Ratcatcher

by Tim Stevens

  He half followed, half propelled her towards the door of the solitary bedroom. Once inside he kicked the door shut and they were clawing at each other’s clothes, tumbling and rolling on the cold bedspread, enveloped in each other’s heat in a raging joy that was so complete it made time cease for hours.

  She lay naked against his side, her breast pressed against his chest, her hair pushing up under his chin every time he breathed in. Purkiss watched the ceiling, letting the night vision work its way into his retinas.

  He hadn’t been expecting it, wondered if she had. The nearness of death no doubt had something to do with it, the need to respond by engaging in the most life-affirming act of all. There had been other women, since Claire, including one with whom he’d become very close until she’d come up against the impenetrable bedrock of his grief. Usually the women ended it, saddened by his distance.

  The evenness of her breathing made him wonder if she’d fallen asleep. He said, ‘We should get ready.’

  ‘No. Not… all that, out there, yet. Not for a few minutes. Let’s be normal for a while.’ She shifted against him, easing herself. ‘Ask me something normal.’

  ‘All right.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Elle. Not the commonest name nowadays.’

  ‘A long story. Well, not long so much as dull.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘First week at university. I was registering for a class. I was asked for my name, and for some reason instead of Louise Klavan – Louise, that’s my name – I said “L. Klavan”. The woman wrote down “Elle”. It sort of stuck.’

  ‘I prefer Louise.’

  ‘That’s too bad.’ She pinched his arm. ‘Your middle name. Rutherford. I noticed it when I did the background search on you. What’s that all about? It wasn’t your mother’s maiden name.’

  ‘My father was an amateur scientist. He wanted me to pursue a career in physics. Like Ernest Rutherford.’

  ‘You must have been a great disappointment to him.’ He felt her smile against his shoulder.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  After a pause she said, ‘Now comes the part where I ask you how, or why, you came to join the Service.’

  ‘And where I give you the usual reasons. A young man’s restlessness and desire for adventure. A bookish intellectual’s wish to serve abstract ideals of freedom and justice. Or the self-indulgence of an immature existentialist who lacks the imagination to seek out normal ways to live a worthwhile life, and chooses a life of danger as a tragic gesture against the void.’

  She sat up and drew the covers around herself and stared at him, still smiling, genuine interest in her eyes. ‘I don’t believe any of those apply to you. But clearly you’ve considered them.’

  ‘Everyone in this job asks themselves sooner or later why the hell they chose it, as you well know.’ He shrugged, feeling suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know what I read at university.’

  ‘Philosophy, English literature and history, in which you achieved a first,’ she recited. ‘So… I’m guessing it was the history that motivated you? You saw yourself as an agent of history, destined to carry it forward. I’m not being facetious, by the way.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t think you were. But you’re exactly wrong, one hundred and eighty degrees out. There are no grand sweeping narratives in history, other than the ones we construct. Something happens and then another something happens, and then another, and in retrospect we impose a contrived causal link between them, so it seems like one progressed inevitably from the last.’

  She said nothing, absorbing it. Purkiss sat up, warming to his theme.

  ‘Take tomorrow, or later today, rather. The presidents are meeting, and if all goes according to plan, they’ll seal an agreement which will make it less likely that their two countries, Russia and Estonia, and by extension Russia and the NATO powers, will go to war. But there are thousands of other potential triggers, manmade and otherwise, that could lead to such a war. Yet in a year’s time, ten years’ time, if we haven’t gone to war then the historians will attribute this achievement directly to today’s meeting. Baselessly so.’

  ‘But if the meeting is sabotaged, if the Russian president is assassinated… the chance of war is dramatically increased.’

  ‘Exactly. Chances, probabilities – that’s all we can deal in. Not certainties. It’s what Hume taught me. That’s why I chose the Service.’ He sat back against the pillows again. ‘You can’t make the world a better place. But you can help reduce the probability of awful things happening, not awful things in principle but individual things. And if that’s the most you do with your life then I think you can say you’ve had a life worth living.’

