Kamar swore viciously. ‘I don’t think Britva will see it that way.’
‘Britva,’ breathed Vassikin.The only thing the Menidzher understood was money. ‘O gods. We’re dead.’
The mobile phone rattled on the deck. The speaker was vibrating. Fowl was still on the other end.
Mikhael picked up the mobile as though it were a grenade. ‘Fowl?You there?’
‘Yes,’ came the reply.
‘You crazy devil! What are you doing?Your father is as good as dead. I thought we had a deal!’
‘We still do. A new one. You can still make some money tonight.’
Mikhael stopped panicking and started paying attention. Could there possibly be a way out of this nightmare?
‘I’m listening.’
‘The last thing I need is for my father to return and destroy what I have built up over the past two years.’
Mikhael nodded. This made perfect sense to him.
‘So he had to die. I had to see it done myself, just to be sure. But I could still leave you a little something.’
Mikhael could barely breathe. ‘A little something?’
‘The ransom. All five million.’
‘And why would you do that?’
‘You get the money; I get safe passage home. Fair enough?’
‘Seems fair to me.’
‘Very well. Now look across the bay, above the fjord.’
Mikhael looked. There was a flare burning, right at the snow-covered hill’s tip.
‘There is a briefcase tied to that flare. The flare goes out in ten minutes. I’d get there before then if I were you. Otherwise the case could take years to find.’
Mikhael didn’t bother to cut the connection. He just dropped the phone and ran. ‘The money,’ he shouted at Kamar. ‘Up there. The flare.’
Kamar was after him in a heartbeat, shouting instructions into the radio.
Someone had to reach that money. Who cared about a drowning Irlanskii when there were five million dollars to be claimed?
Root pointed at Holly the moment Artemis Senior had been shot. ‘Go!’ he ordered.
Captain Short activated her wings, launching herself right off the hilltop.
Of course, what they were doing here was against all the regulations, but the
Council was cutting Foaly a lot of slack having more or less convicted him of treason. The only conditions were that the centaur was in constant communication, and that every member of the party was fitted with remote incineration packs, so that they and all their fairy technology could be destroyed in the event of capture or injury.
Holly followed events on the submarine through her visor. She saw the charge impact on Artemis Senior’s shoulder, knocking him against the larger
Russian. Blood registered in her field of vision. It was still warm enough to be picked up by her thermal imager. Holly had to admit, it looked effective. Maybe
Artemis’s plan could actually work. Maybe the Russians would be fooled. After all, humans generally saw what they wanted to see.
Then things went horribly wrong.
‘He’s in the water!’ shouted Holly into her helmet mike, opening the wing rig’s throttle to the max. ‘He’s alive, but not for long unless we get him out.’
She skimmed silently over the glistening ice, arms crossed over her chest for speed. She was moving too fast for human vision to pin her down.
She could be a bird, or a seal breaking the waves. The submarine loomed before her.
On board the Nikodim, the Russians were evacuating. Clambering down the tower ladder, feet slipping in their haste. And ashore, the same. Men breaking cover, crashing through the frosted undergrowth. The commander must have set the flare. Those Mud Men would be delirious to find their precious money, only to have it dissolve in seventy-two hours. That should just about give them time to deliver it to their boss. Odds on he wouldn’t be happy with disappearing cash.
Holly skimmed the sub’s keel, safe from radiation in her suit and helmet.
At the last moment, she flipped upwards, shielded from the northern shore by the conning tower. She popped the throttle, hovering above the ice hole where the human had fallen in. The commander was talking into her ear, but Holly didn’t reply. She had a job to do and no time for talk.
Fairies hate cold. They hate it. Some are so phobic about low temperatures that they won’t even eat ice cream. The last thing Holly wanted to do right now was put so much as a toe into that sub-zero, radioactive water.
But what choice did she have? ‘D’Arvit,’ she swore, and plunged into the water.
The micro-filaments in her suit deadened the cold, but they could not dispel it entirely. Holly knew that she had seconds before the temperature-drop slowed her reactions and sent her into shock.
Below her, the unconscious human was as pale as a ghost. Holly fumbled with her wing controls. A touch too much on the throttle could send her too deep. Not enough and she would fall short. And at these temperatures, you got one shot only.
Holly hit the throttle. The engine buzzed once, sending her ten fathoms down. Perfect. She grabbed Fowl Senior by the waist, quickly clipping him on to her Moonbelt. He hung there limply. He needed an infusion of magic, and the sooner the better.
Holly glanced upwards. It seemed as though the ice hole was already closing. Was there anything else that could go wrong? The commander was shouting in her ear, but she shut him out, concentrating on getting back to dry land.
Ice crystals spun themselves across the hole like spiders’ webs. The ocean seemed determined to claim them.
I don’t think so, thought Holly, pointing her helmeted head at the surface, and opening the throttle as far as it would go.They crashed through the ice, arced through the air and landed on the slatted surface of the sub’s forward deck.
The human’s face was the colour of the surrounding landscape. Holly crouched on his chest like a predatory creature, exposing the supposed wound to the night air. There was blood on the deck, but it was Artemis
Junior’s blood: they had pried the cap from a Hydrosion shell, and half filled it with blood taken from Artemis’s arm. On impact, the Fizzer had knocked
Artemis Senior off his feet, sending the crimson liquid spiralling through the air. Very convincing. Of course, being thrown into the freezing waters had not been part of the plan.
The shell had not penetrated his skin, but Mister Fowl was not safe yet.
Holly’s thermal imager showed that his heartbeat was dangerously slow and weak. She laid her hands on his chest. ‘Heal,’ she whispered. ‘Heal.’
And the magic scurried down her fingers.
Artemis couldn’t watch Holly’s rescue attempt. Had he done the right thing? What if the Hydrosion shell penetrated? How could he ever face his mother again?
‘Oh no,’ said Butler.
Artemis was at his side in an instant. ‘What is it?’
‘Your father is in the water. One of the Russians threw him in.’
The boy groaned. That water was as deadly as any bullet. He’d been afraid that something like this would happen.
Root had also been following the rescue attempt. ‘OK. She’s over the water. Can you see him, Holly?’
No answer. Just static in his earphones.
‘Status, Captain? Respond.’
Nothing.
‘Holly?’
