Читать книгу Jimmy Coates: Target - Joe Craig - Страница 4

THE ONLY THING that distinguished this man from everyone else on the bridge was his stillness. His collar was turned up against the wind of a typical Parisian autumn and his hat was pulled down to his eyes. Nobody noticed him. Then, with one deep sigh, he marched through the fog towards the Île St Louis. / hope nobody will have to die today, he thought.

He reached a familiar wooden door. A sharp jab with his elbow snapped the old lock and he slipped through unobserved. Around him was a small courtyard he didn’t bother to inspect. Instead, he eyed the fourth floor of the adjacent building. Drizzle slicked the drainpipe when he clasped it, but he heaved himself up, strong and persistent. He hauled himself on to the balcony, careful to land silently, and drew his gun. It felt familiar yet horrible in his grip. It’s just a precaution, he told himself.

After only a moment, he burst through the flimsy balcony doors. “Levez les mains!” he shouted.

An elderly man sat proudly at his desk among piles of papers. “There’s no need to speak to me in French, Ian,” he announced with just a hint of an accent as he raised his hands above his head. “And there’s no need to point a gun at me. If you’re going to shoot, shoot. If not, let’s talk.”

“You should have run further away, Doctor.”

“Where could I have gone that NJ7 wouldn’t find me?” Still the gun pointed at the doctor’s head, but neither man blinked. Dr Memnon Sauvage rose slowly and edged round his desk.

“You know I can’t come with you,” he continued. “What I’ve done can’t be undone, no matter what Hollingdale does to me.”

“Turn round and put your hands behind your back,” the other man replied flatly.

“How’s Helen?” The doctor stayed facing the way he was. “Has the baby been born? It must be any day now.” Despite huge effort, Ian Coates’s face flickered.

“Ah,” exclaimed Dr Sauvage with a dry smile. “Congratulations. A father for the second time!”

Ian Coates was scowling now, trying hard to detach his anger from his trigger finger. “Do as I say or I will shoot you.”

“Go ahead. Shoot me,” Dr Sauvage snapped back. “Then NJ7 will never know what France is capable of.”

“Then turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“So you can march me back to London? Back to NJ7? Back to your wife?”

At that, Coates slapped his hand viciously across the old man’s face. The blow sent him straight to the floor.

“Hollingdale can do nothing without me,” barked Dr Sauvage, spitting blood. “Tell him that! And tell him this: the day he finds out what I’ve done will be the day it kills him.”

Ian Coates approached slowly, leading with his gun. But Dr Sauvage crawled backwards, round his desk, and stopped at the foot of a huge bookcase. The two men stayed like that for what seemed like for ever. Dr Sauvage’s blood dripped from Ian Coates’s knuckles. Then the doctor’s glance flicked for a moment towards the papers on his desk. Coates followed his gaze, but immediately regretted it. In that instant, Sauvage heaved on the bookcase.

“No!” cried Ian Coates, dropping his gun and lunging forwards. He was too late. The huge books hit Sauvage like a prizefighter’s punches. Then the bookcase itself crushed his wiry frame.

Coates was stunned. Only the doctor’s head was visible. Coates reached down to the man’s neck and felt for a pulse – out of habit, not in hope. A cloud of dust settled on the body.

Coates didn’t panic. He rifled through the stacks of papers on the desk. Everything was in code, of course, but he discarded the files at the top as obvious decoys. He paused when he came to a bright orange flash drive, the sort you could simply plug into a computer to make vast amounts of data portable. It was marked simply ‘ZAF-1’. The same initials recurred on documents, sometimes in bold. It meant nothing to him.

He snatched up his gun and stuffed as many of the files as he could under his arm, slipped the flash drive into his pocket. He ran out of the room and followed the staircase to the roof. From there he bounded across to the next building, shoving the papers into his coat so his hands were free. ZAF-1, he thought, trying to shut out the image of the doctor’s death. What could it mean?

He leapt to a balcony below, then down again, catching the arc of a lamp-post. Finally, he let himself drop into the back alley and away he ran.