  Her eyes were soft and he thought he saw a sadness in her smile.

  ‘And where does this fit in? What we’re doing?’

  She waved vaguely at them, at the bed. Before he could be lost for words, she let the cover drop away from her body, leaned in towards him, and he reached for her once more.

  Twenty-Nine

  Purkiss was dressed by the time Kendrick let himself in. Kendrick’s face was taut, the cheeks stretched hollow, his limbs tense as claspknives. He barely nodded at Purkiss as he strode over to the table, where he picked up the gun and hefted it as if it were a prosthetic arm he’d temporarily misplaced.

  Elle emerged from the bedroom in a dressing gown. Purkiss handed her the mug of coffee he’d made. She waved at Kendrick’s stare and disappeared again into the bedroom.

  ‘Have a good walk?’ Purkiss asked. Kendrick had none of the jitteriness of the true speed freak, so probably hadn’t overdone it.

  Kendrick sat himself in Purkiss’s line of sight and leered. ‘Filthy bastard.’

  Purkiss looked at the smirking face, managed to stop his mouth from twitching in a smile. ‘There’s coffee in the pot. Help yourself. If you need any caffeine on top, that is.’

  ‘I won’t tell Abby.’ Kendrick laid a forefinger alongside his nose.

  Purkiss sighed, exasperated. Perhaps Kendrick had overindulged after all. ‘Why would she care?’

  The silence went on longer than was comfortable. Purkiss noticed that Kendrick’s gaze had changed, turned from mocking to wondering.

  ‘My God. You genuinely don’t know, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  Kendrick let out his breath in a great hiss between his teeth, propping his boots up on a chair. ‘Purkiss… for someone who’s only slightly less educated than God, you can be a right stupid bugger at times.’

  ‘What?’ Purkiss spread his palms.

  ‘She’s crazy about you. Batshit insane. Like a teenager with a pop star.’

  ‘Abby?’

  ‘Yes. Abby.’ Kendrick shook his head. ‘And you haven’t seen it. All that wisecracking, all those chirpy Mister Purkiss remarks… it’s all a front. She’s besotted. Christ knows why, she could do better.’

  Purkiss said nothing, his thoughts churning. Was it possible? He’d had a vague notion Abby admired what he did, that her loyalty wasn’t just due to the money he paid her, but… that? Comments, snatches of conversation, nonverbal signs began to play themselves again in his head.

  Elle emerged again, dressed and glancing from one man to the other, aware that something had passed between them. Kendrick chuckled softly, and the moment was gone.

  They did an inventory. Elle’s Glock 19, a lighter version of the Glock 17 with which Purkiss was more familiar. The SIG Sauer he’d taken off the man Braginsky in the hotel. Kendrick’s AK-74. Elle had six rounds left as well as a spare 15-round magazine, while the SIG Sauer still had all ten of its rounds but no spare clip. The assault rifle had one spare magazine holding 30 rounds. And that was it.

  The priority, Purkiss had made them agree, was to see Abby to safety before revealing themselves. Any appearance by the two of them before Abby was home and dry, and they would likely all be cut down. Kendrick in particular had to stay hidden. As the one whose weapon gave him sniping capacity, he was their wild
card, the guardian in the shadows. Purkiss had no idea how many people they would be facing, but had to assume they would be vastly outnumbered. Priority one was to get Abby out. Lesser priorities were to retrieve Purkiss himself at the same time, which was unlikely to be possible, and to take one or more of the opposition alive.

  Twenty past three. It was time to go.

  Kiek in de Kök was, Elle explained, a fifteenth century artillery tower on a hill to the west of the Old Town’s centre. The tower was home to a museum showcasing mediaeval weapons. The name was Low German for ‘peep in the kitchen’ and referred to the ability of soldiers manning it to peer into the houses in the Old Town below. Fallon hadn’t said where they were to meet. Purkiss assumed it was to be at the base of the tower, that the location had been chosen because of its position on a hill with the advantages this conferred on whomever got there first.

