King Solomon's Curse

  They grappled, lumbering into the aisle. The Removal Man twisted to pitch his target down the rear stairs. Eddie kicked out, catching the safety barrier surrounding the stairwell and propelling both men away from it. His opponent staggered, briefly unbalanced. The Yorkshireman spun, grabbing the other man’s gun arm and slamming his wrist against a pole.

  The MP5K clattered to the floor. Both men tried to lunge for it while simultaneously forcing the other away. They thumped back and forth against the seats, reeling forward as they struggled for the upper hand . . .

  Eddie realised to his dismay that he wouldn’t win the contest of raw muscle power. The GB63 member had been through the same special forces training as himself, and more besides after joining the ultra-secret unit – and was both younger and stronger.

  Instead he shifted position – and kicked the gun. It skittered up the aisle to the front of the deck, well out of reach.

  But the action had saved him from one danger only to expose him to another. His movement gave his opponent extra leverage – and the other man took advantage, forcing him forward and driving his head against another vertical handrail.

  If the pain of his broken tooth was piercing, this felt more like being struck by a mallet. Eddie staggered, impossible colours exploding in his vision before clearing – to reveal the Removal Man lunging again. A fist rushed at his face. He jerked up one arm to take the blow, but a second strike thumped into his stomach.

  He gasped, stumbling into the front stairwell’s safety barrier. Another brutal punch winded him – then a hand clamped around his throat.

  The man bent him back over the barrier, fingers tightening like steel cords. Eddie lashed at his head, but scored only glancing impacts. He choked as his enemy’s remorseless grip squeezed his airways closed.

  The Removal Man pushed harder, about to pitch him head first down the stairs—

  The bus tipped violently, flinging both men away from the stairwell.

  Nina had seen on the CCTV monitor that her husband was in grave danger and threw the Routemaster sharply to the right, making a tyre-squealing turn down a side street. Roy yelped as he was hurled sideways. He checked the laptop’s connections. ‘If the cable comes unplugged I might have to start from scratch!’ he complained. ‘By the way: ninety-nine per cent!’

  ‘Hold it in place with your damn teeth if you have to!’ she shouted back. Another glance at the screen. Eddie had broken free, but the SIS assassin still had the upper hand – and foot, delivering a savage kick to the Yorkshireman’s stomach. Eddie fell back on a seat, his head banging against the window. She gasped.

  The Removal Man straightened as if to attack again – then saw something on the floor.

  The MP5K was a sinister black shadow at the bottom of the monitor.

  Nina looked desperately ahead, but the new street was much narrower than the main road; any turn harsh enough to knock him down would send the bus head-on into a lamp post or parked car. And the Range Rover was still behind them. If they stopped, they would be shot dead . . .

  A large red-brick apartment building rose on the left. A driveway ran to it – and through it, a tall arched passage leading to another road beyond.

  The Removal Man snatched up the gun—

  Nina was already turning the steering wheel before her conscious mind could object to the crazy plan. The bus demolished the end of a low wall, the Routemaster bounding over the rubble on to the driveway.

  She accelerated, foot to the floor. The bus jolted back towards the vertical. On the monitor, the Removal Man had grabbed a seat for support, but was now recovering. He faced Eddie, raising the sub-machine gun . . .

  The archway was just big enough to accommodate the bus – if it went straight through the middle. Nina instead steered to one side. ‘Eddie! Low bridge!’

  Eddie heard her and rolled to the floor—

  The Routemaster ploughed into the brickwork.

  Masonry smashed and metal tore, the entire frame of the heavy front window ripping loose and slamming across the SIS agent’s back. He fell, broken bricks pummelling him.

  Eddie shielded his face from flying rubble, then scrambled upright as Nina swung the bus back into the centre of the arched passage. The mangled section of roof crashed to the ground as they burst back into the open.

  The Routemaster ploughed through a set of iron gates on to the next street, Nina making another hard right turn. Wind hit Eddie’s face through the gaping hole in the bus’s front. He looked for the Removal Man’s MP5K. It was teetering at the top of the stairs.

