“Well?”
“Well, I’m trying to tell you, if you’d just listen.” Xi let out an exasperated blast of air. “God, I don’t have time for this.” He regretted his words the second they came out.
Klaus answered coldly, “Continue.”
“Hugo and his idiot team seem to have gotten their hands on the antidote. They’re—”
“What?” roared Klaus. Xi ignored him and went on.
“They’re fleeing the area by car. I’m on foot, alone. The others have been captured.”
There was silence on the other end, and for a moment, Xi thought Klaus had hung up.
Then came the word, “Roger.” The voice sounded clinical, robotic. It was almost more frightening to Xi than when Klaus was shouting. Silence filled the air between them again, and Xi waited, involuntarily holding his breath.
“You’re dismissed.”
Xi froze at the words. “I . . . I’m sorry?”
“You heard me. You are dismissed. Your assignment is canceled. Report back here at once.”
Xi’s heart felt like it had stopped. This had never happened to him before. Dismissed! What did that even mean? A weak sense of nausea began to spread through his guts. Report back? He was just supposed to cancel his hunt? After all that had happened? He took a couple of unsteady steps, stopped, and looked around. Silent snow swirled around his body as the walls of the surrounding houses pressed in closer to suffocate him.
*
Klaus felt sick. The conversation with Xi had been alarming—no, more than alarming. Disastrous. It was yet another failure, and this time, it was a huge one. Enough was enough. There was far too much at stake to continue like this.
He rubbed his temples. Now, more than ever, Klaus needed to keep a cool head. He hadn’t slept in a long time, and the lack of sleep was starting to take its toll. He had to lie down, even if it was for just a few hours. Then he’d have the strength to take care of the second part of his plan.
He was still in a bad mood from tonight’s presentation. He’d gone through his plans to the board, everything he wanted to do with Techyx. That’s when Heidi realized he’d been cheating on her—professionally, anyway. But this was a venture, and he wasn’t going to be an assistant for the rest of his life. Klaus would reach the top, no matter the cost. Still, despite all his preparation, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure he was making the right move.
He reached his apartment—an apartment no one else knew he had. Now it was time to get rid of Heidi’s shadow. Slowly, he removed his clothes and changed into a pair of velvet pajamas. The luxurious material helped him relax.
He sat on the edge of the bed and soaked in the silence.
A moment later, the door opened, and Klaus turned to stone as Heidi entered the room.
“Klaus.”
He kept his face unfazed, but inside, everything turned upside down. Somehow, Heidi knew about the apartment. And like a complete idiot, he’d forgotten to lock the door.
“Heidi.”
“That really wasn’t a bad show performed for the board today. Very impressive.”
“Thanks.”
Heidi pulled off her sleek black coat and laid it over a chair, then started pacing the floor in front of him.
“You just need to know I’m not mad at you, Klaus. You are a capable man, which was why I chose you to be my assistant to begin with. You’ve been a big help to me for the last two years.”
Klaus tried to seem unmoved. She was taking his betrayal alarmingly well.
“But,” she went on, “you should also know that I’m already aware of your small, shady plans.”
He shrugged. “I don’t think you do, actually.”
Heidi stopped pacing and stared at him, hands on her hips.
“Oh, really? I know you hired Xi Liu, a highly paid mercenary, to attack Novus in Sweden. And that you initiated a plan to use a Russian scientist’s mind-control technique to launch an attack against Techyx tomorrow.”
Klaus gulped, and he felt sweat begin to bead up on his forehead.
“You knew about all that?”
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Heidi sat down next to him on the bed. “Because it’s a natural development; I’ve always been waiting for you to do something like this. Within QuantumCorp, this is how you become initiated into the innermost circuits—by showing that you’re willing to go beyond any and all boundaries to reach your goals. It’s part of nature, the will to give everything, to risk everything, to achieve everything.”
Klaus sat quietly as she spoke, feeling like a schoolboy who got caught cheating on a test. He shook his head.
“I can’t believe you knew. How long have you known?”
Heidi shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve proven yourself to be made of the right material.”
“But then, the board?”
“What about them? I’d already prepared them, and they played their role exceptionally well. You know this isn’t the first time we’ve gone through something like this.”
Klaus squinted, trying to grasp what she was saying, but it was so hard to wrap his head around this.
Heidi smiled, stood up, and snapped open the top buttons on her blouse. “Now you’ll get your punishment.”
A moment’s panic rushed through him as the grin spread on her fleshy face.
22
He couldn’t sleep. Dr. Mustafa Boon lay in bed and looked at the clock for the twentieth time. Half-past three. It was nerves, he knew that. Anxiety about tomorrow. Tomorrow, he had to be at his very best. It was a typical reaction, he knew—when you most needed sleep, that’s when it most often escaped you.
He pulled the blanket off and tossed it to the end of the bed, then sat up and put his hand over his face, squeezing his weary eyes. He wasn’t going to fall asleep. Might just as well accept it.
