Evolution of Fear

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘Jesus, they sure worked him over,’ said Crowbar.

  ‘I fought them,’ the boy said.

  ‘Good man,’ said Crowbar, taking the boy in his arms. For a big man he was surprisingly gentle.

  ‘Get them to the car,’ Clay said.

  Crowbar nodded. ‘You?’

  ‘Give me five minutes.’

  ‘We don’t have five minutes.’

  ‘Two, then.’ Clay turned away. Someone was going to get hurt after all.

  Crowbar reached out his hand, grabbed Clay’s shoulder. ‘No, seun,’ he said. ‘Not this time.’

  48

  Each Minute Has a Price

  Crowbar gunned the engine and the Pajero shot down the narrow lane.

  ‘Goddamn,’ the glottal Afrikaans was clear over the whine of the diesel. Crowbar jerked the Pajero onto the broad carriageway of Elefteria Avenue, the centre-median palms swaying in the breeze, lights burning in the tavernas that lined the set-back lanes. Crowbar glanced over his shoulder at Katia and the boy huddled together in the back seat.

  ‘How long do we have?’ asked Clay.

  ‘About half an hour.’

  ‘How far from the RV?’

  Crowbar leant on the horn, brushed past an old man in a vintage Hillman. ‘Not sure. About that, maybe a bit more.’

  Up there, not far, was the border, the Green Line, the demilitarized zone between Turkish and Greek forces. In places up to two miles wide, a meandering, twenty-year confusion of sandbagged emplacements, barbed-wire entanglements and anti-tank ditches, the farm fields and hills sown with thousands of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. And dotted along this wandering scar, from Kato Pyrgo in the west to Deryneia in the east, a rusty wire and sandbag necklace of UN observation posts. Out there, where they were going, the blue cap patrols were few, the posts widely spaced, the lines far apart.

  Clay looked back at Katia, smiled at Alexi. ‘We can’t take them with us,’ he said to Crowbar. ‘It’s too dangerous. And now that we have the boy, Hope will be their target. We have to get to her.’

  ‘We don’t have time, Straker. The old bitch is jumpy as hell. I tell you, broer, if we’re late, she flies. You can guess what that will mean for Rania.’

  Clay swallowed. ‘Call Medved.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call her now. Tell her you’re caught in traffic. Anything. Tell her we need fifteen more minutes. That’ll do. If she’s as desperate for the illumination as you say, she’ll wait.’

  Crowbar shrugged, pulled out his phone, flipped it open, hit speed dial, put it to his ear. He spoke in Russian, listened, spoke again, straight-arming the Pajero through the midnight traffic towards the edge of the city. Then he closed his phone, frowned and pushed hard on the accelerator. The Pajero lurched forward.

  For a while he said nothing, just manhandled the vehicle through the traffic. And then he said, voice flat: ‘The bitch will wait. Fifteen minutes. But we don’t have time to get Hope. And these two will have to come with us. Tell the girl to keep the kid quiet. They need to get down on the floor and stay out of sight. You too, Straker.’

  A police cruiser flashed past in the other direction, lights strobing.

  Clay twisted in his seat, faced Katia and Alexi in the backseat. ‘Did you hear that?’

  They both nodded, eyes wide in the glow of the streetlights, the flash of headlights from the road.

  Katia unbuckled her seat belt, then the boy’s, and slid down with him into the space between the edge of the backseat bench and Crowbar’s chair back. As she did, her minidress hiked up over her thighs. The delicate pale skin was scarred with red linear welts, as if she had been caned. She curled up on the floor and pulled the boy to her. Except for the bruises and cuts they looked like a newborn antelope and its mother, all arms and legs, tawn and black, the pale of her skin, the boy’s big dark curls.

  Clay nodded to her, looked into the boy’s eyes. ‘We’ll see your mother soon,’ he said. ‘Okay?’

  Alexi nodded.

  They were close to the outskirts of the city now, on the old Kakopetria road, the Nicosia airport on the bluff looming ahead, scene of the fiercest fighting of the invasion, now off-limits to all except the UN peacekeeping force.

  ‘Moeder van God,’ cursed Crowbar. In the distance ahead, flashing red-and-blue lights, white illumination, traffic tailed back. A roadblock.

