by Rob Jones
Hawke and Lea kept up their pursuit, and clambered up the stairs as fast as they could only to see Vetsch running through a cosy, well-lit front room of someone’s apartment, screaming at them to keep away.
They followed him, apologizing to the confused and terrified occupants as they went. Vetsch exited the apartment, ran down the stairs and reached the next street.
“I want that little rat!” Lea screamed.
Hawke looked at her. She looked more determined than ever, and he cynically wondered if Lea was using this whole enterprise as a kind of path to personal redemption for whatever it was in her past that she was hiding. Whatever it was she had alluded to over dinner in New York, but then closed up again when he had gotten too close.
Outside, they watched as Vetsch dragged a man from his vehicle. He shot him twice in the head and climbed into his car, a silver Honda. A moment later he was zooming away into the night.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hawke desperately searched for a vehicle as Kaspar Vetsch fled the street in the stolen Honda, its driver now lying dead in a pool of blood on the cold cobblestones.
“That’ll be the easiest,” he said, looking at a bright purple Renault Twingo.
He told Lea to keep watch while he took off one of the hubcaps and used it to smash the driver’s window. Inside, he removed the vinyl guard under the steering column and located the wiring harness connector, a small coil of electrical wires.
“Faster, Joe. We’re losing him.”
“Oh thanks – I was planning on stopping for a tea break but since you mention it, I’ll get on.” Over his shoulder he heard her sigh.
He separated the little bundle which contained the battery, ignition and starter wires and used a piece of the smashed window glass to strip the insulation from the battery wires and twist the copper wiring together. This allowed electricity to flow to the ignition component so the engine would start when he turned the starter.
Then he connected the ignition and battery wires and watched as the dash lights all came on. Next he sparked the wires and the starter turned over. He revved the car gently for a few moments and then snapped the steering lock free with brute force.
“Ready for a drive?” he said, and winked.
“SBS training includes how to steal cars?” Lea asked.
“No, that little skill is courtesy of a misspent youth. Now get in!”
“Something tells me I’m not going to like this,” Lea said.
“Where’s your spirit of adventure?” he asked.
“I think it flew away up on the rooftops.”
“Nonsense. Buckle up,” Hawke said. “But yeah, this could get rough.”
Seatbelts on. First gear, and throttle down.
The Twingo lurched forward. Its 1.1 litre engine was cold and howled like a scolded cat as Hawke raced the small Renault along the narrow cobblestone backstreets of the Old Town. His eyes focused on the Honda in front, driven to its max by a desperate Kaspar Vetsch.
Then the Honda drove down a flight of broad stone steps leading into a medieval square. Hawke didn't hesitate, and piled the Twingo down the steps, the heavy impact of the descent rattling through the shock absorbers with terrific violence and reverberating inside the tiny cab.
Lea held on for her life, completely unable to take a shot with so much movement in the car. A brief respite as they raced across a cobblestone terrace before another set of steps caused Lea to fly up in the air and hit her head on the ceiling.
A string of exotic Dublin profanities filled the car and put a smile on Hawke’s face, but it was only fleeting – the danger ahead of them loomed into his consciousness once again.
The Honda swerved violently, its right backside swinging out uncontrollably in the tiny square and almost plowing into a neat line of parked mopeds. But Vetsch regained control and accelerated into a side street, forcing people to jump to safety in a shop’s doorway.
“Black ice,” Hawke said, steering to avoid the same fate.
“I need to get a shot, Joe!” Lea said. “Could you at least try and get up close and calm things down a bit?”
“Please don't kill him – we need him alive!”
“Fine, I’ll blow his tires. He must be getting used to that by now.”
Vetsch careered around a streetlamp and accelerated into the Place du Molard, a broad pedestrianized area of elegant cafés where chairs and tables spill out onto the cobblestones during the day, but now the way was clearer, and Vetsch took advantage.
