Matt Drake 14 - The Treasures of Saint Germain

by David Leadbeater

  “Straight down then.”

  She lined his skull up between her sights.

  Kinimaka let out a yell from behind, far away. His words didn’t matter. Webb looked aghast, an expression that warmed her heart. Even Kenzie gaped though, and that single expression was what gave Hayden cause to hold back.

  “Witnesses,” the Israeli was saying. “What are you thinking?”

  I don’t care, was on Hayden’s lips. Her hand trembled, her finger quivering. One shot, one blast and it would all be over. No more chances for this destroyer of lives, no long reprieve. Just freedom, for everyone he had ever touched.

  Webb flinched as her finger spasmed. The bullet flashed past his skull amidst a terrible, impenetrable silence.

  “Well look at that,” he quaked. “I dodged it.”

  Hayden jumped in, but a heavy hand on her shoulder jerked her backwards. She knew that hand, and then the voice that accompanied it:

  “You’re out of control. Stand down. I’ll handle it.”

  Kinimaka stepped past her and approached Webb. Hayden, beyond surprised, made no move but to wonder if the Hawaiian was right. It had to be said that if she hadn’t wasted those moments contemplating killing him she’d already have the man in cuffs.

  Out of control? I don’t think so.

  She pushed up alongside Kinimaka, making no comment. Webb watched them both, a slight smirk on his face.

  “I remember the last time we met as a threesome,” the Pythian leader said. “You both looked a little different then.”

  Just a few meters separated them. The Champs Élysées still surged with a vital, fluid life all around them; those running from gunshots, those curious and those who hadn’t heard anything. Onlookers inched forward, excitement in their faces. Sirens screamed somewhere distant, coming closer. The night was alive. Journalists and cameraman were trying to climb trees for a better vantage point. Police cars tried to slice through the already heavy traffic.

  Hayden attempted to relax. No way could Webb outrun them now. To the right Drake and the others traded gunfire with the remaining mercs, only about four of them now. Interpol and French police tried to flank the mercs. A Frenchman was down and an Interpol cop lay bleeding, medics giving aid. She ignored the man-mountain at her side and gestured fiercely at Webb.

  “On your knees.”

  “As much as I do like the concept and potential outcome of that idea, Miss Jaye, do you really think I don’t have a few last-chance scenarios planned?” Webb asked them, entirely too confident for Hayden’s liking.

  Then thunder swept the streets.

  The helicopters were already approaching.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Seeing two enormous black birds swooping over the Champs Élysées, Hayden screamed out a warning. Kinimaka bellowed too and mayhem seized the entire area with an unshakeable chokehold. Sharp bursts erupted, adding panic to the mix. Hayden instinctively hit the ground, Kinimaka falling like a building at her side.

  Right where he always was.

  The thunder approached. The Hawaiian’s arm draped her shoulders but she shrugged it off, listening hard. Those small bursts sure as hell weren’t gunshots. Over the tumult she heard Drake’s unmistakable accent.

  “It’s all a trick, love! Webb’s off down t’ road!”

  Understanding little but the urgency of the words, Hayden rose and took in the scene. The choppers approached, as loud as monsters, but the incendiaries they were dropping were not much more potent than fireworks. This was all that Webb could muster then, now that he had become a fallen king. Birds guided by desperate men, paid-off and almost certainly about to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. For what?

  Something only Webb’s resources could provide no doubt.

  Hayden watched the choppers, already disappearing. Nobody fired, the local authorities were digging out radios to help track them. Hayden looked around for Webb, but already knew what she would find.

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Bastard has more lives than Jon Snow.” She looked over to Drake’s position. “You go help them, Mano. I’ll search for Webb.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Hayden stalked off, hunting the hunter.

  *

  Drake estimated the exact moment the creeping Interpol agents would catch the mercs’ attention and then let lose an entire clip, winging two men and sending the others scurrying. Dahl broke cover with Mai and ran hard. Alicia lined a lurker up as he prepared to take one of the agents out, and fired her weapon just a second or two before he did.