Mustafa slipped his robe on and turned on the shower. A long shower would be a lovely way to pass the time. The press conference was tomorrow—eleven in the morning at the hotel. And here he was, at the exclusive Mandarin Oriental hotel next to Hyde Park in London. Only the best was good enough, as Techyx saw it. Mustafa was one of their top researchers and, for the past three months, the head of the research group assigned the QuantumCorp abuses. Their job was to document every infraction the company committed; it was dirty work, but what QuantumCorp was doing would be politically explosive. It was of the utmost importance that everything was documented as accurately and in as much detail as possible.
He tuned into CNN on the hotel rooms flat screen TV. The end of a news summary rolled by, and when it faded away, a news anchor leaned forward over her desk.
“And, welcome to Update; I’m Olivia Karlsson. This morning, we begin with excitement in London. In recent weeks, there have been rumors of a big reveal in the corporate world. At eleven o’clock, we will be live covering a press conference at the exclusive Mandarin Oriental hotel—and who has called it?”
Karlsson paused dramatically.
“None other than Techyx, one of the most successful multinational companies in modern history, having skyrocketed among industrial firms exponentially over the past two years.”
A sling whipped through Mustafa’s heart. And I’m the one to keep it that way.
Karlsson continued, “As we all know, Techyx has a few competitors out there, but their biggest one by far is QuantumCorp. We are eagerly awaiting the presentations at this morning’s press conference.” She gave a strangely seductive smile, and then said, “And now, other news.”
Mustafa turned off the sound and tossed the remote on the bed. Steam was pouring into the bedroom from the bathroom’s open door, and he removed his bathrobe and stepped into the sizeable shower. Almost instantly, the heat relaxed him and he sat down on the built-in bench. After a few minutes, he lay down on the tile shower floor and placed his feet on the wall. The hot water was hypnotic as it beat against his body, and he didn’t
notice the tiny insect that flew into the bathroom.
And this was no ordinary insect. Its exoskeleton was light and strong, and its interior was packed full of advanced electronics. In a smooth motion, it steered itself up to the glass shower door, registered the heat radiating from Mustafa’s body, and continued over the top. Deftly avoiding the jet of water pouring from the shower head, the little bug aimed downward. It landed imperceptibly on its target’s foot—a surface that would work just fine for its goal. A narrow needle—thinner than a strand of hair—punctured Mustafa’s deep brown skin, injecting into his bloodstream an advanced drug. When it was finished, the insect flew back the same way it had come.
Mustafa didn’t detect anything except a minor itch on the top of his foot as he stood and left the shower.
*
Some distance away, parked behind a truck, stood a midnight-black, ultra-modern, extended van. Inside, a highly specialized group of workers made final preparations. Dr. Michael Zepp, white-haired and sporting a pot belly, spun around in his chair.
“Well done, QC. Very good. The target noticed nothing.”
In the next seat, a man who went by the hacker name QuicksilverChaos—but was called QC for short—shrugged his bony shoulders.
“Yeah, thanks, it was no problem. Easy-peasy.”
Dr. Zepp stood up and stretched. It had been a long night. He went off to the coffee maker at the back of the van and poured two cups into white, disposable plastic mugs. He handed one to QC.
“Well, I don’t think it’s all that easy,” Zepp said. “Controlling these experimental miniaturized robots is tricky, but you succeeded. Well done.”
“Thank you,” QC repeated. He took the coffee and offered an awkward salute of appreciation.
Ten monitors were installed along the van’s walls, five on either side. Above each group of monitors sat a controller. The screens showed the Mandarin Oriental hotel—some displayed the exterior, some the interior. This group had spent the past week smuggling a hundred mini cameras into the hotel, installing them on each floor. Every angle of any interest at all was covered by the latest generation of cameras, which sent military-level encrypted video streams to the monitors in the van.
“It won’t be long now.”
QC shrugged his shoulders again. To him, time was a relative concept. He’d be earning as much this week as he would after ten years in his old job as a system administrator.
“It’s quiet. We still have the other two scientists to prepare.”
Dr. Zepp sipped his coffee as he went through the checklist. Soon it would be over and he could leave this damn van. He rolled his eyes. He hated this—this the van, these people he was stuck with. But there wasn’t much further to go now.
He’d promised dear and holy to himself that when he got out of here, he’d give up the gambling for good. After all, that’s what had put him in this situation. Those two thugs had shown up ten days ago, pushed their way right into his apartment. Zepp had been dialing the police until the men declared they’d been sent by his bookie. The month prior, he’d been quite unlucky—everything he had played on had lost, and now he owed more than a million.
Zepp looked around him, at the cramped van, at these people he was consigned to lead, and sighed. Soon. Soon it would be over. He rolled his chair to the nearest monitor and calibrated the last of the parameters for the next injection.
“Okay, QC, where’s the next victim?”
QC grinned and let fly another one of his nearly invisible miniature pets.
*
Fatigue had long ago turned to complete debilitation. Madeleine stood up and stretched, her body stiff and sore from too many hours in the conference room. This space was filled with the members of Novus who had survived the attack the day before. Most of them had small wounds here and there; some had arms and legs in bandages. That wasn’t stopping any of them from giving their all in trying to restore Novus. The strike they’d received had been hard—more than half of the employees were either dead or horribly wounded.
