It had been empty for days.
~~~~~
Berlin, Germany
Steel ran his standard-issue Golok machete gently along the whetstone, then tested it against his arm, where its edge sliced neatly into his skin drawing a wafer-thin line of blood. He stared at the red ooze. Fascinated. Then put the blade back to the whetstone.
With his other hand he gently lifted the final sheet of paper from the floor, moved it to his mouth, stuffed it in, and started chewing nonchalantly.
He was already in Berlin. He didn’t need to go anywhere.
Hiding out, like the Brass had told him to, in some shit-hole of an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, near the godforsaken and eternally condemned town of Salzwedel, had been boring. There had been no bars and no girls to distract him. It was too quiet there. Far too quiet. In all that silence he could only hear the whistling bullets, the crack of rifle-fire, the concussive boom of close artillery strikes. There was no way he could have stayed there. Besides, that credit card he’d been using seemed to be unlimited. Stupid Brass. Should know better than to give combat grunts like him too much time to think.
From his cross-legged sitting position, he stared sightlessly through the apartment’s floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows at the darkening cityscape. A myriad lights began to blink into life in front of him, but Steel didn’t notice. He was thinking about killing again. It excited him. His penis became hot and swollen in the tattered union jack boxer shorts he was wearing, and nudged wetly against the grubby fabric, as the rest of his naked body moved to the rhythm of his continued sharpening.
~~~~~
Cordova
Tin scowled at himself in the bathroom mirror. He was less than impressed... What kind of a stupid code-name was Tin? He shook his head, grabbed his scant toiletries, stuffed them into a zip-up soccer-boot bag and then returned to the living room. All of the litter, crisp packets, everything – even stuff he hadn’t eaten yet – was in a black-plastic rubbish sack which stood by the apartment’s front door.
He stuffed the boot bag into his rucksack. Right at the top. Easy to get to. Then grabbed the open pack of sterilising wipes, returned to the bathroom, and wiped down every visible surface.
Clean enough.
He stuffed the used wipes and remainder of the packet into the top of the rubbish bag, pulled the top shut and tied it up. Then slipped on his gloves, shrugged the rucksack onto his back, hefted the heavy bin bag into his left hand, opened the door, stepped out, and quietly pulled the door closed behind him.
It was as if Jack Vittalle had never been there...
~~~~~
Barfold, Sussex, England
“That’s very good, try one more...”
I don’t want to try one more. I don’t want to try any more. I can’t see the point of lifting these little weights. Of exercising my broken body back to health. I am consumed with self-pity; I know it and I’m angry with myself for it. The little blue-plastic dumbbell sits latent in my outstretched palm as I lie here on my back.
They’ve moved me out of the specialist unit in London and back to a hospital closer to home. I made the trip laid out on a gurney, rattling horizontally along a series of corridors, and then from side to side in the back of an ambulance. From what small glimpses I got of the outside, the weather looks to be about as bleak and grey as my mood.
“Come on, Nick,” prompts the chatty male nurse, not unkindly. I think he can see my mood in my eyes. “Just one more. You’ll feel better for it. Try to find something positive to focus your mind on. Something you’d like to be mobile and able to do again.
“When I broke my leg, playing football, I focused on how much I wanted to get back out on the pitch again.” He’s standing above me, his youthful face filling my vision, smiling encouragingly and I can see a spark of remembered-determination in his expression. “It worked for me. What works for you?”
I close my eyes in exasperation. What-on-Earth could ever motivate me to want to get better? Everything has been snatched away. I haven’t practiced any of my serious sports for years. Skiing was abandoned when we knew there was a child coming, Taekwondo was abandoned, years before, when University social-life started to overfill my leisure time with drinking and loud music. My archery – whilst I still practice pulling Vengeance from time to time – lapsed after the Championships. I had achieved my objective. Job done.
I thought for a second about Vengeance. She lay in her fibreglass case under my bed, all beautiful curves and latent energy. She had saved my voice apparently – albeit a few octaves beyond baritone – because the muscles she had developed across my upper chest and shoulder had been so thick and strong that the shrapnel impact had been deflected to one side and then over my shoulder. Those same strong muscles would be hard to repair.
But it would be nice to fire her again.
To see if I could still hit anything.
To see if I can still heave the fifty pounds of pull necessary to make her sing her momentary humming, crystal harmonic, note as she releases the perfect arrow with maximum power and accuracy toward her target. To see a target swinging into her Clearview Optics sights and choosing the precise moment to unleash her strength...
“Great stuff!” exclaims the nurse, clapping his hands. “That’s it, keep going, Nick!”
The little blue dumbbell rises again...
~~~~~
London
The public prosecutor threw the thin file onto his desk top and strode over to the coffee maker in the corner of his office shaking his head as he walked. “We need to try to delay the court case,” he said.
“Agreed,” said one of his assembled team. “But it’s unlikely it’ll make much difference to the outcome.”
The prosecutor wheeled angrily to the three of them. “That little scrotum of a man was undoubtably the primary contact. He’s clearly the one who has been shuttling back and forth to Turkmenistan over recent months, and been using our bloody benefits money to pay his fares. The little bastard even pulled a weapon on our police officers. We need to keep looking for evidence linking him to the bomb.”
