by Chris Simms
He ducked his head through the inner doors. Two options. Follow the corridor straight ahead or turn immediately to the left. What had Alice said? The games room. Opposite a visitor room. He looked at the signs on wall. Medication room. Staff room. Visitor room.
He removed a fire extinguisher from its metal bracket on the wall. The cold metal felt good in his hands as he crept along, eyes fixed on the door to the games room. A man’s voice. He peeped through the window. Alice! He gripped the handle and pushed it open, raising the fire extinguisher up like a giant club. Greg Mueller and Carl D’Souza were standing next to her, both of them at the end of the bed with the girl in. D’Souza was half turning, hand already in his jacket. Jon saw the man’s eyes were almost popping out of his skull.
‘It’s me!’ Jon lowered the extinguisher and looked at his wife. ‘OK?’
She nodded and he turned back to the CIA agents. ‘Where’s your support?’
D’Souza lowered his hand, eyes cutting to the corridor behind Jon.
Mueller gestured to the window and announced, ‘On their way.’
‘You’re on your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘Christ, then let’s get out of here.’
Mueller exchanged a glance with D’Souza, then nodded. He looked back at Jon. ‘I’ll cover the corridor. Carl will help you.’ He brushed past Jon and positioned himself on the opposite side of the corridor, his back to the visitor room.
Jon turned to Alice. ‘Right, you hold the door open. Carl? It’ll be quicker if we just carry her out between us.’
The CIA agent nervously ran a hand across his mouth, turned to the bed and then looked back at Jon. ‘No. We wheel her out.’
‘Seriously, Carl, it’ll be faster to just carry her.’
‘I’m not carrying anyone. If Salnikov’s here, I want both arms free.’
‘Who?’ Alice asked, glancing nervously at the two of them.
‘Just someone,’ Jon replied, placing the fire extinguisher on the floor and then stepping into the room so the door swung shut behind him. The volume of the alarm immediately dropped.
‘Is he talking about . . .’ Alice’s eyes went to Amira, ‘. . . who I think he is?’
‘I’ll explain later,’ Jon replied. ‘Help me sit her up and I’ll carry her over my shoulder.’
He moved past Carl, who stepped back to the door and peered anxiously out of the window. Alice folded back the covers and Jon found himself staring at Amira’s near-skeletal form. Oh, he thought, you’re hardly bigger than a child. He knelt by the side of the bed, reaching for one arm so he could drape it over his shoulder. ‘OK, Carl, open the door.’
The CIA agent stepped back towards the bed, staring at Amira.
What the fuck are you doing? Jon thought, turning to Alice.
‘Lean her forward so I can get my shoulder under her.’ He had just started to brace himself to lift her up when a thud came from the corridor outside. The loudness of the alarm suddenly increased. Craning his neck to the side, he saw the door opening behind D'Souza. A man in full surgical gowns stepped swiftly inside. The gap between the man’s face mask and cap was narrow, but Jon recognised the eyes immediately. Salnikov.
Thirty-Two
Jon’s eyes went to D’Souza. Before he could shout, the CIA agent was reaching into his jacket, shoulders starting to turn. His hand emerged with a gun and he began to swing his arm round, straightening his elbow as he did so.
Salnikov’s legs suddenly buckled and, in a flash, the Russian jumped sideways like a crab. The pistol went off and the window in the door shattered. One hand on the carpet to steady him, Salnikov whipped his right foot out, connecting with D’Souza’s knee. The joint gave out and the CIA agent’s balance was lost.
Jon was trying to shrug Amira back off his shoulders as Salnikov rose up, lifting both hands above his head to catch D’Souza’s gun arm before sweeping it down towards the ground. The momentum of the move spun D’Souza towards the bed and Jon saw the look in the other man’s eyes. I’m going to die, it said. The pistol went off again, bullet firing straight into the floor.
Then Salnikov was twisting D’Souza’s arm up behind his back. Jon heard cartilage snapping and D’Souza’s mouth was opening in a gasp when the central part of his chest burst outwards. Another retort and the man’s collar bone exploded. As he started to drop, Salnikov kept his grip with one hand, controlling D’Souza’s descent. His other hand appeared with the pistol. He held it to the base of D’Souza’s skull and pulled the trigger again. D’Souza’s upper jaw disintegrated and Salnikov let him fall face first to the carpet.
