“I have no choice. Think of him as a trustworthy double agent.”
“Is this one of the people Szabo is holding captive?”
Harry nodded his head. “Yes. Liška worked with another scientist named Pablo Reyes — real name Gabriel Ramirez — and the two of them worked on the nanodust project together. The other person Szabo snatched was his girlfriend, Lucia Serrano. She is also a physicist.”
“And Ramirez?”
“Murdered in Madrid in his own apartment while Lucia was in the shower. His death is what started all of this.”
“But this Ministry did not kill her?”
Harry shook his head and looked at Baupin. “No.”
“Suspicious?”
“I don’t think so. I think we can trust her.”
“Good — Szabo has many political connections, and since he built this new place here in the mountains, he has entertained many politicians from all over Europe here. Last week the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and his wife spent three nights there on a skiing holiday.”
“And if I wanted to give Monsieur Szabo a housewarming gift how would I go about it?”
“Let me give you the bird’s eye view.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
Harry followed Baupin through a few more of the town’s winding streets until they were at a beautiful Belle Époque era building. A pine forest stretched away behind it and led up to the enormous mass of Mont Blanc which loomed above them in the leaden winter sky like a solemn, silent giant.
“What is this place?” Harry said.
“Montenvers train station,” Baupin said. “We’re going for a ride.”
Zoey Conway was no stranger to trouble. What not even Niko knew was that she was an orphan, raised in an orphanage in the East Bronx. Life was not easy for her — she didn’t even know if her name was real or not. The home had given it to her when she was brought in on a rainy New York night. Abandoned outside the 46th Police Precinct, two officers had delivered her into the care of Those Who Knew Best, and there her new life began, days old.
She glanced outside the hotel room at the tourists as they sauntered hand-in-hand through the snow-dusted fairytale that was Chamonix. “From there to here in twenty-seven years, Chief,” she said to herself.
Why hadn’t she told Lucia any of this when the Spanish woman had told her about her own past in Seville on the flight to France? She didn’t know. She wasn’t ashamed of it, or the list of her criminal convictions as long as your arm, and yet something always stopped her from sharing her past with people… at least this part of it. Lucia’s childhood had seemed almost as bad as hers — a violent, drunken father and a life on the streets. Like Zoey, Lucia had been dealt a shitty hand, and cheated death on more than one occasion. Having such a thing in common would be the ultimate bond, and yet she had kept her lips sealed the whole time.
Maybe another time, Sister.
She cracked the mineral water and poured two glasses, turning on her heel in the plush pile and handing one of the drinks to Niko. He was busy watching the news on a plasma TV that was tucked away in the cabinet on the far wall. She returned to the window and put a hand in her pocket.
“Danke,” he said, taking a sip and sighing with relief. “I love a good mineral water.”
“That’s ’cause you’re a real rock star, Nikky.”
“Stop looking out the window,” he said, smirking. “He’ll be back when he’s done what he has to do.”
Zoey spun around and narrowed her eyes. “I’m not even thinking about him, never mind waiting for him.”
“Whom?”
“Harry Bane.”
“I never mentioned his name.”
“What are you, Columbo?”
“I’m nowhere near as cool as Columbo, but I think I could pull off Kojak.”
“I’m not sure he’d like that.”
“Huh?”
Zoey smirked and choked back a laugh before drinking more water.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, just what you said kinda means two things in English.”
“What did I say?”
“Forget it, Nikky.”
She turned and looked out the window once again. Niko might not know every last piece of English slang, but he was no fool, and he had been right. Without even knowing it she had been worrying about the stupid Englishman. The tough street kid-turned-thief from the East Bronx was worrying about an arrogant burned-out English soldier and a failed spy. And worse than all of that he wore a suit with a god-damned silk pocket square in the jacket. James Bond he certainly was not, and yet there was something about him…
Jesus.
She shivered and opened the drinks cabinet. “I’m drinking that thought right back to where it came from.”
“What thought?” Niko asked. “Kojak?”
“No, but thanks for putting that image back in my mind.”
“What image!” he said, the frustration clear on his face.
“I said forget it, Nikky,” she said, pulling a miniature bottle of gin from the cabinet. “English gin… seems appropriate right now, somehow.”
“Appropriate? What are you talking about… oh — Heiliger Strohsack! You really do like Harry!”
“I do not!”
“You do so.”
“Well, maybe a little,” she said, cracking open the gin and knocking it back neat. She winced and coughed. “Gross. Tastes like perfume.”
“You never had gin before?”
“Hell, no. I’m a beer drinker.”
“I can’t believe you like Harry.”
“Better than what you want to do to Kojak,” she said under her breath. “Anyway, I do not like him. My brain just went AWOL, Chief, that’s all. My heart belongs to NYC and not some smarmy English toff.”
“If you say so.”
But now it played on her mind. “You think there’s a little something in the air between us?”
“Sorry,” Niko said. “I had an aloo gobi for lunch.”
“For fuck’s sake, Niko,” she said, sighing. “Can’t you take anything seriously? I meant between me and Harry.”
“Nein.” Niko shook his head and began flicking through the channels, but she couldn’t change the Harry Bane channel playing in her head anywhere near as easily. It was madness, she knew.
A few hours ago she was just minding her own business and breaking into the Saudi Embassy in Paris, but now she was on the run across Europe, hunted by two national police forces and her face was plastered all over the Interpol website.
She had watched Lucia Serrano snatched from the jaws of the Paris Catacombs by an Austrian psycho who made the Terminator look like Mrs Doubtfire, and for all she knew she was next, and all of this was thanks to Harry Bane. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her head said cry, but her heart wanted to laugh and for a moment she nearly did, but stopped when she lifted her eyes to the mist-covered mountains looming above the hotel.
Somewhere in all that gloom was Harry Bane, and like it or not he was the only person who could get her out of this mess. She turned back into the room as Niko cheered loudly and relaxed back into the enormous bed.
“Why so happy?” she asked.
“I was just wondering if they had any Kojak episodes on — and look here… I found one!”
“Great,” she said. “I hope you’re very happy together.”
She sighed and looked back up at the mountain, not even knowing if Lucia and the professor were still alive.
Good luck, Harry, she whispered.
THIRTY-ONE
Harry looked up to see they were standing in front of a small stone train station with shuttered windows and a clock above the door. The building was behind the main station in Chamonix, and now they walked up a path with snow piled up on either side of it and headed toward the door.