McCall ran up the back of the Second-Tier seats of the balcony, speaking sotto voce into the earpiece in his ear to Nigel McGarry. “You got four mercenaries heading for you. Close all the exits in the stalls.”
“I’m on it,” McCarry said.
McCall ran into the stalls section G in the Loggia Boxes leading through the large ornate doors leading to backstage. Security Officers summoned by McGarry were already converging on the exit doors to the Royal Albert Hall. Around McCall the audience were wearing their special avant garde infra-red glasses. Lady Gaga was singing in her spotlight at the center of the stage. McCall moved through one of the ornate doors leading to the backstage area. The corridors and the dressing rooms were in shadows. A door led to the Family and Friends Room.
Then he was hit by what felt like an express train.
One of the Memento Mori assassins, Gabriel Del Castillo, slammed into McCall and wrapped his massive arms around him. The man’s breathing was labored and stressed. McCall’s instincts had kicked in at the last possible moment. He half-turned in the man’s crushing embrace, stepping sideways, at the same time striking the attacker’s arm with his fist. It immediately convulsed. He stamped on the killer’s foot with enough force to break it. McCall continued his turn and kicked the attacker’s right knee, all but shattering it. The big man started to collapse to the ground. McCall slashed at the man’s throat with an openhanded strike. He went down with his legs swept out from under him. McCall grabbed the terrorist’s head and snapped it first to one side, then to the other side.
He was dead by the time his head hit the floor.
McCall ran down the deserted dimly lit corridor. Gabriel’s embrace had virtually crushed all the air out of him. He noted there were large steamer trunks in the corridor, including an American Dome Steamer Trunk, a Stagecoach 1800’s Antique Style Steamer trunk and a Pirate Treasure Chest Wooden steamer trunk. McCall caught a glimpse of Samantha Gregson in the shadows. She was kneeling beside one of the empty trunks lowering something down into it. McCall ran the length of the corridor. Samantha whirled, still on her hands and knees. McCall hit her cheekbone with savage force. The blow jarred her and sent her flying down the polished floor. McCall thought she had lost consciousness. He looked down into the Pirate Treasure Chest Steamer trunk.
Samantha had put together the various pieces of the denotator that had been passed to her by her mercenaries. They fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle with six wires protruding from them. Samantha had not yet fitted the last piece of the three-dimensional puzzle to the contacts. There was a sequential order in which the wires had to be pulled out. There was a detonator with a timer which had started to count down from 1:50 seconds to zero. McCall had spent enough time with Kostmayer and Granny to know his way around these explosive devices. Three of the wires were blue and the last three wires were red.
He carefully ripped out the wires in their correct order.
The timer stopped at 1:20 seconds.
McCall exhaled a breath. He removed the device from the trunk. He set the defunct timer down onto the ground and turned back to where he had left Samantha Gregson lying on the corridor floor. McCall’s blow to her head had left her stunned, but not incapacitated.
He had been wrong.
She was gone.
McCall took out his walkie. “Nigel, come back.”
Nigel McGarry answered immediately, his voice low. His snide attitude had completely changed. “McCall, we rounded up two of the mercenaries from your description, Damien Milinov and Bradley Stafford. Another of them, Costas Savermento, slipped through the net but we are putting what you would call a Bolo in the States on him. We’re still searching for a fourth man, a big brute but he might have escaped backstage.”
“He’s dead,” McCall said shortly. “Samantha tried to trigger an explosive device. I stopped her in time, but she disappeared. You need to send in your bomb detail backstage. I believe I disarmed the device, but I can’t be sure.”
‘On their way to you, McCall.”
“Keep the all entrances and exits from the Royal Albert Hall covered.”
“On it,” McGarry said.
McCall did not wait for the bomb squad to arrive. He ran down another corridor backstage and came out at Row K in the Royal Albert Hall. The lights immediately blacked out. The audience still held the small white candles in their hands. McCall ran for the nearest exit door. The lights came up on onstage and on the audience as Lady Gaga took her curtain call to a standing ovation. The noise within the venue was thunderous. McCall reached one of the exits and ran out of the building. He descended the marble staircase outside. Rain drummed down onto the streets around the massive statue of Prince Albert in the center of the building. McCall stood in the deluge, looking down Kensington Gore which wove around the RAH.
There was no sign of Samantha Gregson.
McCall turned back up the marble staircase and re-entered the building. The audience were calling for Lady Gaga to make one more curtain call. She obliged them, sitting back down at the piano. A hush travelled around the concertgoers. Nigel McGarry ran up to McCall, keeping his voice low, but the cheering for the punters, as he liked to call them, drown any words he was saying.
