Rules of Vengeance (48 page)

Sergei Shvets sat on the couch, one hand clutching his stomach. The other hand still held the gun, but it lay limp in his lap. “Bravo,” he said, in the same dull, unflappable tone. “I didn’t know marksmanship was one of your skills.”

Jonathan eyed the Russian warily. Approaching with caution, he knelt and pried his fingers off the pistol, then tossed it onto the floor out of reach. “Let me take a look.”

Reluctantly, Shvets lifted his hand. “And so? Will I live?”

Jonathan unbuttoned the shirt. The bullet had struck below the liver. Very little blood came from the wound. “How’s this? Tell me about La Reine and Emma, and I’ll save your life.”

“You’re not so mercenary.”

“No,” admitted Jonathan. “I’m not.” He retrieved some towels from the bathroom and wiped away the blood. “Lean forward,” he said.

Shvets grunted and did as instructed.

“Hold these firmly against your stomach and don’t move. I’m going to call an ambulance. I’ll let them save you.”

“Not necessary,” came a dry British voice. “We’ll take it from here.”

Charles Graves stood in the doorway, flanked by a squad of men in black assault gear.

“Ransom? What in the… How can you
…?”
Kate Ford slipped from behind Graves and walked into the apartment, bewilderment and anger playing across her sharp features.

“Stay where you are,” commanded Graves, a pistol leveled at Jonathan. “Your run’s over.” He motioned to one of the men at his side. “Arrest him,” he said. “And make sure the cuffs are tight.”

   Exiting from the central processing facility, Emma walked down a protected passageway across a broad courtyard and into the main administration building. Again there was a guard desk. She showed her site badge and passed through a man-trap, a floor-to-ceiling turnstile that regulated entry into the main reactor complex. On the other side of the man-trap, she cleared a metal detector for the second time. Her purse was checked again, and she was led into an explosives detection booth. A puff of air dusted her body. A green light flashed, and she was waved through. Another man-trap waited. Emma passed through it, then crossed a small lobby toward a set of glass doors leading outside. She swiped her key card, waited for the lock to disengage, then walked through the doors into the morning sunshine.

She stood for a moment, looking at the administration building behind her and the fence topped with razor wire that ran the perimeter of the reactor complex.

Getting in was the easy part
.

The reactor building stood in front of her, a gargantuan, windowless four-story block of concrete. Inside it were the reactor control room and the reactor vessel itself. But Emma did not go inside. She had no interest in getting anywhere near the control room. Instead she drew up a map of the complex on her phone. Skirting the reactor building, she crossed a wide storage area and headed toward an immense warehouse the length of a football field. The walk took five minutes, and in all that time she saw only three or four men. No one paid her the slightest attention.

Swiping her key card, she gained entry to the warehouse. Massive lights hung from the ceiling. Shipping containers stacked three high were divided into neat rows. A forklift drove past her, searching for cargo. Halfway down the warehouse to her left, giant doors stood open, and she could see the blunt snout of a locomotive advancing slowly inside.

Every twelve months it was necessary for the reactor to power down and temporarily cease operation. During this time, spent fuel rods were replaced with “hot” new rods, aging equipment was changed out, and a general maintenance of the facility lasting four to six weeks was carried out. The upkeep required that nearly one hundred containers of new equipment be ferried into the plant.

The last power-down had been completed two weeks earlier.

Emma made her way through the maze of containers to an isolated area far to the north side of the warehouse. Instead of containers, there were pipes. Hundreds and hundreds of sixteen-inch-diameter lead pipes stacked upon one another. She continued to the wall. She checked her phone and registered her current GPS position. A red dot appeared on the map. She scanned the wall of pipes. Then she saw it. A length of green tape tied around the end of one pipe. She counted down four pipes below and looked inside. She saw nothing, and her breath left her.

Pulling back the sleeve of her jacket, she pushed her arm into the pipe, feeling for a package wrapped in wax paper. Her fingers touched only air. A frisson of panic welled up inside her.

Start over.

Emma counted down four pipes from the length of tape. This time she checked the pipes to her left and right. Again there was nothing.