Amira landed back on the bed and Jon sprang up to step in front of Alice.
Salnikov levelled the gun on Jon. ‘Back.’
He looked to his side. Two chairs and a small table.
‘Back!’ Salnikov shouted, bringing his other hand up to cup the base of the pistol’s grip.
He felt Alice’s fingertips digging into his arm as he retreated, aware that he was now pressing her against the wall. They were trapped. ‘An Armed Response Unit is coming,’ Jon said shakily. 'They’ll be here any minute.’
‘I doubt that,’ Salnikov replied, pulling the surgical mask down. Jon saw the mass of scars above the pale green cloth.
‘Now, kneel.’
Oh no, Jon thought. Not like this. We can’t die like this. He tried to tuck Alice in behind him, glance going to the fire extinguisher on the other side of the room. I have no way of stopping this man, he thought, estimating the distance between them. Ten feet? If I jump at him, could I pin him down long enough for Alice to escape? He knew the distance was too far. Abruptly, the alarms in the building fell silent.
‘On your knees,’ Salnikov whispered. ‘I will not hurt you.’
Holly’s face appeared in Jon's head and a moan escaped him. He looked at the table once more. A shield. If I grab that, could I rush at him? He looked back at Salnikov, but his eyes were drawn to the black circle of the gun barrel now pointing directly at his face.
Salnikov slowly shook his head. ‘On your knees,’ he hissed.
Knowing he had no other option, Jon lowered himself down. Next to him, he felt Alice doing the same. He’ll take a step closer, Jon thought. Just to make sure. As soon as he does, that’s when I’ll grab the table. Alice had started to sob and he said, ‘Close your eyes. Just close your eyes.’
He readied himself to snatch at the table leg just inches from his grasp. But rather than move in for the kill, Salnikov crouched over D’Souza’s corpse. Gun still trained on Jon, he started searching around in the American’s jacket with his other hand. Jon realised he had stopped breathing.
Salnikov’s pointed lower teeth showed as he smiled. ‘You are lucky.’
Jon blinked. This is it, he said to himself. If I don’t move now, we’re dead.
‘He would have killed you.’ Salnikov removed something from D’Souza’s inner pocket. Jon glanced to the other man’s hand. A wire-like loop, small wooden handles at each end. ‘The garrotte would have been ineffective with three of you. He would have shot you then claimed it was me.’
Air finally rattled into Jon’s throat. What was the bloke ranting about?
Salnikov placed the garrotte on the floor. ‘Your name is Spicer?’
Jon didn’t dare move.
‘You’ve been looking for me. I know. We passed on the stairs of Andriy’s apartment.’ He nudged D’Souza with the toe of one foot. ‘As soon as that khokol, Mykosowski, phoned with the locations of my three colleagues, this man caught a flight up here and killed them.’
Among all the thoughts racing around inside his head, something that Rick had said stood out. A witness had asserted he’d seen D’Souza in the vicinity of one of the murders. He looked at the CIA agent’s corpse. Why had the bloke got a garrotte in his jacket? And why had he stepped back to the bed as I was about to lift Amira? Jon swallowed. ‘You didn’t kill the Russian crewmen. That’s what you’re saying?’
‘The only
person I killed,’ Salnikov replied, ‘was Mykosowski, for betraying Marat, Yegor and Andriy.’
Jon glanced at the garrotte again. ‘It was D’Souza?’
‘That’s his name? When I first rang Mykosowski – after the trawler took us to Liverpool – he called the Americans. They contacted D’Souza and his friend.’
‘The Americans?’ Jon said slowly. ‘You mean the people in America waiting for the shipment of cash?’
Salnikov nodded. ‘That money was sacrificed the moment your people told them it was on its way.’
‘My people? Who?’
‘MI5? Whoever it was who rang the CIA to say the cargo was heading for Baltimore on the Lesya. Once the people involved knew the cash was being tracked, they contacted Mykosowski and told him to get rid of it.’