Madeleine went to the window and looked down at the collection of journalists still standing there despite the weather. The snow blew in gusts outside. When she appeared in the window, ten of the reporters immediately pointed their cameras in her direction, and she quickly ducked away again.
Henrik went to her. “Are they still there?”
“They sure are.”
“Impressive. They’re not quitters, anyway.”
“No,” Madeleine replied, “but that’s their job, I guess.” She sighed and said, “It would just be nice to have a little break, just a few hours.”
Henrik put his hand on her shoulder.
“How long have we known each other, Madeleine?”
She turned to look at him. The corners of her mouth turned up. “Two years, I think,” she said.
Henrik, as the contact for the Swedish Armed Forces, had used Novus many times and had more or less always been satisfied with the outcome. The fact that an external group had carried out this type of terrorist attack on Swedish soil—and had caused so many deaths—gave the situation an extra dimension for him, made him feel even more connected to the company and its people.
“You know I’ll do everything I can to help, right? Both me and the SAF—we’re here for you.”
She touched his hand affectionately. “That means a lot to me, Henrik. It really does.”
“Good. It looks like we’ll be able to restore some of the communications and operations we’re running.”
“Thanks—that’s helpful and impressive. But I’m still worried.”
“About Hugo and the team?”
“Right.”
“Have you heard something?”
“Sussie called an hour ago. She said they were heading to the airport again to find a flight.”
“A flight to where?”
“To London.”
“London?”
Madeleine nodded.
“They’re headed to the press conference? To Techyx’s press conference?”
“Well, she didn’t say that explicitly, but I imagine so. The call was cut off—we only got to talk for half a minute.”
“They showed something on the news about an attack in Finland,” Henrik said, “Think that has anything to do with them?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible.”
Henrik crooked his hand over his mouth as he thought. It was important to support Novus as much as possible—especially now, when they were so exposed. But at the same time, no brutality was to be allowed on foreign territory.
“So now what?” Henrik asked
“Only one thing to do. I have to help them.”
Henrik nodded. “I understand. Should we start finding a flight?”
Madeleine smiled slyly. “I’ve already done that.”
23
He couldn’t think. Xi shook his head to get the flow of thought going again. The icy snow and wind bayonetted his clothes, and he shivered. But what was far worse than the cold was the mental and physical paralysis caused by the fact that he’d been disconnected from the mission.
He had no clue how to handle it. Xi had heard of clients who withdrew an agent from an ongoing assignment but had always believed that the employee must have made some unpardonable mistake and deserved it. But now, now that it had happened to him, he realized how wrong he had been. A wave of uncertainty rolled through his body.
He grumbled wordlessly, a deep, guttural sound. He had to do something. He couldn’t just stand here and freeze to death in the middle of a snowstorm in Helsinki. He had to get out of there and demand revenge. Yes, he would. If it was the last thing he did.
He’d have his revenge.
A yellow, flashing light got closer as a plow truck approached. Xi trudged through the knee-high snow toward the arriving plow truck and aimed his weapon at the driver. The driver stopped the truck and raised his hands.
Xi motioned with the gun for the driver to open the door and come ou
t.
“What are you doing?” the round-faced driver asked once he, too, was standing in the snow. He chuckled absurdly. “Are you going to rob a plow truck?”
Xi cocked the weapon. “Give me the keys.”
The driver shook his head in confusion and pointed back up at the truck. “They’re in the ignition, ya crazy bastard. Tell ya what—why don’t you take over my work for the night while you’re at it?”
Xi scowled at the man. “Shut up. Just be happy that I haven’t shot you yet. Now get out of here if you want to live.”
The driver looked around him, then back to Xi and the barrel of the gun, and scoffed.
“Fine. Great,” he said with a bewildered shrug. He turned and lumbered through the snow until he reached the road he’d just plowed. He turned back and looked at Xi.
Xi lifted the gun to the sky and fired a round, shattering the soft, snowy silence of the night, and the driver turned again and started running. Xi jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door closed, and put the weapon on the passenger seat.
“Here we go,” he muttered. He released the brake and stepped on the accelerator, and the heavy plow truck began to move. A faint smile danced on Xi’s lips as the truck got up to speed, and he looked for a sign for the highway. There wasn’t much time left—the press conference in London would be starting at eleven, and he was in another country. He pondered his next step as he steered the plow toward the abandoned highway.
*
One man’s death is another man’s bread, they say.
When Hugo and the team were finally on the highway, the pickup skidded and drove straight into a snowdrift.
“Goddammit,” he murmured. Pushing away the pain in his throbbing shoulder, he threw the truck into reverse and shouted, “Come on!”
The wheels spun. Mikko opened the door.
“I’ll push.” He jumped out, got into position at the front of the hood, and pushed for king and country. Nothing. The others jumped out to help as well, but the truck didn’t budge. They were truly stuck.
The Hugo Xavier Series: Book 1-3 Page 16