“The weapon is not much use to us. I think we should abandon that line of attack,” the second male lawyer observed. “It was a replica. A toy. Seems the guy collected them. There was a mini arsenal of useless weaponry found in the house.”
“And then there’s the use of force at the scene,” said the solitary female member of his team. “He’s claiming that he was merely trying to surrender the toy to the police. That he was confused. That he was, naturally, surprised when the police came charging in. That he’s being singled out due to his nationality.”
“What about his charge sheet?” asked the prosecutor. “His previous list of criminal charges, including the use of violence on more than one occasion? Can we use this to discredit him?”
“We can try,” said the woman. “But none of those incidents and nothing we’ve been able to dig up are linked directly to the bombing. The defence will just pepper us with objections. They are maintaining pleas of ‘not guilty’. Even to aiding and abetting charges.”
The prosecutor shook his head in disbelief. “The defence team?” he asked.
“Glammed-up ambulance chasers,” the first speaker replied. “Calling themselves, Right Protection. This case is a massive PR boost for them.”
The woman shuffled through her legal pad. “Trust us,” she said, “we genuinely think our only viable strategy is to sacrifice the prosecution of the injured party to secure custodial sentences for the other two. We make it look like we’re determined to pursue all three convictions for as long as possible, then back the defence into a corner when we offer this small concession. Weight of public opinion will force the Judge to want to appear robust. He, or she, will not be able to let them all go. If we can keep the defence majoring on their best arguments – the injured party – it’ll be too late for them to swap horses and the other two will almost certainly be convicted.”
&nbs
p; The prosecutor scowled. His team were right. This was going to prove to be a very tough case and, given the strength of public opinion and lack of hard, useable evidence, it was likely his team would end up coming out of it looking worse than those who were actually guilty of perpetrating such heinous crimes.
“Keep digging,” he muttered angrily.
~~~~~
Auxerre, France
Iron trundled comfortably along a rural country lane. Flat French countryside drifted past the open window of the battered Renault Clio he’d driven down from the safe house. His instructions had told him to walk down to the town, to get a bus to Moûtiers, and then a train into Paris. Instead, he’d easily forced the Clio’s door, and a screwdriver had served well as an ignition key.
The car had only been sitting there gathering dust. It was still fitted with winter tyres. Some seasonal runabout for a rich ski-bum. The chalet it had been parked outside hadn’t been occupied the whole time he’d been up in the mountains. The car wouldn’t be missed for months. There was no way he was going to walk all the way down the mountain and, besides, he’d needed something to carry the two holdalls full of silverware and the well populated jewellery box he’d lifted from the big gaff at the head of the valley. Neither set of wealthy bastards would miss their little trinkets for ages.
A line of finger-like, twenty-metre, cypress trees cast strobe shadows over the car as he drove past them, thinking about what to do next. This car was good, if he could drop a few more gigs like that big house, and concentrated on lifting portable gear like that silver, then he’d be pretty much sorted. All he needed to do was to get this simple job done – icing some funny-looking foreign geezer – then he could scarper off and vanish into Europe.
Those idiots that had sprung him from his last stretch certainly had plenty of clout to have got him out of clink... And they had plenty of hardware – must be ex-military or something – but they knew nothing about professional criminals despite their playacting in front of him.
He shook his head angrily.
The white-haired geezer had been almost credible but that little-Hitler character, mincing around with his shiny black hair, was totally out of his depth. Imagine banging on about rules and training and stuff? Like he was going to listen? Or needed their bloody advice?
Iron’s already pinched and lined face became even more wiry as he smiled to himself. Nicotine stained teeth flashed briefly in the battered Clio’s wing mirror beside him. He couldn’t believe how gullible they’d been. Lapping up his little sob-story about poor dear old Mom. About how she’d been such a hard-grafting old lady. Struggling to raise enough money to keep him at school. Struggling for work. It being so tough for her since the bombing. Since she got caught up in that bomb in Brighton. Of course he wanted to strike back. Of course he wanted to avenge his poor old Mom’s loss of her legs. How can a dear old lady cleaner get work when she’s stuck in a wheelchair?
By now, the trundling Clio was ringing to the sound of barking laughter.
Iron wiped roughly at his eyes. Just as long as they didn’t find her body any time soon.
Christ, those two had been easier to con than the old biddies he’d done over on his last proper job – before this farce... That old couple had also been a pushover. “I’m here to read your meters...,” he’d announced, and if they’d been a little quicker to hand over their stuff then maybe he wouldn’t have got so angry? Maybe he wouldn’t have got himself nicked because he’d spent too long rooting through all their worthless shit? Maybe he wouldn’t have spent so long in their upstairs bedrooms after he’d smashed their decrepit old faces into pulp with their big, antique, solid brass, mantle piece clock...
~~~~~
Berlin
Steel wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a while anyway...
The pole dancer bent herself backwards: her hand slowly sliding down the shiny-metal rod and her long brown hair tumbling like some shimmering auburn waterfall towards him.
