Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

Outside, the streets were taking on a hostile appearance as the darkness settled over the city. Krupina rubbed away a patch of condensation on her window.

‘Do I need to do any liaising with the Embassy?’ Beside her, Tamarkin’s calmness masked similar feelings to hers, she knew.

‘Not as long as his legend holds up.’ Like all of them Oleg had a cover story, an address and a history in Prague. He had an up-to-date visa.

Tamarkin had reached the area in his car fifteen minutes before Krupina arrived by cab. They hadn’t got close to the tram. The police were already cordoning the scene off. But they’d watched, and soon two bodies were being carted into an ambulance on stretchers. In each case the blanket was over the face, which meant only one thing.

‘How much are you going to tell HQ?’ SVR headquarters was in Yasenevo, southwest of Moscow. It suddenly felt a long distance away to Krupina.

‘Nothing, at the moment. I want to be able to offer them some good news first.’

He laughed without mirth. ‘Ever the optimist.’

The others, Arkady and Lev, were scouring the area, trying to pick up from snatches of conversation what exactly had happened. Eyewitnesses put the numbers of assailants at between two and ten. One said they were definitely Muslim, another that they were armed with machine guns. Her men relayed this information to Krupina as Tamarkin drove the two of them back to the office off Wenceslas Square.

Tiny, shy Yevgenia, the closest thing to a desk jockey in Krupina’s team, was already working on the identikit composites on her PC, based on the information provided by Arkady, who apart from Oleg was the only one of them to have seen the foreigner who’d been tailing Gaines. Quite what his relation was to the men who’d stormed the tram was anyone’s guess. But he was their only lead, and as far as Krupina was concerned was responsible for Oleg’s death until proven otherwise.

Yevgenia was generating possible identikit images of the man using standard software. Arkady was viewing them on his smartphone and giving her feedback.

‘Hair a bit shorter. Also, the chin’s too round. Sharpen it a little.’

Despite herself, Krupina was fascinated. The image on the screen morphed almost imperceptibly as Yevgenia’s fingers flew over the keys. The face was monochrome. Arkady hadn’t seen the eyes close enough to identify the shade and it would be a mistake to speculate, so better to leave colour out of it. The head rotated in 3D — Arkady had seen it mainly in profile — and the jaw and occiput changed shape according to his instructions.

Krupina gazed at the face. Though it wasn’t familiar, the man was British, she was sure of it.

‘Gleb.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Get me the biographies and pictures of the known British SIS operatives in Prague. Might as well throw in French and German as well.’

‘Long shot.’

‘I know.’

‘Think he could be a Yank?’

She glanced back at the screen.

‘No. He looks too grim.’

*

Bartos, the Kodiak, stood in the basement with the three men in a semicircle before him. One, whose name Bartos couldn’t remember, if he’d ever known it, had his right shoulder wrapped in thick layers of bandage through which blood was seeping pinkly.

‘So what the fuck?’

Janos spoke up immediately. ‘The source was good. We learned the target was on the tram, and we boarded without initial incident.’

‘“Without initial incident”. It sounds like a traffic report.’

‘Sorry, boss.’ It was always boss in front of the other men. Never dad . Bartos insisted on it. ‘I took charge of the target myself, when a passenger attacked us with some sort of spear. A home-made affair. Looked like an umbrella shaft.’

‘You were attacked by a single man… armed with an umbrella .’

Janos jerked his head at the injured man. ‘He got Milos in the shoulder. And he killed Istvan.’ He jabbed a finger at his throat.

‘Istvan’s who, exactly?’

‘A good guy. Couple of bank jobs.’

There’d be nothing to tie the dead man to Bartos. It was one of Bartos’s tenets that everyone was deniable. Still, at that time the mdnt time an had been working for him, had been one of his employees, and had been killed. Bartos took that personally.

‘And Istvan fired his gun when he went down. Hit a civilian.’

Bartos wasn’t interested. ‘This umbrella guy. You say not a Russian.’

‘Didn’t look it.’

‘You remember his face?’ He swept his gaze across each man. They almost fell over themselves nodding, the injured man wincing in the process.

‘Good. Find him, and bring him to me.’

Janos said: ‘We shook him off the car, and he got hit by a tram. Probably hurt.’

‘Excellent. Shouldn’t have any difficulty finding him, then.’

He turned away, began to lumber out. Then he stopped.

‘Janos.’

He didn’t turn, but heard the man approach. Could smell the terror.

He put a hand on Janos’s back and walked him to the far side of the basement. He murmured: ‘You fucked up. But you also did good, getting me the Englishman. I ought to rip your balls off and give you a medal.’ He clapped his palm between his son’s shoulderblades, hard enough to make Janos gasp. ‘Even-Steven. Get me this umbrella guy and you’ll be well into the black.’

*

Back outside on the street, he took a call on his phone, recognising the number on the screen.

‘Yeah.’

‘Got the product? The Brit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’ A pause. Then: ‘You realise one of your guys shot a Russian dead on the tram.’

Bartos stopped in his tracks.

‘Not only that, but he was SVR. Oleg Ruzhovsky.’

‘Ah, for Christ’s — ’ Bartos stared about him, the rage building. Don’t smash the phone. Don’t.

Into the silence he snarled: ‘My men said some stranger attacked them.’

‘Yes. That’s a bit of a mystery to me, too. But he wasn’t anything to do with Ruzhovsky. Somehow Ruzhovsky stopped a bullet from one of your boys’ guns.’

A civilian , Janos had said. He hadn’t known it was a KGB who’d been shot.

‘Look after the merchandise.’

Bartos headed for his car. He said: ‘Any idea yet why this Brit, Gaines, is so important?’

›‘No. But I’m looking into it.’ In a moment: ‘What do your guys say about the attacker on the tram?’

‘Nationality not clear. Not Czech or Russian, probably. Tough, a professional.’

‘What did he have? Gun-wise?’

Bartos bit his lip.

‘You there?’

Bartos said: ‘They think it was a sharpened umbrella.’

‘An…’ In the background Bartos heard coughing, or something like it. ‘Did you say an umbrella?’

‘It was sharpened. Weaponised.’

‘Right.’

The voice sounded like it was choking. Bartos shouted, ‘What?’

He thought he caught something about Mary Poppins before he cut the call. He stood, T-shirted in the cold, the Kodiak, and wished he had something nearby to assault.

Nobody laughed at him. Nobody.

When this is over, you’ll pay. God, how you will.

*

Calvary had crossed back over the river and was somewhere south of the Old Town, in a modern shopping district. He kept moving, not with any particular destination in mind but not aimlessly either. Physical motion kept his thoughts flowing; at the same time he wanted to stay close to the scene of the attack without getting too close and possibly being recognised.

He stepped through the glass doors of a department store and felt the warmth and familiarity draw him in. Escalators soared past layers of shops, many of them with recognisable names.