Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  Was this Rybkin? The dull street lighting showed the man had thick hair, but he needed to see the face. He quickened his pace to get closer.

  Suddenly a massive explosion shook the town. High above the rooftops fireballs burst into huge floral circles. The man stopped to look up. There was less than ten metres between them now. In the light from the flares the shape of the jaw and the scar on the cheek were unmistakable.

  Sam smiled. The gods were being good to him. Then he flung himself behind a tree, as Rybkin looked round. The pistol nagged against his ankle.

  Rybkin cut left across the cobbles. Sam waited for him to turn the corner into the boulevard, then sprinted forward.

  The square at the head of the Potemkin steps was a mass of craning necks as the fireworks detonated above. He looked left, right, straight ahead.

  ‘Damn!’ he breathed.

  He’d lost him. He elbowed through the throng, searching for the thick head of hair that was his moving target. At the far side of the square the crowd thinned to nothing. He swung right. Then left. Then he saw him. Turning into an alley, looking back, checking. But checking for what? For an assassin from a rival mob? Or to make sure Sam was following . . .

  Had they recognised him outside the restaurant? Was Rybkin leading him by the nose to that coffin he’d been so keen to nail the lid to? The coward in him wanted to turn back, but he couldn’t. He had to know now. Had to bloody know what Rybkin knew.

  He reached the corner where he’d seen Rybkin, half-expecting a bullet. The alley passed through a small courtyard lit by a single lamp high on a wall. Dark, iron-railed balconies overlooked cobbles and a dry fountain. At the far side the lane continued beneath an archway linking two halves of a mansion. A shadow moved.

  Deliberate. Drawing him like a lure.

  He glanced behind, fearing he himself was being tailed. But there was no one else. Just him here. Him and Viktor Rybkin. A trap, almost certainly. But he had a gun, and if walking into it was the only way to achieve his end, so be it.

  He sprinted across the courtyard to the side of the arch. A few paces further on, the alley seemed to end in a void. He tried to visualise where he was. Odessa was built on a plateau whose edge sloped sharply to the sea. Maybe he’d reached it.

  Moving forward, hugging the alley wall, he discovered steps leading down. At the bottom was another yard, lit by a single lamp high on the wall of one of the apartment houses surrounding it. Beyond the roofs he saw the sharp pricks of light from arc lamps in the harbour.

  He ran down the steps. His skin prickled. The lower yard was a paved pen, overlooked by windows from all sides. He heard water dripping from a broken pipe and, back in the direction of Prymorsky Boulevard, rock music competing with the crackle of rockets.

  No sign of Rybkin.

  He saw doorways, four of them. Each was open, each appearing to access stairwells to the flats above. Did Rybkin live here? Hugging walls again he reached the first entrance, stopped and listened. A woman’s keening echoed down the stairwell.

  He held his breath, sensing Rybkin here somewhere, listening too.

  Silently he moved to the next entrance and listened again. The third doorway was different. Steps up yes, but down too. Down to a lower landing. He smelled alcohol suddenly, a lingering in the air like the exhalations of a man who’d spent the evening drinking. From below he heard a door creak.

  Sam dropped to a crouch, his hands scrabbling for the knot binding the gun to his leg. Then he checked himself, something telling him to keep the pistol hidden. He felt a sudden compulsion to shout Rybkin’s name, to end this unbearable tension by revealing himself and demanding that they talk.

  He breathed deeply to steady his pounding heart, then edged down the stairs. Too dark to see, he pulled the Maglite from his pocket and twisted the cap, narrowing its beam with his fingers. At the bottom was another door, painted green and scratched with graffiti. It was half ajar. Heart in mouth, he put his hand on the latch and jerked it open, shining the full beam inside. Two more steps down. And the smell of booze again, stronger now.

  His fear was intense. He wanted to run, but couldn’t. The torch lit up a cellar a few paces wide and maybe ten long. Empty but for a row of locked, steel cabinets, each the height of a small man. Their green paint was streaked with rust. Lockups, he decided. For the flats above. To keep their wine cool. Hence the drink smell. Not Rybkin’s breath at all.

  ‘Shit!’

