Eva used her feet to propel herself skyward. She kicked out her shackled legs so the rear of the flimsy chair hit the ground hard.
It landed with a crash, and the rickety furniture splintered under her weight. Every part of Eva was pummelled with agony. Her captors’ heads snapped around. Eva rolled around to fragment the chair further, then got to her feet. Her legs and arms were still bound, but she could move.
As fast as her aching limbs would let her, Eva reached for the device on the table and hurled it at Isabella and Alex. It sailed between them, hitting neither.
Alex untangled himself from his lover’s arms and scrambled for a gun. Eva jabbed her right arm at Alex. The chair leg slid from the ties and projected directly at his head. He ducked out of the way, the wooden projectile missing him by centimetres. A wry smile crossed his lips as he aimed the gun at Eva, as if to say, you missed your chance, bitch.
The flash grenade exploded behind them. Eva picked up the other chair and hurled it at the kitchen window. The glass fractured as the chair sailed through it. Eva stepped onto the table, ready to leap through.
But Alex had other ideas.
The big man clomped across the floor, his eyes unfocused, stunned by the grenade. His lumbering hand grabbed Eva’s wrist. She snatched the only thing available to her.
A pencil.
She plunged the sharp object into Alex’s bulging neck. It sank into his flesh and instantly a geyser of blood spurted from his carotid artery. He screamed in pain. Eva used her palm to ram in the pencil further into his neck. He wheeled backwards, groping at the haemorrhage.
Not waiting another second, Eva propelled herself at the window. She leapt through the fractured gap, not knowing what was on the other side.
Eva plunged from the window, clutching at the air. The fall from the second floor wasn’t as high as she’d thought. The atrium over the apartment foyer hurtled towards her. Eva collided with it awkwardly, and a fraction of a second later it shattered from the impact. Eva crashed through and landed heavily on the floor, a barrage of glass fragments showering around her.
She was bruised, cut and winded. But alive. The atrium had broken her fall. There was no time to be thankful. Eva pushed herself up with weakened arms and forced her exhausted body to keep moving.
The pain was unbearable. Her body screamed for her to stop, to rest. But if she did, she’d be dead. With a wheezing chest, Eva lurched forward.
She ripped part of her t-shirt and wrapped it around an elongated shard of glass. With a cough and a splutter, she staggered towards the front entrance. As she yanked it open, bullets shattered the glass above her head. They were firing blindly at her, but it was too late. She was through the door.
Lurching onto the street, Eva wobbled on unsteady legs. Passers-by gasped at her bloodied and bruised appearance. Or it may have been the giant shard of glass she wielded.
Isabella and Alex would be on their way down by now. She had to move. An old white beat-up Citroën with a pizza sign on its roof sped down the narrow street. Eva staggered onto the road and held the shard out menacingly. The driver skidded to a halt.
Through the open front window, Eva stabbed the air in front of the driver’s terrified face. He slid across to the passenger side, away from the crazy lady with the glass.
In heavily accented French, he asked, “Is this a carjacking?”
Eva threw the car in gear and took off. “No, just an exceptionally aggressive alternate delivery.”
As the aged car sped around the corner, Eva glanced at the rear-view mirror and saw Alex and Isabella burst from the apartment block. They scanned the street for any sign of Eva, but she was already gone. Alex clutched his bleeding neck.
It seemed MI6’s focus on stabbing people with pencils had finally paid off. At least Eva had utilised one thing she’d learned. She hoped lead poisoning was fatal.
For several blocks, Eva remained mute, using every ounce of energy she had left to keep the car on the road. Her eyelids were leaden, every fibre of her body screamed for her to shut down. She couldn’t let that happen.
Suddenly everything turned black. Eva was jolted awake by the screech of car horns and the high-pitched squealing of the delivery driver. She’d veered into oncoming traffic. She fought the wheel to regain control of the vehicle.
