Sebastian looked up as Annja burst into the room and she saw his eyes go wide at the fact that she was carrying a medieval sword in her right hand. With her pursuers only moments behind her, though, she didn’t have time to explain. She pointed at a door on the other side of the room and shouted, “Run!”
She expected him to jump to and do as she said and had taken a few steps in that direction herself before realizing he hadn’t moved. He just stood there, holding the test results in one hand and a pen in the other, staring at her in amazement.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he watched her dash across the room and grab the torc from inside the cutting crib.
Before she could answer him there was a resounding crash from the front of the house.
How long is that door going to hold? Annja wondered.
Sebastian tore his gaze away from her and looked toward the front of the house, uncertain.
They were wasting precious time. “In another thirty seconds armed gunmen are going to come swarming through that door, looking for this,” Annja said urgently, holding up the torc. “We need to be somewhere else when that happens.”
A crash of glass was heard and quickly followed by shouts from the front of the house.
Apparently the door wasn’t going to hold them for very long at all.
Sebastian glanced once more in that direction and then made up his mind. He turned and hurried over to the door on the far side of the room, Annja close at his heels.
“Is there a back way out?” she asked as they left the lab and its equipment behind and headed deeper into the building down another short corridor.
“Yes,” he told her as they emerged into another big room like the one they’d just left. To her left was a spiral staircase leading upward to the next floor. On her right was a makeshift storage area, with shelves overloaded with discarded equipment and boxes piled high with records that had yet to go to long-term storage.
As Annja glanced around, Sebastian hurried forward to the rear exit, half-hidden in the shadows against the far wall.
“This will lead us out in the alley,” Sebastian said, reaching for the knob.
Realizing what he was about to do, Annja cried, “Wait!” but she was too late.
Sebastian either didn’t hear her or was too caught up in the excitement for it to register. She was a few steps behind when he grabbed the door and yanked it open.
She didn’t know who was more startled, Sebastian or the gunman standing on the other side of the door, reaching for the knob from that side.
Unfortunately for Sebastian, the gunman was armed and he was not.
Sebastian shouted in surprise as the other man brought up his weapon and put two rounds right into Sebastian’s chest at almost point-blank range.
The gunman only lived a few seconds longer than his victim however, for even as Sebastian’s body toppled backward to the floor, Annja stepped over him and thrust her sword forward, skewering the intruder through the chest.
Automatic gunfire split the morning air and bullets chewed up the door frame around her. Looking past the man impaled on the end of her sword, Annja could see two other intruders just entering the small backyard from the alley behind the house, firing as they came.
Ignoring the flying splinters and the whine of bullets as they zipped past her, Annja released her sword, snatched the gun from the dying man’s hand and then dove back inside the house. She dragged Sebastian’s body clear of the doorway and then kicked the door shut.
Bullets slammed into the other side, but the door must have been reinforced with steel or something similar for it held up under the assault. Annja took one look at Sebastian and knew he was gone; his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling above, unseeing.
She looked around, frantically hoping for a way out. Her gaze fell upon the staircase leading to the second floor and for a moment she gave it serious consideration, but she didn’t know what lay in that direction and the last thing she wanted to do was get cornered without a way out. Dismissing it, she chose instead to charge back in the direction from which she had come, thinking the gunmen wouldn’t be expecting her to retreat that way.
As she ran she glanced at the gun in her hand. It was an MP-5, a weapon common with SWAT teams the world over, and thankfully one with which she was familiar. She hit the release and let the magazine fall into her other hand, noting its weight.
About half-full, she thought. Gotta make every shot count.
She slapped it back into place as she raced into the lab.
The door leading to the reception area was still open, giving her a clear view all the way to the front of the building. Several figures were coming in through the front door and she didn’t have to see them closely to know they were up to no good. The guns in their hands and the ski masks over their faces kind of spoiled the surprise.
