Scorpion Trail

by Archer, Jeffrey

  Then suddenly, with a moan like an exhausted beast, the ventilator fans died. Silence, total silence that rang in their ears.

  Pravic remained on the mounting block, frozen in disbelief, finger on the trigger of the spray, its nozzle pressed to the useless duct.

  Then he cursed, long and low, the guttural SerboCroat muffled by the rubber of the mask.

  With the fans safely shut down, the technical manager led the two nervous policemen to the fourth floor. He knew exactly where Pravic would have gone.

  A radio check had revealed that the Landespolizei reinforcements were still five minutes away, but they couldn't wait for them.

  He'd identified Pravic from the photo they'd shown him. Pity he hadn't seen it earlier. Nobody had thought to tell him there was a maniac on the loose.

  Lorna shivered uncontrollably now she knew the killer was in the building.

  Pravic was up there somewhere -and so was Alex.

  The police cluck-clucked when she told them about him. Interfering civilians. A foreigner at that.

  They asked her to wait with the administrator in his office. She gave them a minute's head start. Then, making the excuse of needing the toilet, she rushed from the room and headed for the stairs.

  The technician and the two policemen were silent with fear as the elevator carried them to the fourth floor.

  The doors slid open. Two figures crossing the lobby, heading forward F.

  Pravic pushing Alex in front of him, the gun at his back.

  A nod from the manager. The police drew their guns.

  Alex heard the clunk of the lift doors but dared not turn to look. His hands were bound behind his back with adhesive tape. Pravic was a hair's breadth behind him. And the pistol bruised his ribs.

  'Halt!' A policeman's shout. The hollow bark of a man whose only authority was his uniform.

  Pravic hooked an arm around Alex's neck, and spun him as a shield towards the voice, levelled his automatic and fired. One policeman buckled, clutching his chest. The other stumbled back into the lift where the hospital technician had already sought cover.

  Alex strained against the choking arm, ears whistling. The shot shook him, hammered home the danger he was in. Pravic jerked him sideways into the ward F corridor. Police outside the ward. Police in the lift lobby. More on the way. They'd never let this madman through. They'd gun him down for sure. Shoot them both if they had to

  He heard rough shouts - warnings to staff to stay in their wards.

  Milan Pravic stared left and right. Out of sight of the lobby, now. There'd been two police in the corridor. Gone. Ducked into doorways. A gun, an arm and half a face was all he saw of either of them. His heart thumped.

  He knew he was cornered. But not finished. He had the gun. He had his shield. And above all, he had his need.

  His ears still rang from the crack of the shot. In his head the ringing turned to voices, girls' voices from inside ward F. Had to get in there to stop them. To silence their derision. There must be no more snickering from Tulici, ever again.

  Lorna panted up the last flight and pushed open the glass-panelled door to the fourth floor. She'd heard the shot, feared the worst. Hand to her mouth, she saw the sprawled policeman, gasped at the pool of red spreading from his chest.

  Footsteps on the stairs behind her. A nurse pushed past and ripped open a sterile dressing to press on the policeman's wound, 'Alex?' Lorna called. Half shout, half whisper. Bewildered.

  Hearing her, the technical manager rushed from the lift, and hustled her back to the stairs. She twisted from his grip. He gave up, scrambling through the doors to save himself The second policeman growled into his radio, ignoring her. He checked his wounded colleague was in good hands, then edged up to the corner of the corridor, gun arm extended.

  Lorna took in the scene and understood. Pravic must be metres away. Down the corridor which led to Vildana's ward. And for the police to be so cautious, there must be someone with him ... Alex.

  Full of dread, she stepped round the nurse and the body on the floor.

  Heedless of the risk, she edged forward.

  She glimpsed Pravic. Saw his arm tight under the chin of a hostage. Saw who the hostage was. Saw the gun at his temple ...

  'Ale . . .' she screamed. The cry died in her throat as the policeman barged her back out of sight.

  'Zuriickl Sind Sie veryickt?' he hissed, shoving her through the doors to the stairs, then returning to his watch.

  Alex felt the gun hot against his jawbone.

