Eddie threw himself out of the line of fire, only for the toe of Leitz’s shoe to meet his kneecap as the broker whipped around to deliver a fierce kick. He reeled, crashing against a bookshelf. The Sphinx clattered to the floor.
The other gun was now at the heart of a battle for possession — which Leitz was winning. As the pair spun around, he shoved Zane backwards. The younger man’s momentary loss of balance gave his opponent the opening he needed to grip the weapon with both hands and twist it through a forceful half-turn — trapping the Israeli’s index finger inside the trigger guard.
Zane gasped in pain as the motion almost snapped the bone. He had no choice but to yank his hand back, skinning his finger against the metal as he pulled free.
But now Leitz had the gun. He flipped it around, his own finger closing on the trigger—
Eddie hurled a swathe of ledgers across the office. Volumes pounded Leitz’s arm, knocking the gun away from Zane — who responded with a kick of his own, spinning into a Krav Maga move that smashed a heel into the white-haired man’s stomach.
Leitz stumbled backwards against the table, knocking the laser printer to the floor, and tripped over the chair. It collapsed, sending him sprawling. The Barak skidded across the marble floor. Zane ran after it, bending to scoop it up—
A blizzard slashed at his eyes as Leitz snatched the paper from the printer’s tray and flung the sheaf into his face. Blinded, Zane groped for the gun, but his fingers found nothing but cold polished stone. He swatted away the last of the fluttering sheets — and was hit by the back of the broken chair as Leitz jumped up and threw it at him. He fell heavily near the balcony door.
Eddie recovered the fallen Sphinx. He turned to find Leitz standing over the Mossad agent, one foot drawn back to kick him in the face—
He snapped up the gun — but the white-suited man caught the movement, instantly abandoning his attack and launching himself at the balcony. Eddie tracked him, about to fire…
Leitz dived over the railing.
‘Holy shit!’ Eddie cried as his target plunged out of sight. Zane was equally shocked. The Englishman helped him up. ‘Did he just fucking kill himself so he wouldn’t talk?’
They rushed outside and looked down. The cliff they had ascended dropped away below… to a small cove at the foot of the near-vertical chimney beneath the balcony, at the centre of which was an almost perfectly circular splash. As they watched, a white figure rose from beneath the surging waves and surfaced. ‘He made it!’ said Zane in disbelief. ‘He actually made it!’
Eddie stared at Leitz as he swam for the jetty. ‘He’s either the luckiest bastard on the planet — or the best prepared. Diving about a hundred feet, into that? Jesus!’ He looked back at Zane, only to find that the younger man had already returned to the desk. ‘What’re you doing? He’s set off the alarm, we’ve got to get out of here!’
Zane grabbed the mouse. ‘I can find Kroll.’
Eddie hurried to him. ‘How?’
‘The IP address of the videoconference — it’ll tell me where he’s located,’ he said as he brought up a window and rapidly tapped at the keyboard. ‘Okay, I’ve bypassed his encryption, so I just need to…’ More typing. ‘There!’ He pointed at a string of hexadecimal characters, eight blocks of four, separated by colons. ‘IPv6, harder to remember, but…’ He stared at it for a moment, then closed the window and jumped up. ‘Got it — let’s go.’
‘You remembered all that?’ Eddie asked in surprise.
‘What, you didn’t? Come on!’
The Israeli recovered his gun and ran to the door. Eddie followed. There was nobody on the landing. ‘Okay, so how are we gonna get out of here?’
Zane went to the staircase. ‘You’re supposed to be great at improvising — I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
‘Is that what my Mossad file says?’ the Englishman asked as they clattered down the stairs. ‘We’ll need a car, unless you want to run back to Amalfi.’
‘We’ll take one of Leitz’s. I saw aerial photos of the villa; he has a garage.’ They reached the hall, the Israeli pointing to a door in one corner. ‘That must be it.’
‘You sure? If it’s his laundry room, we won’t get far in a pair of his underpants!’
Zane yanked the door open, Eddie covering him. Glossy metal gleamed in the dimly lit space beyond: Leitz’s BMW parked alongside a second vehicle. ‘I’m sure,’ the agent announced with satisfaction.
‘All right, smug-boots.’ They rushed in, Eddie finding the light switch beside the door. ‘We need the key.’
‘Here,’ said Zane, spotting a nearby set of hooks bearing fobs. He picked one marked with a BMW logo, but Eddie reached past him to snag another. ‘What are you doing?’
The Yorkshireman grinned. ‘Take a look.’ Zane turned — and saw that beside the black 7 Series was something considerably more impressive. The second car in the garage was a bright red Ferrari 458 Spider, the roof retracted to turn it into a two-seater convertible. ‘Just what we need for a quick getaway.’
He started to round the BMW, but Zane half jumped, half slid over the bonnet of the 7 Series to land by the Ferrari, snatching the key from Eddie’s hand and vaulting into the driver’s seat without a pause. ‘I’m driving.’
‘Like fuck you are,’ Eddie protested. ‘You ever driven anything like this?’
Zane started the engine, the Ferrari’s V8 howling to life. ‘I’ve been trained by the Mossad! I can drive anything.’ He pointed at a control panel on the wall. ‘Open the door, and the main gate. Quick!’
Annoyed, Eddie slapped both buttons and hopped into the Ferrari’s passenger seat. The outer door began to rise. Over the rattle of the mechanism and the 458’s engine burble, he heard shouting from the hall. ‘They’re coming,’ he warned, bringing up his gun to cover the entrance.
Zane glared at the garage door as it ambled upwards. ‘Why are these things always so slow? Come on!’
‘Sav’lanut,’ Eddie said with a half-smile. The glare was turned upon him. ‘Okay, soon as you can fit this thing under—’
Movement in the hall — a man with a gun.
‘In qui!’ yelled the guard, raising his weapon. Another man sprinted across the hall towards the doorway—
Eddie fired a single shot to deter them, hitting the door frame at eye level and sending a blinding spray of splintered wood and plaster across the opening. Both men jerked back. A glance at the garage door; it still wasn’t quite high enough to let the car through…
Zane floored the accelerator anyway. The 458 shot forward, throwing Eddie back into his seat. He ducked as the top of the windscreen’s frame clipped the door — and the glass instantly crazed, the view ahead reduced to a cobwebbed haze.
Brilliant sunlight forced both men to screw up their eyes. Eddie squinted back at the house, glimpsing figures running into the garage. ‘Down!’
Bullets tore after them. One thunked against the raised bodywork behind Eddie’s headrest. Zane yanked at the steering wheel. The Ferrari swept past two more guards standing beside another BMW outside the villa and made a tight, skidding turn around an ornamental fountain before tearing up the steep drive. More shots followed it, but they smacked harmlessly into the cliff face behind the car.
Eddie leaned out to look around the damaged windscreen. ‘Might have known a kid like you’d suffer from premature acceleration,’ he sniped. The barrier at the top of the drive was rolling open — but not quickly enough. ‘Slow down or we’ll hit the gate!’
‘We’ll make it,’ said Zane, staring intently through the spiderwebbed glass.
‘No we won’t!’
‘We will!’ He adjusted the wheel, lining up the car’s nose with the slowly widening opening.