The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  He ran back out and looked back down the hall. Nin and the other woman were trying to get past the naked Italian, who was shouting and wildly gesticulating.

  Hunt threw open the metal door. Just behind him, the women broke past the Italian. At the top of the stairs, Hunt dumped the bucket. The water cascaded down the concrete steps.

  Hunt grabbed the metal railing and jumped over it, landing halfway down the next flight, below the wet treads. He pounded the steps three at a time, using the railing to whip around corners.

  Down two flights, he heard the door above crash open. A second series of thudding steps joined his. Then a scream, shouting, a series of thuds. The grad student smiled and ran faster.

  At the bottom, he shoved open a door. The garage still smelled of exhaust and burnt rubber. Sprinting, he traced a pair of black streaks up a ramp.

  Ahead, through the grated garage door, he saw cars passing on the street. He reached the top of the ramp. At shin-level, on either side of the door, little red electronic eyes glowered in standoff.

  Hunt kicked the beam; nothing happened. Below in the garage, the door from the staircase slammed open.

  Hunt frantically waved his lower leg back and forth through the ray, “Come on, come on!”

  Still nothing.

  He looked around. At the ceiling, near the rolling-door mechanism, the security camera glared at him.

  He kicked the beam one more time. Nothing.

  Then the door shuddered and started creeping up. Footsteps rang from the garage below. Hunt dropped and shimmed under the metal sill.

  Nin ran up the ramp and through the now open doorway. The Bobcat whipped around the corner and searched the street. But the gun found nothing other than nighttime traffic.

  In the office, the two bartenders high-fived each other. Before them lay the wires ripped from the computer network—including for the monitor for the garage security-camera feed.

  – 42 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Prague

  Sam Quick stared at Prague Castle. She wondered which window had disgorged the victims of the Second Defenestration of Prague. Zach Davies’s voice eventually replaced the receding scream of the man whom she had thrown to his death from her hotel window just an hour earlier.

  She turned and locked eyes with Davies.

  “Yes, I promise … And if I hear from Amanda, I will definitely call you right away,” Davies said. Then he put down the phone and shook his head. “Mothers worry too much.”

  Quick crossed to his bed. “I’d say having a son shot would give even the most iron-hearted mother pause,” she said, laying a hand on Davies’s forearm, below the fresh bandage.

  Davies glanced at the hand and then at Quick. “Actually, I think she is more concerned about my sister who fancies herself the antiglobalization activist.” He pointed at a muted television hanging on the wall, and the flashing images of Madrid and chanting protestors.

  He laid his hand over Quick’s. “By the way, thanks for staying with me back in the hotel room; I’ve never had a beautiful scientist tend my wound with one hand and wield a gun with the other, to hold off the bad guys.”

  Quick rolled her eyes.

  “I’m just sorry if I stopped you from going after Nin. I guess you’ve figured out I really am just an embassy attaché and not some CIA undercover agent.”

  “I don’t know; you were a decent shot with that ashtray, kinda stealthy even.”

  Davies grinned. “Yeah, not bad for a diplomat, huh?”

  “Perhaps you should try out for the Yankees,” said an unsmiling Captain Svoboda from the doorway. He motioned with his hand, and Eric Hunt followed him into the room.

  “What did you find at the Sokolóv property?” Quick asked, pulling her hand free of Davies’s arm.

  “Well, let’s just say our friend Nin Zanin gets around.” Hunt relayed the events at the brothel, ending with his sprint away from the building. “I didn’t have much time on the Sokolóv computer network. But when I saw that Nin Zanin was also visiting Prague, I made additional inquiries.”

  He held up his smartphone. “And fortunately for us”—he shrugged at Svoboda—“the Czech government’s networks are not nearly as well protected as Sokolóv’s. A flight plan was filed for Nin’s jet from Ruzyne to—”

  “Madrid,” Quick interrupted.

  “How—,” Hunt started.