They followed the Honda into a wider street where Vetsch was skidding around to the right in a cloud of burned rubber smoke.
“We’re going against the traffic, Joe!”
“Hold on!” Hawke shouted. Ahead, a tram was trundling towards them with its headlights on, its overhead contact system wobbling gently in the cold night as it moved along the street.
The Honda swerved to the left, mounting the sidewalk and smashing through a Vespa parked outside a Chanel store. A moped spun off to its right and struck the side of the tram in a blaze of sparks.
Hawke swerved left, narrowly avoiding a lethal impact with a large Jaguar and slipping out behind the tram to see Vetsch had gone left, still against the traffic and into a main thoroughfare.
The Swiss hitman mounted a traffic island opposite a taxi rank, smashing through a street sign before steering sharply to the right. He fired a volley of pistol fire through the passenger’s window in a frantic attempt to slow the Twingo.
Hawke reacted in a second and swerved away from the bullets. Lea fired back, striking the Honda’s right front wing and causing Vetsch to swerve into a line of Vespas, still firing, his bullets smashing the windows of another jewellery store.
“He’s trying to get over the river.” Lea pointed to the left where the Pont du Mont-Blanc stretched across the river Rhône, its streetlamps lighting up the Geneva night like a string of pearls.
Hawke pulled alongside Vetsch on the bridge and Lea fired a few shots from the Sig. Vetsch hit the brakes and dropped behind the Twingo, swerving in neatly behind it as he went and scraping the nose of the Honda against the Renault’s rear fender for a few seconds before bringing the steering under control again.
He accelerated and rammed the back of the Twingo, which jolted violently forward with the impact from the much heavier vehicle behind it.
“That son of a bitch!” shouted Lea. She turned in her seat and fired the Sig through the back window, blowing the glass out and peppering the Honda’s windshield with indiscriminate bullet holes.
Vetsch grimaced and swung the wheel hard to the left to avoid the volley of fire. Smirking, he then raised Lea’s Glock over the steering wheel and let loose a long, rapid burst of fire, emptying the magazine into the back of the Twingo. One bullet got lucky and thudded into the plastic dashboard. Another got even luckier and blew the stuffing out of Hawke’s headrest, narrowly missing him by centimeters.
The abrupt change in circumstances with Vetch switching from hunted to hunter had put Hawke at a disadvantage and he knew it. He also knew what to do about it.
“Hold on, Lea!” he shouted. “We’re going for a spin.”
He swung the steering wheel to the left full-lock and applied the hand-brake, bringing the Twingo to a terrifying and shuddering stop and spinning it violently to the left.
Vetsch could barely react in time, and the Honda nearly went into the back of them, but missed the impact when Hawke performed a speedy handbrake-turn with an impressive squeal of the tires. A great cloud of rubber smoke rose behind them on the bridge.
The Honda shot past them again, and Hawke brought the Renault three-sixty before slamming down on the throttle and taking the pursuit back up.
“You bloody maniac, Joe Hawke!” Lea was white with terror as she clasped the Sig in one hand and the door handle with the other, her knuckles white with the strength of the grip.
“Yeah – sorry about that,” said Hawke. “Not done anything like that since we burned that doughnut
on the local cricket pitch when I was a teenager.”
“Literally unbelievable.”
“Thanks.”
“It wasn't a compliment.”
Then, in the rear-view, he saw the first of the blue flashing lights and the familiar two-tone whine of the Swiss police as they pulled up behind him in a powerful Volkswagen Passat.
“Great, les flics,” he said, jabbing his thumb behind his shoulder. He glanced at Lea as she turned in her seat to look at the cops, her face lit intermittently by the flashing blue of their lights. Even in the middle of all this he noticed there was something haunting her eyes that hinted of a long-ago tragedy.
Then more gunshots. Vetsch was firing blind over his shoulder as he raced through the night. A split second later the Twingo’s windshield was covered in bullet holes, then it smashed completely and Hawke could see nothing.