She lowered herself to one knee and began looking into all the pipes in the vicinity, pushing her hand into each, searching, to no avail. She wondered if somehow the pipe had been taken already, but didn’t see how it was possible, given that the green tape was still in place. Then she stopped. If it wasn’t below, it might be above. Standing on her tiptoes, she counted the fourth pipe above the green tape and felt inside it.

Her fingers scraped cold lead. Another false lead. Yet she knew the package had to be here somewhere. Papi had confirmed it, and his word was enough for her. Perching a foot on one of the lower pipes, she stood and thrust her arm deeper inside. Her fingers touched something firm and slick. Clawing with her nails, she inched the package out of the pipe until it fell into her arms.

She looked around. The aisle was deserted. She noted that she was breathing harder than her exertion demanded. She took a moment, then carefully unwrapped the box. Inside were two explosive devices, each measuring 6 inches by 6 inches and 3 inches thick, packaged in glossy black electrical tape. On top was a paper-thin LED readout and keys to program the time and initiate the detonation sequence. She set the first device to thirty minutes and the second to six, then put them inside a pipe at eye level. Once more she consulted her phone to study the layout of the complex, running over her route again and again.

“What do you have there?”

Emma spun. Three meters away stood Alain Royale, the plant’s deputy director of security. She studied his expression but could not tell if he had seen her program the explosives. She selected one of the bombs and said, “M. Royale, I’m happy to see you. Do you have any idea who put these here?”

Royale took a step closer, then stopped. “There’s nothing for you to inspect in the warehouse.”

“Not usually, but today’s an exception. Did you place this green tag on the pipe?”

“Of course not.”

“I didn’t think so. You have a smuggling problem. Drugs, I’d say.” Emma held out the bomb. “Take a look. Maybe you can tell me what it is.”

Royale took the bomb in his hands.

“Well,” she continued, “what is it? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Royale shook the square package, then ran a fingernail over the LED. “It appears to be a timer of some kind.”

“Look underneath it,” Emma said—a command, not a request. “There are some curious markings.”

Intrigued, Royale lifted the package high and examined it. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look closer. You can’t miss it.”

“No… there’s nothing—”

Emma struck his jaw with her flattened palm, stepping up and into the blow, so that it crushed his molars and rendered him immediately unconscious. She caught him as he fell and lowered him to the ground.

Just then the two-way pager on his belt cackled. “M. Royale, we have an urgent call from the National Police. Please contact me immediately. A Code Nine emergency.”

A moment later a siren sounded inside the warehouse. Red strobe lights positioned at every exit flashed at two-second intervals.

Emma paid no attention to the commotion. Kneeling, she removed Royale’s key card from a retractable lanyard. Then she scooped up the explosives, placed them in her purse, and ran for the closest exit.

   Graves shook Sergei Shvets by the collar. “What the devil do you have planned? You’ll tell us now, or by God, I’ll kill you with my own hands.”

“He’s wounded,” said Ford. “Go easy.”

“I’ll go easy after he talks.” Graves yanked Shvets’s shirt so hard that the Russian bounded off the couch. “Where is she? Where’s Emma Ransom?”

Shvets grimaced. “You’re too late,” he whispered. “It’s done.”

“Too late for what?” demanded Graves.

“Go to hell,” said the Russian.

“Oh, I will. I’m sure of that. But I’m going to do my best to make sure you get there before me.” Graves balled his fist and ground it hard against the wound in Shvets’s gut. “Where—is—Emma—Ransom?”

Shvets’s eyes bulged, and a moan escaped his clenched teeth.

“Enough!” Kate Ford grabbed Graves from behind and forcibly separated him from Shvets. “Leave him.”

Graves shook her off, and took a step back toward Shvets before thinking better of it. “They’ll have your head on a pike looking over Red Square,
tovarich
, before I’m done with you.”

Shvets didn’t answer. He sat hunched over his stomach, sucking down great drafts of air.

“Get him out of here,” said Graves, delivering a last glancing blow to the top of the Russian’s head. “And make sure you don’t leave his side. I want guards at his door, even when he’s in the operating theater. Do you understand me?”

