10
South Rome (Allied sector)
“Inappropriate and off topic, I know,” said Harry, as the agent led him away from the angry Russians at the reception, “but would you be …?”
“Plunkett,” replied the David Gower look-alike. “David Plunkett.”
“David …?”
“Gower was, would have been, my nephew. By way of my sister. But he’s not been born yet, of course. Perhaps never will be. Does the head in, doesn’t it, Your Highness?”
“Please. Just Harry. I’m not nearly so high-and-mighty as I once was. The line of succession took a long detour around me in ’49.” Having touched on the issue of his own father’s birth and where that left him, Harry steered the conversation back to the Plunkett family tree. “Don’t you find it a bit difficult in this line of work, having a famous unborn nephew? A doppelganger, really. You could be his twin.”
They had pushed far enough into Babington’s to have left behind the protests and shouts of Beria’s men but were not yet into the crush and roar of the party proper. A few guests turned and, recognizing Harry, raised their drinks and smiled. Some of the men dipped their heads and a few of the women even curtsied, which wasn’t at all necessary—in fact, it was a breach of protocol, strictly speaking. The Act of Succession that removed him, or rather clarified his irrelevance to the royal line in this world, had made all such ceremony redundant. Harry didn’t mind his redundancy one little bit.
“I’m a declared asset,” said Plunkett. “MI6 liaison to the host government. Wouldn’t have worked out that way originally, from what I’ve been told. But we play the cards as they are dealt.”
“Or each ball on its own merits.”
“Indeed,” the not-so-secret agent agreed with a smile. “Her Majesty’s government had already invested considerable time and money in my early training when the penny dropped. Would have been a terrible waste to just let me go when I could play at being the most dangerous concierge in Europe.”
“Right then, I suppose we’d best not arse around,” said Harry.
The atmosphere in the restaurant was strange. The waitstaff were under orders to bring out as much alcohol as quickly as they could, especially to any Russians in need of a drink. Nobody offered the prince or Agent Plunkett as much as a shandy, and he doubted they would give him a drink even if he had asked. The Russians too, he noted, in defiance of national character, were remaining resolutely dry.
“How many of these cheeky f*ckers do we have in here?” Harry asked.
“The Smedlovs? Nine that we are aware of. That’s nine hitters. Half an NKVD snatch squad that got in before we could stop them, and a couple of ring-ins from their embassy’s undeclared-asset list. Plus another five guests here legitimately, from the trade delegation to the conference.”
Plunkett led him through the heaving press of the crowd. Harry followed close at heel.
“Can we expect any trouble from the trade-ministry people, Mr. Plunkett?” he asked.
He was aware of being tracked by two Slavic-looking bruisers, who were keeping pace with him and Plunkett as they moved farther into the venue. The goons were not shy about muscling their way through the crowd. You could track their progress by the drinks they spilled, the elbows they jostled, and by one old dame they nearly knocked to the ground. Under different circumstances, Harry might have hurried over to help her up, and popped the Bolshevik enforcer a good one on the nose for his bad manners. Instead he hurried along just behind the SIS agent. The Russians were sending a nasty vibe throughout the gathering. Harry was alive to it, and increasingly so were the guests.
“Hard to say what they might do if and when things kick off,” Plunkett conceded of the five Soviet diplomats. “We have pretty thorough coverage on all of them. As best we can tell, there are no real players there. A couple with military experience, because—well, who doesn’t nowadays? But nothing of note. And we have each of them marked, anyway. It’s Beria’s people who are making a bloody nuisance of themselves.”
By now Harry could see for himself what Plunkett meant. He recognized the British ambassador—backed into a corner, engaged in an animated discussion with a short, bald character, who seemed to be leaking sweat from every pore in his body. The man’s cheap, ill-fitting suit shone where the light caught it, and his frightened eyes darted back and forth between another pair of slab-shouldered Soviet brutes, who were doing their best to slowly, surreptitiously, force their way through a cordon of Plunkett’s people. Undoubtedly, the human bag of sweat and nerves was none other than Valentin Sobeskaia.
From this distance, the contest between the Russians and the embassy’s security people was fascinating to behold. It had not come to open blows yet, but Beria’s men were not far off. The larger of the two was toe to toe with an enormous black man, whose dinner jacket probably cost more than the Russian earned in a year.
Harry smiled at the sight of his former regimental sergeant major. He almost laughed. In fact, he felt his spirits lifting for the first time since he had seen Julia, so many hours before.
“Viv,” he said. “Everything is going to be fine. Or not. But better than I’d thought, anyway.”
“Indeed. Sorry, I suppose I should’ve mentioned it. Mr. St. Clair is here in a private capacity, as a businessman, of course …”
Harry waved off Plunkett’s explanation. “Oh, I’m not at all surprised that old Viv would be mixed up in all this, Agent.”