  “Nin Zanin went to awful lot of trouble to get us to Prague—and out of Madrid.” Quick pointed at the mute TV and an image of protesters outside the Palacio Real. “My father advised: ‘Don’t hit a growling dog with a stick, because he’ll bite as you fend him off. No, what you do,’ he said, ‘is throw the stick, which the dog will chase, giving you time to grab a shotgun.’ And like any dog, we followed the stick right to Prague.”

  “I fail to understand that expression,” Svoboda said.

  “What Sam is saying is that she”—Hunt glanced at Davies’s bandaged arm and the IV tubing snaking up to a plastic bag hanging adjacent to the bed—“and I are returning to Madrid.”

  “What?” the captain exclaimed, as Quick waved at Davies and then passed through the doorway, with Hunt following close behind her.

  Davies’s call of “Be careful” jumbled with the captain’s shrill, “I must protest …”

  ∞

  “Ruzyne please,” Sam Quick said, and the cab shot away from the curb. She pulled out her phone and held it between her and Hunt.

  A sleepy “Hello?” issued from the speaker.

  “It’s Sam and Eric calling, I hope we haven’t wakened you.”

  They heard mumbled confirmations from both Molly Matson and a voice fainter yet discernibly deeper and younger than Matson’s.

  Quick raised a brow at Hunt. “My apologies to you … both. Listen, Molly, I dropped something out the window of my hotel suite in Prague, and the folks at the front desk raised a ruckus. Eric and I are now en route to the Prague airport, on our way to Madrid. We need another favor. The computer files, the maps of Madrid’s subterranean infrastructure, did they chart any particular area of Madrid?”

  Quick and Hunt heard Matson quietly say, “I have to talk business. Go have a rinse.” After a pause, Matson’s full voice returned to the speaker, “Sam, the files contained hundreds of maps—of varying detail, scale, and location. I would need to run a full analysis to say for sure. Why?”

  “Molly, we need a spatial correlation of the locational frequencies of those maps against the meeting sites of the International Capital Forum in Madrid where world leaders will be present—”

  “Whoa, Sam, honey, what’s the connection between the ICF meetings and Kalia Slater?”

  “I’m not entirely sure myself. But Sokolóv and his twins, and the tattooed antiglobalization crowd, some of who were on La Palma when Kalia was abducted, may be connected. And tonight, one of the twins paid us a personal visit in Prague, and now she’s rushing back to Madrid in her private jet. Kalia’s abduction might not be about ALCHEMY after all. Rather, Kalia Slater might be a pawn in some sort of geopolitical blackmail having to do with the ICF.”

  “Oh criminy, why can’t kids just burn their bras anymore?” Matson replied.

  “Molly, if you could run some models using the computer files, I’d be forever grateful.”

  “No problem. My techies are probably just sitting around in their skivvies playing video games at this hour anyway. Harley undoubtedly has been snoring away for hours by now, so no need to worry about him poking his shiny head into the computer lab. And all I had on my agenda for tomorrow morning were a few lessons for my tennis pro—”

  “Don’t you mean from your tennis pro?” Hunt asked.

  “Eric, while I may be nearing the age for social-security eligibility, I assure you that Molly Matson always means exactly what she says. Ciao, kiddos.”

  Quick slipped the phone into her pocket and looked at Hunt. “Molly has a certain … oh, never mind. You’ll probably see for yourself someday.”
>
  They continued in silence, watching the Vltava’s dark waters race by at 80 mph. As Prague Castle receded from view, Quick stared out the window. Hold on, Kalia: we’re coming.

  ∞

  The driver set down his phone. “They survived. Somehow.”

  The old man continued staring out the front passenger window of the silver Peugeot. “Did they now? Well, my, aren’t they resilient.”

  “Nin Zanin is flying back to Madrid. They will follow.”

  The driver glanced at the rearview mirror, at the third man, who was sitting in back seat, and who was shrugging. He turned back to Utley. “They’re getting closer. They may cause you a problem. Should I have our people divert them?”

  “Au contraire, they’re beginning to prove quite useful. By all means, let’s stay out of their way.”

