The Secret of Excalibur_A Novel

  Whether it was a ballroom or just a very large hall she didn’t know, but it was clearly the hub of Vaskovich’s party. A DJ on a platform in one corner pumped out thudding techno, but even this was overpowered by the hubbub of hundreds of voices all talking at once.

  The air was thick with smoke, and everybody seemed to have a glass in his hand. The men were in tuxedos or more playboyesque designer suits; the older women were formally dressed, the younger women showy trophy attachments to wealthy husbands … or “entertainment,” Prikovsky’s girls having already spread out among the crowd.

  Nina had barely taken five steps before a red-faced man in a straining tuxedo budded off from his group and blocked her path, treating her to a glassy-eyed smile as he spoke in slurred Russian. “Hi,” she replied, her own smile fixed and fake as a pungent reek of aftershave assaulted her nostrils. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak much Russian. Er … nyet Russki? American.”

  “Ah, American!” the fat man boomed. “Pamela Anderson, da?” He cupped his hands in front of his chest as if holding a pair of beach balls, and laughed.

  “Yeah,” said Nina, less than impressed. “By the way, congratulations on your breasts—they’re nearly as big as hers. Excuse me. Oh!” She flinched as a hand slid over her right buttock and squeezed it. She turned, expecting to see another drunken man, and was taken aback to find instead a drunken woman.

  “So, you are American?” the woman said. She appeared to be in her late fifties, hard-faced and thin, but from her hairstyle and clothing apparently still thought she could pass herself off as two or three decades younger. “How are you finding our country?”

  “Just went through Poland and, ha, there it was!”

  The woman let out a high-pitched, tinkling laugh. Her bony hand encircled Nina’s wrist like a handcuff, and she pulled her into the crowd. “Come, come, you must meet my friends.”

  “I’m, er, supposed to go and see Mr. Vaskovich,” Nina said desperately.

  The woman laughed again. “Then you are in luck—he is one of my friends!”

  “Oh, he is? Oh. Shit,” she added in a whisper.

  The woman led her through the room. Nina looked around, trying to get a feel for the mansion’s layout. She spotted a staircase at the rear of the hall, polished marble and red carpet. Dmitri had said the top floor was out of bounds; that was presumably where Excalibur was being kept.

  She heard a buzz in her left ear. “—an you hear me? Nina?” Chase’s voice was distorted by interference, at the very limit of the earpiece’s range.

  “Mm-hmm?” she said through closed lips, as loudly as she dared.

  “I guess you can’t talk, then. But I’m in position. Was that a chopper landing in the garden?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Some rich bugger’s always got to show off, don’t they? All right, soon as you get a chance, find somewhere quiet so Jack can tell you what to do next.”

  “O-ay,” she mumbled.

  The woman glanced back at her. “What?”

  “Just, ah, clearing my throat. I’m a little thirsty.”

  “I’ll tell a waiter to bring you a drink. Come on, just over here.” She guided Nina around a knot of people—

  And Nina found herself looking straight at Aleksey Kruglov.

  He walked toward her, grimly purposeful. Three steps away, two, eyes flicking at her …

  And gone. He passed so close that his sleeve brushed Nina’s arm. But he hadn’t recognized her, hadn’t made the connection between the briefly glimpsed, seductively dressed escort and the dirty, scared archaeologist he’d seen in England. But she couldn’t help glancing nervously back in case some suspicious synapse fired in his mind, finding common features of the two redheads and making him return for a closer look …

  He kept going, disappearing into the throng. She gasped in relief.

  The woman stopped, Nina almost bumping into her. She spoke in Russian to a slender, unassuming man in rectangular wire-framed glasses—who Nina realized with a chill was Leonid Vaskovich.

  The man behind the entire plot. The man responsible for the murders of Bernd Rust, Mitzi Fontana, Chloe Lamb, and others whose names she didn’t even know, collateral damage of his quest to gain the power of Excalibur. He was within arm’s reach, unsuspecting, defenseless.