  “They’re running,” Drake observed.

  “Let Torsty and the Sprite have ’em. That’s grunt work.”

  Drake laughed, still surveying every angle and wondering if Webb or the mysterious mercenaries had anything else planned. Maybe Hayden should have winged him, but Webb looked like he’d already been shot. It certainly wasn’t hard to disappear into the crowd along the Champs Élysées, especially when three-quarters of it were panicking. That left them with just a couple of alternatives.

  Where did Webb come from? And who are the mercs?

  “Hey love, fancy a bit of interrogation?”

  Alicia eyed him. “Is that some kinda Northern pastime, or something?”

  Drake hung his head. “Whoa, that north-south divide. It never gets old.”

  “So you mean the mercs?”

  “Yep, that’s what I mean.”

  “ ’Cause, to be honest I’m happy either way.”

  “What else is new?”

  Cautiously they approached the area round where the mercs had made their stand. Some were dead, others bleeding, watched over by several none-too-concerned local cops. Dahl had already hooked his arms under one man and was pulling him into a sitting position. Yorgi and Lauren walked up and hovered around the fringes, not getting involved but always listening, always watching.

  “Are you likely to talk?” the Swede asked in cultured tones. “Or would you like me to introduce you to some of my friends?”

  The man, a blue-eyed, bearded individual with an old scar across his forehead, rested his back against a low wall, breathing heavily. Drake saw he’d been shot in the stomach, but wasn’t in too much imminent danger.

  Apart from the obvious.

  Alicia knelt down so that her eyes were level with the merc’s. “You gonna talk, or am I about to get some close-up target practice in?” She held her weapon across her knees, casual style.

  The merc winced, making a show of being torn between loyalties, then caved. “You ain’t about to like what I’m gonna say,” he drawled in an American accent. “Joined this crew just a few weeks ago. Extra insurance, they said. Didn’t firkin help much.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Keep talking,” Alicia growled.

  “Wish I’d never bothered. But the money; it was good. Firkin good. Could’a taken a year off, maybe two.” He paused as a pair of eyes bored into his own, those eyes owned by a fellow mercenary clearly more invested in his client than he was. Dahl dragged the man out of the way.

  “Guess I should keep it shut,” the merc muttered.

  “Don’t worry, they’re gonna get theirs,” Drake told him. “This is your chance to get less.”

  The merc looked dismally at the floor. “I can’t remember the last good decision I made,” he said. “The job was easy. Watch a palace, watch a house. Report back. Report on the foot traffic, guys who appeared to be interested in certain areas or items. Watch real close. My brother did it. Then I did it. Became a family thing.” He tried to guffaw then sobered and continued. “We were using field glasses, walk-bys, crooked guards and cleaners, food companies, mobile listening devices, photography. We pretended to be tourists . . .” he tailed off. “Every trick in the book they had.”

  Drake joined Alicia at his level. “Who is they? And to do what?”

  “They’ve been on it for years.” The merc seemed surprised. “Easy money. Some of these local mercs forgot how to pull a firkin trig
ger they got so cozy. But then—” he blinked “—something happened.”

  Drake looked up. The team were gathering around, the Interpol agents also listening. Traffic had ground to a halt up and down the road and a man was shouting through a bullhorn.

  “This guy, this Webb, appeared from nowhere. Got their panties in a bunch up at Transylvania he did; scared more of Webb muscling into what they consider their territories than ole Vlad the Impaler, they were.” He guffawed, then coughed and grimaced in pain, holding his stomach. “Then . . . then Versailles happened, and that’s when the hens really started destroying the henhouse. Webb again. Some head honcho went off the rails in panic, faster’n a Fourth of July firecracker . . . called doom down on that poor bastard’s head.”

  Alicia rocked on her heels. “I wouldn’t describe Webb as a poor bastard.”

  “Whatever, dude.

  “But do go on,” Dahl encouraged.

  “Versailles changed the game. Suddenly they were all on alert, taking calls and disappearing to make quiet calls. Favors here and there too. The big boss man called us long-distance like, every hour. More guns, more ammo. And dude, I don’t even know what we were guarding.”