  His gaze traveled up the building’s dark façade. His trembling finger stilled as he pressed it against the glass, pinning the building’s one window burning with light, nine stories up.

  “The boys will move soon. When they do, we shall know what to do.”

  – 43 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Island of La Palma

  Her body sank deeper under the water. Kalia Slater tasted the sea’s salt, felt the water’s warmth, and saw the shifting, shimmering fabric of schools of brightly colored fish. But as she sank deeper still, the receding sunlight turned from white to blue to green through a thickening filter of plankton and algae. Thousands of tons of water pressed down on her. And Slater began to struggle.

  The fading point of sunlight turned into an orange sea snake shooting down, directly at her. She tried to turn over and swim away, but she could not. The blazing serpent neared; she screamed; water filled her mouth. She realized the snake was actually a cascade of glowing-hot lava sinking into the ocean. For a second, the budding volcanologist in Slater took over, and she wondered how lava could continue glowing orange at such depths. The lava neared her face. But instead of the burn of fire, Slater felt the sting of cold.

  She whipped her head back and forth. Water flew from her face and hair. She tried to sit up. But the restraints kept her pinned down. Opening her eyes, she could only wonder which nightmare was worse—boiling alive in an underwater lava flow or waking to find an unwashed man standing over her with an empty plastic cup clamped in one hand and a semiautomatic machine gun, in the other.

  The grad student wished her mouth were not so parched from the combination of irregular access to water and the Devil’s Throat unrelenting heat, because she really wanted to spit in the bastard’s face. Instead, all she could do was imagine her captor taking her place beneath the lava-fall of her nightmare.

  The man crumpled the cup and threw it onto a trash pile growing in the room’s far corner. His Micro UZI landed on the wood planks stretched between a pair of upright barrels. His browned teeth flashed at her. And Slater felt the tiny warning hairs on the back of her neck rise.

  He leaned over her pinned body. She grimaced, as his fetid breath and sweaty chest brushed against her. But Slater did not flinch; she had been through this routine enough by now.

  The man backed away, returning the handcuff key to the chain around his neck. Slater, her hands now free, sat up and carefully made a show of rubbing the red marks ringing her wrists. Her captor retook his seat, while she eyed the gun tabled five feet from her.

  Although certain that she could grab the weapon before the guard could, Slater did not know whether she could simply pull the trigger and blast away the man’s face. Or whether she instead needed to first find and switch off a safety mechanism. If the latter, then the guard would overpower her before she could figure it out. No, better that she stick with her plan and wait for an opportunity offering a greater chance of success.

  A second guard’s almost immediate arrival confirmed her hunch. This man spoke rapidly and loudly to the seated guard, who scowled and snatched the gun from the table. The new arrival shook his head and handed Slater a bowl of unadorned white rice and a cup filled with water.

  Sitting on the cot, Slater used her fingers to shovel the rice to her mouth. After she finished eating, one of the guards pointed toward the covered bucket at the room’s far end. Slater stood. Fresh blood filled her lower extremities, and her feet felt as if they were thrust into the lava of her nightmare. Slater stared straight back at them, as the men watched while she used the bucket to relieve herself.

  As the Hawaiian returned to the cot, a commotion outside the chamber’s entrance caused her and the men’s heads to turn. The sounds of footfalls and shuffling followed.

  A third man, also holding a gun, stomped into the room. Behind him followed someone or something—with rope loosely binding its feet; filthy shorts and a shirt serving as its cover; and an oddly misshapen, black blob resting where its head should have been. A fourth man trailed, his gun stuck into the hostage’s back.

  The tattoos circling both ankles ruled out both Quick and Hunt. So, who was this? Slater watched the men force the figure toward her cot, with the captive moving with the short steps that the bindings demanded. The men shoved the body down beside Slater; a squeal erupted beneath the black hood. A guard pulled out a new set of handcuffs and locked the new arrival to the cot.