  The SIS man also saw it. He lunged—

  Eddie stamped on his hand. He screeched in pain. The Yorkshireman snatched up the weapon – then twisted to kick him hard in the face with a hideous snap of breaking teeth. The younger man slumped nervelessly to the floor.

  Gunshots from behind. Windows on the lower deck shattered as Nina swerved frantically from side to side. Eddie ran back down the bus. Below, he saw the Range Rover pulling alongside, the fourth man leaning from a window with another MP5K. The sub-machine gun blazed again, strafing the Routemaster’s flank—

  Eddie’s weapon joined in the staccato chorus. The gunman fell screaming back into the SUV with bloody wounds in his arm and shoulder. The Yorkshireman switched aim, knowing the windows were bulletproof – but gambling that not every part of the vehicle was similarly strengthened . . .

  His shots tore into the roof.

  The Range Rover was indeed not impenetrable from above. The rounds hit the driver in the legs and hip. The black vehicle abruptly fell back, weaving – then struck a parked car and cartwheeled over it, smashing down on its side.

  Eddie hurried down the stairs. ‘Nina! Roy! You both okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Nina replied breathlessly. The window beside her had been shattered.

  ‘Oh my God!’ cried Roy. ‘That guy tried to kill us! What happened to him?’

  ‘I took him out,’ said Eddie.

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘No, but I hope MI6’s cafeteria has plenty of soup options, ’cause it’s all he’ll be eating for a while. What about the laptop?’

  The young man checked. ‘Well, it’s still working, somehow, but – oh!’ A ping came from the machine. ‘One hundred per cent. Good timing!’

  ‘It’s finished?’ asked Nina.

  ‘Yah, yah.’

  ‘Great – but which way do we go?’

  Roy looked ahead. ‘I’m not sure where we are – no, there!’ He pointed. ‘Right, then left straight away. I can see the river!’

  Nina braked to bring the battered bus through a junction, then immediately turned again to swing it on to a tree-lined road along the Thames’s northern bank. She saw a bridge crossing the river about half a mile ahead. ‘Can we get to the US embassy from there?’

  Roy nodded. ‘That’s Chelsea Bridge – the embassy’s in Nine Elms on the other side.’

  ‘Still got to reach it,’ Eddie warned. ‘There’s probably another half a dozen cars of goons on the way already.’

  ‘Roy, check if the video’s there,’ Nina said, blasting the horn and swinging the bus around a knot of dawdling traffic.

  He quickly checked the newly recovered directory. ‘The most recent file is . . . an MP4, about two gigabytes, last changed . . . four days ago.’

  ‘That’s got to be it,’ said Eddie. ‘Play it!’

  Roy double-clicked the file. Eddie watched as a video started. Nothing but blackness for several tense seconds, making him worry that the file had been corrupted . . . then lights came into view.

  They were inside the ceremonial chamber beneath the Palace Without Entrance, the drone descending towards it. Inside, he saw shadows cast by movement in front of the lanterns – then figures came into view.

  Himself, Nina . . . and Brice.

  ‘We’ve got video,’ h
e told his wife, before looking back at Roy. ‘Turn it right up, we need to hear.’

  Roy set the laptop’s volume to maximum. Echoing voices became audible. ‘Cosmic rays, maybe,’ said Brice. ‘Something that can penetrate so deeply.’

  Eddie looked up from the screen. ‘We’ve got it. We’ve got it – and we’ve got him!’

  Nina spotted cars slowing on the bridge ahead – and moving aside to clear a path for something coming up from behind them. ‘Roy, have you still got that flash drive?’ Having seen several USB sticks on his desk, she had suggested he bring one.

  He checked his pocket. ‘Yah, it’s here.’

  ‘Copy the file on to it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a flash drive’s a lot harder to break than a laptop! Eddie, bad guys on the bridge.’

  Eddie hefted the sub-machine gun and hurried up the front stairs. ‘If they stop us, we’re dead,’ he called back to Nina. ‘Keep going no matter what!’