At the first chance she got, Eva pulled the car over and turned to the driver. “Sorry about that. Maybe you could drive.” She saw the terror in his eyes. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Your very big piece of glass says otherwise.”
“Sorry.” She put the glass down. “I was escaping some bad people. You saved my life. Thanks.”
“Okay.” His clear eyes were sceptical.
“My organisation will give you a reward,” Eva said apologetically. “I’m sorry if I scared you back there.”
The driver’s shoulders relaxed. He nodded. They swapped seats and the driver took off for the hospital. As they drove in silence, Eva flipped open one of the pizza boxes in the back seat.
“Is that Hawaiian? Sweet.” She took a bite. It was the single most delicious thing Eva had ever tasted.
“Please do not eat my pizzas,” the driver said with a frown.
Eva took another bite. She felt revitalised. “Can I borrow your phone?”
The driver gave her a sideways glance. “Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice, dude.”
The driver shrugged and extracted a phone from his pocket. “Who are you calling?”
“The big guns.”
Chapter Eleven
Eva felt like a petulant child waiting to see the principal. She sat in the hospital chair, watching the rain cascade down the window. After being patched up she felt a million Australian dollars. Given the current exchange rate, that was pretty good.
She’d called Paul from the pizza delivery car. Her boss/mate had been livid and relieved at the same time. That’s who she was waiting for in the hospital room. He’d jumped on the first available flight to Paris and was on his way up in the elevator. Eva wasn’t entirely sure what her fate would be. A promotion was definitely out; a treason charge was more likely.
When she’d been admitted to hospital, she’d told her story to the doctors and they’d immediately called the police. Within minutes cops swarmed around her. She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure if they were protecting her or guarding her.
The doctors said she’d live, but that the bullet wound was likely infected, and that the trauma to the lesion would likely leave a nasty scar. Bikinis would be out. It was a small price to pay.
Mohamed the delivery driver would be given a citation and a hefty reward by His Majesty’s government. Eva had even called his boss to apologise for the late delivery, and the missing pizza slices.
The sound of a knock made Eva turn. Paul’s beaming face poked around the door.
“I hear this is the incredibly-daft-but-lucky-Aussie wing.”
Eva leapt out of her chair and instantly regretted it. The painkillers were wearing off, and every part of her hurt. She was dizzy, but still managed to meet the tall, lanky Englishman halfway.
He wrapped his big arms around her but didn’t squeeze as tightly as he normally did. At least he remembered she had severe injuries, even if she’d forgotten. Right now he wasn’t her boss, he was her friend. Albeit a slightly pissed one.
They sat and chatted for a while. Eva could tell he was doing his best to remain calm, mainly due to what she’d been through. She knew him well enough to know he was also furious. She’d disobeyed a direct order. His direct order. She’d put herself in harm’s way. Others had died, and the perpetrators had gotten away, yet again.
“What happens next?” Eva asked.
“Well, I was thinking I’d try and find a decent pub in this godforsaken country. Do you think they even do pints here?”
“Paul, I mean with me, and with Isabella and Alex.”
“Well now, you’re a prickly one.”
“Give a girl a break. I haven’t been able to shave my legs in days.”
“Funny,” Paul said, showing no sign of amusement. “I’ve done some spin with the top brass. Took some doing, let me tell you. They think you were never off the case, and that I only said you were to put off anyone in contact with Alex or the DGSE.”
“Good spin,” Eva said, genuinely impressed.
“Any more and I’d be a bloody whirling dervish,” Paul said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know you’re getting me an awesome birthday present this year, right? None of that nice socks rubbish. A big-arse Lego set, like a Millennium Falcon or something. Nancy will hate it, but I think it’s the least you can do.”
“Two birthdays,” Eva said firmly.
“Bloody right.” Paul grinned.
Eva knew he didn’t actually expect her to buy him the gift, which was all the more reason she would. “And Isabella?”