Her inverted face came closer. She was looking at him with big blue eyes. She was smiling at him. Her massive tits were pointing upwards, defying gravity with their succulent firmness, erupting from her chest like quivering mountains. He’d like to get his hands on those, that was for sure.
In a flash, she pulled herself upright, and span herself round so that the naked flesh of her G-string clad buttocks drifted hypnotically along his eye line.
He reached into his pocket, fished out another hundred-Euro note, and flicked it nonchalantly in his fingers so she’d turn around to face him again. His breathing became heavy as she completed her elegant pirouette and crouched down obediently, legs akimbo, one knee on either side of his head.
Perfect. He could see the lines of her close-shaven love-nest bulging against the tight gusset of her tiny string.
He slipped the note, and his fingers, down the front of her panties.
“Mmmm, I bet you like that, don’t you?” he muttered, blissfully unaware of the dancer scowling angrily down at the top of his fat balding head.
~~~~~
Cordova
Jack checked carefully, up and down the road, then emerged from the narrow alleyway. The train would be on the platform in a few minutes. The ticket, through to Madrid and paid for with cash, was in his pocket.
He hadn’t liked the look of the station when he’d arrived here, on foot, earlier. It was too quiet. He hadn’t wanted to hang around on the platforms for too long. One of the locals would doubtless have noticed him. He didn’t want to be noticed. He didn’t want to be memorable in any way.
They might give him a crappy code-name but he was going to do this right.
He had to do it right.
He owed his bro’s.
He owed Mike...
~~~~~
London
Ellard was hunched, frowning, at his desktop computer screen when Greere walked into their Operations Room in the SIS Building. Greere had always thought that his tall subordinate looked clumsy in front of a computer. Today he looked even more so. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Two of the three assets are at their holding points,” Ellard muttered. “I can see from their card transactions.” He waved a hand vaguely at his screen.
“That’s good,” said Greere.
“Not necessarily,” Ellard pointed at the screen. “This is Steel’s card. Looks like he’s been in Berlin for some time, racking up a hefty bill for us. He’s rented a penthouse in the Mitte District, near Kurfürstenstraße subway station, overlooking the city – all on the bloody card – and been taking large cash withdrawals every day from the same fucking ATM.”
“Shit.” Greere moved closer and studied the on-line banking web page. “Isn’t that...”
“Yep, it’s a notorious red light district. I’d assumed he was still at the safe house. He’d seemed happy enough to stay there and keep training once I’d laid on a regular hooker for him.”
“We’ll have to wipe the entire cover entity,” Greere muttered angrily to himself. “Idiot squaddies. Start winding up that safe house. I’m not sure we’ll need anything else round there for a while. What about the other two?” The look on Ellard’s face didn’t inspire confidence. “Well?”
“Iron is in Paris but I’m not sure how he got there.”
Greere looked more hopeful. “Well that’s good, isn’t it? The Con seems to be doing what he was told to do?”
“Except I’ve also found out that a French police investigation has recently been initiated, due to a robbery from a mansion at the foot of the valley near the safe house, and, when I had a look at the pictures from the latest satellite sweep of the area, a private car has vanished from the neighbouring chalet’s driveway.”
“You don’t think?” Greere asked.
Ellard stared accusingly up at his boss.
“Hmmm, maybe you had better get over there then. If Iron is leaving a nasty trail behind him, we’d better be ready to deactivate him.”
“His target is already in Pa
ris too.”
“Even better. It would be a shame to loose another cover company with no result. You can deal with Mr. Sticky Fingers after the hit. Where’s Tin?” Greere smiled to himself. “I do like that code-name. Sometimes you’re a genius, Ellard. Cocky Special Forces guys like him need to be put in their place now and again.”
“Presumably on his way to Madrid,” Ellard replied flatly. “Still using his initial cash allowance – there have been no withdrawals or purchases. The cleaning company I engaged, for that apartment we’d put him in, wrote back to me asking if I’d given them the wrong address.”
“Why?”
“They said the place was spotless. Didn’t look like it had been lived in for ages...”
~~~~~
Barfold
Forty-seven. Forty-eight...
“That’s great, Nick! Come on, push!”
The chatty nurse – called Steve, as it turns out – is panting next to me on the leg press. His weights are set several kilos higher than mine but, then again, I’m also having to lift my casts which are currently rising and falling in front of me.
We train together now. He says he’s never been fitter. Me: I’m throwing myself into this. I’m not just training my upper body for the bow; I want to develop all my muscle groups. When I’m fit enough, I might even restart the Taekwondo. Steve says he’d be interested in taking it up. Says he’s always wanted to try a martial art.
I grunt a bit. “Cum ’n,” is what I hope I’ve managed to say.
“Yeah!” Steve exclaims. “Yeah! Come on!”
Fifty-six. Fifty-seven.
The steroids are helping to build muscle all over me. Not only in my throat. Even now, after just a few solid days of training, I feel like I’ve never been so honed. I was always kind of straight up and down. One of the thin ones who could eat just about anything and get away with it.
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