  He made sure the Removal Man was still unconscious by kicking him again, then went to the front of the top deck. Another black Range Rover was tearing across Chelsea Bridge. It reached the shore and made a screeching turn through a crossroads to power down the embankment towards them.

  He readied the gun, expecting a gunman to lean out – but instead the SUV skidded to a halt across the middle of the road. Other drivers heading in each direction stopped in alarm as a man jumped out and took up position behind it, aiming a gun – an MP5, the full-size, more powerful version of Eddie’s own weapon – over its bonnet.

  With traffic halted, there was no way around the obstruction. ‘Eddie, what do I do?’ Nina cried.

  ‘Go through ’em!’ he yelled. ‘Ramming speed!’

  ‘Roy, keep down!’ Nina shouted as she dropped as low as she could. The speedometer needle rose again—

  The man behind the Range Rover opened fire. Nina screamed as the windscreen blew apart – but held her course, foot jammed down on the pedal. Eddie retaliated, bullets twanging off the SUV’s windows and bodywork. The man ducked as people nearby fled their cars.

  But the MP5K had already exhausted its ammo. Eddie dropped it, bracing himself as the bus surged towards the Range Rover.

  The gunman sprang up again – to see a wall of red charging straight at him. He broke and ran—

  The Range Rover’s driver also realised what was about to happen and threw his vehicle into reverse – but too late.

  The bus hit the Range Rover’s front quarter at over fifty miles per hour. The SUV was flung around in a mad pirouette, swatting the running man over an abandoned car before smashing into it.

  Nina raised her head, squinting into the wind. What had been the platform inside the bus’s front passenger door was now folded upwards like crumpled paper, mangled bodywork embedded in it. But the bus was still moving, the long overhang having protected the front wheels. ‘Is everyone okay?’ she shouted as she turned towards the bridge.

  ‘Somehow, yah,’ said Roy, sounding surprised.

  ‘More of ’em!’ Eddie yelled from above.

  There was indeed another 4x4 charging towards them. ‘What, does MI6 have an infinite supply of Range Rovers?’ Nina protested.

  Too late to turn back. The oncoming SUV braked hard and angled up on to the kerb at the start of the span to block her way, its nose against the sloping metal barrier separating the roadside from the footpath. A window lowered, another MP5 poking out.

  The bus roared towards it. ‘Hold on!’ Nina cried—

  The Routemaster smashed into the Range Rover.

  The impact slammed the 4x4 up the barrier – and over its top, sending it cartwheeling across the pavement into the bridge’s railings. It burst through them and plunged into the murky waters of the Thames forty feet below.

  The bus lurched to a stop. Even braced, Nina had still been thrown over the steering wheel. Pained, she remained still for a moment, thinking she could hear a ringing in her ears – before realising it was the sound of distant bells. She sat up. Pedestrians and people in the stationary cars gawped at her. ‘Eddie? Roy?’

  ‘I’m still here,’ Roy groaned. ‘I think . . .’

  Footsteps thumped down the stairs. She turned to see her husband carrying the unconscious Removal Man. ‘What’re you doing with him?’

  ‘Getting rid,’ Eddie replied, going to the open middle door. ‘Don’t need him causing you trouble if he wakes up.’

  ‘That sounds like you’re not planning to stay around to deal with him,’ said Roy.

  Eddie tossed the man out on to the pavement as Nina engaged reverse gear and started to extract the bus from the dented barrier. ‘You need to get to the embassy. Roy, what’s happening with the computer?’

  ‘The file’s still copying to the flash drive,’ the young man told him as the Routemaster lurched free.

  ‘Still? Fuck’s sake, is that laptop steam-powered? Okay, I just heard Big Ben – it’s quarter to twelve. If I find Brice before noon, I might be able to stop him. It’s about a mile and a half to the Houses of Parliament, so I can make it in time if I run.’

  ‘But you don’t know where he is,’ said Nina.

  ‘I’ll just head for the weird noise.’ He jumped down to the street.

  ‘It’ll be too late by then!’

  ‘I’ve got to bloody try! You get that video to the embassy.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you!’