Annja dashed over to the workstation closest to the other door and took up position behind it. She pointed the gun in the direction of the intruders and sent a short burst their way before ducking down behind the counter.
Almost immediately a withering hail of answering fire came in her general direction, but most of the shots were inaccurate and she wasn’t seriously threatened by it.
The room around her, however, took a beating, as did the hallway leading from the reception area as bullets chewed into the walls, floor and ceiling.
Annja waited for a lull and then popped her head around the side of the island. Two of the intruders were headed down the hallway in front of her, trying to gain ground while she kept her head down.
Oh, no, you don’t.
She stuck the gun around the corner and held the trigger down.
When she looked again, the gunmen were on the ground, unmoving.
This angered their companions, for another blistering wave of bullets came in her direction. Annja simply hunkered down behind the workstation and rode it out.
Good thing she did, too, because as she rose to her knees to return fire, she glanced back the way she had come and saw three men crossing the storage area, headed for the door to the lab. The lead gunman saw her, as well, and snapped out a shot in her direction.
The bullet streaked past her ribs, coming so close as to tear the side of her shirt but missing her tender flesh.
Annja returned the favor by putting a bullet of her own right into the gunman’s face.
As the dead man fell back against the others struggling to get by him, Annja used the time, and the confusion, to scramble over and behind a different workstation. This one would give her more protection from the gunfire coming from the front of the house while simultaneously bringing her within arm’s distance of the door to the back hallway.
Once in place, she called her sword to hand.
As the first of the intruders moved cautiously forward into the room, his gun held out in front of him, Annja swung the sword downward, taking the hand holding the gun off at the wrist.
He started screaming, startling the man behind him, which gave Annja the split second she needed to step around the corner and fire past the injured man, taking out his companion in the process.
That should even up the odds a bit, she thought with satisfaction.
That was when she heard the clatter of something bouncing across the floor toward her.
Whirling, her eyes tracked the round egg-shaped object as it came to rest against one of the other workstations.
She was already moving as her mind registered what it was seeing, diving for the cabinets nearby, her only thought to get under cover as quickly as possible.
The grenade went off a moment later.
With his heart in his throat, Roux handed the address over the front seat to Henshaw, saying, “As fast as you can. Annja’s life depends on it.”
His majordomo needed no further urging. He stomped his foot down on the accelerator and with consummate skill began to weave the limo in and out of traffic as he sped through city streets, headed for Sebastian Cartier’s office.
Roux had made a trip like this once before, rushing off to save a young woman in his charge, only then he’d arrived too late and she’d perished at the hands of her English captors.
This time will be different, he told himself.
This time his young protégé would not be left to perish alone.
As they approached the address, they saw two dark-colored vans pull away from the curb and speed off in opposite directions. For a moment Roux considered giving chase; if they were Shaw’s men and they had the torc, this might be the only chance he would have to take them out. But his concern for Annja overrode his instincts and he watched them disappear down the street unhindered.
No sooner had Henshaw pulled to a stop in front of the house than Roux was out of the car and dashing toward the entrance, calling Annja’s name as he went.
The house looked like it belonged in war-torn Baghdad than on a quiet Parisian street. The door was open and from the walkway Roux could see that the room just inside—a reception area of some kind—had been riddled with gunfire. As he stepped inside, shell casings rolled underfoot and the air stank of cordite.
“Annja?” he called, desperately hoping for an answer.
Silence was the only reply.
He took a few steps forward. There were two exits, one to his left that opened into an office and another dead ahead that looked like it would take him deeper into the building. He could see into the room on his left, a ransacked office that appeared empty, and so he chose the other way out of the reception area.
A narrow hallway stretched out ahead of him and it was there that he found the first two bodies. He hurried forward, concerned, but upon getting closer it was obvious that they were both male. He couldn’t see their faces due to the ski masks they wore but that was fine; his interest in them immediately waned when he realized that neither of them was Annja.
The doors on either side of the hallway were locked, which left him only the direct route ahead.