  He'd caught a glimpse of Lorna. Why had they let her through?

  She mustn't see him die. Mind spinning. Stupid thoughts suddenly important.

  The end. For him the pain might be quick. For her it would linger.

  In his ear, the Bosnian's breath in jerky spasms. He sensed Pravic's nerve go.

  'Drop the guns or I kill him!' Pravic screamed. Fear in his voice. No wish to be a martyr.

  Me neither, Alex thought.

  Inside ward F, Vildana stared at the door, transfixed by the shout in the corridor outside. The same voice she'd heard on that day of death, cowering in her hidey-hole behind a cupboard. The shouts, the laughter, the gurgle of the madman who'd ripped open her mother's belly with a hunting knife branded on her memory. The Scorpion. He had come for her, like she always knew he would.

  Nancy Roche kneeled on the floor beside Vildana's bed, clutching the girl's hand. Two other children in the ward, both crying. Between the metal bed legs Nancy watched the police officer braced by the door, his right arm extended into the corridor. At that moment she trusted his invincibility in the way a child trusts its father. Had to.

  But if he failed? If the crazy Bosnian blazed his way into the ward? What if she was the last barrier between Vildana and death? Would she sacrifice her own life if she had to? Would Irwin want that? Scott and Ella?

  She sank closer to the floor, checking how much room there was under the bed.

  The young policeman pressed his forehead to the door jamb, eye in line with the Heckler and Koch that had become an extension of his arm. Poised to kill a man for the first time in his life. He remembered the certificate on the bedroom wall at home. Top of his year for marksmanship. But paper targets were different from an armed man.

  He saw the gunman edge closer, his back to the corridor wall, hugging the Englishman like a security blanket. A clear sight of Pravic's head, for just two seconds, that's all he wanted. All it would take to snuff him out, to pop the balloon with a bullet, just like the display shoots on open day at the police college.

  Alex heard his own breath rasp, felt the tape sear his wrists as he struggled to loosen his hands. Could be dead within seconds unless he did something. Powerless though. Tipped back on his heels. Unable to use weight and strength.

  Just needed one chance. One chink of an opportunity

  A moment's glance from the police marksman to his companion in the doorway opposite. A nod of agreement. Beyond Pravic at the corner to the lift lobby he saw that the third man was ready too.

  Deep breath.

  'Lzs' ihn los! Let him go! Let him go now!' he yelled.

  Pravic started. He jerked on his hostage's neck. Alex gagged. Pravic swung the gun left and blasted plaster from the wall by the door to ward F. The marksman ducked inside.

  'Halt Pravic Drop the weapon!' From the lift lobby now.

  Hell Pravic, Alex seethed. Why so bloody formal? Why not arsehole? He wrenched his head to the right. Ten metres away, a face and a gun edging round the wall.

  He understood. Saw their tactic. To prod and confuse like picadors in a bullring, twisting Pravic one way, then the other, in the hope he'd expose enough of himself for a hit.

  A dangerous tactic, that could kill him in the process.

  So, Pravic was to be stopped at any price. Never to be let into that ward.

  Even if the hostage died in the process ... Alex had nothing to lose.

  The gun muzzle crushed the lobe of his ear.

  '
Let him go, Herr Pravic!'The voice from the left. The word. 'Let the hostage go!'

  'Herr Pravic!'

  From the right, now. The lift lobby. 'Throw down the gun!'

  Pravic trembled, blinded by flashing images from the past. Taunts. Prods with sticks. The stones flicked in his face as he ran to school.

  'Let him go!' The lobby end again. 'Have sense! You're surrounded. No way out, Pravid'

  Oh yes there was! He'd learned to fight back. Learned that if you asked for mercy, they pissed on you.

  He aimed the Zastrava at the lobby corner.

  Alex felt Pravic tense to absorb the kick of the gun. He tensed too. Ready.

  The shot cracked and ricocheted off the walls. A split-second only in which to act.

  Alex reached back with his trussed hands and grabbed for the soft, sensitive offal of the gunman's genitals.

  Pravic buckled instinctively, grunting with surprise.

  With the sudden weight-shift, Alex had leverage. He locked his chin onto Pravic's arm and buckled his knees. As he fell forward, with Pravic hooked to his neck, he jinked, turning the Bosnian's back towards ward F.

  Marksman of the year for 1992 saw his chance.

  Four shots. Four shuddering jerks to the Bosnian's body. Then Alex felt a stabbing pain in his spine. He crumpled to the floor, with Pravic's twitching bulk on top of him.

  Lorna banged open the doors to the lobby and sprinted after the policeman as he thundered down the corridor.

  Bodies on the floor. Uniforms clustered round. A policeman's boot stamped down hard. Crushed by its heavy sole, a hand clutching a gun.

  She couldn't speak. Didn't dare ask.

  Face pressed to the shiny floor by Pravic's body, Alex tasted blood. Wetness trickled to his mouth from the back of his head.

  Words in gruff German, then Pravic was pulled off him. Alex rolled onto one side, wincing at the pain in his back. One look at the dark red dribble from Pravic's mouth told him the blood he'd tasted had not been his OVM.

  'Alex!'

  He looked up - Lorna was kneeling beside him. He smiled up at her, seizing her hand, and holding on to it as if it were life itself.

  Twenty-Six

  9.45 p.m. Frankfurt Airport

  On the long, hard drive from Calais Michael McCarthy had stayed at the wheel of the British-registered Mondeo. Didn't trust the moody, hungover Nolan.

  They'd found beds at one of the new, plastic hotels that did cheap rooms near an autobalm junction west of Frankfurt. He'd dropped Nolan there, then driven to the airport and left the Mondec, in the long-term car park.

  At the arrivals terminal, he rented a VW Golf using a stolen driving licence, paid cash for three days' rental, then took the car for a short familiarization spin before returning to the hotel.

  He knocked on Nolan's room. Heavy feet, then the door wrenched open.

  'Will you fockin' look at this, Michael,' Nolan howled, heading back into the room and pointing to the television.

  'What, then?'

  'Youse can get Sky News here, that's fockin' what!'

  'So?'

  'So your man's only on the fockin' news!' Nolan was apoplectic.

  'What you on about, Tommy?' He grabbed his arm. 'Count to five. Then tell me.'

  'It was himself! Your man Jarvis, only his name's Crawford now. It was shown on Sky News, but it happened here. In Frankfurt. At some hospital.

  He stopped some madman murdering hundreds of people with anthrax. They's calling the bastard a hero!'

  'When did you see this? Are you certain about it? just a few minutes ago. And of course I'm fockin' certain. It'll be on again in a wee while. You'll see.'

  McCarthy perched his backside on the dressing-table unit. Didn't change anything.

  'Did they say where this hospital was?'

  'I don't know. I didn't get it anyways. You'll see for yourself in a minute.'

  Nolan sat on the edge of the bed, crumpled and out of his depth. He'd only once been out of the British Isles before, a fortnight in Tenerife one year when he'd won a bit on the pools.

  'Not getting cold feet, are you Tommy?'

  'What? Not on your life.'

  Not convincing. McCarthy could see he'd have to put some bottle in him.

  Hadn't brought him all this way just to have him cop out at the last minute.

  'What's he done?'

  'Eh?' Nolan looked up, confused.

  'What's he done to you this fellow, that you've wanted to kill him for the last twenty years?'

  'He's a tout. You knows that. He put my brother Kieran under the earth.'

  'Exactly. I know that. You know that. So don't you forget it tomorrow when you've got the nine millimetre pointed at his head.'

  Belsize Park, north London

  In the comfort of his suburban home, Roger Chadwick watched News at Ten with deepening unease. It was all there. The bloodstained hospital corridor, the press conference with Alex and Lorna. Big close-ups, their names broadcast for everyone to hear.

  'Oh God,' he breathed. The IRA ceasefire was certainly expected, but it wasn't yet in place.

  'Something the matter, dear?' his wife asked, glancing up from her crossword.

  'Yes. I think there might be.'

  He got up from the soft armchair, crossed the hall from the living room to his study and picked up the phone. Better have a minder or two on the first plane to Frankfurt in the morning.

  Lorna Donohue! It was her, after all. Why the hell had Alex lied to him?

  Not hard to guess.

  After his call to Thames House he stared up at his well-filled bookshelf, thinking. By the time his men got to Germany and found their way around, it would be midmorning. The thought made him uncomfortable. A vital few hours left uncovered.

  He tried another call, to the German Bundeskriminalamt in Wiesbaden.

  No reply to Kommissar Linz's direct line and he had no other number.

  Better get Thames House to pass a message through the BKA duty officer.

  Alex was the person he most needed to contact, but the idiot hadn't told him where he was staying.

  Harz Mountains

  Dieter Konrad sat alone in front of a fire of crackling spruce. Normally he loved the quiet of his isolated retreat in the Harz. Trees all around, nearest neighbour half a kilometre away. But tonight the silence deepened his fear.

  The man he knew as 'Schiller' had ordered him here this morning.

  Telephoned him at the Berlin apartment, breaking the agreement not to contact him there. His wife had asked questions.

  The mystery murder of Karina the prostitute had been on the morning radio news. There'd need to be two more deaths before he felt safe. Gisela Pocklewicz and most important of all, Milan Pravic.

  It was after midnight, but there was no point in trying to sleep. Not while his mind still saw the disbelief in the whore's bulbous eyes as he'd choked her to death.

  Strange that with a handful of murders to his credit, this one should affect him so deeply. The difference was it had been personal this time.

  Had to kill Karina with his own hands, to save his own skin. And worse, much worse, she was somebody he had desired.

  The ring of the telephone made him half leap from the chair.

  Rudiger Katzfuss and Martin Sanders weaved through the forest on the deserted 'B' road, headlamps bouncing off the light bark of silver birches. Sanders at the wheel of the big BMW, Katzfuss on the phone.

  'Schiller here,' said Katzfuss. 'We're on our way to see you. Can you pack a bag with enough things for a week?'

  'Why? What's the matter?'

  'We've got wind that the press are on to you. We've decided you'd be safer, and so would we, if you were in one of our houses. Pick you up in about ten minutes?'

  Konrad grunted an acknowledgement and rang off. Katzfuss held the phone out so he could see the dialpad in the light of the reading lamp. He pressed the 'secrecy' button. The line would stay connected, but silent.

  Konrad stood
by the phone staring at it. Why? Why at this time of night?

  How could the press be on to him, unless the BND themselves had tipped them off. No one else knew that Herr Konrad and Herr Dunkel were the same person. Not even his wife.

  Perhaps the press had been on to her. He picked up the receiver again.

  She'd be asleep at the flat in Berlin Lichtenberg, but never mind. He had to know.

  No dialling tone.just a hum and a crackle. He pressed down on the rest, then up again. Dead.

  'Ach, Du Liebe,' he gasped. 'Neim!'

  He flung open the front door and stumbled towards the Mercedes, guided by light spilling from the house. He felt with a finger for the escutcheon and inserted the key. Stupid habit keeping it locked. No need to out here.

  Ignition on. Wait for the diesel light. Come on!

  A flick of the key and the engine rumbled. He stabbed at the light switch, crunched into first and accelerated down the hundred metres of narrow gravel towards the road.

  Headlights! Turning in towards him.

  'Gott o Gott!'

  Full beam. Dazzling. No room to pass. Trees either side. He stamped on the brake.

  Sanders braked first, then sprung from the door running into the darkness, reaching into his shoulder holster for the pistol.

  Katzfuss, heart pounding, walked slowly to the driver's door of the Mercedes.

  'Weren't you going to wait for us, Herr Konrad?' he asked when the window was down. Konrad looked old and very, very scared.

  'Something happened to my telephone he explained lamely. 'I don't know what's going on.'

  'Not working? Never mind. There's one in the house we're going to. It's not far from here. Bag packed?'

  'No. I...'

  'Better be quick. These journalists work through the night. Back the car up. You'll come with us in ours.'

  'Us?'

  'Yes. I have a friend with me. There's another colleague at the safe house. We'll all be staying there tonight. A little cramped, but we'll manage. Gemitlich! Here, I'll help you reverse.'