  He looked back at her. ‘I don’t care what Brice says, this is my country – and I’m not going to let him fuck it up. Now go!’ He vaulted over the barrier and raced away.

  ‘Eddie, wait!’ Nina shouted, but he was already gone. ‘Shit!’ Knowing there was nothing she could do to bring him back, she set her jaw and put the Routemaster into gear.

  37

  The traffic had cleared the bridge ahead, either oblivious of what had happened behind or wanting to escape the chaos. ‘Okay, Roy,’ said Nina as she accelerated, ‘how do we get to the embassy?’

  Roy regarded the approaching south bank of the Thames. ‘We’ve got to get around Battersea Power Station, so . . . okay, head down this road to a roundabout, then go left. That’ll take us into Nine Elms – and that leads us straight to the embassy.’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘It also leads straight to Vauxhall Cross, so anyone sent after us from SIS headquarters will be coming down it.’

  ‘Not great!’ A flash of alarm as she spotted blue strobe lights in the distance – but again, the police had clearly been ordered not to intervene, the car not moving. Her capture – or elimination – would be left entirely to MI6’s assassins.

  She raced on, sweeping past expensive, anonymous new apartment blocks on the left, a large park on the right. The roundabout came into view. The road to the left was clear, the police car preventing civilians from becoming ensnared in the chase. She was being channelled, corralled; her pursuers had probably realised where she was trying to go.

  Which meant they could wait for her to come to them.

  Pushing the grim thought aside, Nina brought the bus through the turn. ‘Under the bridge, there,’ said Roy.

  A broad Victorian railway arch spanned the new road. She steered beneath it, careful to keep the shredded roof clear of the ironwork. ‘How far to the embassy?’

  ‘About a mile.’

  ‘And what about the video? Has it copied yet?’

  ‘Almost done . . . yes! It’s just finished.’

  ‘Okay, give it to me.’ He quickly unmounted the little flash drive and handed it to her. She shoved it in a pocket. ‘Okay, hold on!’

  Roy hurriedly retreated and gripped a handrail as she blasted the horn and swung the bus out to overtake more sluggish traffic.

  Brice brought his van around the green common of Parliament Square, slowing at its north-eastern corner. Instead of contin
uing around it, however, he turned on to the pavement. The tourists and passers-by merely flowed around him. The grubby Transit pickup, orange warning lights flashing on its roof, was the perfect stealth vehicle. Nobody would even look once, never mind twice, at a council workman on some mundane business.

  He carefully guided the van along the little park’s northern side, halting in front of a statue of Winston Churchill. The sight of the great wartime leader gave him a surge of both pride and determination. Churchill had done whatever was necessary to protect his country from the forces seeking to destroy it; now he was going to do the same.

  He got out and climbed up into the van’s rear. The lead box containing the Shamir was hidden under a dirty tarpaulin. His first task was to line the ancient weapon up on its target.

  A glance across the square. The Elizabeth Tower dominated the scene, the clock standing tall over the northern end of the Houses of Parliament. The Victorian-era Gothic edifice was a globally recognised icon of Britain itself, visual shorthand for an entire country . . .

  And he was going to bring it down.

  He knew full well the damage its destruction would cause to his nation’s psyche. Indeed, part of him was appalled by the prospect. But it had to be done. The gaping scar in the London skyline would unify the people, bring up the walls necessary to protect against all enemies outside. And once they were in place, the process of rooting out those lurking within could begin.

  The purge would begin in Westminster itself. Those in Parliament who were about to weaken and diminish their own country, who would sell it out to foreign powers, could not be allowed to take control. And he had the Prime Minister’s authorisation to prevent it.

  He pulled the heavy box into position. Once he opened the lid, he would still have to position the strange stone itself to focus its destructive effect upon its target, but then all he needed to do was ensure it remained in place until the job was done . . . and that no one interfered.

  He saw someone who might do just that. Parliament Square was the nearest area of open ground to the Houses of Parliament, and as such was under high security, both covert and visible. An example of the latter was now approaching, a uniformed Metropolitan Police officer who had taken an interest in the van.