by Stevens, Tim
He lifted his head but dropped it again as more stray slugs whined past. Behind him he was vaguely aware that Blažek and his man were returning fire, their handguns puny against the power of the automatic weapons levelled on the other side. The slope became steeper and Calvary dropped the last few feet, hitting the ground with a jar, fetching up against the base of a concrete wall.
He wanted to lie there, catch his breath. Instead he recoiled, cringing away as a man came crashing down through the foliage towards him. He was flailing, airborne, and he hit the wall with a crack and slid down. It was Blažek’s minion, the one who’d been after him on the slope. Calvary saw the dark hole in his chest where the slug from one of the automatics had caught him. His mouth gaped, his eyes wide and lifeless. Calvary stood and grabbed the top of the wall and hauled himself over, dropping to the other side just as he became aware of figures barrelling through the trees after him.
Beyond the wall the brightness and space was frightening after the stifling darkness of the wooded slope. A broad single-lane road ran along the edge of the river, the traffic light enough to allow him to see the pavement on the other side. Calvary didn’t hesitate, sprinted across the road, provoking a blast of alarmed horns. A low iron railing separated the pavement from the sloping concrete drop to the river’s surface.
For the last time he looked back. Men were scrambling over the wall, black-clad figures, three or four of them. Krupina’s people, not Blažek’s. It meant they’d followed him down the slope, had probably got Blažek.
He swung over the railing and slid down the slope on his bottom. The water yawned to meet him. Ten feet from the bottom he launched himself forwards and outwards with his legs, was airborne for a second, and hit the surface.
*
Krupina watched them come through the Tabor Gate at a run, three of them, hustling the big man between them at surprising speed. He was stumbling as though drugged, his hands restrained behind him.
She stepped out to meet them. One of them – Voronin, she saw as they drew close – hissed, ‘Stay in the car. The police will be here any minute.’
‘I want to see.’
They halted for a moment. She gazed up at him. His face was bloody, his shirt, which she assumed was expensive, torn. Even bowed, his head sagging, he exuded power.
‘Bartos Blažek.’
He stared back at her. Then spat. A bloodied tooth stuck to her shoulder.
From far off came the occasional single shot. Her men were mopping up.
Voronin gave her a terse update. No casualties on their side. At least six of Blažek’s men dead, one of them Miklos Blažek. The big man showed no reaction to this.
Calvary gone. But Voronin’s men were in pursuit.
Krupina wanted to smile, but didn’t.
‘Call your men in.’
She saw him raise his eyebrows.
‘We need all available personnel. Because Mr Blažek is going to tell us where he is holding our target.’
*
The shock of the cold was a hammer blow to Calvary’s chest. The drop had been only six feet or so and he hadn’t gone very far beneath the surface, but before his head could rise back above it he tipped forward and kicked away from the wall with his legs, sending himself as far as he could out into the river. He began a slow-paced breaststroke. Before he had plunged in Calvary had made sure there were no boats in the immediate vicinity, but even so as he swam he imagined the impact against his skull of a keel or propellor blades.
Holding his breath for impressively prolonged periods had never been among his repertoire of tricks, and although it felt like five minutes it was probably closer to ninety seconds when the burning in his airways began to feel like acid eating away the boundary between himself and the river. At the same time, instead of feeling panic he noticed a dream-like quality to his thoughts and perceptions. It was a bad sign. He needed to breathe.
He angled his legs downwards and kicked hard. A second later his head and shoulders burst through the surface and he was sucking in air, great sweet draughts of it.
There was no raking gunfire chopping at the water’s surface. Calvary trod water until his head had cleared. He reached up to feel his head. The bandage had disappeared, and the gauze pad was hanging off on a strip of tape. Calvary wasn’t medically trained, but he suspected filthy river water entering the skull through a trepanned hole wasn’t that good an idea.
He moved in a jerky circle, surveying the environment. He was close to a long, narrow island in the river. Far above on the opposite bank brooded the castle, swathed in mist and looking even more sinister than previously. On the other side, Vysehrad Park and the spires of its church were dark and still, but then a spattering of light rippled across the trees and shots echoed in its wake. Somewhere nearby sirens had started up en masse.
On the bank Calvary had left, standing at the rail, were three men, peering at the water. Reflexively he dipped his head so that the white of his face was obscured.
He waited, and bobbed. The cold was like a cocoon, sheathing him. The silhouettes on the bank didn’t move, just stood patiently scanning the water. Calvary’s feelings began to drift. It was pleasant to hang here in the water, not required to do anything but stay afloat. Come to think of it, even staying afloat seemed unnecessary. All he needed to do was relax, trust in the river to keep him safe.
The adrenaline jolt stabbed him alert and for a moment he wondered if his sudden jerky movement had drawn the attention of the men on the bank. One of them was straightening, raising his hand. Calvary drew a long breath, prepared to dive. To flounder away until his chest was on fire again, and then to surface into a sweeping fusillade of rifle fire. The end would be quick, at least.
Then the three men peeled away from the railing and started back across the road, disappearing from sight.
Calvary flexed his arms and legs, shaking life back into them. He struck out for the bank.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘We’ve brought equipment.’
