by Rob Jones
“Come on!” Lucia said. “We have to get away from here.”
Harry checked his pockets to make sure his iPhone and the NAND chip were still safe, and with that done they jogged down the steps and sprinted toward the street where they had parked the Vespa. The bronze face of the Francisco Goya statue looked down at them impassively as Lucia climbed on board the scooter and kickstarted it.
“Maybe we need a car,” Harry said. “I can steal one.”
“No time, and too dangerous.”
“But we’ll be safer.”
“Get on and stop arguing!” she screamed. “It’s my city and I say we go on this!”
Harry looked over his shoulder as the assassin sprinted across the small car park and began to run up the stone steps toward the Goya statue. He was now holding a gun in his right hand, and Harry knew this meant at least one other security guard was lying dead back there.
The man fired. The bullet hit the kerb and ricocheted into the night with a gentle ping and a cloud of concrete plaster.
“You’ve convinced me,” Harry said and leaped on the back of the Vespa. He linked his arms around Lucia’s waist just as she swerved the moped out in the street.
As they raced into the night, he turned to see a black Roketa skid into view. The man who was hunting them down was driving it toward them like a demon.
Lucia looked in the mirror. “That looks like Miguel’s bike. He must have taken the keys when he killed him... bastardo!”
In her anger, she turned the accelerator on the handlebar and the Vespa increased to its top speed of nearly sixty miles per hour. In a car this was a gentle speed, but on the back of a scooter weaving in and out of the traffic in the middle of the night Harry thought it felt like a white-knuckle ride.
The killer fired on them and almost blew out their rear tire. Lucia swerved to avoid a second bullet and quickly brought it under control, impressing Harry who now turned to see their pursuer rapidly gaining on them. As Lucia deftly navigated the Vespa along the boulevard, Harry fired on the assassin with the security guard’s gun to return the favor. With two shots he blew out the headlight and destroyed his front tire. The Roketa skidded wildly in a shower of sparks as the rider fought to bring it under control, which he did, and responded by increasing speed and driving on the rim, regardless.
“We need to lose them, Lucia!”
“You think?”
Harry held on tight around Lucia’s waist as he tried to keep his balance on the speeding bike and take another shot. The man pursuing them fired again, and this time the bullet pinged off the rear licence plate with a loud ricochet. “That was too close for comfort,” he said.
“We can lose him down here.”
“Thank God for that!” Harry yelled, still holding onto her waist for his life.
“I can do this... I know this area. Hold on.”
She swerved off the Paseo del Prado and into the twisting side streets of the Centro district. This was the oldest part of the city, inhabited since the Moorish occupation of Spain when Muhammad I, the emir of Córdoba settled the area. He had established a fort on the banks of the east bank of the Manzanares over a thousand years ago during the ninth century, back in a very different world.
Now, Lucia Serrano was pushing the Vespa to its limits as she zoomed out the western edge of Centro and hit the traffic on the Calle de Bailén next to the world-famous Royal Palace of Madrid. This was the location of Muhammad’s fort, but tonight his Moorish army was replaced by the more prosaic scene of taxis shuttling people back and forth through the traffic.
As she jumped through the lights at the Calle Mayor and raced the Vespa toward the river, the man fired another shot at them. The bullet punctured the rear tire and sent shredded rubber flying out like confetti behind them. Lucia struggled to control the moped for a few seconds but then adjusted to the different feel of it. She pushed on at the tip of a shower of sparks bursting over the street as the wheel rim grinded against the tarmac.
Keen not to lose sight of his prey, the assassin also jumped the lights but wasn’t as lucky as Harry and Lucia. A taxi clipped his rear tire in a screech of burning rubber and angry horn-blowing, sending the Roketa spinning around in a perfect circle of three hundred and sixty degrees.
For a few seconds Harry thought the assassin was going to get out of it, but then another car, a heavier black SUV slammed into him and knocked him clean off the bike. He watched over his shoulder as the Roketa skidded across the road in a shower of orange sparks and smashed into the kerb. Its rider clambered to his feet and staggered off into the shadows.
“It’s over... for now,” he said. “Now we need a cheap hotel where we can check in no questions asked. Our faces are all over the news, remember. Tonight we have the distinction of being Spain’s most wanted.”
“Don’t worry, I know just the place.”
*
Lucia drove around the Jardines del Campo del Moro in between the river and the palace and turned the bike east again. Wordless now, and without a single glance back at Harry, she drive the battered Vespa back into Centro and down a narrow cobblestone lane lined with parked cars and other scooters.
Climbing off the dying moped, she looked at Harry and then pointed at a delapidated building squeezed in between two bars. “Bienvenido al Hostel Goya,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “I stayed here for a few days when I first got to Madrid.”
Harry regarded the neon green and pink graffiti with interest and shrugged his shoulders. “If we can get a room without any questions, then we’re sorted.”
“We can.”
