Zero kill, p.4
Zero Kill, page 4
‘Go on, Tel.’ She pressed a finger against his massive arm. ‘Let me in.’
He looked genuinely sad. ‘Really wish I could, Elsa, but no can do.’ When she gave him an evaluating look, he gestured behind him. ‘Even if you knock me cold, they’ll never open the door.’
Elsa looked at the solid door to the club – with no outside handle, it could only be opened from the inside – and up at the black bulb of the video camera above it.
‘Is Panda inside?’ she asked quietly.
‘No, love,’ Terry told her loudly, but a miniscule nod of the head indicated otherwise.
‘I’d better go, then.’
‘Sure, my lovely, you have a good evening.’
‘Terry.’ Elsa looked back as she pushed past the queue of people. ‘A word of advice: don’t come inside.’
‘No chance of that.’ He gestured at the line of disgruntled punters. ‘Got my hands full with this bunch of losers, don’t I?’
Someone in the line called him out on the comment and Terry jabbed a finger. ‘Shut it!’
Elsa walked around the corner to find another way in. Because that was what she used to do for a living: get into places. Halfway down the street was a tall gate that led to a courtyard behind the club, and she climbed over it. Cameras would cover every angle, she knew that. Someone like Panda, who had his fat fingers in a lot of pies, would have security everywhere. Someone sitting in a dark room in front of a bank of screens had no doubt watched her jump the gate and already picked up a phone.
There was no point in trying to get in via the basement, there would be a steel door and all manner of sophisticated locks and security devices, so she’d have to go all the way up.
Elsa rocked back on her heels like an Olympic sprinter and ran across the courtyard, pumping her arms. There was a window with a security grille straight ahead and she leaped at it, climbing the bars, ignoring her shrieking shoulder and hurty feet, using all her strength to heave herself to a first-floor sill, straddling it, then leaping to a drainpipe. Sweating even in the chill of the night, she shimmied up, wedging her toes into the rusty brackets attaching the pipe to the wall.
Distant traffic noise, sirens and horns, the electric hum of the city, became more pronounced the higher she climbed. Elsa thought she heard voices inside the building, frantic footsteps.
She should be lying in bed dreaming of an exotic honeymoon, but here she was in the early hours, dragging herself floor by floor, inch by painful inch, up the side of a building. One of the brackets popped out of the brick, she heard it clink against a dustbin way below, and the drainpipe shifted slightly away from the wall. It would be a bad idea to look down, disorientating and gut-fluttering – Elsa had fallen off a building before, and didn’t recommend it – but she couldn’t help but peek at the concrete courtyard from seven floors up.
When she reached the roof, she heaved herself over the guttering, barely pausing to appreciate the Mary Poppins skyline. Towering chimney stacks and wonky roofs, silhouetted against racing silver cloud. She ran up the steep incline to a skylight, slate tiles clicking beneath her feet, and wrenched it open – the lock on the sill was old and flimsy because nobody had been to the top of this building in years – and dropped into the dark.
She was eight floors above the club. Panda’s goons were already coming up the stairs, she heard their pounding steps, but there was a lot of helpful junk in the attic space. She picked up a metal chair leg gathering dust under the eaves, flipping it in her fingers to get a sense of its weight and balance, and as soon as the door slammed open and the first gentleman came in, she swung it into his head. He was still spinning when Elsa dropped to one knee in the darkness. The hollow pipe whistled through the air as she brought it up behind the knees of the second guy. Dust flew up in a cloud when he hit the floor.
Elsa found the main stairway, which descended around a central caged lift shaft, and ran down. Seven floors and counting.
On the sixth floor, another of Panda’s men appeared in the stairwell and they grappled. Spinning, gripping each other tight, lifting each other off the floor, taking it in turns to slam the other against the wall, both of them somehow managing to keep their footing on the faded carpet as momentum pulled them down to the fifth.
