Zero kill, p.31
Zero Kill, page 31
If she saw even a glimpse of Elsa fucking Zero, she would smash the vial.
‘I’m tired,’ whined the girl.
‘Me too,’ Camille said, as they headed into the foyer. ‘Let’s sit down.’
They sat on one of the benches in the middle of the large ground-floor space, surrounded by works of art that she barely registered. She pulled the girl closer to her. The thin fogged glass of the vial felt slippery in her sweaty hand. When a woman noted the odd tension between her and the girl, Camille gave her an unfriendly smile. With her pale, perspiring face and haunted expression, she looked like a mother at the end of her tether.
‘Mum’s going to come and get you in a minute,’ India told her. Camille laughed sourly; she had to admit the girl had spirit.
‘She isn’t going to save you, you’re going to die, along with me and all these other people.’ When tears fell down the girl’s cheeks, Camille felt a bitter satisfaction. ‘Cry like a baby, then. Elsa doesn’t care about you. If she did, she would never have let me come in here.’
Camille tensed when she glimpsed someone in a peaked cap at one of the main doors. But it was one of the gallery guards giving directions, not a police officer stealthily trying to direct people out of the building.
‘You’ll see…’ India gave her the same disdainful look Camille had seen in her mother.
‘I’m not scared of little girls,’ Camille sneered.
Camille decided they were just killing time, putting off the inevitable. It was a mistake to come inside, she should have just dashed the vial at Elsa’s feet earlier. She’d head outside, stand at the top of the steps overlooking the square and just do it, in full view of the surging crowd and impotent police. Her sacrifice would be a portent of the kind of world – of chaos, conflict and disease – that the virus would herald.
Carragher had wanted the pathogen to create a new world eventually – a better world – but Camille didn’t care about that any more. She dragged the girl to her feet, and pulled her back towards the entrance.
‘Watch where you’re going!’ complained one guy when they bumped shoulders. Camille gave him a sick smile. He didn’t know how close he was to an agonizing death.
The gallery was packed with people, many of whom had come inside to escape the disturbance outside. Paranoid, suspicious, Camille darted looks everywhere. Watching for a furtive glance in her direction, or someone pushing towards her in the crowd.
She knew exactly the type to look for, because she’d known those people all her life: the SIS agents, the police, special forces and other military men and women. There wasn’t a hope in hell any of them would be able to get within six feet of her. But she was careful, and blinking away the sweat from her eyes, she instinctively analysed the people around her: too young, too unfit, too short.
A six-foot man with a buzz cut came striding towards her and she stopped dead, gripping the vial almost to the point where it would shatter, but his eyes were focused on someone behind her; he raised a hand in greeting and headed past her, oblivious.
She glimpsed the crowd trouble escalating outside. She’d throw the vial into the throng, nobody would even see where it landed, or care what it contained, and in a few short hours it would all be over. The contagion would spread inexorably among the population, hospitals would begin to fill with the dying, and the mortality rate would climb…
It seemed somehow fitting that the world would be transformed so close to this place of culture, with its walls of classical art celebrating the beauty of civilization.
Camille walked steadily towards the front doors, which still hadn’t closed. The authorities had made their choice. They weren’t going to lock down the building, hoping that she would reappear outside and they could begin negotiations.
But Carragher was gone, her treacherous husband was dead, and all that remained for her to do now was to honour his great project – and kill one of his precious fucking kids at the same time.
Camille instinctively stopped in her tracks when a young boy raced in front of her. His flustered mother grabbed him and swept him into her arms.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she told Camille, and glanced at India. ‘You’ve got the right idea, keeping a tight hold of yours!’
It occurred to Camille that an even better idea would be to drop the vial right there in the foyer and fire her handgun into the crowd, in case armed officers were hidden behind the columns outside the building. People would flee in panic to the exits, and keep running. She’d follow them out, firing more shots, causing even more turmoil and panic in the already turbulent crowd. She’d be shot and killed – which would certainly be a better way to die than succumbing to the coming plague.
It was time. Her journey was over.
Camille unzipped her jacket, ready to take the handgun from her belt.
‘Do keep up!’ She vaguely heard the voice of an elderly man. ‘I want to buy a couple of postcards.’
‘I’m coming,’ complained his wife. ‘There’s no hurry. It’s always rush, rush, rush with you.’
Heads lowered as they bickered intensely, the pensioners walked slap-bang into Camille.
‘Excuse me, can we get past?’ the old woman snapped.
‘So sorry about my wife.’ The man looked mortified. Camille reached for the gun, but was shocked to discover it gone.
Then she felt a sharp stab in the wrist of her hand that held the girl, making her fingers flex.
Camille’s immediate reaction was to drop the vial – but it wasn’t in her hand.
Greta Zero thrust the bottle into the hands of the little girl and told her, ‘Go, child!’
And then India was off and running. Camille roared with shock and rage. Shoving past them, she raced after the little girl, who held the vial in both hands.
Behind her, Howard said into the earpiece disguised as a hearing aid, ‘She’s got it!’
SIS agents poured into the gallery. Standing hidden to the side of the main entrance, Elsa sprinted in.