  Although the tower was within walking distance of the safe house, they decided to take Elle’s car in case a quick getaway was needed. By now the streets were mostly silent, the cobbles slick, street lights often absent so that the turrets rose blackly against the rain.

  Elle parked up on the kerb of a narrow street that was part of a tightly woven warren of cobbled passageways, which together with the tiny top-heavy cottages and quaintly lettered shop signs that lined them gave the impression of a village for some kind of mythical folk. She led them round a bend through an arch, and pointed upwards where a steep flight of steps twisted in a gap between two houses. Beyond rose a hill at the top of which Purkiss could see in silhouette a cylindrical tower with a coned roof.

  Twenty to four.

  ‘You and I go first,’ said Purkiss. ‘Tony, you keep back. At the top of the steps you move away, approach the tower by a separate route.’

  ‘Got it.’ Kendrick fitted the night-vision goggles in place.

  They began to climb the steps.

  *

  Kuznetsov stepped forward and popped the catch on the boot – it was the Jacobin’s car but Kuznetsov always had to be the man doing things, the one in control, and the Jacobin let him. They stood gazing down.

  The woman was tiny, made even more so by the bindings that narrowed her arms against her sides and her legs together. Above the gag her face was yellow in the light from the streetlamp, her eyes huge. The Jacobin couldn’t read them because of the light, and so couldn’t see if they held fear or defiance or even contempt. He hoped it wasn’t the last. It wouldn’t bother him, but Kuznetsov’s ego wouldn’t take kindly to it and he might snap and get rough.

  Two of Kuznetsov’s men, one of them Dobrynin, his second in command with the damaged hand, took hold of the girl under her arms, hauled her out, and deposited her on the pavement of the car park. She lay trussed, not struggling or whimpering. In the dim light the Jacobin could see a thread of blood from the corner of her mouth where the gag had cut into the skin.

  ‘Untie her legs,’ said Kuznetsov. The men cut the cords at her knees and ankles and dragged her to her feet, dwarfing her between them.

  One of them reached for the gag. The Jacobin said, ‘No. Leave that.’

  The man glanced at Kuznetsov, looking almost astonished that the Englishman had given him an instruction. The Jacobin said: ‘She won’t run, but she will call out, try to warn him.’

  Kuznetsov nodded at his man and turned away. They pulled the girl along after him. Beyond him four more of his people waited, all wearing overcoats to conceal their weapons more than to protect them from the rain. They too began to move up the slope towards the tower.

  Kuznetsov stopped, half-turned as if surprised to see the Jacobin keeping pace with him. ‘You’ll want to keep out of the way.’

  ‘Just the opposite. I want to be right there when he appears.’ And to see that you don’t balls it up.

  Kuznetsov raised his eyebrows in a shrug. He continued after his men and the stumbling girl.

  *

  The tower was in darkness, sodium lamps throwing a fringe of brightness across the small lawns and paved pathways around its base. Purkiss and Elle stopped at the edge of one of the lawns between a small clump of trees, watching and listening. No movement in the shadows. From somewhere, low voices murmured, but it was impossible to tell how distant they were. The rain was steady, soft, its drumming setting up low-grade interference both visually and aurally.

  Purkiss glanced behind him. Kendrick was already gone, invisible somewhere in the shadows.

  They moved forwards, closer to the tower. Purkiss had one hand in his pocket, his fingertips touching his phone.

  ‘There,’ breathed Elle. He crouched as she did, arm coming up with the SIG Sauer extended. It was a man’s shape, emerging from the shadows and standing at the foot of the tower, perhaps sixty feet away.

  ‘Purkiss.’

  The voice was quiet but carried against the rain. He recognised it: Dobrynin, the man they’d met at the offices of Rodina Security.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Your friend’s here. Is it just the two of you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Because of the rain it was difficult to tell if the man laughed. ‘Point taken. I have back up myself.’