Elsa finally managed to overpower him with a succession of Krav Maga elbow and knee strikes to his throat and kidneys, and he dropped to the floor, just as another guy came hurtling through the door on the fourth. Elsa saw the glint of a handgun, and when she upended him in a single, fluid movement, she heard it clatter down the central shaft.
On the third, more footsteps approached along the corridor. Elsa tucked in behind the fire door. When the first man came through, she gave him a helpful kick down the stairs, took the second thug’s head in her hands and jumped. Her knee whipped up to meet his nose cartilage. He rebounded off the metal mesh of the lift shaft and crumpled to the floor.
Elsa skipped lightly over the guy, down to the second floor, where a man swung an extendable baton back and forth in front of her face, the metal rod clanging against the handrail and the lift shaft. When it hit the shaft, she jabbed the heel of a palm against the rod so it became stuck in the grille, then lifted an old fire extinguisher off the wall and spun it by the hose, first high, cracking a bone in the man’s wrist; low, to splinter a shin; high again into the side of his head.
On the first, three men hurried up the stairs towards her. Elsa slid down the banister, accelerating, jumping off behind them, bringing the heel of her left foot down on the back of the calf of the nearest guy. There was a sickening snap and he howled. Grabbing the arm of one of the others, twisting it, causing his body to jerk stiff as an ironing board, she slammed him into the wall. She should have done it harder, but the guy clearly wasn’t up for a fight; he made a pathetic little noise and fell in a heap, pretending to be unconscious.
The last man came at her, fists clenched like he’d watched too many MMA bouts, hopping from foot to foot, making snorting piston noises every time he jabbed. One of his punches connected with her injured shoulder, and it hurt; her eyes stung. Elsa was sick of getting punched and kicked, and when the man overreached with his next lumbering jab, she moved in low, grabbing his chest with one hand and his groin with the other, using all her momentum and balance to dump him on his head.
By the time she reached the ground floor, Elsa was aching and sweating hard. Her hair was plastered to her forehead. She walked through the office area of the club, flicking a bank of light switches to bring up the house lights, and onto the dance floor, discreetly adjusting her twisted leggings because all the exertion had given her a camel toe.
Afraid of the havoc Elsa would cause in his precious club, Panda had already told everyone to leave. The DJ was placing his vinyl away in record boxes; disgruntled punters made their way out. Elsa walked through the crowd of smartly dressed people. Terry had been brought inside and he shouted for everyone to collect their stuff from the cloakroom. He winked at her as she passed. With all the main lights on, the inside of the sophisticated Mayfair club looked tawdry, and badly in need of updating.
Panda was sitting in his usual place on a stool at the end of the bar, watching her approach. She was about to speak, but he held up a finger, wait, and sipped serenely from a rum and Coke. When the room finally emptied, Panda climbed off his stool to go behind the curved bar, with its shelves of bottles backlit by colourful lights.
‘Would you like a drink, Elsa?’
‘No, thanks.’ She watched him scoop ice from a bucket. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to just let me in?’
‘I see that now.’ Panda chuckled ruefully. ‘But you’ll forgive me for not encouraging your presence here right now, not in the circumstances.’
‘And what exactly are those circumstances?’
There wasn’t much that Panda, who provided intel for sundry parties on all sides of the law – crime gangs, mercenary groups, military departments, global corporations, private security companies, dictators, and billionaires – didn’t know about.
‘My people picked up international chatter earlier this evening that suggested your life was about to become very difficult.’
‘From who?’
He poured bourbon into a tumbler, placed a coaster beneath it and pushed it in front of her. ‘Your name appeared in encrypted communications between a number of intelligence agencies, in which you have been classified as a very dangerous and expendable individual. Congratulations, Elsa, you’re a top-level threat.’
She stared in disbelief. ‘Why?’
‘The source of the original communication can’t be verified at this time, even by my people. It could have come from a particular agency or somewhere else entirely.’
‘What the actual fu—’
‘Washington, London, Moscow, Beijing – all the big boys and girls have got their knickers in a twist about you, Elsa.’
‘Someone tried to kill me tonight.’
