by Anton Gill
‘To translate the thing? No, he had this planned. It’ll take him too long to get someone else he can trust to do it. He’s let us do all the groundwork for him.’
Marlow hung up. He swiftly changed into dark clothes – black jeans, soft matt-black boots, a rollneck of the same colour, over which he strapped the harness for his automatic. He clipped a Kevlar knife in its sheath to his belt and pulled on a black suede bomber jacket, stuffing black leather gloves into one of its pockets. Into the other he put a small spray canister. Then he went down to the garage and picked up the car he was using, a gunmetal-grey Porsche 911. From its boot he removed a PDR, his usual FN-P90, and two blast dispersal grenades.
He took a south-western route out of the city, into the light of the setting sun.
Once outside the city limits, the gathering darkness engulfed him and the roads became lonely. He drove fast but steadily, and had reached his destination by mid-evening. The place was as Lopez had described it. Marlow parked a hundred metres away, and walked down the country lane which led past the house. Everything was silent except for the gentle rushing of the faint breeze in the branches.
His senses were on full alert, but he was not challenged, nor could he detect any hint of anyone watching him.
He reached the wall and skirted it until he came to the gate. Very gently, he tested it – locked – and through its grille made his survey of what he could see of the house.
It stood on its own; he had not passed another building in the last kilometre, and there was no other he could see as he scanned a countryside which looked monochrome, shades of grey, in the light of a three-quarter moon. A square house, unornamented except for a modest portico surrounding the front door. Another door to the rear, and a third, on the west side, bricked up. Two floors of tall windows, and one upper storey where the windows were smaller; narrow slits of windows towards the base of the building, which indicated a basement or cellar of some sort. No visible outbuildings except for a double garage. The place was surrounded by a wall about three metres high, in which there was one entrance, an iron double gate from which a short drive led through neat gardens planted with dark-green trees and shrubs to the front door and the garage to the east of it. The gate and the garage doors were closed, and there was no sign of light in any of the windows, as far as Marlow could see, and in many places his view was impeded by the wall. He could not see the north side of the house at all.
It seemed impossible that there should be no guards, but it occurred to Marlow that Adler may have come here with only a skeleton crew. Like Marlow, he would want to keep his discovery close until he was completely sure that he could use it. But there would be electronic surveillance. Marlow would have to take that risk. From what he could see, there were no cameras in the trees, but he’d have to take a chance on passive magnetic field detectors, microphonic or H-field systems.
The bars of the gate were set too closely together for him to squeeze through them, but the wall was scalable, and it wasn’t topped by razor wire or any other deterrent. Marlow walked round it until he was at a spot which he judged to be out of the sightlines of most of the windows. He bent his knees and leapt, succeeding the second time in getting a grip on the wall’s parapet, and with an effort he hauled himself up until he was straddling it. He crouched low, collecting his breath and listening keenly, just a shadow among other shadows. After waiting a full two minutes, he swung his outer leg over and, after a second’s further pause, dropped on to the grass below.
He remained crouched there, then cautiously made his way forward, using his spray canister to search for infra-red alarm lines. There could be fibre-optic detectors, as well, but he could see no E-field poles and there was still no evidence of CCTV cameras.
Silently as a cat, he came closer and closer to the house. He began to scan the windows for a possible way in. He’d have to keep as silent as ever and, even if the garden wasn’t wired, the house certainly would be. He was well armed, but he was alone. His only ace in the hole was the element of surprise.
He was ten metres from the nearest wall of the house when two low, dark shapes came hurtling round the far corner towards him. Low and silent, and very fast.
Dogs. Adler had chosen the oldest and most effective defence mechanism in the book.
There was no point in running. Too far to get back to the wall, the dogs would be on him in seconds. And no Mace spray. Marlow could take out one dog silently, but not two. He drew his automatic and crouched in readiness.
