Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

Calvary got to the part about the whereabouts of the Russian citizen when the voice cut in: ‘Name again?’

‘My name? Valery Petrov, senior public liaison officer. My staff ID number is 83774. My immediate superior is Mr Konstantin Churyenko, contact telephone number — ’

‘All right, yes.’ The voice was gruff. Calvary had pulled all of it out of the air — title, number, names. Sound confident enough and you can get away with a great deal, he’d learned.

‘I’m Dr Grossman. An hour ago I operated on a man who gave a Russian name.’

Calvary felt a clutch of elation. He realised the surgeon was waiting for him to speak.

‘Doctor, the man I’m looking for is called Gleb Tamarkin. However, he may be using an alias.’ He lowered his tone, making it grave, though not conspiratorial; he didn’t want to overdo it. ‘This man occupies rather a sensitive position at our embassy.’

If the surgeon was impressed he didn’t let it show in his voice. ‘What alias?’

‘Possibly one of the following.’ He ran through the list Llewellyn had provided. ‘Adam Livschitz. Mikhail Dubrovsky. Gennady — ’

‘Dubrovsky. That’s your man.’ Calvary heard the rasp of a stubbled cheek against the receiver. ‘Got himself shot in the belly and the leg with a handgun. My job was the easy part. The abdominal shot missed all the vitals, passed through the muscles in his flank. The orthopaedics team are working on his leg now. It’s messy.’

‘He’s still in theatre?’

‘That’s what I said.’ The surgeon sounded testy now.

‘Thank you. We’ll be sending a representative down as soon as possible.’

‘No questions for him, for a while. A few hours, at least. I’ve put the police off as well.’

Calvary said, ‘Dr Grossman, you’ve been extremely helpful. My country is grateful.’

‘Sure.’ The surgeon put the phone down even before finishing the syllable.

Calvary crammed the phone in his pocket, picked up the Browning. Checked the magazine. Five bullets fired, eight left.

To Nikola he said, ‘How far to the hospital?’

*

The man’s head rocked back, the guy with the hooded eyes. He blew snot and blood and fragments of teeth on to the floor.

Bartos stepped away, breathing heavily, shaking his dripping fists. The guy’s face was a mess, one eye swollen closed, but still he glared at Bartos with that lizard look.

No respect.

Beside Bartos, Pavel cracked his knuckles. He was limping a little. Bartos knew the sign: he’d been kicked in the balls, though he wasn’t admitting it.

Bartos’s throat was sore. For an hour he’d screamed himself hoarse. The bellowing storm of rage that normally battered its terrified targets into obedience hadn’t worked.

In a moment he’d go next door, see how Miklos was getting on with the other one, the skinny kid with the stupid hair.

He let Pavel have a go, watched him wade in with fists and boots. The man toppled time and again in his chair and was pulled upright. He never looked at Pavel; always his stare came back to Bartos.

Pavel was moving in again when Bartos said, ‘Wait.’ He strode forward, bent his head so that his ear was near the man’s moving lips.

The sound was barely a whisper. Bartos turned his head to try to decipher the words the lips were forming.

‘Pig,’ hissed the man, and he spat in Bartos’s face. Laughed.

Bartos straightened. His self control was, he thought, remarkable. He turned, walked slowly back towards the wall. Three paces, four.

He drew the pistol from his belt, a CZ-TT nine millimetre. Good Czech workmanship. Bartos was nothing if not patriotic.

*

‘No answer at his flat.’

Arkady stood in the doorway. Krupina waved him in. The nausea had passed; she’d managed to keep down some tea. Felt better.

‘You didn’t force your way in, by any chance?’

‘Of course.’ A faint smile. ‘Unobtrusively. No sign of him, no evidence of any struggle.’

‘And you last spoke to him when?’

‘The same time as you, boss. Just before we all left for the night.’

A missing operative. Krupina should go to the Embassy to report it. Endure their scorn, their laughter. Their jokes about milk cartons.

Failing that, she should contact her superior at SVR headquarters in Moscow. Face his quiet, slow-burning anger. She’d already had to call him twice, once to make arrangements for Oleg’s body to be repatriated, the second time to ask for more men.

She thought of her father, the scarred stumps of his legs that he’d brandished like trophies. His proof of having lived in the service of his country. Where was hers?

She got up, left her office. Arkady followed. At her desk Yevgenia looked up expectantly.

‘Can you get a GPS trace on Gleb’s phone?’

‘Yes, of course.’ The young woman set to work.

Krupina prowled about the larger office, reluctant to return to the stuffy confines of her own room. Also, she acknowledged to herself, she wanted to demonstrate to the others, Yevgenia and Arkady and Lev, that she was fit and well. Or at least ambulant.

In less than ten minutes Yevgenia said, ‘I have it.’

Krupina peered at the screen. The girl homed in. Identified the cross streets, entered the details into a search engine.

‘It’s a hospital.’

*

The man was leaning against the wall of the alley beside two enormous wheeled dumpster-like containers almost overflowing with linen. He wore overalls with the hospital’s name stencilled across the chest, and was smoking a cigarette. He glanced at Calvary as he approached, then looked away again.

In Russian Calvary said: ‘You work here?’

‘Have a guess.’ The man concentrated on his cigarette.

‘I’m a doctor. I left my pager in my scrubs and they’ve been thrown in the waste. Mind if I take a look?’

The man laughed, glanced at the linen containers. ‘Needles and haystacks. But knock yourself out.’

Calvary found a crate and climbed up on it, peering down into the container. They’d circled the hospital in the rented VW to get a feel for the layout, and had spotted the bay round the back where loading and offloading was done. The hospital wasn’t the one Calvary had approached earlier, where he’d been ambushed by Janos and his men. This one looked bigger, sleeker, more modern.

The container was a riot of cloth, bloodied or stained or merely grubby. He rummaged, careful not to tip too far forward and fall in. Sheets, towels, hospital gowns. He found a gown with only a smear of blood on it.

He rolled the garment up as tightly as he could and stuffed it under his jacket, which he zipped up. He found the upper half of a pair of scrubs but not the lower. Eventually he tugged out a white coat, unstained. It looked about the right size. This too he crammed under his jacket.

He stepped down, said over his shoulder to the smoking man, ‘There’s no chance I’ll find it in there. Don’t know what I was thinking.’

Another laugh. ‘Told you so. Hope it doesn’t get you into too much trouble, pal.’

Round the corner, on the other side of a grassy verge, Nikola sat in the car. He climbed in and unzipped his jacket.

She pulled on the white coat — it was a size too big, but that added authenticity if anything — while Calvary slipped out of his jacket and wrapped the gown across his torso, arching to tie the knot at the back. He kept the rest of his clothes on under the gown, and his boots. Rolled his sleeves up.

Calvary glanced in the wing mirror, saw a police car turning up the road running along the side of the hospital and heading towards them.

He grabbed Nikola and clamped his mouth over hers. She stiffened, startled; then he saw her eye, close up, swivel to the back window and she understood. She responded, winding her arms round his neck. Over her head Calvary saw the police car cruise past, the man in the passenger seat gazing at them, grinning and saying something.