outside them. His attention was more on the voices coming from within than on the corridor, curiosity having got the better of him.

Chase marched round the corner, gun aimed at the guard’s head. The man took a moment too long to react, first caught by surprise and then involuntarily freezing in fear at the sight of the huge weapon pointing at his face. By the time he overcame his paralysis, two kilograms of hard steel had cracked against his skull, dropping him to the carpet as effectively as one of the Desert Eagle’s bullets.

Barely breaking stride, Chase stepped over the fallen guard and kicked open the doors.

Standing before him were three startled men: Kruglov, Vaskovich and a third he didn’t recognise. There was no mistaking what lay on the table between them, however.

Excalibur.

‘Ay up,’ said Chase, his gun locked on to Kruglov. ‘Remember me?’

‘Chase!’ hissed Kruglov. His eyes narrowed. ‘That bastard Mitchell. He got you in here, didn’t he?’

‘He’s around. The sword’s here,’ he told Mitchell, before flicking the gun towards Vaskovich. ‘Hi there. You don’t know me, but I know you. You killed someone I cared about, and a lot of other people besides.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ said Vaskovich, eyes flinty behind his glasses.

‘You didn’t pull the trigger, but they’d all be alive if you hadn’t told fuck-face here to get you this sword. Now me?’ He thumbed back the Desert Eagle’s hammer for emphasis. ‘I pull my own trigger. If I’m going to kill someone, at least I’ve got the balls to take the responsibility myself.’

As he’d expected, Kruglov didn’t react at all to the purely psychological effect of the hammer-click. Vaskovich flinched, but otherwise remained composed. The third man, however, gasped in fright before overcompensating with bluster. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘How dare you threaten me! I am Felix Mishkin, Deputy Defence Minister of the Russian Federation!’

‘I don’t care if you’re Yuri fucking Gagarin!’ Chase told him. He aimed the gun at him; Mishkin instantly cringed back. ‘Sit down and shut the fuck up.’

‘I’m airborne,’ said Mitchell over the headset, the whine of a helicopter engine partially obscuring his words. ‘I’ll be there in four minutes.’

‘So how is Nina?’ asked Kruglov. Chase whipped the gun back round at him. Vaskovich’s eyes betrayed a flash of comprehension at the name, but Chase, his attention focused on the former KGB man, didn’t notice.

‘Better than you’ll be in a couple of minutes,’ Chase snarled.

A very small, calculating smile crept on to Kruglov’s lips. ‘What are you waiting for, Chase? Why not just kill me now?’

‘You in a rush?’

‘No, but you have us, you have Excalibur. There is no reason for you to wait . . . unless your escape route is not yet ready,’ he concluded, the smile broadening. ‘Go ahead and shoot.’ Mishkin gabbled disbelievingly in Russian. ‘He won’t fire,’ Kruglov told him, still speaking in English for Chase’s benefit. ‘Everyone in the building will hear the shot. He will never get out of the mansion, never mind the grounds.’

‘You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime . . .’ Chase stepped up to the table, gesturing for Vaskovich and Kruglov to back towards the open safe set in one wall. ‘I’ll be having this.’ He picked up Excalibur.

‘You are making a mistake,’ said Vaskovich. ‘Whatever Jack has told you about why I need the sword, it is a lie.’

‘Well, it’s funny, but after the experiences I’ve had with billionaires in the past, I don’t believe a fucking word they say any more.’ Chase stepped back, starting to feel vulnerable. Mitchell was still over three minutes away - and as long as he was holding the sword, he would be forced to fire the heavy Desert Eagle with one hand, reducing his accuracy. He would also have to drop the sword if he needed to reload with the spare magazine attached to his holster strap.

And there was something else, a growing feeling of
wrongness
. While Mishkin, now sitting, was trembling in fear, both Vaskovich and Kruglov were almost visibly growing in confidence as he watched. He glanced at the doors. Nobody there but the downed guard, no sounds of movement. But—

‘Jack,’ he said, voice taking on urgency. ‘Those extra security systems in here - were they just for alarms? Or was there anything else?’

‘I’m not sure,’ came the reply over the helicopter noise. ‘There might have been some data lines.’

‘Data? Like to a computer?’ He looked more closely at the yawning safe. ‘Or from a
camera
?’ There was a small circular hole in the top of the frame, only exposed when the door was opened.

He was being watched
.

The men in the mansion’s security centre had seen the whole thing - and to protect their boss would have ordered others to the room without raising a general alarm . . .

Chase looked through the doors. There was a very slight shadow being cast on the unconscious guard, someone pressed against the wall outside—

He snapped the Desert Eagle round and fired at a point two feet to the door’s side. The noise was almost deafening, the recoil kicking his whole arm up and back as a hole exploded in the wall - followed by a pounding thump as the lurking man was blasted across the hallway into the opposite wall.

He wouldn’t be alone . . .

Chase fired at the other side of the door. Somebody tumbled to the floor, blood spraying across the hall carpet.

Movement in his peripheral vision—

He spun back to face the Russians by the safe - and saw Kruglov dive at his boss and throw him down behind Mishkin’s chair. The minister screeched, flinging up his arms in a pathetic attempt to shield himself from Chase’s bullets.