  The skin crawled on the back of his neck. He spun round to the stairs he’d just descended but there was nothing. Nobody. No sign of life. This was a blind alley. The bottom of the trap.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding. Then he listened. Listened and listened, but there was nothing. Not a bloody thing apart from the crack of fireworks. Rybkin had shaken him off.

  Shaken him off? The man had tempted him down here with the creaking door. So where the fuck had he gone?

  He looked again at the line of cabinets. They had doors. Each and every one had a door big enough for a man to pass through. He moved along the line, rattling them. All locked, all with the tinniness he would expect.

  Except for the last one which was as solid as stone.

  He stood back. The cabinet looked identical to the others, but wasn’t. He pointed the torch down. The cellar floor was dusty, littered with scraps of cardboard and leaves blown in by autumn gales – except here, in front of this one, where instead of dust there was an arc of clear floor.

  He gripped the front of the cabinet and tried to swing it, but couldn’t. He felt at the sides for a catch, but there was none. It would open though, he was certain of that. Because it was the only way Viktor Rybkin could have got away from him.

  He stared at it. The doors were double. A single keyhole surrounded by a heavy brass escutcheon. He touched it to see if it would move sideways. It seemed firm. Then he tried a twist.

  From inside the cabinet came a whirring sound. It swung forward revealing a hole in the concrete wall high enough for a man to pass through at a crouch. A light current of air came from the hole, fresher than that in the cellar and with the dry texture of air conditioning.

  His throat tightening with terror, Sam ducked through, his torch picking out a narrow downward sloping passage. He took a few steps, then threw himself against the rough stone wall as the steel cabinet hummed shut behind him. He flashed the torch on it. No handle. No escutcheon to twist on this side. No way he could see to get the damned thing open again.

  The passage stretched into the distance. He felt the walls. Sandstone. Suddenly he realised that he’d entered the catacombs Oksana had told him about, the tunnels formed when the city’s builders cut the stone to create their Little Paris on the Black Sea.

  As he moved forward, the ceiling lowered until he was forced to stoop. His breath thundered in his ears. The gun hurt his battered shin as if it had slipped round his leg when he’d fiddled with it. He crouched to straighten it and to loosen the tie so it wouldn’t snag when he needed it.

  A score of paces further on, the tunnel forked, the left-hand path blocked by a fallen roof. Sam swung the torch to the right. The beam hit a steel door with a speaker grille in it.

  He stared for a moment, mesmerised. Was this a secret entrance to the Voroninskaya’s lair? A way for the gang’s leaders to escape if their fortress came under siege above ground? Rybkin had led him here for one reason. To get him through that door and never let him out again.

  He gulped. Beyond here was the point of no return.

  His hand went for the buzzer. As it touched, a floodlight blazed on from above, dazzling him. The door swung inwards and Viktor Rybkin stood there, a Skorpion machine pistol in his hands, its muzzle aimed at Sam’s heart.

  38

  I SHOULD HAVE shot you in Cyprus,’ Rybkin spat, his deep-set eyes hooded by the overhead glare. ‘The first ideas are always the best. You’re like a dog, Packer. Kick you and you come back for more. Put your hands on your head.’

  Shaking, S
am did as he was told. From behind Rybkin the track-suited shpana who’d stood on Odessa station to watch them off sprang forward on rubber-soled shoes to search him.

  He’ll find the sodding gun, thought Sam. Still, if he’d been holding it in his hand when they’d opened the door he’d be dead by now.

  The hands groped under his arms, then at his thighs and crotch, but a frisk downwards ended at his knees after an impatient shout from Rybkin. Sam felt a rush of astonished relief. Sweat was dripping from his armpits. The thug shoved him inside and Rybkin swung a kick as he passed.

  ‘That’s right,’ snarled Sam. ‘Enjoy yourself. You won’t be able to for long.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, idiot. If I had my way I’d finish you now. But my boss wants to show you something – to make sure you die hurting.’

  The boss was Grimov. The huge door closed behind them with a clunk of heavy bolts.

  The passageway ahead was well lit by ceiling lights every ten metres. Warm air wafted from chambers on each side. In some of them stood barred safes that would do justice to a bank. In others, tables were topped by computers and calculators. Incongruously, on one desk there was an abacus.