He was lucky. The leading dog came in for the attack first. Both Dobermans, long-muzzled beasts, which made his job easier, but vicious and lethal as Lugers. Marlow raised his left arm to give the dog something to go for, rising slightly as he did so and bracing himself for the weight of the animal’s body as it threw itself on him, jaws open, ready to latch on to the proffered target. As soon as it had, and Marlow felt its teeth worry at the thick leather of his jacket as it sought to bite through it to the flesh, he brought the gun up and smashed its butt down on the dog’s muzzle, up at the top, between the eyes. The beast died instantly, without even a yelp, and Marlow shook himself free to deal with its companion, which had been worrying his ankles, snarling, but not barking. Now the animal sensed danger and hesitated, looking Marlow in the eye, but not jumping up, as he had hoped it might. Impasse. Swiftly but steadily, he re-holstered the gun and drew the knife. The dog knew that it was not feared, and it showed doubt. Only seconds had passed. Marlow had to take advantage of the brute’s hesitation and strike, but the dog kept low.
Then it was too late. The animal reached a decision, turned and bolted back the way it had come.
Moments later, there was a confused sound of men’s voices. Rough voices, calling to each other in – what language? Slavonic, in any case. Lights came on in the house and, as Marlow flattened himself against the wall, dark shapes appeared round the corners of the house on either side of him. Someone barked an order and in an instant the whole garden was bathed in the glaring, flat whiteness of searchlights. There was the ominous clicking of sub-machine-gun bolts.
There was nowhere to run. Praying that the glass of the window behind him wasn’t reinforced, Marlow smashed the stock of his PDR into the nearest pane. It shattered easily; old glass, maybe even the original glazing. No need to worry about setting off alarms inside now.
As the machine guns started to stutter, he hurled himself inwards through the low-silled window, shattering more glass and delicate wooden struts with his weight as he rolled over and over across the polished oak floor of the room beyond it.
No one there. Yet. He rose fast and turned back to the window. The guards, thundering up, were still bellowing at each other in what Marlow now recognized as Serbian. Not trained mercenaries; not for this kind of work, anyway. Far too incautious. He crouched by the window until he could tell his pursuers were close. Then he stood abruptly and brought the FN-P90 to bear, hammering out an arc of withering fire at face level and at point-blank range.
The silence after the deafening noise had echoed away was as deep as the sea. Somewhere in the silence, it seemed about a hundred kilometres away, the surviving Doberman whimpered in fear.
Five bodies lay sprawled and broken under the window. Only one moved, but no sound came from the contorted face, as his whole jaw had been shot away.
Marlow listened in the silence, but there was nothing. The dog stopped whimpering, and then the only noise which re-established itself was the sound of the wind in the trees. The white light bathed everything in an eerie glow.
Then there was another noise. Creaking, whirring. Electric doors opening.
The garage doors.
Marlow craned through the window. To his right, he could see the main gates opening. Then the noise of a car. A black Porsche SUV roared out of the garage and, as it sped up the drive and out of the gates on to the lane, he caught a glimpse of the passengers: a plump woman at the wheel, and next to her a thin man, both dressed in what looked like boiler su
its.
He sprang through the opening, gun ready, and made for the garage.
Its interior was illuminated. There was a second car there, a burgundy-red Rolls. Near it stood Adler, a gun in his right hand. His other hand held Graves’s upper left arm in a vicious grip as he manhandled her towards the car.
Marlow stepped into view, drawing out his HK but wary of lining up a shot as Graves’s body was between his line of fire and Adler. Graves saw him, and Adler followed her line of sight with his eyes before she could dissimulate. Swearing, he swung his weapon round and fired wildly. One of the three rounds he got off found its mark in Marlow’s shoulder, in the same place as his earlier wound. Marlow was knocked off balance as he felt his collar-bone smash and went down. Adler was wielding an AutoMag V and the .50-calibre bullet had done a hell of a lot of damage. By the time Marlow had raised himself to one knee and levelled his own gun with a shaking hand, Adler had had time to bundle Graves into the car, hitting her neatly over the back of the head with the automatic’s barrel to subdue her, and had taken his place at the wheel.
Marlow fired at the tyres as the Rolls’ engine kicked in, but his aim was wide and his bullets hammered harmlessly into the wing. The big car turned heavily on to the drive, slowly picking up speed. You can’t hurry a Rolls.