Roux could hear sirens in the distance and knew he didn’t have much time. He had to find Annja and get out of there before the authorities arrived or there was going to be trouble.
He stepped over the bodies, being careful not to put his feet into the widening pool of blood that was seeping out of them and onto the floor, and then pushed ahead.
The room at the end of the hall was in even worse shape than the reception area had been. Cabinets hung half on and half off the walls, their exteriors riddled with bullet holes. Water shot up from a shattered sink and flowed down onto the floor where it mixed with a pile of broken glass and other debris. The ceiling and part of the wall in the far corner had collapsed, burying the cabinets beneath in an avalanche of wood, plasterboard and ceiling tiles.
Sticking out of the pile of debris was the lower half of a woman’s leg, wearing blue jeans and a familiar style of hiking boot.
Annja!
Roux rushed over and quickly dug her out. Her face was covered in blood, a mask of crimson obscuring her features, and for a moment he feared the worst, but then he noticed the steady rise and fall of her chest and knew that she was merely unconscious. The blood was from a sizable cut at her hairline, and she was clearly bruised and battered, but she was alive and for that he was thankful.
He scooped her up and headed back the way he had come.
The sirens were louder, probably only a few blocks away now, and a small crowd was gathering outside. Henshaw was holding them off with stern looks and his impressive size, but it was obvious that it wouldn’t work for much longer. Several were already fondling their mobile phones, no doubt getting ready to take pictures of what they were seeing if they hadn’t already done so. It was time to get out of there.
“Let’s go!” Roux shouted as he rushed out of the house.
Henshaw had the back door open and the car running by the time Roux slid Annja into the backseat and climbed in after her. There were several shouts of concern from the crowd at that point, people openly wondering if they were witnessing a kidnapping, but Roux ignored them as Henshaw hit the gas and got them out of there just seconds before the police arrived at the scene.
Annja was still unconscious, but that was to be expected. Roux used the opportunity to give her a quick once-over, making certain he hadn’t missed any more serious injuries.
“Home or the hospital?” Henshaw asked from up front.
“Hospital.”
Definitely, a hospital. Just not one the public knew about.
As Henshaw drove, Roux picked up his cell phone again and made the call that he’d been putting off since earlier that morning.
“Detective Inspector Beresford, please,” he said when his call was answered by the police operator at the other end of the line.
“Detective Inspector Beresford is on another line at the moment, sir. Would you like to leave a message?”
“No,” Roux replied. “I’ll hold. It’s urgent that I speak with him. Please tell him it’s about the Arkholme case.”
Music played for a moment or two and then the line was answered a second time.
“Beresford,” said a gruff and tired voice.
“My name is Roux, Inspector,” he began. “And I believe it is time that you and I had a short chat.”
Annja lurched upright in the hospital bed, her mind and body unaware of the time she’d spent unconscious so that they both thought she was still in the midst of the firefight, still in danger. Her hand curled around the nonexistent hilt of her great sword and suddenly it was there, swinging forward in an arc designed to disembowel her opponent.
Thankfully Roux had foreseen just such an occurrence and was standing off to one side, out of reach.
“Annja!” he called sharply.
His familiar voice brought her to full wakefulness and she glanced about, taking in her surroundings, noting Roux standing off to one side, prudently out of reach of her sword.
She was in a hospital; that much was obvious. An IV tube ran to her left arm, no doubt pumping glucose and other necessary fluids into her body in the wake of the battering she’d taken at the hands of the intruders who’d come for the torc. She also had a bandage around her head right at the hairline and another wrapped around her ribs. Her body beneath her hospital gown felt beaten and bruised, which was to be expected given what she’d been through, but her thoughts, now that she was awake, were surprisingly clear. She remembered the phone call from Roux, warning her to get out of the geologist’s offices before Shaw’s men arrived.
How had he known they were coming? she wondered, which then prompted another, perhaps more important, thought.
