The Secret of Excalibur (27 page)

‘Get me ready?’ she echoed.

‘You do not seriously think you would be able to get in looking like that, do you?’ He looked disdainfully at her heavy coat, jeans and Reeboks. ‘My girls all look amazing, like models - like
supermodels
! You will have to look the same.’

‘Oh,’ Nina said. ‘Y’know, that might be a problem. I’m not really the supermodel type.’

Prikovsky grinned - or leered, though it was hard to tell with the cigar clenched between his teeth. ‘No need to worry. Some makeup, the right clothes . . . Mario is incredible.’

‘Mario?’ hooted Chase. ‘There’s a proper Russian name.’

‘He styles all my girls,’ Prikovsky told him as he put the briefcase into a safe. ‘We’ll go and see him now.’ He grinned again. ‘In my shiny new truck!’

‘Shut up,’ said Nina, before Chase even had a chance to open his mouth.

It opened anyway - mostly in amazement. ‘Bloody hell,’ he finally managed to say. ‘You look . . . whoa. Pavel was right - Mario really
is
incredible!’

Nina had spent the better part of two hours in an opulent salon, her hair being washed and styled, makeup applied to her face. She was not the only woman there - over a dozen others were also lined up before the huge illuminated mirrors, being worked upon and fussed over by two women apiece. Mario - who despite his name was about as Italian as Joseph Stalin - scurried back and forth along the line, brushing and plucking and tweezing and glossing, fixing every last detail of each makeover.

And though the overall look was a long way removed from anything Nina would have chosen herself, she was forced to admit it was indeed one hell of a makeover. She had spent a good portion of the time in a reclined position; when she finally sat upright, she experienced a bizarre moment of disassociation, as though someone else was looking back at her from the mirror. Someone who happened to be a model . . . though she wasn’t prepared to go as far as supermodel. Mario wasn’t
that
good.

It wasn’t the heavy, smoky-eyed makeup or scarlet false nails or ultra-moussed hairstyle that aroused her ire, though. It was the outfit Prikovsky had provided for her - which, as she’d expected, provoked a wide-eyed response when she was presented to Chase and the other men.

‘I look like a goddamn
hooker
,’ she moaned. The sleeveless black rubber minidress was, she’d been assured, the product of some extremely expensive and exclusive designer in London - but that didn’t alter the fact that it was also extremely tight and revealing. She had the horrible feeling that if she moved her knees more than a fraction of an inch apart, the entire skirt would twang up over her hips like an overstretched elastic band.

‘You’re
supposed
to be a hooker,’ Chase pointed out.

‘Hey!’ said Prikovsky. ‘My girls are not hookers. They are . . .’ He thought about it. ‘Escorts? No, courtesans. The courtesans of Pavel Prikovsky, that sounds better. Like the title of a great Russian novel.’

‘Or that crappy American novel,
The Immodesty of Nina Wilde
,’ Nina grumbled. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’

‘No, no,’ said Chase, smirking, ‘I’m all for it now. You
are
going to dress like that after we’re married, right?’

‘That’s it, I’m outta here.’ Nina turned and tried to teeter back into the salon on her high heels, but found her way blocked by Mario, who clapped approvingly and ushered her into the lounge once more. He reached up, trying to remove her pendant, but she forcefully shook her head. He tutted, then spoke in Russian to Prikovsky, who laughed. Mario then bowed and returned to the salon.

‘What did he say?’ Nina demanded.

‘He thinks your necklace looks cheap,’ said Prikovsky. Nina shot an offended look after the stylist. ‘But he is very pleased with how you turned out, considering how little time he had to work with you. Oh, and also considering your age.’

‘My
age
?’ she shrieked. ‘I’m only thirty!’

Prikovsky shrugged. ‘Most of my girls are only twenty-two, twenty-three! You should be proud. You look . . . unrecognisable.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘In this case, yeah,’ said Mitchell, who had been watching with quiet amusement. ‘Honestly, if I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t have recognised you when you stepped out of there. So hopefully no one else will either.’ He stood, taking a box from a pocket. ‘Okay, time to mike you up.’

‘What’s that?’ Nina asked, eyeing the object in the box. It looked like a small golden bullet.

‘Earpiece. You ever watch that show,
24
? Just like Jack Bauer uses. It’s two-way - you’ll be able to hear me and Eddie, and we’ll be able to hear you and what’s going on around you. All you have to do is whisper.’

Chase stood for a closer look as Mitchell carefully slipped the bug into Nina’s left ear. ‘What’s the range?’

‘Only about two hundred metres. But that doesn’t matter because you’ll have the relay so I can hear, and once you get to the outer wall you’ll be in range.’ The device in place, he stepped back, quickly running an admiring eye over Nina’s glossy curves.

‘I saw that!’ she snapped.

‘Get used to it,’ Prikovsky told her. ‘You will get a lot more attention than that tonight.’ He frowned as a thought struck him. ‘Do you speak Russian?’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘Hmm. Still, not a problem. The girls are not there for conversation.’ Nina could barely suppress a disgusted shudder. ‘Okay, you’re an American student here to learn Russian - and you’re doing this because you need money to buy a dictionary. Ha!’ He drew back a hand as if about to slap her on the butt, but stopped short on seeing Chase’s stony glare.