But then something happened. The main gates began to close. Adler accelerated to beat them, but a woman had appeared, framed by the gateway, in the middle of the drive, caught in the light. A thin woman in late middle-age. Adler drove straight for her, but she made no attempt to move. Instead, she raised her right hand. It held a tiny gun – a Ruger LCP. She brought up her left hand to steady her right and fired just before the car was on her. The .38 bullet was enough to shatter the windscreen. The big car swerved at the last moment, catching the woman and flinging her to one side before smashing into one of the gateposts. Flames burst under the bonnet in an instant.
Marlow ran, his heart battering his aching ribs. Once, he stumbled, turning an ankle, but he forced himself back to his feet and ran on, reaching the car and wrenching the nearside rear door open, using his good arm and all his strength to drag Graves’s unconscious form out by her legs, pulling her free and across the grass as far as he could before he collapsed. On the other side of the drive, he could see the shape of the woman, dressed in a fawn mac. She lay still. Over the roar of the fire in the car Marlow could hear Adler’s screams, could see the flailing arms and the twisting body as the man struggled to get out, could see his head catch fire and turn into a burning skull, the jaw still snapping open and shut as the fire ripped flesh and muscle from it. Then it gave a last convulsion and slumped on the ivory leather seat, like a puppet with its strings cut, as the flames closed in on it and covered it like a shroud.
Frau Müller had taken her revenge.
114
New York City, the Present
‘What will happen to her?’ Graves wanted to know.
‘Does it matter?’ Marlow smiled, and shifted his position in the armchair at Graves’s apartment. The effort sent a shooting pain through his heavily bandaged shoulder, and he winced. ‘In any case, you don’t have to worry about Frau Müller. She’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, but she’ll live, and we’re not taking any action against her. No one is. It’s not worth it. She’s not worth it.’
‘Isn’t she a risk?’ asked Lopez, from the other armchair.
‘No. Without Adler, she’s nothing. When he fired her, her life was over.’
‘But she was a willing aide. In all those projects of his …’
‘She’s already told the police everything she knows. She’s implicated the three international businessmen we know of, one Chinese, one Indian and one Russian, but it’ll be one hell of a job to bring any kind of case against any of them. They’re just too powerful. Even if we did get them, there’d be others like them, but as far as these guys are concerned, without Adler and without MAXTEL, they’re nothing. They’ll have the police watching them for ever; their teeth are drawn.’
He thought of the other two accomplices, the middle-aged couple in the car who’d got away before Adler. God knows who they’d been. Domestics? Aides? Rats deserting the sinking ship? They’d probably thought an army was descending on them. But he’d never know who they were now. The German police and EUROPOL had drawn a blank. They’d vanished. There was nothing to pursue.
‘Memories are short,’ said Graves, interrupting his thoughts.
‘So is life,’ said Marlow. ‘The important thing is, they don’t have this.’
The other two followed his gaze to the little clay tablet that rested innocuously on the coffee table between them. Marlow had picked it up from the scorched grass where it had fallen from Adler’s burning hand and transferred it quietly to his pocket in the confusion of police cars, fire engines and ambulances that had invaded Bönigsdorf in the wake of what the international press later reported as ‘the tragic loss of billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Rolf Adler, in a freak auto accident at his country seat outside Berlin’.
No one breathed a word about the other circumstances. House cleaners had arrived and done their work well before the press was let near the site. As for the public services, they turned the blind eye they always did when called to similar scenes.
‘So what’s to be done with it?’ said Graves, picking the tablet up and turning it over in her hands.
The other two were silent for a moment.
‘We know what it can do,’ said Marlow.
‘If the whole thing isn’t a myth,’ said Lopez.
‘A myth? You mean it only worked because they believed that it did? Is it worth putting that to the test?’
‘It could be a major force for good,’ said Lopez, guardedly.
‘What do you mean – we could use it as a force for world peace?’ Marlow’s tone was mocking. ‘I don’t think even this tablet’s that powerful.’ He paused for a moment. ‘In any case, the risk of its being used for other reasons is too great. And that is a greater likelihood, whoever gets their hands on it.’