“Kick it out!” he said.
Lea leaned back in her seat, raised her legs and kicked at the reinforced glass with everything she had, and four or five kicks later the shattered windshield flopped out of its frame and spun off to the right of the car, hitting the white metal fence at the side of the bridge and dropping into the freezing river below.
A rush of icy air hit their faces as they accelerated towards Vetsch, the annoying nee-naw of the Swiss police sirens getting louder as the much more powerful Passat behind them made short work of the Twingo’s weak acceleration.
Hawke floored the throttle and the small car’s runaround engine labored in response but the Honda was still getting way. Back on busier streets Vetsch had no advantage, but on the straight of the bridge the bigger engine was leaving them behind – with the police closing on them fast.
But now the bridge was coming to a close and Vetsch zoomed off the end, cutting in front of a bus outside the Four Seasons, and leaving Hawke and Lea far behind him.
By the time the bus had moved along and cleared the road, the Honda was halfway up a narrow road lined with boutique restaurants running parallel to the river.
“He’s getting away, Joe!”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
In the rear-view Hawke saw the police car get clipped by the front of the bus. It spun around in a circle several times before sliding down the riverbank.
“That’s the rozzers out of the way,” he said.
Ahead, Vetsch had met with similar misfortune and failed to avoid a large Kronenbourg truck which had turned the corner too fast and without warning.
Vetsch swerved to avoid it but his speed left no time to navigate a safe passage between the truck and a concrete lane divider, which he struck with considerable force.
The Honda’s rear spun to the left and the car tipped on its side before coming to a steaming, smoking stop against an apartment block. Hawke pulled up a safe distance from it and they approached with caution.
The Honda’s front wheels were still spinning by the time they reached the wreckage. Everything smelled of gasoline. Hawke leaned inside and saw at once that Kaspar Vetch was dead, hanging upside down in his seatbelt with a broken neck, eyes bulging in their sockets. His head lay on the deflating airbag like it was a pillow.
Hawke reached in and pulled out the Glock and Vetsch’s phone. “His address will be in here,” he said. “I’ll give Cairo a call and let her know she’s missed all the fun.” He tossed the gun back to Lea, who caught it with ease and slipped it back inside her jacket.
“I told you I’d get my Glock back,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vetsch’s apartment was a luxurious affair above a cyber café in Les Pâquis, a bohemian district on Geneva’s right bank. Despite the cold and the hour, people milled about in the streets outside, laughing and joking. As Hawke and Lea climbed the apartment steps, a young couple stepped into an Italian restaurant opposite, kissing as they opened the door.
“Seems like too a nice place for such a scumbag,” Lea said.
“All paid for by Zaugg, no doubt,” said Hawke.
They opened the door with Vetsch’s keys and took a quick look around – minimalist, clean lines, empty cupboards. On a glass coffee table was a copy of Plato’s Immortality of the Soul. Lea picked it up.
“A little heavy for a man like Kaspar Vetsch, wouldn’t you say?”
“De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est,” Hawke muttered under his breath.
Lea stepped into the back of the apartment, gun raised in defense, while Hawke began a search of the main living space. It was open-plan and had few hiding places. The search ended with a look through the kitchen cupboards.
“Anything back there?” he shouted.
“Maybe. You?”
“Nothing, Just instant coffee and some vodka – and a packet of old biscuits.”
“Sounds like he was a real party animal,” Lea said as she walked back into the lounge. “I found this in his bedroom. Check it out.”
She handed Hawke a manila folder three inches thick.
“What is it?” he asked, opening it.
“Looks like Vetsch’s career. By the looks of the files inside I’d say it was a list of his hits.”
Hawke looked through the folder. “This could be something,” he said, passing a file back to Lea. It was a single sheet of paper with a black and white mugshot of a man in the top center. “All the others have a nice red line through their faces but not this guy – and check out his name.”