  But there was nothing she could do. Her skintight latex dress had no room to conceal a weapon, even had she been able to pull the trigger. Chase could have, but he wasn’t here. All she could do was paste on a smile to cover her fear.

  Vaskovich responded to her companion with polite feigned interest, nodding before looking at Nina. He took in her sultry makeup, her fetishistic outfit, her bare legs and high heels—then turned back to the woman, uninterested.

  Nina felt oddly offended, before realizing that Vaskovich wasn’t dismissing her specifically; he would have responded the same way to any of Prikovsky’s girls. It was a seen-it-all-before look, the boredom of a billionaire who had long since indulged all his wildest fantasies. Despite being the host of the party, he seemed unenthusiastic about being there.

  He spoke to the woman; she replied, then smiled at Nina. “You said you wanted to meet Leonid Vaskovich? Here he is!”

  “Vaskovich?” Chase said through the earpiece. “Jesus, he’s right there? Can you stab him with anything?”

  Vaskovich regarded Nina again. “Rozalina says you do not speak much Russian,” he said. His English, in contrast, was excellent. “That is a shame. I hope you learn quickly …” He looked at her questioningly, waiting for her name.

  “Don’t tell him your real—” Chase began.

  “Nina,” she replied automatically.

  “D’oh!”

  “Good to meet you … Nina,” Vaskovich said. He gave her a slightly puzzled look, as if struggling to remember a previous encounter.

  “Likewise, Mr. Vaskovich.” There was an awkward pause.

  To Nina’s surprise, Vaskovich then smiled, a flicker of genuine amusement twitching up one corner of his goatee. “Well, I can tell you are not like most of the other young women I meet.”

  “Really?” Nina asked, unsure where he was leading.

  “Yes. By now they would be trying to get into my bed—or my wallet. But there is something different about you, I can tell. You are not a shark. It is a nice change.” For a brief moment, he seemed almost melancholy. “Beautiful women always want me, but only for what I have, never who I am. And that long ago stopped being fun.” He sighed, then shrugged. “Still. I hope you enjoy the evening.” He said something else to Rozalina before spotting some body behind Nina. For the first time, his face actually revealed some enthusiasm. “Ah, Felix Mishkin!”

  Nina looked around, only to hurriedly turn away again as she saw Kruglov returning. With him was a man in his midthirties, hair slicked back, clad in a dark blue Italian suit. She remembered the name—he was the man who had arrived in the military helicopter.

  Apparently Rozalina knew him too, as she kissed him on both cheeks. Nina was left to stand there, feeling exposed and isolated. But just as it struck her that this could be her chance to slip away, she realized she was a topic of conversation, “American” leaping out from Vaskovich’s words.

  “American?” said Mishkin. He looked at Nina, then said in a heavily accented mock whisper, “Perhaps she is a spy, here to sleep with me to learn all my secrets!” He laughed at his own joke, Rozalina joining in.

  Vaskovich managed a polite chuckle. “Somehow, I don’t think that is why she is here.” He continued in Russian, now almost excited about his subject.

  “Nina,” Mitchell unexpectedly said via the earpiece, his voice even more distorted than Chase’s. “He’s talking about his new ‘acquisition.’ He’s got to mean Excalibur. I think he’s going to show it to him, which means the sword is definitely in the building. Ditch the bitch and find somewhere we can talk—you’ve got to reach the security system so Eddie can get in.”

  “’Kay,” Nina said, disguising the word
as a cough. Keeping her face averted from Kruglov, she spotted a waiter bearing a tray of champagne glasses through the crowd. “Would you like me to get you a drink?” she asked Rozalina. The older woman seemed caught between staying with her catch and remaining with her powerful companions, finally deciding on the latter. With relief, Nina moved away, heading for the waiter until she was out of sight and then making a beeline for the relatively empty area to one side of the stairs.

  “How’re you holding up?” Chase asked.

  “I’m surviving,” she whispered. “Although I nearly had a heart attack when I saw Kruglov. Oh, and I have a handprint on my ass.”

  “Whose? If it’s Vaskovich’s, I’m going to have to revive the bastard after I kill him so I can kill him again.”

  “No, it was that woman.”