  ‘Where’s Fallon?’

  ‘You’re here to trade yourself for the woman. It doesn’t matter where Fallon is.’

  ‘Bring her out, then.’

  Dobrynin looked to one side, over to the trees. Two men stepped out, sandwiching a smaller figure as though in a rugby scrum.

  ‘Her?’ Elle murmured. He nodded.

  The men gave Abby a push. She staggered but kept her footing. One of the men said something harsh. Over to the right Dobrynin made motions with his good hand: go on, walk. Behind her, the men had handguns drawn.

  Purkiss looked up and off to the left and the right, making a show of it, as if he had an army hidden in the darkness waiting for their orders. He had no idea where Kendrick had positioned himself. With his hand still in his pocket Purkiss used his fingernails to prise the SIM card from his phone and wrap the plastic around it. He brought it up to his mouth and swallowed, wincing at the hardness, feeling it scrape as it went down.

  Abby began to take slow steps in his direction. He realised her wrists were bound together behind her back and she had some sort of gag in her mouth. She was too far away for him to be sure, but she didn’t look marked.

  Dobrynin called out, in English, ‘Stop.’ She did. Her eyes were on Purkiss.

  Dobrynin said, ‘Now Purkiss. Gun on the ground, hands raised, and approach those two men.’

  He kept his gaze on the two men. Abby was in his line of sight, nearer, out of focus. He knelt, laid the gun on the ground, folded his hands on top of his head, and began to walk.

  The two men raised their guns to shoulder height, both adopting the Weaver stance, free hands cupping the ones that held their pistols. Purkiss watched them over the tousle of Abby’s hair.

  As if obeying some unseen choreographer, Purkiss and Abby timed their progress so that they reached one another at what appeared to be the midpoint between the two men and Elle. For a moment Purkiss took his gaze off the two men with the guns and looked down at Abby’s face. He realised she’d been trying to get his attention. Her eyes were flashing frantically above the gag, and he could see the dirty material billowing and sucking as she tried to articulate words. Low sounds came from her throat.

  Just as he passed her he lowered his head to catch what she was saying, but it was no good, the gag was too secure. He whispered, ‘Tell Kendrick.’

  Then she was out of sight behind him.

  Later he had time, plenty of it, to reflect on what happened, on whether he could have averted it in some way with a shouted instruction, a warning of some sort. Whether, indeed, he was responsible for it by omission. But as the men shifted their stance and tightened their grips on their weapons and he drew close enough to see the dilation of their pupils in the darkness, all Purkiss was thinking of were the chances of not only taking down two ar
med men who were fully expecting him to make such a move, but also surviving the assault from whatever backup they had waiting in the shadows.

  Signals were useful things when preparing for a combat situation. The fall of the drop of sweat that had been gathering in the armpit, the next cry of the owl off in the trees, the final chime of a clock striking the hour: all could provide a focus point for the launching of an attack. This time he was waiting for Elle’s shout, the sign that Abby had reached the point of safety.

  And Elle’s voice came, high and clear against the thrumming of the rain, though it wasn’t the word they’d agreed – now – but rather one that while sounding similar carried an altogether more terrible significance.

  ‘No.’

  Thirty

  Purkiss had once read about the intriguing hypothesis that time was an entirely human construct, and did not, in any valid sense, exist. Instead, what people regarded as units of time – minutes, seconds, moments or instants – were really quantum states that happened to be stacked up alongside one another in space (which did exist, provably), like the infinitesimally altered series of pictures that when run together tricked the human eye and became a cartoon.

  He’d found the concept a tricky one to get to grips with. He came close to grasping it during the events that followed Elle’s cry. The free flow of time became a series of snapshot images that engrained themselves on his memory.

  In the first picture, the two men immediately in front of him were bracing their bent legs and sighting horizontally down their arms, their eyes widened slightly, ready to fire imminently; but one of the men had his gaze fixed not on Purkiss’s face but on a point past his left shoulder.