India was small and agile and zigzagged around the legs of the visitors in the gallery, but Camille was fast and full of rage and focus, and flew through the crowd, sending people flying to the left and right, bearing down fast on the girl.
India stumbled; the vial jumped out of her grasp – for one long moment she saw it fly in front of her eyes – but she skidded onto her knees, cupping her palms, and it fell back into her hands.
Behind her, Camille screamed in fury. There was noise and commotion as all the agents shouted for everyone to Get Down! Down on the floor! so they could get a clear shot at her. But, instead, the panicked crowd ran in front of the raised weapons.
And by the time India managed to get to her feet, Camille was almost on her. Reaching out to grab her. All she had to do was knock the vial from the girl’s small hands, and it would all be over.
Camille leaped.
And was knocked sideways when Elsa smashed into her in mid-air. The two women rolled across the ground. Camille landed on her back with Elsa above her. Elsa’s forearm clamped down hard into her throat, snapping her head back onto the floor.
Within a moment, Camille was staring up at the barrels of the half-dozen pistols pointed at her.
‘Stay down, Camille!’ All Elsa’s instincts screamed at her to break her neck, kill her then and there, but instead she took a deep breath and whispered gently into her ear. ‘Just stay down.’
‘May I…’ Nigel Plowright walked into the gallery to kneel in front of India, as a protective circle of armed police and SIS agents surrounded them. ‘May I take that from you?’
India looked over quickly at Elsa, who nodded, and offered him the vial containing the virus.
‘Careful now,’ Plowright told her, because her small hands started trembling.
The glass felt damp and slippery when Plowright took it and placed it with the utmost care in a container held by a man wearing neoprene gloves.
Only when the lid was closed and sealed, and the container taken away, did he exhale. His neck and shoulders were drenched in sweat.
‘You could have told me you were going to intercept the target,’ Howard complained to Greta as she handed Camille Archard’s disassembled handgun to an agent. ‘Communication is key, Greta.’
‘She was about to drop the vial,’ Greta said in irritation. ‘That was obvious, even with my eyes.’
‘I thought we might get some postcards while we’re here. You know how I love Titian.’
‘You don’t think the gift shop will currently be open, do you?’ said Greta. ‘Honestly, Howard, I wonder about your state of mind sometimes.’
‘You’re alive, then,’ Howard said, when Elsa came over. ‘We were beginning to wonder whether we would be stuck with those children forever.’
‘I told you to keep them safe,’ Elsa snapped, and Greta and Howard bristled.
‘We did our best,’ said Howard in annoyance. ‘And at our age—’
‘Thank you.’ Elsa’s throat clogged with gratitude. Her obvious emotion made her parents uncomfortable. ‘For everything.’
‘Just don’t ask us again,’ Howard said. ‘The next time will finish us off for good.’
‘It was an imposition at first, but I must admit…’ Intrigued, Elsa waited to hear what Greta was going to say. ‘It was a pleasure to have the children come and stay.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Howard. ‘Despite glaring lapses of behaviour from time to time, they are mostly nice children.’
‘Perhaps…’ Greta’s eyes lifted to Elsa’s. ‘If you agree, we could see them again.’
Her parents peered at her steadily, their faces giving nothing away.
‘Yeah.’ Elsa briskly smudged a tear from her eye. ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’
‘When is the debrief?’ asked Howard, quickly changing the subject. ‘I’m sure they’ll want to include us.’
‘If I disappear,’ Elsa told her parents grimly as Nigel Plowright came over, ‘tell the world what’s happened here, tell everyone.’
‘Actually, I was going to suggest a coffee and a bite to eat,’ said Plowright. ‘It’ll only be in the back of a van, I’m afraid. But then we can talk about having you locked away, if you absolutely insist upon it.’
‘My gosh, what a day it’s been,’ Howard said. ‘Come on, Greta, let’s see if we can get those postcards.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Greta said, and followed him.
Howard and Greta exited via the gift shop.
Camille’s eyes blazed with hatred for Elsa as she was marched out of the building.
‘What will happen to her?’
Plowright thought about it. ‘There’ll be due process, of course. In a fashion. And then she’ll spend the rest of her days imprisoned somewhere very secure. I don’t know where, the decision will be out of my hands.’
‘I can’t run any more,’ Elsa told him.
He nodded. ‘We’re putting the word out to the other agencies that the threat, in which you were wrongly implicated, has been neutralized.’
‘But the data encoded in my cells…’
‘There are ways and means to deal with that,’ he assured her. ‘Most probably.’
India had been given an examination by a biological containment team and now she came running over to her mother.
Elsa lifted her into her arms and held her tight. Promised her daughter again and again that she was safe, and told her how much she loved her and Harley, and that nobody would ever harm them again.
Not now, not ever.
52
‘Come on, Dougie!’ Thumb poised over the stopwatch button, Elsa encouraged him to pick himself up.
Lumbering unsteadily to his feet, he sopped with sweat. It dripped from his nose and chin, and stained the chest and spine of his workout top. Gasping for breath, his face scarlet, you’d think he’d just completed an ultra-marathon, not just completed a second burpee.