  Crowbar turned sharp right, towards the airport. The Pajero lurched from side to side on the road. They hit the shoulder, skidded across the gravel. Katia screamed. Stones cracked off the windscreen. The passenger compartment was full of dust, thick, choking. Crowbar gunned the engine, fighting to control the vehicle. It swerved, righted, regained the tarmac.

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’ said Clay.

  ‘Through the UN base. With all the roadblocks up, it’s our only way out of the city. I know the senior officer there. He’ll take us through.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Let’s just say that I’m his retirement plan.’ Crowbar dialled a number on his phone. ‘Don’t worry. We go in, come out the other side.’

  ‘But what about Hope, Koevoet? They’ll kill her.’

  ‘Command decision.’ In Afrikaans. ‘Best result, cheapest price. How the fok do you think I got all you fokken babies through the war alive? I made decisions.’

  ‘We still have time.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘Call Medved again.’

  ‘Each minute has a price, Straker.’

  ‘Spare me the homilies.’

  ‘Homilies? Fok, Straker, I don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, what price?’

  Crowbar slowed the vehicle; they were approaching the main entrance to the UN base.

  ‘Koevoet.’

  Crowbar stretched his back, rolled the vehicle to a halt. ‘The perverted old bitch said we could have as much time as we wanted.’

  As he heard the words, Clay’s vision collapsed, fear pushing in from all sides like nothing he had ever felt, even in the worst days.

  ‘Each minute, one step,’ said Crowbar. At the last word, his voice wavered. Just a little. If you didn’t know him, it was imperceptible. But for Koevoet, it was almost panic.

  Clay’s heart stopped.

  ‘Rania is blindfolded. They’ve sent her out into the minefield. Each minute we’re late, they force her one more step forward.’

  49

  Dark Wells of Gravity

  Led by Crowbar’s contact – a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army and commander of the base – it took them less than twenty minutes to clear the UN checkpoint, make their way across the derelict airport and discreetly emerge on the far side of the base though a little-used, overgrown exit in the wire.

  Crowbar launched the Pajero along a gravel road, heading west. Minutes sped by.

  ‘There,’ said Crowbar, slowing the Pajero.

  Up ahead, an abandoned farm house, barely visible in the weak moonlight, a line of old pine trees, the branches overhanging black and heavy, and the road T-ing into a gravel track that ran parallel to a barbed-wire fence. Beyond the fence, the open ground of the buffer zone.

  A black panel van was parked, lights off, about twenty metres from the intersection. Ten metres behind, close to the wire, was another vehicle, a dark Mercedes saloon. Crowbar rolled the Pajero to a stop.

  Clay said over his shoulder, ‘Keep down and keep quiet, Katia. And whatever you do, stay put.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Understood back there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Katia’s voice, scared. And then, ‘Yes.’ Alexi.

  ‘Give her Todorov first,’ said Clay in Afrikaans, pulling back the Beretta’s action, the grip between his knees. ‘We get Rania, then she gets the icon.’

  ‘She’ll want you, too,’ said Crowbar.

  ‘If she wants me, fine. We won’t have much time before she figures it’s not the real thing. Once you’ve got Rania, don’t worry about me. Get her out of here, Koev
oet.’

  Crowbar opened his mouth to speak.

  Clay cut him off. ‘I know what you’re going to say, oom. The answer is no. Get Rania. If you have to leave me, do it. I can look after myself.’

  Crowbar sat there a time in the dim light from the moon and the car’s instrument panel. And then he said: ‘Keep your hands behind your back, like you’re tied. Stay in the car till I come get you. Act like you’re banged up, ja.’

  ‘I am banged up.’

  Crowbar gave him a quick smile. ‘Once we’re out there, play my lead, Straker. We’ll get you both out, understand? Don’t want the old bitch wanking herself off over you.’

  Clay peered into the darkness. A lone figure was standing next to the panel van, on the side of the track near the barbed wire. He was holding an assault rifle. ‘Shooter, right of the van, five metres.’

  ‘Got him,’ said Crowbar. ‘Let’s do this thing as quick as we can, go get Hope. Just like Angola. Okay?’

  ‘Hope.’ Clay had almost forgotten. He reached into his pocket, took out his phone and dialled her apartment. She answered first ring.

  ‘It’s Clay.’