And less than five minutes later they were in an economy double room with a view of a grimy inner courtyard. Harry wasn’t interested in the view, and seconds after closing and locking their door behind them he was carefully taking the NAND chip out of his silk pocket square and pulling his iPhone out of his pocket.
“What are you doing?” Lucia asked.
“I’m going to put this chip into my phone and see what all this is about.”
A few moments later, they were scrolling through a long list of files. “What are we looking for?”
“Hard to say – most of these are just personal snapshots by the looks of it.”
Lucia looked down at the images and saw one of the two of them standing side by side on a balcony in Barcelona. Before she could get upset, the pictures turned into word documents – all blank apart from one which contained a long line of numbers and letters.
“A code of some sort,” Harry said and continued to scroll through the information. “Nothing too explosive here.”
“That one,” she said, tapping the screen with her fingernail. “This is a movie.”
“And it’s called Armageddon IV,” Harry said anxiously.
They exchanged a glance and then Harry opened the file.
Without knowing they had done it, both of them had sat down on the bed beside each other as they watched the video on Pablo’s NAND chip. They stared hard as they tried to comprehend what they were seeing, and then they both worked it out at the same time.
“Es una bandada de pájaros,” Lucia said gently, still not understanding.
“Yes, a flock of birds,” Harry added, equally perplexed.
The birds looked like carrion crows. Perhaps two dozen of them circled in a graceful arc high in a sky the color of lead. As their glossy lampblack feathers reflected what weak winter light was on offer, their hoarse cry filled the silence. Now, swooping and climbing in the cold air they flew in unison once again, and then without warning all of them stopped flying and fell out of the frame like black stones.
“What the hell?” Harry said.
“Why would they all fall like that?” Lucia asked. “Is it possible they all died at the same time?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t think so. Something killed them and Pablo knew what that was. He’s trying to tell us something – but what?”
“I don’t like this, Harry. It’s starting
to frighten me. First poor Pablo is murdered in cold blood while I am in the shower... and now he leaves us clues leading to this horrible video. Turn it off... I’ve seen enough.”
Harry went to hit the stop button when the screen flicked onto some static, and then another image appeared.
“Wait a minute – there’s something else on here.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know... it looks like CCTV footage of some kind of lab.”
They were seeing a number of men and women in white lab coats working in a large, busy lab – testing, sorting, ordering, writing things down. One of them approached a sterile glove box and inserted his hands into the nylon gloves, but the interior of the box was obscured by the man’s body.
“What the hell are they doing?” Lucia asked.
“And more to the point, why is the footage on this... wait – something’s happening.”
They watched in disbelief as the people in the room began moving all at once – and all for the exit. Within seconds it turned into a stampede as everyone piled into the doorway. Some got through, but others were trapped behind in the crush. Then, without any warning, those they could still see in the lab suddenly stopped, stared up into the sky and collapsed all at once.
Lucia gasped and covered her mouth “What just happened, Harry?”
“I don’t know, but I think they’re dead – the same as the birds.”
“If we knew where this happened we might at least have a chance!”
“Wait – rewind the film and look here.”
They rewound the film to the first segment with the carrion crows. Harry pointed into the top right hand of the screen just above where the birds had dropped from the sky, and Lucia gasped. “I think that’s our chance.”
They were looking at the smallest sliver of sky above a gray rooftop and in the corner was the unmistakable shape of the top of the Eiffel tower.
“Paris!” Lucia said.
“Correct, and more than that – this view is from the east, and really close as well – no more than half a mile at the most. Whoever filmed this panned the camera around as they followed the birds and just clipped the top of the tower.”
“So we know where we have to go,” she said, untying her hair and shaking it out. “But how do we get there? We couldn’t use the Vespa even if it wasn’t wrecked.”
“Just leave that to me,” Harry said, and loosened his tie. He walked over to the bedside lamp and weighed it in his hand before putting it back down and turning to Lucia. “Is there a coat hanger in that wardrobe?”
Lucia looked inside and nodded her head, confused. “Yes. Why?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
SEVENTEEN
As they walked down the hotel’s stairs, Harry bent the coathanger into a long piece of wire with a hook on the end, and then when he got outside he chose an old Nissan model with zero anti-theft devices.
He pushed the hooked end of the wire between the window and the black rubber trim seal until he had found the catch and yanked it up. They heard a metallic clunk and then the door was open.
“I never knew breaking into a car was so easy,” Lucia said.
“Easy when you know how,” Harry replied. “And when there’s an old car around. If you have a sparkplug you can smash a piece of porcelain off of it and throw it at the window. The tiniest piece will break the window, every time. It finds the weakness in the glass. That’s why I looked at the lamp in the bedroom but any noise made smashing it to get the piece might have drawn unwanted attention our way.”
Lucia looked at him for a moment without speaking or moving as the cold wind blew through her hair. “I’m glad I found you tonight, Harry.”
“Oh, me too,” he said with a wink. “I could be sitting in a warm bar with an Armani model, but instead I’ve been stabbed, strangled, and shot at. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. It reminds me of...”