“I’ll gather more troops if you think you’re good for this, sir?” said the SIS man.
“Good to go,” Harry replied as he watched the big West Indian shift his center of gravity slightly while holding on to the wrist of the NKVD thug attempting to get past him. The former SAS noncom drew the other man’s hand across his body and inflated his chest with a deep breath. The move was quick and almost impossible to see, if you didn’t know what to look for. But Harry could hear the crack as St. Clair broke the man’s elbow. The Russian’s face turned yellow, then white. Sweat beaded his high forehead and the muscles in his jaw line knotted as he ground his teeth together.
But he did not retreat. Instead, he used his close proximity to St. Clair to attempt a killing blow. Harry saw the flash of a blade appear in his good hand just in time. It looked like an oyster knife, stolen from the buffet.
“Viv, old man! On your left,” he called out, distracting both Russians but not St. Clair. It was not his first bar fight. St. Clair ratcheted up the torque on the armlock as Harry lunged forward and grabbed the attacker’s knife hand, crushing it back into the joint and twisting viciously, breaking that limb too. The NKVD hard man groaned and staggered away from the confrontation. He looked as if he was about to vomit.
“Bloody Russians,” said Harry. “Never could handle their drink.”
“Nice to see you, guv,” beamed his old sergeant. “Heads up …”
The West Indian interposed himself between Harry and the second attacker, who had moved up quietly on his blind side. St. Clair’s hand shot out and back-fisted the man in the testicles. Harry flinched when he heard the crack. Plunkett took the victim by the arm, not gently, and propelled him away from the ambassador and Comrade Sobeskaia.
“Nasty,” Harry muttered with a heartfelt grimace. “I think I heard one of his goolies pop.”
“That’s disappointing, guv,” said St. Clair. “I was aiming for both.”
Harry looked down as he felt a hand gripping his biceps. It was Sobeskaia, who had detached himself from the ambassador.
“Your Highness, you must get me out of here. You must get me away. They mean to kill me. I know what they are capable of.” The man was dangerously close to babbling.
“Oh, I think we all know what they’re capable of. Get a grip, man—but not on me.” Harry prised the Russian businessman’s fingers from his upper arm. Sobeskaia’s hands were cold and clammy. Panic sweat.
“Don’t mind him, guv,” said St. Clair. “I’ve got him sorted.”
The ambassador, an ex–Royal Navy man, Harry recalled, did his best to calm their would-be defector and draw him away from Harry and Viv, who had now been targeted by three more NKVD goons.
Harry took up station next to the forbidding presence of Vivian Richards St. Clair—six feet four inches of hard-packed West Indian carnivore. The reception roared on around them, largely oblivious to the quietly violent struggle playing out near the sausage rolls and party pies. Harry understood now why Carstairs and Walker had not let him bring a weapon other than the pig sticker strapped inside his forearm. It would be too tempting to open up on the Smedlovs, and God knows how many bystanders would’ve been cut down in the cross fire. He supposed the only reason the Sovs hadn’t opened up on Sobeskaia was thanks to the metal detector out in the foyer. They hadn’t been able to get any artillery inside, contemporary ceramics and plastic munitions being what they were. Which is to say, complete arse.
They must have wanted this character back quite badly, though. Because while everybody was keeping things relatively nice on the surface, beneath that it was obvious they intended to either escort Sobeskaia out of the joint or leave his corpse behind.
“What are you even doing here, Viv?” Harry asked, as they watched the approach of the three Soviet strongmen.
“Just trying to turn a quid, governor,” said his onetime NCO. “I’ve got a lot of old boys from the barracks on my books now, you know. Turned over a mill in profit last year for the first time—after tax, of course. Not easy to do with Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue having its paws so deep in my funds. Oh, no offense, guv.”
“None taken, Sergeant Major. Wakey wakey, here comes trouble …”
The NKVD emerged from the jostle of the crowd in a two-up, one-back formation, hoping to engage Harry and St. Clair into defending themselves and Sobeskaia from the first attackers, while the third slipped in with a blade or perhaps a poison point, whatever they intended to use on him. Harry caught himself nervously running his thumb over his fingertips, anticipating the confrontation before it arrived. He breathed in and out and tried to empty his mind. To play the ball on its own merits, as he had said to Plunkett. He waited, knees slightly bent, his weight focused forward on the balls of his feet, eyes settled on the center mass of the man who seemed to be coming directly at him.