  ‘Panamayou, where have you been?’

  ‘We’ve got Alexi.’

  Silence. And then, ‘What did you say?’

  Clay passed the phone into the back. ‘Talk to your mum, Alexi.’

  A hand took the phone, and then hushed voices, cries of joy through the line.

  After a moment Clay took the phone back. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Look, Hope, without Alexi as a hostage, they’re going to come after you. Is there somewhere you can go?’

  Breathing down the line, deep, fearful, elated. ‘Yes. A friend’s place, a small flat in the old city near the Green Line,’ her words were rapid, clipped. She gave the address.

  ‘Go there. Now. We’ll bring Alexi. Just sit tight, be invisible.’

  ‘What about Rania? Is she safe?’

  ‘We’re going to get her now.’

  ‘Thank you, Clay. Thank you.’

  Clay closed the phone.

  Crowbar nodded, rolled the Pajero forward, the tyres crunching on the gravel, and stopped fifty metres from the van, the wedge of the Pajero’s headlights illuminating the front of the van, the rusted red-and-white sign hanging from one of the fence posts, painted with a skull and cross-bones, and the words danger, mines, in big red letters. The man by the wire raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light, the AK47 he carried pointing out beyond the fence, towards the Turkish lines. Clay followed the line of the man’s weapon out into the darkness and across the dry, hummocky no-man’s land of the minefield. A lone figure stood about thirty metres away, barely visible in the dark, facing the Turkish side, unmoving, arms wrapped around herself against the cold.

  ‘Jesus, Koevoet,’ Clay said.

  ‘I see her.’

  Clay clenched his fist behind his back. ‘How the hell are we going to get her out?’

  ‘We’ll figure it out.’

  ‘Hulle sterf.’ They die.

  ‘No, Straker. We get her out, clean as we can, then we get the boy out of here and we go for Hope. Okay, seun?’

  Clay could hear the words, faint starlight blinking through a thickening night of hate, Crowbar’s voice drowning in the genetic roar inside his head. He dropped his head to his knees, concentrated on the air filling his lungs, holding it there, pushing down, slowly letting it go.

  And then Crowbar’s voice again. ‘Seun? You okay?’

  Clay sat up. The van’s headlights had come on. ‘Just like Angola.’

  Crowbar nodded, opened his door, stepped out onto the gravel and slammed the door behind him. Clay watched him walk across the dual-lit distance between the vehicles, stop short of the van, stand arms extended at his sides. The shooter by the wire registered him with a glance, kept his weapon trained on Rania. Clay could see her dark silhouette. She’d turned now, stood facing them. She was blindfolded. He spoke the name of her god, and called on him to protect her and wished with all of himself that it could be him out there now instead of her. But just as quickly, he let it go. Such distractions got people killed. There was only now, only what it was.

  The front passenger door of the panel van opened. A man got out. He was tall, slim. An Uzi hung from his neck. He walked towards Crowbar and stopped ten paces from him. Clay could see the man’s mouth moving, and then, on the night breeze, the muffled sound of voices. The two men spoke for a while and then Crowbar turned away and walked back to the Pajero, long calm strides. As he passed Clay’s open window he said: ‘Phase one.’ He opened the back of the vehicle, hoisted Zdravko’s body up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, slammed the tailgate closed and walked back towards the van. The man with the Uzi had returned to his spot and now waited for Crowbar, a metal case in his left hand. Crowbar got within about five metres, stopped and dumped the body on the ground, face up. It landed with a dull thud, that lifeless grain-sack sound that once you’ve heard you can never forget. Crowbar stepped back.

  The man with the Uzi paced forward, shone a torch in the corpse’s face and turned the head with his boot. Then he raised his hand, gave the thumbs-up back to the van and tossed the case to Crowbar.

  Voices again, Crowbar pointing out into the minefield at Rania. The man with the Uzi shook his head, pointed at the Pajero, at Clay. Crowbar, shifting his stance, his voice louder now, clear on the wind, saying, ‘No. The girl first. Then the Illumination. Go tell your boss.’

  Damn it, Koevoet.

  The man with the Uzi stood a moment, weighing up what this big Afrikaner had said, by now surely feeling the presence of this man, the sheer will. Then he turned away and walked back to the van. He leaned into the passenger window a moment then came back out to face Crowbar. More talking, voices raised. Then Uzi shouted something and the shooter by the wire raised his weapon and trained it on Rania.