How deeply was he involved?
Annja kept her sword in hand, her gaze locked on Roux.
“What happened?” she asked.
Roux’s eyes narrowed slightly as he realized she was not putting her weapon away, but he didn’t say anything about it, simply answered her question instead.
“By the time Henshaw and I arrived, the mongrels who attacked you had fled, taking the torc with them. We managed to extricate you from the scene before the police arrived and brought you here.”
“And that is?”
“A private hospital outside of Paris. The kind of place that caters to those who do not wish to have their business aired in public.”
She hated to ask, but she had to know. “Sebastian?”
Roux shook his head.
Annja knew what that meant and vowed she’d take the time to properly grieve her new friend when all this was over.
For now, though, she still had to get to the bottom of things.
Watching Roux carefully, she said, “You knew they were coming.”
It was more a statement than a question, but Roux answered it as if it were the latter.
“I was offered a chance to bid on an artifact, one that might have some unusual powers attributed to it. As I dug into the offering, it became clear that the man running the auction, David Shaw, was up to something untoward and I made it my mission to find out what that was. By the time I discovered the connection between you, the torc and Shaw’s activities, it was almost too late. I warned you as quickly as I could and then did my best to extract you from the situation.”
He was telling the truth. She could feel it in her bones, could sense his honest concern for her and what she’d been through. The fact that she’d doubted him at all now seemed ludicrous.
She released the sword, letting it disappear back into the otherwhere, to wait for her next time of need.
She seemed to be having them a lot lately.
Roux stepped forward, coming over to her bedside. “The doctor said you should drink this when you woke up,” he said, handing her a glass.
“What is it?” she asked suspiciously, her discomfort with doctors and hospitals showing through.
Roux smiled. “It’s just water, Annja. Nothing more sinister than that.”
She smiled back at him, the initial awkwardness between them already forgotten. She took the glass and it was only when she held its cool surface in her hands that she realized how thirsty she was. The water soothed her parched throat and she drank two more before she was finished.
When she’d had enough, she said, “This guy, Shaw. Do you know how to find him?”
She asked the question in a casual tone, but Roux knew her extremely well. There was nothing casual in her desire to know the answer.
“At the moment, no, but I have people working on that. Unfortunately, we have a much bigger problem on our hands.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “And that is?”
Before he could answer, there was a knock at the door.
Annja glanced at Roux, her mind already halfway to calling the sword to her side, but he shook her off, gesturing that she cover herself up with the blanket.
As she did so, the door opened, revealing a short, stocky man with gray hair standing in the doorway. His shirt and suit had been well-pressed at the start of his shift, but since that was forty-eight hours ago, he was starting to look a bit worse for wear. Annja knew this because she’d seen him in the same suit the night before, giving a press conference regarding the events in Arkholme.
Detective Inspector Ian Beresford looked them over, then stepped into the room.
“It’s good to see you still alive, Miss Creed,” he said, his voice much deeper than it sounded on television. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to her companion and said, “You must be Roux.”
To her surprise Roux stepped forward and shook the detective’s hand. “Thank you for coming, Detective Inspector. I appreciate your willingness to meet with us on such short notice.”
Beresford’s face was a carefully controlled mask as he said, “You made a persuasive argument for doing so, Mr. Roux.”
Roux’s smile didn’t falter as he automatically corrected the other man. “It’s Roux, just Roux.”
“Indeed,” Beresford replied. “How interesting.”
“If you two are done fencing with each other,” Annja said, “maybe one of you could tell me what the hell is going on?”
“I’d like to hear that, as well,” Beresford said.
Roux pointed at the chair in the corner. “Why don’t you have a seat, Inspector? I have a hunch that this will take a while.”