Lea read the file. “Yannis Demetriou. Should I know him?”
“Look at his occupation.” He pointed at some text at the bottom of the page.
Lea read on, her eyes widening. “Professor of Classical Antiquities at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. My God – this must be his next hit.”
“I think so. And now Vetsch isn’t around to do it I guess Zaugg will just hire someone else, maybe even this Baumann maniac. We have half the golden arc, but the other half is still in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Zaugg can’t know that, because only we know that the Poseidon Vase contained only half the code.”
“But he must know he needs a specialist like Demetriou to translate or he wouldn’t have had Vetsch put him on his hit list. We have to get to him first, Joe. Heaven only knows what they’ll do to him if they get their hands on him.”
“You’re right. We have to warn him. Get his number from the internet if you can.”
Lea started searching on her iPhone.
There was a knock on the door and Scarlet walked into the room spinning the Lexus’s keys on her finger. “Honey, I’m home,” she said. “And I brought the kid, too.”
“Who?” Ryan asked, looking over his shoulder. “Oh, very funny.”
“Any news?” Scarlet asked, flopping into Vetsch’s white leather sofa and quickly arranging her hair.
“You mean apart from Vetsch’s tragic end on the banks of the Rhône?” Hawke asked.
“Of course.”
“Just this,” Lea handed Scarlet Vetsch’s hitlist.
“Oh my goodness gracious me,” Scarlet purred. “He was a naughty boy. He must have been one of the most active hitmen in Europe.”
“Western Europe, actually,” said a voice behind her.
They all spun around, guns raised.
Standing in the doorway was a young woman, standing alone, her hands raised in anticipation of their defensive reaction. She had dark brown hair, and was in her mid-twenties, tall and confident. Her eyes were intelligent and keen, but a weariness in them told Hawke she’d been around the block a few times.
“Who are you?” Hawke asked, Sig pointed squarely in her face, unwavering.
“My name is Sophie Durand,” she said. “I’m with the DGSE.”
“And who are they when they’re at home?” Ryan asked, looking up from his MacBook.
“The DGSE,” explained Hawke, “is the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure, or, in English, the General Directorate for External Security. It’s the French equivalent of MI6 or CIA.”
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“Oh, French secret service” Ryan said, going back to his computer. “What’s she doing here?”
“She wanted to check out Kaspar Vetsch’s interior design and ask him a few tips,” Scarlet said. “What do you think she wants here?”
“And you’ve been following us since when?” Lea asked.
“Since your little escapade all over Genève,” she replied. “The Swiss are watching you too.”
“But they don’t know you’re here?” Hawke said.
Sophie shook her head. “Of course not. I am very good at what I do.”
“We’re going to need some ID here,” Lea said.
Sophie opened her jacket so they could see the inside and slowly pulled out a thin black wallet. She held it forward and Scarlet casually took it and flipped it open. “In the old days this would have been enough,” she said, passing it to Hawke. “But these days...”
“Cairo’s right. Lea, take her picture and email it to the boss.”
Lea snapped a picture of her face and moments later a text came back from Sir Richard Eden.
“He says she’s legit,” she said.
They lowered their weapons and Hawke patted her down. In her shoulder holster he found a nine millimeter semi-automatic PAMAS G1s.
“Anything else?” Lea asked.
“Just a Beretta.” Hawke pulled it out of the holster and took a step back. “You can have this back when I trust you, and that’s going to take some time. You can start by telling us everything you know and why you’re here, exactly.”
Sophie sank into the sofa opposite Scarlet, who then kicked Ryan’s leg.
“Eh – what was that for?”
“Coffee, boy,” Scarlet said, flicking her head at the kitchen.
“I’m not your coffee bitch, you know,” he said.
“Sorry,” she said, “but you really are.”
“Just get some freaking coffee, would you, Ryan?” Lea said.
“And try and find some of those little French madeleine biscuits,” Hawke said. “I like those.”
