by Andy McNab
I reached for the bag and got another whiff of white spirit vapour. I’d been aware of the smell upstairs in the wing that was still under reconstruction, only fleetingly, though, and in an environment where I’d expect it. Maybe this smelt stronger because it didn’t belong here.
As I straightened, the socket powering the kettle buzzed and flashed and popped and the blue light snapped off. I flicked the nearest wall switch and half a dozen LED bulbs in the ceiling sparked up, so only the ring circuit feeding the sockets had blown.
I emptied the dishwasher salt into a glass jug, poured the not-quite-boiling water over it and gave the concoction a stir.
Upstairs in the bedroom, Lyubova was pretty much where I’d left her, still out of it, but breathing more easily. I fixed her a saline cocktail in the plastic beaker and gave it an experimental sip. If this stuff didn’t work, nothing would.
I went down on one knee and, keeping her arse on the floor, hauled her up far enough to lodge the back of her neck in the crook of my left arm. Her ribs must have been on fire, but she didn’t even blink. I reached round and gripped her jaw with my left thumb and forefinger, locking her chin in the web of skin between them. Keeping her face horizontal, I pushed open her mouth and poured as much of the emetic down her throat as I could.
A fair amount of it spilt down her cheeks and some went into her nose, but most of it was on target. The result was almost immediate. Her sneezing then her gagging reflex went into overdrive. Her chest heaved and I managed to tilt her sideways before she propelled whatever she’d had for lunch across the tiles and, with any luck, a critical amount of whatever had been forced into her before I arrived. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but house beautiful had been put on hold.
I poured her another slug of saline and she gave a repeat performance. Then she opened her perfectly shaped eyes. But this wasn’t a Snow White moment. Her surgeon wouldn’t have been pleased. She still looked like shit. And felt like a dead weight. I didn’t expect her to crack into a kettlebell workout anytime soon.
She didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.
She took a deep, rasping breath, swallowed painfully and tried to lick her lips. Then she spoke.
‘Those … fucking … bastards …’ Her words were slurred, but her voice was deep and husky.
‘Who?’
She turned on her own this time and sprayed the porcelain once more. It took her another couple of minutes to gather her marbles. I knew exactly how she felt.
Then she managed to wrench her head back in my direction. ‘Whatever that little … shit … is paying you …’
She closed her eyes and I felt her body slump.
I shook her like a ragdoll until she resurfaced.
‘… I will … pay you … double … to kill them …’
Her eyes flashed.
‘What little shit? Frank?’
‘Frank?’ She snorted. ‘He’s dead.’
‘What little shit?’
Her mouth opened and closed. ‘Frank’s … creature …’
I waited. I didn’t have a fuck of a lot of choice.
‘Laff … ont …’
‘Who did this to you?’
I knew the answer, but I needed it to come from her.
‘The Albanian … bastard.’
‘Uran?’
She summoned the energy to curl her upper lip. ‘Ur-anus …’ She must have been quite pleased with that one, because the sneer almost turned into a smile. ‘And … the other … asshole …’
‘Dijani?’
I couldn’t help admiring her anger. But I didn’t want her confusing me with her new best friend. I tightened my elbow and felt my left fist clench. ‘You helped them to kill Frank.’
‘Frank … deserved … to die.’ Her dark eyes blazed. ‘But they … are … peasants …’
I couldn’t argue with that. And Lyubova should know: she’d made the journey from air stewardess to aristocracy in double-quick time.
She went limp on me again. I bundled a big fluffy bath towel under her head, then stood and filled the jug with cold water and emptied the whole thing over her face.
Her eyelashes fluttered and she fought to get some more oxygen into her lungs.
I knelt down and gave her a slap, leaving a livid red mark on her cheek. So her circulation wasn’t completely shot.
‘Where are they? Where are your peasants?’
She mumbled something I couldn’t hear.
I felt for her pulse again. Her heart was now beating like a snare drum.