It was Elsa’s own fault. In the heat of the moment, she’d promised him free lessons, but never imagined he’d take her up on the offer, not after he had almost been killed by Saint and a pair of assassins. But Dougie Heston never looked a gift horse in the mouth.
‘Can’t…’ He dropped to his knees on the garden decking and keeled forward onto his stomach. ‘Can’t do it!’
‘You can!’ Elsa barked at the back of his head. ‘Just another eight to go!’
He rolled over, his pleading look a mixture of terror and desire. His gaze dropped inevitably to her long Lycra-clad legs.
Sitting inside, Dougie’s wife, Roberta, watched sourly over a glass of wine. Refusing the offer of free training sessions, she had done everything in her power to convince Dougie not to let Elsa visit their new Richmond home; a perfectly reasonable attitude, considering how she had killed two people in their former house.
Dougie groaned. ‘Please, no more.’
Months after an apocalyptic plague virus had almost been released in central London, Elsa was back in the routine of her old life; working hard to rebuild her client base. But something inside of her had shifted in ways she couldn’t explain.
She was struggling to engage with her business. The drive and focus she had previously poured into it was missing. The enjoyment she got from working with her clients, on training and diet plans, setting fitness levels and chasing goals, just wasn’t there.
She couldn’t wait to see her kids at the end of the day, of course. But later that evening she had accounts to do, and tomorrow there was a school event to attend; she’d had more than enough of the cliquey, self-important mums who gave her the evil eye across the playground.
Dougie finally stood to lift his arms to the sky, his top rising up over his bulging, hairy stomach. Elsa paused the stopwatch; there was no point in timing his efforts.
‘Let’s go again, just seven more,’ she said with a weary sigh.
Elsa had undergone a gene therapy process which targeted the memory cells in her bloodstream containing the data and caused apoptosis: the cells self-destructed. Her DNA was now clear of the information encoded into it, she’d been assured, although she would continue to have regular checks for the rest of her life.
She couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the vials that contained the virus, or the samples of her blood taken at a military hospital.
‘Tell me the data has been destroyed,’ Elsa demanded of Nigel Plowright one night on the phone. ‘That it hasn’t been kept.’
There was a long silence on the line. They both knew that the vials had probably been taken to the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, or somewhere even more top secret than that, because there were always more Top Secret places. The UK had announced decades ago that it had destroyed its stock of biological weapons, but Elsa suspected there were wheels within wheels. She couldn’t be sure, nobody could.
‘I can’t assure you of that,’ Plowright said finally. ‘Because if that’s what was intended, the likes of me wouldn’t be told.’
There was nothing she could do about it, in any case. The main thing was that her blood cells were clear. If someone tried to kill her again, it wouldn’t be because of that.
‘Please.’ Dropping to his knees, Dougie slapped the exercise mat with an open palm. ‘No more!’
‘You’re going to kill yourself,’ Roberta shouted from inside the house. ‘If that woman doesn’t kill you first.’
Roberta, who was a bag of nerves whenever Elsa was at the house, stood suddenly and went to the front window.
‘Dougie…’ she called in a voice trembling with worry. ‘Someone’s pulled up outside.’
Looking for an excuse to stop, Dougie insisted on going to look, and Elsa joined him.
A long limousine with tinted windows was parked on the street.
‘You organize a hen night, Roberta?’ Elsa tried to joke, but she could see how worried the Hestons were.
‘This is you,’ Roberta hissed at her. ‘It’s all your doing!’
‘Come away from the window,’ Dougie told his wife, and they both stepped back, imagining assassins and murderers rushing up the drive.
Elsa had no idea who was in the car, or why it was parked out front. ‘Let me handle this.’
‘What did I tell you about letting that woman back into our house?’ Roberta told her husband scathingly as Elsa went outside.
Halfway down the front garden, she stopped. As the limo idled at the kerb, the nearside back window lowered smoothly, and a hand with silver nails tapped against the shiny metal of the door.
A voice came from the dark interior. ‘A situation has arisen, Elsa, and we’re urgently in need of your skills and experience.’
‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Mrs Krystahl. ‘I’m a good judge of character, and I really don’t I think I am.’
The back door of the limo swung open.
It would be crazy to climb inside. Not long ago, Elsa had been plunged into a storm of life-or-death events: placed in mortal danger, along with her children. She’d been throttled, shot, stabbed, skewered, drowned, and nearly exposed to a deadly virus.
But Elsa Zero had finally left behind her old life, with its constant shadow of violent death. She was a single mother with responsibilities. She had her life back, her own little house, a nine-to-five business; even some semblance of a relationship with her parents.
It would be crazy to get into the back of that vehicle and put it all at risk once again.
Absolutely insane.
Meanwhile, across the city…
Dr Christian Vaida began to reconstruct the aorta of his young patient.
He’d already removed the diseased and dilated aortic root, leaving the valve crumpled in a heap, and now had to replace it with a flexible tube made of woven Dacron, carefully stitch the valve, and plumb in the coronary arteries.
It was a lot of work, and had to be done quickly or the heart, which had already been deprived of blood and oxygen for an hour, may never work again. Speed, concentration and precision were all absolutely essential.
