There was only one way Harry could know for sure that a creature like Zalan Szabo wouldn’t live to pursue the Ministry’s insane agenda, and that was to end things permanently, now.
And yet it wasn’t that simple. Harry was no cold-blooded killer. He’d killed in the line of duty both during his time in the Pathfinders and while working overseas as an undercover agent for the SIS, but they were state-sanctioned executions. If he took out Szabo now it would be nothing more than murder, and he would be no better than the very evil he was committed to fighting.
Szabo stared at him and an icy grin broke out on his wrinkled face. It was as if he could read his mind, and Harry’s blood ran cold when he stared back into those dark, slate eyes.
“Don’t come any closer or I’ll activate the nanodust.”
Harry raised his gun. “Not with a bullet in your head, you won’t. Now take your hands away from the laptop and raise them in the air, nice and slowly.”
Szabo remained perfectly still. “No.”
“I’ll aim to kill, Szabo. You know I will.”
“But I have a much better idea. Why don’t you lower your guns or I will activate the protocol? My finger is less than one inch from the button. Even if you shoot me dead here and now you will not be able to stop the canister dispersing the dust. There is no way you can get to it in time.”
Harry’s face dropped.
“What?” Szabo said with a grin. “You thought we would be stupid enough to keep the nanodust here with us at the launch center?”
Harry’s mind raced with scenarios.
“It seems the misinformation I gave that fool Tóth has paid a dividend. You will never locate it in a city of this size…”
“Enough of this!” Baupin yelled, and raised his Glock. He fired once, striking Steiner in the upper leg. The Austrian screamed in pain and fired back, causing everyone to dive for cover.
From behind Szabo’s drinks cabinet, Harry fired back with his gun and blew out part of Szabo’s window wall. At nearly one thousand feet above London, the late December wind rushed in through the gaping hole and drove sleet into the apartment.
Szabo screamed orders at Steiner and Ruiz and a moment later the Austrian hurled a short-fuse grenade at Harry’s side of the suite. They rolled away hard as the device detonated behind a grand piano and blasted pieces of the Steinway all over the room.
Fire took hold of the velvet drapes and crawled into the plush pile and within a few short seconds their half of the penthouse suite was ablaze.
In the heat, smoke and confusion, Szabo slipped away with his underlings while Harry and the others struggled to breath in the burning apartment.
“I’m not digging the fire, Harry,” Niko said. “If it takes off we might find ourselves stuck up here.”
“That’s not going to happen — listen.”
Below they heard the sound of sirens, and Niko peered down through the smashed window to see several Mercedes Benz Ategos belonging to the London Fire Brigade racing toward the base of the tower.
“Something tells me their ladders aren’t three hundred meters long,” Niko said.
“They’re on it, Niko,” Harry said firmly, “and we’re on this, so focus.”
Lucia gasped. “What was that?”
“What?” Harry said.
“I saw something over there!”
Harry turned to see shadows flitting out of sight in a circular staircase that led up to a mezzanine. Behind the rail he saw the unmistakable sight of two burnished chrome elevator doors sliding shut. “That must go up to the viewing platform,” he said. “He’s going to try and activate the launch from the observation deck at the top of the building.”
“So we’ll follow them up.”
Above their heads, the sprinklers burst into life but the fire was too powerful and they barely touched the blaze. Harry led the others away from the flames and over to the bottom of the circular staircase on the other side of the suite.
“Something tells me this elevator is on a one-way journey and it’s not coming back down for us or anyone else.”
“He’s right,” Leo said. “They’ll shoot the control panel when they get to the top and disable the lift.”
“We have to get after them!” Baupin yelled.
“But he said the dust isn’t here,” Lucia called back, the wind whipping her hair across her face.
“He’s probably just lying his ass off,” Zoey said.
“No,” Harry said. “He’s not lying. He’s right — we were stupid to think they would concentrate everything in one place so close to the end of their mission.”
“What’s the difference?” Zoey said. “If we stop the launch it doesn’t matter where it is.”
“They’ll have a contingency in place,” Maja said. “I know these people. If the launch fails they’re not just going to give up the dust.”
“So where do we start?” Lucia said.
“Wait,” Niko said. “You remember that hideous painting in his ski lodge?”
“Ördög?” Harry said.
“Right.”
Lucia shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”
“Tóth told us he was the old Hungarian god of the Underworld, right?”
“Sure,” Zoey said. “Some kind of demonic, shape-shifting monster who created all the bad things in the world.”
Harry frowned. “What’s the point, Niko?”
“Do you remember I told you I’d seen that word before?”
“Yes.”
Zoey raised her hand to protect herself from the flames at the other end of the apartment. “We have to get out of here right now, so get on with it Nikky!”
“Now I remember where — it’s the name of the company that’s delivering the fireworks at this year’s New Year’s Eve display in London. Ördög Industries — they’re the pyrotechnic company in charge.”
Harry nodded. “I think you might be onto something, but they have several different launch sites all around the Thames.”
Niko grinned. “But don’t you remember what he said about the devil’s eye? Remember — everything to people like Szabo has symbolic significance.”
“Oh my God!” Harry said. “The canisters are fixed to the London Eye. They’re going to use the fireworks to blast the dust all over the sky and then control it from here.”
“Bastards,” Leo said. “There are tens of thousands of people gathered around it ready for midnight.”
Lucia locked her anxious eyes on his. “But what’s the Eye?”
“The Millennium Wheel,” Harry said, already calculating how long it would take to get there. “They call it a cantilevered observation wheel, but to the rest of us it’s the enormous Ferris wheel on the South Bank.”
“Five hundred metres from here, max,” Leo said, already stuffing his gun into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I can be there in less than ten minutes — how long have we got?”
Harry sighed. “Midnight is just a few minutes away, Leo… there’s no time to waste. With Rook and his men down you’re going to need some backup.”
“I’m going with him!” Zoey said.
“Me too,” said Maja.
Leo looked at the two women and then back to Harry. “Why do bad things happen to good people, Harry?”
“Piss off, Leo,” Harry said and watched his old friend, Zoey and Maja sprint through the billowing smoke and vanish from the apartment.
“What about us?” Lucia said.
Niko and Alain Baupin looked at the Englishman waiting for his lead.