Harry grinned and nodded his head, and when he turned to look behind him he saw his new friends standing right there — Lucia, Zoey, Niko, Maja and Alain Baupin, each looking right back at him, ready to risk their lives with him.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
“You’ll need these weapons,” Rook said.
Harry took the gun from the Superintendent and weighed it in his hands. It had been a long time since he’d been issued formally with a weapon. He left the army a long time ago and despite what most people thought, MI6 agents did not run around with Walther PPKs in their dinner jackets. The smell of gun oil brought back memories of Iraq. Not good ones.
He checked it was loaded and slid a round into the chamber, making sure to keep the safety catch on.
“Into the lifts,” Rook said.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Lucia asked.
“If you prefer to climb all sixty-five storeys on the stairs, we’ll meet you up there.”
Lucia was first into the elevators, followed sharply by Harry, Leo, Maja and half of the Special Ops guys, while Rook, Baupin, Zoey and Niko and the other half of the team stepped into the next elevator along.
No one spoke a word as the elevator sped up hundreds of feet to the thirty-third floor where they had to change to another elevator. On their way again, they continued for a few more seconds until they reached their final destination on Floor 65, but when the bell pinged and the doors opened they were met with a burst of fire from Szabo’s men.
Last into the elevator meant closest to the doors, and within a few seconds three of the five SO15 officers were cut to shreds. Harry was first to react, raising the gun Rook had issued him with and returning fire at the men. The noise of the gun spitting fire in an enclosed tin can like the elevator was terrific, and Lucia screamed and dived for cover as she blocked her ears with her hands, but Leo’s reaction was to bring the Glock 17 sidearm Rook gave him into the aim and shoot back with as much rage as he could muster. Maja followed suit and unloaded an entire magazine of well-aimed rounds at the enemy.
At that moment the second elevator arrived and Eddie Rook and his men burst out and joined the fight along with Zoey, Niko and Baupin.
Zoey fired the hardest, raking the Ministry’s men with lead and fury. Visions of those who had trashed her childhood rose up in her memory like hideous phantoms as she blasted the powerful semi-automatic pistol at the men who were trying to kill her. “Die you sons of bitches!”
Szabo’s men returned fire taking out Eddie Rook and blasting him back inside the elevator, but with two fronts to fight, Szabo’s men started to retreat along the corridor leading away from the elevator section. They headed toward Szabo’s apartment, but then one of Zoey’s rounds struck a fire extinguisher bolted to the wall beside the elevator and the heat from the explosion set off the local sprinkler system.
She was disappointed that the entire sprinkler system hadn’t been activated, but that wasn’t the way industrial systems worked. Outside of Hollywood movies where the entire system is triggered, the reality was only the specific sprinklers that detected the increase in heat got activated. Now, Szabo’s men were outgunned and soaking wet, they turned on their heel and disappeared into the service staircase behind the elevator housing.
Harry watched the chaos unfold as the automatic sprinklers used water pumped up from the mains and sprayed it all over the corridor. “Keep going,” he yelled. “Szabo’s still in his apartment!”
THIRTY-NINE
Zalan Szabo waited impatiently as Steiner fiddled with the combination locks on the aluminum case. A few seconds later it popped open and the Austrian raised the lid to reveal a small laptop inside, built into the housing of the case. He turned it on and a black welcome screen invited the entry of a password. Both of them had heard the fighting outside as their men tried to stop the police from getting to them.
It was of concern to Szabo that his instructions to the Home Secretary had been ignored, but that was a problem for the future. No doubt, the Home Secretary would apologize profusely for his transgressions right before his execution. They always did.
“Fetch our guest,” Szabo ordered Steiner. “He will want to see this.”
“Yes, sir.”
Steiner stepped away and Szabo took over, typing in a long series of numbers and letters from memory. A plain desktop screen was revealed a few seconds later, with only one icon: a small black triangle which represented the program controlling the Armageddon Protocol.
The Hungarian licked his lips in fear and swallowed hard as he slowly typed in the activation code that Steiner had retrieved from the traitor and his friends back in Paris. “In doing this, I obey the sacred vows I gave to the Ministry.”
“Hold it right there, Szabo.”
The Hungarian froze in place and turned his head slowly to his right. Walking across the room was Harry Bane, a man he considered of no more significance than a cockroach… a man he thought had frozen to death in Chamonix several hours ago.
“How are you still alive?” he said coolly.
“Thanks to me,” Maja said stepping into the room.
Szabo made no move. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “I always had my suspicions about you.”
“Of course you did.”
“This is quite the place,” Harry said, glancing around the plush apartment. “You must have a few gold mines tucked away here and there.”
“You don’t dig for gold if you want to make money in a gold rush, Mr Bane.”
“No?”
“No.”
“So what do you do?”
“You sell shovels, of course.”
Harry noticed some movement behind Szabo and then saw two figures emerge into the room from a door. The first man he recognized as Hans Steiner, but the other man was less familiar — he was sure he had seen his face before but he couldn’t place it.
They reached Szabo and the Hungarian smirked when he saw the confusion on Harry’s face. “He seems to be having some difficulty placing you, my friend,” he said to the man.
The man gave a businesslike smile and said, “I’m Rafael Ruiz.”
“Means nothing to me,” Harry said.
“Perhaps if I told you we met in Madrid, in a manner of speaking.”
And then it clicked. He knew where he had seen this man before. He was the lead CNI officer who led the assault on Pablo’s apartment. He narrowed his eyes in confusion. “But this isn’t your jurisdiction, and what are you doing with him?”
“Mr Szabo is my senior within the Ministry.”
“And the Ministry comes above all other obligations,” Szabo said with a smirk before turning back to Steiner and Ruiz. “Is it ready up there?”
Steiner nodded. “All ready to go.”
“And the devil’s eye?” Szabo said.
Another nod.
For a brief moment, Harry almost felt physically sick as their words sunk in and he realized once and for all that Andrej Liška had been right all along, and that everything he had said about the Ministry and its long, hideous claws was right. At first he had wondered if the Czech scientist had allowed his fear of being hunted for the nanodust warp his sense of judgement and make him paranoid, but no… it was all true. The Ministry was everywhere and there was no way he could trust anyone in the same way ever again.
He felt his heart sink as he realized he was already doubting those around him — even Leo — how much did he really know about any of these people? No, now he was being paranoid and it had to stop. You had to trust someone in this world and those he had shared this nightmare with had risked their lives to help him.
His mind raced with crazed thoughts as he fixed his eyes back on Szabo. The contempt he felt for the man standing a few yards ahead of him was almost overwhelming… he could almost taste the hatred he felt on his tongue. He knew Szabo had to face justice, but now the truth in what Andrej had said meant there was no hope of a fair trial. The truth was Szabo would be out of the country and living on some private island somewhere under a new name in hours while the public would be fed lies about his sad and untimely death.