  Alicia slapped him across the face. “Call me dude again, I dare ya.”

  “Umm, sorry. I call everyone du . . . that. But like I said—I don’t know what we were guarding.”

  “Any of those guys know?” Drake jerked his head at the other mercs.

  “Dunno. Maybe. Try Milner there. He’s a veteran. We were told to watch for Webb and take him out. Before that though, orders were to find an old book inside his jacket. They said we should get that too.”

  Drake watched Dahl stride off to chat with Milner. “Your boss then, mate? Who is he?”

  “Ah, I don’t know much, dude. It’s some kinda organization, or group. Low key. But, shit, they’re firkin fanatics. Pure, radical freaks. I know they have good lives, wealthy lives. They’re privileged, and I mean like gods. But this one thing with Webb seemed to set them off.”

  “Names?” Drake asked. “Anything? Addresses? Nicknames? Phone numbers?”

  “I got nothing. But I could list all the places we were tasked to guard.”

  “That’s a start.”

  The merc broke out into another fit of coughing, making Alicia shuffle back. Drake waved to a nearby medic.

  “Make sure he lives.”

  Alicia tucked her gun away. “Doesn’t matter who we follow,” she observed. “Webb and these assholes won’t be far apart.”

  “True. But we’ll soon know what Webb visited in Paris. And then we’ll know why. Next time, the good guys will be a step ahead.”

  Alicia squinted. “Good guys? Did I miss something?”

  “You don’t think we’re good?”

  “I guess we have our moments.”

  Mai walked up then, and Dahl returned. The looks on their faces said the other mercs hadn’t talked. Kenzie hovered at the fringes, eyeing proceedings, as Hayden garnered as much information as she could from the local cops and Interpol.

  “So where did Webb come from?” Mai asked.

  Hayden reeled off an address. “It’s a ten-minute walk from here.”

  The team gathered, checking weapons and ammo, staring at the dark street from where Webb and the mercs had previously come.

  “Any more of his friends down there?” Smyth asked, referring to the chatty, despondent merc.

  “Says their team was eight strong. Could be some went back to keep watch or—”

  “Or destroy the place,” Alicia said. “Let’s move.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “So what the hell is all this crap?”

  Alicia kicked at a chipped table leg, clearly bored. Drake studied the underground room which looked like it hadn’t been visited in decades before tonight. Alicia kicked again and moved the table, wood dragging across the concrete floor and plumes of dust taking to the air. The small room felt cramped and the team looked stressed out—they had taken precious time finding this place and now every moment of it appeared to be a waste.

  Kenzie flicked through the old book, fingers leaving prints in the grime. Kinimaka almost dropped a glass vial in his efforts to read its label. Smyth leaned glumly in a far corner, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Mai said she felt a little exposed and wandered out of the room, to a few baffled looks. Drake knew she just wanted to be useful, and since there was nothing she could do down there she decided to guard the perimeter. Smyth went with her, and then Beau too. Not a bad border guard.

  “So what do we have here?” Hayden asked the obvious rhetorical question. “Let’s put it all together.”

  “It would take weeks to sort through,” Yorgi said.

  “Liquids.” Kinimaka pointed at a stuffed shelf. “Potions maybe? Medicine? I’m not sure.”

  “A book.” Kenzie slammed it down. “Full of masonic symbols and spidery, smudged handwriting. Old stick drawings.”

  “Chemical paraphernalia.” Dahl pointed out a burner, test tubes and several other items.

  “So many containers you could sink a ship.” Alicia indicated the haphazard clutter of shapes.

  “Tells us very little,” Hayden said. “But this is all we have to go on, guys. We can’t rely on facial rec the next time. This was our best chance to find Webb when we knew he was here. The man’s a ghost again.”

  “There’s nothing obvious,” Drake said. “A map would be nice. Or a set of clues.”

  “Not exactly a treasure trove,” Dahl said. “More a collection of grunge. C’mon, Drake. I’m sure there’s a Yorkie expression for it.”

