On Borrowed Time

by Solomon Carter

  “Is that because there was always someone else in front of you?”

  The woman smirked as she held a lungful of smoke.

  “That’s one way to survive. It’s the woman’s way, isn’t it? We have to be smarter than them, so we are. We can work with them, because we have to. And when we need to we can climb over them to get where we need to be.”

  Eva shook her head. “You are despicable.”

  “Tell me, sweetheart, who’s fighting that killer right now?”

  Eva said nothing, but looked out to the courtyard. Dan was still standing, moving backwards as he fended off another volley of punches and kicks from the killer.

  “And where are you, sweetheart? That’s right. You’re standing here in the room with me. The problem is all yours, Miss Roberts. I know exactly who and what I am and I don’t pretend to be anything else. Is honesty despicable? Or is lying to yourself?”

  Brian Gillespie shoved past the women. His jacket was on and now he had a gun in hand, a long barrelled black pistol. “Where are the last of your boys? Get them in the windows, and get them shooting at that tart. Do it pronto!”

  Joleen Riley looked at Eva and raised an eyebrow as if they were caught in the same grand male conspiracy and were co-conspirators against it. Eva rejected the sentiment with a cold hard stare.

  The woman walked away with a trail of smoke following her and called the names of her boys.

  “Keep back.”

  “Maybe I should be shooting,” said Eva.

  “If she shoots you first, I lose. I’m not having that. Stay back.”

  The old man opened the window. Already she could hear shouting from around the house and floorboards shuddering as the other men took up positions in the other windows.

  “One thing then. One thing. Let me get some pictures of her.”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Get your bloody pictures, but stay out of harm’s way.”

  Gillespie teased the bedroom window off the latch and opened it carefully. As he took aim, Eva pointed her phone out of the window and snapped as many images as her phone would allow in a twenty seconds. She dragged her phone in and scanned the images. One, or maybe two of them would do. The rest didn’t show her face at all as she was caught up in the fight.

  Gillespie was muttering to himself as he pointed the gun. Eva started on her plan for the images.

  The old man tracked the woman with the gun, and counted quietly. One. Two. Three. The shot sounded out in the early morning.

  Dan was breathing heavily now, his arms were tired and his brain was struggling to read the woman’s moves. She must have seen he was reading her and now she moved with random strikes and kicks which broke the pattern of her fighting style. Sometimes they caught him. Most often they left him tired and confused, having to fend off another attack from an unexpected angle. Dan could read this tactic too - she was wearing him out. And it was working. Just as he was working to read her intent for her blade arm, her eyes pointed right. He saw the right arm come out open-handed, ready for a grab or a slap. Dan watched her eyes. Was this a bluff? No. They eyes stayed. Dan swept inside her right arm and drove a punch into her gut and one up towards her chin. It never connected. The bluff was so well laid on, Dan was suckered straight into it. The girl backed up before the punch connected properly with her abdominal wall. Now his stomach faced her knife hand, and it arched in towards him. All he could do was turn and seize hold of her, pressing in tight to her body. He did so, jumping against her, pressing all his weight forward so she fell back against the cobbles. She moved off balance and her knife arm swept up and landed. It was inevitable. In this position, the knife was always going to win. Dan grunted then roared in pain as the short blade landed in his shoulder blade. He was on top of her, and threw himself back in pain and to stop her from performing a total slice of the shoulder. It burned worse than any fire he could imagine. He felt the knife still in him. He hammered a punch down into her jaw.

  “I’m still here, honey. And I’m the one on top.” He was grinning through the agony, stoking her rage with his taunts. “But from what I heard, you prefer giving to taking.”

  The woman roared back at him and threw him off her.

  As Dan rocked back, she surged up in front of him ready to strike. Then came the thunder, and a bullet struck like a late lightning bolt, cutting through her raised upper arm. A line of blood followed the bullet. The woman looked at her ripped arm in shock before she wailed, and then she dived for the floor and out of sight of the house. Kropotkin moved over the short man’s body on the way. She found a small gun inside his jacket. Dan saw her take it. Unless he moved, he was totally exposed to the gun, while she was out of sight of the windows upstairs, too close to the front of the house. Dan ran along the side of the house and dived just in time to the side of a parked car as a bullet whizzed past him.

