Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (26 page)

The drug company’s headquarters were located in the business district of La Défense, at the western end of Paris’s six-mile-long Voie Triomphale. Anatole guided the sedan onto the busy Boulevard Périphérique and through a series of underground tunnels, before exiting the motorway close to Charles de Gaulle Avenue. Though it was well past morning peak traffic time, the boulevard was a gridlock of slow moving vehicles.

The immortals snaked through the crowded lanes and blissfully ignored the horns and angry shouts peppering the air around them.

Glittering glass and steel sky-rises loomed on the horizon as they approached the River Seine. The facade of La Grande Arche glowed in the distance, the pale marble reflecting the midday sun. Conrad was seeing it for the first time.

A phone rang as they started across the Pont de Neuilly. Conrad removed Stevens’s cell from his jacket and answered the call.

‘Hi,’ said Laura.

The sound of her voice sent a small shiver down his spine. Conrad suppressed the wave of yearning that rose through his body and concentrated on the green waters beyond the window. ‘What’s up?’

‘The research facility in Helsinki is clean,’ said Laura.

Conrad could practically see the frown puckering her brow.

‘Stevens and I have been through the place with a fine-tooth comb,’ she continued. ‘They’re doing advanced work in anesthetics, hence their need for bucket loads of BTX in the last couple of years. Their story makes sense. Our intelligence analysts can’t find any red flags in their history or financial activities.’

Anatole left the bridge and headed up an exit, the second Merc close on their tail.

‘Okay,’ said Conrad. ‘We’re almost at the French company’s location. We’ll keep you updated.’

‘Be careful,’ warned Laura. ‘Lewis just called. They’ve cleared the labs in Chicago and LA.’ She paused. ‘We’ll be taking off within the hour. I’ll see you at the airport.’

Anatole negotiated a series of access roads and swerved illegally into a service lane at the back of a group of buildings. He drove down a slope and parked in the shadows of a trio of skyscrapers.

Conrad stepped out and strolled to the Bastian Hunters’ vehicle as it rolled to a stop behind them. ‘Stay put,’ he told the driver. ‘We’ll yell if we need you.’

The man handed over a couple of flesh-colored, pea-sized earpieces and tiny, wireless Bluetooth transmitters. ‘These are hooked up on the same frequency we’re using,’ he said.

Conrad put on the devices and gave the second pair to Anatole. They followed a path to a flight of concrete steps and climbed up to a courtyard containing a modern water feature. A white high-rise soared on the other side of the piazza beyond it.

They entered the building through a side entrance and went up an escalator. Moments later, they reached a gigantic, airy, glass-covered courtyard connecting a complex of interlinked towers. They headed into the lobby of the tallest building and took a lift to the twentieth floor.

The elevator opened silently onto a carpeted corridor. A pair of frosted doors stood at the end of the empty passage. They stopped in front of the glass entrance and contemplated the security panel on the wall. Conrad glanced at the discreet cameras in the corners of the ceiling before studying the words etched on the doors.

‘“Societé Strabo,”’ he spelled out slowly.

Anatole pressed the buzzer on the panel. A small burst of static preceded a pleasant female voice. ‘Hello, how can I help you?’ the woman said in French.

‘We’re with the Security Service,’ Anatole declared in a somber voice, his accent flawless. ‘We have reason to believe that a crime has been committed on the premises that poses a threat to national security. Let us in.’

A gasp travelled over the intercom. ‘Pl—please wait a moment!’ the woman stammered. An electronic buzz sounded seconds later.

Conrad pushed through the doors and strode along a hall that opened onto a circular foyer. Steel-reinforced security doors with biometric locks radiated off the round space. He stopped in front of the pale blonde in the white dress suit seated behind the curved reception desk. The woman was placing a phone back on its cradle.

‘Our security chief will be with you in a moment,’ she said in a flustered tone, her cheeks flushed a bright pink. ‘Please take a seat.’ She indicated the brightly colored, modular chairs behind them.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have time for that,’ said Conrad bluntly. ‘We need to talk with whoever is in charge of—’

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ someone cut in smoothly from the left.

Conrad turned and watched a tall, heavily built man in a crisp, black suit cross the floor toward them. ‘And you are?’ asked the immortal.

The man bristled at his tone. ‘I’m the head of security at Strabo Corp.,’ he snapped. ‘May I see your credentials?’ He extended a hand rudely.

They showed the man their IDs. He scrutinized the badges for some time. Conrad knew the delay was deliberate. Anatole’s eyes glinted with a cold light as he studied the Strabo Corp. security chief.

‘How may I be of assistance?’ the man finally grunted.

‘We have reason to believe that a poison used to assassinate an American prisoner and a Soviet agent may have been manufactured by this company,’ said Conrad. ‘We would like to talk to your director.’

The man sneered. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Mr. Sahin is with Professor Kadir. They are otherwise engaged at the moment.’

‘Oh.’ Conrad smiled. His patience was wearing thin. ‘Doing what, exactly?’

The security chief squared his shoulders. ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ he said coldly, ‘but they’re attending to one of our most important clients.’

Unease shot through Conrad at the look that flashed in the man’s eyes. ‘Anatole?’ he said quietly.

‘Yeah?’ Though anger radiated off the red-haired immortal in waves, he grinned apologetically at the blonde behind the desk.

‘Open that door.’ Conrad indicated the opening through which the security head had entered the foyer.