I
T TOOK MORE
than an hour, as it turned out. Roux began the process, telling them how he’d been approached as a potential buyer for a rare Celtic artifact that had been unearthed by what he had been told was a private collector on private property. That wasn’t exactly the truth, but ally or not, Roux had no intention of telling a police inspector that he’d been breaking the law right from the very start. That was one detail that he had no qualms about leaving out. Annja went next, describing the attack at the Arkholme dig site and the ruthless way in which her colleagues had been cut down with gunfire. She told them how she’d managed to survive when the others did not and then of the two subsequent attacks by armed men, all with the same peculiar tattoo that she’d seen on the intruders at the dig site.
Beresford joined the tale at that point, confirming Annja’s guess that the gunmen were members of the armed insurgency group known as the Red Hand Defenders and then gave a little background information on the group’s motives and membership.
That cleared a few things up in Roux’s mind, particularly what Shaw intended to do with the portable nuclear device he’d bought from Perchenko, and he filled the others in on his activities the night before and what he suspected they meant in the overall scheme of things.
Beresford listened carefully as the story unfolded, letting each of them speak and only occasionally interrupting to ask a question if he didn’t understand something. It was only when Roux mentioned Perchenko by name that Beresford acted surprised.
“Ivan Perchenko? The arms dealer?”
Roux nodded. “Acting on some information I received, I followed Shaw last night and witnessed him buying a piece of what I took to be surplus military equipment from Perchenko.”
“Do you have any idea what that equipment might be?” the detective asked.
Annja wasn’t surprised when Roux said, “I do,” but she was shocked to hear what he had to say next.
“Suspecting something was amiss, I decided to question Perchenko myself. After some conversation, he revealed to me that he sold Shaw a Cold War–era RA-115, which, in plain English, is a man-portable nuclear device, or suitcase nuke.”
Roux’s revelation stunned them into silence, but only for a moment.
“Is the device operational?” Beresford asked, leaning forward in his chair, practically vibrating with tension as he did so. “And is Perchenko still able to answer questions on the subject?”
“Perchenko thought he’d pulled a fast one over on Shaw. The device had been rendered inert by the Soviet military years before and he found it remarkably funny that Shaw had been willing to pay for a piece of equipment that was useless without the plutonium necessary to activate it.”
Beresford visibly relaxed as Roux continued.
“Figuring the authorities might be interested in hearing what he had to say for themselves, I left Perchenko and his bodyguard securely locked in the basement of a facility outside of Paris late last night.”
Annja couldn’t believe what she was hearing! From what she’d put together, it looked like this guy Shaw was clearly a member of the Red Hand Defenders, possibly even their leader. She’d thought the torc’s mystical properties were what made it so attractive to the organization, but now she understood that it was much more down to earth than that. Apparently it was the torc’s plutonium base that was of interest to them and not its alleged mystical qualities!
“I’m not sure I want to know what it took to ring that admission out of him,” Beresford told Roux, “but I guess I should thank you for your efforts. CT Command has been watching Perchenko closely for the past few years and hasn’t been able to pin anything definitive on him. With your testimony, we should be able to put him away for a good number of years.”
But Roux shook his head. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for that, Detective Inspector.” He turned. “Annja, would you be good enough to share what you learned about the torc before it was taken from you?”
Beresford turned to face her, a look of confusion on his face. Clearly he didn’t understand where this was going.
It’s only going to get worse, she thought.
She did as she was asked, telling him about the tests they’d run using the mass spectrometer in Cartier’s office and how those tests had shown that the torc was mostly composed of a type of plutonium that did not exist naturally on earth. How Shaw had known about it, she didn’t know, but it now seemed clear to her that it was the nature of the necklace that had attracted him to it in the first place.
Beresford’s face got more and more pale as she spoke, until he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Perhaps, like Scrooge, he was seeing the ghosts of things to come. The idea that a working nuclear device had fallen into the hands of the Red Hand Defenders, an organization that hadn’t shied away from targeting Catholic schoolteachers and postal workers, for heaven’s sake, was nearly unthinkable.
It also raised another, vital question.
What were they going to do about it?