  “I’m too tired for any more of this shit,” he whispered. He took a peek up to the windows. Three windows were open with guns pointing from each. The woman was hemmed in for now. But now he had fought with her up close and personal, he still backed the killer to survive. Dan hoped he was wrong. The woman stood up. Dan studied her face. There was a strangely serene look upon it, a face he had not seen on her before. That alone sent fear rocketing up his spine.

  The woman moved forwards and shot at the upper windows speculatively. One window shattered and the gunman withdrew. Another window broke. The woman ducked and moved again as a bullet streaked past her. She waited a second, still looking measured and calm, before she tried the technique again. This time she shot straight at the middle window – Eva’s room. A bullet went through the glass and two bullets thudded straight down. One hit the woman in the body. She fell back, howling and rolled into the shadows of the house. She howled some more. Dan heard another noise beneath the volume of the first. Upstairs in the window, a gunman had been hurt. There was swearing and groaning. It was old man Gillespie – Bad Boy Brian had been shot. But with relief, with apprehension, Dan saw the woman struggle. Kropotkin was slowing down. Growing weaker by the moment. A full minute later she stopped moving altogether. She had been shot in the stomach – not a pleasant way to die.

  “Anna Kropotkin is down. She’s not moving.” Dan shouted up. There was a muted cheer from one of the broken windows on the upper floor. It wasn’t much. In Eva’s window, Brian Gillespie was still groaning and swearing.

  “Gillespie’s been hurt,” called Eva. “A flesh wound mostly. Shrapnel from the window. Dan… Dan… is this over?!”

  Dan smiled and breathed a deep breath and stared up at the grey winter sky. The light made him squint. Yet, the look on Kropotkin’s face stayed with him. In the seconds passing since Eva’s question, Dan wondered new, terrifying thoughts. His thoughts shifted from wondering to knowing. Where was the blood from the stomach shot? Dan stood and shouted. “No. Eva, stay! Stay!” He shouted as loud as he could, but no response came. Eva was coming. Dan leapt around the car and started sprinting the distance to the front door. Before anything else, he saw the absence of blood. If she had been struck the woman’s life blood would have been spilled all around her, but there was only blood near her arm.

  “No!” Dan roared, forgetting the short blade still in his shoulder, all the pain dulled by abject fear. He remembered the knife as he moved, felt its pressure in him. With his other arm he reached back awkwardly as he ran, and with great pain blooming all over his upper body, he wrenched it free. The door began to open. Kropotkin’s corpse started to move. She spun and took aim at Dan as he threw his body at her with arms outstretched. They collided hard, and the small gun went off. With all his strength Dan plunged the short blade into her gun wielding arm. But he didn’t see her other arm, nor the stone she was raising in it. The woman beneath him screamed. He still wasn’t sure if the bullet had missed him. But then the lights went out as a something heavy struck his head from the top and side.

  Eva opened the door to see Ann Kropotkin drop her gun
, a knife hanging from her forearm. She also saw the woman land the cobble stone on Dan’s head in a catastrophic blow. Dan fell limp. Eva gasped but didn’t scream. She was silent. She saw the gun free on the floor, and then she kicked it before Kropotkin could grab it. The gun spun and skittered along the cobbles until it stopped beneath a parked car.

  The woman stood. One hand was bandaged with a gunshot wound evident on the same upper arm. The other arm was stabbed in the meat of the forearm. The woman now looked drained, but still as mean as ever.

  “Do you think I’m beaten, Miss Roberts? I hope you do. But I can still finish you.”

  Eva nodded “Maybe. Maybe not. But the thing is, Anna, you’re finished right now. You’re done.”

  “Come here, and I will kill you like I killed your lover.”

  Eva didn’t look down. She couldn’t cope with that yet. Not until this was finished.

  “Listen to me, Anna. A person like you needs secrecy, don’t you? To be an assassin for a shady army like Dobcek’s, you cannot leave a trace. There must be no proof you even exist.”