  ‘Quite a business you have here, Viktor.’ Keep him talking, thought Sam. Keep the bugger talking.

  ‘So now you understand what you’re dealing with,’ Rybkin answered.

  No people around, Sam noted. No night shift.

  ‘It’d be sad to lose it, my friend,’ he goaded.

  The Ukrainian snorted contemptuously. ‘In these caves? We do not lose, my friend. When partisans hid here in the Great Patriotic War, the whole German army couldn’t get them out.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Viktor, if that anthrax is used, nothing will keep you safe. The Americans will come with earth penetrator bombs. This lot’ll be vaporised. And if by some miracle you survive, they’ll string you up in the name of the thousands who died. Hang you from the streetlights as a lesson to the other hoodlums.’

  He was on a desperation-induced high, unable to stop his insane tongue.

  ‘Shut up, idiot!’ Rybkin jabbed him in the back with his gun. ‘In here!’

  The shaven-headed escort shoved him to the right, pushing him through a steel-framed doorway into a small, square chamber. On a table against the far wall, television monitors, tape players and a control console were set up – a video editing suite. And in front of them all, watching pictures of a naked woman being trussed like an oven-roast, sat a heavy-set man with hair like a wire brush, dressed in a blue and white shell suit.

  Sam was held in the middle of the room. For several seconds no one moved and no one spoke.

  Then Dima Grimov froze the video and swivelled his chair. His rubber-mouthed face was unsmiling, his button-hard eyes, one out of line with the other, were angry and curious.

  Face to face with the man who’d killed Chrissie, Sam felt icy cold. He itched to pull the gun from his sock and punch holes in the bastard’s head.

  ‘Da!’ said Grimov. ‘Viy gavareetyeh pa-rooski?’

  He was being asked if he spoke Russian.

  ‘Nyet.’

  ‘Then it is lucky for you that they teach me English when they train me in Soviet army to invade England,’ Grimov laughed uproariously. ‘But nowadays we don’t invade your country by force,’ he added, mocking. ‘No need, when you British can be bought.’

  ‘You can’t buy me, Vladimir Filipovich,’ Sam answered reactively.

  ‘No? Anyway you are not worth buying. But in London there are good businesses. Property, restaurants. And nice houses. Holland Park – you know it?’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘In six weeks I will have house there,’ he declared proudly, snapping his fingers for Rybkin to wheel up a chair behind Sam.

  ‘Sit,’ he growled.

  Grimov himself stood up. Not a tall man, Sam saw, but muscular.

  ‘Why you come back?’ he demanded, hunching forward and crossing his arms like some Hollywood villain. ‘We’re going to kill you. You know that.’

  ‘I came back to warn you.’

  ‘You warn me?’ he guffawed.

  ‘Yes. In case your buffoon of a guard-dog here forgot to tell you that your time’s running out. Western intelligence agencies know all about your deal with the Iraqis. If the anthrax attack takes place, you and your organisation will be wiped out by the international community.’

  ‘Ha! International community! You come back to tell me this joke?’ he squealed, jabbing out a finger, its tip ending inches from Sam’s nose. ‘You come here to tell me how to run my business? Ha! You and she – you so alike.’

  She meant Chrissie. So she had cracked it. Had tried to stop the deal with the Iraqis.

  ‘You are ridiculous person.’ Grimov stepped back and perched his backside against the editing table. He appeared puzzled. ‘But that is all? You come here to tell me that?’

  He knew it wasn’t all. Knew Sam had another reason for coming back. He was playing with him. Patting him with his claws like a cat pats a bird with a broken wing.

  ‘With thousands of lives at stake, what else could I do,’ Sam said grimly.

  ‘But you lie. That is not only reason.’ Grimov’s smile was like a torturer’s.

  ‘No?’

  ‘You want to know about Christine. That’s why you come back. You want to know how she died, because you love her.’ Grimov licked his lips as if preparing for the kill. ‘Well, I’m going to show you how.’

  He turned to the machines, ejecting a cassette from the player and inserting another.

  Sam’s stomach turned over. He couldn’t breathe.

  ‘I like videos,’ Grimov purred.

