Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

A classic proletariy , in the old terminology, Calvary was the son of an English decorator father and a receptionist mother. The mother, intriguingly, was a Russian immigrant. Calvary was from Leicester in the Midlands, and had attended but not graduated from a technical college in Birmingham. He’d then enlisted with the British Army.

ed but n="2em" align="justify"›What little was available from SVR’s contacts within the British Ministry of Defence indicated that Calvary had served from 1998 until five years ago, and had risen to the rank of first lieutenant. He had distinguished himself as a rifleman in the Royal Green Jackets in Kosovo in 1999 and later in Afghanistan, first in 2005 and then in 2007 when, as an officer in the newly formed Rifles regiment, he’d been part of Operation Achilles, the renewed push against the Taliban in Helmand Province.

Then, in the summer of 2008, he’d left. Honorably discharged. No breath of a scandal. No details available at all.

And reappeared, no longer a serving soldier, near the scene of the Kreutzmann hit in Copenhagen. Kreutzmann, the old Stasi officer, had employed his own security, some of whom had links to SVR or FSB. They had sifted through their collections of surveillance footage from the days before and the period immediately after the murder, and he’d come up more often than most.

Krupina couldn’t hold out any longer. She walked to a kiosk and bought a pack of Marlboros. Belomorkanals were hard to come by, and her next shipment wasn’t due till tomorrow. She lit up. The smoke barely tickled her throat, let alone her nerve endings.

So: Calvary’s potential as a hit man had been spotted during his time in the army, and he’d been headhunted. By SIS, probably, though there were lots of people who might want an old Stasi dead — many of them Germans — and so it was conceivable that Calvary was working for some other agency, or even freelancing.

He was here, then, to take out Gaines, who knew the identity of the British mole in the Kremlin. This suggested strongly that SIS were handling him. Probably they’d bought Gaines’s silence through bribes or threats before, but weren’t satisfied. Wanted him out of the picture entirely.

It didn’t explain what had happened on the tram. Who the armed men were who hijacked it, why there’d been gunfire. Were they accomplices of Calvary’s, joining him on board and helping him kidnap Gaines? It didn’t fit.

She’d pulled strings at the airports, Prague’s and the others, to get Calvary’s name and face on the danger lists. But the Czech Republic was a landlocked country with porous borders and an almost infinite number of escape routes. She’d never stop him leaving.

And yet… something in her, something nagging, told her he hadn’t left. Hadn’t completed his business here in the city. Might not, in fact, have got his man at all.

She could muster little excitement at the prospect of the chase. Hanging over everything was the fact of Oleg’s death. No goodbyes, just a life terminated in a semi-random act of violence.

One of the best espions she’d ever known. The phrase came back to her.

And… something else.

That was what had been nagging at her.

She turned and began the nearly kilometre-long journey back to the offi Sk t wice at close to a trot, fumbling out her phone as she did so.

*

‘You’re doing what?’

‘Burning it.’

Calvary put his lips around the end of the hose and drew deep, feeling the heavy warmth spread down the rubber. He pulled his face away in time to avoid a mouthful, angled the hose end into the cut-off plastic milk bottle. The petrol began to course out.

The young man and the woman — a few years older, but still young, perhaps in her late twenties — had been peering round the lip of the alley, watching for police. The sirens sped by in both directions but there’d been no interest shown in this dark passageway between tall blocks.

She’d ridden on the rim of the wheel until the front tyre had begun to howl in sympathy. Calvary said, ‘Down there,’ jabbing his finger at the alley’s mouth. She spun the wheel and the van rocked into the blackness, one side scraping sparks off the wall.

While they were looking out — not that it would do them any good — Calvary rummaged in the bins at the end of the alley for what he wanted. A container, in this case a two-litre plastic bottle, and a length of hose. He used the jagged edge of a tin can lid to trim the hose and saw off the neck of the bottle.

‘It’s my van.’ The kid ran a hand through his sprawling mop of black curls. He was spare, hip-looking in skinny jeans and T-shirt.

‘No it’s not.’ Calvary wielded the bottle like a chainsaw, shaking petrol over the van, inside and out. Using what he had sparingly. ‘It’s now the property of the city of Prague, specifically its police department. Along with all the DNA inside. Yours, hers and mine.’

He held out his hand without looking at the boy. ‘Give me a light.’

‘What? I don’t — ’

‘The van stank of weed. Come on.’

‘Jeez…’ But the kid handed over a lighter, decorated with a bas-relief of cannabis leaves.

‘Back,’ said Calvary, and flicked the roller. He dropped the lighter and herded them towards the street. The heat licked at their backs, and Calvary heard the crackle of blistering paint an instant after they turned into the low afternoon sunlight.

He let them take the lead, matching their pace.

‘How far are we going?’

‘Twenty minute walk,’ said the woman.

Calvary said to the man, ‘You said it was your van?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How come she was driving?’

The woman cut in: ‘Because she y"›t size="+0"› is the better driver.’ Her English was good but with a Czech accent. She was tall, nearly Calvary’s height. Dark hair hanging loose, dressed in a suede jacket, jeans and boots. There was a slight resemblance between her and the boy, Calvary thought; something in the nose, the mouth.

To the boy Calvary said, ‘The number plate will have been caught by every security camera we passed. The police will be looking for you already.’

He grinned back. ‘Uh-uh, dude. Unregistered car, fake plates. Untraceable.’

Well, that’s something. ‘Why?’ said Calvary. ‘Are you criminals?’

Another laugh. ‘No. We just don’t trust the State, man.’

They ignored red lights, wove their way precariously across traffic. Overhead a helicopter chattered through the early evening sky. It looked like police.

‘He means,’ the woman said, ‘our enemies, the ones chasing you, have connections everywhere. Maybe in the vehicle licensing department.’

Calvary was disorientated, thought they were somewhere south of the hospital where it had all kicked off. It was a slightly grubby commercial district, fleets of lorries rolling down the roads in boiling clouds of dust.

‘Who are you?’

She said, ‘I’m Nikola. This is Max.’

‘No, I mean who are you?’

‘Your enemy’s enemies,’ said the boy. ‘So, your friends.’

Calvary thought, Spare me . He didn’t push it, concentrated on an inventory of his injuries. Nothing disabling, but there’d be aches later that might restrict mobility. He’d have to watch for that, keep his joints in motion.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Calvary.’

‘Like where Jesus got crucified.’ The boy was grinning again.

The woman, Nikola, had been murmuring into a phone. She put it away.

‘We are activists,’ she said. ‘We publish an independent newsletter. Reflektor . You are from England?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you will not have heard of us. Even most Prague residents haven’t.’