‘Where?’ I leant in closer and turned the volume up. ‘Where?’
Her eyes widened, but they were glassy now. Unfocused. Her breathing quickened.
‘WHERE?’
Blood-flecked spittle leaked out of the corner of her mouth.
‘Ad … ler …’
In the silence that followed, I knew that the interior of the chateau was no longer still. The quality of the air had changed. My eardrums registered it first. Something or someone had fucked with the molecules in our immediate environment.
I drew down the Sphinx as I got to my feet.
10
I reached the archway that led through to the bedroom and heard a crack from below us. The entrance hall, maybe. A door banging shut? No. I had a bad feeling about this.
Then a noise behind me.
The empty glass jug smashing against the tiles.
I turned to see Lyubova struggling to raise herself off the floor. Gasping. Her skirt riding up her bare thighs. One hand clutching her ribs, apparently unaware that blood was flowing freely from the other, where shards of glass were embedded in her palm.
‘Mis-ter …’
She shook her head, trying to clear it.
‘Stefan …’
I smelt a hint of smoke now. I glanced in the direction of the stairwell. I couldn’t see any sign of it in the corridor, but it was definitely in the atmosphere.
‘They … have … him …’
As I went back to her, Lyubova’s supporting hand slipped away, leaving a streak of crimson on the tiles. She collapsed, shoulder first, on to the towel I’d shoved underneath her head, and gave a pain-racked groan.
I gripped her outstretched arm and rolled her on to her back. She was in all sorts of shit, but her eyes were open. She was relishing this.
Steering clear of the broken jug, I pushed my head right up close to hers. ‘What did you say?’
It was a fucking stupid question. We both knew what she’d said. And I’d just given her the pleasure of saying it again.
‘Those … assholes. They have … taken … the … boy …’
‘You’re talking shit.’
Her tongue slid out, moistened her lips, then slid back in again.
‘So … go back … to … the beach … and check …’
I replayed my movements over the last few hours at top speed inside my head. I hadn’t been followed. I was ninety-nine point nine per cent sure of that.
‘Where have they taken him?’
She said nothing. Didn’t even blink. Her expression told me everything she wanted me to know. You may have saved Frank’s son on the mountain. But now you’re both well and truly fucked …
I let her have a good look at the muzzle of the Sphinx, then pressed it against her forehead, right between her eyes.
‘I said, where?’
The weapon meant nothing to her. She’d already been a milli-metre away from terminal and, with a bit of help from a gutful of dishwasher salt and sheer determination, she’d fought her way back to consciousness. Whatever else was going to rat-shit in her life, this was her reward.
‘Where?’ I gripped her bicep and gave her a fucking good shake. ‘Where have they taken him?’
She wasn’t going to let the grinding of her broken ribs steal her moment of triumph. ‘I wouldn’t tell you … even if I knew …’
A smile began to take shape on her no longer flawless features, but never made it to the finishing line.
She heard the crackle of flames at the same time as I did.
I sprang up and accelerated through the bedroom and into the corridor. Grey smoke was billowing up the stairwell from the ground floor.
I rammed the weapon back under my belt and spun back into Lyubova’s bathroom. She hadn’t moved.
I soaked a hand towel under the shower. Folded it into a triangle. Covered my mouth and nose with it and tied it around the back of my neck. Then gave another the same treatment. Wrapped it around my head like a shemagh.
I was vaguely aware of her watching me, but she’d had her moment. I didn’t need her to slow me down any more than she had already.
I ran through the smoke, two steps at a time. When I was halfway down the second flight, a jet of superheated propane from one of the cylinders blasted through the polythene sheeting opposite the kitchen and enveloped the space below me. The shockwave of the explosion that followed drove all the air from my lungs, lifted me off my feet and punched me against the wall.
I lay on the cold stone steps long enough to be reminded that the bit of my back which Claude had hammered with his fence post still hurt like fuck. And that I had to get moving before the rest of the propane and white spirit accelerant ignited above me as well. This might have been designed to look like an accident, but there was no way it was. I wondered whether whatever triggered it had been on a timer or detonated remotely. The van in the layby, maybe?
I hauled myself up as the smoke thickened. The far side of the hall was an inferno. I pulled one towel further down my forehead and the other up on to my cheekbones. The heat seared the strip of unprotected skin between them.
The fire began to consume the stairway. If the cylinders kicked off on the floor above, I’d be completely fucked. There were a whole lot more of them there. When they ignited, I’d have a major bleve on my hands.
I couldn’t get back to Lyubova, even if I’d wanted to.
Fuck her.
Whoever was pulling the strings was clearing up after himself. First Frank’s BG. Now his ex. It was no accident that the dogs, the security crew, the maids and whoever else had pissed off. And now I had to as well, before the emergency services arrived.
I legged it up to the landing and dived through the polythene I’d sliced on my way in. I whipped off my shemagh and wrapped it around the nearest propane cylinder. It sizzled like bacon fat but saved my palms from being fried long enough for me to hurl it through the nearest window.
Glass and shutter disintegrated. I clambered over the sill and on to the planking. The big hole I’d made would help fan the flames, but there was fuck-all I could do about that.
The heat was suddenly fucking outrageous up there too.
The mouth of the telescopic chute was two metres to my left. The shutter one metre beyond it burst outwards. A swirling eruption of glass and splintered wood, debris and dust. But I knew worse was to come. I vaulted over the retaining scaffolding pole while I still could, raised both arms and went into the chute feet first.
It was like one of those water slides you should never make the mistake of going down on a stag weekend in Portugal, but without the jets and the chance to level out before you hit the pool. I managed to slow myself with my boots and my arse and my elbows, and hoped that I’d land on a pile of plasterboard and insulating fibre rather than metal and slate and brick and chunks of wood with nails sticking out.
It was metal and slate and brick and chunks of wood. I couldn’t feel any nails. My right knee took most of the pressure of the fall, and my arse didn’t enjoy the experience either. I lay in a heap for a moment, counting the seconds until the boiling liquid expansion vapour explosion took out the front of the wing and everything immediately in front of it.
I took a breath or two and tested all the bits of myself I needed most right now. Then I hauled myself out of the skip and hobbled across to the van.
Three or four more windows on the upper floors at the centre of the house burst outwards as I went, showering the ground with razor-sharp shards, which sparkled like diamonds in the evening sunlight. Lyubova would probably have liked that. I didn’t look up. I needed to get out of range, double quick.
Two more went, sucking in air to feed the fire and superheat the propane.
I whipped out the Sphinx. Ripped open the driver’s door. Shoved the weapon under my thigh. Rammed the key in the ignition. The engine coughed, then died, then caught. I threw the gear stick into first, floored the accelerator pedal and sprayed gravel across the tarpaulin as I took off.
No flashing lights yet. And no sudden reappearance of the Dobermanns or their handlers.
I slowed as I approached the gates and skidded to a halt between the sensors that prompted them to open for outgoing vehicles. On went the baseball cap. Now I could hear sirens. I waited for the metal railings ahead of me to shudder and swing back.
They didn’t move a millimetre.
I felt my shoulder and jaw muscles clench as I willed them to release me. The entry and exit system might have been fucked by the fusing of the ring main, or whatever had sparked up the blaze. I’d have to get out and wrench the fuckers open.
The tone of the sirens changed as they drew nearer. I knew what that meant. It meant they were reaching the end of their journey. I gripped the pistol and was reaching for the Expert’s door handle when the gates gave a shudder. Then another. And a gap between them began to widen.
I eased the van forward and, with the pressure wave of the bleve kicking in behind me, I was out of there.
11
My knee throbbed as I put my foot on the gas and headed away from the sirens and the flashing lights I could now glimpse through the trees to my half-right. There was no sign of the smoker in the layby.
I didn’t want to get nailed for speeding, but needed to separate myself from the chateau, then get to Stefan as quickly as possible. I took the second left, hit the brake, then the third right, then left again.
After a couple of Ks I pulled off the road. I wasn’t in cover, but about a hundred from the nearest house, and with a fair amount of foliage close by. I dusted myself off and peeled both decals off the side panels. Then I slid back the door and chucked them into the rear toolbox.
I dug out a screwdriver and swapped the registration plates for the first of the Swiss ones. The original set went into the toolbox too. This was turning into a weapons-grade gangfuck, but I had to grip it, not lose it. The remote drive for the chateau security cameras would be well out of reach of the fire, and the first place any halfway competent investigator would look. Moving freely right now was vital, especially if the van was pinged, and I was in the frame for what Hesco and Dijani had done there.
I put the degreaser down by the partition, then extracted myself from my overalls and bundled them in too.
I glanced in the wing mirror as I rejoined the main and pointed the van north towards the beach where I’d left Stefan. Smoke spiralled into the sky from the chateau behind me. The traffic ahead pulled into the kerb to make space for the two fire engines screaming towards us.
A white and green police wagon, four up, was hot on their heels. One glance at the black combat kit worn by the lads inside it told me they were TIGRIS. They were a long way from home – the Einsatzgruppe HQ was two hundred Ks west, near Bern – but the Zürich canton cops didn’t dress like that, and they didn’t have Sécurité Internationale splashed across their rear wings either.
I heard the rhythmic beat of rotor blades from the south, approaching from St Gallen. The heli might have been carrying a news crew or another TIGRIS team. I’d find out soon enough.
The parking area by the lake had a lot more empty spaces now, and most of the parasols had been taken down. I pulled in a fair distance from the Polo and scanned the surrounding area. Families were being shepherded towards their wagons. Nobody seemed to be there without a good reason, and I couldn’t see anyone dressed for work talking urgently into a mobile.
I got eyes on Stefan’s deckcha
irs. They were empty. That was when I really started to leak sweat, even from places I didn’t know I had sweat glands. On the way, part of me had still hoped Lyubova was bluffing.
The woman in the sundress was packing up her picnic basket and yelling at her twin girls to come out of the water. They weren’t paying her the slightest bit of attention. I scanned the shoreline to the left and right of them. Stefan wasn’t anywhere in sight.
I climbed out of the cab and checked out the Polo, in case he’d got bored and decided to listen to his Pitbull album, or some other rap on the radio. He’d chucked his towel on to the passenger seat, but he wasn’t in there with it. Nor was his rucksack.
I ran down a gangway on to the stretch of turf, then on to the sand. The sun was low in the sky now, and much of the heat had gone out of it. The place wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been earlier, but bunches of locals and holidaymakers were still intent on having a good time. One or two began to point at the pillar of smoke rising into the sky behind me.
Two girls in wetsuits hopped off their windsurfers as they skimmed into the shallows. Four well-oiled teenage dudes were playing volleyball at the far end of the beach, surrounded by a small crowd of kids. Stefan wasn’t one of them.
As I turned back towards the deckchairs, the mum in the sundress finally lost her patience with the twins and heaved them both out of the water. I almost collided with her as she strode back to her basket, gripping a small female wrist in each hand. She looked up, muttering something in Schweizerdeutsch, then recognized me from earlier.
‘Have you seen my boy?’
Her angry-mum face was immediately replaced by her old smiley one. ‘You mustn’t worry. He has gone with the maid.’
‘The maid? Ah … Natasha …’
‘Very pretty girl.’
‘Did she say where to?’
She frowned. ‘She told me you would know. She said they would see you later …’
I nodded again and tried to react as if this was all part of our plan for the evening. I needed answers, but I didn’t want her – or anybody else – to go on red alert.
