Fury

by Andy Maslen

  Inside his room, a rectangular box with a functional bathroom built into a corner, Gabriel stripped down to his underpants and sat on the bed. He texted Britta.

  Kazakhstan very flat. Minor alarm today. Turned out to be nothing. Carl fine. V talkative. Hotel OK. How are you?

  His finger hesitated.

  I miss you.

  He backspaced.

  I love you. G x

  Then he set an alarm on his phone, lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He’d agreed to meet Carl in the lobby at seven thirty and it was six now. Sleep wouldn’t come, though. He got to his feet and spread his towel on the floor. Took some deep, lung-filling breaths, in through his nose, then sighed them out through his mouth, squeezing his abdominal muscles and lifting his diaphragm until his lungs were empty. With his eyes closed, he began working through a series of yoga moves known collectively as a sun salutation. As he stretched, bent, jumped back into a press-up position, slid to his belly, arched his back, folded himself into an inverted V and started again, he let his mind settle and clear, repeating the sequence over and over again.

  He heard his phone buzz as, hopefully, a reply from Britta came in. He ignored it. For now, the meditation was more important. A thought rose to the surface of his mind like a bubble plopping in a mud pool.

  Death follows you around, Wolfe.

  With his breathing synchronised to his movements, he continued his yoga practice, not trying to interrogate the thoughts that began piling in on themselves.

  How many is it now? How many since you left the Army?

  Meeks and his Hells Angels. Bart Venter. Sean Cunningham. Toby Maitland. Gary Granger and his skinhead friends. Vix and Lizzie Maitland. Kasym Drezna. Elsbeta Daspireva. The other Chechens. Yuri Volkov. Christophe Jardin. Diego Toron. The Children of Heaven. All six hundred of them. Philip Agambe. His wife. Her brother …

  … you are not the Archangel Gabriel. You are the Angel of Death. You deliver it or you bring it.

  Gabriel was holding a press-up position as this last accusation swam up from his subconscious. With his arm muscles shaking he maintained the pose, eyes open now and observing the drops of sweat that fell from the tip of his nose to the white towel beneath him, darkening the twists of cotton to a translucent pale-grey.

  He shook his head, flipping a final drop of sweat off to one side and jumped forward into a squat then stood and reached for his phone, which had just buzzed.

  The text wasn’t from Britta. It was from Fariyah Crace, his psychiatrist.

  How are you Gabriel? Come and see me soon, yes? Fariyah

  He grunted. “Huh. Perfect! Were you listening in, Fariyah?” he asked the blue rectangle containing the eleven words, and headed for the shower. He stood motionless, letting the hot, faintly ammonia-smelling water stream over his face as he tried to argue with himself about that last, devastating comment from his subconscious.

  “I don’t mean to bring death. It’s a consequence not a purpose,” he said out loud as the water drummed on the plastic floor of the shower stall. “I’m righting wrongs. It’s what I do. It’s all I can do.”

  The inner voice replied.

  And still they fall.

  “Better them than me,” he said grimly, stepping from the shower and towelling himself dry.

  Carl was waiting in the lobby when Gabriel emerged from the lift. He’d dressed in that classic style Gabriel had come to think of as Exec-At-Play: navy blazer over a pale-blue button-down shirt, no tie; khaki chinos, razor-sharp crease; polished, nut-brown deck shoes. In a nod to the temperature outside the oven-like confines of the hotel and its central heating, Carl also had on a puffy, scarlet hiking jacket. Gabriel himself was less smartly dressed than his client for once, in black chinos, a denim shirt with pearl press studs and a forest-green crew neck sweater. A heavy, black, military-style greatcoat completed the outfit.

  “Good to go?” Carl said, as Gabriel approached him, nodding to the two pretty receptionists as he passed the front desk.

  “Ready when you are. Find somewhere good to eat?”

  “You better believe it. Zagat recommended this new place on Daraboz Street. Chinese-Kazakh fusion. Sounds pretty interesting.”