“The bomb squad converged on the backstage area in seconds. You had dismantled the device. No worries there. They found one of the mercenaries lying dead with his neck broken. His passport said he was Gabriel Del Castillo. I fancy that was your doing. We got the two of the other terrorists locked away in one of the dressing rooms backstage with an armed guard watching them. The last terrorist, Costas Savermento, is still in the wind. Did you catch up with Samantha Gregson?”
McCall shook his head. “She was long gone.”
“We shouldn’t have let her slip through our fingers,” Nigel said. “My fault. But we will pick her up. I have word out to the airports, train stations and tube stations.”
“You won’t find her.”
“But we can try.” Nigel followed McCall’s gaze that was directed at the stage where Lady Gaga sat in her spotlight. She was singing her Swallow song for which she had received an Academy Award. “Do you want me to stop the performance?”
“No need now,” McCall said. “Let Lady Gaga finish her show.”
“No one in this audience is aware of what has gone on,” McGarry said. “We’ll keep it that way. No one needs to know how close they came to a bloodbath.” He turned back to McCall. “At the risk of sounding like a true Englishman, that was a bloody good call you made. Saved a lot of lives. Forgive my churlishness of before.”
McCall did not respond to that. He just said: “Keep in constant touch with your Security Officers. Lady Gaga’s show is not over yet.”
“Will do.”
McCall moved away from Nigel, suddenly feeling that he had accomplished nothing. Samantha Gregson was out on the streets of London. It would not matter how massive a manhunt was launched to find her. McCall knew she would slip their net.
And she would be even more determined now to end Robert McCall’s life.
McCall had taken a suite at the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair in London. He had stayed at the Dorchester on and off for years. There was an old-world feel to the place that had always appealed to him. Granny was there with him. The concerts in the six European countries had been a triumph as far as the public was concerned. The rock concerts in Spain, Sweden and Prague in the Czech Republic had been resounding successes with the public with no hint of terrorism. The concert in Greece had continued once Gunner had found the device loaded with C4 explosives that Christos and Nico had neutralized. The Rome concert had been totally abandoned. The firefight that had raged in the catacombs beneath the Terme di Caracalla ruins had left twenty Al Qaeda terrorists dead. None of Benedetto Lombardi’s Security Officers had been killed. The explosive device that Samantha Gregson had handled in the Royal Albert Hall corridors had been defused by McCall. Lady Gaga had accepted her standing ovation from the sold-out audience in the RAH and the concert had emptied out with no further incidents. Samantha’s core group of mercenaries had been decimated. McCall had killed Harry Brandt, Scott Renquist and Gabriel Del Costillo. Terence Soul and Mace O’Brien had been killed in the firefight beneath the Terme di Caracalla ruins. A fourth mercenary, Costas Severmento, had been shot and killed at the Royal Albert Hall by Nigel McGarry. Bradley Stafford and Damien Malinov were being interrogated by Intelligence agents working for Control. The three of the mercenaries who had escaped capture were Jaak Olesk, Aleksanteri Karjala and Khalid Rehman Mohammad. Control had ordered any intel on these men to come directly to him. He wanted what was left of Matthew Goddard and Samantha Gregson’s network destroyed.
McCall had had a conversation with Gunner who had relayed to him the events surrounding the Greek concert. How the Security forces there had defused an explosive device found on the stage and that Gunner had been forced to kill a mercenary named Jack Roslyn whom he had confronted beneath the stage area. McCall had thanked Gunner for his timely intervention. He had a lot of time for Colonel Michael Ralston, especially after he had sat with Mickey Kostmayer in the underground parking garage at the UN while another bomb squad had defused an explosive device. Gunner had told McCall that Jack Roslyn had died in his arms without offering any explanation as to what had motivated him to carry out such a potential atrocity. McCall told him it was Samantha Gregson who had masterminded the list of mercenaries. She had fled the scene at the Royal Albert Hall in London and completely vanished.
McCall took a call from Mickey Kostmayer who had left Rome the day before. He had intel that Khalid Rehman Mohammad, Aleksanteri Karjala and Jaak Olesk had fled from the area and had been seen in Laguardia in Spain.
“It’s a very picturesque little town,” Kostmayer said. “The stone buildings hide a maze of tunnels and escape routes from when the town was under attack in the Middle Ages. A good place for terrorists to hide out until the heat had died down. There was a sighting on Khalid Rehman Mohammad at the Romanesque church of San Juan Bautista that bought me here. It may come to nothing but tell Granny I am looking into it. Is he with you?”
“He is.”
“I presume he told you about planting a tracking device on Ji-Yeon before he took off in that helicopter?”
“He might have mentioned that small detail when we were actively looking for Ji-Yeon,” McCall said, mildly, “but Granny has always played his cards close to the vest. He didn’t keep it a secret for long. Control is looking into it.”
“Ji-Yeon is a thug and a killer,” Granny said, as if in his defence. “We had a shot at capturing him in Rome and I let that chance slip through my fingers.”
