Surviving the Evacuation, Book 16

by Frank Tayell

  “Are you sure?” Nicki asked.

  The Australian gave the injured man a kick. “He’s breathing. Give him half an hour, he’ll be deader than a croc in Cairns.”

  “Who is he?” Locke asked.

  “Who are you?” the Australian asked. “Sorry, that was rude. I’m Mikko, g’day.” He held out a hand, then saw it was covered in blood. “Sorry. You know how it is in this line.”

  “This is Sorcha Locke,” Nicki said. “She is with Lisa Kempton.”

  “Are you now?” Mikko said.

  Locke nodded. “But who is he?”

  “Who are you, mate?” Mikko asked, turning to the injured man. “The lady asked you a question. Nah, he’s too far gone. He’s Lenny Smiles. Broker to the rich and infamous.”

  “Leonard Smilovitch,” Nicki said. “The sisters asked him to find a remote location for these meetings. Somewhere discreet. He chose here.”

  “I wondered about the location,” Locke said. “It did seem out of character.”

  “Oh, sorry, where are my manners?” Mikko said. “Do you want a turn? I’ve had him for six hours. I wasn’t expecting to share.” He drew a long, thin knife from the sheath at his belt.

  “Thank you, no,” Locke said.

  “Suit yourself,” Mikko said. He crossed to the table and picked up the bottle. “Wondered where this had got to. Belonged to El Jefe himself. You know what Lenny said about how he got it? That, about ten years ago, he was asked to produce some films about the Cuban Revolution. Big budget with big name stars. The CIA got wind of it, told him to back off unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life producing a one-man tragedy set in maximum security. He made the wrong choice.”

  “Some story,” Nicki said. “He was lying.”

  “Nah, they never lie, not to me,” Mikko said. He put the bottle down, and turned to face Nicki, tapping the long knife against his thigh. “So what do you want done with him? Your boss said you have to decide. Your new boss.”

  Nicki went pale. Her eyes went to the knife. “My new boss? I see.”

  “What is you French say?” Mikko said. “C’est la vie, c’est la morte?”

  “How long did you say he had left to live, thirty minutes?” Nicki asked, the uncertainty gone from her voice.

  “Twenty, if that,” Mikko said.

  “Give me that knife,” Nicki said. “I can keep him alive for at least an hour.”

  Mikko grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

  Locke had never been so grateful for anything as when, just then, the door to the one-storey opened and Lisa Kempton stepped through, alone. She walked calmly along the edge of the swimming pool, utterly ignoring the bloody trail leading to the barely breathing body.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Locke said.

  “No rest,” Mikko said. “I know how it is. Be seeing you.”

  Locke didn’t reply, but fell into step behind Kempton. The older woman said nothing, and neither did Locke. Not on their way back to the limo, nor on the drive back to the airport, not until they were both on the plane.

  “Excuse me,” Locke said, rushing to the bathroom.

  When she came out, Kempton was changing, albeit into another, identical tracksuit.

  “Change,” Kempton said, indicating a plastic-wrapped, vacuum-packed set of clothes on the chair opposite. “We must destroy all evidence, all DNA we picked up.”

  “That man…” Locke began.

  “Lenny Smiles, the facilitator, yes,” Kempton said. “His was the name we wanted. They introduced me to him.”

  “I… what the hell was that, Lisa?” Locke asked, finally snapping.

  “Did I not warn you?” Kempton asked.

  “No,” Locke said. “None of that answering questions with other questions. I want a proper answer.”

  “The sisters are consolidating power,” Kempton said. “They arranged a series of meetings with a series of rivals, and gave them an ultimatum. Join or die. A Frenchman tried to insist on a third path. He died. You do not want to know how. Lenny Smiles died because this meeting was meant to take place somewhere remote. Somewhere bodies could be more easily disposed of. The sisters killed his people last night. Or their assassin did.”

  “The Australian?”

  “He is a mercenary. The people in suits were his unit, if such a word can be applied to them. They are an assortment of nationalities. Killers who sought what the rules of engagement prevent them from taking in any regular nation’s army.”

