Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

Scattered on the platform ahead of Purkiss was an assortment of bits of metal. He spotted what he wanted while he was still running, so the delay when he reached the pile was minimal. Slowing only a fraction he ducked and grasped a wheel of some sort, orange with rust, the size of a dinner plate. It had a good heft as he swung it up, enough to give it the momentum needed.

Purkiss put a last burst of effort into his running, nothing sustainable but enough to bring him back level with Pope. For an instant Pope glanced across the track at him. Purkiss slowed a touch and gripped the wheel like a discus in his left hand and, more awkwardly than he’d have liked because he was using his non-dominant arm, sent the circular block of steel arcing across the track.

For a moment he thought he’d got the trajectory wrong, but his move evidently surprised Pope and broke his stride and that brought him directly into the path of the wheel. It caught him in the side of the head with a solid noise Purkiss could hear on the other side of the track. Pope dropped, thrown off his feet.

Purkiss leaped off the platform, his shoes meeting gravel, fear thrilling him as for an instant he was sure he was going to touch the rails. He picked his way between the metal bars and sprang up on to the other side, seeing Pope stagger to his feet and reel about, disorientated.

Purkiss was at him in two strides, grabbing his shoulders and spinning him round and swinging a punch that would have floored Pope if the younger man hadn’t snapped his head to one side at the last instant and driven a kick into Purkiss’s abdomen, knocking him back. As Purkiss stumbled Pope seized his right arm and rolled on his back, legs drawn up. Purkiss felt himself lifted, pulled along by his arm and across the fulcrum Pope had created with his own balled-up body. The edge of the platform loomed large. Purkiss shot out his left arm and broke his fall awkwardly, his face slamming against the edge.

He felt Pope twist his right arm up between his shoulderblades and force his knee into the small of Purkiss’s back. Purkiss’s neck was twisted so that he was staring down the track to his right, his head hanging over the edge of the platform.

A train was approaching the station, curving down the track towards him, the rumble of its wheels and the screech of its braking mechanism amplified through the concrete pressed against Purkiss’s left ear.

It wasn’t going to manage to stop in time.

Behind him Purkiss felt Pope twist his arm higher and drive his knee deeper into his back, inching Purkiss forward so that his head protruded further over the lip of the platform.

The brakes of the train were screaming now. Through the expanding front window the driver’s mouth stretched silently.

Blindly, Purkiss seized the lip of the platform with his free left hand, ignoring the blaze of pain in his right shoulder where it felt his arm was being wrenched free from the socket. With his hand anchored and using his left elbow as a pivot, he turned slightly on to his left side and heaved.

Pope toppled forward over Purkiss, releasing his arm to flail reflexively with his hands. As the nose of the train hurtled into the station and Purkiss hauled himself back, he saw Pope drop on to the track feet first, between the live rails, and turn his landing into the first movement of a springing action that shot him up to grab on to the opposite platform. He was pulling his feet clear when the length of the train juddered past, hiding him from Purkiss.

Purkiss was up on his feet, running through the pain that burned his shoulder and his face and his belly, back down the length of the train. He reached the end and, heart hammering, stared across at the opposite platform, scanning its length.

Pope was gone.

Purkiss cranked the window as much to bathe his head in the cool spring afternoon air as to disperse the nicotine fug. Beside him Vale’s hand on the wheel held a smouldering dog-end between the index and middle fingers.

He was aware Vale was looking across at him but he stared straight ahead. Images coalesced and dispersed, a surreal kaleidoscope: garish neon above as yet curtained windows in the Walletjes, laughing stoned faces, and everywhere the bicycles, looking in many cases too rickety to be roadworthy.

Vale said, not for the first time: ‘Are you operational?’

Purkiss didn’t answer; once was enough. He’d rung once his fingers were steady enough to dial. He could have made his way back to the temporary base Vale had set up but he’d decided to conserve some energy.

A last burst of speed had taken him away from the station, not this time in pursuit of Pope but out of the reach of whatever authorities were massing and descending on the scene of the fight. Once he’d cleared the canal to the south and lost himself among the shopping arcades he’d slumped against a wall and rung the number. He’d been mildly surprised that Vale had arrived in the car on his own.

‘How is he?’ Vale meant Pope.

‘In better shape than I am.’ He’d caught Pope hard on the side of the head with the rusty chunk of metal he’d thrown, but up close it didn’t look as if there was any serious damage. ‘Fit enough to be far away by now, and have left no trace.’

‘We’ve been over the flat.’ Now he turned to look at Vale. ‘Bit of a mess, as you said.’

Vale was a rarity, if not unique: a black man in his sixties who’d held a senior position in the British intelligence establishment. Nowadays there were plenty of younger people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Vale on the other hand was a veteran of over three decades’ standing. He looked older than his years, hunched over the wheel, the cowl of his oversized coat like the rim of a tortoise’s shell across his neck. His face was seamed from years of tension and tobacco.

Purkiss had rung Vale’s number the first time after Pope had fled the flat, not saying anything except: ‘He’s done it. I’m after him.’ He’d trusted the older man to scour the flat and seal it, which he’d done. The police would need to find it eventually.

So would the CIA. They’d probably get there first.

‘Three shots.’ Vale made it a statement, one that sounded obvious, except that Purkiss knew he was fishing for further impressions.

Purkiss said: ‘Nine millimetre. A Glock, possibly. I didn’t get a good look. I made him drop it. That’s when he made a run for it.’

There had indeed been three shots, a double tap to the head after an initial belly hit to bring Jablonsky down. There was a significance in that sequence which danced on the periphery of Purkiss’s thoughts. He left it for the time being.

Something else was clamouring for his attention. When he focused on it, it became a klaxon exploding in his head.

‘You have to warn Taylor.’

‘Too late.’ Vale was staring ahead now, navigating knots of tourists spilling across the road. ‘We went to his flat as soon as we got your call. Same method. Probably the same weapon.’

*

Purkiss had arrived at Schiphol Airport at six that morning. It always seemed to him faintly absurd to fly to Amsterdam when the total time in the air was usually less than that spent journeying to one of London’s airports and checking in; but Vale had ensured he was fast-tracked through the boarding process.

Vale’s call had come at midnight.

‘I need you in Amsterdam.’

Purkiss had been reading in his study at the time. ‘Where are you?’

‘On my way there from Paris.’

Purkiss closed his book and sat up, alert.

Vale went on: ‘I’ve booked the five a.m. London City flight. Meet you this side.’

‘I’ll be there.’ Purkiss was already striding to pack. ‘Anything you can give me at this point?’