A team of medical technicians lifted Shvets onto a gurney and wheeled him out. No fewer than six Black Panthers accompanied the director of the Russian FSB to the ground floor and all the way to the hospital.

“La Reine,”
said Jonathan.

Graves looked over to where Ransom stood in the corner, held in an armlock by a policeman.

“What did you say?” asked Graves, who was wiping his brow with a handkerchief, barely listening.

“La Reine. That’s what Emma’s going to try to blow up.”

Graves shot an impatient glance at Ford. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “La Reine is France’s newest nuclear power facility. It’s on the Normandy coast, near a town called Flamanville.”

“Let him go,” said Graves with a casual wave.

The police officer released Ransom.

“There’s going to be some kind of bomb,” said Jonathan. “I read about it on a laptop I found at Shvets’s house in Èze. It’s supposed to happen today.”

Graves gave Ford a look. “You see that laptop?”

“No.”

“It was in the car,” said Jonathan.

“Sure it was.” Graves eyed him with skepticism. “And why should we believe you?” he asked, crossing the room toward the American.

“Give it a rest,” said Jonathan. “Can’t you see we’re on the same side? I want to stop Emma as badly as you do.”

Graves halted a foot away from Jonathan. “All I see is a fugitive from British justice wanted for the car bombing of Igor Ivanov’s motorcade, as well as for the murders of a doctor in Notting Hill and a yet-to-be-identified corpse burned beyond recognition currently resting in a Monaco morgue. That’s what I see.”

Jonathan appealed to Ford. “She’s going to plant a bomb inside the reactor somewhere.”

“And just how is she getting in?” broke in Graves.

“She’s pretending to be someone named Anna School,” said Jonathan, fighting to extract a kernel of grain from the pages of chaff he’d pored over. “I mean,
Scholl
. Yes, that’s it. She’s some kind of an investigator.”

“Go on,” said Ford, in a less hostile manner, which was a signal to Graves to take it easy.

“All the material was written in Russian,” explained Ransom. “Most of it went over my head. But I remember a few things. Emma’s supposed to pick up something in the northeast corner of something called W-4. Maybe if I could talk to the engineers or the plant manager, I could figure out more of it.”

“Not a chance,” said Graves. “Your merry flight from justice is officially terminated. From here, you’ll be transported directly to one of France’s darkest and most secure jailhouses. And there you’ll remain until we file all proper diplomatic papers in triplicate and see to it that your extradition to England goes off without a hitch.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Jonathan. “I can help.”

“And you, sir, are a liar, and as far as I can tell, an agent with extensive training and experience in the employ of a foreign government to be determined at a later date. This nonsense about being a simple doctor stops now.”

“No,” said Kate Ford. “He has to come.”

Graves shot her a whiplash glance. “You’re not serious?”

But Ford kept her eyes locked on Ransom. “Call the plant,” she said. “See if anyone named Anna Scholl is visiting or if there’s been an inspection from the IAEA.”

Graves hesitated.

“Do it, Charles.”

Graves first consulted with the captain of the Paris gendarmerie, who gave his blessing and provided the plant’s emergency phone number. It took another five minutes to be put in touch with the plant manager and five minutes more to explain in his perfect schoolboy’s French who he was and why he was calling.

“She’s there,” said Graves, lowering the phone to his side. “She arrived at shift change. Security checked her out. She passed with flying colors. Even the palm print.”

“God,” said Kate Ford. “This is it.”

Graves put the phone back to his ear. “Do you know where she is right now?” he inquired in French. And then his face fell. “She’s inside the main complex somewhere. There are fifteen buildings. She has an all-access pass card.”

Kate turned to the French police captain. “How far to Flamanville?”

“Three hundred kilometers. One of my choppers can have you there in fifty minutes.”

“Please get it here as quickly as possible,” she said, before turning toward Jonathan. “Dr. Ransom, you’re coming with us.”

“Lock down the plant,” said Graves. “We’ll get them a photo and description of Emma Ransom within the next five minutes. And tell your people that she’s armed and dangerous, and that she’s most likely carrying high explosives. Don’t take any chances. Shoot to kill.”