  “The sisters planned all of that because we were there?”

  “Because we were coming, yes,” Kempton said. “Because they fear us. They wished to show how powerful they are. And aren’t they powerful indeed? Now they control a street gang in France. I am shaking in my shoes.” She unclipped the sapphire necklace. Unlike her discarded clothes which had gone straight into a burn-bag, this she returned to the drawer. “The camera should have recorded everything. We shall review it later.”

  “We can’t use it,” Locke said.

  “Information is always useful,” Kempton said. “And now we are getting close. Soon this will be over. Very soon.”

  Chapter 33 - Unwelcome Guests

  Hovst, Denmark

  “Nicki?” Locke asked.

  “Sorcha Locke,” Cavalie said. “But here, I go by Dominique. Except everyone else knows to call me Madame Cavalie.”

  “Are the sisters here?” Locke asked.

  “No, they are dead,” Cavalie said.

  “And Lisa?” Locke asked.

  “She is not with you?” Cavalie asked.

  “I expected to find her here,” Locke said.

  “You are looking for Kempton?”

  “In part,” Locke said. “I’ve been travelling to all of our bunkers, our redoubts, looking for my people. It’s how I’ve survived this long.” She tapped the side of her submachine gun. That caused the two burly guards to step forward. “The supplies we stashed kept me alive.”

  “In the hidden room, beneath the laboratory? They were gone when I arrived,” Cavalie said. “Your people were gone, and they took the food, the guns.”

  Locke smiled. “Those aren’t the supplies to which I was referring. I’ll show you. Tomorrow I shall continue. It’s Russia next for me, unless you know of anyone who came through there.”

  “Russia? You would go to Russia searching for your employer?” Cavalie asked.

  “If she is still alive and finds I gave up the search, then all of this would be as nothing compared to her wrath. Come, I’ll show you where the hidden vault is. You can keep what I can’t carry.” Locke walked past Cavalie, then around the two hulking figures. She didn’t look around, but knew that Cavalie would follow.

  Locke’s knowledge of the facility was mostly theoretical. She’d visited the site before construction and then after the complex was complete, but it would have been too suspicious to spend time here while it was being built.

  “Why did you install weapons and food at these facilities?” Cavalie asked.

  “In case we had to go on the run,” Locke said, almost truthfully. “The politicians were playing a game. We didn’t trust them, or trust they wouldn’t be caught. Thus we needed a plan for escape. But we didn’t plan for the undead. How could we?”

  “How could anyone?” Cavalie replied. “It is in here? Your gun, please. You will be more comfortable without it.”

  “Will I?” Locke said. But she didn’t argue. She handed her submachine gun to the hulking woman.

  Inside, Locke led Cavalie along the dim corridors. Some of the LED ceiling lights still worked, but in other places, they’d been ripped out, with battery-lanterns providing some shade to the shadows. Locke walked slowly, peering through the occasional open door.

  “I see you’ve turned the laboratories into store rooms,” Locke said. “You’re planning to remain here for the long term?”

  “Who can say?” Cavalie said.

  “Indeed,” Locke said. “I’m impressed with the tanks. I wish I’
d learned how to drive one.”

  “It is a difficult skill to master,” Cavalie said.

  “Did you find them nearby?” Locke asked, struggling to find something to ask. Most of the questions she could think of led to the obvious one: how did Cavalie know this place existed? The specifics of the answer didn’t matter, and the shape of it lay in betrayal of Lisa by someone on the inside. Who hardly mattered. Not now. No, all that mattered was keeping the charade going for another few minutes.

  “Nearby?” Cavalie said. “Non. From France. They gathered them at military airfields. Protect the airfields, protect the runways. A tank, against the undead? That type of thinking is why they failed, why they died. They didn’t consider that planes, unable to land, had no choice but to crash. Where were you during the outbreak?”

  “Ireland,” Locke said. “The vault is in this office.”

  It was a corner office, facing south, marked as human resources.