  Sounds pretty disgusting, Gabriel thought, but didn’t say.

  It was growing dark. Carl led the way, keeping up a stream of small talk that left Gabriel free to maintain his situational awareness as they traversed virtually deserted road junctions and meandered through the dimly lit streets of Astana.

  “Should be around the next corner,” Carl called over his shoulder. He’d been striding ahead for most of the walk, and Gabriel had been happy to hang back a few steps, the better to keep his client and potential threats in view.

  They turned into a street where the first three streetlamps were out. Gabriel looked past Carl’s right shoulder down to the end of the street. No lighted shopfronts. No neon. No A-boards on the pavement. No marquees. No doormen. No sign of any retail or commercial premises at all. The absence of the normal.

  Street-fighting Man

  A movement caught his eye. Across the road, a shadow had detached itself from the deep pools of black in the lee of a black-windowed office block. A six-foot-tall shadow that resolved itself into the shape of a man as it took a diagonal path across the road towards Gabriel and his charge.

  Gabriel’s pulse ticked up a notch and he closed the distance between himself and Carl. The shadow divided, amoeba-like, and one became two. The distance between him and them was no more than thirty yards.

  He began to run a combat appreciation. Two opponents. No sign of weapons … correction. From the right hands of the two men, long shapes had appeared to extrude, sliding almost to the ground. Clubs. No, baseball bats.

  Carl seemed oblivious to the threat and was bleating on about some restaurant he’d visited in Beijing. Gabriel tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Be quiet. I need you to get behind me.”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “Company. I can handle them, but if I say run, you run.”

  “Oh. OK. Got it.”

  Carl backed away and stood against the empty shop window behind them.

  “Shit!” Gabriel hissed.

  Ahead, two more figures had materialised under the sickly yellow glow of one of the functioning streetlamps. Then another three came strolling down the centre of the road. Flashes of yellow light blinked at him from the waists of a couple of the men approaching. Reflections. In steel. Gabriel reached into the right-hand pocket of his greatcoat, drew his CZ 75 and held it up where they could all get a good look at its satin-black contours. He called out, first in English, then again, in Russian.

  “Stop! We don’t want any trouble. Back away!”

  “Stop! My ne khotim nikakikh problem. Otoydite!”

  It had no effect. The men didn’t even check their progress. One man was dragging his bat along the ground, so that its end scraped and clanged, a nasty metallic sound.

  “Shit, man. Do something!” Carl hissed from behind him.

  Gabriel pointed the pistol at the man in the centre of the gang, who were now less than twenty yards away. In the gloom, at least two of the others on his left and right would also feel the gun was pointed at them. A small psychological advantage, but better than nothing.

  A flash of silver lit the corner of Gabriel’s right eye. Then a jolt of pain like electricity leapt from his hand to his shoulder as a hard object smashed down onto his gun arm. The CZ 75 fell from his grasp and he saw it kicked to the gutter.

  Gabriel whirled round. Three more men stood there grinning. Bad teeth, bad breath, bad hair. Bad men. One looked like a pirate, with a black patch over his left eye.

  Two of them set to work on Carl, punching him to the ground and then raising the bat. Somehow, Carl scrambled back to his feet and took off down the street, back in the direction of the hotel.

  Gabriel feinted to his left, then leant back and kicked the man closest to him high in the chest, on the left sid
e, directly over the heart. He dropped to all fours, groaning and gasping. With his right arm useless, for now, Gabriel danced to his left and struck out at the other man. His left hand held stiff like a blade, he chopped him across the throat and snatched his bat as he toppled backwards. A backhand swing caught the man on the right temple. A high-pitched crack told Gabriel he’d smashed the man’s temporal bone.

  As Gabriel had begun his counterattack, a shout went up from the main group of attackers. Now he ran, with the seven remaining men pursuing him, cursing in Kazakh.