No, Jon thought. This can’t be true. ‘The CIA was stealing that money?’
‘People within the CIA,’ Salnikov stated. ‘People with connections to these two, here. Helped by people in the CPA and by people working for American businesses out in Iraq. Many people are getting rich from the invasion.’
Jon’s knees were beginning to ache, but he still didn’t dare make any kind of movement. ‘You’re saying people in the CIA ordered the money to be thrown from the ship?’
‘That’s what Mykosowski told me. He received a call telling him to get rid of the money.’
Jesus, Jon thought. Soutar said that, once MI5 knew the Lesya’s next stop was Baltimore, they alerted their counterparts in the CIA.
Salnikov carried on speaking. ‘Mykosowski then called Kaddouri, master of the Lesya, and ordered him to dump the cargo overboard.’
Who now is dead, Jon realised. An apparent heart attack while in CIA custody. And I thought it was our visit to Mykosowski that had led to the money being jettisoned. He could feel himself frowning.
Salnikov narrowed his eyes. ‘You want to know how I know all this?’
Jon gave a nod.
‘Before I snapped his neck, I made Mykosowski tell me everything. When I refused to kill Marat, Yegor and Andriy, Mykosowski passed their locations to this man.’ Without looking down, he landed a kick on the back of D’Souza’s ruined skull. It rocked slightly. ‘He made the murders look like my work. He promised Mykosowski that, when I was caught, no one would ever see me again.’
‘Rendition orders,’ Jon stated.
Salnikov looked at Amira then turned to Alice. ‘She will live?’
‘Yes,’ Alice whispered.
‘You must get her warm. She is shivering.’ He weighed up Jon. ‘Do not move.’
Jon remained motionless, one arm still forming a shield across his wife.
Salnikov stepped to the end of the bed. He laid a hand on the bump that was Amira’s foot and she shrank away. ‘We did what we had to out there, Amira. All of us. When the Lesya left us, we did what we had to. You understand that?’
Slowly, her brown eyes turned to him.
‘There was no other way to survive,’ Salnikov whispered.
Jon felt he should lower his eyes: the man was practically pleading. A flicker of some kind of understanding passed between them. Then, lower jaw still set tight, Amira looked away. Eye contact with the Russian was broken.
Salnikov turned back to Jon. ‘You must protect her. She knows the truth about that ship.’
She knows a lot more than that, Jon thought, picturing the letter in Oliver Brookes’ possession.
‘I must go. You will not try to stop me.’
Jon shook his head. ‘You have the gun.’
Salnikov adjusted his grip on it. ‘Wait here. No more oxygen tanks will explode.’
‘You caused all that?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t know if this was a trap. It was the only way I could be sure. Do not let any American near her.’ He walked backwards to the door, raised the mask over his face then slipped out into the corridor.
As soon as the door shut, Jon turned to Alice and wrapped his arms around her.
She pressed her face into his chest. ‘That was him, wasn’t it? The man from the letters.’
‘Yes.’ He helped her up. ‘Come on, let’s get her out of here.’ He placed a hand on the bed. ‘Amira? It’s going to be easiest if I just pick you up. Is that OK?’
She regarded them both for a moment. ‘With your help,’ she said in a quiet, firm voice, ‘I would prefer to walk.’
Alice nodded. ‘Of course.’
Supporting Amira between them, they walked her, complete with drip stand, out into the corridor. They passed Mueller’s lifeless body and continued slowly through the airlock and into the lobby. Jon paused to look out of the window. Far below them, firefighters with breathing apparatus were making their way back to their engines as others were running hoses towards the building. Ambulances and police cars lined the main road and the car park was busy with patients and hospital staff. A figure in surgical gowns came into view. For a second, Jon contemplated banging on the window to try and alert those below. Instead, he watched as Salnikov walked quickly across the tarmac, merging with the people milling about. He passed behind a row of ambulances and Jon didn’t see him again.
Epilogue
Jon watched as Holly, giggling with delight, placed a tennis ball into the bowl-shaped end of the plastic handle. Once it was in position, she raised it above her head and tried to flick it forward. The ball was only thrown a few metres across the grass but Punch bounded after it anyway, stump of a tail wagging furiously.