  “Really?” Chase sounded intrigued. “A threesome, huh?”

  Nina found herself smiling despite the situation. “I don’t think she’s your type, Eddie. She definitely wasn’t mine.”

  “Can we stay on mission here?” Mitchell said impatiently. “Nina, where are you now?”

  “By the stairs in the main hall.” Looking up, she saw guards standing at the bottom of the next flight. She explained what Dmitri had said about the off-limits parts of the mansion. “Crap, Vaskovich is coming.”

  She crouched, pretending to tighten the strap on one shoe. Vaskovich, Kruglov and Mishkin ascended, the guards moving aside to let them through.

  “If they’re going to the top floor,” Mitchell said when Nina told him, “I’ve got a fairly good idea where he’s keeping Excalibur. Okay, Nina, you need to get to the back of the house. Are there any doors out of the hall that aren’t guarded?”

  She checked. “In the middle of the west wall. Double doors.”

  “They’ll do. Go through them.”

  Nina picked her way through the hall, trying not to attract any attention—which her outfit made a futile task. She didn’t need to know any Russian to tell she was drawing lecherous comments. But she was almost at the door …

  A hand suddenly clapped against her butt and squeezed it, sweaty flesh squeaking over latex. Nina choked back an obscenity-laden tirade and turned to see the fat man she had encountered earlier, two champagne glasses clutched clumsily in his free hand and an expectant grin on his florid face.

  “Oh, hi,” she said through gritted teeth. “You again.”

  “Hello, Pamela!” he said drunkenly, before dropping back into Russian as his groping hand slowly clambered around from her backside toward her chest. He tried to push one of the glasses into her hand.

  She reluctantly accepted it, realizing that if he tipped it any further the contents would end up in her cleavage. “Thank you. Hey! Easy, tiger,” she added, batting his wandering hand back down.

  “What’s going on?” Chase asked, in a voice that suggested punches would have been thrown by now had he been there in person.

  “Nothing, just a very, very friendly man …” It occurred to her that she might be able to make use of the inebriated oaf. She clinked her glass against his, then indicated the doors. “Do you want to go somewhere private?” He stared blearily at her. “Private? Goddamn it. Shhh,” she said, putting a theatrical finger to her lips and glancing at the doors again. The message finally sank in, and he gave her a pop-eyed smirk, hooking a pudgy arm round hers and leading her into the next room.

  The main hall had been standing room only; this was a lounge, guests chilling out on modern leather armchairs around glass tables. Nina saw the remains of a white line of cocaine on one. If anything, the sickly swirl of cigar smoke was even thicker. Trying not to cough, she peered through the haze, seeing a door at the rear of the room. A waiter bearing a tray of empty glasses hurried through. She nudged her companion toward it.

  A brightly lit hallway was beyond—as was another tuxedoed guard, who with an expression of forced politeness moved to block their path. The fat man huffed and began what was almost certainly an outburst along the lines of “Don’t you know who I am?”

  Nina shushed him. “Dmitri said okay,” she told the guard, hoping he would understand two out of the three words. “We get champagne?” She mimed holding a bottle and then flicking off the cork. “Pop!” The guard regarded her dubiously. “Dmitri said okay,” she repeated.

  The guard finally stepped aside, saying something to the drunken man, who responded with a dismissive, “Da, da.” Apparently only the top floor was strictly off-limits. Nina saw another waiter coming back with a full tray. She tugged at the fat man’s arm, leading him in that direction.

  The scent of food replaced smoke. They were now in the mansion’s kitchen and service areas, opulence toned down to mere elegance. A side room turned out to be for cold storage, walls lined with glass-fronted refrigerators filled with hundreds of bottles of champagne, more crates of vintage Dom Perignon and Krug waiting to be chilled. There was another door at the back of the room; it was ajar, darkness beyond.

