“What’s she doing?” Lucia asked.
Harry frowned and took a step toward the door. “She’s converting the weapon to make it less accurate but fire more rounds.”
“Less accurate?” Niko said.
“We’re fish in a barrel, Nikky,” Zoey said. “She doesn’t need accuracy. She’s just having fun.”
“Got it in one,” Harry said.
“I think I’d rather freeze to death,” Lucia said, keeping one eye on the matte black barrel at the end of the Uzi.
“Then that’s too bad…” Elsa said, glancing over her shoulders up the steps. They all heard the sound of Szabo’s enormous Bentley fire up and pull out of the garage block. “You are certainly not going to freeze to death.” She extended the collapsible carbine stock and snuggled the weapon into her shoulder, raising the muzzle in their direction and then moved forward to open the cold room door.
THIRTY-SIX
Harry searched the room for a weapon but aside from Szabo’s caviar tins there was nothing he could use to fend off the fury of a full-scale Uzi attack. He took a step forward and put himself between the gun and Lucia, Zoey, Niko and the wounded Frenchman.
“Just think about what you’re about to do,” he said as he locked onto the Swedish woman’s blue eyes.
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” she said as she swung the door full open. “I’m releasing you, so you’d better hurry up and get out of there before you freeze to death.”
Harry and the others exchanged a confused glance. “You’re releasing us?”
She nodded.
Zoey narrowed her eyes. “If this is some kind of insane trick to extend your pleasure in killing us, you’re one sick freak.”
“Here,” she said, handing Harry the Uzi. “This should prove I’m serious.”
Harry took the Uzi with a frown. “Who are you?”
“My real name is Maja Eklund, and I’m a former Swedish National Task Force officer from Gothenburg.”
“Who are they?” Zoey asked.
Harry said, “They’re a special operations unit who operate inside the Swedish police’s National Operations Department.” As he spoke, he took off his jacket and wrapped it around Lucia.
“I’m impressed,” Maja said.
Zoey was harder to convince. “One false move out of you, Abba, and I’ll beat you like a rented donkey.”
Maja didn’t break eye contact with her. “That, I would like to see.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“But why are you here?” Baupin said, moving into the gap between Zoey and Maja.
“Zalan Szabo has been monitored by agencies within the Swedish Government ever since he set up his laboratory in Södermanland.”
“Yes, I remember what Andrej said about that,” Harry said. “He said he and Pablo had been working somewhere in Sweden.”
Maja nodded. “Yes, in Kolmården Forest. The laboratory they used was a relic from the Cold War — an old biological weapons testing center in the middle of nowhere. Naturally he had paid off the relevant authorities but there are many factions in the government. Someone didn’t like what was happening and decided to order a surveillance package on the Södermanland site.”
“And that’s where you come in?”
“Jag, that is where I come in — but we cannot stand around here talking about the past. All of that we can talk about later. For now, we have to stop Szabo and his men.”
“I’ll buy that for a dollar,” Zoey said.
Harry and the others pounded up the basement steps and made their way back into the ground floor of the hotel. They ran to a nearby window only to see Szabo’s Bentley skidding out of the compound and disappearing into the Chamonix night.
“Damn it all!” he cursed, and slammed his fist into the wall beside the window. “They’ve got away.”
“Have you any idea where they’re going, Maja?” Baupin said.
“Not at all. He trusted me as a bodyguard but no more. Only Steiner was brought into those conversations, and even then only on a need to know basis.”
“Hang on,” Harry said. “We know that he wants to wipe out cities where the population is very dense, so London is the obvious choice in Europe anyway — that or Paris maybe.”
“That’s not enough to go on,” Baupin said, turning to Maja. “Is there any other way?”
Maja nodded. “Yes, György Tóth. He’s Szabo’s chief financial officer and the man behind the money laundering. He also has many contacts in intel agencies and Szabo uses him to run ID checks on prospective staff. He’s in the penthouse now and he’s not due to fly out until midnight.”
“Hell… how are we going to get information out of an accountant?” Baupin said, glancing at Harry and winking.
“Let’s go!”
The ‘wellness retreat’ was not exactly humming with guests, so they made their way silently to the staff elevator and took it to the penthouse. Maja opened the door with her key and they found György Tóth warming his toes in front of Szabo’s plush fireplace. He had a glass of cognac in one hand and was waving his other hand in time to Bartók’s third piano concerto. Beside him was a large bowl of fruit and several magazines. All very cosy. He was in his fifties, thin and with a thick shock of silver hair, and Harry recognised him as the man he had seen lurking in the other room when Aleksi Karhu had closed the door.
Baupin moved forward and grabbed him, causing him to cry out for help and try and wriggle free. Harry tore down a pull cord from the crushed velvet curtains at the far end of the room and then padded casually back over to the Hungarian accountant under the strict gaze of Lucia, Zoey and Niko.
Above the mantelpiece was a painting of a terrifying being emerging from a raging fire. It was not exactly the sort of comforting image most people enjoyed having in their living spaces. The picture was entitled simple Ördög.
“That’s awful,” Lucia said.
“Ördög…” Niko said. “I’ve seen that word before somewhere.”
“It’s the old Hungarian god of the underworld,” the sweaty accountant said, trying to connect with the gang of people now standing around him.
It took Harry an unsettlingly short amount of time to tie the man into the chair and then he dusted his hands off and crouched down so they were eye-level. Then he said, “Hello, György. You might not know it yet, but you’re here to help us,” he said, gently pushing a poker into the glowing coals. “You see, my associates and I seem to have run out of ideas and we can’t for the life of us work out where we need to go to stop your psychotic employer from committing the worst genocide in history.”
“I know nothing.”
“That’s not true, is it?” Harry said, turning the poker iron around a few degrees to ensure it was evenly heated. “You know, for example, what will happen when this red-hot fire iron gets pushed into your face. Am I right?”
Tóth’s eyes widened as he watched the former English spy crouch down and carefully extract the poker from the roaring fire and study its glowing tip. Behind his back, Lucia and Zoey exchanged an uncertain glance, but Maja showed no emotion.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” Harry continued. “Where is Szabo’s target city?”
Tóth stared in horror as Harry brought the poker up to his face. It was so close now he could already feel the heat radiating from the searing iron. “It’s London,” he said, his voice now dry with fear and cracking up at the edges. “London!”
“London,” Harry repeated. “Good. Now… where is the launch site?”
Tóth licked his lips in fear and kept his eyes locked on the red-hot poker as Harry casually swung it back and forth in front of his face. “I have no idea.”
“Now, now…” Harry said. “And we were doing so well, too.”