‘We’re the only ones now who know what it does, how to use it,’ said Graves thoughtfully.
‘I hope so,’ Marlow replied. ‘But just in case, I decided to buy this.’ From his shoulder-bag, which lay at his feet, he pulled a plastic bag, and from it, an ordinary hammer. A large one.
‘You can’t be serious,’ said Graves, alarmed.
Marlow ignored her. ‘Leon,’ he said, turning to him, ‘have you done what I asked you?’
Lopez nodded gravely. ‘All data on this thing has been erased from every file we have.’ He looked at Graves. ‘I’ve hooked into your system and done the same there,’ he added. ‘Sorry. Orders. All INTERSEC files are blank now.’
‘And the ones in Istanbul? Haki’s stuff?’
‘Not enough to put two and two together.’
‘So the secret’s safe?’ said Graves.
‘I hope so,’ said Marlow again.
‘You’ll get hell from Sir Richard.’
‘Will I?’
‘I take it you didn’t consult him before taking this decision?’
‘Should I have done? It was always my department’s responsibility.’
‘It got bigger than that,’ said Graves.
‘I know,’ said Marlow. ‘And I knew for sure from the moment we found ourselves unable to trace that woman in the Westwood coat who was bidding at the auction. She was working for Sir Richard, wasn’t she? Or for the CIA. Or even Homeland Security direct.’ A pause. ‘You’re expecting him, aren’t you?’
Graves was silent.
‘Any time now,’ Marlow prompted her.
‘Yes,’ she said, biting her lip.
‘I kind of knew – as you must have done – that people other than MAXTEL were interested from the moment Yale baulked at translating the document you found at the Cluny Museum.’
‘But I translated that for us.’
‘You did. But then you wond
ered. And, quite rightly, you double-checked. And you decided we couldn’t handle this on our own.’ Marlow leaned forward. ‘Then there was the delay on the delivery of the Reinhardt letter. That clinched it. The Land of the Free thought the best place for this thing would be in its custody.’
Graves was silent again, as Lopez looked at her in silent astonishment. ‘I didn’t tell Adler anything,’ she said to Marlow at last. ‘He was going to torture me, but I wouldn’t have told him.’
‘You weren’t working for him. You are a good operative. But you were supposed to be working for me. Not Sir Richard. Not the CIA. Not Homeland.’
‘I did what I thought was right!’
Marlow sat back. ‘Each of us owes the others one hell of a lot,’ he said. ‘More than you know. And we won. Kind of. So, if there’s a hatchet to be buried, let’s bury it now.’
‘Shit,’ said Lopez. ‘I’m going to open a bottle of Laura’s Chablis.’
But he was interrupted as they heard movement outside Graves’s door, then a key in the lock. A scent of cigars and expensive aftershave. The dapper figure of Sir Richard Hudson entered the room.
He looked at the three of them in mild surprise, then at the tablet, which lay in the centre of the table.
‘I see he has a key to your place,’ said Marlow evenly.
‘I’ll take that,’ Sir Richard said, indicating the tablet. ‘Ms Graves –’
‘Sit down,’ said Marlow.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Sit.’
Dumbfounded, but clinging to his dignity, Hudson did as he was bidden.
‘That artefact is in my custody now,’ said Sir Richard. ‘It represents a potential international security threat. Heaven forbid that it should fall into the wrong hands. The damage could be incalculable.’ He paused, for effect. ‘I am here to ensure that it is properly contained.’
‘Good,’ said Marlow. ‘So am I.’
He took the hammer in his hand and, concentrating against the pain in his left shoulder as he made the effort, swung it, smashing it down again and again on the tablet, on Adhemar’s Sacred Scroll, on Dandolo’s key to the destruction of the Eastern Roman empire, on whatever other evil the thing had served since it left the hands of its creator, until it was a mess of rubble, and the coffee table beneath it, an expensive piece of furniture which Marlow would have to replace, was a total wreck.