  “Not the director’s office?” Cavalie asked, curiosity getting the better of her. “Restez ici,” she added to the two impossibly muscled guards. They stopped outside as Locke entered.

  “Good thing you asked them to stay outside,” Locke said. “I don’t think there’d be room for them in here.”

  “Where is this vault?”

  “Hidden, obviously,” Locke said. “But the entrance is in here. The director of this facility was well known, a professional, which is what people would expect for a marine research facility. Because we had to hire an expert, we couldn’t pick one of our own people. The administration staff were a different matter entirely. They were our own people, and hence people we could trust.”

  “You were wrong,” Cavalie said. She walked around the desk. “The safe is here, beneath the floor. We found it when we arrived. The carpet had already been removed. The position was your mistake.”

  “It was? In what way?” Locke asked, keeping her voice calm even as she felt the opportunity slipping from her fingers.

  “It was beneath the manager’s feet. She would have walked on that panel. Felt it was different. Heard it was different every time she sat down. She didn’t open it. We did. There was a gun inside. And diamonds. The diamonds are still there. Who has a use for them? The gun is… I don’t know. Who keeps track of weapons?” She pulled the wheeled office chair from the corner of the room. “Please. Sit down.”

  Locke weighed her options. They weren’t good, but sitting down would make them no worse, so she did.

  “I recognised you,” Cavalie said.

  “As I did you,” Locke said.

  “Non. I recognised you in France,” Cavalie said. “You were travelling with two men, in an ATV. There was a house by railway tracks. You interrupted the conversation I was having with your two associates.”

  “Ah.”

  “But you didn’t recognise me, did you?” Cavalie said. “No matter. You betrayed us.”

  “In that sentence, who is you and who is us?” Locke asked.

  “You planned to eliminate the sisters. You and Kempton.”

  “Of course,” Locke said.

  Cavalie frowned. “You admit it?”

  “They were in league with politicians whose reliability depended on blackmail. The sisters were destined to be caught. Except they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be arrested. It would have been a bloodbath. They wanted money, but they needed respectability which no amount of wealth could procure. The politicians wanted power, yet none were able to achieve it alone. We wanted to change the world, and nothing was going to stop us.”

  “You admit it? You wished to destroy us.”

  “Not you personally, not directly,” Locke said. “I’m sorry, Nicki, I barely knew you existed. You’ve done well for yourself. Here you are, running the Rosewood Cartel. Albeit in much reduced circumstances. You have new recruits, I understand. Do you tattoo them all?”

  “So your arrival isn’t an accident?” Cavalie said. “You came for revenge. I wondered if you would. I hoped you might.”

  “Sadly, no,” Locke said. “I genuinely came in search of other survivors. People with whom we could rebuild the world. Instead, I found you.” She looked around. There were no questions she wished to ask. Nothing she couldn’t guess for herself. And there would be no one to pass the answers on to. “I had such plans, Nicki. Not for myself. It was after we first met that I realised my life would end somewhere like this. My plans were for the planet at large, for the innocent bystanders oblivious to the nightmare, as we, in turn, were oblivious to the nightmare being concocted in a bunker beneath the green fields of Oxfordshire.”

  “I remember when we first met,” Cavalie said. She drew a long knife from a sheath hidden at the small of her back. “It is not the same blade I had then. I had to go to Bremen for this. Guns we can find. Tanks we can find. Even food, though that is growing scarcer. But a good knife? They are not left lying around.”

  “You went to Germany just to find yourself a knife?” Locke asked.

  Cavalie stepped forward. Locke’s hands were braced on the chair’s arms. As Cavalie took another step, drawing back her knife-hand, Locke kicked out, slamming her foot into the woman’s shin. Obeying Newton, the chair rolled back. Not far, only a foot, but that was enough. Already off-balance, Cavalie’s desperate swipe cut through empty air.

