Severance Kill

by Tim Stevens

  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 basizhad 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. Blazek 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 Blazek 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 of 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 Blazek 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 featureles
s.

  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 ha size=, 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 beyond the periphery of the mirror. Calvaryirrd t 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.

  Calvary watched his eyes. They blazed, dark and malign. For an instant they flicked to the staircase and then back. Calvary said, ‘Forget about him. He’s no use now.’

  He hoped he was right.

  Calvary was five or six feet from Gaines. With his arm extended, the barrel of the gun was less than a yard from the man’s face. He raised it so that he was looking down it. There was sweat, Calvary observed, on the smudged pouches below the man’s lower lids. As he watched he saw a tiny flicker of muscle leap in the man’s cheek.

  It was a problem, his being so jumpy. It meant he might pull the trigger as a reflex, in response to a sudden movement or sound.

  As if on cue a mobile phone rang somewhere. Calvary saw the man’s eyes move first, jerking to one side, saw the tightening of his finger on the trigger.

  Calvary began the pressure that would squeeze the trigger of his own gun, believing as he did so in magic, that the gun would miraculously unjam itself.

  The man got control of himself at the last moment, fished the phone out of his pocket. He pressed the muzzle of his gun — another SIG Sauer — harder against Gaines’s head for emphasis and spoke quickly and softly into the phone, his eyes rne,preemaining on Calvary’s. He listened, mainly, except when he rattled off a burst which Calvary assumed was his updating the caller on the situation.

  The expression in his eyes had changed from hate to fear.

  He folded the phone away. Calvary eased himself forward, barely moving his feet, putting most of the motion into a lean until the barrel of the SIG was less than
a foot from the man’s face. He could see the tension in him, feel it lashing off him.

  The problem Calvary had created for himself by moving so close was that he no longer had an adequate view up the stairs, which were behind him now. He heard stirrings from above, a low groaning punctuated by a thump. He glanced at Gaines’s face. He was looking past Calvary. His eyes swung up to meet Calvary’s. Barely perceptibly his head shook. Calvary nodded. It was clear behind him, for the time being at least.

  A second problem, also of Calvary’s own making, was that the longer he continued his bluff the higher the risk that the man would call it. He would soon start wondering why Calvary hadn’t shot him, would start thinking that he hadn’t the nerve, even if he didn’t work out that the gun was jammed.

  ‘Lower your gun,’ Calvary said, ‘or I’ll shoot you.’ He repeated it in Russian.

  The man didn’t move, didn’t appear to react at all. Calvary pushed the muzzle forward so that the metal was an inch from his forehead.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ Calvary said. ‘I’m here to get Gaines. I’d prefer it if he were alive, but I’ll take him even if he’s dead. The difference is, if he dies, you die. If you let him go I promise you I will not kill you.’

  There was something in his eyes, then a change. Calvary said, ‘Oh, bloody hell, have it your way,’ and pulled back as hard as he could on the trigger.

  The man didn’t have time to notice that it was jammed because he did what Calvary had suspected he would do and moved the pistol away from Gaines’s head to aim it at Calvary. It was an extremely fast move but Calvary had been expecting it. He swiped his useless gun hard against the back of the man’s hand and felt the metal connect with the brittle bones. The man screamed, his fingers loosening. At the same time Calvary headbutted the man in the face. The man let go of the gun and Calvary prised it free. He stepped back, Gaines dropping sideways off the sofa, free of his captor.