“Let Granny know I am with him all the way,” Kostmayer said. “I’ll report back if I find any sign of Ji-Yeon.”
Kostmayer ended the call. Granny said: “So, you are going to go after him,”
“That’s why we’re here,” McCall said, softly. “Leave no one behind.”
Hayden Vallance arrived carrying a slim briefcase which he set down on a low coffee table. Granny sat down beside him on a couch. McCall stood as Vallance opened the briefcase and spread a sheaf of maps that he had collected. He pointed to one of them that he had ringed in red.
“This is the town of Plyos in Russia,” Vallance said. “One of the Golden Rings Cities. A quaint little medieval merchant town where in the early 1800’s Isaac Levitan, the renown classical landscape mood painter, had lived. I have got one of his paintings, a piece called Twilight Moon, which had hung in the Tretyakov Gallery. I received it as a gift from the curator for some questionable work I had done as a mercenary. It’s got a haunting quality that is memorizing.”
“You’re always full of surprises,” McCall murmured.
“I studied art when I was in my twenties before I found out that dealing with dictators and terrorist thugs was more rewarding,” Vallance said, dryly. “We’ll have to refuel in Murmansk in Russia which is 24 kilometers outside the city. I have a chopper on call for us. From there it’s a short way following the Volga River.” He produced another map in greater detail from his briefcase. “This is the rampart of the old fortress. We’ll bypass that and that will bring us close to our objective.”
“How close?” Granny asked.
“It’s on the other side of the lake about a half mile. We will be flying under the radar.”
“There’s a suspension bridge leading to the Chateau Kharzinski,” McCall said. “What you have told me about Ji-Yeon it will be heavily guarded. Men patrolling the grounds, but they won’t be on high alert.”
“Ji-Yeon has just escaped from Security forces in Rome,” Granny said. “He will be on high alert.”
“No one else knows where he is,” McCall reminded him. “But if he is in that Chateau, we’ve got a window of opportunity.”
Hayden Vallance said: “Here’s the floorplan of the Chateau.” He spread more maps on the coffee table. “The Chateau Kharzinski has fourteen rooms with balconies above three ornate archways, covered walkways, an elegant courtyard, two libraries, four marble staircases, parquet floors, a mill on the grounds, stables and its own chapel. Stained-glass windows with some interesting scrollwork with rampant lions and the Knights Templar in stone. The grounds are landscaped and surrounded by woods which come down to the lake edge. There is a helipad on the roof.”
“A nice fixer upper,” Granny said.
“Too isolated for my taste,” Vallance said, “but to each his own.”
“How many guards will be stationed at the Chateau?” Granny asked.
“No telling, but I’d reckon about twenty or more. Ji-Yeon usually travels with an entourage of at least eight. They are all handpicked mercenaries who would die on their swords if their leader were challenged.”
“So it is a fortress,” Granny said.
“You got that right. Getting in there won’t be easy.”
“Leave the floorplan for me,” McCall said.
Hayden Vallance lay the floorplan on the coffee table, rolled up the other maps and put them into his briefcase. McCall turned to Granny. “There’s a chance that Ji-Yeon and his men are guarding an empty Chateau. There is no guarantee that Deva Montgomery and Daniel Blake are being incarcerated there.”
“You want my opinion?” Vallance asked.
“Go ahead,” McCall said, but he knew what was coming.
“They’re dead,” Hayden Vallance said.
“But we won’t know that until when go there and find out,” McCall said.
Vallance shrugged. “Worst case scenario. I have a date with a blonde tonight with a lot of curves and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. We will leave in the early morning. I will be waiting for you at the back of Heathrow Airport which you can access from the Western Perimeter Road. I will give you detailed directions.”
Granny looked at the mercenary. “You don’t have to do this for me.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I owe McCall,” Vallance said simply, and walked out of the hotel suite.
Granny looked at McCall. “What are you going to say to Control?”
“Need to know basis,” McCall said, still a little curt.
“He wouldn’t sanction this mission.”
“He won’t know anything about it. What are you going to do now? You can stay here at the suite. The restaurant in the Dorchester is suburb.”
“I have a date,” Granny said.
McCall nodded. He knew about Granny’s date. He put a hand on his arm. “Listen to me, Granny. If there is any chance that Deva Montgomery or Daniel Blake are still alive, we’ll find them.”
Granny nodded. It was what he needed to hear. Even though he did not really believe it. He picked up his leather jacket from an armchair and exited the hotel suite. McCall poured himself a shot of Glenfiddich Reserve Single Malt whisky and looked out at Hyde Park in the misty morning.
He also thought that the chances of finding Deva Montgomery and Daniel Blake alive were slim to none. He sipped at his scotch as he looked out at Hyde Park.
Hope for the best, he thought, plan for the worst.