“Of your days in MI6?”
“I was going to say boarding school, but that too, yes.”
A brief smile flashed on her face as she locked her eyes on him, but then it faded as if a light had gone out, and she looked away. “We need to go.”
“Agreed.”
Inside the car, Harry smashed out the kick panel beneath the ignition keyhole and located the connector and identified the battery voltage supply wires. “Pass me one of your hairclips.”
“A hairclip?”
“Yes, and fast.” As he spoke he raised his head from beneath the steering column and scanned the street for any trouble. Up ahead he saw a man walking toward them along the sidewalk on the other side of the road. He was about to pass in front of the Hostel Goya when Harry grabbed Lucia and pretended to kiss her.
“What are you...”
“We’re passionately in love, remember, darling?”
Lucia saw the man was now staring at the two of them in the Nissan and immediately played along. When he had passed she moved away from Harry, but they both noticed the slight hesitation.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “But one suspicious glance and the whole show’s over.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said as she pulled her hairclip out. “It was a good idea.”
She passed him the clip as he pulled one of the wooden buttons off her coat.
“Hey, this is Marta’s!”
“Sorry, but we need to use the button as an insulator.”
He threated the clip through the button holes and then used it to jump the connections between the car’s electronic control module wires and the power coming from the battery. Then he used the second clip and button to jump connect the body control module with the same power supply. Immediately all of the dash lights blinked to life.
“Are we done?”
“Nearly,” he said. “I just have to touch together these two starter wires and... voila!” The engine burst to life with a gentle, low-rev rumble as he broke the steering wheel lock with brute force.
“I’m impressed, but now get out of the way. This is my town and I’m driving.”
Harry knew when he’d been told, and this was one of those times, so he jumped out of the car and jogged around to the passenger side while Lucia slipped over into the driver’s seat and buckled herself in.
“How does it feel driving your first stolen car?” he asked.
“This isn’t the first time I drove a stolen car,” she replied with a glance, and then steered out of the space and hit the road.
A few minutes later they were driving north out of the city. Lucia had used her local knowledge of Madrid and Spain to get them out of the country as fast as possible, and after swapping over in Bordeaux at dawn, Harry had taken the wheel and driven north on the final stretch to Paris.
After cruising through the southern suburbs – Orsay, Orly, Arcueil – the ancient city began to rise around them as they drew closer to its heart. Now Harry was using his knowledge of Paris to the same effect.
Lucia watched him change lanes as he fiddled with the radio dial. “You know Paris?”
“More or less,” he said.
“Maybe this is where you gamble your money away?”
He glanced at her and then checked over his shoulder. “Hey, you live your life and I’ll live mine, all right?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Anything you say. I just want this over.”
“That makes two of us,” he said flatly.
It was true that he knew the city well – there were several casinos he liked to use, and he’d met his ex-girlfriend Grace in the city so he felt at home as he turned into Maison-Blanche and navigated the backstreets of the 13th Arondissement.
Slowly they moved through the traffic into the 7th Arrondissement. His experience in MI6 told him all he knew about the European Arrest Warrant and he knew by now all of the other European Governments’ relevant authorities would have been informed of their fugitive status. That was why he was listening to the French news. For this reason they used the same technique the
y’d used in Madrid and checked into a dive he knew from long ago. It was on a cobblestone side street similar to the Hostel Goya, but had an even less savoury clientele.
After freshening up they stepped back out along the street and walked over to a wide boulevard where they ordered croissants and coffees in a small café. Everyone he glanced at was a potential threat – a spy with a grudge, an Interpol agent... whoever was behind the disaster in the lab and those dead carrion crows.
Lucia shivered in the cold and pushed Marta’s scarf up around her face. Harry had insisted they sit outside so he could smoke a cigarette, and the modest outside heater was doing little to alleviate the icy breeze that was blowing along the boulevard.
Now, as Lucia tore open a croissant and dipped it in the hot coffee, Harry was poring over images of the Paris skyline so he could narrow down the location of the apartment they had seen in the video.
“We came here when we first starting seeing each other,” Lucia said. “We’d both been before but never together, and he thought it would be romantic. We only stayed one week, and in the mornings I would lay in bed and read while Pablo walked to the shop to buy baguettes and tobacco for his pipe.” She sipped the coffee and shivered again. She looked troubled.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Harry said quietly.
“And what am I thinking?”
“That maybe he was meeting with this Andrej Liška on those walks and stopping off at the shops on his way back?”
“Yes, I am thinking that.”
“Did he ever come here on business trips, or anything like that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She set her cup down and sighed. “Have you found anything useful yet?”
“Maybe,” he pushed his chair closer to hers and turned the phone so they could share the screen. “There are a few moments at the very beginning and a couple at the end of the film when you can see the skyline in more detail. It looks to me like we need to walk south from here to get the Eiffel Tower in the right place, so to speak.”