  “I’d just call it a shithole,” Drake remarked.

  “All right.” Hayden looked like she agreed with the overall consensus. “Only the experts can root through all this—”

  “Crap,” Alicia added in helpful fashion.

  “Yeah, that. What else can we do?”

  “Head back up top,” Kenzie said. “Give me my katana and one of those uncooperative mercs. I’ll make him sing like Shakira in concert.”

  “Would we have to pay five hundred for a family ticket?” Dahl wondered.

  “Probably, yeah.” Kenzie stalked out of the room.

  The team made their way out into the night once more, despondent and a little desperate by now. What appeared to be their best lead had quickly vanished almost as fast as their prime suspect. An Interpol agent saw Hayden and came over, gesturing with a cellphone.

  “Take this please.”

  “Sure. Who . . . oh, hi Armand.”

  Drake listened to her one-sided conversation with Argento, the gist being that they needed more information and by any means. Argento had an awful lot riding on this, as did his superiors.

  Including the SPEAR team’s involvement.

  Hayden nodded at Kenzie. “Choose your man.”

  The Israeli looked surprised and pleased. “Really?”

  “They tried to kill us and the French cops. They fired randomly across a busy street. I’d choose the leader, but it’s your call.”

  Drake watched as Kenzie considered her first real directive as part of the team. With a snarl she hauled the leader to his feet and dragged him by the collar nearer the shadows that surrounded the house. No sounds emerged, no screams or muffled thuds, but something was going on in there. Drake could see a constant shift of the darkness.

  He heard Kinimaka’s whisper, “You gave her the job you wanted.”

  And Hayden’s reply, “Leave it, Mano.”

  Kenzie returned, an injured look on her face. “I honestly believe they don’t know anything.” The merc crawled along at her side, unable to stand.

  Smyth surged forward, muttering angrily. Clearly, the soldier had had enough of waiting in the wings. His victim struck out, but Smyth subdued him with a simple punch. A broken rib and jaw soon followed, the soldier’s anger getting the best of him.

  As Kinimaka leapt in to pull him away an aggrieved voice shouted, “Dubai!
They’re in Dubai, but that’s all I know!”

  Smyth paused and so did Kinimaka. The soldier stepped away. Lauren caught his shoulder.

  “What was that?” she hissed. “You scared me.”

  Smyth turned away.

  “Now you’re scaring me more.”

  “Interesting,” Smyth said. “That I scare you more than a Pythian terrorist.”

  “Oh, give it a rest. And hey, you’d better not have hurt him before we left.”

  Smyth looked like he wished otherwise.

  “You’d better not hurt him, Smyth.”

  “And how could I do that?” Smyth rumbled. “He’s in lockdown.”

  Lauren clammed up, staring up at the skies.

  Drake was busy wondering if he’d heard correctly and nodded at Yorgi. “He said Dubai, right?”

  The Russian widened his eyes. “Oh, dah. I heard that too.”

  “That just makes everything weirder,” Dahl stated. “Dubai? I mean how do you connect that with . . . this?”

  “Guys, we have to focus,” Hayden urged them all. “Right now, Webb is in the wind and we’re nowhere.”

  “He’s getting desperate though,” Beau said quietly. “Webb. The man I guarded and worked for all those months would not make mistakes like this unless . . .”

  “What?” Smyth cut in quickly.

  “He is nearing the end. Anxious. Webb is almost at his ultimate goal.”

  “And, I’d like to point out,” Hayden said. “That’s something else we’re practically clueless about.”

  “Chemistry. Versailles palace. Transylvania. What’s the connection?” Dahl shrugged.

  Hayden brandished the cellphone. “Let’s head out,” she said. “There’s nothing more here for us to do. Get some rest guys, because when this all plays out I’ve a feeling we’re gonna need it.”

  *

  Argento came through the old fashioned way. He called Hayden and she called the team together, and they traipsed down from their hastily acquired rooms to a cold, empty conference room. They all sat about the dusty table, staring at the bare floor and shivering, watching the windows grow brighter as dawn began to rise.