“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was your wife’s turn.”
“Well, I never…!”
Leo burst out laughing but Niko tried to hide behind his menu.
Harry leaned forward to reassure the man. “She’s very sorry. Truly.”
“Sorry, and yes, hungry — hungry for booze, baby,” Zoey said with a wink. She turned in her chair and clicked her fingers at a passing waiter. “Hey, seven cold beers, garçon!”
“The bar is over there, madam,” the man said, and continued on his way.
The new friends looked at each other and started laughing again. After a few moments, Harry said, “I’ve never heard anyone say the word madam like that before.”
“With so much disgust, you mean?” Niko said. “I concur.”
“Typical Scorpio,” Zoey said with a shrug. “And I don’t see why he’s so snooty with hair like that. He looks like Karl Marx, only with much bigger hair. You could stuff a mattress with it.”
“I think you mean Harpo Marx.”
“That’s right — I'm so sorry! He was much funnier than his brother Karl.” Before anyone could correct her, she slapped Niko’s thigh. “Now get your ass up to the bar, Nikky and make yourself useful… we might be here for some time.”
“What do you mean — you don’t exist anymore?” Harriet asked. The concern was clear on her face.
“It’s what the Ministry does,” Maja said. “Anyone who crosses them has their lives deleted from every record. You will never get them back.”
“True story,” Zoey said. “I just tried to book a flight back to the States and it told me my passport isn’t recognized. So this really is happening… Jesus, Harry — what the hell have you gotten me into?”
Even without Maja’s warning, Harry knew the Ministry meant business, and worse than that was the spectre of their reach — above and beyond national governments. It looked like they had made the worst kind of enemy imaginable.
“But now we eat, right?” Zoey said.
Harry turned to his sister. “Please tell me your card still works?”
She gave a serious nod. “Yes. Unlike you I don’t go around upsetting powerful secret orders.”
They sat in silence for a while, thinking about the implications of their new lives, and then Niko returned with the beers and they ordered their food.
Zoey’s eyes widened like saucers. “Like, we can have anything on here, and you’re definitely paying, right?”
Harriet laughed. “For the last time, yes.”
“In that case I’ll have the truffle flat bread with pancetta and ricotta for starters and the lobster with lemon verbena for the headline act followed by the New York cheesecake. Gotta see if it’s authentic or not, right?”
“Of course,” Harry said with a smile.
Lucia ordered the sea bass with fennel and olives and after much hemming and hawing, Niko finally went with the king crab with sauerkraut and saffron hollandaise while Leo and Maja opted for the crispy duck confit.
Harry stuck with something simple and ordered a beef tenderloin with a Beaujolais jus and then they sat back and enjoyed their cold beers. Lucia had worked out it had been less than two days since she had run to Harry in the casino to ask for his help, but soon they all returned to the shadow over their lives: the Ministry — about what the sinister order really was, who was in it, and how it had so easily deleted all of their lives from the face of the Earth.
“It’s scary,” Maja said, placing down her phone. “I’m gone too — even my listing in the online Gothenburg phone book, and my Facebook page. Nothing.”
“I’m okay,” Leo said. “I still exist — for now.”
“You weren’t there until the end,” Harry said.
“Can we even trust each other?” Niko said. “What if someone tries to infiltrate us?”
Zoey smirked. “When was the last time you infiltrated anyone, Nikky?”
“So funny,” the Swiss man said, reaching over to the bread.
After a long period of silence as they watched the sun slip below the horizon and the London night lights buzz to life, Lucia raised her beer bottle in the center of the table. “At least we stopped them, I guess,” she said. “So here’s to the six of us.”
“To us!” Niko said.
Zoey rolled her eyes and picked up her beer bottle. “I hate this sort of buddy-buddy crap, but if we have to, then… here’s to us and Harry — the bane of my life,” she said, nudging Harry in the ribs and winking at him.
“Oh no,” he said with a sigh. “If I had a pound for every time…”
She smiled. “I’m just kidding with you, Henry.”
“It’s Harry.”
“Your sister calls you Henry.”
“That’s my sister. You can call me Harry.”
“Sure thing, Henry.”
“It’s better than Chief I guess.”
Like the others, Harry Bane had no idea what tomorrow would bring, but he lived for the moment, so as they waited for dinner, he pulled the deck of cards from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He gave them another shuffle just as he had done for Lucia back in Madrid, and handed them to Zoey. “Give them another good shuffle.”
She surprised no one by giving the deck a speedy and faultless riffle shuffle and then brought her eyes back to Harry’s. “Done.”
“Cut them wherever you want,” he said, slowly losing his confidence.
Zoey cut the deck in half and now two small piles of cards were sitting face down on the smooth white tablecloth. Everyone was watching closely, holding their beers together like a group of old friends. “Now what?”
“Okay.” He put his finger on one of the piles. “Simply by looking at the fourth card down in my pile, I can tell you what the fourth card down is in your pile.”
“Sure you can.”
He counted four cards off the top of his pile and glanced at the card. Without touching Zoey’s pile, he looked at his card and placed it back down. “The fourth card down in your pile is the Queen of Hearts.”
“Show me.”
Harry counted four cards off the second, untouched pile in front of Zoey Conway and flipped over the fourth card to reveal the Queen of Hearts.
Everyone at the table gasped, including even Leo, but Zoey just winked at him and smiled. “The Power of Four. You gotta love some classic mentalism, plus I saw both your false cuts at the start — you pass me that bread right there?”
As everyone laughed and Harriet gave him a consolatory pat on the back, Harry gave Zoey the bread and took a long sip of his beer. Something told him this could be the start of a difficult relationship.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Armageddon Protocol was always going to be a standalone thriller, but while I was writing it I sketched out another two more adventures for Harry and the rest of the team and gave them a problem to sort out — namely having their identities deleted from the world by the Ministry. Whether they get their lives back or not, only time will tell…;)
I’m hoping to release The Sword of Fire (Joe Hawke #9) in the spring of 2017 (including a note about the future of the series) so long as I get a fair tail wind, but the next release is a new project I’ve been working on called The Hunt for Shambhala. This is similar in style to the Hawke books with new characters and stories based on archaeological mysteries and treasure hunting but with a major difference — these guys have what you might call a mobile office…
Let me here once again thank everyone who has left me a review on Amazon and Goodreads. It’s a really important way of supporting the novels and I sincerely appreciate it. If you enjoyed The Armageddon Protocol, please consider leaving a review: