A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  He looked at the top corner of the building and a jagged bite had been removed from it and he reckoned the flat roofing had been taken off, cast away, and there were flames leaping where earlier there had been windows with lowered blinds. The car by the exit point flashed again, then reversed and was in place at the side of the slipway. She drove. An arm was waving from the car in front, the gesture for the Polo to slot in behind. The boys had come back.

  They went on to the main drag clear of the city. Their headlights lit the car in front and he saw the back of Kristjan’s head, then his face when he turned. Then, Merc lurched in his seat and his belt snapped tight and he hit her shoulder and she rode the blow. The boys had swerved into the fast lane and she followed and there was a cacophony of protesting horns. The needle climbed on the speed dial. More sirens. Vehicles belted towards them on the far side of the crash barrier and hammered past. Ambulances and fire brigade and militia. The boys coming back, then leading them clear, was ignored . . . He understood as she did. Kat had not protested that they left too early, should wait to see if he showed. He didn’t see her face, could not have said whether she still shed tears or how far her jaw jutted.

  They went fast, kept to the convoy, and Merc reckoned it would take them an hour and a half to the choke point. He did not say a prayer, did not think she had. In the trench on Hill 425 they always said a prayer, then laughed, then cursed the enemy, then did the fighting. Had to hope that chaos and confusion would blind the investigators long enough for them to break through, get clear, reach the forest.

  Chapter 12

  Merc thought her driving bordered on reckless. Some ability, no fear. Astonished, accelerating, how they had not collided with other vehicles, hit the central reservation, gone off the road and into a ditch, or though the chain-link fences that surrounded factories and storage units.

  Security vehicles and rescue teams powered noisily past. It would not be long before the blocks would be in place: there was always a window after a major incident but a small one. Where the boys went, Kat followed. Martin drove well. Might be a jobbing decorator but might once have owned a performance car, seemed to sense gaps and their width and be able to push though them. Possible for the lead, harder for the following car. They had twice overtaken the two lanes of traffic by going on to the hard shoulder – only wide enough for a cyclist – and their wheels spat gravel up from the verge. Had taken a mirror off a saloon car and fractured their own, now crazily angled and useless. A trail of debris and cursing was behind them, and siren blasts.

  Could Merc have done it better? Not sure he could. Was a decent enough driver but there was usually a clutch of speeding tickets held in a poste restante down the street from the bank in Stoke Poges. But if handed a ticket and asked to give an address then he would give Hill 425, along with a GPS reference. Brad had done speed driving with the regiment, and always said it was about the chicken game: all the other drivers on the road would blink first, get the hell out of the way, not wanting to end up with a scratch on their bodywork. It was what Brad said, and Rob had the little masked grin, enigmatic, that said – even he – trained in close-quarters combat, damn near wet himself when riding passenger, or shotgun, with his mucker at the wheel. She would not have been on any driving course. She made little grunts, like hard swallowing. Tears ran unchecked down her face. The windows, both sides, were down and the wind came in and the rain, and the cold, and the noise of the big vehicles they left behind. Never more than half a dozen yards behind the boys’ car, and sometimes Merc could see Kristjan turn, look at them and smile, maniacal.

  She said, almost a shout, and staccato because she was crying. ‘You didn’t know about the Wolf’s Lair . . . It’s what happened, and why . . .’

  He was told the story. Short, savage sentences. Good, expressive English. The uncertainty of a killing game. Gone too early. Failure. All understood, and the realisation that Nikki, hacker and drop-out with the sloppy shoulders and spindly arms and the hole that seemed burrowed into the centre of his chest, had performed an act of self-destruction for the sake of his sister getting a ride out of Russia. Nothing to do with a great plan concocted by Boot . . . The traffic seemed to thin. She didn’t talk again.

  He wondered for how much longer she would cry: not those theatrical tears that his mother used, which became the excuse for dumping Merc on his grandmother’s doorstep with his case. Tears of the sort done in private. Merc had seen Rob cry. For a little guy, fat and short-sighted and useless as a front-line fighter and keen and able to make everyone laugh. Could not clean his rifle, and if he managed to strip it then had no idea about reassembly. Brave as a damned old lion when it came to crossing open ground to bring up more ammunition, might use a wheelbarrow and go at a snail’s pace. And had stopped one in a trench a couple of miles beyond Hill 425 – and had died slowly and still fucking smiling . . . Brad and Rob had known that section of the Fire Force Unit, had trained them, had cursed the fat guy for his incompetence and seen him cringe like a dog, then come back and sidle up with fresh coffee, and anger evaporated. Merc had been there, had seen Rob cry . . . had felt his own tears welling, had stifled them.

  She cried big, and drove the car fast. Should have had a cushion under her buttocks, would have let her see better through the windscreen, and the wipers were going hard and sleet gathered at the sides of the arc they made. Her body was rigid, her chin stuck forward and her hair was a wet mess from the wind blowing in through the windows. She held the wheel high with both hands, didn’t go through the gears, hardly touched the brake pedal. They were out of the traffic. Fewer cars and fewer vans and fewer lorries. The boys had done well, had opened up the road.

  She coughed, then tilted her head to wipe her face on the sleeve of her coat, then looked up. Merc saw that her cheeks were dry, and there were no more tears. As if a crisis had passed . . . He remembered they had not said goodbye. When the Kurd girls went forward into the line, their fathers, their husbands, their boyfriends, would come to the depot and stand outside the main gate, and the trucks would pull out and go past a knot of loved ones, waving and fluttering handkerchiefs. They had not touched, not clung to each other. More important to Nikki than to the sister, Kat, Fuck all business of Merc’s . . .

  A gasp, an involuntary shout, and she swung the wheel and just missed the back of the boys’ car. They would not have reached first base of the escape without the boys, something to be grateful for. What they were there for – to get them through the road-blocks, and the choke point – essential to them. Merc wondered what had happened to make them quit, then stop, then retrace, then flick their lights and give the signal, wait for her to come out from the parking area, lead the charge. They had braked, and the lights had flashed, and they had dropped their speed, and the silly beggar – Martin – had hit the horn and done a little dance on it with his fingers, or it might have been Toomas beside him.

  He would need them at the choke point, would need them badly.

  He pointed his wife in the direction of a taxi queue. With the rank of Major and the ID of the FSB, he had commandeered a militia driver for himself.

  About to go into the cinema. A phone had sounded, muffled in a pocket near to them. He recognised the head of Internal Security in the office of the Mayor, a face pulled, a phone snapped off, and a woman with her cheek pecked abandoned in the foyer. More ring tones. A woman, a general accident and emergency consultant at the Mariinsky Hospital, answered her phone. Julia knew her, and the woman’s face had gone ashen . . . then the phone of a man he knew from the militia, a colonel, then his own.

  From the Operations Room at the Big House, a curt message. They would have known that he had had a minor dissident in custody. Would have known she was under surveillance and had been ‘lost’. Would have known that her brother was a hacker and used by the mafiya group operating from the Kupchino district. An unexplained explosion in a building used by that organisation . . . His caller lowered his voice, then an aside – had probably turned his
head away so the words would not be picked up on the permanent monitoring microphone – clear that senior men from the building were present. A bomb. Casualties . . . The Major had hesitated. But the link captured him. He had been on a Civil Defence course with an official from the city’s Fire Unit, and that same man had been across the foyer, and his phone had rung, and he had not hesitated. Something of an apology, not much . . . It would have been a good film but already the Major had forgotten its title. The foyer had emptied. Julia was already in the taxi queue; had neither criticised nor told him she valued his sense of duty, had not wasted breath.

  He told the militiaman where he wanted to go, what part of Kupchino, then held the door open for two more to join him. They were driven away, and all had their phones to their ears.

  A crowd had gathered, raw in anger, several deep. Some casualties had been taken away. Others were still being dug for. Some distance from the living, and the triage work of the first medical teams, were the black bags for the fatalities, already zipped but showing the shapes they held.

  Alarms rang from cars and from the stricken building. All the windows were blown out and a part of the end wall, on the top floor, had collapsed and the roof was split wide. The sleet and the cold had access to an open area into which searchlights played. The fire teams had their first extended ladder in place and would have had a clear view into the devastation. The lights showed, to the crowd held back by increasingly nervous militia, a splintered and overturned table and parts of bodies, some intact but unmoving, and some crawling towards the ladder, jostling for safety.

  A girl in a flimsy dress, and cloaked in gold foil, still sat at the reception desk and was white cheeked from the dust that had fallen on her. She gazed straight ahead and was deep in shock. Another girl sat in an open Porsche sports car and did not move and had no mark on her, and might have been sleeping except that a small dribble of blood seeped from her mouth and ran down to the cleft of her chest. A girl in waitress uniform, except that the apron she wore was no longer white but crimson, walked in circles and whined like a lost dog. Most were silent . . . but not all. One fuelled the anger of those held back by the uniformed men. He was the avtoritet of the Kupchino district of the city. He ranted at the crowd. He shouted of treachery, of rivals, of murder, of the revenge that would be taken on the ‘evil shite’, the ‘fucking pig’ – and named him – who ran the Ul’yanka district and had control of most of the cargo area of Pulkovo airport, and had his own roof. He was pale, blood stained, and had an open wound on his forehead. A sleeve of his suit jacket hung loose and was held at the shoulder by threads, and his trousers were ripped and showed his tanned legs. He made a denunciation, had the certainty of conviction. The official who might have backed him, and might have denied him, did not contribute, was being carried to an ambulance’s open doors. Another official huddled in a corner, a blanket across his shoulders, shivering and silent. A woman, strangely calm and with her face scarred by glass shards, said that her twin boys had been inside, and she had not seen them since the fireball burst.

  Many of those who gathered at the torn fence around the building lived close by in the tower blocks that ringed the small area of low-set industrial buildings, and owed a good living to the Autorite. They drove for him, did courier work, provided cheap muscle, pimped girls from whose work on their backs he took a healthy cut, and were dependent on his generosity for finding work for their children, and for the settling of disputes – anything requiring leverage with the city’s administration. He was a popular man if not crossed, and he stood, bloodied and unbowed, and called down devils on his rival in the Ul’anka district, neighbouring his own territory.