A frown. “I’d like to say even the DGSE can’t ignore this one, but they’re trying bloody hard to. An agent cavorting with a supposedly dead foreign agent and bombing her own country is pretty damning stuff. If she worked for MI6 she definitely wouldn’t be invited to the office Christmas party, but the Frenchies are being so damned cagey. They’re denying her involvement, of course. An all-points bulletin, or whatever their damn equivalent is, has been issued for an identikit likeness of Alex.”
“Not Isabella?” Eva asked with a scowl.
Paul gave a shake of his head. “I have a nasty feeling they’re going to sweep this one under the carpet. My hope is that the two of them flee France and we catch them on foreign soil, because I doubt Isabella will see the inside of a courtroom.”
Before Eva could raise a protest, Paul lifted his palm. “And for pretty much the same reason, we need to find Alex before the Frenchies do. Can you imagine the ruckus that will ensue if a former MI6 agent is connected to terrorist attacks in France? We’d be thrown out of 9 Eyes, NATO, the G8, UAFA, and the Tin Tin official fan club.”
“Pretty sure Tin Tin is Belgian.”
“Whatever,” Paul said, then his face turned grave once more. “We need to find the buggers first. The French authorities have dropped a net on the city, but the place is a rat’s nest. You could hide out for years and never be detected.” He poked his chin at Eva. “Good work on finding her, by the way. We’ll make an agent out of you yet.”
“So I’m not fired?” Eva asked.
It amazed her how much she cared about the answer.
Paul dropped one of his famous long pauses. “If you’re not you came bloody close to the wire, Missy. We’ll have to see. The smart money would be on you being turfed out on your skinny white arse, but you know me, I’m not that smart.”
There was still hope. Even if she got away with being in France when she shouldn’t have been, there’d been too many failures in her mission. Too many missed chances. Too many lost lives. MI6 would have a hard time justifying the mouthy, inexperienced Australian keeping her job.
Eva didn’t answer, but surveyed the scene outside her window. After a pause of her own, she said, “I want to be there. I want to see their faces when they’re caught.”
“Evie, you’re getting on the next plane—”
“The bastard shot me. She stuck her damn finger in my hole. Not a good hole, either. A very bad hole, Paul. Very bad. I want to see them go down, and not on each other.”
“We don’t even know where they are, love. These are two highly trained and experienced spies. They know how to go underground. It’s what they do. It could be weeks, if at all. It could—”
Paul’s phone rang. They smirked at one another.
“If this was a movie,” Eva nodded at his phone, “now would be the time for someone to say they’ve been cornered.”
Paul answered the call and listened. After uttering “Uh-huh” a few times, he rang off.
“Well,” he said. “I guess life can be like a movie sometimes.”
* * *
As much as Eva hated to admit it, technology had succeeded yet again. To the chagrin of privacy advocates, since the attacks the French government had hooked its claws into private CCTV networks in the name of homeland security. The upshot was that they had tens of thousands of servers at their disposal, running facial recognition programs. It was a gross violation of privacy. It had also worked.
A person answering to Alex’s description had been spotted at a train station. The photo was crystal clear: Alex and Isabella entering the main concourse of the Gare du Nord. There were also fuzzier photographs of them purchasing an international train pass and eating ice cream and laughing like tourists in love. Murder must be quite the aphrodisiac.
Alerts had immediately been triggered in every French government organisation with a passing interest in the attacks in Lyon. Given the worldwide profile of the crimes committed, every man and his dog wanted in on the arrest. Based on the phalanx of uniforms, Eva wouldn’t have been surprised if the local dog catchers had been called in, too.
Gare du Nord was an international train station; the EuroStar to London left from there. The nearby Gare de I’Est train station was also being covered, as it had international destinations as well.
Eva assumed that even if they flew within the EU, airport scrutiny would be too tight. Rail travel could be more lax, so that’s where they took their chance.
She and Paul stood on rue La Fayette, between the two stations, and watched the operation unfold. They were there in a purely ceremonial capacity, at the behest of the DGSE, perhaps as an olive branch, potentially to keep an eye on them. Their liaison had wandered off when the interdepartmental chest beating began.