He smiled sympathetically. ‘I’d get used to it.’
Elsa had always been cautious about her own safety and that of her children. She stayed alert, which was only sensible considering the great number of enemies she had made in her life, but it had been nine years since she had left the business. And much of her work as a deep cover agent for the private security agency RedQueen – all the incursions, along with the extractions, assassinations and kidnappings – had remained highly classified. Her own identity had always been kept top secret, known only by a small and dwindling number of people.
‘Why?’
‘I was hoping you would tell me.’ Panda nodded at the glass in front of her. ‘Have a drink, you look like you need it.’
She pulled it towards her. ‘I’ve been out of the business for years.’
Panda propped his elbows on the bar to cradle his chin in his upturned hands. ‘Your name still pops up on security channels, did you know that? Even after all these years, the agencies still share information about you. They keep tabs on your whereabouts, what you’re up to. These discussions occur on quite a regular basis. Once, twice, sometimes three times a year. You are still a person of great interest to high-level sections of the intelligence community.’
Elsa felt like she was falling down a rabbit hole, as if the ground was dropping away beneath her. She lifted the bourbon to her lips, but placed the glass back down without taking a sip.
‘I don’t understand.’
She’d been retired for years now, had lived a life of obscurity in a terraced street in South London, along with all the other nobodies. Bringing up her kids, setting up a business as a fitness trainer; getting all the accreditation, passing the exams. She’d almost come to believe her old life, with its constant threat of violence and betrayal – both real and imagined – was long behind her.
‘You’ve never been trusted,’ said Panda. ‘Maybe not since Buenos Aires.’
When she looked at him sharply, he smiled because he knew he’d hit a nerve.
‘I was nearly killed in Buenos Aires.’ She thought of the phone Saint gave her when she had finally recovered and returned to the UK, the one charging in Miriam’s kitchen. ‘Tell me.’
‘That’s all I know, I’m afraid. I’ve seen comms that have mentioned you in the context of Buenos Aires. The mission was code-named Pilot Fish, I believe.’ He shrugged. ‘Alas, these days I’m very much on the outside of the goldfish bowl looking in, much like you.’
Except Panda – for whom signals intelligence, the interception of electronic communications, was something of an obsession – still made stealing the seemingly impregnable encrypted comms of SIS, the CIA, GRU, MSS and other agencies very much his business. Elsa knew he had cryptanalysis teams working 24/7 in numerous locations around the world.
‘Who is Joel Harris?’ she asked him.
He frowned. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘He was my boyfriend up until a couple of hours ago, and my fiancé for several seconds, until he attempted to kill me. I’m very keen to speak to him.’
‘I don’t believe you ever introduced us. You don’t come to see me any more, Elsa, and I’m very hurt about it. It’s almost as if you’re ashamed of our previous association.’ Panda looked sad. ‘What will you do?’
She didn’t have the faintest idea. Her first priority was to get Harley and India somewhere safe, if such a place even existed.
Panda placed the bottle of bourbon back on the shelf. ‘Come on, drink up. No offence, but I don’t want you here a moment longer.’
She could do with a drink right then, one little sip wouldn’t hurt; it might even numb her aching wounds. She was in shock, in pain, already tired of fighting the world.
Elsa lifted the glass to her mouth and Panda raised his own tumbler in salute. She smelled the pungent spirit – and stopped.
She’d known Panda for many years; he’d helped her several times in the past, as she had given him assistance in various matters. But if her death was such a priority for numerous unknown parties, then there was good money to be earned from it. And Elsa knew that more than anything, certainly much more than friendship and loyalty, Panda loved money. He also knew Elsa had serious trust issues, and was sly enough to know that the most effective way to persuade her to come inside was by trying to keep her out. There were very few people Elsa trusted in this world, the list was getting more miniscule by the hour, but in all honesty… Panda never made the cut.
‘Tell you what.’ She slid the glass across the bar towards him, cowboy style. ‘You drink it.’