  Two monitors behind Grimov’s head – two identical pictures appeared on them. A room, shot in wide-angle from a camera high on the wall. A man and a woman on a bed. Fucking.

  ‘Jesus . . .’

  Sam’s chest was bursting. He couldn’t watch this. Not Chrissie doing it with this arsehole . . .

  The picture zoomed. Her face was turned to one side so he couldn’t see her eyes, but there was no mistaking the strands of chestnut hair gummed to the perspiration on her cheek. Her slender legs were hooked round Grimov’s tanned back, his comically white buttocks thrusting with a dogged rhythm.

  ‘Shit . . .’

  Sam’s stomach clenched. He put a hand over his mouth to catch the vomit if it came up. For the job, he told himself. She’d been doing this for the job. To save innocent lives. No other reason.

  ‘Want to listen?’ Grimov pushed a fader to bring up the sound. ‘Directional microphone,’ he murmured proudly.

  Male grunts, then Chrissie’s voice, throaty and insistent.

  ‘Dima, Dima. . .’

  Sam tensed. Any second now he would hurl himself at the machinery and smash it with his bare hands. Chrissie – mouthing that slimeball’s name. Mouthing it in the same hungry, pre-orgasmic gasps that he’d thought of as being for him and him alone.

  Grimov laughed. ‘What you think now? What you think of your girlfriend?’

  ‘I think you are a shit. A murdering little shit.’

  ‘No. Her. What you think of her? What word is right word for her in your language? Look this video. See what she doing?’ he gloated. ‘So professional, yes? Come on. I want to hear you say right word.’

  He stood over Sam, glowering down at him, his slash of a grin glinting with silver.

  ‘Whore!’ he screamed. ‘That is word in English. You say for me now! My girlfriend is whore!’ His good eye gleamed maniacally.

  Sam balled his fists. A sharp upper cut would be so satisfying . . .

  ‘And you know all about whores,’ he snarled, his words spilling out like bile. ‘Something of an expert . . .’

  Grimov backed off, stung by Sam’s defiance. Eyes blazing in two directions at once, he turned angrily to the tape player and jabbed at fast forward.

  The picture broke up. The scene changed. A flickering, jumpy image, but enough to show Chrissie alo
ne on the bed, kneeling with a towel round her shoulders. Talking. Mickey Mouse sound, but talking as if in an argument.

  ‘I show you,’ Grimov fumed. ‘I show what we do with English whores.’

  Sam heard a soft tongue click from Rybkin, standing to his right, as if he disapproved of what was happening here.

  The picture went dark. Grimov pressed play again then spun round to savour Sam’s pain.

  The image was grainy and yellow. Outdoors, indoors, impossible to tell at first. The light flickered, as if it came from a guttering candle. Chrissie was sitting on a wooden chair, her ankles bound to its legs. Behind her were railings, and her hands were tied to them. Then Sam recognised the blurred twinkle of the distant lights. Limassol. The balcony of the half-built house in the hills.

  He wanted to leap up, to stop this re-enactment of her death to assuage his lingering guilt for failing to prevent it.

  Chrissie’s face was puffy and bloated, her mouth a ring of sores. She fought for breath, her eyes bursting with terror.

  ‘No!’ Sam howled, springing forward. ‘No! Turn the fucking thing off!’

  Grimov knocked him back with the strength of an ox, then the shpana pinned him back on the chair.

  Sam wanted to look away but some terrible compulsion made him watch. Grimov appeared in shot, his hands grabbing Chrissie’s lank hair and swollen jaw. He yanked her mouth wide open.

  Sam felt the blood drain from his brain.

  A second pair of hands held a funnel over her, of the size used for pouring petrol into a car. On one of the thumbs on the hand that held it the end joint was missing. Rybkin’s hands, and they rammed the funnel into Chrissie’s mouth.

  Sam’s mind exploded. There was a roaring in his head. He felt he was outside his own body, looking down on the room noting where everyone stood. On his left, the shaven-haired thug, eyes glued to the screen. On his right Rybkin, long-jawed and guilt-ridden, looking away. Ahead of him Grimov, unrepentant, revelling in his home-made snuff movie. Non-humans the lot of them.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the Skorpion machine pistol dangling from Rybkin’s hand. It was the only weapon in the room, except his own.