  “Choose and shape the battlefield, even if you can’t choose anything else,” one of his war course instructors had advised his group of trainees early in Gabriel’s service with the Parachute Regiment, before his transfer to the SAS. Now he took that advice to heart, sprinting into a side street that was darker and narrower still. In a confined space, a single man has an advantage over a group – he has full freedom to act while they must close ranks and either impede each other or wait in line.

  Ahead, he saw an iron fire escape zigzagging down the side of an apartment building. Without breaking stride, Gabriel leapt for the lowest rung of the ladder and hauled himself up. He groaned with pain as his battered arm almost failed, but his grip held, and seconds later, he was swinging himself up and onto the first platform of the escape.

  He looked down. His leading pursuer had a hand on the topmost rung. Gabriel stamped down on the man’s knuckles, drawing forth a scream as his heavy, cleated boot sole smashed the man’s fingers against the cold steel bar. Then he was climbing, breathing hard, heart racing, the adrenaline flooding his system doing the job nature had intended and flooding his skeletal muscles with additional oxygen to increase their power.

  On the second floor, he glimpsed a dark narrow rectangle halfway along a walkway, and ran for it. The passage was cut between two parts of the apartment block, presumably to allow residents access to the rear of their flats. Gabriel darted down it, reached the far end, and flattened himself against the wall to the right

  Five seconds later, one of the gang popped out from the entryway, to catch Gabriel’s bat across the bridge of his nose. He crumpled, screaming, blood spurting from between his fingers. Almost instantly, a second man tripped over his fallen friend’s inert form. Gabriel stamped down on the back of his neck, then skipped back and kicked him, hard, on the chin. Gabriel turned and sprinted down the walkway that ran round the inside of the hollow square of the apartment block.

  He headed for another dark rectangle. A passage through to another side of the block. He hoped it would lead to another fire escape. Then either up and away over the rooftops, or down to the ground if the men were still pursuing him. He couldn’t hear footsteps. No cursing, either. He stopped, just for a second and turned round. Nobody. Even the residents were wisely staying indoors, with their blinds drawn and their curtains closed. Gabriel permitted himself a grim smile. Weren’t expecting much of a fight were you boys? he thought.

  Then his right kidney exploded with agony.

  Gabriel cried out and slumped to his knees.

  He glimpsed a man built like a bull wielding a leather cosh before the incoming blow to the back of his skull lit a painfully bright star in his field of vision.

  Then it, and all the other lights, went out.

  Injuries

  SOMEONE was shaking his shoulder. Gabriel opened his eyes and winced as pain flared behind them. He was lying on his back, legs twisted beneath him. His lower back ached from the blow to the kidney, and the pain had seeped like dark oil into his bladder. Looking down at him with an expression of curiosity and concern was a small child. A girl, maybe eight or nine. She had pink cheeks, flushed as though from a hot bath, and startling blue eyes. She looked over her shoulder and called out.

  “Mama!”

  Gabriel pushed himself up on his elbows and instantly cried out as a blade of pain stabbed into the back of his head. The girl flinched and drew back, then patted him again, softly on the cheek. She said something in Kazakh that he didn’t understand, but could translate:

  “Lie down.”

  He did, thankful for his coat. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but his muscles were stiffening in the cold. He untangled his legs.

  A woman appeared at the door of the flat outside whose red-painted front door he’d been coshed. She was skinny, with ash-blonde hair pinned up into a bun. She knelt by Gabriel’s side, and spoke, in English.

  “You are hurt. You must come inside. We will help you.”

  “Thank you. I would like that very much.”

  Together, the girl and mother helped Gabriel to his feet. He ground his teeth to stop himself crying out again and frightening the girl. The awkward trio manoeuvred through the narrow doorway and into the flat, which was mercifully warm.

  The woman spoke to her daughter, and together they half-pulled, half-pushed Gabriel through an internal door to a small sitting room where he collapsed onto a squashy couch upholstered in some sort of grey suede-effect fabric. Now he did groan.

  “Where are you hurt?” the woman asked.

  He leaned forward, gingerly, and pointed to his lower back. “Here.” Then he touched the back of his head. “And here.” His fingers came away sticky with blood and he leaned forward lest it stain the back of the sofa.