  The woman was intrigued in spite of her pain. Eva saw it on her face.

  “I have just posted your image to the police. I have just posted your image to every news network in the western world. CNN. CBC. BBC. Fox. Sky. ABC. Al Jazeera. You name them, they have your image, your name, and the basic details of the plot you are involved in. Eva opened the Twitter app on her phone. “Congratulations, Anna Kropotkin. You’re the most famous assassin Russia’s ever had.”

  She handed Kropotkin the phone into her broken hand. The woman stared at a tweet with a picture of herself fighting in it, teeth bared and knife in hand. Beneath the tweet was a list of retweets where the picture had been shared. There were 372 retweets already. The tweet text read #Russian #assassin #hybrid #gang #warfare #london #kgb #fsb #kremlin mafia on British streets.

  “It’s going viral, Anna. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  The woman looked suddenly vanquished. The anger faded. She went pale from blood loss and certain defeat. Behind Eva the front door fluttered. Another shot sounded. This time the bullet hit the woman in the hip. Blood and bone material graced the air as she fell down.

  “She was wearing body armour, the cheating bitch,” said Gillespie, walking out into the courtyard. There was blood on his shirt where flying shrapnel had flown from the window and cut into his flabby breast. Gillespie would be fine.

  Eva glanced at Dan. She saw his fingers curling. Yet Anna Kropotkin was still alive, the most deadly woman she had ever known.

  “Let’s call an ambulance,” said Eva, as she looked down into Kropotkin’s fading eyes.

  “No,” said Gillespie. “Let’s call an undertaker.” Eva looked away as Gillespie unloaded the rest of his bullets into the woman’s body. When she looked back, Eva worked hard to hold back from vomiting. She sprang past the body towards Dan as he shifted around, bearing a wound just visible above his hairline. “She was dead already, Miss Roberts. The Russians were never gonna let her live. Which is the same problem you might well face, after the stunt you just pulled.”

  Eva shrugged. “Surviving another day is enough for me right now, Mr Gillespie.” She was glad the old man had emptied all the bullets from his gun because as she cradled Dan back to consciousness, bleeding all over her favourite Jaeger suit, she realised she was right. Right now, survival felt like the best thing in the world. It felt like victory. And seeing Dan was still alive was like being presented with the trophy.

  “Right. As soon as you’re both ready, do me and yourselves a favour. Take the nearest tube back to Fenchurch Street and go home now.”

  Joleen Riley emerged from the shadows of the house. She came up alongside Brian and wrapped her arms around him like a picture perfect image of a besotted wife. Eva gave her hard eyes.

  “Why hurry? Dan’s been hurt. And besides, what happened today will be erased from history. Sure, there will be my tweet and that picture. But they will deny it all and maybe they’ll even get that tweet deleted. It’ll be like she never existed. No one will go to prison for someone who doesn’t exist, Mr Gillespie.”

  “You sound like one of us,” said Gillespie sneering. Eva didn’t smile. Yes, she thought, with a pang of self-disgust, she did. “But I won’t forget. I don’t forget anything, Miss Roberts. You already know that. This Dobcek may have Moscow behind him, but he’s no Victor Marka. He’s a dry little bureaucrat who hides in the shadows. His days are numbered. So take my advice while you can and do yourselves a favour. The blue touch-paper has been lit. Go home and stand well back. Let the London war unfold, and maybe I’ll just forget all about you. There’s a first time for everything, right?”

  Eva helped Dan wake with cold water. She tended to his wounds. They had survived, but at what cost? In blood soaked clothes, they drove Georgiev to hospital in Dan’s rattling black Jag, which had been parked on Boneyard Lane. After a blood transfusion and some surgery, Georgiev would make a full recovery, so they were told. And after yet more time spent without sleep, they left the hospital arm in arm, looking like refugees fresh from a war zone. The doctors had been nosey. They had made excuses. And as soon as Eva suspected they had called the police, they had left the hospital in a hurry. “We’re free,” said Dan.

  “And we’re alive,” said Eva.

  “Yes, there’s a lot to be said for alive.”