His gaze travelled beyond the pair, taking in the rearing hillsides dotted with oak trees that, from a distance, resembled frozen explosions of green. Higher still were pastures flecked white with sheep and then the craggy crests straining at the cloudless sky. The sun was nearing their jagged tips, its heat starting to fade. Beside him on the bench, Alice turned her head to nestle the back of it in the hollow of his shoulder. He lowered his chin, savouring the smell of her hair before looking out across the sparkling waters of Windermere.
Swallows were out feeding, flying just above the lightly ruffled surface in their search for airborne insects. He tracked a single bird as it veered this way and that, wings snapping at the water like a pair of thin jaws. As he watched it, a memory of a previous holiday spent up in Scotland returned. ‘Remember the time on Skye? We’d stopped for a rest on top of that hill. You’d just unscrewed the flask when that RAF fighter plane buzzed us?’
Alice laughed. ‘I thought it was a swallow at first, didn’t I? Racing through the air towards us.’
‘Until it closed that last mile in an instant, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The sonic boom as it went over our heads? Jesus.’
‘And I jumped so much, I got tea all down my trousers.’
Jon chuckled, replaying the image of the plane as it sped on across the bay, the pilot tilting each wing in acknowledgement of the prank he’d just played.
They continued to watch the birds and when Alice spoke again, Jon could tell she was smiling. ‘And that time we went to Egypt. You saw all those swallows lined up on the wires between the rickety-looking telegraph poles . . .’
‘And felt cheated,’ he continued. ‘I know it’s stupid, but I still have that same sense of . . . I don’t know. It was weird seeing them there. I thought they were ours to enjoy. It hadn’t even occurred to me where they might disappear every winter.’
A cluster of Mirror dinghies was out in the middle of the lake and Jon could hear the snap of their red sails and thrum of rope as the first ones rounded an orange buoy.
‘Well, she got her birthday trip to the Lake District,’ he said. ‘Are you glad we came?’
She reached up to squeeze his hand. ‘Of course. Glad we came. Glad Holly’s so much happier. Glad about everything.’ He felt a little shiver go through her. ‘It frightens me, you know. Thinking how close we came . . . how near our marriage was to . . .’
‘Hey.’ He pressed his cheek against the top of her head. ‘We got through it, Alice. It’s behind us.’
&
nbsp; She squeezed his fingers again. ‘And I’m so relieved it is.’
He stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles and taking in a deep breath. This is the life. Especially, he thought, because my letter of apology was enough to appease Braithwaite. I wonder what Parks will be like? The only DCI in the Major Incident Team prepared to accept me into her syndicate. Brave woman.
‘There was more in the papers,’ Alice said quietly.
Jon suppressed a sigh. The story had turned into a media feeding frenzy. He thought of the desperate attempts by journalists to obtain Oliver Brookes’ identity. The old man wasn’t interested in claiming the reward for Amira’s first letter; but preserving his anonymity had still been some feat.
‘I had a flick through when I was buying the ice creams from that newsagent earlier on,’ Alice continued. ‘Another subsidiary of that American company’s been implicated.’
Jon thought about Amira. Once Denmark had offered her asylum so she could live with an aunt and sister already there, her progress had, by all accounts, been excellent. The fact she was able to recall company names on the invoices she’d handed to Scott King was even more impressive. Confronted with the evidence of his corruption, the man had promptly offered to give up everything he knew. Rick had taken a call from Soutar the other day. The MI5 officer had said it was like falling dominoes; a chain reaction involving company after company. Rick had grinned at first but, as the enormity of the scandal sank in, the smile had faded from his face.
‘Who knows,’ Alice continued. ‘Maybe they’ll even lift those gagging orders. Then, some of Bush’s closest cronies could face prosecution.’
‘Send the lot to Guantanamo Bay,’ Jon sighed, mind going to the forensic evidence from the crime scenes of the three murdered Russians. D’Souza’s hairs had been recovered from two of the flats and residents in the building where the second murder had occurred had also picked his photo out. Fibres of silk from the man’s garrotte had also been recovered from all three victims’ throat wounds.
