“What do you have there?”
Emma spun. Three meters away stood Alain Royale, the plant’s deputy director of security. She studied his expression but could not tell if he had seen her program the explosives. She selected one of the bombs and said, “M. Royale, I’m happy to see you. Do you have any idea who put these here?”
Royale took a step closer, then stopped. “There’s nothing for you to inspect in the warehouse.”
“Not usually, but today’s an exception. Did you place this green tag on the pipe?”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t think so. You have a smuggling problem. Drugs, I’d say.” Emma held out the bomb. “Take a look. Maybe you can tell me what it is.”
Royale took the bomb in his hands.
“Well,” she continued, “what is it? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Royale shook the square package, then ran a fingernail over the LED. “It appears to be a timer of some kind.”
“Look underneath it,” Emma said-a command, not a request. “There are some curious markings.”
Intrigued, Royale lifted the package high and examined it. “I don’t see anything.”
“Look closer. You can’t miss it.”
“No… there’s nothing-”
Emma struck his jaw with her flattened palm, stepping up and into the blow, so that it crushed his molars and rendered him immediately unconscious. She caught him as he fell and lowered him to the ground.
Just then the two-way pager on his belt cackled. “M. Royale, we have an urgent call from the National Police. Please contact me immediately. A Code Nine emergency.”
A moment later a siren sounded inside the warehouse. Red strobe lights positioned at every exit flashed at two-second intervals.
Emma paid no attention to the commotion. Kneeling, she removed Royale’s key card from a retractable lanyard. Then she scooped up the explosives, placed them in her purse, and ran for the closest exit.
73
Graves shook Sergei Shvets by the collar. “What the devil do you have planned? You’ll tell us now, or by God, I’ll kill you with my own hands.”
“He’s wounded,” said Ford. “Go easy.”
“I’ll go easy after he talks.” Graves yanked Shvets’s shirt so hard that the Russian bounded off the couch. “Where is she? Where’s Emma Ransom?”
Shvets grimaced. “You’re too late,” he whispered. “It’s done.”
“Too late for what?” demanded Graves.
“Go to hell,” said the Russian.
“Oh, I will. I’m sure of that. But I’m going to do my best to make sure you get there before me.” Graves balled his fist and ground it hard against the wound in Shvets’s gut. “Where-is-Emma-Ransom?”
Shvets’s eyes bulged, and a moan escaped his clenched teeth.
“Enough!” Kate Ford grabbed Graves from behind and forcibly separated him from Shvets. “Leave him.”
Graves shook her off, and took a step back toward Shvets before thinking better of it. “They’ll have your head on a pike looking over Red Square, tovarich, before I’m done with you.”
Shvets didn’t answer. He sat hunched over his stomach, sucking down great drafts of air.
“Get him out of here,” said Graves, delivering a last glancing blow to the top of the Russian’s head. “And make sure you don’t leave his side. I want guards at his door, even when he’s in the operating theater. Do you understand me?”
A team of medical technicians lifted Shvets onto a gurney and wheeled him out. No fewer than six Black Panthers accompanied the director of the Russian FSB to the ground floor and all the way to the hospital.
“ La Reine,” said Jonathan.
Graves looked over to where Ransom stood in the corner, held in an armlock by a policeman.
“What did you say?” asked Graves, who was wiping his brow with a handkerchief, barely listening.
“ La Reine. That ’s what Emma’s going to try to blow up.”
Graves shot an impatient glance at Ford. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “ La Reine is France’s newest nuclear power facility. It’s on the Normandy coast, near a town called Flamanville.”
“Let him go,” said Graves with a casual wave.
The police officer released Ransom.
“There’s going to be some kind of bomb,” said Jonathan. “I read about it on a laptop I found at Shvets’s house in Èze. It’s supposed to happen today.”
Graves gave Ford a look. “You see that laptop?”
“No.”
“It was in the car,” said Jonathan.
“Sure it was.” Graves eyed him with skepticism. “And why should we believe you?” he asked, crossing the room toward the American.
“Give it a rest,” said Jonathan. “Can’t you see we’re on the same side? I want to stop Emma as badly as you do.”
Graves halted a foot away from Jonathan. “All I see is a fugitive from British justice wanted for the car bombing of Igor Ivanov’s motorcade, as well as for the murders of a doctor in Notting Hill and a yet-to-be-identified corpse burned beyond recognition currently resting in a Monaco morgue. That’s what I see.”
Jonathan appealed to Ford. “She’s going to plant a bomb inside the reactor somewhere.”
“And just how is she getting in?” broke in Graves.
“She’s pretending to be someone named Anna School,” said Jonathan, fighting to extract a kernel of grain from the pages of chaff he’d pored over. “I mean, Scholl. Yes, that’s it. She’s some kind of an investigator.”
“Go on,” said Ford, in a less hostile manner, which was a signal to Graves to take it easy.
“All the material was written in Russian,” explained Ransom. “Most of it went over my head. But I remember a few things. Emma’s supposed to pick up something in the northeast corner of something called W-4. Maybe if I could talk to the engineers or the plant manager, I could figure out more of it.”
“Not a chance,” said Graves. “Your merry flight from justice is officially terminated. From here, you’ll be transported directly to one of France’s darkest and most secure jailhouses. And there you’ll remain until we file all proper diplomatic papers in triplicate and see to it that your extradition to England goes off without a hitch.”