  Nina slipped free of the man and entered the storeroom, taking a bottle from one of the fridges and sliding a suggestive hand up and down its neck. The man chortled, downing the contents of his glass in one swig. She indicated the darkened room. He waddled to the door and shoved it open. Nina followed him inside—

  There was a flat dunk as the champagne bottle came down on the back of his head. The Russian pitched forward and collapsed on some cardboard boxes. Nina hurriedly checked his pulse, finding it steady, then put the bottle down next to him. “The pleasure was all yours,” she told him as she left. “Okay, Jack, I’m alone. Finally. Where do I go?”

  His voice crackled in her ear. “Find the kitchen entrance, but don’t go in—go past it. There’ll be a door on your left when you reach a right turn.”

  “Got it.” She strode through the hallways, waiters checking her out as they passed but doing nothing to stop her. Swinging double doors and the sizzle of cooking meat marked the kitchen entrance; she continued onward until she reached the promised right turn. “Okay, I’m at the door.”

  “Go inside.” She did, finding herself in a small and chilly room with a heavy wooden exterior door opposite. A metal cabinet on one wall hummed ominously. “There should be a junction box.”

  “Got it. Won’t it be locked, though?”

  “Why?” Chase asked. “It’s the guy’s own house.”

  She tried the handle, and the cabinet indeed opened without any trouble. “Huh. Okay, I see loads of complicated electrical stuff.”

  “You need to find the switch that controls the security cameras,” said Mitchell. “Don’t worry about the labels being in Cyrillic, just look for one with the number 201. Don’t push it yet.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Nina asked as she scanned the rows of switches and fuses.

  “The company that installed the system e-mailed the plans to a subcontractor. We snagged them on the way. DARPA created the Internet, remember.”

  “I’d better be more careful about what sites I look at while Nina’s out, then,” said Chase. Nina wasn’t entirely sure he was joking, but forgot about it when she found the right switch.

  “Two-zero-one, got it,” she said. “Now what?”

  “Okay, here’s what’ll happen,” Mitchell told her. “Pushing that switch will cut off power to part of the security grid. But the system’s not stupid—if there’s a fault, it runs a diagnostic and tries to reboot the affected sections. If they’re not back up after thirty seconds, it goes into alert mode. So Eddie has twenty-nine seconds to get over the wall, cross the grounds and get inside the mansion—without being seen by any of the guards—before you push the switch back.”

  “Two hundred yards in twenty-nine seconds?” said Chase. “Piece of piss.”

  Nina wasn’t so certain. “Eddie, are you sure you can do it?”

  “I’ve got to, don’t I?” he replied, more serious. “I’m not leaving you alone in there.”

  “Do you know the routes of the guards in the grounds?
” Mitchell asked.

  “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past ten minutes? I’m not watching films on my iPod here. I’m freezing my bollocks off in a tree!”

  “Well, get ready to warm them up. Eddie, soon as you’re clear to go, count down from three. Nina, when he reaches zero, throw the switch. I’ll count down the seconds. Up to you, Eddie.”

  Nina nervously raised her finger to the switch as Chase spoke. “I can see the door, and the nearest guy’s about to go around the corner.” She heard a rustling noise as he changed position. “Okay, get ready. Three, two, one … go!”

  She pushed the switch.

  • • •

  Chase sprang from the branch. The wall was topped by razor wire; his leading foot landed not on the brickwork but on one of the metal supports for the bladed coils. It bent under his weight, the wires hissing metallically, but by then he had already jumped, flying through the air with his legs kicking.

  He hit the ground—

  And stumbled.

  The earth was uneven, impossible to see in the low light. Momentum carried him forward, about to pitch him onto his face …

  He threw out his hands. His fingertips hit cold ground, pain crackling through every joint as they took his weight for an instant. Then he launched himself forward like a sprinter at the starting line, still staggering but no longer falling. Two strides, and he regained his balance. How much time had he lost?

  “Twenty-four. Twenty-three …”

  Mitchell’s voice in his headset pushed him onward like an explosion. Over 180 yards to go, no margin for error.

  He was sprinting now, arms pumping like pistons. Nina had opened the back door for him, a dim rectangle of light. The lawn rolled past beneath his feet. Look to the right. No guard. Left—

  Shit!

  A figure at the corner of the building. Looking away from him—but for how long?