Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

Couldn’t, or wouldn’t. The Worm found the man’s stubbornness infuriating. Gaines was of critical importance to the Russian state, of that there was no doubt. Blazek would be able to command an astronomical price even without knowing the full details. But Blazek was a businessman, as he never failed to remind the Worm. And a good businessman never did business without being fully aware of the stakes. Blazek had made clear, furthermore, that until he’d sold Gaines to the SVR, the Worm wouldn’t see a penny of his payment.

So the Worm had his work cut out.

*

The hospital was a modern structure of glass and steel, the emergency department obvious even to someone like Calvary who didn’t read the language: a large forecourt crowded with ambulances arriving and departing, a steady flow of pedestrian traffic through the main sliding doors. It was southwest of the Old Town, fifteen minutes’ walk.

Llewellyn would want a progress report later that evening. Calvary didn’t know when the first editions of the newspapers went to press in Britain, but suspected it couldn’t be much later than midnight. If he hadn’t found Gaines by then, at least he might have enough of a lead to persuade Llewellyn to hold off. A skim through the online news sites, British and international, had told him that either the Songwriter’s body hadn’t been discovered yet, or at the very least the press hadn’t got hold of the story. Calvary thought the Chapel had probably secured the man’s flat, had kept the police away. C/fold

Had opened the dead man’s eyes to increase the impact of the photograph. God. Llewellyn was sick.

For a moment another pair of eyes stared into Calvary’s. Also dark brown. But not dead. Crucially, not dead.

The image, the memory, disappeared as the car cut up onto the kerb in front of him and the passenger door rocked open, the gun emerging first.

*

‘We’re going to lose him. I’m moving in.’

Bartos crashed through the restaurant, his bulk sending a canteen of cutlery flying, the phone jammed to his ear. ‘Who the hell else is nearby?’

Adam’s voice came through. The first one had been the driver’s.

‘Pavel’s on his way. I’d told him to meet me here before I saw the guy coming out the entrance.’

Bartos shoved down the steps past an elderly couple. A walking stick clattered to the ground. His BMW sat on a double yellow line outside, the driver already running the engine. ‘You keep after the guy. I’ll light a fire under Pavel’s ass.’

He rang off, speed-dialled Pavel’s number, and while it rang he yelled the name of the hospital at his driver. The car surged away, slamming Bartos back into his seat.

*

Use the environment to your advantage. Sometimes the best tools are to be found there.

The lesson was woven into Calvary’s fibres, his neurones. The man had made a stupid mistake, emerging over an open car door at close range, perhaps relying on the tendency of an opponent to step back from a gun aimed at his face. Instead of stepping back, Calvary leaped forward, both feet leaving the ground. He smashed the door into the man, catching his arm and his chest and making him cry out and drop back into the car. Calvary found his feet and kicked at the door again, pistoning his leg out, driving it against the man’s legs.

The driver was already reversing, the door swinging open, the man in the passenger seat drawing back inside. Traffic on the road squealed and veered around the reversing car, a Lexus.

Without the benefit of being at close range, Calvary was at a disadvantage. He glanced about, saw a sidestreet and ran round the corner, pressing himself against the wall of the building. The Lexus hurled itself across the pavement at the corner, the gear too low, and overshot. Calvary slipped back onto the main road and began running back the way he’d come.

People were milling on the pavement in confusion. He wove among them. As he ran he scanned the road. No other cars approaching. Perhaps the Lexus was alone.

He heard more horns, a scream of overworked tyres at Ckedont›

He needed to get away, or at least out of range of the gun. But he didn’t want to get too far away, because one or more live captives would be worth a great deal to him.

The Lexus didn’t appear on the periphery of his vision as he was expecting. He chanced a look over his shoulder. The car was idling on the road behind him, keeping pace. The passenger with the gun was on the far side from him. The driver was watching him through the open window.

Evidently they didn’t want to open fire, risk a public battle. They’d expected to snatch him quickly, with a minimum of fuss, so that there’d be no clear eyewitness accounts. There was little chance of that now.

Calvary stopped running. He turned, stood facing the car across the road. Held his palms out.

Your move.

*

‘He’s stopped running. Standing there, waiting for us.’

Bartos stuck a finger in his other ear. ‘What? Can’t hear you.’

Janos repeated himself. Bartos said, ‘You hurt? What the hell just happened?’

‘I’m okay. He’s made us, though. He’s fast. Won’t get him on our own, now.’

‘Jesus.’ Bartos closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, counted slowly back from ten. Magda had recently given him an anger-management CD. He got to five and lost patience.

‘Keep him there. Don’t do anything unless he runs.’

‘Then go after him?’

‘No, dickhead. Sit there crooning Sinatra songs.’

He punched in Pavel’s number again. Pavel wasn’t all that smart, but he was big and ferocious. And he was nearby.

‘You there yet?’

‘Hospital’s ahead.’

‘He’s on the street. Janos and his driver are stopped or parked or whatever the fuck, across from him.’

In a beat: ‘Boss, I see them.’

*

The Lexus had pulled up onto the kerb to let the traffic flow past. Through the windscreen Calvary could just make out the man in the passenger seat, phone raised to his ear. Calling for backup.

Time to make a move.

He scanned the windows on his side of the street. A bookshop caught his eye. He raised a hand to the Lexus and turned and pushed through the door.

C›

The rule was usually, in a situation like this: keep away from civilians . The risk of some innocent being caught in the crossfire was normally unacceptably high. But Calvary’s impression was as before, that these men wanted to keep as low a profile as possible. There weren’t likely to be any hostage situations. And that would give him an advantage that would offset any numerical imbalance.

The bookshop was dark, cosy, populated by a handful of browsers and silent staff. Calvary moved across to the far end, near the cash registers, picked a book off a shelf and began paging. He watched the door.

Something changed in the atmosphere, a subtle shifting like the first hint of a storm. Keeping his gaze on the doors, Calvary groped for it with his other senses, trying to pin it down.

Damn it. A side entrance.

Over to his right, a man stood inside the door. Head shaven, torso wrapped in black leather like a hide. Without looking directly at him Calvary nonetheless sensed there was something wrong with his face. The man wasn’t moving, was just standing there, his stare boring into Calvary.

A minute later the doors at the front swung open and two men slipped in. One was hobbling a little. The passenger from the Lexus. The other was the driver.

They too made no pretence at subtlety, their eyes fixed on Calvary.

All right, if that’s the way it’s going to be.

He lifted his head, looked straight at each of the three men in turn. His eyes met theirs almost audibly, like swords joining battle.