  “Dan?”

  She stopped him in the street and held his arms. She looked up at his tired, war weary face, and saw the young man she loved beneath the hard veneer of battle scars.

  “What is it?”

  “Are we back?”

  Dan grinned. “In what sense?”

  “Back like we were? Back together… back in business?”

  “In that sense, do you want to be?”

  She looked up at him and smiled with a brilliance she hadn’t been able to show in months.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then we are back in business.”

  “But what about everything else?”

  The way she said that, the way she was unable to say what she meant with her feelings brought an awkward smile to Dan’s lips and made Eva feel glow with embarrassment.

  “Everything else?”

  “Yes, Dan.”

  “I think I know what you mean, Eva. And the answer is yes. You’ve got everything else as well. You’ve always had that like I told you before.”

  “Yes I know. I just needed to check.”

  She launched herself against his aching body and they held each other tight and tenderly.

  “After all that, spending hours travelling is the last thing I want to do.”

  Dan’s eyes became suddenly occupied by a mischievous glint.

  “Same here.”

  “Then what about over there?” Eva pointed to a tall townhouse hotel set in the middle of a North London terrace.

  “Are you sure the business can afford it right now?” said Dan.

  Eva made a face and hugged him tighter. “The business can wait until tomorrow. Until then, why don’t you and I keep off the radar a little longer? Let’s go and get reacquainted…”

  Eva saw the old fire rise in Dan’s eyes, and felt his hand wander down her back.

  Yes, it was good to be back in business. It was good in every sense. Survival was just the very start.

  Epilogue

  Security is always an illusion, and knowing that they now treasured it deeply. Eva held onto Dan’s body as if this were the last day she would ever see him, knowing that it could have been. She traced the scars on his back and the ridges of solid muscle by his shoulders. He winced when her hand traced across the bandage laid on the knife wound, but he laughed into her kisses and she kissed him harder, laughing too. This was unrestrained passion. His body was a territory she had almost forgotten. In the moments between their affairs, the times when they had slept together for comfort rather than for love, were nothing compared to this. Each moment now
was about giving and savouring rather than plundering. Eva’s eyes closed as his hand ran through her hair and her scalp tingled to his touch. His weight and strength mingling into her feminine softness had to be one of the answers to what life was about. Dan pressed down upon her as he felt Eva’s body rise to his, a wave of passion and desire seizing her body. He felt her body grip him, her whole body, and as she pressed up to him, eyes knitting tightly together, he savoured her beauty afresh. Eva Roberts was still amazing to this day. Gratified that she was his, caught in the pleasure of being with someone he loved and desired, Dan replied to her body. He held her close and pressed his lips down to her neck. Lazily, a sweet whispering moan leaving her lips, Eva kissed Dan’s firm neck as his body rocked and released. She whispered like a mother to a child in his ear, shushing his ever alert mind, as he rocked and slowly fell to peace. After a long time of enjoying the soft hush of each other’s inert bodies, Dan whispered. “Honey, that was wild. That was…”

  “Wasn’t it. I missed you, Dan. And now I’ve got you back. The real you.”

  Dan smiled into her neck while his hand twirled her long red hair.

  “Likewise.”

  In the North London hotel, finally at peace, Eva wondered if they should stay the whole day, and maybe later, after a long rest and maybe a repeat in an intimate shower, maybe they would go for a restorative meal and a drink. She was considering all kinds of wonderful indulgences, to make up for all the hurt, all the fear and all the lost time, when a noise from the TV table slowly roused Dan from his near slumber. He rolled over. “My phone, baby.”

  Eva looked at him with sleepy eyes. “You should never answer a phone or read a text when you’re in the middle of making love. I didn’t think I had to explain that one, Dan.”

  “You didn’t, sweetheart, technically, we’re not making love right now, are we?”

  “90 seconds ago, we were doing something very much like it.”

  Dan smiled and pulled his body up out of bed. She admired his firm muscular physique, like a guy from one of those superhero movies, only with more scars and more body hair. Dan was aging well for a childish wild man. The phone stopped ringing and Dan looked back.