The man glared at him. ‘What the—?’

‘Sorry, lady.’ Anatole strode around the receptionist’s station and gently moved her wheeled chair back from the desk. He took her place in front of a sleek computer, his fingers dancing nimbly over the keyboard. The woman’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly behind him.

The security head reached inside his suit jacket and took a step toward the reception. He stopped dead in his tracks when the barrel of a gun kissed the skin at his temple, his own weapon frozen in his grip.

‘Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,’ Conrad murmured at the other end of the HK P8 pistol.

Nadica studied the contents of the metal case. ‘Is that all of them?’

‘Yes,’ said Professor Ridvan Kadir. The head of R&D for Strabo Corp. pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His eyes gleamed with a zealous light as he observed the black boxes stacked neatly inside the padded briefcase. ‘They’ve been tuned to the specific C-band microwave frequency of the satellites and are ready to be deployed. I would advise a trial run. One of the smaller targets, maybe.’ His lips compressed in a thin line. ‘The people you have at your disposal should be more than capable of taking care of such a task.’

The director of the company bowed. ‘Please let us know if you require more products,’ Volkan Sahin said ingratiatingly. ‘Your will is our command, mistress.’

Nadica smiled crisply at the Strabo Corp. scientist and CEO. She knew that the two men both feared and lusted after her. Her face and physique were nearly as stunning as those of Ariana Rajkovic, a combination that had proven lethal on more occasions than she could count during the nine decades of her existence to date. Still, none of the men Nadica had attracted in that time could ever hope to match her brother’s physical and intellectual greatness; she was more committed to her sibling than she could ever be to a lover. She engaged the security lock on the case, dipped her head imperiously at the men, and turned on her heels.

The company’s secret research facility occupied three levels of the tower block. The walls and floors had been reinforced with extra steel and concrete to mask the presence of the experimental lab in the middle of what was effectively a business complex.

Her eyes skimmed dismissively over rooms of expensive equipment and scores of white-coated staff as she headed for the stairs that would take her back to the goods lift. As far as she was concerned, Strabo Corp. existed for a single purpose: to make the components of the devices that would help Zoran Rajkovic become the ruler of a new empire.

She went down two flights of steps and entered a small foyer holding the elevator. A security door opened at the end of the passage to her right just as she pressed the call button.

Conrad froze when he saw the woman standing with a metal briefcase in front of a lift some twenty feet away. Shock flared in her slate-colored gaze. It was replaced by a flash of recognition and anger. Her free hand moved to the small of her back.

‘Hey, isn’t that—?’ Anatole started to say behind him.

Conrad bolted down the corridor a split second before she raised her gun. She squeezed the trigger repeatedly. Bullets whispered past his head. A grunt sounded behind him. Anatole swore. A soft ‘ping’ chimed. The lift doors opened. The woman darted inside the cabin.

Conrad staggered to a stop in front of the closing elevator. ‘Help me!’ he shouted. He dug his fingers in the gap between the panels and pulled.

Anatole joined him, blood blossoming on his left temple where a bullet had grazed his head. Harsh grunts left their lips as they forced the outer doors apart. Conrad looked down the shaft, aimed his gun at the power unit on the roof of the rapidly disappearing car, and fired rapidly. The bullets struck metal with loud cracks.

Something exploded inside the electric motor; a high-pitched whine followed as the unit controlling the lift’s inner doors failed. The elevator slowed and stopped, its automatic safety measures engaging.

‘Take the stairs!’ Conrad barked. ‘And warn the Bastians!’ He jammed his pistol in his waistband, pulled out the gilded staff, and twisted the first ring.

Anatole gaped at him, his eyes shifting from the weapon to the yawning elevator opening. ‘Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re—?’

Conrad leaned inside the shaft and weaved the double-ended spear through the hoist ropes. He jammed the ends into the guide rails on the walls, braced one foot on a cable, and stepped into empty space.

The weapon shuddered in his hands as he slid some thirty feet down, the spear blades raising hot sparks from friction against the steel supports.

His boots struck the roof of the car hard, the shock of the landing reverberating up his legs. He yanked the staff from the cables, broke the locking mechanism on the ceiling exit hatch with a blow from one of the spear blades, and wrenched the trapdoor open. Brightly lit paneling appeared beneath him. He kicked through the frosted surface. The panel fell toward the floor of the lift.

Conrad kneeled and poked his head through the opening. He pulled back sharply. A bullet winged past his left cheek and struck the masonry wall of the elevator shaft above his head. A tortuous whine of metal reached his ears from below.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ he hissed.

He closed the staff, swapped it for the HK P8, and dropped inside the cabin.

The elevator had stopped partway between two levels. The woman had already forced the inner doors apart and was prizing the outer panels open onto an uneven landing. She spun around when the car juddered under the impact of his feet. Her eyes shrank into slits.

She cast the briefcase through the gap between the cabin transom and the adjacent floor, twisted on one leg, and aimed a high-kick at his head. Conrad blocked the blow with his forearm and staggered back a step.

The woman turned and jumped toward the opening. The immortal lunged forward. His fingers closed around her right calf. She gripped the edge of the landing, glared at him over her shoulder, and kicked out. Her boot connected sharply with his head.

Conrad stumbled, bright spots bursting across his vision. He shook his head dazedly and looked up in time to see her disappear through the breach. He swallowed a curse and put the gun away before scaling the exposed concrete wall.