Before the Russian could reach him, Harry stepped out and closed the distance between them, shifting off-line just before their bodies met, fending away the slashing blade that tried to open him up. He turned outside the short arc described by the knife, stamping down on the Russian’s instep with the heel of his expensive Italian loafers. Bones cracked, and the man grunted, but not without trying to drive an elbow into Harry’s solar plexus. He foiled that with a high-low block that appeared to most onlookers as though he was patting a friend on the shoulder, and perhaps directing him toward the food table with a gentle push on the elbow. In fact, he had unsheathed his own blade and buried it deep into the triceps of the other man, who lost control of his weapon hand and dropped his own blade to the floor.
St. Clair, he noticed in his peripheral vision, appeared to have a friendly arm around the shoulder of his Smedlov, and was swinging him around, laughing as though he had just been told a particularly ribald joke. The third man, who was making directly for Sobeskaia now, suddenly found his approach blocked by the deadweight of his colleague, whose neck had been snapped by the former SAS sergeant. The dead man—he was most certainly dead, thought Harry—dropped to the floor, tripping the last NKVD agent and a waiter carrying a tray of drinks. The enormous crash of shattering glass brought a momentary lull to the roaring buzz of the party, but only for a second or two. Plunkett appeared with a couple of offsiders, raised both eyebrows at the carnage in the corner, and tut-tutted Harry.
“The idea was rather to avoid an incident, you know.”
“He choked on a particularly long ribbon sandwich,” Harry replied, nodding at the body of the Russian spy on the floor.
Plunkett’s people were already muscling away the walking wounded from Beria’s snatch team. Or hit squad. Or whatever they were. Most of the onlookers who had no idea what was going on backed off. A couple of them offered their medical expertise, and one woman fanned herself into a complete faint. Adding to the confusion.
“This is a bit of a dog’s breakfast,” Harry declared. “Viv, watch my back, would you?”
He turned on Sobeskaia, taking him by the lapel and dragging him away from the ambassador.
“You couldn’t even be bothered wearing a proper dinner jacket,” he rebuked the terrified boyar. “Typical. I hope you’re going to be bloody worth it, my friend. With me—we’re out of here. Now.”
Harry propelled the Russian toward a pair of swinging doors from which waiters would occasionally emerge with trays of drinks and canapés. He shot an inquiry over his shoulder back at Plunkett. “You secured the kitchens, right?”
“Of course.”
“Marvelous. Let’s go.”
The sudden movement, on top of the excitement of the recent confrontation, sent waves of confusion and concern through the packed masses inside Babington’s. A stone’s throw from the showdown with the NKVD, it would have been impossible to know what was happening; but people on the other side of the room soon knew that something was happening. Harry dragged Sobeskaia along behind him, with the huge bulk of Vivian St. Clair providing protection in the rear and Plunkett keeping a watching brief. The confused babble of the party guests quickly increased as the remaining Russians attempted to follow. SIS muscle intervened, leading to some ugly pushing and shoving, which generated further shouts of complaint and cries from distressed bystanders. Harry let it all fall behind him as he pulled the defector into the kitchens, almost knocking another waiter to the floor, and grabbing a handful of devils on horseback as he hurried past an unattended platter of food. He was very hungry.
A waitress screamed, and he realized his white dress shirt was covered in the blood of the man he’d stabbed in the arm. So much for discretion.
“Thank you, thank you,” Sobeskaia kept babbling. “Thank you, Prince Harry.”
“He’s not really a prince anymore, you know,” said St. Clair, in disturbingly good humor. “He’s more of a celebrity really. Like you’d find on The Apprentice, if you had any decent f*cking telly here.”
“Try not to do his head in, please, Viv. There might be something in there we need later.”
“What is this? What does this mean, about my head?” Sobeskaia asked, panicked.
There was a scuffle at the doors behind them, and Plunkett begged off to join his people in neutralizing the other Soviet gate-crashers.
“Oh, just in case I don’t get a chance later on, sir … er, Harry,” the David Gower look-alike said. “It’s been nice working with you, despite the chaos and madness and the general air of cocking everything up.” But he said it with a boyish grin, which Harry recognized from his own extensive repertoire.
The two ex-commandos now hurried their charge over to a fire exit.
“Thank you, my prince, thank you,” he continued to babble.
“Oh, for f*ck’s sake,” said Harry. “Don’t make me roll my eyes …” Then he turned to St. Clair. “Have a bit of a sticky beak out there in the alley, would you, Viv? See if there are any villains lying in wait.”
“Got it, guv,” he said, before slipping out through the fire door.
Only now did Harry give Sobeskaia his full attention for the first time. “Right. Listen up, you. I don’t know what f*cking game you’re playing. I don’t know what you’ve got that you think we might need. But if you want to get out of this place alive, you’re going to tell me now. Not a week from now, or during the debrief. Right now.”