Adrian Magson - Execution

She awoke to the scuff of leather shoes in the corridor. Eyes dragged open, gummy with sleep, then closed again, a reflex action. Easy does it. Relax. You’re safe.

She froze as a random thought wormed slowly through her befuddled mind. The nurses don’t wear leather shoes. She was familiar enough with the hurried tread of the consultants, or the heavier, measured stroll of the security guards. So who?

Outsiders. Not good.

She willed her breathing to remain steady. Not easy with a hole in her side. She focussed instead on the air around her, going over the small details to get her brain working. She’d been shot. She was in a hospital. King’s College, south London — the Major Trauma Centre, they had told her. She kept forgetting that bit. Stuff seemed to leak out of her head all the time like water from a holed bucket.

She concentrated. It was night, she was certain; at a guess, two a.m. There wasn’t the hum of daytime activity, the rush of feet, the voices; nor the beep of electronics signifying seconds to someone’s total blackness and a bed left empty. Wakefulness brought a throb in her temples and a woozy feeling from the drugs, and the stickiness between her shoulder blades from lying in the overheated, cloying atmosphere for too long. There was a tightness across her middle and the tug of plaster against skin, still tender and sore.

So who was out there? And why now?

The door to her room whispered open. Soft footsteps approached the bed, accompanied by a man’s nasal breathing. Her body shrieked with a sense of vulnerability but she remained still. It wasn’t hard — she’d had a lot of practice in this place; using it to distance herself as much from the probing of questions as of fingers, of their barely restrained curiosity about what had brought a civilian woman here with a gunshot wound.

A ghost of warm peppermint fanned her cheek. Along with it came the tangy smell of damp clothing. It made a change from the sickly aroma of anaesthetics and cleaning fluids. Must be raining outside. God, what she wouldn’t give for a walk in the rain and a lungful of fresh air. And a Starbucks to go. With a double shot.

Some hope.

She tensed as the man leaned further over her. She didn’t need to open her eyes to see him. Normal times, she’d have reacted by kicking back the covers and planting her foot in his face for invading her space. Watched him fall and lie still, before stepping over him and kicking him in the balls for good measure.

But these weren’t normal times.

‘She awake?’ A whisper from over by the door. A second man, the accent rough.

The peppermint smell receded. ‘I don’t think so.’ The air around her shifted and she sensed the man move to the foot of the bed, heard the clank of the clipboard being lifted.

‘What’s her problem?’

‘She has a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Not pleasant.’ This man sounded more educated.

‘So she’s army.’

The clank of the clipboard being replaced. ‘It doesn’t say. Most of them are, here. Who cares? She’s out of it, so not our problem.’

Footsteps moving away. The door closed and she once more felt the emptiness of space. They had gone.

She continued to remain still, fighting against the temptation to open her eyes. A minute ticked by in silence. Two. Three. Then the door huffed, as she knew it would.

Heavy breathing. They were back.

‘Well?’ The one with the rough accent.

A long pause, then: ‘She hasn’t moved. Come on, let’s get this done.’

‘What if she hears us?’

‘Then we’ll have to finish what the bullet started, won’t we?’

‘We could save the bother — do it now.’

‘No. There’s no time. The guard might come back.’ A pause, then a whisper, very close: ‘You’re lucky, Miss Jardine, whoever you are.’

The soft tread of footsteps moving away.

Lucky? Why am I lucky? Where the hell are the security guard and nurses?

She followed the men’s progress, visualising a mental picture although she’d never seen anything of the corridor outside. You don’t, when you’ve been gut-shot, see much of anything beyond the chaotic inner world that is the shock and pain and confusion of memories, some imagined, some real. All the rest is a blur of vague faces and ceiling lights.

The men didn’t go far. Next door or across the way, she couldn’t be certain. The corridor ended there. Two other rooms, two other patients. No, wait. Next door had gone not long after dark. Rushed to theatre in a controlled scramble of feet and wheels and clanking equipment.

They hadn’t come back.

If it was across the way, she knew who they were going to see.

Knew what they were going to do.

Because like the patient in that room, who had gabbled on almost non-stop since his arrival two days ago, including shouting his name several times, the two men had been speaking Russian. And suddenly the mush of details sloshing around in her brain was starting to make sense.

She understood Russian. And from what the man across the way had been saying over and over again, between bouts of silence, there was only one reason for these two men to be right here, right now, in the middle of the night, when the security guard was away, probably on a fag break.

They were going to kill him.

And if they found out who she was — and what she had once been — she would be next.

So much for being lucky.

In a luxury Mayfair office rented by a holding company registered in the Cayman Islands, three men watched as a female technician swept the room they were in with an electronic countermeasures device. The building was checked regularly, but today was deemed especially important in view of the matter under discussion. The fact that this office was held under a blanket of cover names, and that there were no regular staff, led to a clear understanding by all who stepped foot in the building that what was discussed here stayed in the minds of those present and was never confirmed on paper or digitally recorded.

It was especially important to the three men now here, as none had been recorded entering the UK under their real names, and they would have no contact with their official embassy.

The technician finished and packed away her probe and monitor and pronounced the room clean. When she had gone, the three men sat down at a central table and opened small bottles of apple juice.

‘Report,’ said one of them, glancing impatiently at his watch. His thoughts were clear: it was not yet eight in the morning and his day was going to be busy.

In his sixties, he wore a grey suit and crisp white shirt, the image of a successful businessman. However, he was anything but. His name was Sergei Gorelkin. Once a senior officer in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), successors to the old and much feared KGB, he still held the rank of colonel, although his position of Honorary Deputy in the Division for the Defence of the Constitution carried far more weight than that of any military officer.

‘The assignment was completed without a hitch.’ It was about as much report as Gorelkin would require, and the speaker, Fyodor Votrukhin, who held the rank of lieutenant, crunched on an Extra Strong Mint and waited for the signal to continue. A long-time member of the elite Special Purpose Centre of the FSB, Votrukhin was tall and lean, with the dark looks of a Georgian. He seemed at ease in the plush surroundings of the leased office, but after their journey here from Moscow and their activities of a few hours ago, he was looking tired.

Gorelkin nodded and sipped his apple juice, rolling it around his mouth before swallowing. ‘Good. Glad to hear it, lieutenant.’ He eyed the third man, who so far had said nothing. ‘Is that your summary also, sergeant?’