‘All right,’ said Mitchell, adopting a commanding tone. ‘I’ll be waiting in the helo. It’ll take me four minutes to reach the mansion from my takeoff point, so once you secure the item, that’s how long you’ll have to get to the extraction point. There’s a balcony on the west side - it’s not big enough to land on, but there’s enough clearance for me to hover next to it so you can climb aboard. If you don’t raise the alarm, we should be able to get clear before anyone realises what’s going on.’

‘And if we do raise the alarm?’ asked Nina.

Chase reached into his leather jacket and drew out a massive silver handgun. ‘Jack had a little present delivered while you were getting your cuticles done,’ he said with definite glee. ‘Desert Eagle, .50-cal Action Express. Would have preferred a Wildey, but I’m not complaining.’

Mitchell shook his head. ‘Big, heavy, limited load, huge recoil . . .’

‘Works for me. Anyone gets hit by this, they’re done.’ His smile disappeared. ‘And if I see Kruglov . . .’

‘Let’s hope you don’t need it,’ Nina told him, gently pushing the raised weapon back down.

‘Okay,’ said Mitchell. ‘Let’s party.’

24

T
he girls left the salon in a small convoy of minivans driven by Prikovsky’s men. Nina was in the last vehicle with three other young women, as carefully made-up and provocatively dressed as she was; none spoke English, but all seemed excited - in a somewhat calculating way - about the evening.

Excited
wasn’t the word Nina would have used to describe her feelings, however.
Tense
would have been closer. Or
nauseous
.

A voice in her left ear. Chase.

‘Nina, if you can hear me, clear your throat.’ She did. ‘Okay, I’m not far behind you.’ She glanced back, seeing headlights in the distance. ‘I’ll call you again soon as I get to the entry point.’

The lights dropped away. There was a faint crackle as if he had opened the line to speak again, but then it faded to nothing. Out of range.

She was on her own.

The minivan came to a stop at a gate with a high wall to each side - the same wall she had seen in the background of the spy photo of Kruglov.

Vaskovich’s mansion. The dragon’s lair.

Security guards opened the doors and shone bright flashlights into the faces of each of the van’s occupants in turn. Nina was the last to be checked. A chill swept over her, not solely from the night air. What if they recognised her, if she wasn’t on the guest list, if Prikovsky had betrayed her . . .

The light swept down to her legs, paused for a moment - and flicked off. The guard leered, then shut the door. The minivan drove on.

Vaskovich’s mansion lay directly ahead, at the end of a long drive surrounded by lawns. Nina leaned forward for a better look, impressed despite herself by the brightly lit edifice. It was as huge as she had imagined, but elegant where she had expected nouveau-riche vulgarity, a perfectly restored neo-classical building of the early nineteenth century, tall arched windows blazing with light.

The vehicles lined up outside more closely matched her preconceptions, however. Expensive, showy and mostly vulgar, a procession of stretch limousines and supercars. Valets drove them round the corner of the mansion after the occupants emerged. Nina imagined that a scratch on any of the vehicles would cost the careless perpetrator more than a docked pay packet.

The vans pulled up. More security guards in heavy coats lined the front steps, watching them. The girls got out, to be met by a man in a white tuxedo. He quickly spoke to each in turn before pointing to the doors above, reaching Nina last.

‘Uh, I . . . I don’t speak very good Russian,’ she said in response to his instructions.

He frowned. ‘You don’t speak Russian? Oy! Pavel is getting lazy; I should send you home. What are you, American?’ Nina nodded. He chewed his lip for a moment. ‘Well, there are some Yankees in there. Easy to find - they’re the ones who can’t hold their drink. Stay with them. What’s your name?’

‘Nina.’

‘Nina, okay. I’m Dmitri; if you need a private room, find me. The top floor is off-limits. Okay, shoo, shoo!’

Even with a coat over her outfit Nina was still freezing, and she was about to hurry gratefully inside when a blast of noise halted her mid-step. She looked up to see a helicopter sweeping over the mansion, swinging round to land on the lawn. But it was no ordinary helicopter; clearly military, black as the night sky and with two sets of rotor blades mounted one above the other on a single shaft, it was one of the most bizarre - and menacing - machines she had ever seen.

‘What’s
that
?’ she asked.

Dmitri looked annoyed. ‘
That
is the new Deputy Defence Minister Felix Mishkin, showing off and ruining the grass! Go in, go, I will greet him.’ He turned to watch the helicopter power down.

Nina clacked up the stairs on her heels, entering to have her coat taken by another man in a white tux. A few groups of people were talking in the marble lobby, all men - and all taking the time out from their conversations to watch her strut past in her tight, shiny dress. Feeling horribly self-conscious as well as scared, she nevertheless remembered her role and smiled politely at them before going through the double doors into the next room.

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 their 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 amongst 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 beachballs, 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 round, 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 towards 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 recognised 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 realised 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, defenceless.

But there was nothing she could do. Her skin-tight 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 realising 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 beard. ‘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 somebody behind Nina. For the first time, his face actually revealed some enthusiasm. ‘Ah, Felix Mishkin!’

Nina looked round - only to hurriedly turn away again as she saw Kruglov returning. With him was a man in his mid-thirties, 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 this could be her chance to slip away, she realised 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 keeping in 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 . . .