Ultimate Power (8 page)

As I said, only you are able to stop the massacre.

Have a good week, Madam President. It sure as hell is going to be interesting, if nothing else.

It was signed as
Cruel One, I. Taste my wrath in All the Nations.

“What the hell is this?” Bruce asked.

President Rue quaffed her drink. “At first I thought it was some sick joke.” She sat down, rubbing her arms. “But I’m not sure, anymore. Any idea who this
GREEFF
could be?”

Bruce scratched his chin, nodding slowly. “Yes, I’ve dealt with them before.” He gulped down his drink and held up his glass questioningly to the President. She shook her head.

He sauntered to the drinks cabinet and refilled his glass. “The Green Freedom Fighters are some extremist bunny huggers organization with military ties to the skinheads. They threatened to blow up an oil rig in the South China seas twenty years ago.”

“What happened?”

Bruce took a sip of cognac and frowned. “They operated from Stuttgart, militant and well funded.” He paced the room, scratching his chin. “Their leader was a man called Carl Richter. Staunch military type, his mom was a Duchess, father a Commander in the navy.”

He sat on the edge of the sofa. “He attended Harvard in the sixties and got involved with the Greenpeace student organization, but he felt they weren’t doing enough.”
 

“So he decided to sink an oil rig?”

“Amongst others. Interpol got involved when they stormed the Bundestag and tried to force them to ban the use of fossil fuels in Germany.”

President Rue nodded. “I remember, didn’t they murder someone as well?”

“Chancellor Erhard Kohler, shot in the back when he tried to escape.”

“What did Interpol do?”

“We infiltrated the building.”

“Casualties?”

“One agent wounded, eighteen GREEFF members killed, twelve wounded.” He stood up and placed the tumbler on the serving tray. “We cleaned up their cell in Stuttgart, many were sentenced to a couple of years in jail, but most of them showed remorse and admitted that they were manipulated against their will to take part in the heist.”

The President sighed, pushing herself up from the couch. She looked tired. “And they’re back.” She glanced at the door as someone rapped it with a knuckle. “Come in.”

A tall, slim man walked in. He wore a three-piece suit, a cigarillo clutched between his teeth. He had round glasses, like John Lennon used to wear. He held out his hands to her. “Darling, you coming to bed soon?”

The President of France smiled, strain coloring her features, and took his hand. “Bruce, this is my husband, James. James, Major Bruce Bryden, Interpol.”

The man smiled and shook Bruce’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.” He turned to the President, expectantly.

“I don’t know if you’ve been watching the television?” she asked her husband.

He sighed. “I guess you have one or two things to finalize, darling.” He strode to the sofa and sat down. “Mind if I finish our game?” he asked, pointing his chin at the scrabble board.

She waved a hand. “Off course.”

He nodded, started arranging the scrabble tiles on the board.
 

She gazed at him for a while, her expression softening. “He’s quite jealous, my husband.”
 

James glanced at the President, chuckling.

“He has clearance?” Bruce asked softly.

She smiled, strain coloring her features. “Yes.” She turned to Bruce. “Yes. He’s my political adviser. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”

“Anything I can do to help?” James asked, frowning over his glasses.
 

The President shook her head. “No, thank you, darling. This is a military matter requiring—“

The door flew open and Henrie Dumas rushed in waving a black envelope with gold embossed lettering. “Madam President, we’ve received another threat.”

“What does it say?”

Dumas sucked in rasping breaths. “A bomb…is going to…explode.”

“What is the target?” Bruce asked, grabbing the envelope.

Dumas stood up straight and took a deep breath. “New York.”

Laiveaux clutched his wrists, massaging the lesions left by the rough sisal rope. He opened and closed his hands, trying to get the blood flow circulating through his arms. He unscrewed the bottle of cheap whisky Moktar had left him, and took a swig. He held up the bottle to the other prisoner. “Want some?”

Agent Jake Turner smiled, then took the bottle from Laiveaux.

Laiveaux glanced around. He was in a small prison cell without any windows, a sturdy door the only way to exit the room. The heavy wooden door looked more solid than the mud walls. It was damn hot inside, the air dry and stale and dusty.
 

“You here to rescue me?” Turner asked with a smile, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Laiveaux chuckled. “Funny.”
Bloody traitor.

Earlier that morning, a young woman wearing a burka had brought him a meal. She spooned the milky slop into his mouth, the guards refusing to untie him so that he could eat by himself. They muttered some words to each other in the dialect of the nomadic Kandahar people. Outside kids chattered and laughed, chickens clucked and a lone dog barked at the passersby. He was probably tied to a pole. Probably by the same sick people that had tied Laiveaux to his chair.

After he had told Moktar the rubbish he thought he wanted to hear, they had cut the rope and handed him a bottle of cheap whisky. Moktar had said it was all he could find. They gave him a meal and allowed him to eat by himself.

Laiveaux guessed they were somewhere in the Rigestan desert region of Afghanistan, probably a small village, recently settled. Due to the droughts in the area, the people moved around more often, not having permanent bases that they returned to as they had done in the past. They were always looking for more fertile regions and places that had some water.

Laiveaux’s plan had been executed to perfection. Al Qaeda were always on standby, looking for opportunities to kidnap high ranking agents. When he announced over his unsecured cell phone that he was taking Yumi to
La Cite des Sciences
and that he wanted minimal protection that evening, that he wanted to take a walk with his goddaughter in private, they took the bait. His undercover agent got the exact details of when and where they would execute the kidnapping.

Jake Turner gave him back the bottle of whisky. “Thanks.”

“How have you been, Agent Turner?”
 