  In such circumstances – the attack on the commercial enterprise of a man with significant influence – few of the more minor players would wish to intervene. The avtoritet was known for quite scientific cruelty: none, at this moment, would wish to antagonise him further. The militia officers organised a cordon of uniforms around the fence and hoped that the crowd, teetering towards a mob, would not burst through and vent their resentment against the medical teams and the fire crews, and investigators. At that moment, few men or women in authority wished for prominence.

  One came forward.

  Because the Major was from Belarus, a foreigner and without a roof, and gave not a kopek for the city’s endemic corruption, he stepped out. He took charge.

  It was a crime scene. He secured it. On his orders, long rolls of tape were unravelled, and the fire and rescue and medical teams warmed to him, someone who understood the requirements of their work. He gathered the principals together, talked through the recovery of corpses and the injured from the building, little of which was safe. He gave them respect, they gave him effort.

  A general came. It was the Major who briefed him. Leadership was not awarded him, merely seemed to slip into his lap, and lodge there. He was crisp and to the point. He wore his civilian clothing, had an armband over the sleeve of his leather jacket. It was to his advantage that he did not wear the uniform of his ranking; as a major, he would not have been listened to. The general approved of what he had done. He was told he headed the investigation. With the general had been two colonels but they did not query the order. Did he have permission to go wherever the investigation led him? ‘Within reason’, he did, and the general’s name was to be quoted if he encountered obstruction. Perhaps a word had been passed to the general’s ear: this was a man without ‘connection’, without a krysha, without friends who carried influence . . . Perhaps the general appreciated such independence. Almost at his car, he called to him.

  ‘Is this clear cut, Major? Does it shout at you?’

  ‘I don’t know, General.’

  ‘Thugs, turf war, crossing of boundaries, good enough reasons for an atrocity?’

  ‘A meeting in progress. Its significance. The seat of the explosion . . . also good enough reasons? I cannot answer you. Please, General, excuse me.’

  The Major would have liked a good sergeant with him, reliable and enthusiastic and with a nose – and fearless. Would have to make do, when he could lay hands on him, with his surveillance sergeant, and there was a young lieutenant in the Big House who worked for him, seemed sensible. Had to get the scenes of crime team in, and the fire forensic people, had to have them crawling through the wreckage of the meeting room. Were there road-blocks in place? A shrug for an answer. Were there road-blocks in place on all main routes? No, not just to Ul’anka district, but on the roads into central St Petersburg, and the roads away from the city, north and west and south. And he raised his voice, unusual for him, and demanded action. Blocks on all the roads, and to hell with log-jammed traffic. What should the militia on the blocks be looking for?

  ‘I don’t know. I do not know what they should look for, but they must look.’

  ‘When do we get a woman?’

  ‘When do we get a drink?’

  ‘When do we stop – and will the casino still be open?’

  Peals of laughter inside the car.

  They veered on the road, hit the barrier and bounced back because Martin laughed so loud. ‘I want a woman, big gut and big paps, any shape, just a woman.’

  Toomas chimed in: ‘A litre of vodka, high strength, some beer to chase it, the rest of the night on a bench, and not wake until I am back on the hill with the castle and the tourists have come, and everything of this forgotten.’

  Kristjan leaned between them, and the laughter bubbled spittle on his lips. ‘Get there, get to the casino, clear the bastards out, win big. Put it on nineteen – every cent I have. Big odds – it was the age of my grandfather when he came on the fast boat . . . Let the wheel spin, the ball wobbles, comes to rest, can only be that number. Be there before it closes.’

  ‘I accept the chance of a woman is slight, less than minimal.’

  ‘Can’t stop, fuck about – not at a store where they’d sell good quality vodka, or bad.’

  ‘Would the wheel come up? But it is a dream. It is
good to dream, what else?’

  They went on down the road, and the traffic opened out for them and the girl kept close and the Polo’s lights were full on and were in their mirrors. The thoughts of a woman, and of bottles full to the neck, and of a bouncing ball on a spinning roulette wheel, were like sand slipping through their fingers. Their elation had been strengthened by the chase through the lorries on the road, and Martin’s driving skill, and the brilliance of the girl who had followed them. But the road now opened up and excitement had no place. The mood swing was sharp, felt by all three of them.

  Martin said, ‘We should never have come. If there is a road-block, what do we do?’

  Toomas said, ‘What we did wrong was turn back, then wait for them. Without us they don’t get through.’

  Kristjan said, ‘Should not have come, should have taken their money, gone.’

  They went down a long straight road, and all the time the headlights stayed bright in the mirrors, and the girl tracked them.

  Colder. The sleet had not turned to snow, but came stronger, spattered up from the road surface, and visibility was worse, but the vehicle in front kept a steady speed. They had skidded, and he had thought she had lost traction but she regained it. He did not know whether that was ability or luck. Merc usually reckoned that luck outweighed talent.