  The girl sat beside him on the sofa, mouth set in a determined line, and took his hand in hers and patted its back. She spoke to him again in Kazakh. The tone was soothing, and he wondered if she liked to play doctor with her toys.

  The woman returned and sat on Gabriel’s other side. She carried a glass bowl half filled with water with a few grains of salt swirling in the bottom. In her other hand she held a pale-pink washcloth. With the bowl set on the coffee table front of her, she began to clean the wound at the back of Gabriel’s head. He inhaled sharply with a hiss as the pressure sent a fresh dagger of pain into his head. She dabbed away, not stopping, and murmuring in Kazakh as she worked. Each time she dipped the washcloth in the bowl and then squeezed it out, it added a fresh swirl of pink to the water. But it was only pink, not scarlet, so whatever damage had been caused by the blow was superficial. He’d seen enough scalp wounds to know they bled like fountains, so this must have been little more than a nick.

  “You have a small cut,” the woman said. “It has, er, I do not know this word. When blood goes hard. Dark.”

  “Clotted?”

  “Yes. It has clotted already. No need for stitching. Your back now. We must take off your coat and clothes.”

  With slow, gentle movements, she and her daughter helped Gabriel to wriggle out of the greatcoat. Then, as he held his arms up, they pulled his jumper off over his head and unbuttoned his shirt, before removing that too. Gabriel felt a sudden sharp memory of his early childhood: he was a little boy, being undressed by his mother for his bath. And there, lying on his back on a folded towel on the bathroom floor, was a baby. Michael.

  “Turn, please,” the woman said.

  Gabriel shifted his weight cautiously and twisted to his right, away from the woman and towards the daughter. He smiled at her. Now, at last, she smiled back.

  He jumped as the woman’s fingers found the site of the punch, over his kidney, the soft, vulnerable spot between pelvis and ribcage where any trained fighter knew to hit an opponent.

  “Bruised?” he asked.

  “Coming. It will be very pretty colours. But not too serious, I think.”

  He looked round at her. She was smiling and he noticed the way her eyes were the same shade of blue as her daughter’s.

  “Thank you for helping me,” he said, as he put his clothes back on, grimacing as his arm movements set off flares in his lower back. “My name is Gabriel Wolfe.”

  “I am Alina Kaliyev. My daughter is Nadya. Tell me, Gabriel. Who did this to you?”

  He shrugged. “I really don’t know. I was going to dinner with my client.” Shit! Who I need to contact. “Then they appeared. They didn’t take my phone or my wa
llet, so not robbers.”

  Alina shook her head. “There are many violent men, even gangs, in Astana. They like to kidnap foreigners for ransom. It is a big problem here. The police do nothing. They are not well paid, so bribes work well.”

  But they didn’t seem to want that either. Just to give us a good kicking. And my attacker left me, but not for dead. This thought prompted Gabriel’s aching muscles to send up another distress flare.

  “Please, do you have any painkillers? Aspirin? Paracetamol?”

  Alina got up from the sofa, smiling. “Yes. Also ibuprofen, codeine, even morphine if you want it?”

  Gabriel blinked in surprise.

  “Morphine? No, thank you. Just paracetamol please. Maybe some ibuprofen, too. I can take them at the same time.”

  After swallowing five tablets with a glass of water Alina had brought from the kitchen, Gabriel leant back against the sofa cushions.

  “You speak English very well. And you have morphine. Are you a doctor? A nurse?”

  “Thank you. And, yes. I am a general practitioner. A family doctor, you call it this?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Or GP. Like you said, a general practitioner.”

  He looked around the room, at the old but serviceable furniture. He saw plenty of books and a small, flat screen TV, a couple of pictures on the wall. But it looked temporary, somehow. Not like a family home, still less that of a doctor, who he imagined even in Kazakhstan would be able to live better than this kind woman appeared to.

  She followed his gaze and shook her head with a sad smile.

  “You are thinking is poor place for a professional to live.”