He shrugged. “Okay, under the circumstances.”

The man had been kidnapped by Al Qaeda in Kabul a year ago. They hadn’t requested a ransom, only accepted responsibility for the kidnapping.
 

Then Laiveaux’s undercover agent in Kabul had been murdered and hung in the town square.
 

The next target was Kasra Naheed, a politician from the house of elders and destined to become the next Afghani President. He was killed in a car bomb.
 

“Naheed is dead.”

“I heard,” Turner said. “I wasn’t there to protect him. I feel like it’s all my fault.”

Laiveaux nodded but said nothing. He had given Bruce until fifteen hundred today. They were probably on their way. He chuckled. If it was up to Alexa, she would have stormed the place already. The clock in his head said he had another four hours.

“How are you keeping up, old chap?” Turner asked. “You’re looking a bit under the kosh.”

He turned to face Turner. The man was a senior agent, British, a veteran with more than thirty years in the field. But he also liked the high-life, nice cars and pretty woman. Laiveaux studied him. He looked in good health, fat and happy. The guy called Rehan would come fetch Turner every couple of hours. Laiveaux heard the blows, but knew they weren’t real. Laiveaux guessed that they probably took him to have a nice meal and a cigarette. “I’m fine. You?”

Turner nodded slowly. “Good.”

They only kept him in the cell with Laiveaux to keep up appearances, hoping that Laiveaux would divulge a piece of pertinent information to the double-crossing bastard. The man had been probing him with questions, whether the safe houses were still secure, hoping to catch a crumb of information that the General might drop.

“That stuff you said about the new agent in Kabul.” He lit a cigarette, handing it to the general as he lit one for himself. “Was it true?”

Laiveaux took a drag, stood up, taking a last sip from the bottle. In a flash he smashed it against the wall and stuck the bottle neck against the man’s throat. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered, pinning the man against the wall.

The cigarette dangled from Turner’s lip.
 

“What else do they know?”

Turner shook his head, wide-eyed.

Laiveaux grabbed the cigarette from his lip, clamped a hand over his mouth and pushed the coal into his cheek.
 

The man’s face went red and a vein throbbed in his forehead. The sickening stench of burnt flesh hung between them.

Laiveaux waited for the man to suck in a couple of breaths from flaring nostrils before slipping his hand from his mouth.

“They were going to kill me, General,” Turner said, a tear rolling past the wound on his cheek.

“What else?”

The man closed his eyes. “That’s all, I swear. The longer I took with the info, the longer I lived.”

“You sure?”

The man nodded furiously.

Laiveaux clamped his hand over Turner’s mouth and ground the cigarette into Turner’s forehead, tossed the butt to the ground. “Who are you working for? And don’t bullshit me.”

The man closed his eyes, shaking his head.

Laiveaux stuck the bottle to his neck and pulled it across. A fine trickle of blood seeped on to Turner’s shirt. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” the man sobbed.

Laiveaux had expected as much. “Do you know about the missiles?” He had received a black letter containing threats that he was going to wipe out strategic sites, and he had noticed hundreds of missile launchers move into position.

The man shook his head.

“What are the rocket launchers targeting?”

The man shook his head, fear in his eyes. “I don’t know.” He blinked away a tear. “I swear.”
 

Laiveaux slit a gash into the man’s cheek.
 

“I swear, please stop.”
 

Laiveaux grunted, he had gotten as much as he was going to out of the man. He slit his throat. Turner clutched his neck, choking, trying to speak. He dropped to his knees, blood spurting from the wound. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like a fish out of water. He had a questioning look on his face. He fell to his side, thrashed for a couple of seconds and went limp.

Rehan swung the door open and pointed his rifle at Laiveaux. “What’s going on?” he shouted in Arabic.

Laiveaux dropped the bottle and lifted his hands. “I was just venting some of my frustrations on Agent Turner over here.”

Rehan ran and kneeled next to the man. He cast Laiveaux an accusing glance. “He’s…He’s—“

“Dead. I know,” Laiveaux said and picked up his cigarette. He puffed and the coal started burning again. He took a deep drag and blew out the smoke through his nose. “I don’t expect you to understand, Mr. Rehan, but, unfortunately, loose lips sink ships.”
 

Alexa lifted her head over the edge of the dune and looked through her Steiner binoculars. She rubbed a bead of sweat from her eyebrow with the back of her hand before resuming her observation of the small shanty town in front of them.

The sun beat down on her back, so she had dug herself into the sand. According to his GLD chip, Laiveaux was in one of the buildings in the remote village in front of them. They had been scoping out the place since early that morning when they had arrived.
 

She squinted her eyes and looked up at the sun; it was almost noon. Goat herders walked behind their goats, hitting the ground with a stick to keep the stubborn animals moving in the required direction. Woman sat around a well, washing clothes in plastic drums.

She lowered the binoculars. Her hands were shaking, probably because of the strain of staying in the uncomfortable position for long. She turned her head sideways. The damn migraines were back. “Suggestions?”
 

Neil looked up from his binoculars. “There’s open terrain for six, maybe seven hundred yards around town, which means we won’t be able to sneak in.”

“Could we flush them out?”

“How?”

Alexa shrugged. “Bomb the place.”

Neil frowned. "What about the collateral damage? Like our beloved general, for instance."

She wiped back a strand of hair that stuck to her forehead. “Shit.” She felt emotionally drained. She placed a hand on her feverish brow and closed her eyes.

“You okay?”

She grimaced, opening her water bottle and forcing herself to swallow some of the tepid liquid. “We need to do something, soon,” she said. “I need to get out of the sun.”