She threw the torches.
The spilled fuel ignited. The crowd screamed and pushed back, people stumbling and causing a chain reaction as others tripped over them. A trail of flame rushed across the open space. Kit jumped away, but his sleeve was already alight. He swatted at the fire, trying to shrug off the garment. The fire-eater’s assistant scrambled for an extinguisher.
Madirakshi took advantage of the panic to dive back into the crowd. Eddie ran after her.
Neon flashed ahead, the shrill mosquito buzz of the holographic display getting louder. Behind, he heard the gushing hiss of the fire extinguisher. Madirakshi’s black bun had become partially unfastened in her flight, long black hair flapping behind her like a horse’s tail.
Eddie reached out, grabbed it, pulled. She shrieked, then spun.
The stolen pistol was in her hand—
He ducked as she fired, the bullet hitting a man behind him and showering his companions with blood.
Eddie sprang up before she could fire again, slamming his shoulder into her adbomen. She reeled. Metal clattered against paving as the gun was knocked from her hand.
He grabbed for the fallen weapon, missed, tripped as someone ran into him, and found himself amongst a forest of trampling legs. A man stumbled over him, stamping on his hand. Eddie yelled and struggled to stand, realising through the sharp pain that he had lost sight of Madirakshi. He looked from side to side. No sign of the police uniform—
Something lashed round his neck from behind.
Eddie’s hand flashed up reflexively just as the garrotte pulled tight, crushing his fingers against his Adam’s apple. Choking, he tried to push the wire away, but it cut painfully into his flesh, blood oozing out. A knee crunched into his back. He struggled for breath as the wire drew tighter, sawing at his throat—
Kit hurtled from the panicked crowd and tackled her. She lost her grip on one end of the garrotte as all three fell. He tried to pin her, but she elbowed him viciously in the face and jumped back up, about to run again—
Sirens howled all round the square, a voice booming orders through a megaphone. The Lyon police were sealing off the Place des Terreaux.
Eddie got up. ‘There’s no way out!’ he gasped. ‘If you give up now, I
To her other side, Kit was also recovering. Madirakshi glanced between the two men, eyeing up possible escape routes - and finding none, blocked by the towering neon display and the pedestal beneath the holographic dancer. ‘We can make a deal,’ said Kit. ‘Testify against your employer, and we—’
She was uninterested in deals. Instead, she ran to the neon sculpture - and started to climb it.
‘Get round the other side, cut her off!’ Eddie told Kit, but even as he spoke he realised she had no intention of jumping down. She kept climbing the ladder-like central frame, the spinning lighting effect seeming to sweep her aloft. What the hell was she doing?
The answer hit him as she reached the pinnacle, over thirty feet above. She
‘No, wait!’ he shouted—
Too late.
She thrust her hands into the wiring.
The neon flickered, sparks sizzling from the sculpture’s summit as thousands of volts surged through her. People screamed at the sight. Smoke coiled from Madirakshi’s body as she shuddered uncontrollably, the vibrations shaking the whole tower . . .
Something broke loose. With the searing lightning-crack of an electrical short, the display went dark, and the woman fell away.
For a moment, it seemed as though the hollow man was trying to catch her . . . but he was just an illusion. High-powered lasers seared across her back as she dropped towards the holographic generator, uniform and hair bursting into flames before the blazing corpse smashed down spread-eagled on the pedestal. The operator hurriedly shut off the lasers, but the body continued to burn, rising smoke glowing in every colour imaginable as it passed through the beams of the giant projections.
8
New York City
‘
‘She electrocuted herself and fell on a hologram that set her on fire,’ he repeated. ‘Probably not what the local tourist board had in mind for their Festival of Light . . . Anyway, she was dead set - literally - on not being caught.’
‘I’ve heard of loyalty to your employer, but jeez,’ she said. ‘And Fernandez is dead?’ The thought was not exactly heartbreaking.
‘Yeah. She practically sliced his head off. We just got a preliminary report on her body - that glass eye of hers was a fake.’
Despite the grim situation, Nina couldn’t help but smile. ‘They usually are.’
‘Ha fuckin’ ha. I mean, it was a trick eye - there was a garrotte wire inside it. Someone’s been getting ideas from
For the second time in less than a minute, she was astonished. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I saw that woman in San Francisco - she brought Khoil a phone just before we got attacked. So unless she was doing some really violent moonlighting, it’s a good bet that he’s connected with this. My guess is that he had Fernandez killed to stop him grassing.’
Thinking back, she remembered the woman. ‘Maybe the phone call was to tell Fernandez to carry out the raid,’ she mused. ‘His Plan A was to ask me for full access to the Talonor Codex - but when I said no, he already had Plan B all ready to go.’
‘Just steal the thing.’
‘Right. So what happens now?’
‘Kit’s going to India to check out the Khoils - he’s willing to take my word that this woman’s the one from Frisco, and he thinks that makes them worth investigating.’
‘And if Interpol finds the Khoils really are behind everything?’
‘Dunno, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Probably be a race between the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate and Chinese External Security to see who can kill ’em first for nicking their countries’ treasures.’
‘What about you?’
He yawned, almost setting her off in sympathy. ‘Doesn’t look like I’m going to get much sleep tonight. I’ve got to finish giving my statement to Interpol, then I’m flying back to New York.’
‘What time is it there now?’ She looked at her watch; it was past seven in the evening.
‘After one in the morning. When are you finishing work?’
‘I’m almost done. I had a fun day explaining to Sebastian Penrose and some State Department people how the director of the IHA got embroiled in another gun battle. You know, I really hoped we’d left this kind of thing behind us.’
‘No such luck, eh?’ He yawned again, then grunted in discomfort.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, just got a sore neck where she cut me.’
‘What? She cut you?’
‘Remember that garrotte? She got the drop on me with it. I’m okay, though.’
Nina’s concern grew. ‘And how did she get the drop on you?’ ‘It wasn’t ’cause of my hearing,’ he said, irritation clear in his voice.
‘I didn’t say it was.’
‘You were thinking it, though. Christ, this is why I didn’t tell you about it before.’