  Clay’s heart lurched, hammered out a few panicked beats, hung there as the fractions of time that make up a second ticked by, aeons in each. And then Crowbar’s voice and the rifle lowering and his heart beating normally again and Crowbar striding back towards the car.

  Crowbar went to the driver’s-side door, threw in the case, grabbed the bag containing the Illumination, pulled out his Beretta, came around to Clay’s door and opened it.

  ‘Out, Straker, and make it convincing. The old bitch wants you first. Who would’ve guessed it?’

  Clay grabbed his stump in his right hand, kept his arms tight behind his back. In the darkness they would never be able to tell his arms weren’t tied. Crowbar made as if to free Clay’s legs, grabbed his hair, jerked him out of the car and stood behind him. ‘Walk,’ he said.

  Clay moved across the car-lit gravel towards the van. As they got close, Uzi shone his torch in Clay’s face. Clay narrowed his eyes against the light, kept his head high, let them have a good look.

  ‘Stop,’ said Uzi.

  Clay complied, Crowbar behind him with the Beretta cocked and loaded and jammed into Clay’s side. Convincing enough.

  The van’s engine started. It rolled forward and stopped beside them. The panel door slid open, engine still running.

  It was the eyes that Clay would always remember. Not the platinum wig that looked as if it had come straight out of the sixties, or the crudely applied cherry-red lipstick smeared over thin, withered lips, the undertaker’s rouge applied to the yellow skin slumping over the jutting cheekbones, or the plastic tube sprouting from the right nostril, the frail, slumped shoulders, the concentration-camp arms, each pierced with a catheter, the tubes recycling some fluid of horrible opacity, the lights and filters and pumps of the dialysis machine blinking behind her like an airliner’s control panel. None of that. The woman who faced them now across a thick pane of bullet-proof glass, slumped in a wheelchair set in the van’s cargo platform, stared out at them through eyes of an intensity and depth such as he had never seen. They seemed afire, consumed, more determined, more enraptured even than those of t
he supplicants awaiting their turn on the Ladder of Divine Ascent.

  ‘He will kneel,’ said Regina Medved. Her voice was deep, almost mechanical, muffled by the glass, filtered through a speaking grille set just below her mouth, like the ones at train station wickets.

  Crowbar jammed his boot into the back of Clay’s knee. Clay crashed to the ground, keeping his arms behind him.

  ‘For you, my brother’s killer, all the devil’s horrors.’ She ran her tongue over her wizened lips, a deathly flush on her cheeks. ‘Hours will pass as centuries and you will beg for my satisfaction.’ She inclined her head.

  Uzi opened the front passenger door, threw another aluminium case onto the ground.

  ‘Your money, mercenary,’ said Regina Medved. And then to Uzi: ‘Take him.’

  Uzi moved to grab Clay by the head, but Crowbar blocked his arm with his handgun. ‘The woman first.’

  Clay could see her, unmoving in the darkened field, the shooter still there, just a few long steps away, weapon at the ready.

  Medved’s index finger twitched, her hand crisped around the chair’s arm. ‘Our agreement is distinct from this,’ she rasped.

  Crowbar raised his hand, let the bag sway. ‘The Illumination is right here. Give me the woman.’

  Her eyes flicked left then right, narrowed. ‘What is she to you, this harlot with the devil’s child, next to these millions?’

  ‘That is my business.’

  ‘No, it is mine. I caused her to be here. She is here because she owes me penance.’

  Clay’s pulse lurched. Of course. This was not some accident of coincidence, some perturbation of chance. She wanted her here. Somehow, Medved had manipulated LeClerc into sending Rania to Cyprus. Clay remembered LeClerc’s cryptic tone when he’d called him from Santander, the fear in his voice, the unfinished statements, as if he’d wanted to tell him something important but couldn’t bring himself to do it. To tell him this. Fear did hard things to a man. But it didn’t matter now. Rania went to Cyprus and when Medved had got what she wanted from LeClerc, they’d killed him, slowly and brutally. If Chrisostomedes and Todorov hadn’t got to Rania first, Medved would have killed her too. Now she was one step away.