He looked at the glass for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘Alas, I’m not a bourbon man.’
Was there something in that glass? A poison or sedative? Panda stood to earn a big payday if he delivered Elsa – dead or alive – to whoever had given the order to have her killed.
‘Well.’ He poured her drink into a sink behind the bar. ‘If you don’t want it, you had better go.’
Elsa climbed off the stool and turned to see Panda’s sore and injured men standing behind her, some of them bent crooked. At the entrance, Terry opened the front door with a flourish, and she walked out into the empty night.
‘Night, Tel.’
‘Night, love.’ He waved, as she trudged off, like an exhausted clubber who’d been partying all night. ‘You take care.’
Buenos Aires, she thought. What the actual.
6
Nine years earlier
Thin light ignited faintly across the horizon at dawn, revealing the cold plains of Uruguay as the Bell 212 flew at low altitude towards the brown mass of the Rio de la Plata.
Sitting in the rear cabin, Elsa watched the last of the dark scrub blur past below the open hatch as they approached the river’s edge.
Beside her, Max Saint’s right heel beat an anxious rhythm against the metal floor. Saint simply couldn’t keep still. His scarred face twitched, his tongue probed constantly over his gums, his neck rolled on his shoulders.
Finally, he asked Camille Archard over the headset, ‘What’s it all about?’
‘How would I know? Your guess is as good as mine.’
He grinned. ‘Thought you’d have the inside track.’
Opposite, Camille’s face was a blank mask, her pale grey eyes hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses so it was impossible to tell who she was looking at. But Elsa couldn’t shake the feeling Camille was staring at her.
‘He doesn’t tell me anything,’ she answered finally.
When Saint began to sing loudly to himself, oblivious that his amplified dirge was being broadcast into the ears of the other two passengers on the transport, Camille leaned forward to ask Elsa, ‘He’s like this the whole time?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Elsa shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’
Saint whooped into his mic, ‘One of a kind, baby!’
He lifted a hip flask and took a swift, unobtrusive swig. When he caught Elsa watching, he held it out, want some?
She gave him a flat smile. ‘Too early for me.’
‘It’s always the right time somewhere in the world,’ he said with a wink.
The helicopter dropped steeply to avoid radar detection, the brown water below writhing beneath the downwash of the blades, and then banked sharply. Elsa felt her stomach flutter, bracing her hands on the sides of the seat to stop herself getting thrown into Saint’s lap. Opposite, Camille sat composed with her hands on her knees, as if her slim, muscular frame was weighted by some super-heavy interior force – Elsa marvelled at her core control – except for the icy blonde hair that was whipped frenziedly around her face by the blast of cold air rushing through the open hatch, and which even occasionally lifted the severe geometric fringe that bladed high across her forehead. Her face was serene, despite the turbulence and noise.
As the Bell approached the Argentine coast, the pilot’s voice crackled, ‘Ten minutes.’
This part of the shore was full of deserted petrochemical refineries. Hulking ugly gunmetal structures, cylindrical tanks and seared flare stacks, huge industrial complexes abandoned for many years and left to rust. They were flying towards a crumbling helipad beside one of the buildings.
‘One for the road!’ Saint took out the flask and, pressing himself almost horizontal against the fuselage, tipped the dregs into his mouth. When he threw the flask out of the hatch, something flew out of one of his pockets and skittered around the cabin, until Elsa trapped it beneath her foot. She picked up the scrap of paper and unfolded it. It was a faded image of a clapboard shack beside a white beach and a sea of vivid blue.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘My future home.’ He held out his hand. ‘When I’m finally done with all this shit.’
‘Looks nice.’ Elsa gave it back, and Saint carefully replaced it in his pocket, making sure it was sealed inside. ‘Where is it?’
‘No idea, I tore it from a magazine.’ Saint turned back to the window. ‘But I’ll find it one day.’
The Bell circled the helipad, with its faded white painted ‘H’, its downwash sending leaves skittering across the concrete. The skids touched down; its three-tonne weight settled.