Chase didn’t fire. He couldn’t blow away the Russian Deputy Minister of Defence to kill Kruglov, or even to stop Vaskovich’s plans. Instead he ran for the doors, hearing movement outside. Gun in one hand, he swung Excalibur with the other—

Even without its weird glow, the sword was still sharp, hacking deep into the wrist of the guard who had been just about to shoot him. Before the man even had time to scream, Chase pistol-whipped him with the Desert Eagle and knocked him to the floor.

Nobody else was in the hallway, but others would be on their way. Nina and Mitchell were both speaking at once, the latter’s shouts drowning out the former’s frantic whispers. ‘Eddie! What happened, what’s going on?’

‘If you can cut three minutes off your flight time, that’d be great!’ Chase answered. ‘How do I get out?’

‘Back the way you came, but carry on past the stairs, then go left.’

Chase was already running. ‘Shit - how’s Nina going to get to the chopper now?’

The background noise from the hall had changed, party conversation turning to confusion at the gunfire. ‘Eddie, Eddie!’ Nina said as loudly as she dared. ‘Dominika just ran upstairs! What do I do?’

‘Nina,’ said Mitchell, ‘in about two minutes that whole place is going to be in total panic. You’ll have to get out then - either meet up with Prikovsky’s other girls, or just steal a car and head for the US embassy.’

‘I don’t know where it is!’ Nina protested.

Chase was almost at the stairwell. ‘I’m going back for her!’

‘
No!
’ Mitchell’s transmission crackled as the shout briefly overpowered his microphone. ‘If you go back you’ll
die,
and Vaskovich will get Excalibur again!’

Chase reached the stairs, slowed fractionally - then continued past them. ‘Shit!’ Reluctant as he was to admit it, Mitchell was right. He arrived at the turn and went left. ‘Nina, get close to the front door - soon as people start running, you go out with them!’

He heard a door crash open behind him. He twisted and fired at the guard who ran round the corner. The shot missed, blowing a hole in the wall, but it had the intended effect - the man jumped back into cover.

Mitchell directed him towards the balcony. Chase kicked open a door, firing another shot back down the hallway as he went through. The pursuing guard fell to the floor. Behind him was Dominika, wearing a black cocktail dress, hair now an acidic yellow.

Chase took aim. She saw him and dived, the .50-calibre bullet burning over her as she landed and grabbed the guard’s gun. Before Chase had a chance to recover from the recoil she loosed off four rapid shots. He jumped backwards as the door frame splintered.

The room was a library. It was unlit, but enough illumination came through the arched French windows from the lights outside for him to see the balcony beyond. Mitchell had been right about there being enough clearance for a helicopter to hover beside it, but it would be tight.

No time to fiddle with the windows. Instead, he flung Excalibur at them as hard as he could. The sword smashed through, clanging down outside amidst the shattered glass and broken wood. Chase shielded his face and jumped at the broken hole. Jagged glass sliced against one side of his head, but his leather jacket took most of the damage. He shook off the fragments, then snatched up the sword and pointed the Desert Eagle back at the library’s door.

No sign of the chopper. He glanced over the balcony’s side. Dozens of expensive cars were parked below. On the front lawn, mostly hidden behind the mansion, was the glossy black tail of a helicopter.

A shadow in the doorway. Chase fired as another of Vaskovich’s guards rushed through. The bullet hit his shoulder, spinning him like a top.

Dominika jumped through the door behind him, gun blazing. The remaining windows burst apart. Chase dropped into a clumsy roll as bullets chipped the stonework of the balcony wall behind him. He fired a wild shot. The Russian woman rolled too, far more gracefully, dropping her now empty pistol and taking the wounded guard’s weapon in a single smooth movement.

Only two bullets left in the Desert Eagle. Maybe Mitchell had a point about his choice of weapon after all . . .

The helicopter suddenly roared into view overhead. A gale scattered glass fragments across the balcony as it swept past, nose tipping up sharply in a hard braking manoeuvre. It wheeled round, turning side-on to the mansion and slipping back towards it.

Chase had lost sight of Dominika in the darkened library. But she was there somewhere, waiting to strike.

The helicopter, a small MD 500 with a rounded, almost egg-shaped fuselage, moved closer. Its strobing navigation lights lit up the balcony like silent explosions. He could see Mitchell in the pilot’s seat, eyes flicking between him and the yellow-painted tips of the rotor blades, judging the distance to the mansion wall. Fifteen feet, ten, the blades perilously close to the wall . . .

Movement: acid-blond hair streaking past the broken windows—

Chase blasted off his penultimate shot as Dominika ran across the library, muzzle flashes searing a dotted line across his vision.

But she wasn’t aiming at him.

The helicopter’s aluminium skin bucked as bullets cratered the thin metal, the Plexiglas windows cracking. The aircraft lurched. Chase thought Mitchell had been hit, but he recovered, only startled. The American mouthed words at him, voice drowned out by the engine noise.
Come on!

Chase looked back at the library. Dominika was in cover past the windows. He only had one bullet left. And she had a much bigger target to aim at.