Paul paced up and down the sidewalk. He was livid that he could do nothing while the French were about to capture Alex. In one move they would ruin MI6’s reputation, and he was helpless to do anything about it. It should have been MI6’s collar. They’d wanted him first. Paul didn’t say it, but all this could have been avoided if Eva had caught him back in Lyon.
It hadn’t been revealed that the photographs were of a former MI6 operative. As far as the agencies knew, he was merely a man with a description. When that information broke, the consequences would be catastrophic for MI6 and His Majesty’s government. A former British spy involved in terrorist acts in France would be news everywhere. It would tarnish them forever.
If Paul had his way, he and Eva would grab Alex and take him back to the UK before the French authorities got their hooks into him, but that was unlikely. Paul’s inability to do exactly that led him to pace even faster.
The station was surrounded by uniforms. There must have been several hundred officers from various departments, all jockeying for position and ownership of the shit-show.
There was an agreement that all forces would hold off and not close in until the order was given. A sensible plan. A logical one, even. Of course, it didn’t work out that way.
The Prefect of Préfecture de police de Paris, or the head of the Paris police department, ordered his people to swarm the station, in direct contravention of the agreed strategy. All hell broke loose.
Representatives of various organisations tried to cover the same exit. While they argued with one another, passengers sailed right past. It was a textbook example of how not to run a dragnet. It would be laughable if their actions didn’t mean the slaughtering bastards were going to slip through their fingers.
Across the road, Paul and Eva watched the shemozzle unfold. Clumps of commuters were streaming through while only the occasional one was challenged. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. Even though she didn’t smoke, Eva wanted to light one up and blow smoke in disgust.
Paul stared, open-mouthed, as a shoving match broke out between two uniformed groups. “It’s like they’re trying to re-enact the first days of the revolution. This is madness.”
Being spotted at a train station had a sense of urgency to it, suggesting they had to leave right now. There was desperation to their tactic.
It had also seemingly drawn every available French agent to the one location. Had they meant to be seen?
Through the phalanx of uniforms, four civilian figures emerged and headed toward the taxi ranks. Two figures in particular caught Eva’s attention.
“There, in the red,” Eva pointed toward a woman wearing a large black floppy hat and an ill-fitting red dress. “I know it’s her. The way she moved, the way they hugged one another. It’s them, I know it.”
Paul squinted across the road and some distance away. The two had slipped behind a huddle of commuters waiting for taxis. He shook his head with a frown as if not seeing them. “The French are going mad trying to catch Alex, there’s no way he wouldn’t have been challenged. They’re going to do everything they can. Despite what their national football team would have you believe, they’re not idiots.”
Eva eyed the chaos unfolding at the nearest exit. One officer took a swing at a rival department’s officer, but was pulled back by his compatriots. Eva hefted an eyebrow at her boss.
Paul threw up his hand and yelled, “Taxi!”
A passing taxi skidded to a halt in front of them. As the taxi with woman in the black hat and her partner took off, Eva and Paul bundled into theirs.
To the driver, Eva said “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but,” she sighed at the cliché, “follow that taxi”.
The driver grinned at the challenge. Paul offered him an extra fifty Euros if he kept with them. The driver hunkered down behind the wheel like a rally driver, turned his peaked cap backwards and floored it. Eva wondered if he was related to the Viennese tram driver.
As they raced off, Eva said, “Fiver says they’re still getting out of Paris on a train. They bought a rail pass, right? There’s another international train station in Paris, the Gare de Lyon. I bet that’s where they’re headed.”
Paul tilted his head. “A fiver? You’re betting on MI6s reputation, Evie.”
“Tenner?”
“Fine.” Paul smirked. “A tenner.”
The travel time to Gare de Lyon was normally twenty minutes. The way both taxis were speeding, they’d probably make it there in half that.
The Rookie?s Guide to Espionage: An Eva Destruction Espresso Shot Page 12