  Locke leaped up, grabbing Cavalie’s still moving arm, turning Cavalie as Locke reached her left arm around her throat. Locke pulled Cavalie’s left hand up, twisting the wrist until the blade was just below the gangster’s chin. She kicked at the back of Cavalie’s knee, causing the woman to collapse, falling onto the blade. It sank deep. But not deep enough. Eyes wide, Cavalie frantically scrabbled at the knife’s handle. Locke clasped her hands around Cavalie’s, holding them tight against the blade’s handle, and tugged the blade up, twisting it into her brain. Cavalie spasmed, then collapsed.

  “That was easier than I expected,” Locke said.

  The door opened. The muscled woman stood outside. She saw the body and barked in surprise.

  “Perhaps not,” Locke said.

  The building shook.

  Locke staggered, but the muscled woman kept her feet. She grinned, raising her open hands in front of her. But her expression of murderous glee changed to puzzlement as one of the false ceiling tiles fell on her head. Then another, and then the entire room above.

  The office filled with a cloud of plaster and brick, metal and polystyrene, wires and dust. Locke was thrown back, coughing, gagging, her eyes stinging as she forced them to stay open. As the dust slowly settled, she saw the muscled woman. Her head and shoulders, anyway. The rest of her was buried, as was the doorway. Beyond, she could hear something that might have been voices, but which might not.

  “That was unexpected,” Locke said. “But I am not one to turn down a gift. It appears that we are trapped in here. You more so than me, but both of us are trapped. An interesting turn, don’t you think?”

  The woman said nothing, her face turning scarlet as she strained every muscle that still worked. The pile on top of her shifted an inch, then stayed still.

  “You almost had it,” Locke said. “Do try again, but if you’ll excuse me, there is a task I must complete.”

  She walked around the desk. The carpet had been removed above the safe.

  “Of course we knew that putting a safe beneath someone’s feet would ensure they’d find it,” she said as she knelt down. “That was the point. Wherever we put the safe, there was a good chance it would be discovered. The simple solution was to hire an honest woman to occupy this office. We didn’t think it likely she’d take a blowtorch to the safe. Is that how you opened it? Rather foolish, don’t you think? You might have set fire to any papers inside.” Locke pulled the buckled safe door upwards.

  Plaster pattered across the floor as the muscled thug heaved upwards, shifting the tangled debris by a few centimetres. The trapped woman growled, and collapsed again.

  “Hence the diamonds,” Locke said wh
en she was sure the woman wasn’t about to break free. “No matter what a marketing man might think, they are not a woman’s best friend, but they are what you expect to find in a billionaire’s safe. Think of those as a test. Having broken into the safe, would the diamonds be taken to a jeweller’s? If so, she would have found herself in for quite a shock. They are blood diamonds, you see, and easily identified as such due to the impurities within the stones.”

  Locke took the velvet bag out of the safe, and pocketed it, before sweeping the dust aside from the safe’s base. “Lisa bought them on behalf of a task force as part of an entirely legitimate and legal police operation,” she said, speaking now to herself. “A favour to Loretta, which was really for Tamika. But perhaps she was doing it for herself. Doing some good. Buy the diamonds, and so get access to the group trading them, and so enable the authorities to shut down one source of revenue for the sisters.”

  She found the clasp, and removed the small panel. Inside was a combination lock.

  “Of course, in the end, what difference did that make? A few diamonds, the loss of a few percent of a few percent of a few million dollars from one revenue stream? It’s like trying to stop a flood with a mop.”

  The lock clicked, and she was able to pull the panel back, revealing a digital number pad beneath.

  “We were doomed to fail,” she said. “But we tried. History will judge our actions. And there will be a history, and it won’t treat me kindly. There will be judgement, and it will be severe, but at least that means there will be a future.”

  She entered the code. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. She stood.

  “And now we wait,” she said. She braced her foot on Cavalie’s chest, and pulled the long knife free.

  The second explosion knocked her from her feet. When she stood, she could smell burning, she could see smoke, billowing through a gap near the top of the door. Not a large gap, but she wasn’t a large woman. Not like the figure on the floor.

  “Ten thousand calories a day?” Locke said. “I imagine you regret that now.”