By turning her head Krupina could see behind her, in the darkness of the car’s back seat, Voronin’s lone eye glinting whitely.
Lev was at the wheel of the Audi once more, Arkady in the back alongside Voronin. The Hummer was ahead. Moscow had sent it along with the men. Blažek rode in the rear, wedged between two agents on either side.
Krupina turned back to look through the windscreen. ‘We have all the equipment we need.’
‘Including canvas sheets?’
The balance of authority had shifted, ever since Voronin had brought Blažek through the gates. The act itself had said it all. Look, we have taken him. You couldn’t manage it on your own. You weren’t good enough.
Voronin went on, with measured quietness. ‘It’s the quickest way. I will achieve a result within fifteen minutes, maximum. I guarantee it.’
Krupina remained silent, watched the tail lights of the Hummer ahead. American methods. Her motherland’s intelligence services were embracing with enthusiasm, acknowledging as superior, even the old enemy’s interrogation techniques. It was the present, and she wasn’t a part of it. Nor would the future include her. She was a creature of the past.
To her left, through the window, emergency vehicles whipped by, their lights stuttering in disbelief.
The fist of triumph in her centre had opened, and claws of pain were growing through her as in a sped-up film.
*
He stumbled past the flashing headlights of a last terrified car and was free, on the other side of the road. At the fringe of the Old Town.
As he loped down a dim alley towards the lights of a tiny square redolent even at this hour with the aromas of spice and cabbage and roasting meat, Calvary reflected on his needs. He needed a phone, a map, and a gun. In that order. Food and sleep, blessed sleep, would also be good, but they were low on the ladder.
And a dressing for his head. Mustn’t forget that.
He had none of what he needed. Instead he was lurching like a vision o
f hell through the late-night streets, sodden from the river, his head violated and mutilated. He had no wallet, no money. No passport.
But he had an address.
In the brightness of the square he straightened his back, hearing Major Farnborough’s yelled command – for Christ’s sake, Calvary, put some spine into it – and inhaled deeply. He stopped, looked around. A few restaurants were mopping up, turning out their last stragglers. Across the way a bar was in full, raucous flow.
He toured the periphery of the square. In one corner he found what he wanted: a map of the vicinity on a vertical column. He squinted at it. He’d got the right side of the river, at least.
North was Josefov, the Jewish Town, and on its eastern side the Spanish Synagogue.
The most direct way would be through the Old Town Square, where a day and a half ago he’d tailed Gaines, but it was large and exposed and Calvary didn’t want to risk being stopped by the police patrols that must be crawling all over the city by now. Instead he worked out an alternative route, one that would keep him as far as possible in the shadows.
He ducked along alleys and narrow streets, emerging into a larger square with an enormous renaissance hall across from him – the Rudolfinum – and the expanse of the river to his left. Keeping to the edge of the square, he headed west, skirting the Old Jewish Cemetery. The gravestones staggered and tumbled into one another and for a moment Calvary paused at the railing, seeing something heaving beneath the ancient earth.
The dead were returning for him, coming to claim him as one of their own.
He stumbled on, shaking the image from his head. From either side visions lurched at him. Here was an enormous red Golem, hewn from clay, which groped for his shoulder but revealed itself to be a tacky decoration outside a restaurant. Over there was the arched face of a malevolent puppet leering from a shop window.
Rest. You need to get your head together, you’re starting to lose it. At least slow down a little.
But he couldn’t rest, or even slow down, because if Krupina had taken Blažek and taken him alive then she would soon have the address from him, the whereabouts of Gaines, and then Calvary would lose Gaines forever.
*
An Art Nouveau clock on a street corner told him it was just shy of two a.m.. Perhaps an hour since he’d fled the park.
The Spanish Synagogue reared to meet him and he stopped to orientate himself. Before it stood the bronze Kafka statue, the man sitting on the shoulders of a striding, empty suit. Calvary wandered about until he found another street map. The address he wanted was to the north.
The street led into an increasingly residential district, tall terraced houses giving way to individual building, quirky in their contrasting shapes and sizes. There was the side road he was looking for, off to the right. It was dimly lit with infrequent, Gothic streetlamps. He squinted at the numbers. Twenty three: it would be on the right-hand side, where the odds were.
Cars were parked end to end on the opposite side of the street. Calvary crouched and duckwalked behind the row until he drew abreast of number 23. He peered round the rear bumper of the nearest car.
It was a cottage, a narrow two-up, two-down building with one corner forming part of the entrance to another alley. There were lights on downstairs, coming through the spaces between the horizontal slats of wooden blinds. The blinds were closed too tightly for Calvary to be able to see through. He shifted further along and looked down the alley alongside the house. It was dark and featureless.
Keeping low, he crossed the road and went down the alley. There were two plastic wheeled bins at the end. High up on the side of the cottage that formed one wall of the alley there was a small window, dark and curtained within. Calvary took hold of one of the bins and lifted it across so that it was beneath the window. Then he climbed on to the bin so that he was balanced on the top. He reached up and got a grip on the rough sill below the window, hauled himself up so that his elbows and forearms were on the sill. It was about six inches wide and as he pushed himself higher he tipped forward so that his face was almost against the glass.
