‘Belts on! And that’s not a request!’ she screamed.
She settled in the driver’s seat and rammed the car into reverse, checking behind her for an escape route. She floored the accelerator and got to around fifty kilometres an hour. She plunged the gearbox into neutral and waited for the engine to smooth over, then, without warning, she turned the steering wheel from left to right. The car turned one hundred and eighty degrees, screeching on the tarmac, and Helen heard panting from the back.
‘Bravo,’ the PM’s bodyguard complimented her. She ramped the gearbox into drive and accelerated away the way they’d come.
But it wasn’t over.
Two men emerged from behind the treeline. Park visitors screamed and ran away, grabbing children from picnic rugs and diving for cover. Gunfire rattled over the bonnet and they all took cover inside the vehicle. They slammed into a tree.
The impact wasn’t serious and Helen was barely winded. She scanned the faces of the two shooters. They both carried short-barrelled automatics with an extra AK-47 slung over their shoulders for good measure. One of them was Fawaz bin Nabil. She realised in horror that the attack on Versailles was a diversionary ruse: his true target was Sir Conrad and the PM, and she’d driven them right to him. Here in the early-evening sunshine, in the middle of families enjoying picnics, he planned to gun down those responsible for his son’s death.
‘I need you,’ she told the bodyguard. They sank down and cowered in the foot well.
‘Keep down,’ she screamed at the two men in the back.
‘I’ll take left, you, right,’ she said. Two vehicles in the PM’s entourage had driven towards them, under fire. Helen peered above the window level and saw Fawaz walking calmly towards the car as the other unidentified shooter was taken out. Fawaz kept walking. Helen could tell by his face that he knew that Sir Conrad and the prime minister were with her in this car. She cocked and fired, but missed because her aim was out at the last minute: a woman ran behind Fawaz and Helen knew she’d have killed her if she’d been on aim. She took cover again. The bodyguard got off a few rounds.
Fawaz returned fire and sprayed all around him for good measure with the AK-47.
‘Give me a fucking MP5,’ she said, gutted that she’d only been issued a few pistols. They were good at short range but not accurate at the distance Fawaz was currently. They’d expected close combat. She needed something destructive. The bodyguard crawled to the back seat, making sure the VIPs were keeping low, and produced two pristine Heckler & Koch submachine guns. She snatched one, ducking from bullets pinging off the body armour.
‘Drive!’ she shouted. The bodyguard crawled into the driver’s seat. Fawaz kept coming. Why wasn’t he dead? He was so close now; he fired again and again, and a shot from behind sliced through his arm. More rounds split his shoulder and hand on his left side. There was hush in between rounds as, no doubt, the PM’s bodyguards checked crossfire.
They were trapped by the other vehicles now, and Helen opened her door and got out, crouching behind the door. She brought the automatic up and took aim. She squeezed her left eye shut and aimed for his head, gently pressing the trigger, landing her first burst of ammunition. He went down, and she lowered her weapon.
But it wasn’t over. They created a barricade of armed guards around the principal’s car and waited. Distant screams and calls for help could be heard, as well as birds singing and an aeroplane up above.
Were there more attackers?
She wiped her brow as she waited, crouched behind the door of a support vehicle. The PM’s car remained static, gas seeping from the hood, with all the windows and doors locked, as she’d told them. She caught the bodyguard’s eye, and he nodded to her: they were okay.
It wasn’t for her to judge who was in the right. Sir Conrad could have made the connection way before she did, but he probably didn’t even remember signing the extradition form of an incidental Moroccan who he’d sent home to be electrocuted, beaten and probably sexually humiliated in some way.
She heard the familiar sirens of the gendarmes and emergency vehicles but kept watching the treeline, expecting more followers to emerge holding automatic weapons.
A helicopter buzzed overhead, and she looked up: it was the damn media. Ah well, if they got a close-up at least Grant would know she was alive. She heard a car door open and turned around angrily. It was Sir Conrad.
‘Shouldn’t you come back inside here?’ he asked. She smiled weakly.
‘Thank you, sir, but I think I prefer to be outside.’ She turned away and heard the door slam. Later, as the emergency services arrived and the park was made secure, Helen walked up to the body of Fawaz bin Nabil. She leant over and studied his face, realising that a photograph had fallen out his shirt pocket. It was of his son, Rafik.
Chapter 56
L’Aiguille du Midi cable car ascended through the clouds on its way to Mont Blanc. The sky seemed to shine a crisper blue up here at almost four thousand metres. They looked out of the window and seemed suspended above sheer rock as it scaled the peak up to the highest point reachable by transport. From there, one had to climb the final thousand metres to the glorious summit, but climbing wasn’t on the agenda today. They’d both done it before and they watched as climbers and walkers, eager to tackle Europe’s highest peak, gathered their thoughts excitedly and nervously at the same time. Mont Blanc wasn’t a hill walk, though many had died thinking it might be.
The hairiest part of the cable-car journey was the final push, hanging underneath ancient rock,