  The men turned their attention to Slater. The handcuffs clicked closed behind her back. And Slater balled her fists and pulled them against the metal rings with as much force as she dared, as she had been doing each time the cuffs were applied to her. The men stepped back and admired their bound prey: Slater and her new companion sitting side by side.

  The men spoke rapidly, elbowed each other, and laughed. A guard stepped toward the cot. With a snapping sound, the spandex hood broke free from the new arrival. The head shook; dreadlocks lashed against the rock wall. Big, dark eyes blinked and finally opened. They looked first at the guards and then at Slater.

  Then she said, “Hi. I’m Amanda.”

  – Part III –

  – 44 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Madrid

  The extended hundred-euro note metastasized into a finger-thick pile. A loud pop of air exploded from the gum in the tired mouth, marking the disappearance of the money into a shoulder bag.

  “Muchas gracias, señores,” the woman said, as she smoothed her neon pink skirt and grabbed the doorknob. The woman—who might have been a fashion model if not for a thin, ropey line of scar tissue running from her upper lip to her left nostril—was eager to leave. The windfall, she figured, would allow taking off the rest of the month to spend time with her angel. As soon as I get home, the beeper goes into the drawer. And tomorrow, I take my little girl to El Prado to see the colorful pictures that my Maria loves so much.

  Fifteen minutes after the woman’s departure from the apartment, a cellphone chirped. Gabriel scrolled through the text message and then grinned at Jacob. “We’re on.”

  After rapidly dressing, each man grabbed a plastic jug. The bottle caps landed on the sofa. The men ran from room to room, dumping clear liquid from the jugs onto the piles of dirty clothes and take-out containers. Much of the fluid vaporized before hitting the intended targets, filling the room with a thick chemical haze, its stinging odor mingling with the pot smoke.

  The men slipped into the building hallway and pulled the door almost closed behind them. A match head scrapped the stucco wall. The little stick cartwheeled through the space left by the cracked door; Gabriel and Jacob ran for the stairs.

  The blast wave slammed the Peugeot and the line of parked vehicles. The cars shook as if hit by an earthquake. Alarms shrilled. Hot splinters of glass and aluminum danced on the Peugeot’s hood and roof.

  Utley and his companions craned their necks, looking upward through the windshield and sunroof, finding orange flames chasing a curl of black smoke from the ninth-story window.

  Utley slid his phone from his pocket. Despite his finger’s tremor, a line of digits sprouted on the display without the mobile’s backspace key ever fe
eling pressure. The phone beeped and then returned to his pocket.

  He looked around the passenger compartment. “The time has arrived for parting’s sweet sorrow. I have initiated the transfers. Provided you meet the remainder of your contractual obligations, including divulging none of this week’s events, you will receive your first payments fourteen days hence.”

  Utley pointed at the Metro station. “I suggest that you leave Madrid with all dispatch. Goodbye, gentlemen.”

  ∞

  The 737-300 glided just north of Madrid. The orange flash on a midrise building held her eye for only a second. Then Sam Quick turned from the oval window, slid the vibrating phone from her pocket, and checked the display.

  “Molly,” she said to Eric Hunt, who sat beside her in a row midway back in the crowded plane. She raised the phone between her and Hunt. “What have you found?”

  “Sweetie, you sure know how to give the boys a workout. First we had to determine which locations appeared most frequently on the encrypted maps. Then the boys correlated these locations to the sites of those International Capital Forum meetings where world leaders would be present.”

  “And?” Quick asked, as a gentle bump shook the plane, and the PA announced a welcome to Madrid.

  “We found only one match: a network of former coal-cart tunnels beneath the location of a champagne reception slated for this evening at the Prado.”

  “Great work, Molly,” Quick said. “Please further characterize the location.”

  “The coal tunnels were part of a subterranean network formerly used to deliver fuel to municipal buildings during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After coal burning was phased out, the tunnels were converted to utility shafts. They now carry steam pipes, high-voltage lines, communication cables, and water and gas mains. And the site of interest is a tunnel that runs directly beneath the museum.”