Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

‘They’re past now,’ Calvary managed to say, but Nikola continued a while longer. Eventually she broke away.

They cruised the perimeter of the hospital again until Calvary spotted what he was looking for and pointed. Outside another service door a carelessly scattered fleet of stretchers had been left unattended, like trolleys in a supermarket car park. One or two had blankets piled haphazardly on them.

Nikola pulled into one of the public car parking areas and while Calvary waited in the passenger seat, she trotted over to the trolleys and purloined one, together with some blankets. Back at the car they peered around. Cars were arriving and departing but everybody appeared too preoccupied with their own problems to notice a white-coated woman helping an apparently bleeding man out of a car and onto a gurney.

It was better they played it this way round, Calvary had decided. That Nikola be the doctor and he the patient. Anyone such as a security guard or policeman who might have grounds to be looking out for an intruder would notice Nikola first and unconsciously discount her as a threat; her patient would probably not warrant a second glance, as long as he didn’t ham up his performance too much.

They left both guns in the car, the Browning under the seat and the Glock in the glove compartment. He’d thought about bringing one of them in but decided the risk of discovery was too great.

Nikola pushed him at a brisk pace around to the main entrance. The automatic doors slid open with futuristic speed and they were inside. From his supine position Calvary saw the emergency room waiting area was much like the ones in hospitals of similar size in London: a few people dotted about on the seats, sleeping or muttering while supporting bleeding hands, the floor stinking of sour drink and scrubbed-away vomit, the bins overflowing with wrappers and soft-drink cans. Behind a desk a desultory pair of clerks ate and drank and listened to a radio.

Calvary muttered something hoarsely and she bent to hear. He whispered: ‘Take us into the emergency room itself. I need to get a couple of accessories.’

They proceeded into the emergency room proper, the inner sanctum which those fortunate souls who were ill or damaged or persistent enough to get past the triage nurse were privileged to penetrate. Elderly quavering wails rose from curtained cubicles, and the sound of drunksouanctum wen puking was interspersed with clotted expletives. At the central hub, dog-tired young women and men spoke into phones or scribbled notes.

Nikola parked the trolley beside a wall of drawers and pretended to study a notice board. Calvary snaked an arm out from under the blanket and rummaged in one of the drawers, coming away with a roll of tape and a few alcohol swabs in individual packets. He groaned, struggling to a sitting position, and Nikola put her hands on his shoulders and began to talk to him in Czech in a half-consoling, half-chiding tone. His new position allowed him to peer into the other drawers and he lifted out a cannula, a plastic bag of saline and an infusion set. These he buried beneath the blanket before slumping back.

She wheeled him out of the emergency room into a corridor that led off into the depths of the hospital, pausing near the door to allow him to lift a cheap-looking stethoscope from where it was coiled on a small steel table. Nikola draped it around her neck, and instantly her appearance was transformed: she became a doctor.

A short passage off the corridor appeared to lead to the locked door of a disused ward. Calvary said, ‘Down there.’ They had to be quick; anybody glancing down the passage would wonder what they were doing there. Motioning Nikola to keep her back to the corridor and thereby provide a degree of cover, he lifted back the blanket and began to peel open the plastic packaging of the cannula.

He attached the infusion set to the saline, ran a little of the fluid through, hung the bag on the hooked rod that protruded vertically up from one corner of the trolley. ‘Squeeze my arm,’ he said. Nikola gripped his upper arm, making the veins in the forearm bulge. He inserted the cannula, used tape to secure it. It wasn’t much, an added detail, but it would help.

Back in the corridor she stopped at a signboard indicating the directions of various wards and departments.

‘The theatres and pre- and post-operative wards are on the first floor,’ she said.

Now came the tricky part.

The pain had hold of his entire body. It wasn’t the sharp burn of earlier, but a duller, less localised sensation that was aggravated whenever he moved.

Tamarkin opened his eyes to harsh lighting glaring into his face. For an instant he was back in Moscow on a training exercise, in the subterranean cells of the Lubyanka, being put through his paces while an interrogator alternately shouted and wheedled.

Then his situation snapped into focus as if a camera lens had been adjusted. He’d been shot, abdomen and leg. He was in hospital. He was alive.

He tried to lift his head. Apart from the pain the move set off, he felt the groggy, spinning nausea caused by the anaesthetic. Before his head sagged back he took in a small, low-ceilinged room. He was the only occupant, apart from a lone nurse who moved about amidst the beep and flicker of monitoring equipment. She caught his eye, smiled distractedly.

Tamarkin had a few memories of what had happened after he’d seen the muzzle flashfon from Calvary’s gun and felt the hammer blow to his stomach. He recalled finding himself at some point alone on the rooftop, and sliding the agonising distance towards where his gun had landed. He’d managed to kick the Makarov a good ten feet and was delighted through his pain to see the stock land near the gunman Calvary had shot. The immediate assumption would be that the pistol belonged to the dead man.

Further vague memories included shuffling backwards on his bottom until he reached the stairwell, then flopping back down it, before blackness claimed him again. Then, thirty seconds or two hours later, he couldn’t tell which, the intolerable racket of a helicopter’s rotors almost on top of him. Later, faces crowding over him as he was lifted on to some sort of bed — the operating table, he supposed.

He closed his eyes to take further stock. He remembered groping for his phone, finding it smashed by the impact of his fall; so the hospital staff would have been unable to run through his contact list to call anybody he knew. They’d have found his Mikhail Dubrovsky ID, so that was the persona he’d have to remember to use. They might already have contacted the Embassy, in which case Krupina would have been notified and would be on her way, if not already waiting outside.

He would have to come clean with Krupina. Not entirely, not about his association with Blazek; but he’d have to tell her that he’d attached a tracker to Calvary’s Fiat without her knowledge. Had done it to try and catch the man on his own initiative. She’d bawl him out, would probably arrange for his demotion. But he thought part of her might understand.

Calvary . Had he learned of Gaines’s whereabouts from Janos? If he had, then Tamarkin thought he might succeed in springing Gaines. A few hours ago he would have thought this impossible. But time and again Calvary had evaded Blazek, had got the better of him, and Tamarkin had to assume this might happen once more.

Krupina had requested reinforcements from Moscow. Might even have received them by now. A dozen highly trained operatives versus what Tamarkin was coming increasingly to regard as an inept mobster rabble.

It was time to play a different hand. Time to throw in his lot with Krupina once more. To tell her where Gaines was being held.

*