There was no light whatsoever coming through the curtains. It was the type of window that consisted of two casements, one below and in front of the other and which slid up to open the window. The lower casement was secured by a latch which he could see through the pane.
As quietly as he could Calvary dropped back down again and searched the alley. Finding nothing of use, he searched the bins. In one he found a plastic knife and fork in a discarded tin foil food container.
He climbed back up on to the sill. After several slips and false starts he succeeded in raising the latch off its peg enough that he could push the lower section of the window upwards with his right hand while the left provided a brace against the sill. The gap created by the raising of the window was about two feet wide. He decided against parting the curtains to inspect the room before climbing through, because if there was anyone in there they could easily have pushed him off the sill. He grasped the sides of the window frame and levered himself through.
If the man waiting in the dark had chosen a garrotte or even to use his bare hands he would have incapacitated Calvary. Instead he had a handgun, and the cockiness that came with it. Calvary saw it coming sooner in the darkness than he would have if the lights had been on, lamplight from outside glinting off the barrel to his right. Calvary snapped out a sideways kick which connected with the man’s hip. It surprised him and it gave Calvary a chance to sweep low with his heel in an arc across the floor and catch his ankles. The man went down.
Calvary grabbed for him because he would have a noisy landing on the thinly carpeted floor, got hold of his hair in both fists That stopped his fall, but it meant Calvary’s hands were occupied, and in that crucial moment the man swung the gun up. Calvary pulled his head forward by the hair and drove a knee up under his chin. The neck snapped, and his body sagged like a sack of grain. This time Calvary couldn’t catch him in time and he hit the floor with a heavy noise.
There was sound, then, from downstairs. Calvary picked up his gun and stepped over to the open door. Beyond was a landing with a wooden railing that overlooked the stairs. Light was coming up from downstairs. There were voices from below, but low ones, as though they were trying not to let Calvary hear.
The gun was a SIG Sauer. Checking the magazine would produce a tell-tale sound so Calvary didn’t do it, but from the heft of the weapon he could tell that it was loaded. On the floor behind him the man was breathing thickly, almost snoring. Calvary paused at the door, crouching, not moving out into the landing in case the floorboards creaked. He aimed the SIG at the top of the stairs and waited.
The door opposite him across the landing moved an inch. God, he’d been slow, because there was someone in there, in the other bedroom, waiting in the darkness just as the first man had been.
It meant that they had been lying in wait. It was an ambush.
Calvary fired off two shots in rapid succession at the door, which looked cheap and modern and not very strong. The slugs smashed through the wood and there was a cry of pain which he barely heard, because he was up and running at a stoop to the top of the stairs where he stopped again.
Halfway down, hanging on the wall, was a large mirror. Reflected in it he could see the living room at the foot of the staircase. Two men were moving quickly into position, guns raised.
Seated beyond them on a sofa was a small, molish man, head hung, eyes watchful behind dense glasses.
At last. Gaines.
*
Calvary hung back and aimed down along the banister into the room. As one of the men, shaven-headed and black-clad, came into his line of sight he fired. He was a fraction shy. A coffee table exploded in a rainbow of glass. The man lurched back as Calvary himself withdrew.
He watched the mirror. The bald man jerked his head at his partner who stepped behind Gaines, grey and expressionless on the sofa. Put a gun to his head.
The bald man disappeared beyo
nd the periphery of the mirror. Calvary moved forward to adjust the view he had of the downstairs room.
This move saved his life because an instant later a shot blasted past his left ear, so close that he could feel the flick of the bullet’s slipstream against the lobe. Calvary spun. Before he could complete the turn he saw that the second bedroom door was open and the man he’d shot through the door was sitting in the doorway, his gun levelled, blood streaking his face and arms.
Calvary became aware of punctured viscid screaming from below. He understood: the shot meant for him had hit one of the injured man’s associates instead. He took aim at the sitting man and pulled the trigger. It wouldn’t go back, the first or the second time. It had jammed, Swiss precision engineering letting him down. Calvary dived forward and grabbed the base of the banister, swung himself round so that he was rolling down the stairs even as the sitting man fired again, this time striking the mirror which erupted above Calvary and sent knife-like shards of silvered glass showering across the staircase.
Calvary hit something with his back, an ornamental statuette of some sort, at the bottom of the stairs. Then he was up on his knees, pointing his useless jammed gun at the room. At his feet was the shaven-headed man, on his back, his throat blown away, his limbs jerking like a marionette’s, his acrid urine boiling on to the carpet and stinging the air. Ten feet away Gaines sat on a leather sofa, watching Calvary. The other man squatted beside him, jamming a pistol muzzle into his right temple. Killian looked wan but unhurt physically.
Calvary threw himself forward as the dying man upstairs let off another shot, but it didn’t even make it downstairs this time. He rose to his feet on the carpet in the middle of the floor, aiming at the face of the man beside Gaines.
‘Shoot him and I’ll kill you,’ Calvary said, in English. The man wouldn’t have seen him trying to fire his jammed gun upstairs and would assume it was in working order.
